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cemoras27-but-writing-this-time · 2 years ago

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Danny's Evil Jaunt Pt. 3

(this is the chapter but I have work soon so I will tag everyone later a swell as links) @little-pondhead @im-totally-not-an-alien-2 (you two get tagged because your the big inspirations :D

warnings: swearing

Word count: 1.3k

Let it be known that Fright Knight loves his job. It's literally why he still exists. He exists to serve the King of the Infinite Realms and stand as the embodiment of Halloween and similar celebrations. That said, he feels conflicted as he gazes at the mechanical husk his future king shows off.

Compared to a normal mortal, its stature was massive. Though for Fright Knight it was about equal height, possibly a little smaller. The inspiration was clear and a little flattering. The metal was shaped into a stylized Fright Knight, complete with a (mundane) sword.

He eyes his king as the Halfa clings to its arm. He rambled about how he was planning on taking the husk to a pocket that was populated with heroes with him to guard him, and how he wanted Fright Knight to help with ‘teaching it how to do those cool sword moves you do Frighty!’.

Has his king replaced him?!?! No, surely not! There's no way this heap of scrap could ever compare! He had been around for CENTURIES while this thing hadn't even existed an hour ago! The king still had his hands inside it making adjustments yet!

“My Liege! Please forgive any misgivings about this… thing, but may I know the purpose of such a creation? You said that it was for protection yet I am here.”

His king turned his head towards him, arms still hidden within the side of the imposter. “His name is Fright-bot, and he's gonna keep the heroes off me while I work! They get annoying when you're trying to do some welding and all of a sudden you have like three arrows comin’ at ya real fast.” the young Halfa finally pulled his glove clad hands out of the monstrosity.

“He's also for keeping my other works safe, that's why I need him first. I’m thinkin’ of keeping most of my bots in my ‘therapy’ dimension that Clocky showed me for convenience, and they need a guard! But I can't just have you away to protect them! You need to do head guard stuff! I know you want to protect me and stuff but I can’t just let you just out in the living world with me all the time!” the king continued as he slid the siding back onto the almost finished robot. “Besides! It's kinda like you're protecting me from afar! Since it’ll be your techniques and stuff. I just gave it a body and Tuck helped me with the learning algorithm stuff so you can teach it.” his legs finally released his hold on the beings arm, dropping into a handstand and falling back onto his feet upright.

The flaming kight considered this. While it’s true that he can’t always accompany his king (as much as he would like to) it would be nice to have some assurance that the King would be safe. Perhaps he could convince the King into some sort of deal…?

Well Danny could say that he’s extremely happy with the events that happened at the castle! He and Frighty came to a deal finally! Frighty would teach Fright-bot how to fight and stuff but Danny would have to put in a built-in alarm system that notified Frighty that something bad was happening, so he could come in and save Danny’s day. Overall pretty good! Now to start working on those blueprints, he was so excited!

‘Ok, who gave the kid permission to build huge robots?’ Oliver thought as he saw the Fenton kid perched on top of the mecha-knight looking thing, and pulled back on his bow. Just as he released the arrow the thing’s head swiveled around like an owl and caught the damn thing! The kid looked up at Ollie and smiled.

“HI MISTER ARROW!! HOW HAVE YOU BEEN?” the kid shouted at him and jumped off the robot. Oliver sighed and readied another shot but was forced off his rooftop position by the purple knight.

“Who's your friend there, kid? He looks like the wrong kinda crowd,” the kid’s grin grew wider as he unfolded that damn cannon and attached it to a slightly glowing tank on his thigh.

“Do Ya like ‘im?! I built him myself, his name is Fright-Bot!” The fanged grin of the kid did not get any less unsettling as the newly dubbed ‘Fright-bot’ landed next to Fenton again.

“Uh uh, real nice kid. Why don’t you calm down and give up for today, yeah?” Oliver made sure to keep the knight within his sight. It honestly looked like it could snap someone in half.

“Hmm? Ahh.. I don't think so Mr.Arrow, I worked really hard on Fright-bot and I wanna see how I can make him better y’know! I promise I’ll keep the damage to a minimum!”

“You have your fingers crossed behind your back, don’t you.”

“What nooo… I would never lie Mr. Arrow, it's very hurtful that you would even CONSIDER that I would do such a thing. I believe you owe me an Ice cream now!”

“Kid, there was a snowstorm yesterday. And I don’t think you need any sugar.” The bow pulled back and the Knight rushed.

It wasn’t a fair fight in the slightest, Ollie was out numbered and the goo that was glowing a slight blue-green did not help. Especially with the still slick roads, so it was only a matter of time before his legs were stuck to the concrete. Frozen actually, the goo turned into weird ice. Fenton had the big guy grab his arms while the kid himself searched his body, eventually finding his wallet. The one he brought on patrol in case he got a bit hungry. Guess he was really buying the kid ice cream after all.

“14..15..16..21. Nice! You think it’ll cover it Fright-bot? I don’t know the prices but I think it’ll be enough. You watch Mr. Arrow for me! I’ll be back soon I promise!” and like that the kid expertly glided over the iced roads and into the Ice cream parlor. To be fair to the kid, the Ice cream here was kinda expensive.

While the kid was gone Oliver tried to escape from the Ice and the robot, but neither were budging. Well until Roy came up and stabbed the focused robot in the back, somehow causing it to malfunction and release Ollie’s arms. It fell to the ground with a heavy thud as Fenton came out of the parlor.

“Oh no! HEY! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!” Fenton screeched. Then released a guttural groan and whine. “Come onnnn…. I still had an hour left! And now I have to leave EARLY!” he honest to god pouted at the two vigilanties.

Then a lazarus green swirling mass opened in between the opposing parties and out stepped another Fright-bot, this time with a much more intimidating demeanor. This one was bathed in purple fire and held a sword covered in green flames that gave off the feeling of nightmares.

“MY KING! I RECEIVED THE ALERT AND CAME AS SOON AS I COULD'' it bellowed. Shaking the ground around them.

King? What, did Fenton make them refer to him as King? That felt weirdly out of character for what they had seen so far.

“Frighty! You were just WAITING outside weren’t you!” Fenton yelled at the knight. The knight didn’t take his eyes off the two perceived threats. And picked up Fenton by the scruff of his coat.

“My King! I knew we couldn’t trust your safety with that pile of metal! Only I- FRIGHT KNIGHT, is worthy of protecting you! NOW YOU TWO. YOU ARE HEREBY GUIL--” the knight spoke and was cut off by Fenton.

“We get it Frigty! Just.. Can you grab the Fright-bot and just take us home please… I told you this was a trial run to see how to improve him!” the child pleaded. The knight stared forward for a few moments before sighing and coming forward, yanking Oliver out of the Ice and flinging Roy and him out of the way. Then picking up the lifeless metal and carrying Fenton away through another swirling portal where it closed behind them seconds after they were out of sight.

“Hey Arrow, what the FUCK was that?”

“A massive pain in the ass that keeps getting bigger”

#dp x dc #cem's writing #dpxdc

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dennydreadful · 1 month ago

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HI THANKS FOR ANSWERING MY UNHINGED ASK THIS WILL BE VERY LONG BUT I READ THE COMIC IN ONE SITTING. im now going back and forth between imagining what kind of deeply toxic pseudo-vigilante shenanigans bunny (and caleb by association) get into post epilogue and thinking up scenarios where before shit got really real they both get soooooo much good therapy and heal together and end up toxicly codependent and kinda bad for each other still but in a way that doesn’t involve murder. like one of those aita posts where the general consensus is the couple should stay together bc even tho they’re both just exacerbating each others Issues at least nobody else is getting hurt. also i think dave and juicybaby hook up at some point.

have you ever seen that post that’s like “media in which it’s so very obvious all the problems could’ve been avoided if this guy got some therapy and a consensual bdsm relationship but that is very much Not What Happens in the story”? bc i feel like that applies to caleb. rip caleb you would’ve loved being a more well adjusted girl’s puppy and being led around the mall on a leash until security kicked you out. maybe next time king.

none of this to say i didn’t enjoy the comic as presented immensely btw. despite my ramblings here i think the comic ended in the most satisfying (for the audience at least) way possible. we love to see a dogboy beg for his own demise <3 we love to see a pretty girl go from justified anger to righteous rage <3 we love when characters have a deeply unhealthily fucked up perception of love and care and mental stability <3

like imo psychological horror is at its best when you take relatively normal people facing relatively mundane horrors then letting the aftermath of those horrors warp them beyond repair. in a good psych horror (at least when it’s like ii is and based on deeply human characters dealing with stuff in the most unhelpful way they can) you should be able to understand why and how things turned out like they did. you can think of a million ways it could’ve turned out differently if only the characters had seen the end coming, but the end they met was inevitable bc they *can’t* see it coming. the red flags aren’t obvious bc they increase so gradually. the bones of the building were there from the very beginning, but how were the characters supposed to know whether it’d be a home or a slaughterhouse? there were no plans, just bricks to lay and a storm coming. and that’s exactly how i felt finishing ii.

anyways. a caleb shaker charm would be so awesome i would love to go darla from finding nemo on his ass. thanks for the incredible comic my brain chemistry is different now and i’m kissing u on both cheeks in thanks MWAH MWAH

Cut because this post ended up really long, but here's Dave and Juicy:

idyllic island is a big old vent comic in a lot of ways. i drew on a lot of my own emotions and experiences to make it. i was in a very dark place for a very long time. i could have very easily gone down an even worse path, and very easily have been taken advantage of in a very dangerous way. but "guy goes to therapy and learns how to stop climbing into a wood chipper" is not a terribly interesting story imo, even if it's obviously the better outcome in real life. much more interesting to read about characters hurtling headlong towards certain doom lol

that said i always enjoy a good tragedy that leaves me feeling like "it didn't need to be like this..." (even though I know it was always the only way it was ever going to be) and imagining a happy world where everything worked out as best it could, so it's really cool to hear about someone doing that something I made!

before you read the next part just know that i LOVE hearing people's headcanons so feel free to disregard anything/everything i say here. death of the author and all that lol

imo he would have needed to never meet bunny for him to actually heal, and for her to not charge ahead on her path of destruction. even if he had gone to therapy and straightened himself up, bunny is so toxic she would have found exactly the right way to break him again (and honestly she would enjoy the added challenge). and couple's therapy would be SO BAD for him because she'd learn how manipulate and gaslight him even harder.

honestly I can't see a future for bunny where she DOESNT commit murder. she's a scorpion. it's simply her nature. it's not her fault we live in a society. perhaps she could have become a doctor and euthanized her patients discretely. i think she'd enjoy forensic science as well, but that would literally make her girl Dexter lol. maybe she could work for a three letter agency.

but yeah I absolutely agree that caleb would have LOVED to be in a 24/7 lifestyle BDSM relationship with a girl that did not want to grind him down to dust and scatter him on the wind. being a kinky freak with a loving partner would have fixed him 100%

#long post #ask #anon #idyllic island #idyllic island spoilers #maybe I'll make ii merch when I get out of this bad art rut

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northwest-cryptid · 3 months ago

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You know a very real part of me wonders how many of us have depression and see life as less of a fun and vibrant place as we get older if not just because it literally is.

I'm not even talking about how your body adjusts and how colors lose their vibrancy and all that. I'm talking about how when I was young, we sure as hell had Nokia bricks that were just black or grey or whatever. However we also had colored pencil boxes, and Macintosh computers for kids in school, cars came in brighter more varied colors, and most the tech was either given a colored shell like old Gameboy devices, or had some kind of colored accessories. A lot of the latest stuff coming out was stylized almost to a fault of form over function. Everything from phones and computers to art supplies and backpacks had some kind of vibrant color and whimsical design to it. Not just because most of that shit was for kids; but because it was just what we did back in the day.

Your computer mouse would have a unique shape or your jacket would have interesting little design tweaks from others. Maybe your shoes lit up or had some kind of weird gimmick to them. Now it's like, my monitors are black thin squares, my computer is a minimalist white box with a clear side panel and some RGB lights. That's all the color I get, a black keyboard with RGBs, a black thin tablet; a black generic mouse with RGBs, black headphones; black controllers, a black thin phone, a black mic sitting on a black mic arm on my black thin desk.

Listen I get it, I'm goth and all that, I understand that a lot of this is a matter of choice, but a lot of it also isn't. This is just how tech looks now, this is just how things are designed. To be thinner, to be sleeker, to be ignored. Sure blobjects and the like were horrible wastes of plastic, but I cannot tell you just how much personality everything had. The world used to embrace vibrancy and whimsy, now it is seen as childish. Now we seek the "modern" mundane look of monotone grays, black and white tech. It's all so boring, and the stuff that is slightly unique is expensive as hell. You can't afford to have personality in your tech anymore, literally. If something does have an ounce of interesting design it's typically pretty cheaply made and will fail within a year.

I don't latch onto Y2K aesthetics and the like because of some weird nostalgia for a promised future torn away from me by capitalism. I genuinely enjoy the vibrant colors, interesting fun designs, and just general love for life that it had. Y2K to me is a celebration of technology, it's why nearly everything came with the option to be transparent so you could see all the inner workings. Now even that has been dumbed down to a generic black cube graphics card and some generic minimalist black fans in my PC. That's all I get now, I don't get these colorful transparent interesting shells that let me peer into the inner workings of the tech I use. It's either unavailable, or too expensive; and even when it is available and affordable; it's typically poorly made or fails to understand the true aesthetic and interest of the reason for it in the first place. I don't care if I can see into my PC if all that's in there is a generic sleek black box. Show me the circuit boards, the wires and connections. Show me the lights that flash to indicate signals firing and being received.

Show me the soul of the machine I operate, let me watch as it dances to carry out my will. We used to be in love with our technology, we used to appreciate it's inner workings, what made it tick. It was like seeing the innards of a loved one but rather than feeling repulsed; it was like seeing their very soul, understanding that you love not only the exterior; but that you find beauty in what makes them function on the inside too.

Now all I'm left with is a simple thin black box, to be tucked away; hidden out of sight; ignored. Tech is something to be used, upgraded, replaced; and discarded. We do not love our tech, we do not love anything we create now. We create to consume, to sell; to profit.

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fawnfulart · 2 years ago

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finally the ask meme where i don't have to think of the questions myself 💫 Random favorite trope 🧶 What's a fluff plot you'd like to write? 🗯 What's an antagonistic plot you'd like to write? 🗨 What's a plot or trope you'd like to write [character] in? is it okay to ask so much.....who knows but i'm a nosy bitch

Writing Wishes Asks

FIRST OF ALL

You can ask anything you want to any time you like. Talking to people is basically what I made this tumblr for. I’m doing my best to be friend shaped, I hope it’s working. Stop by whenever your little heart desires about anything you want. We are all nosy bitches 🤝

Cut for length I'm really really sorry this is so long. I came up with a lot to say.

💫 Random favorite trope

I'm realizing these questions maybe weren't the best for me to reblog because I'm not sure I know the answers. Other people could probably notice what tropes I use better than I can. I know like a reluctant hero who wants nothing to do with the call to adventure lmao. I also like writing about cultural exchange so language barriers and characters who are fundamentally different creatures or who have wildly different life experiences come to mind. Insert Mermaid AU or whatever. Also..........found family again tee hee. Just put a bunch of weirdos through adversity so they can bond and love each other thanks.

🧶 What's a fluff plot you'd like to write?

I'm not sure what fluff plots I want two write mostly because A Long Way Off keeps providing me opportunities to put in just everything I want. I think a mall date would be fun to write, maybe I’ll put one in. Malls are very of the 90s here and the few malls that didn't go out of business are such a different experience now. When it comes to fluff I find myself writing about mundanity. There’s a real niceness to doing boring things with your favorite people. I wanna write about hugging and cooking together and stuff. People taking care of each other. Talking about nothing important. Also idk maybe the blorbos should kiss more, they deserve it.

