#i am so weird about talking about my original stories
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tempesttz · 3 days ago
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oh hey a topic i can talk about because webnovel isnt just for fanfic.
so i've used webnovel for over a year now? you can bet they have not gotten a single cent from me and i exploit the hell out of the bugs in their terrible system to allow me to read whatever the hell i want (no i will not post how i do it because i dont want that grubby company to be able to patch it) but its a pretty good (and one of the only that i know of) ways to read some good translated novels (especially of the cultivation/reincarnation genre, one of my favorites to read) to english. some more things about webnovel though
they will terminate and get rid of accounts that provide links to the original stories (because a lot of the stories arent original content, theyre translated, usually from mandarin. i am sure a lot of them are also MTL or machine translated works) to the dismay of readers
most stories are 40 chapters free, usually chapters of stories are in the hundreds, sometimes the thousands, and the rest are locked. no add pass no nothing go fuck yourself locked. to the dismay of readers
the male/female lead stories thing makes a little bit of sense to me because of the kind of content it hosts. i read 90% female lead content, the writing genre and "feel" of the stories is pretty different so as weird as it is i'll give them this one
they have a bunch of weird badges and things to add to your profile. most of them are things you have to pay for. speaking of here's my stats just to prove im not talking out of my ass here. the numbers are a little skewed because, again, exploiting the hell out of bugs to let me read whatever the hell i want. also how many badges there are holy shit.
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my credentials. they overflow.
most of the art for the covers is stolen or, as i see more and more, ai-generated
i didnt even know webnovel HAD fanfiction by the way. so let that speak for itself. dont write fanfic on webnovel. dont write ANYTHING on webnovel. fuck these people. i am kind of terrified this will get my account terminated but hey fuck it thems the breaks i guess
this is a much smaller gripe but why is LGBT in the "female lead" section. its not yuri its mostly just BL why??? is this???? those leads are NOT female???? you cant blame the fujoshis for this thats on webnovel
they make you buy coins for EVERYTHING and they SHOVE them in your FACE.
they have this weird gamification thing they do with how long you read filling up a bar in the corner of your screen that gives you five fuck-if-i-know-points. so theres also that
if you are looking for fanfiction do not give webnovel your time. if you are looking for translated novels also do not give webnovel your time because its just not worth it, as hypocritical as i sound. go to wattpad. there are plenty of people semi-okay-probably-not-really-legally posting them there for your viewing pleasure, just put them in your offline library and read them with your wifi/data off because wattpad can also go fuck themselves for shortening the amount of books you can have offline to TWO i dont care how many years it has been i am still pissed off. and for running an ad after every chapter. ao3 supremacy until the end and stay away from webnovel they are a greedy greedy terrible company
I got this comment on a story from my Other AO3 Account this morning.
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(Info redacted because I prefer keeping these accounts separate but no one follows me on the side blog I have for that account.)
The story was posted almost a year ago and is relatively “popular” by my average statistics even though it has tropes and themes that are big turnoffs for a lot of people (hence separate accounts). This popularity is undoubtedly because it’s a Marvel Loki story and that fandom is massive.
So there is obviously an algorithm or a bot scrubbing ao3 statistics and leaving this comment on fics that meet a certain metric with the main character of the fic inserted into the comment.
I had a little time to kill this morning so I decided to investigate further. And y’all this is so predatory. Come on this journey with me. It made me mad. It may make you mad.
First, if you go to Webnovel’s website, you HAVE to choose between male lead or female lead stories before you can go any further. WTF?
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And that’s weird, but this gets so much worse. This is basically a pay-to-read site that has different subscription models. Which… okay BUT! The authors don’t get paid! Look at that comment again. They’re promising a supportive and nurturing community, but zero monetary compensation. It’s basically, “post your stuff here so we can get paid and you can get… nice vibes?” I mean look at this Orwellian writing:
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Using the phrase “pay-to-read model” in the same sentence as “qualitative changes in lifestyles for authors” deliberately makes you think that you can get paid and maybe even make a living on this website. But that’s not actually what it says and authors will not receive one red cent.
Oh but wait, the worst is still to come. In case this breaks containment (which I kind of hope it does) this is where I mention that I’m a lawyer in the US.
I don’t do intellectual property or copyright law but I do read and write contracts for a living. So I went to look at their terms of service. It was fun!
Highlights the first, in which Webnovel gets a license to do basically whatever they want with content you post on their site. This is how they get to be paid for people reading authors’ writing without paying them anything.
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Highlights the second, in which Webnovel takes no responsibility for illegally profiting off of fan fic. This all says that the writer is 100% responsible for everything the writer posts (even though only Webnovel is making money from it).
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Highlights the third which say that by posting, the author is representing that they have the legal right to use and to let Webnovel use the content according to these terms. So if a writer posts fan fiction and Webnovel makes money from people reading the fan fiction, and the House of the Mouse catches wise, these sections say that that’s ALL on the writer.
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So that’s a little skeevy to start off with but the thing that is seriously shitty and made me make this post was that these assholes are coming to ao3. They are actively recruiting people in comments on their fan fiction. And they are saying they are big fans of the character you’re writing about and that they share your interests.
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They are recruiting fan fiction writers and giving every impression that you can make money from posting fan fiction on their site and hiding the fact that you absolutely cannot but they can make money off of you while you try, deep in their terms of service which no one but a lawyer who writes fan fic and has some time to kill will read.
I see posts on here regularly from people who don’t understand how this stuff works, don’t understand that they (and others) can not legally make a financial profit from fan fiction. And there are tons of people who will not take the time to dig into the details.
Don’t deal with these bastards. Fuck Webnovel.
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mooifyourecows · 1 year ago
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I really wanna ramble about the relationship Dynamic™️ I gave to these characters in my original story. It's just.... so..........