🗯 What's an antagonistic plot you'd like to write?

Antagonists and conflicts are an interesting topic. I tend to prefer representing conflict that isn’t black and white. I want characters in conflict to each have an reasonable point of view so it’s easy to understand why they believe what they believe. It’s boring if one side is “just evil” or whatever. People aren’t really like that in my experience. I want both sides of the conflicts in my stories to have a point whenever I can write it that way. I want the reader to have to think about who they align with and why. It's boring if I just tell you what to think. I also think it’s interesting to write about characters who are stuck in conflicts that are larger than themselves and who are tasked with trying to navigate an understanding of the world that doesn't match what they’ve been taught about those conflicts. For example, members of feuding families, young people who have been born into the wars of their fathers, creatures or factions who are framed as natural enemies—inherited conflict where what side you’re on is not only assumed but socially enforced. What is one supposed to do when they stop believing what they were taught or have experiences that go against their prejudices? Romeo is out here like my dad says fuck the Capulets but Juliet is kind of hot tho….

🗨 What's a plot or trope you'd like to write [character] in?

You didn’t mention which character you want me to talk about so I’m going to assume it’s one of the two most likely ones we have in common. Sal. I just want to make Sal a creature so bad. I want him in every monster AU. I want a dumb mermaid AU. I’m gonna make him a rude cat boy. I want to make him the weird ghost haunting your house. I just think Sal is so funny in canon because he has regular guy syndrome no matter what extraordinary things happen to him. He’s so grounded. He’s so well adjusted. His perspective is so measured and humanistic literally no matter what, even when he is ripped from his plane of existence and shot across the multiverse. He's just vibing and having regular guy thoughts about everything. It’s very funny to me, and that makes me want to put him in crazier AUs more often. I would love to explore that dissonance between Sal's absurd fantastic circumstances and his normal guy reactions more.

For Larry I have kind of a cop out answer because I’m already writing it in the background of A Long Way Off. I'm really interested in how Larry forms his personal identity because I think he has a lot of similar ideas as Sal about things like masculinity and growing up and his place in the world but he's kind of fighting against different factors than Sal is. For one, I think it's more difficult for him to express vulnerability or anything feminine as it is for Sal. Sal is already "a freak" so in that sense society expects less of Sal than of Larry. Sal has more room to experiment than Larry does. I think Larry feels a lot more pressure to figure out what the world wants from him and to try to live up to that standard. He needs to be a respectable adult who embodies all the parts of manhood that his dad wasn't there to fulfill. But at the same time Larry is interested in counter culture, and the same masculine ideals that are important to him also make him feel threatening and force him to distance himself from things he used to find fun, like playing "girly" games with Ashley as kids. It's a hard balance to strike, trying to be a strong reliable man and a soft approachable boy at the same time. Also being more of a grown street rat and less of a sweet faced kid than he used to be has also caused him problems in school.

I tried to allude to it a little bit here. Because of his accident with the rabbit and because puberty hit him like a truck, Larry has kind of been categorized as a delinquent by adults and my experience of public school is that once authorities in systems assume you're a "bad kid" it's very hard to overcome that label. Anything you do is interpreted differently, especially if you are not white. Larry--who is large and mean looking and into "devil music" and has a permanent record and gets lumped in with his South American classmates--doesn't stand a chance. When he asks his teacher for a pencil, that teacher is going to assume he doesn't have it because he's irresponsible, because he doesn't care about school, because he has a bad attitude, because he's going to grow up to be a deadbeat and go to jail. But we know Larry, he's just trying to get through his day. I never bring this up in the story but I think the reason Larry doesn't have a pencil is because he lent it to somebody else and never got it back. But if you ask that teacher they probably just assumed he threw it at another kid or something. I think Larry is constantly wrestling with this double standard--am I supposed to be this strong responsible man or am I supposed to be this innocent well meaning kid? Adults seem to expect both from him and yet they arent happy when they detect aspects of either one. It's not fair and I worry about him. Anyway sorry for saying so much about it, I haven't really written a character like him before so I find it interesting. I think Larry's crisis of identity is kind of the opposite of Sal's in a sense. Sal knows who he is but he doesn't have a realistic understanding of how he is perceived by the world and he is very afraid of that. Larry, by contrast, understands completely how he is perceived by others, but he spends so much time worrying about those perceptions that he hasn't taken the time to ask himself who he wants to be.

#fawnfic #stellesappho #im so sorry this is so long #I feel like I must be thoughtful when you ask me things #I appreciate the opportunity to go crazy go stupid

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akaanonymouth · 2 years ago

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19, 25, and 46 for both Bernie and Serena pls 😊

Sorry, it's been a hot minute! (Really fucken hot, I actually melted and I've been in a freezer but when I was pulled out some of my limbs were on the wrong way, so I had to thaw and then refreeze, and it's all been a very wearisome sweaty time, but enough about that 😂)

19. What do they think about before falling asleep at night?

It depends what sort of day they’ve had. Sometimes, it’s mundane stuff like what time they have to get up, and what’s on in the morning. Sometimes, more often at the moment for Bernie than Serena, it’s about their children, about the what ifs and maybe’s. But, as cheesy as this sounds, I think the very last thing they think about is each other. Mundane stuff; poignant stuff, just a little reminder that the other one is there, a bit of skin touches skin and it’s real, and they have love.

25. How do they see themselves 5 years from today?

Alive, and that’s as far as they’re happy with these days haha! I think they’ve both had shifts in perspective, quite understandably, and so now Bernie is more content to settle down in one place; wherever Serena is, is home, she’s known this since before the 2nd bomb (I can’t believe we can measure her character development through the times she’s been blown up) but now even more so. She’s not thinking of retirement, just that there’ll always be a home, with a back garden where she put together a swing set, and visiting grandchildren/ niblings, and if they travel for work, it’ll either be together, or very short non-continental solo trips. She doesn’t see it really, but Charlotte tells her she’s quite good at photography. She might do a course.

Serena - So much can happen in 5 years, but time also flies, so if it comes to pass that she’s spent 5 years just cultivating new friendships and familial ties and everyone feels loved and secure and happy, then she won’t at all consider it time wasted. But she does think maybe she’ll start mentoring properly again. Or lecturing, if the surgery starts wearing on her bones. She might write a book, she thinks.

46. Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?

Previously, I think Serena very much a words, Bernie a deeds. Serena, after Ukraine, really censored herself to her - and their - detriment, afraid of expressing too much and not knowing how to balance sacrifice and desire, and love and general wellbeing. Bernie just… didn’t learn at all, and instead of checking out bc she couldn’t deal with her thoughts and emotions, or thought through other people’s, she went all in with them, grand gestures, forgetting in the process to actually use, or even reply to, some words, which would’ve been very useful on occasion.

But in this strange new world post-bombings (again, christ almighty that shouldn’t be a phrase I can use as measurement!) they’ve really worked on communication, both together and separately. Serena had a lot of time without Bernie to work on herself, so when Bernie reappears, although it would be easy to lose herself in focusing completely on Bernie again, using all the words she wants Bernie to have, she does - not so much censor herself, especially in that detrimental way - adjust her methods. She’s still more speaking than doing, but is healthier about it. Bernie… has a lot of therapy, which is a big thing for her, and through that she learns to use her natural “doing” instinct on smaller, and more effective scales. Like, sometimes she just doesn’t have the words, but she’ll take Serena’s hand, and take them off for a walk and such things, and instead of ploughing on ahead and just doing the big things like, argument’s sake, booking a three month holiday/ applying for a job, installing a three storey treehouse in the back garden because Jason mentioned how much Guinevere likes climbing, she will manage to have a discussion about them first because she’s aware now that sometimes Serena just needs words, actually. And vice versa (Serena just went ahead and ordered treehouse components for Bernie to tinker with, actually, because now she likes to do things just to see Bernie’s eyes light up, without the worry that she’s being too much).

#answers #berena #serena campbell #bernie wolfe #life after holby

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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

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Adventure and 02′s production philosophy and its impact on the storywriting (or: “a series made with love is best understood with love”)

It’s hard to really judge a series too much by its production details, but Adventure and 02′s staff has been very open about discussing background and production to the point we’re able to involve it in discussions. In fact, to a certain degree, we’ve gotten rather reliant on said production notes to explain too many things that weren’t clearly depicted or stated in the series -- I’ve spent a fair share of time complaining about how frustratingly subtle this series is -- and you see a lot of strange conspiracy theories or myths about production that circulate in all sorts of different directions. Undeniably, it’s a series that spoke to a ton of people, but there are still so many things that have perplexed people over the last two decades, and when you ask someone “what’s good about this series?”, people struggle to say it in clear words, often only able to resort to a rather oversimplified explanation like “the character development is good” (but what is character development, anyway?). A lot of times, some small things that initially don’t seem to track have led to some pretty wild, far-reaching fanbase-endorsed theories, when in fact the actual reality of the situation is much more mundane.

I think, in general, the best way to “understand” Adventure and 02 is simply to have an open mind about everything in regards to it. This is something I can only say because we currently have more than enough evidence, given production testimony, that this is the kind of series that was made with that kind of philosophy -- I will not shy away from the fact that there are things in this world that are made maliciously, meant to “one-up” the audience or using half-baked explanations as a way to cover up the fact that it wasn’t well thought-through. But in the case of Adventure and 02 specifically, almost everything we have heard about it is to the contrary, and, in practice, I find one can get much more out of the series by adjusting one’s mindset to think about what they’re looking out for and not, because once you have, the beauty of the series opens itself up even in places you’re not looking for it.

Let’s talk a little about the production philosophy behind Adventure and 02 and how it shaped a series that left such an impact on so many kids, and what we can learn from it!

“Something important that we wanted to tell the kids who were watching”

The two most important figures to know when it comes to Adventure and 02 production are its producer, Seki Hiromi (who would eventually go on to produce Tamers and Frontier as well, along with being supervising consultant on Kizuna), and its director, Kakudou Hiroyuki. I would say that both of these figures are probably the most influential people in shaping the series as we know it, but in different ways -- Kakudou was the one most responsible for building the world of Adventure and 02 and setting up the standard for having all sorts of background worldbuilding details that weren’t shown in the series, whereas Seki was the one who pushed for them to include family backgrounds and things that ought to be relatable to the average kid, so that they could empathize with the problems shown on screen.

Both of them had different ways of going at it, which is all for the better because it allowed the story to be enriched from both sides, but the common thread between the two was that they wanted to use this opportunity to “show the kids important things”:

Kakudou is the kind of person I would say is very “media literate” -- he was very well-read in books and well-versed in cinema, not just Japanese but also internationally, and also very in-tune with the Internet by the standards of a director in 1999. (Part of the reason we know so much about Digimon production now is that he still keeps up with everything on social media and throws in a few comments here and there.) His comments on the final episode of Adventure include a list of all of the things he credited for inspiring him during this series, and he later stated that he had a goal of conveying all of those “interesting things” to the kids watching, so that they could also find it interesting. So in other words, Adventure and 02 were basically his love letter to everything in media that he’d come to appreciate.

Seki was the one who pushed for humans to be involved in the series so that the audience could empathize with them, and for all of the “real world worldbuilding” like the kids’ family backgrounds. She’s also functionally responsible for the base premise of 02 at all, having been thoroughly alarmed by the story of a young boy skipping grades into university (to the point this plotline resurfaced a whole 20 years later in Kizuna). It can be said that the heavy “human drama” elements and family background emphasis continuing into Tamers and Frontier are probably her doing, and in terms of Kizuna, she also was responsible for personally vetting the dialogue to keep the kids in character, and it was said that it came off like she loved the characters as if they were her own children.

The result is that, firstly, Adventure and 02 is a series that is very well-thought through. Ridiculously well thought-through, in both background lore and character backgrounds and mentality. So many surface-level criticisms of Adventure and 02 come with an accusation that the writers were “lazy” or “did a writing cop-out”, but we actually have more evidence that the Adventure and 02 staff thought out so many details in the background that they kept forgetting that they hadn’t actually told the audience about it yet. (No, seriously, there’s a thread of official staff repeatedly forgetting that they may not have actually outright mentioned one of the background details they’d planned out in advance.) Even despite all of the extra information we’ve gotten since in the drama CDs and Animation Chronicle and such, it seems there’s still way more information that was planned out that we still haven’t learned about, and it’s presumably why there are so many little things that are too consistent to be coincidental and yet were still never actually stated. It may have been awful at communicating those details well, but those details were most definitely there, and both series have a shocking amount of consistency in adhering to them.

The second is that not only did the producer and director want to convey those important things, they also encouraged the rest of the staff to do it too:

One of the concepts behind the prior series was for us to pack in as many interesting things that we’d seen, heard about, or read about as we could into it, so for 02, we thought, what else could we put in beyond even that?, and so we looked over what we needed to have, and put in all the things we could so that they wouldn’t be left out, and the story became a multi-layered one, overlapping and accelerating. It was to the point that, after we’d gone through 02‘s story, the scriptwriters told me that they’d worn everything they had out to the ground.

So in other words, Adventure and 02 were basically a sort of potluck where they encouraged everyone on staff to come up with interesting things that they wanted to show the kids, and throw it all in -- and it’s presumably why the second half of 02 is so “crowded” (more on this later), because you had everything from all of the writers on staff adding another thing into the potluck, until everyone could get it out of their system. Yoshimura Genki, one of 02′s head writers, said outright that she used the famous 02 episode 23 to convey her concerns about some very real and horrible things happening to kids at the time, and it’s easy to imagine that all of the other writers and staff members were given similar encouragement to do so. Even the (in)famous 02 episode 13 was something originally created from Kakudou seeing Dagomon, thinking he was really cool and wanting to make an episode about him, and remembering that Konaka was good at Lovecraft and basically going “he’s gonna love this, we should get him to do an episode.” In fact, it’s said many times that a huge attitude behind production was to “not be ashamed of anything” and try whatever they wanted.

Which means that the result is a series that isn’t actually all that well-organized in plot or structure -- 02′s plot writing is of course an infamous pile of knots, but even those who are willing to be a bit more critical of Adventure often point out that its plot is simply more linear, being basically a video game-esque boss rush of “evil enemy, followed by even more evil enemy”. Most people do not watch Adventure or 02 for the actual plot writing. What they do watch it for is all of this stuff mentioned above -- that all of these different people on staff were given the question “what do you want to say to this audience of kids?” and took the opportunity to say something fun or meaningful. And, hence, why it’s best to understand Adventure and 02 not necessarily by the minutiae of its plot, but rather, “what was this series trying to say?”

Writing the series as it went along, under massive constraints

In general, Japanese anime is produced as it goes along -- even the character writing is subject to change depending on the voice actors’ performance (this was cited for Adventure specifically, but it’s well-known common practice for non-adaptation anime in general). That said, Adventure didn’t even have a guarantee of how long it was going to be at first -- it was generally expected that it’d be a one-year series (like most Toei series), but they weren’t even sure about it. This resulted in a very “loose mindset”, in which they decided to basically wing it, and the only thing determined for sure was that the epilogue (that we now know as the 02 epilogue) was going to be at the end of it.

As I mentioned above, scrutinizing the plot of Adventure too closely reveals that it’s not actually that coherent of a narrative, just more linear -- and, even by official admission, Hikari wasn’t planned to be the eighth child at first nor was the Tokyo arc of episodes planned to be that long, and yet this entire section is one of the most famous parts of Adventure. A lot of the best parts of Adventure and 02 seem to be the result of sheer accident...

...Or was it accident? Can you say that “going in with a positive mindset and a desire to do something meaningful” is accident? Even if you didn’t plan things out from the beginning, if you go into everything with an attitude of wanting to make the best out of something and make the best out of opportunities you see and hear about, is that really an accident? Couldn’t you perhaps say that this kind of thing is why Adventure and 02 hit so well with people to begin with?