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puppyeared · 6 months ago
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who up seeing their disorder in a fictional character but feel like its not their place to put a name on it
#id have to be waterboarded before i can talk abt how i see a lot of my adhd and personality in mitsumi iwakura let alone post it#idk how to talk abt this without feeling like im talking over or invalidating ppls experiences relating with a character#someone was talking abt how ppl tie laios' autism to special interest and social difficulties but not much else which kinda flattens it#and then went into a respectful in depth analysis of other autistic behaviour that laios exhibits and it wasnt phrased meanly#its fascinating and important to me to hear someone explain a little bit abt traits that they recognized and often go overlooked#because it does help me learn more about it. but i think thats also where hesitancy kicks in when it comes to depicting it accurately#like i have adhd and some of my adhd symptoms overlap with autism (time blindness and pattern seeking behaviour) but that only means#it feels familiar to me even without having autism. on top of that traits arent always cleanly determined as being /caused/ by#a disorder. to understand my environment i compare it to something unrelated but similar to make it more familiar and for the longest time#i thought that was a personality thing and not an information processing thing since i loved playing pretend in my head as a kid#so if you make a character who experiences that hoping to reach people that also experience that and tell them its not weird or#smth youre making up like. thats the goal. ppl who dont get it arent expected to it just means it doesnt cater to them but it helps them#become familiar to it yk? since i dont have autism myself i dont feel confident i can depict it properly or explain it in my own words#but that doesnt mean im trying to dismiss it or try and cut it out completely.. ill just leave the floor open to someone who /can/#a lot of issues around fanon depictions are when smth is baselessly popularized or a characters personality and behavior is flattened#especially to fit them into a trending meme. its harmless and its supposed to be for fun but it gets tricky when you drag things that#need to be carefully explained beforehand or else it gets lost in translation. like that tweet abt 'hyperfixating' on cooking pasta#once it becomes popular language usually the original meaning is left out for the sake of simplifying it for everyone that when it#circles back theres a sort of hesitancy like. am i using it the way it was intended or am i unknowingly using the popularized version of it#actually thats probably why i felt wrongfooted during diagnosis bc it felt like i was misusing the words i heard to describe what i felt#i /know/ i see a lot of myself in mitsumi because our minds are always somewhere else and we tend to put good faith first and for me#that personal connection is enough. but idk it feels like its always gonna have to be 'palatable' first before i can talk abt it openly#mad respect to writers and creators who stick to their story even if theres the looming fear of ppl misinterpreting it and letting them#have it.. its been almost 2 weeks and i am so close to deleting that m3 dunmeshi drawing bc ppl keep saying chilchuck wouldnt have 200 HP#IT LITERALLY SAYS I MADE IT WHILE WATCHING EP 1. I USED EARTHBOUND LOGIC AND I WASNT EVEN TAKING IT SERIOUSLY CHILL#yapping
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giddlygoat · 4 months ago
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my brother can make me laugh without moving at all. he can make me laugh on command, just by existing, and there is no physical tell or indication that it is about to happen. it’s like he can will me to laugh and i will. of course we’re not telepathic, but we do speak in unison sometimes. we improvise like no one’s business. we could fool anyone into believing we are psychically linked. when i try to explain it, i sound silly saying it out loud, but i really CAN tell what he’s thinking. we exchange so much information just with a look. he can make me cry laughing and he doesn’t even have to move
#i miss him so much i need him back i need him to live next to me again. i need to mooch off his wifi from my porch and invite him over#i miss him so much.#he’s only 2 minutes younger but he feels years younger. and yet i think we’re two halves of one soul#i’ve always babied him not even in a mean or diminishing way but i felt this need to protect him#because he tends to be so naive and so shy#but. i am so proud of him. i need to show him off to everyone and i need everyone to understand how funny and charming he is#it feels like i grew up and left him where he will remain 11 forever. i miss him more than moving back home can fix#i miss him in ways that have nothing to do with the distance between our locations#but. it would certainly help to be able to see him every day#i keep smelling the carpet in his room and it’s so vivid. i remember the countless hours we spent developing huge wood block cities#and we would drive hot wheels over the wooden raceways we had made. we were actually quite coordinated and autistic about it#we were always building things together#just recently me and him talked on the phone about an old mlp au we came up with. all original characters and shit#it was super extensive and very clever#i STILL think it would make a really cool book series or something#i remember watching him play army men RTS gamecube on the wii. i STILL listen to the soundtrack to that game like…. daily#i remember walking into my room once where he was watching a show. and he was crying#and he NEVER cries over tv#but he was crying because his favorite character had resigned from the organization that the series was based around#and he was so distraught that she was leaving.#i remember when all 3 of us slept in one room. i remember when me and him were in bunk beds across the room#and we would sneak out of bed right as the parents left and stayed up playing by the light of the nightlight#the way we raced back into bed when the parents were approaching 😭#my mom always says she’s sad that i seem to remember so little of my life. like every story of my youth is news to me lmao#but i feel like i remember the most important parts? i think so#i remember how mom woke me up in the night to ask me to roll over because my bro could see my face from where he was sleeping#and he was scared because there was a weird shadow cast on my face that made it look like a skull which was making it hard for him to sleep#it was. so funny. i begrudgingly rolled over#i don’t know. it’s just that there isn’t a single instance i bring up that my brother does not also remember.#no matter how tiny or specific. we shared everything growing up
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minakoaiinos · 7 months ago
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It's not even a joke anymore I need to see Mey Rin.
#and my finny and bard i wonder how they're going to look in this new animation style#i don't usually care about animation styles per se like it's not something i bitch about but i don't love the animation this season per se:(#sometimes it's really really pretty but also sometimes i am like that's not how ciel and especially sebastian look :(#sebastian looks really pretty but sometimes he doesn't feel like sebastian? i like when sebastian was all pointy#i think sebastian should look like this is junjou romantica.#but aside from that i think the tone is a smidgen off from the manga? like the way certain things are animated are not as goofy as the manga#when usually i don't feel a weird imbalance there sometimes it lands now and sometimes it doesn't#oh back to the original point i wish we had done an obligatory house episode ik the arc is just like this in the manga but uh so was circus#we're in the same situation where it's been so many years since the anime has been on air AND we are in a situation where we got 11 eps...#...out of this arc i think it would have made perfect sense to have a house episode with everyone#bc at its heart black butler is about the house ciel has made and the bit they all have going there#everything bad happens now bc he goes out of the house!! the house is the safe space control group type of environment#that's part of why the murder arc is so fun bc everyone there is in complete control of it and ciel's a stay at home not talk guy#everything outside of the house is fake! that's why it's the bit that they're pretending to be fake inside!#that's necessary to orient you to this story and ciel but whatever anyway 😔#small gripes that pick at me occasionally i just haven't had the time or mental space to voice them here#kuroshitsuji#my kuro posts
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signalhill-if · 10 months ago
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Fun fact: a lot of the story ideas I have came from the world I designed for an Apocalypse World game, and at the time I was reading @attollogame and loved Sysba and wound up making a character with a similar premise of being a god banished to live in a human body. That character took on a life of their own and became like everybody's favourite NPC. But they were really specific to that game's story at that point and were very fultifaceted, so when I started writing Signal Hill (which has a totally different plot) I decided to split their role in the story into two different characters, Yvette and Aldrich.
In other words, if you trace it far enough back, 1/3 of my main cast is just Sysba from Attollo
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stergeon · 8 months ago
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for the writer ask
💭🚦💛 💌
💭 What inspires you and your writing?
this is a real marketing major-ass answer (from your local marketing major), but i love sharing knowledge and telling stories. writing’s one of those things that’s a bit of a compulsion for me—i’m always writing something. i took a five-year break from fiction writing before i stumbled ass-first into fanfic last year, but even in those years when i was focusing on my career, i was writing guides and trainings and a ton of other stuff—just not anything fun, lol.
writing is also so cathartic. sometimes i set out to tell a specific story, but at other times, a particular emotion gets me in a vice grip and i have to put it to words before it’ll go away. my stories tend to wind up as emotional dumping grounds as a result.
i don’t write things pulled directly from my own life, but there are bits and pieces of myself and things that have happened to me scattered throughout stuff i’ve written, and usually when i’m about 75% of the way through a piece, i’ll realize it’s absolutely related to something i’m currently going through. funny how art works that way, even when you don’t intend for it to.
and occasionally i just have a fire lit under my ass about an issue and i get so hot about it that i gotta compile my thoughts. looking at you, silver snow
🚦 What sort of endings do you prefer to write: ambiguous, bad, happily ever after, etc.?
look, i would love nothing more for them girls (pick whichever girls you please) to have a happy ending where they kiss and are stupid in love for the rest of forever. i love reading those kinds of stories. but in my heart of hearts, i love an ambiguous ending. i like when there are still questions after the story ends. i like thinking about where things could go or how the characters will go on after the events of the story. like, shared space could be read as having a happy ending, but i don’t really think it is. and with the victors; the vestiges, well. you’ll see :0)
come to think of it, i’m not sure i’ve ever written a happily-ever-after, but i don’t think i’ve ever written a 100% bad ending, either. i read too many bury-your-gays stories and watched too many sad european queer coming-of-age films in my youth to ever be happy putting that kinda thing out into the world. i want to write about love with all its ugliness, but not despair or hopelessness. i think what most appeals to me about an ambiguous ending is that lingering feeling of hope. it’s not the same as the kind you get from a happily-ever-after, and something about it speaks to me.
💛 What is the most impactful lesson you’ve learned about writing?
honestly? how to take criticism. i took a creative writing class in high school where we had to read our work out loud and then receive feedback on it from the other writers in the class, and that did a lot for me. going into that class, i’d already been writing for forever and had won some little local writing contests and such, so i was a wee bit of a pretentious douche. but i’d never gotten real critique before beyond, essentially, spelling and grammar checks. it humbled me lol. it made me grow so much as a writer, and i could see where i needed to improve or where my head was wedged way too far up my own ass for others to follow. it also helped me recognize strengths i didn’t know i had, and that was huge. it’s easy to get into a self-doubt spiral when making creative work, and good, constructive criticism can do so much to help avoid that.
to this day i love critique. i like knowing what worked or didn’t work so that i can continue to improve as a writer and do better next time. did my themes land? did something really work, but another part fall flat? i’d love to know!! i try to treat everything i write as practice for the next thing, and frankly that’s helped take some of the pressure off so i don’t go into total Perfectionist Mode.
i know critique is kind of a sensitive topic in fan spaces, but i think that’s because a lot of people have gotten unsolicited criticism that is purely critical and isn’t constructive. but getting good, constructive criticism will do so much to help a person grow as a writer. it’s scary, and sometimes it hurts! writing is very personal for most people, and it stings when things aren’t received the way you think they will be. but i know i’ve grown more from having my failures pointed out (and, very importantly, having the good things about those efforts acknowledged) than anything else.