By the time we get to 02, 02 started off as a very different series from the get-go, and it’s always struck me as very odd that people act like 02 was tacked on and didn’t have nearly the exact same staff. It was Kakudou himself who petitioned for 02 to start off with a light atmosphere, and the series itself was fundamentally meant to be addressing the new concepts of “relationships” instead of Adventure’s “self-assertion”, and explore concepts that hadn’t been covered in Adventure. The reason 02 is so different from Adventure is exactly because the staff didn’t want to rehash things for another year, and instead wanted to take the opportunity to cover stuff Adventure didn’t. And the fact that 02 is lighter than Adventure at first, but quickly gets darker, is also by design:

The story had gotten rather heavy by the time of Digimon Adventure, so we decided to make it come off as brighter. And then, it actually ended up getting even heavier somewhere down the line, but there was no way we could just avoid depicting important life problems.

Which is also a similar sentiment reflected by Seki herself, when thinking about how her suggested plotline ended up making the story darker:

An overly intelligent child, prone to falling into loneliness, cut off from his friends and family, and with a Digimon slowly coming and staying close to him…I remember that kind of image forming. We were supposed to have been aiming to have them going to the Digital World with the mood of a picnic, but the fact it didn’t end up so easy for them may have been my fault…or so I remember thinking as I reflected on it.

02 didn’t get dark for the sheer sake of getting dark, and in fact it’s not like the staff necessarily wanted it to get that way, but there were so many meaningful things that they wanted to tell the audience of kids that they allowed it to. It’s also kind of odd how the fanbase has this idea of there somehow being staff conflicts or people bickering in order to produce 02, but there’s no indication of this at all -- at most, 02 unusually had two head writers instead of one, Yoshimura Genki and Maekawa Atsushi, but it was even said that they had a clear division of roles, with Yoshimura on the “villains” side and Maekawa on the “protagonists” side, and there’s no sign of conflict.

(A lot of people also tend to give more credit to Yoshimura since the villains are some of the most masterfully crafted part of both Adventure or 02, but this is still somewhat reductive; Maekawa is very open about the fact that he was rather inexperienced during 02′s production, and considering the fact that the 02 protagonists aren’t nearly as underdeveloped as the fanbase claims they are, and Maekawa would later go on to write a PreCure entry that basically saved the franchise and a very well-acclaimed Super Sentai entry, both with many parallels to 02, his role should not be discounted, especially since 02 is often liked by its fanbase for the duality between both its lighter and darker sides.)

So we had the staff basically on a roll of throwing in everything important they wanted to say to the kids, both “fun” and “meaningful”, and then, two things impacted the way it ended: firstly, they weren’t allowed to go with their initial proposal for the final enemy because it was too gory, and secondly, the decision was made midway through that they would not be making a third Adventure series, and would have to end more quickly than expected.

I think, whenever you hear stories of “we were originally going to do this but couldn’t,” people generally tend to assume that they should have done the original plan (especially if the original plan was particularly gory or brutal, because everyone loves to think that edgy is better), but, perhaps fittingly for a series that’s about not drowning in past regrets of “what should have been” and learning to move on, the staff has never really shown any indications of really, thoroughly regretting any of the decisions they made for 02, even if the second half came out messy. If you look at that original proposal they had for 02′s final enemy, in which it would be an enemy “reduced to an idea”, it certainly explains a lot about why BelialVamdemon was defeated by the power of sheer positivity in the final ending -- obviously that would make a lot more sense with a conceptual embodiment of malice, instead of a returning enemy from the prior series -- but at the same time, that loss of that concept led to the creation of Oikawa, Archnemon, and Mummymon, which have consistently been praised as one of the most compelling parts of 02 and its finale, and Yoshimura herself even gushed about the concepts they got. So it’s not “we couldn’t do what we wanted,” it’s more “we couldn’t do what we initially wanted and made something out of it, arguably an even better something in certain ways.”

And as for the lack of the third Adventure series, all indications point to the fact that this was something by personal choice of the staff, not by higher-up mandate -- not that I enjoy speculating about other people I don’t know, but if you actually follow what Kakudou has said about his work on Adventure and 02, and the fact that he considers his later work on X-Evolution to functionally be getting everything else out of his system (even saying that he liked Bandai doing a lot of the work for him), Kakudou doesn’t seem to want to be the main leader of his projects for the most part, mostly seeing Adventure and 02 as the one time he got to dump all of his one-time ideas that he personally wanted to accomplish, and otherwise being satisfied doing episode direction work for others -- testimony as to the handoff between 02 and Tamers consistently depicts him as expressing sentiments similar to “please let me have a break.” (As of this writing, he still does work for Toei, but has never been lead director on a full series since.) Kakudou didn’t like having to deal with a bunch of increasingly canon-contradictory works because, as an infamously detail-oriented and consistent person, dealing with that kind of thing didn’t really seem to agree with him, and moreover it’s understandable that he (and the other staff) would feel that it was better to end it there instead of overstaying its welcome and stretching things out.

Certainly, when you look at the second half of 02, its plot is “crowded” in nearly every direction (not as incomprehensible as people like to claim it is, but definitely going in a lot of places at once). The infamous 02 epilogue is probably the biggest example of the disparity between staff thought and how it came off; remember that it was one of the first things decided about the series at all, meaning that the staff was deliberating over it and under the impression they were building up to it for a whole two years, but when it finally dropped everyone was blindsided and even often made accusations of the staff coming up with it at the last minute while drunk or something (not helped by the staff clearly being so fixated on their own production that they even included details that were completely incomprehensible to anyone not aware of the potential third series plotline). Yet, ever since then, many people who have sat down with it have figured out that it’s not that incomprehensible and that many of the aspects of it make sense on a theoretical level or are foreshadowed in the series -- it’s just that they tacked it onto the end of an excessively crowded finale with no warning and didn’t sufficiently communicate their reasoning for it, requiring people to spend the next 20 years puzzling it out and Kizuna to come around to drop even more clues, and also failed to realize that one of humanity’s most die-on-a-hill issues about media (shipping) would make people a lot more offended than they likely intended. (PreCure has successfully pulled off “adult timeskip” epilogues in recent years, and they’ve all been received well, but the difference is that they actually pad out the episode with a proper lead-up instead of just chucking it in your face right after Oikawa dies.)

And, ultimately, the staff has never shown any signs of having regret over this. Kakudou takes the stance that they were able to close out 02 in a good way, despite all of the circumstances. The rest of the staff, including Seki herself, and overall Toei as a whole, has doubled down further on the latter half of 02′s plot events and the epilogue’s place in canon despite the infamous controversy around it, and I have to say that I do at least understand why they’re like this when you consider the circumstances and their likely feelings on it -- regardless of everything, they’re proud of the work they did on it, and even if not everything went according to original plan, they loved taking the opportunity to use the sandbox to express things they may not have been able to in their other projects, and the epilogue was their baby that they’d been raising for two years. It’s the ultimate question of “satisfying the creators vs. satisfying the audience” -- not to say that I completely agree with the call to be this unaware of how people were going to read this, because it’s not good to blindside your audience or hurt their feelings, but at the same time, it’s said that you will never be able to satisfy an audience at all if you’re not satisfying yourself first. And in the end, despite everything, that something in Adventure and 02, built out of that earnest desire to say something, came across in some ways and touched the hearts of kids all over the world.

So the result was that the Adventure and 02 staff did everything they wanted, got it out of their system, and handed an imperfect but carefully-crafted baton to Seki, who decided that it was a good opportunity to do something completely new, and deliberately picked Tamers’s director Kaizawa on the grounds that he’d had no experience with the series before. Remembering that Seki was on Adventure and 02 and was clearly happy with it, her decision to do something new with Tamers was just that -- to do something new -- and it’s honestly kind of saddening that the series’ respective fanbases treat each other with significantly less respect than their actual creators do, since both series still shared a lot of staff, Kakudou went on to be an episode director for Tamers (and even calls it a “masterpiece”), and Konaka clearly has a lot of respect for his predecessor series as well, with Tamers being its own product made with conscientiousness and a desire to make things meaningful for kids (Kaizawa himself has expressed a lot of strong opinions on this topic). A lot of anti-02 folks have often spread a conspiracy theory that Tamers came out of a “writer revolt” because they hated being “restricted” by 02 and wanted “more freedom” -- but that is completely contrary to the above evidence where 02′s production process arguably gave the writers too much freedom, and Tamers head staff was picked deliberately due to their lack of connection to the prior series so that they could do something conversely new and fresh...

One thing that’s interesting about Kizuna is that its director, Taguchi Tomohisa, has spoken very often about his love for the original series, right down to respecting its ability to cover very serious topics. His recruitment philosophy for the movie also seemed to have “being a fan of the series” as a big plus factor, and he moreover shows a lot of respect for the staff members involved in production, both the people he recruited and the long-timers like Seki. “Being a fan of the series” doesn’t necessarily constitute skill by itself, but there’s a lot of similar sentiments in “let’s make something that shows respect and does something interesting and important” and “let’s make sure the staff gets to do something without regrets” also seem to be pretty huge factors in consideration here, rather similar to the original series...

What this means in terms of understanding the series

I do not think that, just because a creator clearly had good reasoning for putting in what they did, the audience necessarily has to accept that. It may have had good intentions, but "intentions” don’t justify things coming off the way they do, or at least, the 20/20 hindsight can make us all get together and think “if that was your intention, there were probably a million better ways to execute that.” And, as someone writing this blog, there are times I really think “if you could have please just thought a little harder about making those ideas clearer so we wouldn’t have to have these arguments...”

However, I do think there is something illuminating about the idea of “adjusting one’s mindset” in response to the above revelations, and going in with an open mind when trying to get something out of the series for one’s own sake. I mean this truly in the sense of encouraging others to find something interesting and new -- this is not a blog I write expecting people to see things the same way I do, as much as I like encouraging people to look out for things they might have not noticed beforehand.

I started writing for this blog regularly last year (I hadn’t even planned to start regularly doing it) after a rewatch of Adventure and 02 with some friends and some honest discussion about the series after it, and one thing we all agreed to do when we did that rewatch was “we are not going to go in with the intent to criticize it.” That is to say, we decided to throw out all of those sentiments that you have to “admit” everything wrong with any series when even bringing up its name -- which is not to say that we’re glossing over potential criticisms or their validity, just “we’re doing this rewatch to have fun and to enjoy and appreciate things, and that will be our priority going in.” After making that agreement, something really magical happened, and it was that we started catching things without even looking for it, things that had clearly been planned but hidden in the background, or things that were caught by one person in the group watch chat and pointed out to the others, and it turned out that a huge chunk of the “criticisms” we might have originally gone in with actually did have answers, we just hadn’t realized it because we were too brainwashed into the mindset of dismissing things as “well, that part’s just bad writing.”

Of course, we’ve seen bad writing -- it’s not like we were going out of our way to absolve everyone for every mistake -- but that base mindset allowed us to better appreciate things we might have missed earlier that weren’t immediately apparent. I’ve said many times that I don’t think the things I write on here are that huge speculation -- in fact, in writing meta, I often throw out a lot of stuff because I think “yeah that’s too absurd, let’s just stick with the simplest explanation” -- as much as I just thread things that are in the series but are frustratingly subtle, because I’m taking things that seem like throwaway details and going “hm, well, instead of just dropping it the first time like ‘probably bad writing’, let’s maybe look at this one more time and see if there was a reason?” And those reasons present themselves surprisingly easily without even that much effort, and after a while you come to realize: this is a really consistent series!

It’s actually very rare that things outright contradict themselves, because it really does not take long to piece together a rational explanation (because those things are in the series, just buried)! This was a detail-oriented series that had a ridiculous amount of attention paid to it, even if it didn’t communicate that! Whenever I post meta, I often get comments from people who say outright that they’d had the same impressions, they just didn’t know how to put it in words! There’s been multiple cases of people independently coming up with readings of the series that the fanbase historically dismissed as a reach, only for official to come out and confirm they were absolutely correct, and a common thread between all of these is that they were referenced in the series, it’s just that people kept wanting to dismiss them because “there’s no way they’d be that detailed”! A truly contradictory series falls apart when you subject it to higher scrutiny (even when you’re being optimistic about it), but there’s a strange thing about Adventure and 02 in that they actually fit together even more when you look closely -- and, again, things start coming in when you don’t even expect it, just because of your mindset.

I suppose the take-home here with all of this is that a series like this is best understood when you have an open mind and a desire to listen to what it has to say. As I said before: Adventure and 02 (and especially 02) are not series that most people watch for the plot, and, to be honest, it’s clear that plot wasn’t even a priority for all of the staff in the first place as much as it was about conveying important ideas and sentiments. And I’m not going to say whether not prioritizing plot or not is a “good” or “bad” thing -- for some people, that kind of thing is understandably very important, and a series like 02 can be very frustrating to deal with as a result! -- as much as, for those who have a genuine interest in sitting down and understanding these series, I cannot recommend scrutinizing the plot too much simply because it will not get you very far, and, to be honest, whenever I see a lot of analyses of Adventure and 02, I really do often wonder if they actually understand the core of the series and the sentiment and emotion behind it, or whether they’re just doing it on a technical surface level so they can say they did (which is usually partially as a bid to passive-aggressively dunk on later series to prove Adventure is superior). The entire concept of objectivity is a lie in itself, but this is not a series that you can get much out of if you try to evaluate it with that kind of detachment; it’s a series that spoke to you through theme and passion first and foremost, and to receive that message and “enjoy” the series is most effectively done when you detach all of those doubts and approach the series without malice.

(By the way, this is not me claiming I’m inherently a “better” analyst just because I also prefer to use this mentality when approaching it; it’s just that I’m a bit frustrated that this kind of approach is so hard to find, despite Adventure’s popularity, because losing out on the heart causes so much rich potential to get lost. This is also the reason I recommend @analyzingadventure‘s work so much -- I’m so sorry about tagging you for the third time here! -- because they’re as positive about Adventure as I am about 02, and their insight and thought into the series coming from the angle of “appreciating” it with genuine positivity is something I believe is truly valuable in a climate where this is very hard to find.)

And this is what I mean, “to approach it without malice”. I don’t mean that you should go in prepared to never have criticisms of it ever again, nor that you should just absolve everything and assume that everything is fine, but rather that going in with a mindset of “we’re going to look for things to love” instead of “we’re going to ‘look past’ the bad” alone has the magical effect of shifting your entire view of the series, way more than I would say with any other. And, again, that’s only something that can happen when the base product was made with this much sentiment and honesty to begin with, and moreover fighting against the mindset to criticize is tough when we’re dealing with a fanbase that’s acted like being “fair” requires “acknowledging” the faults of everything in the same breath you praise it until the horse is beaten for two decades and everyone’s exhausted. (And then yells at you if you dare criticize anything that’s put on the fanbase’s pedestal.) It’s kind of the question of: should this really be about media criticism and whether it’s “objectively” good or bad, especially since this has been brought up so often for two decades now, or might it be better to think about how to have a more positive experience with something that you may not have had before?

Once you get rid of that mindset of “critical by default”, you start to realize things that the series did knock out of the park, or were exceptional, that got too obscured by the distractions of fixating on its plot -- 02 is a plot mess for sure, but I have never seen any series that is so sincere and earnest about its actual themes and things it wanted to say, and it’s something I love it even more for. And buried under that criticism of everyone not getting “equal attention” from an evolutionary forms perspective is the fact that, from a story perspective, they deliberately went out of their way to make sure everyone gets mostly equal focus, which is something that sticks out especially when you start watching other long-running series that aren’t as good about this, and although it’s not completely perfect by any means, they do a damn good job keeping everyone in the 8- and 6-person groups relevant to the very end, which is pretty impressive! And, in the end, you end up having a much healthier relationship with the series -- again, it’s not glossing over everything to pretend nothing is wrong per se, but rather, you’re able to appreciate it and love it for what it is, instead of constantly feeling like you’re making up for its “mistakes”.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #shihameta

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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago

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I felt like the plf war was rushed

1.Plf advisors getting hype but no payoff

2.Only miruko, Momo, and Kirishma got time to shine

3.Machia got defeated to easily

4.The war felt more like a raid

I don't know if I feel like it was rushed, per se--it's by far the longest arc in the story so far by number of chapters, and would be even if you cut off the Tartarus jailbreak and the entirety of the hospital aftermath. What it absolutely does feel like to me is unbalanced.

You note that the "war" feels more like a raid, and you're right. As a caveat, it's worth keeping in mind that "Paranormal Liberation War" as a name for the arc in question is entirely an invention of the fanbase. To the best of my knowledge, the reasoning for the name was that big action shonen series like BNHA (Naruto, Bleach, Hunter x Hunter, etc) always have a war arc, so what we were seeing in the lengthy, mass combat confrontation with the PLF had to be HeroAca's equivalent. It's not a term that's in the manga itself, however, not called as such by the characters, not referred to as such by Horikoshi or his editors, not even namedropped in chapter or volume titles. If it feels like a raid, that's probably because that's what it was intended to be.

And that's the problem, really. This arc shouldn't have been about a couple of raids; it should have been about a war.

(Below the cut: a bunch of fired-up complaining. Uses some harsh language, and talks about both injuries and deaths we did see and some we logically should have.)

From the outset, we were told that the resources Shigaraki had amassed were "on par with, or even stronger than" the resources of the hero-saturated society. Yet, we're expected to believe that a force that strong is so easily taken down by a single coordinated set of raids? Yes, the heroes had the benefit of surprise, but there's just so much that doesn't work for me.

First off, and to get this out of the way, it's ridiculous that the heroes even had the benefit of surprise. The MLA had an unknown number of hero double agents. They had people in the government; they had people in the infrastructure. This is an organization that had been living undercover completely unsuspected for multiple generations--how did the HPSC ever manage to carry out a massive, country-wide investigation on such a secretive group and coordinate multiple simultaneous, comprehensive raids without a single person finding out and alerting the higher-ups over a period of only three and a half months?

When exactly did Hawks have time to go and revive Best Jeanist--which he tells us he did personally--such that none of the bugs and micro-cameras he was covered with picked up on it, and both he and BJ could be back in the positions they needed to be in for the raid to begin?

How did Skeptic find out about the raid such that he only discovered it at the last possible second and not minutes, even hours, before it kicked off? How did hundreds of heroes (and even "hundreds" is being conservative, given the fact that they had seventeen thousand people to detain) close in on the villa without anyone from the PLF noticing, either Skeptic with his information network or mundane precautions like people on watch?

Even granting the heroes their surprise advantage--which I don't want to--if the advisors were all supposedly "stronger than the average hero," why didn't we see any of them winning? Okay, yes, Hose Face beat Midnight, but he had every possible advantage in that "fight"; I hardly count it as some big impressive defeat that shows us that the villains were holding their own.

Here's another thing: the MLA styled themselves as an army--they were demonstrably trained in troop tactics. When we saw them in Deika, even their nameless on-the-ground people were capable of coordinating with each other on the fly in response to the movements of the enemy, as we saw come up repeatedly:

Yeah, they were off-guard at first, but as soon as the advisors made the front line (which, you'll note, was immediately), that disadvantage really should have begun eroding. Certainly once Geten--Geten! The number one MLA member most willing to disregard collateral damage! And there he was being a proper leader!--got to the front and started yelling orders, we should have seen the PLF rallying, and I can't imagine any sensible justification for the tides not turning when a) Re-Destro showed up to occupy the highest-ranked hero on the field, b) a bunch of heroes peeled off to try to stop Machia only to get trampled for their efforts, and c) Trumpet got dug out.

You know who don't style themselves as an army, though? Heroes. Oh, they get some basic lessons in cooperation as students, but the extent of such lessons we see is stuff like "why it's important for heroes to have signature moves"--so that on group missions, their reputations will precede them and fellow heroes will already know their shtick. U.A. teaches the odd lesson plan that involves the kids fighting in groups, but there's a huge difference between you and 3 to 6 of your buddies fighting a similarly-sized group in a practice fight, or a handful of heroes teaming up to take down some criminal low-lives, and the mass combat scenario that was the raid. For heaven's sake, look at our closest other equivalent: the raid on the Hassaikai base. At every turn in that encounter, the heroes let themselves get split up and picked off, winnowing down their numbers. It's even explicit in the narrative that hero team-ups were, in the age of All Might, uncommon, and heroes are only just beginning to adjust to fighting in teams. The erstwhile MLA should have had the advantage there.

As to Machia's defeat, I think the big problem with it is not how it happened, per se, but the timescale involved. The plan itself was sound enough, and even with all the kids' efforts, it still took Machia reaching Shigaraki and not getting any new orders to follow to really do him in. Given what we can extrapolate about his movement speed, though, I just don't think the kids should have had time to set all those traps, especially given how much of that equipment would have had to be fabricated by Momo on the fly. I know she's gotten stronger and all, and good for her, but you're telling me that in the four months between Joint Training and the raid, she went from passing out because she created a bag of goodies and one (1) cannon to being totally fine and still able to coordinate her fellow students while cranking out 23 jars of sedative, dozens of feet of rope/cable, multiple fire-resistant coats, explosives they somehow had time to bury, and three cannons?

For fuck's sake, Jirou gave Machia's ETA as under ten seconds. Yeah, Mount Lady slowed him down, but "only a little"--how much time could she possibly have bought them, that the kids were able to to coordinate and enact everything that plan involved?

You guys, go read this post by @codenamesazanka. Machia is so fast. So unbelievably, incredibly fast. "Twice as fast as the fastest train in the world" fast. "Horikoshi clearly did not stop to think about the distances involved here" fast. Three miles in ten seconds fast. It would have been hard enough to square with the needs of the plot that the kids were sufficiently far from the villa to have the kind of time they needed to swing Momo's plan at all, but Horikoshi explicitly letting Machia get right on top of them before the kids even start just makes it completely impossible for me to credit. Machia clearly being slower aboveground than he is when burrowing does not make that much difference to my suspension of disbelief.

My other big complaint? More people should have died, for real. The PLF warriors would not have been holding back. They were ready and willing to kill anyone they came up against. The heroes did have to hold back, because heroes, as we're told over and over again, are not supposed to kill, no matter how dire the circumstances. That difference in ability to exercise force should have been yet another significant advantage for the PLF. I could write an entire list of characters that I think could have reasonably been killed during the raids. That wouldn't be to say that I think any individual, specific character on that list should have died, just that, based on the parameters as they were presented to audience, some number of them should have.

I mean, honestly. How did Horikoshi wanna show us Gang Orca's unmoving claw in the wake of Machia's passage and not have Gang Orca on the list of the dead? How did Fat Gun run right into a mass melee and still have enough fat left over afterward to survive getting trampled by a walking mountain? How did Thirteen survive not getting pulled out of the hospital basement when Shigaraki's Decay hit? How did Trumpet survive getting a staircase dropped on top of him? How did Gran Torino survive a fist through his tiny old man chest cavity?

I could go on and on, but it's not just about the deaths, either. I'm not saying that Kamui Woods necessarily should have died by swinging himself face-first into a blast of blue fire, but I am saying that he should have been out of commission for longer than three goddamn days. You bet your ass I'm saying that after telling us that Hawks' weak point is fire, making us watch him spend at a solid minute or more with his wings wholly enveloped in Dabi's 2000 degree flames, and having Dark Shadow exclaim that his back is completely burned away, Hawks should never have grown his wings back, much less so quickly that they were already visible under his shirt a single day later.

More deaths, more maiming--heck, even more retirements. I'm not saying I love that kind of thing in my fiction--I don't, actually. I think an overreliance on it is a sign of edgelordy nonsense. But the scenario that we had demanded to be treated with the kind of gravity that would have led to such an outcome. To set up a conflict like the raid and have the villains only barely be able to scrape a partial escape, to try to tell us that Shigaraki's victory in Deika granted him such a terrifyingly powerful force only to have them lose every battle they got into, to tell us this was a blow that shook Hero Society to its core, only to be so unwilling to kill or retire any heroes the audience cares about that Midnight is literally the only significant loss… It doesn't work. None of it works.

I don't have much to say on which characters did or didn't get a highlight. I think there were a few more people than you listed that got some good scenes--Tokoyami and Uraraka both got material I liked quite a bit; Dabi famously out-trended the U.S. presidential election on Twitter when he (literally) came clean, and Mr. Compress gave us some wonderfully interesting and characteristically opaque material to chew on. On the whole, though, adding more character moments would only have been dragging out the problem: the scale of the PLF's threat and the HPSC's chosen method of dealing with it are simply incompatible with the feeble "neither side truly won or lost" resolution we got.

And that's my rant on that--thanks for the ask!

#and yet #i still hate it less than the shitshow that went down with lady n and overhaul #inkbuckets #paranormal liberation front #meta liberation army #bnha #stillness has salt #stillness answers

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silenthillmutual · 4 years ago

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daniil dankovsky is autistic and here’s why:

because i’m autistic and i said so

i kid, obviously. what sort of autistic person would i be if i wasn’t read to back up my silly little claim with an overly long post of evidence a total of three people will read? (hi ned hi jordan hi raven :))

i’m aware that this is cringey because adults aren’t supposed to have autism or interests or talk about either of those things, but this is my blog and you are free to block me if the cringe is too much for you.

these are some things i picked out from the DSMV’s diagnostic criteria, found on the CDC website:

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

abnormal social approach

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

defecits in […] understand[ing] relationships

difficults adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

repetitive motor movements or speech

rigid thinking patterns

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input

there’s also some misc. stuff not in the diagnostic criteria (though it may be in the adir or gars-3) i thought was worth noting.

important note from the diagnostic criteria: “symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning”. i’d say that in his case, they do.

spoilers for pathologic classic, pathologic 2, and the marble nest

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

in bachelor route of classic, daniil

seems completely oblivious to eva making advances toward him, to the point where she complains to him that he’s ignoring her in favor of asking questions about simon.

seems surprised when people mention maria being in love with him, despite outright asking her a couple of times if she’s flirting with him.

not to mention the fact that he asks her that at all.

his inability or resistence to making connections with others is typically considered one of his character flaws. although it is not outright stated in the dsmv criteria, one trait of autism and other neurodivergencies is “having extremely high or extremely low empathy” - and daniil, despite being a doctor, lacks empathy. which is not to say he doesn’t care at all. i think that he does, but is terrible at showing it.

for example, this scene from marble nest:

Sticky: You must feel terrible… right? That’s fine. I forgive you. You just got confused… Adults always do. Daniil: Oh yes, adults are always occupied with the most asinine nonsense. Like feeling anxious that a bunch of urchins keep roaming the streets, putting themselves in mortal danger!

daniil clearly cares about sticky’s wellbeing (and the wellbeing of the kids looking after him, though he’s not cognizant that he’s in a coma), but his way of showing it is… kind of by being a jerk. all of which bleeds into the next item on the list

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

he has no problem sharing his interests, but in both pathologic classic & pathologic 2, daniil speaks with a flat affect - which is to say that he lacks intonation. the words we read him saying may be dramatic or come across as passionate, but the actual voice reading his lines is very monotone, which may contribute to being read as lacking emotion.

and in pathologic 2, he has a voiceline lamenting not telling “her” (eva?) how he felt

in marble nest, he’s teased by the tragedians for being “heartless”:

Tragedian: Maybe. Possibly. But it’s useless to explain to a heartless man. …Take heart, Excellency! If you ever find it, that is. And then come back to us… Even though it all sounds like a rather implausible turn of events.

abnormal social approach

daniil has a tendency to say things that are tactless, odd, or just socially inappropriate. i probably don’t need to point out too many examples, as i think it’s fairly obvious - these are the things people love to pick at when it comes to him, but i do have a few in mind. like, for example, from haruspex route in classic:

Haruspex: What of the antibodies essential for making a serum? Bachelor: I don’t know for sure yet, I’ll send you a report in a few hours. Don’t go about cutting people’s hearts out for your panacea until then. It’s a… controversial solution, you know… Haruspex: What?! Do you even hear yourself? Bachelor: Sorry! I meant no offence… it was just a momentary lapse of… well, you know. Haruspex: None taken.

until artemy points out, daniil doesn’t seem to be aware he just said something rude. even with therapy, picking up on social cues doesn’t come naturally to people with autism, so we tend to say things that come across as rude or strange to others without realizing we’ve put them off. we tend to lack a “filter” that tells us when things are or are not appropriate to say. even when we may recognize it, the rules may not make any sense to us. for example, it makes very little sense that allistics favor politeness over honesty.

i think the glaringly obvious abnormal social approach in pathologic 2 is him threatening to hold artemy at gunpoint to get in the house, which is just overkill, but my personal favorite comes on day 7, when he’s complaining about the orders aglaya has given him. artemy stops him to say he doesn’t understand what daniil wants from him, to which daniil replies:

From you? Oh, nothing. I was just sharing.

to daniil, they were just having a normal conversation. but some part of this - his tone or his words or maybe even his body language - didn’t give artemy the impression that this was supposed to be a regular conversation. (we could, in fact, attribute the same idea to artemy here; why didn’t artemy pick up that this was a normal conversation? the reason i count it towards daniil is because artemy doesn’t seem to have this problem with anybody else. for the record: i don’t think artemy is neurotypical either.)

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

it’s hard to get proof of this in video games, but i will say i think it’s very funny that in pathologic 2 daniil’s idle animations are “pacing”, “sitting like he desperately wants to start bouncing his knees but is stopping himself from doing it”, and “standing unnaturally still” - but there you go. i don’t know anything about making gifs, or i’d gif this one specific talk menu idle he does where he holds eye contact for about three seconds, looks away uncomfortably, and then looks back out of the corner of his eyes.

deficits in […] understand[ing] relationships

mostly examples from his route in classic:

when the army arrives, he can claim to block that aglaya, whom he’s known for two days, is his best friend

he seems baffled by the fact that everone is smitten with maria and working with her, and seems equally baffled by the idea that she’s smitten with him

despite eva implying on day two that she is in a relationship with andrey, is completely blindsided by the revelation on day 6, asking him, “How in the world is she ‘your woman’?”

i’d also like to use his sign-off on his letter to artemy, day 2 of the haruspex route - he signs it as “Your friend (hopefully)”. i know i’m not the only autistic person who used to ask people if we were friends or not. pro tip, if you’ve never done this: don’t. it really weirds people out.

difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

the fact that he stands out is blatantly obvious even in pathologic 2 and in the haruspex route of classic. people will comment on him being an outsider and mention that they don’t trust him. but you can watch it happen in real time in his route, because he never fully acclimates to the town. he says something about this to aglaya on day 7:

Bachelor: Was there any particularly notable backstory? I’m deadly tired of all these people. They’re inhuman. They tell the future, believe in walking zombies, and die in all manners of painfully abnormal ways. Inquisitor: Your line of t hinking is obviously falacious - and I was implying something rather mundane. I promise you, no one can really tell the future around here: and neither are deaths inspired by third parties uncommon. Mysterious phenomenons do occur here sometimes… but hardly more often than anywhere else.

actually, there’s an example of him saying something similar to artemy on day 5 in pathologic 2:

Damn this town… I feel I’m trapped in a nightmare. The absurdity of it all… There’s no one to talk to. Everyone’s so volatile. They all seem to want to help, but… their help is worse than hostility.

some of this can be explained by the town’s strangeness, but keep in mind that the first instance happens after he’s been there and involved in the ongoing for an entire week, and the second at nearly a week in. clearly he’s struggling to adjust to the changes.

it’s also worth noting that his reason for fleeing the town in the nocturnal ending?