💌 Is there a favorite trope you like to write?
actually Just answered this in another ask!
#sterge.eml#foxyjeongin#thank you for playing my little game and letting me talk about stories (and about me lmao)#sorry this is kind of a long post#i talk too much#i think i sound pretentious in this ask whoops. sorry#unfortunately i kind of am. i’m working on it.#… ​i guess the short answer to that first question is ‘emotions and mental illness’ lol#if you follow me on twitter (not recommended as it’s just me complaining about the weather and not being able to ride my motorcycle)#you know that every time i bring up my writing in therapy my therapist rocks my shit by revealing the story is#in fact.#NOT about what i thought it was about#or more accurately ​it’s ALSO secretly about whatever’s going on with me in real life lmao#y’know what’s really fun? looking back at something you wrote in a manic or depressive episode and going ah. hm. interesting.#the signs were. in fact. there.#(this is in fact not fun and i don’t like it. but it always happens.)#everything i write is accidentally Also about being bipolar. no getting around that#i tend to have issues organizing my thoughts and feelings to even figure out how tf i’m feeling#(forget making any attempt at doing so verbally. i have chronic foot-in-mouth disorder and accidentally say shit i don’t mean all the time)#but writing stuff down has always helped me sort through whatever mess is going on in my noggin and i love it for that#learning how to take critique is my no. 1 piece of writing advice but no. 2 is to read#read the classics. find out why they’re classics. read weird shit. read shit you don’t like. find things you like about em anyway.#and importantly: figure out WHY you do or don’t like it#it’s funny to re-read a book i haven’t read in a long time and discover OH. that’s where i get that technique from.#or that’s where i got that idea. or that’s why i had X thing happen in this story.#or why i like this type of character or scenario#nothing’s truly new and original#we’re all an amalgamation of influences and that ruuuuules#celebrate it!!!
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just-spacetrash · 6 months ago
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🛸
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cuteniarose · 2 years ago
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can you plz infodump about your ocs?? so new people to your blog can understand them
Hey, anon? I hope you know that this ask is the best one I’ve gotten in all my 3 1/2 years on this hellsite, so thank you!! You really don’t need to know about my OCs to follow this blog cause a) I post once in a blue moon nowadays, and b) it’s rarely about my OCs, BUT SINCE YOU ASKED-
K, so, my main OCs are Suiren and Midori, sisters who just so happen to be Ghazan and Ming-Hua’s daughters. They were 7 and 4 respectively when their parents were imprisoned for trying to kidnap Korra, which led to them being placed in the ‘care’ of Ghazan’s older sister, Haya. What happens to them after that? Well, you’d have to be more specific, since I have about a trillion different AUs featuring them. The two most important ones (aka the ones written down) are:
1. Seeds of the Red Lotus. The very first fic I wrote about them, which I... haven’t updated in two years. It currently stands at 5 chapters BUT I am in the process of rewriting and continuing it. The basic concept is that the girls grow up in utter misery under Haya’s iron fist, and in a desperate attempt to get enough money to leave and live a happy, comfortable life somewhere else, Suiren becomes an assassin at the bright old age of 17. Fast forward 6 years, and Team Avatar, unable to take down the Earth Empire on their own, hire her to kill Kuvira
2. Under the Oak’s Shade. A rather self indulgent AU written as a form of catharsis and spiritual healing. Six months into living with Haya, the girls are taken in by Zhi, a cranky lesbian with a bad sense of direction/P’Li’s firebending teacher from the Red Lotus/my friend @katkastrofa‘s OC from her fic Lost and Found (which, unlike the multichaps I write, is complete and you should go read it immediately). Once I pull myself together to actually figure out how the next instalment in the series should go, this will, most likely, eventually become a Red Lotus Korra AU, which I’m definitely looking forward to writing.
Now that the basics are out of the way, let’s get to actual infodumping about my two precious cinnamon rolls. Most of this info is from SotRL-verse, as that is the main story I’ve got about them, so keep that in mind
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Suiren:
23 years old as of 174 AG. Master waterbender and deadly assassin. Cold, calculating and precise in everything she does, leaving no room for error. Takes no shit from anyone, is fiercely defensive and independent, and is the last person to ever accept any help or charity. Confident in her abilities and borderline cocky at times, a lot of which is a front. Extremely short tempered, nihilistic, cynical and high strung, not willing to let anyone get close enough to her to see her hidden vulnerabilities
She wasn’t always like this. A long time ago, back before she lost her parents, she was much, much softer, kinder and more gentle. Her parents called her their little water lily, and the nickname suited her well. However, P’Li’s nickname for her was ‘my little firecracker’, so she very much still had quite a temper even back then. Overall, she was a happy little girl with bright eyes and a mischievous smile who was determined to excel in her waterbending lessons. She was Ming-Hua’s pride and joy. 16 years of taking the brunt of Haya’s anger to shield her sister, as well as destroying the part of herself that wouldn’t let her mindlessly do the bidding of whoever paid her, changed her, perhaps irreversibly.
Her old life still haunts her, though. Genetics played a cruel joke on her – the silky black hair reaching below her waist, the angular features, the prominent cheekbones, the (relatively) short height – it all serves to make her see her mother every single time she glances in the mirror. Being just like her mother was something she once aspired to, but now follows her like a curse. Even the things she got from her dad, dark skin and golden brown eyes, don’t help, and just make her look like Haya, especially when she’s angry
There is another side to her that no one but Midori gets to see. She may not be as soft as sixteen years ago, but she is still capable of love and gentleness. She loves her sister more than anything else in life, has already killed and would die for her. She is very protective of Midori (though often to a fault). She hugs her tight and kisses her forehead and cheeks, quietly sings her (their mother’s) lullabies as she calms her down from a nightmare, heals any and all her wounds, tells her stories of their parents, always puts her first no matter how pained and exhausted she herself is... In short, Suiren took on the role of a self sacrificing parent a long time ago and has played it well
Suiren is a distinguished lesbian but can’t keep a partner longer than a few weeks. Girls fawn all over her, but once they see past the pretty face and confident demeanour and notice everything wrong with her, they run (which only serves to make Suiren’s abandonment issues worse). She has taken to sticking to one night stands when she needs an outlet for her frustrations, convinced she will never have, and isn’t deserving of, a long lasting, loving relationship
She struggles severely with her mental health, constantly plagued by what she has done. She tries to limit her sleep to avoid nightmares that she knows will come and represses all emotions except for anger as that is the safest to latch onto and channel into killing. She is almost always on edge and feels pressure mounting with every single day. Very prone to overstimulation when it comes to noise, light and people. The only times she ever relaxes (or, at least, pretends to) is when she’s alone with Midori or with Lotus, her pet sabertooth moose lion.
To sum up: the poor girl is a vessel for my trauma and deserves a 30 hour nap, a hug, a warm blanket, the whole world and her parents back
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Midori:
20 years old as of 174 AG. Earthbender, though not very good at it. She discovered her earthbending only a few months before losing her parents, and had no one to teach her since then. She is naturally kindhearted and hardworking, always trying to help out where she can and seem useful. Quiet and anxious, she prefers to stick to the background and draw as little attention to herself as possible (which is in fact a defence mechanism against Haya’s treatment of her but, y’know, let’s not get into that rn)
Sixteen years ago, Midori was a bright and happy little girl, wanting nothing more than for everyone around her to be happy as well. Always full of energy, she could talk and ramble for hours about anything that crossed her mind. Just as mischievous as her sister, she knew she was the baby of the family and could get away with anything, though to her credit, she didn’t abuse that much. Her parents called her their little Seedling, the youngest of them all so full of potential and eager to grow and make her parents proud. P’Li often called her a cuddlebug for her affectionate nature (am I stealing that from Kat’s fic bc it made me scream into my pillow for five minutes straight? Maybe. You can’t prove anything).