I have no place here anymore.

This town is no longer mine. No longer human. No longer rational. It doesn’t… accept the likes of me anymore.

repetitive motor movements or speech

it’s harder to see the motor movements in classic, but remember how i pointed out earlier that he paces? pacing is a form of stimming. murky, who is canonically autistic, can also be found pacing as one of her idle animations. having stock phrases for characters to speak when you come near them already ticks off the box on “repetitive speech”, but that by itself doesn’t really cover what they’re talking about - echolalia.

but you know what this does fit with? “‘quoting’ things(communication is HARD! sometimes we need to take shortcuts and use someone else’s words)“

i’ll get to the more obvious example in a minute - i want to point out something that happens very early in pathologic 2 first. you know how you first meet him and artemy accuses daniil of trying to guilt-trip him by asking if it’s true that isidor would still be alive if artemy had come sooner? keep in mind that he spoke to rubin first. and this is what rubin says, when you get a chance to talk to him:

Yesterday, I was told you had killed your father.

That’s not far from the truth, Burakh.

You betrayed him. You left when he needed you most. He cried out for your help, but you didn’t care. He was in peril, and you were too busy elsewhere, He believed, truly believed, that your arrival would put an end to his troubles. And, as always, he was right.

i’m not saying this was necessarily the game’s intent, but it’s entirely possible daniil is parroting back to artemy exactly what rubin said to him.

now, for what you’re probably expecting in this section: the latin. people love to refer to his use of latin as “random”, so let’s clear that up:

it is not latin daniil has made up. with the exception of latin that is mispelled in the game’s texts, all of them are proverbs or otherwise common sayings. you can find most of them on the wikipedia list of latin phrases, or through a 3-second google search.

he’s a doctor. him having taken latin isn’t anymore strange than a lawyer taking latin. in fact, if you pay attention, artemy also took latin; this is implied when artemy tells him he’s always sucked at it.

his uses of latin actually aren’t random at all. what he says fits the situation, and sometimes is used in place of him having to come up with something to say on his own.

prime example:

Forget it, Burakh. I have a splitting headache. If you have no urgent business, then we’ll talk later. Later, later… Qui non proficit, deficit.

qui non proficit, deficit - he who does not advance, loses ground. in other words, “i’m sorry, but i really do need to keep working.” one of his voice lines.

as for why he doesn’t translate the latin: it probably wouldn’t even occur to him to. these are not obscure sayings. the utopians all have a certain degree of education - what would he need to translate them for?

this bleeds into something that isn’t really mentioned, but that i’ve found i have a lot of trouble with in everyday life. autistic people have a tendency to either overexplain (and then have everyone get mad at you because they feel you’re being condescending) or underexplain (and have everyone get mad at you because you haven’t explained anything). the latin would be a case where it feels like a justified underexplanation. you’ll notice that when it comes to anything scientific, he tends to do the reverse, and overexplain. this also happens in classic, whether artemy has asked him to clarify or not.

rigid thinking patterns

the thing i had marked for this was simply his strict adherence to western medical practices and refusal to acknowledge the supernatural, even when it seems obvious - he has a conversation in his route in classic with yulia about this, and that is in fact how he manages to get to her: by asking saburov if there are any other logical skeptics in town. it should be noted they seem to be breaking with this in pathologic 2, where one of his voicelines is “I’m no positivist. There are things in this world beyond our mundane perception.” i have no idea where they’re planning on going with that.

there’s also a quote floating somewhere around twitter about him having been raised by a military man, and militaries tend to enforce very rigid routines. you could say the same thing of block - who (in classic at least) i also have my suspicions about.

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

special interests. the one that should obviously come to mind is thanatology, though i would argue latin if not classics in general is a special interest of his as well - in addition to his usage of latin, he also references pericles in the marble nest and was probably refering to the roman occupation of haruspicy in addition to augurs in the same text. he also makes references to shakespeare more than once in both marble nest and pathologic 2.

hyper- or hyperoreactivity to sensory input

i don’t have much written down for this one but there seem to be several places in classic especially where he asks npcs to stop shouting at him. we don’t really have the privilege to know their volume or how they’re interacting with him, but i think it’s also worth noting that he’s the only one of the healers who wears gloves. in pathologic 2 he’s the only named character i can think of who wears them at all. his thing in the lucid dream about the brain being “a border”? gloves are his border, as is his jacket, which may be worn to cut down on sensory issues.

he will also sometimes seem to “overreact” to the situation at hand - such as in classic, when some dogheads mispeak and say that daniil is going to “sterilize” them, and instead of understanding that they must have mispoken, freaks out over the idea that they think they’re going to be… well… sterilized. or in haruspex route, when his reaction to the inquisitor arriving is to threaten suicide.

miscellaneous

he never goes anywhere without that carpet bag. we don’t see it in pathologic 2, but we do hear about it and he doesn’t let it go for a second in classic - not even in the cutscenes where he’s using the microscope. his bag could be a comfort item.

“getting very attached to things like inanimate objects” could work for the bag - but you know what it actually fits the bill much more obviously? the polyhedron. in the haruspex route he recognizes that it’s a lost cause, but he’s still too attached to it to let it go.

in classic at least, daniil is absolutely terrible at lying. most autistic people either are not good at lying, or feel uncomfortable or anxious with having to lie. when he’s asked by yulia and the kids in the polyhedron to lie to block (for different reasons) he’s clearly uncomfortable with the idea that it’ll work. and when it actually comes time to come up with a way to lie to block about why he needs five rifles, your options are to either buckle and tell him the truth, or simply say that you need them for “self-defense”. block believes that you’re not lying to him, but daniil can’t come up with any embeleshments to explain why he needs what he’s asking for.

Commander: Are you hiding something from me? Bachelor: No.

he comes across as naive to other characters. in classic, capella has a voiceline saying, “The Bachelor is not smart. Intelligent, yes… but not smart.” in Pathologic 2, Daniil complains that Aglaya takes him for “a useless dreamer”. he’s also easily used by the Kains to fulfill their endgame in classic.

my final, and absolute favorite: he takes things way too literally. autistic people (and adhd people, from my understanding) have a hard time differentiating jokes and sarcasm. so my favorite moment in marble nest is a case of him taking that earlier advice - to “take heart” literally, by bringing the tragedians a literal human heart:

Tragedian: Oh… Excellency. What a sordid sight! Sorry for underestimating you. You definitely do have… how shall I put it… a creative touch. But this is pure madness. You can’t take things so literally! Daniil: You wanted me to come back to you with an open heart. Well, here I am. …It looked too fitting to be a coincidence.

your mind map, after this, updates to say “I misunderstood the tragedians.”

conclusion

people don’t stop being autistic with age and i think he’s a good example of what it’s like to be in your late 20s and be autistic. i’m sure i missed things as i haven’t finished haruspex route of classic yet and there may just be some other things he does or says that i missed! if anyone has anything to add they think fits i would love to know, thank you for your time :)

#icarus.txt #autistic daniil dankovsky #daniil dankovsky #pathologic meta #ok to rb but i'm not interest in your ''but he's just weird!'' arguments #please keep in mind that this post is about autism #and that this is written by someone w autism...#popular

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tigerdrop · 4 years ago

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hey i just wanna say the long posts genuinely make my day. also can you talk more about gordon freeman character because the way you write him makes me quake in my gay little boots

i would love to talk about gordon freeman. thank u for the opportunity

the first thing i need to communicate about gordon is that this dude sucks. and i say this in the fondest way possible. he is a bitch from the moment he drops into the world until the moment he goes out. if you dont believe me, give it another watch! gordons mouthy and rude for no real reason, at least so far as “being a regular dude on his way into work” goes, and this dude goes around calling his coworkers names with zero provocation. (of course, we all know that the reason is because its a funny guy improv stream that borrows a bit from freemans mind, but im talkin from a character sense.)

but my argument isnt just that gordon freeman sucks. its that he sucks in a very specific way that i find insanely endearing. i love this dude. i love to hate him. hes awful in a very mundane sense - weve all known a guy like this, at least if youve spent too much time online - and its cathartic to watch him suffer because of it.

gordons a smart guy. as written, hes gotta be - hes a recent MIT grad, on his way to work at a top-secret research facility to do weird shit with crystals and theoretical physics. but the thing about smart guys is that theyre often......selectively intelligent. we can see this in the way that he has a hard time navigating his surroundings, and needs the science crew to guide him through it and keep him alive.

this is one of those things that is a natural consequence of somebody going through the game for the first time, but that i am interpreting as “gordon is kind of stupid sometimes”. its uncharitable but its not like he doesnt deserve it. he likes to boss around the crew as if he knows what hes doing, when he often very much does not, and is fond of demeaning their intelligence. hes real bad about this with tommy in particular, treating him like hes a kid whos playing at being a scientist when tommy is actually a decade older than him. all i am saying is that gordon ought to stay humble. hes awful cocky when he perceives himself as better than others.

which, i think, tracks with how cocky he gets when he gives up on the whole “well-meaning citizen” thing and just unloads bullets into people. he puts up a front of being a Nice Guy, you know, just some dude caught in a bad situation who doesnt like seeing his companions obliterate every NPC they come across, but that doesnt stop him from cackling like a fucking madman and mowing down aliens (and soldiers) every once in awhile. when he stops seeing himself as helpless and starts seeing himself as the one in control, the gloves come off. he gets mean. and i think thats very sexy of him

this, among other things, is why i am insistent that gordon freeman is a control freak. he desperately wants to be in control of the situation at all times, shepherding around the science crew primarily by bitching at them, but its of limited success. its futile. sisyphean. tommy, coomer, bubby, and benrey exist almost to torment him with exactly the thing that would make him suffer the most: a gaggle of people running around causing problems for him, but he cant go anywhere without them b/c hes reliant on them to make it out alive.

its perpetual suffering, and its cathartic to watch. and funny, too. and if youre a little weirdo like me, its very, very enjoyable. how twisted up he gets when nobodys listening to him! how sweaty and frazzled he must look. its cute, and it also makes me want to reach through the screen and shake him and tell him to just be a little nicer. he wants control but he doesnt know how to attain it, he doesnt know how to play nice like a real leader. i think its a neat contrast to gordon freeman as we know him in HL2, where he literally is the leader of the resistance and has to live up to it. this is gordon freeman but if he was moe through helplessness.

“helpless” is, i think, a great way to describe him. a core bit of imagery in half life is this sense of railroadedness and helplessness, with gordon freeman being put into play like a chess piece and having no choice but to move forward. and this iteration of gordon leans into that by being totally dependent on the science crew in order to make progress and Not Die. and hes also subject to the whims of benrey, local eldritch weirdo who has basically made it his life mission to fuck with gordon.

gordons anxieties dont help with that. if he wasnt so fun to stress out and fuck with, the science crew probably wouldnt do it so much! too bad for him that they like fucking with him so much that he was driven into a panic attack (multiple times, even, depending on your interpretation). hes got that real neurotic mindset. always worrying about shit that could go wrong, and attempting to exert control over his surroundings in an effort to control the anxiety.

IMO the real way to nail the Neurotic Gordon Freeman Experience is to combine the ever-present anxiety with his pervasive sense of self-loathing. he openly states that he has no friends and nobody seems to like him, and to that, i really gotta say, i wonder why. he doesnt really seem to factor in that hes kind of a bitch, and has way too high an estimation of his own intelligence relative to everybody elses. its really one of the worst ways to be: aware that people dont like you, but unaware of exactly why. if he was like, 10% nicer, he probably wouldnt have had half as many issues getting through black mesa, but also, its funny to see him squawking his way through the game. so, you know.

its stuff like that that makes me headcanon him as a dude with low self-esteem in general. convinced that hes not likable, not attractive, out of his element......impostor syndrome, except that theres some truth to it. this is a guy who truly does not realize how good he has it: he really is just an average shitty dude, and yet, somehow, benrey took a shine to him. some poor motherfucker out there actually likes him and wants to suck his dick. thats dedication

also, i keep bringing up “repression” when i talk about gordon. and hopefully, what ive been talking about helps explain why. he has a strong desire to be a regular dude, not just murdering his way through black mesa, but if hes pushed hard enough he leans into it. gets bossy. picks up a cigar off a dead soldier and takes a long drag, before smacking forzen around with a pistol and ordering him around. gordon freeman is a regular, kind of anxious guy who likes competitive swimming and streaming on justin.tv and making anime references, and he is also a guy who takes a filthy pleasure in making a trained soldier his bitch. and i didnt make up any of this shit - this is purestrain canon, baby. this is a guy with problems

to me, this screams the kind of guy who represses a lot of shit b/c he doesnt feel like its morally decent. you run into this guy a lot online: the wokeboy, the online leftist, the guy who spends too much time on social media websites. (like reddit. i think he would actively use reddit and he would never get any appreciable amount of karma but he never stops posting. its sisyphean! cathartic.) from the way he talks about “bootboys”, i think it tracks. he knows about imperialism, he knows about feminism, but at the end of the day hes your average american white dude who struggles with internalizing it.

a lot of those dudes struggle with sex and gender issues. (dont we all.) when youre trying to be a Good Person(tm), you spend a lot of time thinking about your own relationship to sex and kink and all that shit. and i maintain that a too-online dude who buries a lot of his control freak tendencies would also try to bury a lot of weird sexual shit in an attempt to seem Normal and Well-Adjusted and not like a little freak. i justify this by the sheer number of times gordon blurts out weird sex shit as a joke. there are only two outcomes to making that many piss jokes: either youre secretly a piss guy, or you lathe-of-heaven yourself into becoming one. i will stand by this

ive talked a lot about why this dude sucks. now, let me talk to you about what makes gordon so much fun to write. first things first: hes funny! a subjective evaluation, yeah, but both in- and out-of-character, hes aiming to be funny. and being the straight man to everybody else plays into that whole “helplessness” thing.

secondly: underneath it all, there is a good dude under there. gordon worries when his companions get hurt, he tries to clean them off and patch them up, and hes got his lil leftist heart in the right place. you could even read a lot of his bossy, bitchy demeanor as him wanting to make sure everyone gets out okay and doesnt hurt themselves. when it comes to animals and anti-imperialist sentiment, gordons a pretty good guy.

hes the kind of guy who would probably see a dog on the street and get excited and play with it, but would get really prickly about the correct way to put dishes in the dishwasher. control freak tendencies.

finally, subjecting such a miserable, tormented guy to even more psychological anguish is really, really fun. you feel a little bad for him, but he kind of deserves it. so many problems he goes through are purely of his own making, and if gordon would just relax and quit trying to hard to maintain control - of himself, of the people around him - and own up to having Problems and Issues, he would be a happier guy. but thats why its fun to bend him until he breaks. being a little control freak myself, putting gordon freeman thru psychosexual torment is cathartic.

when it comes to writing his thought processes, the fact that he is canonically some kind of psychotic (yes, i am boldly claiming this. suck me) and i am also canonically some kind of psychotic makes it easier to write what i think his thought processes are. i just give him my brain issues of “getting lost in thought” and “overthinking fucking everything”. a touch of paranoia helps. even if i dont explicitly label him as schizophrenic please know that i am writing him as a paranoid little nutcase at all times because, uh, you write what you know.

paranoid. anxious. of the mindset that everyones out to get him (which isnt helpful when everyone is out to get him). repressed and deeply Not Normal but trying so very fucking hard to be normal and well-adjusted. a control freak with sadistic tendencies who also really, really likes getting bullied by his best frenemy. a hapless little nerd who sounds really cute when his voice starts to break from nerves. and, most importantly, a dumb jock. do not ever forget this.

thats gordon freeman, babey. hope that helps

#asky #careposting

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if-you-built-yourself-a-myth · 4 years ago

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Check Ignition: Sander Schmander

By popular request (*cough* everyone on ao3 and @art3misjade), here is Sander's perspective on events

This segment falls right before Chapter Four of Check Ignition

Sander Driesen was drunk. Honest-to-god, shitfaced drunk. And for the first time in forever, too—he’d laid off the stuff since his treatment plan made it difficult to handle, and since he wanted the meds to actually work. But tonight, he thought, I’ve earned this. Everyone else was drinking. It would be weird if he didn’t participate when his own boyfriend was halfway through his fifth cup of punch.

Fake boyfriend. That was a whole thing.

Now, he lay on the stairs leading upward to the boys’ dormitories. Hopefully those stairs. He didn’t make a habit of visiting the common rooms of other houses, and the layouts tended to differ from one another.

“Sorry,” he croaked to everyone who shimmied their way through. “My bad. Deepest apologies.”

This was why he needed Britt, he thought, to reign in this kind of impulse. Granted, she was the only one who knew about everything else thus far, but he wasn’t going to tell Robbe all that, not when it was already hard enough existing in a magical world with a mundane illness. He wanted to hold onto this last little dream.

Midnight was fast approaching and the bustle downstairs had yet to dispel. Sander tried to move his arms and found them unresponsive. Or rather, he could move them, but it required too much effort to be worth it. He slumped back. More people flooded up the stairs to sleep off whatever terrible concoction was in that punch bowl.

“Robbe has such stupid ideas, I swear,” said Moyo, cresting the staircase. Sander perked up at the sound of Robbe’s name. Probably Moyo. Sander struggled to think through the names of Robbe’s friends—he had them listed in his bedroom for continuity purposes.

He recognized Jens easily enough, because Jens was wherever Robbe was. And Sander watched Robbe a lot. Sander held his breath, as if being quiet could prevent them from seeing him sprawled across their path.

“Shut up,” Jens shot back.

The third boy with them—Alex? Adam?—pitched in, “It’s not Robbe’s fault you don’t get any.”

“He’s throwing away the chance of a lifetime.”

“Shut the fuck up. You sound like an incel.”

“But like, why do they kiss so much? It’s not like you have—” Moyo stopped short as he tripped over Sander’s leg. Despite their somewhat rational conversation, they weren’t any more sober than Sander himself. “Shit, speak of the devil.”

Jens leaned down to Sander’s eye level. “You alright?”

“Never better,” Sander slurred. It came out more like a groan.

Moyo approached to help Jens move Sander from the center of the stairs. They sat him up against the railing on his left side, which was not any more comfortable than the steps digging into his back. Jens was still in full Quidditch uniform (even the chest padding!), Moyo sported a Hufflepuff tie over a t-shirt and jeans, and Adam-or-whoever stood at a quiet distance in a pair of burgundy pajama pants and his Quidditch robes. Sander would have made note to write these in on his list—a good indicator of personality.

Too bad he didn’t have the sense to do so.

“Can’t handle your alcohol, huh?” Moyo asked. He didn’t seem very threatening, though the question was definitely a taunt. Sander’s brain felt like vanilla pudding. Moyo turned to the boys. “Should we wake Robbe?”

“Yes,” said Sander. Oh, hell yes. Robbe. He liked Robbe so much.

The story itself was long and antiquated, a love-at-first-sight kind of deal for Sander. He couldn’t think of one version where he wasn’t the bad guy. He went on a double-date with Britt and her friend, expecting one of Noor’s usual yuppies to show up and bore the whole table with pointless conversation. Then it was Robbe.

Do you ever just see someone, really see them, and—how could he phrase it—know? Or think you know. All things considered, it wasn’t the best sign in terms of his condition.

He had to walk all the way into the next town over to call his psychiatrist, only to realize there wasn’t much to tell her. Hey, I’m infatuated with this guy that my girlfriend’s friend is dating. What should I do? She’d give him some common-sense answer like, Break up with your girlfriend, which he didn’t want to do until he knew what he was feeling would last. So he said, These side effects are nasty, and she reevaluated his dose of Lexapro.

“Let the virgin sleep,” said Moyo.

Sander pitched forward to grab Moyo by the arm. “No, wake him up.”

Because the thing was, time passed, and the feelings didn’t fade. Britt could tell he wasn’t present anymore and said nothing. Maybe she thought it was the Depakote that his psychiatrist added to the cocktail when the antidepressant dangled him on the edge of hypomania. She was a good person. It really wasn’t fair when he told her it was over via owl, and it really wasn’t fair when he seized his opportunity to kiss Robbe in the astronomy tower. The argument in question was not so bad. He conflated it for an excuse to leave her.

“Where’s Robbe?” said Sander. “I have to see him.”

“He’s asleep, downstairs. We gave him a blanket and everything.” Jens passed over his own cup of water. “Drink this.”

“I have to see him,” Sander repeated.

“Yeah, you have to go to sleep. He’s going to be here tomorrow.”

“It won’t be the same tomorrow.”

The whole relationship wasn’t even meant to be a thing. It was a cheap kiss, really, in the astronomy tower. Sander just wanted to know what it would feel like, and he thought it might serve Robbe too, so he did it. Robbe’s appearance the next day was the most unexpected, thrilling twist he could have dreamed of. Except, in a dream, it wouldn’t be fake.

Robbe never missed a chance to restate that it was fake. That wasn’t the best sign, either.

“Aaron, don’t just stand there,” said Jens. “Help me out. Grab his arms, will you?”

“Aaron.” Sander tested out the name. “But you’re Adam!”

“How much have you had?” Aaron grabbed Sander’s arms and lifted. The boys got Sander up two stairs before deciding he was too heavy. They sat him back against the wall.

“Try again,” Jens instructed.

The second try went about as well as the first.

Jens crouched to Sander’s eye level. “Look, is there someone else we can get for you? Or are you cool with sleeping here?” He had to hold Sander’s shoulders in his hands to keep Sander from pitching forward and rolling all the way back downstairs.

“We can’t leave our friend’s boyfriend here!” said Aaron.

“Fake boyfriend,” Moyo added.

Sander groaned. Yes, remind him of that! It was fake! He knew it already! If his psychiatrist could see him now, she’d say—alright, she’d say that he wasn’t allowed to drink on his overly specific medication regimen. But if that weren’t a factor, she’d say some more common-sense things like, “Tell Robbe how you feel. Tell his friends, if you want.”

Fuck, he missed her. He could seek out the phone booth sometime this week and tell her all about it. She loved hearing from him.

“There’s no one,” he slurred. “I’m okay.”

“Fine, there’s us, then,” said Jens. He hefted one of Sander’s arms over his shoulder. “Moyo, take three.”

Moyo took the other arm. They dragged him up the rest of the way, bumping his head on every other stair. He felt like a snow globe in a tourist trap shop, all shaken up, no escape through the glass. Huh. Poetic. Where was Robbe?

“Wake up Robbe,” Sander requested. Jens and Moyo dropped him into the fourth bed in their room. Aaron, Jens, and Robbe lived here; Sander could deduce that from the eclectic assortment of things piled on every available surface. The blankets of the bed in which he lay were already rumpled, implying that someone else had slept here recently. He touched something sticky on the top sheet. Okay, maybe they didn’t sleep.

Jens looked back and forth between Moyo and Sander. “Why?” he asked.

There were plenty of replies Sander could give. We’re fake-dating, and I want it to be convincing.

We’re such good friends, and I want to tell him so.

I think he has my cell phone. Jens might not know what a cell phone was. Sander could never tell with those purebloods.

He and I have plans to smoke weed and throw rocks at pixies in the Forbidden Forest.

Sander said, “I misssssss him,” with the s pulled to the end of the world. Yeah, that would work, too.

“Um, okay,” said Jens. “We’ll see what we can do.”

Then he, Aaron, and Moyo started laughing, although Sander couldn’t tell just what they found so funny. Sander had an alarm on his cell phone to take his medication at eleven PM, since schedule was important to the efficacy of the active ingredients, or whatever it was his psychiatrist said when she adjusted his Lexapro to 15mg. It buzzed in his pocket, but he didn’t have the pills. He was too tired, anyway. It wouldn’t matter if he skipped a dose or two; he’d done worse things than that with lesser consequences.

“You’re going to get Robbe, right?” he asked, and in a moment of clarity, he realized he was a needy boyfriend. He wasn’t a fan of needy Britt. You either die the hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Jens yanked the curtains shut across the fourth bed and bound them with a spell. “You’re drunk, go to sleep. We’ll get Robbe.” The boys began another fit of giggling.

It didn’t bother Sander at all. He stared at the arcing pillars that held up the bedcurtains and hummed a David Bowie song into the darkness. He was young and drunk and in love, and anything could happen. So what if Robbe thought their relationship was fake for now? In a matter of time, it would be real.

#sobbe fanfic #sobbe #sander driesen #robbe ijzermans #wtfock #requested fic #sander POV #fake dating #Hogwarts au

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talkfastromance4 · 5 years ago

Text

The Click-- Calum Hood (soulmate!au)

It’s here! I’ve never written soulmate stuff before so this is probably really different from what you’ve normally read, and it’s different from what I normally write but this really has a part of my heart in it. Inspired by Lang Leav’s wonderful works (the poems up above) and some weird instances I’ve been having.

Word count: 5.6k

Warnings: none, no smut whatsoever (I know who am I?)

Son inspiration: Then I saw You by Tatiana Manois and Surrender by Natalie Taylor

donate to my ko-fi here :)

Masterlist

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. *copyright is listed at bottom*

• • • •

Two strangers both alike in mind have a book propped open with words inked in of love and heartbreak and other musings. They are alike because they mark their favorite poems by dog ears and highlights with little scrawls of their own thoughts scratched into the margins.

Late night for her, early morning for him as they’re on two different sides of the country, it’s not just miles that separate them, but the day and night. The moon comforts her and is her light as she reads of a love shared between two poets. The sun is his friend and a warm embrace as he delves deeper and deeper into the pages of the same love but tinged with an air of sophisticated provocativeness.

While on their Spotify playlists, the same artists and songs are shared between the two. Music and lyrics, words, and prose, two hearts longing for the same thing.

A love to be written about, a love to be shared, an adventurous love that is unique because it is their own. In both their minds, that kind of love doesn’t seem tangible. To be added to their likeness, they’re both the only single ones amongst their friends and have been for a while.

Calum showered his friends in love, giving his friends small gifts and helping in any way that he could. He was always down for a good time, sharing laughs and making memories. Rose was the same, she enjoyed being with her friends and family.

In the daylight they appeared fine and well put together but going home to an empty house in a lonely bed is where they felt the weight of their ache. Sometimes it kept them both up, reading their poetry books or writing their own. His were songs while hers were just words but the premise was the same, dreaming of love.

She received an opportunity of a lifetime to go to school for her writing. A quiet dream she’d held safe in the privacy of her own mind. It was thrilling yet terrifying moving to a whole new city, the city of angels. Her best friend stayed with her for a week helping her adjust in her new albeit small studio apartment.

It was a steal that was right above a coffee bookshop, a place where she’d also received a job. When she wouldn’t be in school, she’d be working to help pay for rent. While she unpacked and decorated her place, she kept pinching herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

When her classes started, she was up by 4 a.m. because of her nerves and her excitement, it bundled up inside her. She ran through her schedule three times, checked her bag that she had the right textbooks and her small laptop.

She read her favorite poems until it was time for her first class. The owner of the shop already had her coffee made to her liking with a cranberry orange muffin already in a bag.

“Thanks Teresa,” she smiles, taking the goodies.

“Have a great first day! Do you want a picture with your bag?” Teresa is a kind, thirty-something year old woman. She’s living her dream owning a coffee bookshop and has the kindest smile.

“I’m okay, don’t need a reminder I’m starting with kids fresh outta high school.”

“You’re not that much older, twenty-five is still young, Rose,” Teresa smiles. “Enjoy it.”

“Thank you,” she smiles then waves with her pinky.

Her first day of classes is just how she thought they’d be, the awkward introductions that she rehearsed in her head before speaking, going through the itinerary for the semester and then reading a few chapters and taking some notes. Rose loved every minute of it.

During lunch and her breaks, she reread through each itinerary again and bookmarks the pages in her textbook she’ll be needing. In between that, she reads her poetry book and jots down a few of her own thoughts.

Then, the day is done and she starts her four hour shift at the bookshop that would last until closing time at 9:30. Rose quickly discovered that this would be a very easy job because it didn’t get a rush of people for dinner.

Some other students she passed on campus would stop in with a friend and share a cup of coffee or tea. By 7:30 there were only a couple of people scattered about the shop, books, or tablets in front of them as the soft indie music played throughout.

Rose gathers her books into her bag behind the counter before she moves to the bookshelf wall to restock the books left on the small wooden tables. She finds herself humming along to a song she knows when there’s a commotion outside.

The other guests inside turn to look as well through the windows framed in the purple and blue twilight shade to see a couple. They’re the source of the noise as both their voices rise over the other and when he throws his arms in the air that’s when Rose turns back to her task.

Clearly whatever was happening outside was a private moment and Rose couldn’t help but smile at the irony of the saying ‘outside looking in’ while she’s inside but was just looking into their outside debacle. Her mind always thinks of outlandish things like that, she calls it her circle thinking because she can run with the same thought over and over.

It doesn’t make sense to others, but it does to her.

After a few moments, she glanced outside, and the couple was gone. The streetlights had flickered on and she could see stars poking through the darkened sky. She hopes she’ll see the moon upstairs.

After the last guest leaves, she locks the door and sweeps up the shop, wipes down tables and locks the cash drawer in the small vault in the back. She checks that the back door is locked after tossing the garbage out quickly and runs upstairs to her studio apartment. She makes a cup of hot cocoa before bed and reads and writes into her favorite poetry book, her journal next to her.

The hot cocoa made her sleepy and she fell fast asleep with her book atop her chest. She dreamed of someone that held a powerful connection with her, he understood her and made her smile. By morning, the dream slipped away with the stars and she started her new routine over again.

***

Calum’s fingers tap impatiently on the laminate surface of the table as he sat through this meeting. It was mundane but necessary that he be here because the band had decided to take a year off. The world is still in recovery from the pandemic and they agreed collectively to hold off on anything until there was some decent footing again.

He’s been in a bit of a mood since he and Zoe fought a few weeks ago after having dinner. They weren’t exclusive, only seeing each other on occasion and that night she brought up soulmates. She was almost nagging at him that he wasn’t hers and that they were wasting their time when he reminded her, she was the one to call him.

He hasn’t heard from her since.

His mind wandered throughout, thinking of ways he can occupy the next 365 days when he wasn’t writing music. Music is his life; it’s always been a constant and has pulled him through some tough situations and has uplifted him in joyous ones. On the TV stuck to the wall there was a news report scanning at the bottom that the university not too far from his home has the highest enrollment rate.

That piques his interest. He reads the closed caption below the broadcaster as it says open enrollment has become the new norm, welcoming students from all ages to attend. This information strikes a chord within Calum and he’s found what he wants to do with his year off.

When the meeting had finally finished, Calum decided to head over to the university and see if he could still enroll. The semester started only a few weeks ago but with this new window of free time, he’s sure he could catch up.

Enrolling turned out to be easy. He had a meeting with a counselor to discuss what his intentions were and if there was any specific study he wanted to get into. He selected creative writing and psychology, bought his books, got his schedule and he was officially a college student.

The night before his first class, Calum is restless. He tosses. He turns. He stares out the window of his room, the moon winking at him through the small opening of the curtain. Duke is snoring softly to his left and Calum’s mind is racing.