In present age, she’s a lot more similar to her childhood self than Suiren is. She doesn’t talk that much anymore, if at all, and her happiness is often clouded by the harsh world around her, but some of that cheerfulness still shines through, especially when she’s alone with Suiren or with Tenzin’s kids. The energy once used for rambling and chasing butterflies and racing with her sister is now almost always redirected into chores and housework, though if Suiren offered, she’d gladly race her again (and probably win tbh, her legs are longer and Renny prefers faster methods than running)
She doesn’t remember her parents well, and their faces have blurred beyond recognition in her mind. It’s why her appearance doesn’t affect her as much as Renny’s own does her. She’s not a carbon copy of either of her parents like Suiren is, she’s more of an even mix. She knows what Suiren had told her, that she has their mother’s eyes and their father’s nose, but can’t piece anything together in her head. She keeps her hair, as dark and silky as Suiren’s, though thicker, at shoulder length, a bit uneven in places as she cuts it herself. As a child, Ghazan would tie her hair into twin pigtails every morning and she never let anyone else do it. She hasn’t styled her hair in any way since she took those pigtails out before going to bed the night their parents left
A disaster bisexual, proven by the fact that out of all people in the world, she falls for Opal Beifong. You know, the step sister of the woman Midori’s sister has to kill (or die trying), and the daughter of the woman who killed Midori’s beloved auntie P’Li. Yeah, tough case. Anyway, turns out, there is a limited supply of Ghazan’s charm in his genetic code and it all got passed down to Renny, because ‘Dori herself turns into an awkward mess whenever the opportunity to flirt arises. It’s fine though, Opal still finds her adorable. Also she probably had a small crush on Bolin when they first met, but that was because he was one of the only people her age to be nice to her and she got over it quickly
Remember how I said she was quiet and anxious? Yeah, understatement of the century. Her anxiety follows her around throughout her day and is the driving force behind all of her decisions. Many things, from raised voices to passive aggressiveness to bad moods to unfinished housework, can trigger it. When it does, she clams up and curls in on herself, but tries her best to deescalate or rectify the situation. She’s also very sensitive to any kind of conflict, even when she’s not part of it. Midori also worries a lot for Suiren while she’s away on missions, as she knows she’ll completely fall apart if something were to happen to Renny. She has nightmares about it often, almost every night that Suiren is not there. Little does she know, Suiren has similar worries over losing her.
Another big thing is her major inferiority complex. She looks at her big sister and sees someone who has always been talented, powerful and capable. Someone who can do so many things without even breaking a sweat. Someone who has girls fawning all over her. And then ‘Dori looks at herself and sees none of those things. She doesn’t hate Suiren for it, not at all, but tiny inklings of disdain sometimes take form. She tries hard to ignore it, but often can do nothing but listen to those thoughts swirl around in her head.
In summary: An anxious mess of a girl who is in desperate need of a proper support system and someone (*cough* Opal *cough*) who could assure her that she is enough and that it doesn’t matter if she isn’t like her sister, she’s perfect just the way she is
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If you want me to elaborate on any of this (and this goes for everyone, not just anon) my askbox is always open and my desire to infodump about my precious traumatised babies never wavers
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nomairuins · 3 months ago
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we had fun tho the whole family hung out and we did some sporclee and chronophoto and then globle me n lamp nd father did globle bc mein mamma went to sleep. yay :]
#nd i think tmrw or something like that me n my mom will finish off 13s run in de#which im excited for bc im rly excited to get to 15 bc my mom loves it and im excited to be caught up so we cn talk abt everything#i am a bit bummed i ws rly hoping 2 like 13s seasons better this time around.. but i didnt :[ just the writing didnt come together 4 me and#i feel like the companions weren't developed much at all#and im famously a timeless child hater like i think its stupid for the dr to be the timeless child. like if there hss to be a timeless child#Fine ig its a fine origin story its kind of a like. answering a question nobody asked thing#where like. yk. i was fine with the tjme lords judt having regeneration#but mein mamma told me that they like drop all that and it is Nottt mentioned again eith the new writers which is so funny#the blessing and the curse new writers. bc the blessing is if there was a writing decision i dont like The new writers will completely#abandon it and go do their own shit. the downside is they do the same for things i do like#missy what happeneddd like where. UGH we cant even get into it i miss my princess so badly it hurts#ik we like. saw her die im just like. bc this master was not at all like.. it just doesnt feel like a continuation at all#my moms theory is he might actually be an earlier incarnation of the master since they never actually specify. nd then i was checking the#wiki and rheres some weird stuff like. missy forcing all of her Good parts to regenerate into some other lady and then like.#idk it just said that. so idk if that implies the bad parts regenerated into like. evil master... i dont know. but wtvr. im excited#and a little birdie told me donnaaaaa will be baaaaaaaaackkkkkk which is the best thing that could ever happen to me im SO excited. my#friend donna#i like that like. i like getting new companions inlike when companions dont overstay their welcome cough cough. clara. but i do love seeing#companions come back like sry it does get me everytime im always like My friend my friend my friend. yk. i just love to seeing them again...#oh i got distracted. i was gonna say i rly dislike the dr being the timeless child bc i rly like when the dr is judt like. a guy. gender#neutral my mom laughed at me bc i said rhat earlier and went That sounded like im complaining abt hrr being a woman. im noy#THATS WHY I WANTED 2 LIKE HER LIKE. im so bummed that the first female dr is the one with In my opinion the weakest writing. like fml. tho i#havent seen any of the older stuff so idk... just from 9 onwards is what iiiiive got going.#but ya. i ws so worried voicing my criticisms to my mom bc i ws worried i ws just being a hater or nitpicky#but my mom agreed with me on a lot and ya. i rly like discussing stuff w my mom even tho im almodt positive i annoy her sometimes bc i get#too busy discussing my theories and being like And what about this and i get distracted from the show where theyrelike#explainjng somrthing jm asking abt. JFBFJFNT#i judt love discussion. and its tly fun to talk abt it with my mom :] yay#like ikit snnoys ppl when someone talks while watching smth or theorizes while watching smth lr asks questions that will be answered#but lke its my fav part of watching things w ppl 😭😭😭 im fr the yapperrr
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casuallyanidiot · 3 months ago
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Imagine Being stuck in the novel of a Yandere author...
Kina a soft continuation of this post.
tw. yandere, forced relationship, cosmic (?) horror
You get hit by a truck and end up in a story! Fortunately you're not the villainess destined to die a horrible fate. In fact, you get the luxury of being the main character and getting the hopeful happy end. Unfortunately, you don't recognize any of the plot points or the names of anything.
That part of it sucks, but you figure you could just follow how you assumed the story would go.
But you find it strange how much the male lead looks like that creepy guy from your work. There's a weird pit in your stomach when he sung your praises, and you can't help but recoil a bit in disgust when he kisses your hand. You know that it's your role in this story to end up with this guy, but geez he's so weird. If the two of you weren't in some weird historical fantasy world, you were sure that he would constantly be glued to your side.
Then you realize that, oh, hey you don't actually have to stick in the direction the plot of this world is trying to lead you in.
You find that the Northern Duke is quite cute, actually, and though he isn't as detailed as some of the other characters that were probably focused on more in the novel, he's still sweet enough. So, when the Male lead proposes to you, you politely reject him and run off to be with your new lover.
But when you arrive at the Duke's estate, you find that he's... the male lead?!
"You're not- how are you here?!" You say with narrowed eyes. The male lead merely smiles at you, if not a little confused. "My love? What are you talking about? Am I not your beloved Duke?" He laughs and spread his arms wide as if to embrace you. His skin feels colder than before for some reason, though you try to brush it off.
Your life in his estate was extremely strange from then on. It was like no one else could tell that the Duke had been replaced. He looked and acted completely different from before, and when you asked the staff about it, they looked at you as if you were the crazy one. They suggested that perhaps the two men were more alike than you initially thought, and that you should focus instead on settling into your role as his happy, unquestioning spouse. You tried not to frown, but with the way their eyes glazed over anytime you began to ask too many questions, you didn't think it mattered if they saw or not.
Your new fiancé was rather clingy. Annoyingly so. You had been trying to stand his lecherous touches and less than innocent advances for weeks now, to believe that perhaps you were crazy and had somehow mistaken the Duke and the Male lead for each other like everyone said you had. That it was just some byproduct of getting reincarnated.
But then you ended up speaking to a gardener.
She was obviously just a background character, one that probably wasn't even meant to be mentioned in the pages of this novel. She didn't even have a face, and her voice was disjointed and soft. When she spoke, her words echoed in the back of your brain as if she wasn't even meant to speak.
"The lord? He's been acting strange ever since you arrived here my lady," She said. You had to blink to make sure you heard her. To make sure she was actually there. "And his face doesn't look quite right. I'm glad you noticed, my lady. Someone has to."
When you sought her out the next day, she had disappeared without a trace.
You decided that whatever was happening with the estate, the Duke and his servants, was far too strange for you to ignore. Perhaps you had strayed far too much from the original plot and setting of the novel. Either way, it wasn't worth all the trouble. Not when the very thing you sought to avoid with the male lead seemed to follow you. Not when the world seemed to be shifting to try and keep you in the plot.
Wherever you went from then on, You would keep seeing the male lead appear. But it was the same as with the Duke. A character that was unique in appearance and personality would suddenly morph into him. And no one would notice. It was like it was completely normal to have dozens of copies of the same man occupying different names and roles.
You feel insane, like you've broken something in the world.
It's one night where you finally snap and stab one of the weird versions of the male lead where you find out the truth. You're panting and covered in blood, a knife gripped in your shaking hand. There's a manic relief that grasps you right then and there. Because, these characters aren't actually alive. They can't be. Not when they all have the same exact face and voice, smiling at you with empty eyes and words that don't feel like anyone would actually say them if this weren't a book.
You let out a sob of relief that for once you're not being reminded of the man who lurked around the corners of your pervious life. He made your skin crawl with the constant muttering under his breath, with the way he watched you. You did not want to see him in these, awful, awful mockeries of real people.
All you want to do, is have a happily ever after in this stupid novel.
Your eyes go wide and you let out a noise that's halfway between a sob and a laugh. The figure shambles up, seemingly unaffected by the wound in it's side. The face of the male lead, no, of that awful wannabe author, stares back at you without a care in the world.
"Did you get it out of your system? [Name]?" It asks you with a polite smile that doesn't reach the eyes and a tilt to the head.
You collapse to the ground, whimpering as the figure approaches you and pats you on the head. It said your name. Not the main character's name, your name from the real world. You swallow thickly as the puppet of a character kneels down with stilted motions. It's like every little movement is being directly controlled right now. As if it's being written right before your eyes.
"Are you ready to behave now?" It asks like you're some scared pet, and not a living, breathing thing that's being played with like a doll.
Your lips tremble as you nod. You feel something in your mind shatter as you realize that the happy ending written for this world was definitely not intended for you.
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not a threat but hey guys who wants to hear a wild fucking story? Nobody? Too bad here we go.
So. You ever hit it off with someone so well that you lose track of time? Probably, right? You ever hit it off so well with someone so well that you lose track of time and get LOCKED INTO A PLACE OVERNIGHT? Probably not.
Guess how I spent last night.
So I volunteer at this nature center, and I've been helping out for their haunted walk. Last night I got done with my volunteer shift at like 11pm last night and I'd been talking a little to this one guy, who was also volunteering for it (I was operations, he was a scare actor and also might I add, dressed in all leather lol) and we like walk out together bc we're chatting and we get to talking a little more in depth. Eventually we start talking about fandoms we're in and I mention as a joke that my car is all covered in stickers, and he asks to see it.
This is important because I parked all the way in the back, furthest away from the turn onto the main road you can be, and also not in sight of the main buiolding. So the yapping continues, it becomes 1am and we're gonna go home bc. you know one am. and.
The fucking gate is CLOSED, CHAINED, AND PADLOCKED SHUT
So obviously I'm like 'holy shit hooooly shit what now' and he's also doing the same because you know. holy shit
And I'm thinking 'idk call the cops and ask them to bring a locksmith?' to which he's like 'no way that's a hassle, we'd have to pay for the locksmith, and they'd be weird about it' which is honestly probably true
So we didn't do that. But thankfully he actually lives like right across the street from the place so we just put our cars back in the lot, put a note on my car explaining what happened, and walked to his apartment at like 1:30 am while carrying a bunch of food bc volunteers get stuff catered for us and we had leftovers that he took (obviously expecting to be able to put them in his car and not fucking carry them)
So that's how I ended up spending last night crashed on the couch of a virtual stranger and also probably the weirdest fucking friendship origin story I'm ever going to get.
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wilwheaton · 1 year ago
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When you watch The Curse, you are watching two children who were abused and exploited daily during production. No adults protected us.
This was originally published on my blog in August, 2022.
I had a wonderful time at Steel City Comicon this weekend. It was my first time at this particular con, so I didn’t know there was such a huge contingent of horror fans, creators, and vendors who attend.
I love horror, and I was pretty psyched to be in the same place as John Carpenter and Tom Savini, across the street from the Dawn of the Dead mall. Pittsburgh feels like one of the places horror was invented, at least to me.
A number of these horror fans came to see me, and asked me to sign posters and other things from a movie my parents forced me to do when I was 13, called The Curse. I had to tell each of these people that I would not sign anything associated with that movie, because I was abused and exploited during production. The time I spent on that film remains the most traumatizing time of my life, and though I am a 50 year-old man, just typing this now makes my hands shake with remembered fear of a 13 year-old boy who nobody protected, and the absolute fury the 50 year-old man feels toward the people who hurt him.
I told this story in Still Just A Geek, and I’ve talked about it in some podcasts I did on the promo tour, but I’ve never put it out in public like this, in its entirety.
I suspect someone at the publisher would prefer I tease this and hope it drives book sales from people who want to read all of it, but I honestly don’t want to have another weekend like this one where everything is awesome, except the few times people who have no idea (and why should they) put that fucking poster in front of me, and all the fear, abandonment, and trauma come flooding back as I tell them that I won’t sign it, and why.
To their credit, each person was as horrified as they should have been, told me they had no idea (if they didn’t read my book why would they), and quickly put the poster away. They were all understanding. I am grateful for that.
But I really don’t need to tell this story over and over again, so here it is, with a child abuse and exploitation content warning, so I can just tell people to Google it.
After Stand by Me, everything changed. The attention from entertainment journalists, casting directors, and especially teen magazines came pouring in. The movie was a generational hit, beloved by critics and audiences alike, and every single one of us could pick anything to do next.
River’s parents and his agent got him Mosquito Coast, with Harrison Ford, as his next movie. I also auditioned for the role, but I knew even then that River was going to book the job. He was perfect, and I’d have to wait a little bit for my opportunity to come along.
I went on a lot of theatrical auditions after Stand by Me. I had tons of meetings with directors and the heads of casting at every major studio. It was all a very big deal, and I felt like we were all looking for something really special and amazing as my follow-up to Stand by Me.
At some point, a couple of producers contacted my agent with an offer to play one of the leads in an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space.” The script was titled The Farm. (It would, of course, be changed when the film was released).
I read it. I did not like it. It was a shitty horror movie, and I saw that right away. It was the sort of thing you rented on Friday when the new release you wanted was already out of the store.
My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.
I told my parents I didn’t like it and didn’t want to do it. I clearly recall thinking it was a piece of shit that would hurt my career.
It wasn’t the first thing that had come our way that I wanted to pass on, and every other time, it hadn’t been a very big deal.