Thoughts tumble over one another, scenarios flash across his mind and then he hears a random melody in his head that sounds too familiar and it helps him drift off to sleep.

***

Calum is racing to get to his first class, he didn’t wake up to his alarm until thirty minutes after the intended time and he blamed it all on a dream. A dream that felt so real he thought the woman in his subconscious was still speaking to him in his ear.

He threw on the first article of clothing his fingers touched, gargled with mouthwash, and shoved a beanie on his head. Regrettably, he didn’t have time to stop for coffee and he hoped there would be some sold on campus somewhere.

Calum just got settled into his seat at the back of the lecture when the Professor stood at the front and began to speak. Thankfully, Calum retrieved notes from the three weeks he missed and read them all weekend, so he picked up easily with what the Professor is talking about.

He smiles to himself, maybe he is cut out for school.

Calum is surprised how drained he feels after his first day. His head is swimming with new knowledge and he’s anxious to get home and get to work. On his walk back to the parking structure where his car is parked, he sees the coffee bookshop he and Zoe fought in front of almost a month ago.

The sign above the bay window reads ‘CBS’ and in smaller print below that it reads ‘coffee bookshop’ and he smiles at the simple cleverness. He remembers Ashton has gone in there a few times and said the coffee is great. Calum makes a promise to himself that he’ll stop there tomorrow morning before class to grab a cup.

His night is spent reading over the homework and answering a few of the discussion questions while Duke sat in his lap. Calum tried writing down the lyrics of the song he heard this morning, but he couldn’t distinguish what they were. To wind down, he had his favorite Michael Faudet book propped on his stomach as he read through each page.

He reads through his own writing; his words transport him to that point in time when the words flowed out of him effortlessly. One poem resonates in his mind as he reads about love being compared to that of a rose and the lilting melody from this morning trickled into his ears again and he instantly relaxed. His mind quieted and his eyelids felt heavy as he replayed the same simple notes over and over.

A beautiful melody without any words.

The loud vibration of his phone woke him up before the actual song did, but he leapt out of bed immediately. The promise of a hot cup of coffee egged him on to take a shower and dress in something nicer than a wrinkled band shirt he had on yesterday.

Traffic wasn’t that bad, and he parked his car on the first level of the structure and he still had forty-five minutes until his first class. Today is shaping up to be the start of a good one and just as he locks his phone so he can open the door of the CBS, he collides with a body.

Books go flying. His phone clutters to the ground and he panics at the fatality that could be evident in the million cracks of his screen. Rushed ‘sorry’s’ are exchanged between him and the stranger as they scramble to gather their things. Their bodies twist away from each other as he shoves his books and pens back into his bag.

When he stands to apologize again, she’s already bustling away, her red scarf blowing behind her in the morning breeze. He sighs then heads inside to examine his phone, but he looks back again to try and get a glimpse of her face. She’s already gone. While they were scrambling to get their belongings, he noted how the smell of coconuts, vanilla, and something else he couldn’t put his finger on, invaded his nostrils. It made him think of the ocean.

He examines his phone to find there isn’t a scratch on it and when he unlocks it there’s a picture of the poem he read last night. Roses. The girl he bumped into smelled of roses.

***

Rose is having an off day. Her alarm didn’t even go off and she put in a generous amount of dry shampoo in her hair but resulted in putting on a hat. She didn’t even have time to get her coffee and muffin from Teresa for she rushed out the front door and collided with some guy.

Without her coffee it was hard for her to focus and when she got called on in class, she had to ask the professor to repeat the question because she didn’t hear it. Then her laptop crashed, and she couldn’t work on an assignment that’s due by Friday.

By the time she made it to CBS, she didn’t want to work her shift. Customers were being needy and rude and all she wanted to do was take a hot shower and read. After eating a quick microwave dinner, Rose took a hot shower then turned on her favorite playlist titled ‘Blue’ for moments like this.

She opens her bag to grab her poetry book, ‘The Universe of Us’ but finds its exact counterpart of Lang Leav; Michael Faudet’s book ‘Cult of Two’ lays on her table.

Did she put that in her bag by mistake?

It was a rough morning so it is possible, but she could have sworn she grabbed the book from her bedside table. Sighing, Rose takes the book to place it back on her shelf then becomes more confused when she sees the same book in her hands, perched snugly on the shelf with her other poetry books.

Rose knows she only has one copy, so where did this one come from and where is her book? She tosses the white paperback onto her bed and empties her whole bag, checking each book twice. How could she have lost it? It’s always buried safely in the bottom of her bag and she didn’t take it out all day except--

Rose gasps. This morning when she was leaving the shop she bumped into a guy and all their belongings went flying. She must have grabbed his book by mistake, and he grabbed hers. Panic sets in, she’s written down some of her innermost thoughts in that book, personal things.

Now this random stranger has her soul in his hands, and she might never see him again. With angry tears in her eyes she crawls into bed while Lewis Capaldi’s voice thrums around her walls. Needing comfort, she opens the strangers’ book then snaps it shut just as fast because there’s handwriting on the pages.

Just like hers.

***

Calum is reading about the red string of fate. After that run in with the girl outside CBS a month ago, he read through her book and became transfixed with those words she wrote down. He knows he shouldn’t have read her thoughts, but once he started, he couldn’t stop. Clearly the poetry captivated her, but her words captivated him.

The red string of fate is a Japanese legend meant to tie soulmates together by their pinkies. No matter the circumstance, the time or place, the two will always find each other. It may stretch and it may tangle but it will never break. He’s never heard of it before now, but he’s become obsessed with the idea of it.

Every morning he’s stopped by CBS to see if he’ll run into her again so he can return her book, but he’s never seen her. His classes are going well and he’s learning so much, his creativity is overflowing. Much of that is because of this girl’s book.

Its spine is overly creased from endless love of reading, some words are highlighted and circled. Pages are dog eared on what he assumes are her favorite poems. Calum smiled the first time he paged through it all because he’s written in his book as well. He wonders if she’s read any of his musings yet.

“Bro, I haven’t seen you without that book. Where’s yours?” Ashton asks while they’re out for lunch.

“Um, I lost it actually. I bumped into this girl outside the CBS and our things scattered everywhere. We switched books,” Calum explains flipping the pages. “She writes it in like I do.”

“You read it? Mate,” Ashton sighs exasperatedly, “that’s an invasion of privacy.”

“I know, I know! But I can’t get enough of it. She’s smart and passionate in what she writes. I wish I got a better look at her when I bumped into her so I could return it.”

“There’s no name inside?”

“Nope. She could be in one of my classes for all I know,” Calum sighs then picks away at the corner of the cover. “What was it like when you and Ruby found each other?”

Ruby is Ashton’s soulmate and they’ve been together for almost two years now. Calum remembers the change in Ashton when she came into his life, he was lighter.

“I heard her voice in my head.”

“What did she say?”

Ashton smiles, “My name.”

“Then how did you find her?”

“I don’t know, it’s hard to explain,” Ashton’s brows crease. “It was only a few days after I heard her voice that I knew her name. It came to me out of the blue. Do you remember anything about her?”

“She had on this red scarf and smelled like a rose.” Calum suddenly felt a wave of dizziness swim in his head and he held onto his temples.

“You okay?” Ashton reaches over as if to help but he’s not sure what’s happening to his friend.

“Woah, that was weird, I got super dizzy,” Calum says blinking a few times until he can see straight again. He removes his fingers from his temples and Ashton is giving him a funny look. “What?”

“What did she smell like again?” he leans forward.

“A rose, why--fuck!” the wave of dizziness crashes into him again and it’s like his brain is spinning in his head. When his vision returns Ashton is smiling gleefully. “Glad to see you enjoy my pain.”

“Don’t you see?! You got vertigo as soon as you said rose. That must be her name.”

“Really? Is that what happened when you said Ruby’s name?”

“Yeah basically, but it wasn’t this strong. She must be close,” Ashton looks around him as if she’ll appear out of thin air. “I suggest going to CBS morning and night, she’s gotta be there at some point.”

***

Rose is flicking through the pages of the new poetry book she acquired. Curiosity killed the cat and she just had to dig her claws between the pages because she’s sure he’s already done the same or will soon enough.

Some of his thoughts left her breathless and with an odd familiar feeling at the way it’s structured. Some of his sentences seem more like lyrics that she’s heard before but can never find the tune that goes with it.

She hadn’t been feeling well this morning, nausea and dizziness made her skip her classes and she laid in bed all day. It would come and go throughout the day and right before bed she drew herself a bubble bath with some candles. The flickering light created the perfect ambience while she read Faudet’s words and the mysterious stranger.

Where her notes are written in paragraphs or stanzas, his are scattered about the page. Sometimes she has to turn the book to read it upside down. The curse words make her laugh and sometimes there’s a fun little drawing.

It isn’t until she reaches the last few pages and she’s reading about a blue angel and knocking back a shot when she stumbles on a name that is not the author. It’s a name she’s heard before, a name she’s known of and has seen floating around her social media.

“Calum Hood,” she mumbles, and she instantly becomes dizzy again. It happens so fast it startles her, and she nearly drops the book into the bubbles. Somehow in her bewilderment she managed to let it flop onto the bathroom floor.

The bathwater and bubbles slosh over the sides as she reaches for the book again. Did she read that right? Her fingers leave dark, pudgy circles on the pages as she goes to that page again.

“Calum,” she breathes, and the room spins again causing her to drop the book once more. “Okay, okay, okay, okay. . .”

Rose gets out of the bath quickly, letting the water drain noisily as she dries off and puts on her pajamas. The spinning has stopped, and she sits cross legged in the middle of her bed, the poetry book open to the poem and her phone opened to Instagram and Twitter.

She’s been an avid fan for quite a few years now and to think if he was the one, she bumped into? With her thumbs hovering over the keyboard she closes her eyes trying to remember anything about him from that morning.

All she can remember is the rush to gather her things and his soft husky voice as he said sorry. She didn’t look at him once and it’s very possible she bumped into Calum Hood. Her mind racing, she texts every one of her friends that have already found their soulmates asking what and how it happened.

She needs answers because how odd is it that she’s felt dizzy and nauseous all day then sees his name, says it, and gets dizzy all over again? Is that what’s supposed to happen? Does this mean he’s been saying her name all this time as well?

Her friends' responses were pretty much the same. In each instance they heard his or her voice in their head say their name. Why hadn’t she heard his voice? Could he hear hers? Rose unlocks her phone and searches his name, turns out he’s gone back to school. The same school she’s attending but it doesn’t say what he’s studying, which is good because it must be annoying having everyone know what’s going on in your life.

Rose falls back onto her pillows burrowing under the covers and shuts off the light.

“Please let me go to school tomorrow, Calum,” she huffs then turns over to hug her pillow.

She swears she hears a ghostly laugh in her ear before sleep consumes her.

***

“I bite back.”

Calum still hears the soft voice from his dream, he can still feel the soft brush of her lips against his ear as she said those words. He’s staring up at the ceiling replaying the dream of sitting next to a girl. In his subconscious it felt like he already knew her, and they carried a conversation well. He doesn’t remember exactly what he was saying but he can hear those three words as if she were laying right next to him.

He greets Duke with quick kisses before letting him outside and Calum washes his face, brushes his teeth, and gets dressed. After he brings Duke in, Calum gathers his bags making sure The Universe of Us is right at the top.

He’s been going to CBS early each morning so he can sit and try to watch for the girl he bumped into. He has one cup of coffee and reads through her pages until it’s time to go for class. A few times he thought he recognized her, but the girl in question always turned out to be just a fan and wanted a quick chat and photo.

They never smelled like roses, so he knew it wasn’t her.

After his final sip of coffee, he flips to a page with the title ‘The One’ and he immediately goes to the girl’s handwritten words.

‘And I want you to be the one for me. The one who brings out my storm but also calms the waves. I want you to be my perfect counterpart. Is my red string frayed?’

Calum smiles at the last sentence. He wishes he could tell her that no, it isn’t frayed and he’s trying his damndest to find her. He gathers his things and heads out the door because his first class is starting in fifteen minutes.

Just as he walked out the door, if he would have waited one more minute, Rose came by his table and cleaned up his dishes to help Teresa out before she went on her way to class.

“How are you feeling today Rose?” Teresa asks, taking the dirty dishes from her.

“A little better,” Rose shrugs, “I can’t miss two days. Are you sure it’s alright I can switch my shift from tonight to tomorrow?”

“Of course. You need to catch up on what you missed, Colbie will cover for you. Take it easy, you still look a little pale,” Teresa frowns.

“I’ll be fine, but thank you,” Rose smiles then waves. “I’ll see you later.”

***

The day runs as normal for them both. Calum has felt this growing energy within him as if something is about to happen, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. He’s been looking at every woman he passes waiting to see if there’s a connection or a siren that will go off as if to say “that’s her! That’s her!” but he comes up short.

Rose still feels a little queasy throughout the day and she’s distracted because all she wants to do is read Calum’s poetry book to try and find another connection.

When the school day is over, she sets up her workspace at her favorite table by the bookshelf in a large, plush chair. Her own latte sits next to her while she quickly does her homework and opens the book. From the corner of her eye a tall figure sits in the chair on the other side of the table. She pays it no mind until there’s a loud crash.

The stranger knocked her cup to the floor, and it shattered, white foam and coffee filling up the grooves in the tile.

“Shit, I’m sorry--”

“It’s okay,” she says automatically.

They both reach for the largest fragment of broken cup; their pinkies touch and Rose feels something click inside her. Her skin is hot where he touches her, and with her heart pounding like a thousand horses running, she looks up.

He knew who she was before he looked into her eyes, when they came in such proximity, he smelled the roses and the coconut and the vanilla. When their pinkies touched, he felt a spark shoot up his veins, that’s the siren he’s been waiting for and when he looked into her eyes? Everything clicked into place.

“Rose?”

“Calum?”

They both laugh nervously, their pinkies still touching. Rose feels her cheeks warm and Calum can’t stop smiling at her. After their small moment, they clean up the mess of the broken cup and sit back in their respective chairs.

“I think this is yours,” she holds out his book that she was currently reading.

“And I believe--” he pulls out her book from his bag holding it up “--this is yours.”

Having it in her possession again makes it feel like a lost limb has been returned home. Calum flips through his own book noticing the wrinkled pages. He knows she read it and he’s so glad she’s the one who did. He watches her rifle through the pages, soft fingers tracing over words that have been printed and words she’s inked in herself.

“You’re a wonderful writer,” he comments, and her eyes flash up to him.

“You are too, but you’re a musician so that’s no surprise,” she giggles, and Calum loves the sound.

Talking comes easily between Calum and Rose, but how could it not when they’re soulmates? As the night gets longer and the shop is about to close, Rose invites him up for some tea and he gladly accepts.

While she’s setting up the kettle, he examines her bookshelf, some books he’s read, and others grab his attention that he wants to ask her about. Soft music fills the room and he smiles because this is on one of his playlists as well.

“How do you like your tea?” she asks, and Calum moves back to the kitchen area.

“Little bit of milk and honey and some sugar,” he smiles, watching her add the ingredients.

Their fingers brush again when he accepts the cup from her, another spark ignites but it starts a different type of warmth. Calum becomes very aware of both their actions. He’s aware of how close she sits next to him on the couch, he’s aware of the way she licks her lips and how badly he wants to kiss them.

“So, this is . . . a little crazy, right?” she laughs awkwardly, her finger circling the rim of the mug. “How did you find me? Did you hear my voice? Because I didn’t hear yours.”

“What did you experience then?” he asks, setting his mug on the small table in front of them.

“I was home for a whole day because I just felt really dizzy and nauseous, then when I was taking a bath and reading your book, I saw your name, said it out loud and had another dizzy spell. I think I dreamed of you, too. . .” her brows furrowed in confusion.