Sidebar: I was cast in Twilight Zone: The Movie, in 1983. The film tells four stories, and I was cast as the kid who can wish people into cartoonland. It was a GREAT role, in a movie I still love. (Note that Twilight Zone had four directors. One of them got three people killed. The segment I was cast in was not that one. I mention this because too many people zero in on this to deflect from what this whole thing is actually about.)
But I was CONVINCED by my parochial school teacher that if I worked on The Twilight Zone, which she had determined was satanic, I would go to hell. (This woman and her bullshit played a big role in my conversion to atheism at a young age, but when she told me that, I was all-in on the supernatural story they taught us in religion class.) I was so scared, more scared than I’d ever been to that point in my life, I cried and wailed and begged my parents to not make me do the movie. And I never told them why, because I was afraid my dad would laugh at me for being weak and afraid. My agent tried to talk me into it, and I wouldn’t budge. It’s the only thing I deeply and truly regret passing on, and I really hate I made that choice for such a stupid reason.
Okay. Back to The Curse.
This time, when I told them how much I hated it, they wouldn’t listen to me. My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.
That is, until they made me take a meeting with the producers of the movie, in their giant conference room on the top floor of a tall building in Hollywood. All I remember about this place was that it was huge; the table was way too big for the five of us who spread around it, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows on three of the walls, but the room was still dark. There was a weird optical illusion in the center of the table, this thing they sold in the Sharper Image catalog, made from two reflective dishes with a hole in the top of one. You placed an object in the bottom of the bottom dish, and it made it look like that object was floating above the whole thing. They had a plastic spider in it. What a strange detail for me to remember, but it’s as clear in my memory as if I were sitting in that room right now.
One man, who I presumed was the executive producer, was European or Middle Eastern (I didn’t know the difference then, he was just Not Like People I Knew), and I was instantly afraid of him. He was intimidating, and seemed like a person who got what he wanted.
So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.
I don’t remember what they said to me in their pitch or anything other than how uncomfortable and anxious I was to even be in that room. I tried so hard to be grown up and mature, but I — and my parents — was way out of my depth. I’d done one big movie and that was it. We didn’t have my agent with us, who had lots of experience and would have known what questions to ask.
No, in place of my experienced agent, my mother had decided she was going to be my manager, and she tackled the responsibility with an enthusiasm that was only matched by her absolute incompetence and inability to go toe-to-toe with producers the way my agent did. She was outwitted, out-thought, and outmaneuvered at every turn.
“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”
So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.
At some point, this man, who is represented in my memory by big Jim Jones sunglasses under dark hair above an open collar, said, “We are offering you a hundred thousand dollars and round-trip travel for your whole family. We will cast your sister, Amy, to play your sister in the movie.”
It all made sense, now. I was only thirteen, but I knew my parents were pushing me so hard because this company was offering me — them, really — more money than I’d ever imagined I’d earn in my life, much less a single job.
I knew that the right thing to do, the smart thing to do, was to say no. There would be other opportunities, and it was stupid to cash myself out of feature films for what I thought was, in the grand scheme of things, not very much money.
It’s incredible to me that I knew all of this. It’s incredible to me that I could see all these things, plainly and clearly, and my parents couldn’t (or, more likely, chose not to).
So after this man made his offer, all the adults in the room ganged up on me, selling me HARD on this movie.
My mother said, “Don’t you want your sister to have the same opportunities you’ve had? Wouldn’t it be fun and exciting to go to Rome? Think of all the history!”
The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.
I don’t think about this very often, because it’s super upsetting to me. Right now, I’m so angry at my parents for subjecting me and my sister to this entire experience. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
In that moment, I felt bullied and trapped. All these adults were talking to me at the same time, and I just wanted it to stop. I just wanted to go home and get out of this room. I just wanted to go be a kid, so I did what I’d learned to do to survive: I gave in and did what my parents wanted.
The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.
But here’s the thing: when you watch The Curse, you are watching two children, me and my sister, who were abused on a daily basis. The production did not follow a single labor law. They worked us for twelve hours a day, on multiple film units (while I work on First unit, second unit sets up and waits for me. When I should get a break to rest, they send me to Second unit, then to Third unit, then back to First unit. I was 13.) without any breaks, five days a week. I was exhausted the entire time. I was inappropriately touched by two different adults during production. I knew it was wrong, but I was so scared and ashamed, and I felt so unsupported, I didn’t tell anyone. I knew my dad wouldn’t believe me, and my mother would blame me. Anything to keep the production happy, that’s what she did. That was more important to her than the health and safety of her children. The director was coked out of his mind most of the time, incompetent, and so busy fucking or trying to fuck one of the women in the cast, he was worse than useless. He was a fading actor who was cosplaying as a director, as in over his head as my mother. My sister and I were never safe. Instead of harmless atmospheric SFX smoke, they set hay on fire in barrels and blew actual smoke onto the set. They took buckets of talc, broken wood, bits of wallpaper and plaster, and threw it into my face during a scene inside the collapsing house. My sister is in a scene where she goes to get eggs from some chickens, and they attack her. So they hired Lucio Fulci, the Italian horror master, to direct her sequence. His idea, which everyone was totally on board with, was to throw chickens at my sister. Live chickens, live roosters, live birds. Just throw them at a nine-year-old girl. Oh, and then tie them to her arms and legs so they’ll peck her. All of this happened under my mother’s observation, and with her full participation.
Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.
If just ONE of the things I can remember happened to someone I loved, I would have grabbed my kids, gone to the airport, and flown home. Fuck those abusive assholes in the production. Let the lawyers sort it all out. Nobody hurts my children and gets away with it.
My mom says she “had some talks” with the producers. She claims that, once, she wouldn’t let us leave the hotel. (God, what a fucking dump that place was. It was just slightly better than a hostel.) I have no memory of that, but honestly the entire experience was so traumatic, I’ve blocked most of it out.
The movie was the commercial and critical failure I knew it would be. My parents spent the money. I don’t know what they spent it on. I got to keep fifteen cents of every dollar, so . . . yay?
My sister and I hardly ever talk about this. I suspect it was as upsetting and traumatic for her as it was for me. I told her I was writing about it, and asked her if she remembered anything. She told me she’d been lied to her whole life about this movie. Our mother let her believe she had been cast on the strength of her audition. “I was excited to work with you,” she said. She reminded me about some stuff I’d blocked out, including a scene where my character’s older brother (played by an actor named Malcolm Danare, who was kind and gentle, and made both of us feel safer when he was around) shoves my character into a pile of cow shit. When it came time to shoot the scene, the mud they’d put together to be the cow shit looked an awful lot like cow shit. When Malcolm pushed me into it, we all found out it was real cow shit. I was FURIOUS. The director had lied to me and had allowed me to have my entire body shoved into an actual pile of actual cow shit. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember he treated me the exact same way my father did whenever I got upset: he laughed at me, told me I was being too sensitive, reminded me that he was the director and he wanted to get a “real” performance out of me, and concluded, “If it bothers you so much, we’ll get you a hepatitis shot,” before he walked away.
My sister also recalled that, after she survived the scene with the chickens, it was the producers’ idea to give her one as a pet.
Okay, let’s unpack that for a quick second: you’ve been traumatized by these birds, so we’re going to give you one as a pet. That you’ll somehow keep in your hotel, and then will somehow get back to America. It will shock you to learn that neither of those things happened.
She remembered, as I do, the huge fight I had with my parents in our kitchen, where I told them I hated the script and I hated the movie. I didn’t want to do it, and I hated that they were making me do it.
“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”
“This is the only film you are being offered,” my mother lied to me. She made me feel like, if I didn’t do this movie, I would never do another movie again in my life. I had to do this movie. As my father bellowed, I had no choice.
Both of my parents denied this argument ever happened. Can I tell you how reassuring it is to know that my sister, who was also there, remembers it the same way I do?
The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them.
But one thing she told me, the thing I did not know, the thing that makes me so angry I want to break things, actually managed to make the entire experience even worse than I remembered it.
There’s a scene after her chicken incident where I check up on her in her bedroom. She’s got cuts and bruises, and I guess we talk about it. I don’t remember and I can’t watch the movie because I’m terrified it will give me a PTSD flashback (I’ve had one of those and I recommend avoiding it). Here’s the thing about that scene: she has some cuts on her face, and those cuts are real. They are not makeup.
I’m going to repeat that. My nine-year-old little sister had actual cuts on her face that were placed there by an adult, on purpose.
The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them. My sister told me our mother wasn’t in the makeup room when this happened — honestly, it seemed like our mother was strangely and conveniently absent when most of the really terrible things happened to us on the set — and when my sister told her what they’d done, she “lost her shit” at the production. She was pissed, I guess, which is appropriate and surprising. I wonder what would have to have happened for her to put us on a plane and get us home to safety? I mean, her son being abused daily didn’t do it, and her daughter being CUT IN THE FACE ON PURPOSE didn’t do it.
I just . . . I can’t. I can’t understand or comprehend allowing your own children to be physically and emotionally abused. They were literally selling my sister and me to these people, like we were some kind of commodity.
This was a tough conversation. My sister’s experience with our parents is very different from mine. My sister and I love each other. We’re close. I know it’s hard for her to hear that her brother, who she loves, was so abused by her parents, who she also loves. I was really grateful she made the time to talk to me about it, and grateful the experience wasn’t as horrible for her as it was for me.
As we were finishing our call, Amy also remembered one man, a young Italian named Luka, who was our driver for the movie. I haven’t thought about him in thirty years, but I can see his face now. He was kind, he was friendly, he taught us how to kick a soccer ball, and in the middle of an abusive, torturous experience, he stood out as a kind and gentle man. I mention him because she remembered him, which made me remember him, and goddammit I want at least one small part of this thing to not be awful.
The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares.
Ultimately, as I predicted and feared, this piece of shit movie cashed me out of respectable films forever. I got offers for movies, but they were always mindless comedies or exploitative horror films. They were never the serious dramas I wanted to work in after Stand by Me. The industry looked at me and River, wondering if one or both of us would become a breakout star. They quickly saw that River was doing real acting work, and I was in this piece of shit. For River, Stand by Me was a beginning. For me, it would turn out to be pretty much everything, at least as far as film goes.
There are thousands of reasons film careers do and don’t take off. Maybe mine wouldn’t have taken off anyway. Clearly, it’s not where my life ended up, and I’m super okay with that now. But when all of this happened, it hurt and haunted me.
The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares. Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.
This annotation is the last thing I wrote before I turned this manuscript in, because opening these wounds is hard and painful. I put it off as long as I could, and I feel like I’m still holding back, because just this small glimpse of the experience has taken me a week to write. I can’t imagine trying to go back and unpack the whole thing. (Note that is not in the book: I’ve made an EMDR appointment to work on this because the nightmares have come back after the weekend).
Fuck The Curse, and fuck every single person who exploited and hurt two beautiful children to make it. You all participated in child abuse, and you all knew better. Shame on all of you. I hope this follows you to the end of your life. I hope that living with what you did to innocent children has been as hard for you as it has been for me, because you deserve no less.
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maniculum · 8 months ago
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Had a baffling interaction a couple hours ago, and I think Tumblr is probably the best place to find an explanation.
I’ve mentioned on here that I have a side job at a bookstore. Today, I heard a customer make the assertion to her companion that the novel Frankenstein is “basically fanfiction”. (I don’t think this was meant as negative, but couldn’t say for sure.)
I asked her about it when she came to check out, because I had to know what that was about, right? She recounted the origin of the book — the Shelleys, Byron, & Polidori challenging each other to write horror stories, etc. I assured her I was familiar with the history, but just wanted to know why that made it fanfiction.
She said, “well, it came from a horror writing competition.”
At this point, I felt I had pushed about as much as I could in this scenario — as anyone who’s worked a customer-service job knows, when customers say nonsense at you, responding in a way that doesn’t upset them is difficult, and you kind of have to be ready to just nod and smile. So I said something along the lines of, “I don’t understand the connection, but as long as it makes sense to you.”
She chose not to elaborate further and left with her purchases.
So now I’m asking Tumblr because I figure this is the best place to find people who are familiar with unorthodox understandings of fanfiction.
Is it because it came from a competition? (This is the most sensible explanation I can think of, but that’s not saying much, because I see no link between these two concepts.)
Is it because it’s horror? (I know people get weird about genre fiction sometimes — last year someone told me they thought “Fantasy / Science Fiction” and “Young Adult” were different terms for the same genre.)
Is it because it was written for fun? (I know that the vast majority of fiction is — to a greater or lesser degree — written because the author enjoys writing, but maybe the customer doesn’t know that?)
Is it because it was written, for lack of a better word, socially? (By which I mean, is the story of its writing significant in that the initial intention was for Shelley to show it to her friends? But of course this is a group of published authors, and authors hang out to talk about & show each other their work all the time… maybe the customer wasn’t aware of that?)
These are the only options I can think of, and none of them have any link to what makes something “fanfiction” in my understanding. I’m just extrapolating from the fact that apparently the relevant distinction has something to do with it being a horror writing competition. Am I missing something? Tumblr, please, help me with this.
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txttletale · 5 months ago
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what are some things you like about fnv?
so much! i like the character writing, i think every companion is well-written and compelling--i like the extremely tight and overarching but (mostly) unforced focus on theme. 'let go, begin again' gets said verbatim maybe a bit too much in dead money but it's also the theme of all the other DLC and every individual companion quest and the most popular of the four main story paths and i think that kind of broad coherence really shines. i love the quest and world design, i love how many different skills will pop up in conversation because it lets you genuinely roleplay, getting the option to e.g. tell dog the cage must be locked from the inside or bypass difficult combat encounters because you have a high lockpicking skill makes you feel like your character is an expert lockpicker in a way that just being able to get optional loot sometimes just doesn't--i love how you will be directed to important or interesting locations from multiple quests, how all these places interconnect.
and i also deeply love how fnv's world is a world of history and people, not of facts and lore. you can kill caesar and kimball and their factions don't just explode without them--and you will hear multiple, contradictory takes from people in the world about how those deaths will impact those factions. if you kill caesar, house says it won't matter at all, boone says he has successors, ulysses and some NCR guys say it'll collapse the legion, and you never really get to know for sure. and so much about the world is like this, stuff you can get endless perspectives on and no single authoritative 'neutral' information. and in that line i love how the world is more than those people! how the world is much more than you., as impactful as the courier can be, the world reacting and moving and changing is prioritized over absolute player freedom to Experience Content--i love that, for instance, if you're vilified by the NCR before House gives you the quest to protect kimball, he just says "they're not going to let you get close to them, we'll just have to let him die" and then you can't do that quest and kimball dies! little shit like that makes new vegas' world feel real instead of warping around wikis and lore bibles and the protagonist.
so yeah i like a lot about fnv! i am a bit more vocal about my criticisms just bc quite frankly i think all of the things i like are things most people like and i see people saying basically all of this every time the game is brought up while i don't see people talk about the stuff i think is weird/bad as much. and i'm naturally inclinced to like, say whatever i think my more original trhoughts are so i'm not just adding to a chorus. but i do love fnv a lot
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rationaliity · 6 months ago
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mine now | gallagher x f! reader ( 18 + )
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ill be so real with you my dearest freaky anon i'm not the biggest fan of cheating so plspls understand that if this kinda sucks,,, im sorry, especially since you were waiting for so long for this and then i drop the most lukewarm fic of all time. i also had to change the story around so that it was something that i was comfortable writing, sorry about that ! still the basic premise, i just am not good with ntr for some reason ?? weird. who knows man. tags : drug abuse ! dubcon, dirty talking, weed & alcohol mention, female anatomy reader but its sort of nonspecific idk, pw/op, voyeurism sorta, exhibitionism sorta, coercion almost, mentions of infidelity, comfort turns into sex, possessiveness, unprotected sex, gallagher uses petnames a lot, reader being drunk & high at the same time, reader gets on call with her ex boyfriend while gallagher fucks them words: 1.8k
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gallagher's hand was in your hair, your head pulled back as he pounded you so hard into the mattress it made your hip hurt a little bit from the pressure, not that it was really what you were focused on. he'd promised to make you forget your shitty ex boyfriend who'd cheated on you, and you had agreed on that without a second thought. it was originally just a drink that the two of you shared together, with you ranting about this loser to gallagher, who was all too patient with you.
one drink turned into three, and drinks turned into smoking together. being crossfaded and half focused, those little rants went on about everything that had pissed you off about that loser since the moment the relationship started to decay. everything from how he refused to flush the toilet no matter how many times you reminded him, to how tiny his dick was. gallagher had laughed at your jokes about him, and it spurred you on to keep going, laughing about that loser's tiny shrimp dick. gallagher asked if you'd ever had a dick bigger than two inches, and you shook your head. you had no idea what sex was really supposed to feel like aside from what you knew.
then he asked if you were willing to see what it was like, and you swore you'd never felt more sober than that moment right then as you hesitantly nodded. was it still going to hurt if you weren't a virgin anymore ? the answer, surprisingly, was a resounding yes ! you learned that pretty quickly as gallagher's hips pistoned into yours, his free hand grabbing the fat of your ass, his body pressed against yours so he could whisper into your ear.
" don't be shy, baby, you can let your makeup ruin my sheets. it's been ruining my shirt all night now, " he purred in your ear, his sharp canines daring to bite into the sensitive skin of your neck completely without warning. when he finally did, you made a pathetic little mewl that you weren't even aware that you could make. " a little reminder of who can fuck you better than that fuckin' pathetic loser, yeah ? gonna go to work tomorrow n show off your mark for everyone to see, yeah ? "
possessiveness was driving him, only amplified tenfold by the weed in his system. it made you both feel everything so much deeper, so both in tune with your bodies and completely disorientated at the exact same time. you couldn't feel your toes anymore, and you weren't even sure you had a tongue in your mouth you were so far gone, but you could feel every deep stroke inside of you as he thrust, and the feeling of his nails digging into the flesh of your ass.
you were a disaster. you knew you should be somewhere else. it was in three the morning, you were three drinks and several shots deep, and with enough weed in your system to kill a victorian child before they could even understand what was happening to them. but you had no idea that you needed this so much, needed to feel him so deep inside of you that it brought you to tears, stretching you so well that you thought there was no way it was going to fit. and yet his cock buried itself completely inside you each time, his tip hitting against your walls in that special spot that made you cry out.
you wanted to scream, you wanted to cry, and by god you wanted to moan so loud that your neighbors could hear you. and maybe you were doing all of those things, at this point you weren't entirely sure what you were doing, other than taking his cock. gallagher was like an animal, desperate to claim every inch of you, and you were so willing to give him everything that he desired without any amount of a fight.
you heard a noise in the background, but you honestly didn't think much of it at that point. it was so unimportant, you didn't really care what it was, although you recognized the sound. " baby, your phone is ringin', you wanna answer it, or should i ? "
you made a pitiful little noise, and he took that as a perfectly valid answer, grabbing your phone and sliding it up for you. " hey, yeah ? oh, man. " you couldn't hear what was going on on the other side of the phone, but you could hear gallagher chuckle, and you swore he started to fuck you even harder now, the lewd noises of your skin slapping together undoubtedly able to be heard through the phone. " yeah, sorry you're a fuckin' loser, but they've got some new dick. thank you for keepin' them so fuckin' tight f'me. "
you don't know why your ex hadn't hung up the phone yet, but also on the other hand it made complete sense. if he had a way to argue, he was going to argue, even when all of the odds were against him, and the answer was blaring at him straight in his face. you buried your face in the pillow, trying not to make so much noise, but finding it impossible with the way gallagher was thrusting inside of you like he owned your body. and maybe he did, who knows at this point ? you just knew that you'd never felt this good, not with yourself, or any other partner.
" you wanna talk to them ? oh, man, be my fuckin' guest. i just hope you know you ain't gonna like what you hear. "
without a warning, the phone was pushed against your ear, letting you speak and say whatever you wanted to, but you couldn't find the words to say anything to him in between the moans spilling from your lips. " i-i- hh- fuck- " you whimpered, trying to think of something to say, but your mind was completely blank and filled with so many thoughts at the exact same time. there was only a brief moment of time where there wasn't anything coming from the other line, your ex so stunned that he couldn't find anything to say, but then came the barrage of insults, ones that would make you cry if you weren't being fucked so well by a man like gallagher, who was able to take your mind off of a pathetic man like your ex.
" put him on speaker, doll. let him hear you cummin' your brains out on my cock if he's so inclined. shit, i'll send him a video if he wants. whatever gets him to understand that you aren't his anymore, " gallagher growled behind you, one of his hands coming to snake around your waist, rubbing the sensitive nub between your legs with his thick, calloused thumb. you could only nod in response, sitting your phone down and turning it on speaker. you wanted him to feel horrible about everything he did to you, and you were hoping this was exactly the revenge you needed to finally get over him.
with the phone out of your hands, it was like it was entirely forgotten, especially with his finger rubbing your clit in tiny little circles. everything was building up to feel so strong inside of you, you had no idea what was happening. was it the drugs in your system making your body act up like this ? you had no idea, completely unsure what was going on. you felt this feeling in your tummy tightening as gallagher fucked you senseless, exactly like how he had promised to.
" ga-gallagher- " you whimpered out, your breath hitching in your throat. even in your fucked out state, you still managed to say something coherent, and of course it was his name. that thought only brought a satisfied grin to his face, and the older man couldn't stop himself from responding, clearly putting on a show for the person on the other end of the phone.
" what is it, my sweet ? gonna cum ? ya gonna cum on my cock like this 'nd forget all about him ? you take me so well, it's like you were made for a big, fat cock to stretch you out 'nd rearrange ya. " he was going so hard he needed to grab the headboard, his nails digging into the wood so hard that he wasn't sure if it would splinter or not, not that it even mattered. a little blood wasn't going to hurt him, and it certainly wasn't going to make him stop fucking your divine body into the perfect little cocksleeve for him. " is this your first orgasm on a cock ? you don't even know what's happenin' to ya, that's fuckin' adorable. you aint got no idea why you feel all tight down there, huh ? "
all you could do was nod helplessly against him, drooling onto the fabric of the bedsheets that was so soaked from your slick just dripping down your legs and pooling underneath you. " gonna- gonna cum, gonna cum, gallagher- pl-please- " you didn't know why you were saying please, you knew he wasn't going to stop now, not when he had a point to make of giving you the best orgasm you've ever had in your life.
" cum then, sweetie. i'll ride you through it. i'm gonna cum in this little hole of yours, okay ? you okay with that ? " you didn't give him a verbal response, just a nod of your head, but he couldn't stop himself from gently slapping your clit, making you cry out in pain, the sharpness of the sensation leaving you breathless. " say it, doll. say you want me to cum inside. you can do it, baby. "
" please- cuh-cum inside of me, gallagher- " you begged, earning you a tentative kiss on the side of your neck where he had bitten you earlier, and his finger started to rub circles around your sore clit again, perfectly timed just to make you cum.
" we're gonna cum together, okay ? let go, baby. i'm right here wi-with ya, " he couldn't stop himself from letting out a low groan, letting go of the headboard to grab your hip, dragging you on his cock as he fucked himself on you, chasing your orgasms together. with a low, animalistic growl, gallagher let go inside of you, shooting hot ropes inside of your walls as you clenched helplessly around him, the duo orgasm making you feel like you were able to blank out at any second, but you were entirely aware of your situation. he rode out the sensations with you, slowing down into gentle thrusts as he milked both of your orgasms at the same time.
when he pulled, gallagher laughed to himself, kissing the side of your neck and your nape several times as he wrapped his arms around your waist, pressing his body against yours. " he hung up. guess we gotta call him back when we have a round two, yeah ? "
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— ♡ rationaliity 2024
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