Calum tries not to let her small tidbit of information that she was in the bath when she said his name get to him, but he knows exactly what she’s talking about. He was at home playing with Duke when he felt another wave of dizziness hit, it came upon him so fast that he practically fell onto the couch. It felt different then when he said her name, it was stronger.

“I’m sorry, when I discovered your name, I kept saying it,” he admits fiddling with one of his rings.

“How’d you find out my name?”

“I was talking with my friend, Ashton and I told him about the day we collided and how you smelled like a rose. You know what’s funny? When we said each other’s name downstairs I didn’t feel dizzy, did you?”

“No, I didn’t,” she shakes her head then looks at him, “what does that mean?”

“I--” he stops short when the song shifts, and he gasps. “I’ve had this melody stuck in my head for weeks, is this you singing?”

“Absolutely not,” Rose laughs and rises from the couch to turn it up on her phone. “It calms me down, so I play it a lot. What was--oh!”

She spun around and Calum was standing right in front of her. She didn’t realize how tall he is until right now and the scent of his cologne and laundry detergent reminds her of a home she’s come back to.

“I have an idea as to why we didn’t hear each other’s voices,” he says, stepping even closer.

“What’s that?” Rose licks her lips.

“We feel things, and instead of vocalizing them, we write them down or listen to it in music,” he tucks her hair behind her ear. “Even the books we read the authors are in love.”

Rose chuckles at that. “Yeah, what are the odds they’re our favorites?”

“Pretty high, since we were made for each other,” he smiles. His fingers tickle her cheek as he tilts her head up, her eyes are shining, and the smell of roses invades his senses. He inches his mouth closer to hers, “I’m ready to surrender to this, Rose.”

She nods and closes the small space between their lips and it’s as if everything stops. The only thing she can feel are his soft, warm lips on hers, the calluses of his fingers on her cheek and the way his other hand wraps around her waist. He pulls her close and she grabs hold of his shirt, kissing him is like a breath of fresh air.

He pulls her even closer, chest against chest and she gasps at the movement but welcomes his tongue excitedly. They kiss feverishly, as if this is the only time they have. But they have many more days and many more moments to make memories of.

They’re breathing heavily when they break the kiss, she feels him smile against her lips and gives her two soft pecks.

“Calum?”

“Hmm?” his thumb strokes her cheek affectionately.

“You made my world stop spinning.”

• • • •

Copyright talkfastromance4 © All works is intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction or any part or all contents in any form is prohibited. You may not, without written expression and consent from the author, distribute works amongst other social media platforms

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#calum hood writing #calum hood oneshot #calum hood angst #soulmate!calum #soulmate!au #calum angst #calum fluff #calum hood fanfiction #calum hood fic #5sos writing #5sos au #calum hood au

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inbarfink · 5 years ago

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I believe Greg’s claims that his family situation was horrible. When a grown-up man feels like he has no other choice but to run away from his family (remember, Greg was, like, 20 when he left) and then has absolutely nothing good to say about them for years and years later - that’s an indictment of the parents, not the son. They forced him into activities that had nothing to do with his actual intersts (including wrestling which can be... very unpleasant when you’re not into it), and absolutely forbade him from anything associated with the thing he actually LIKED, music. They didn’t allow him to dress and look the way he wanted and not in a “I am not letting my toddler wear the same shirt for 20 days in a row way’, in a “your son is 18 and you are still forcing him to cut his hair the way YOU want it to look”. That’s bad, that’s really bad. Greg wasn’t just sick of a ‘boring, mundane life on the suburbs with too much meatloaf’, he was suffocated in a toxic household.

And I understand why Greg was upset and defensive when Steven started with his ‘maybe your parents had a point’ thing. It must hurt to hear your son, the only family you really have in this world, defend the family you ran away from. Steven’s not thinking totally straight, he accuses Greg of keeping him away from his grandparents but he saw the stacks of unopened letters - implying that Greg has TRIED to keep in contact with them but the DeMayos were the one who refused. He’s focusing on the image of normalcy and humanity that the DeMayos house represents, on school and friends and graduations and home-cooking and adorable spoon collections - and not on Greg feeling they could never accept him and that he had to hide his most treasured possessions from his parents.

But ALSO Greg should apologize to Steven and work to be a better parent. Steven wouldn’t have been happier under an upbringing as strict and overcontrolling as the DeMayos. But Greg’s only two options weren’t “toxic overbearing ‘normalcy’” and ‘living in a van and never going to school’ - he is at fault for going into the absolute extreme opposite of his own upbringing and prehaps of projecting his own desires over Steven’s needs. Steven has told him, quite clearly, that he is upset about growing up without a stable roof over his head, about missing out on school (which both an opportunity for his future and a chance to expand his peer group and make a lot more friends), about never going to a doctor’s (nobody could guess what effect Rose’s healing powers could have on Steven’s body! Steven really lucked out that he didn’t NEED to go to the Doc for most issues, but nobody could have guessed it!) and Greg’s response was just “Yeah, but what I had was worse!”. I understand why Greg’s instincts were to go on the defensive but he is the adult and the dad and Steven is his teenage son it’s Literally His Job to be the bigger person in the argument.

And just as I consider Greg’s seemingly 100% negative feelings about the DeMayos indictment enough that they were shitty parents, then I find Steven’s mixed feelings about Greg as an indictment that Greg’s parenting has been flawed. Steven is currently a very messed up teenager, and Greg is his dad; Steven’s healthy development and happiness is his responsibility! I understand why Greg Turned Up the Way That He Did considering his background, but he is at the very least complicit in many of the Shit That Fucked Steven’s Mental State to the point that it is today. Even if I accept the idea that Steven HAD to live off-the-grid due to being a Gem (and I don’t necessarily. Yeah, his mother is a Space Alien, but his dad is a US citizen and he was born on US soil, he can have a fucking Social Security Number), Greg could have... like... tried to find some sort of structured non-Gem activity that Steven might be intersted in (we’re not going Full DeMayo here) like an afterschool class or something to give Steven a chance to develop his nonmagical skills and bond with more children his age. Which would have lowered the amount of time Steven was stuck alone in the Beach House just waiting for the Gems to come back and allowed him to develop his interpersonal skills and create a bigger support network for himself... these are things that could have really helped Steven in the long-run!

Steven opened up to Greg about his issues (and we know how hard it is to Steven to actually open up!), and what Greg ended up offering to him was more about Greg than about Steven. The message of the “Mr. Universe” song is “you can be free! You can be anything!” and that was clearly so meaningful and touching to young Gregory DeMayo, but it is the exact opposite of what Steven Universe wanted and asked for - some sort of direction and stabillity. And it’s... not the worst mistake in the world for a parent to make, to try and give your kids what YOU want rather than what THEY want, especially when you are dealing with such a complex problem as Steven has. But when you realize the You solution isn’t working... you have to process that it’s not working because they are not You and they require a change is perspective and maaaaaybe they might feel a little hurt that you were projecting on them and might want an apology or at least an acknowledgement that that’s what you were doing and that you’re going to Not Do It now?

If you are a parent and you have a child who is as messed-up as Steven is right now, that is kinda your responsibility bcause your child is your responsibility. If you have a child that is mad at you, you should at least have the self-awareness to think about what you might have done wrong. If your child literally shouts at you something that basically means “the source of all of my problems is the fact that I am your son”, then... that at least requires some self-reflection. Steven said stuff that was Dumb and Wrong and Hurtful things in this car argument, that’s true. He WOULDN’T have been happy under the thumb of parents like the DeMayos, Greg probably was justified in cutting them off, it’s not his dad’s fault that he never meant his grandparents. But inside these dumb and hurtful things there is a kernel of real frustration and hurt. And instead of acknowledging that frustration; Showing some sort of regret for not being able to give Steven a more stable and ‘normal’ home life that he now desires, promising to do better in the future, even just a “sorry I messed up, I didn’t mean to mess you up”... Greg just acts like he ignores it completely.

If your child has an outburst that they was clearly ashamed of and was clearly Pretty Unhealthy, you can’t just say “I’m proud of you, you called me out on my bullshit. And if you do, you can at least, like... acknowledge that things you were called on in any way???? Rather than just make it about yourself and YOUR upbringing and how it was much worse, which... even if ya don’t mean it, comes off as just you ‘proving’ that your parenting style IS right, because, hey! You can tell me anything! While meanwhile your kid is processing that no, he can’t tell you anything, because you are not actually doing anything useful for me right now. When your child tells you that your parenting style was bad and harmful to them, you should not immediately go into the same old routines you always do right after that???

I fear that the whole experience might have made Steven’s question Greg’s love for him, that maybe now he sees Greg’s kind and accepting nature as insincere and just as an attempt to overcompensate for his own issues. Is Greg really proud of him or does he just say it because that’s what he’s ‘supposed’ to say? But I have no doubt that Greg loves and cares for Steven a whole lot and that he raised Steven the way that he did because he thought that was the best option possible and that... the whole situation is just hard for him. Steven is dealing with a lot of issues that he never outwardly displayed to his parental figures before and it’s hard for them to adjust and to know what the right solution is. And it’s just plain easier to try and fall into your regular parenting techniques that always seemed to work before (like giving your child more ice cream and telling them their emotions are valid), rather than try and totally dismantle your approach to parenting in one evening.

It’s important to remember that Greg’s probably not in the best place right now either. Just because I think it is Greg’s responsibility as the Dad to be the bigger person in the argument and see what part of Steven’s complaints are valid... doesn’t mean it’s not also a hard thing to do when he’s also bringing up memories of Greg’s abusive childhood and saying his parents might not be all that bad. That’s gotta make it hard for Greg to think rationally about Steven’s words. And that’s not factoring in the supernatural element in which Steven’s trauma gives him Scary Dangerous Powers and Greg is the squishest, most fragile part of Steven’s family.

But it’s still Greg’s responsibility to make Steven happy and healthy, and on that day, on “Mr. Universe”, he messed that up. And I believe Steven when he says that he messed that up before too. Greg’s not a bad person, but... an apology for the missteps of parenthood is what Steven needed at that moment and what Steven was hoping for, and Greg’s inabillity to deliever it was what caused the rift in their relationship most of all. I mean... The show literally spells that Steven needs to hear some sort of ‘I’m sorry’, not just from Greg, but from all of his parental figures! Remember how “Prickly Pair” ended???

Cactus Steven is a metaphor for Meat Steven, for Cactus Steven to find peace he had to hear Meat Steven acknowledge that he hasn’t been the best parent and that he’s sorry. And it’s no coincedence that Steven has very rarely heard his parental figures apologize to him and that it has yet to happen in SUF, my prediction is that it’s gonna play some sort of part in the finale and with Steven fixing his relationship with Greg and the CGs.

#steven universe #steven quartz universe #greg universe #mr. universe #Steven universe future #prickly pair

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eternalpassions · 4 years ago

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Coffee Encounters Part 1

Summary: There are certain things you do to get away from the day to day stresses of being an adult. Those are running and going to a coffee shop. In these places you meet a handsome stranger who catches your eye. He’s mysterious, handsome, tall and younger than you?! What do when you find yourself drawn to someone you shouldn’t want?!

Warning: suggestive

He was always there. As you ran lap after lap you spotted him there in the mornings.

Running was the one real choice you made. Waking up early for work, going to work, spending those long grueling days at the office were decisions you made, you acknowledged that much. But how much could you say they were real choices?

They were as real as they could be in a society that socializes you at a young age that this is the only choice that makes life worth living, that makes life possible to live.

Running was the one thing of your choosing,it was the one choice you made for yourself. Running gave you an escape from the mundane. Running cleared your mind and made your body strong. Running helped you see things.

The track provided you with a distraction and escape from the mundane nature of your life. You came to the track every morning, even on the weekends such as this one. As you ran, and pushed your muscles and core to the point of soreness, you always spotted him there. For some reason he caught your eye.

Watching him made you feel like a creep.,like some kind of pervert. You’d notice whenever he got to the track. You’d glance at your side whenever he strode pat you. With his long legs, it only took him a few strides to be a long ways ahead of you.From the times that he passed by you, you could tell he would tower over your small frame.

Perhaps it wasn’t so creepy that you’d eye the boy when he wasn’t looking.As far as you knew, he wasn’t aware and you’d never let him know.

As you watched him you wondered what was his story. What made him wake up early in the mornings to come to this track? He seemed so carefree, you wondered if he really was.

He seemed young.He was probably in a different place than you. You were 24 years old and a newly working adult with grown up responsibilities. Your work out attire was able to hide who you truly were. A person who lived by the hour. A person whose only purpose was to survive. A shell of a person who struggled to meet demands placed on her by the world.A person who was barely keeping it together.

You quicken your strides ignoring your lungs and legs begging for you to stop.

The last thing you saw before you were sucked into blackness was grass. Was the grass really greener on the other side?

Suddenly, you're back at your college campus, back at the place where things seemed to be much easier. You were standing in the middle of the quad and you could see your friend Jungwoo standing in front of you.

How did you get here? You didn't remember getting to the campus. You didn't have a reason to be at the campus, you graduated a year ago.

“ Running is for uncreative masturbators,” Jungwoo says. He stands in front of you, with his usual posture of a slight slouch with hands in his pockets.

“What?” you furrow your brow confused. He was usually weird, always spouting off random theories and ideas of his.

“You heard me, it's probably proven”

Suddenly the scenery changes and you are both sitting at the STEM library where you both spent what felt like endless hours studying. He sits across the table and he has his arms crossed, looking how he usually did before involving you in his philosophical debates.

“ So you think you have no control. Well it’s true life’s a code. If you look closely you can see the numbers.”

You don’t know why,but you do as he says, curious if what he’s saying is true. As you look around you see numbers in front of you. You could hear numbers crunching.

“Oh and Y/N” he says. You look at him, dazed from what you’ve been seeing. A world filled with codes and numbers crunching. A world with a code that dictates what people should do in life, how the game is played.

“Yea? “ You ask, still dazed. What was going on?

He leans towards you and says “Wake the fuck up”

You squint your eyes, not understanding. What did he mean?

The world fills with colors as you open your eyes. You are breathing heavily and your mouth is dry. You see the boy from the track sitting in front of you looking at you with his brows scrunched.

“Oh man are you okay?” He asks

Your head is pounding and your mouth is dry. You look around trying to adjust to your surroundings. So you really were at the track and the weird trippeness that happened with Jungwoo was just a dream. His weird ramblings from Friday night were somehow seeping into your subconscious.

“What happened” you ask, you voice groggily.

“You were running and then you collapsed right in front of me” he says as he reaches over to grab a water bottle. He opens it and hands it to you.

You thank him as you take the water bottle. This was beyond embarrassing. Here you were, an adult and you couldn't even keep it together in front of strangers. You were a sorry excuse for an adult that you needed a stranger looking after you.

Not just any stranger, but a handsome familiar stranger. A stranger that caught your eye whenever you ran. He probably thought you were some kind of idiot.

“ How long was I out?” You ask after you drink large gulps of water. The water feels heavenly against your dry throat.

“A few minutes” He replies. You look at him. He was sitting closely in front of you and from this angle you could really see him closely. Before you could only take quick glances at him as he passed by you but now you could get a clearer look at him. He had full eyebrows, plump pink lips and light medium length hair. From the stolen glances at him from before you could guess he was handsome but now as he sat in front of you you know he is handsome.

As you drink more water you realize something.You were running past the limits of your body and mind without even bringing any water with you. Perhaps you had gotten yourself dehydrated which explained the fainting.

You wonder how it is you are drinking water if you didn’t bring any water with you. Then you realize that it’s his water you are drinking.That means his lips and saliva touched this water. And your lips and saliva had entered this water as well. It shouldn't fluster you because you were a grown woman, but it did. You found yourself reacting like a flustered school girl.

You sputtered the water in your mouth.

“Are you okay? Should I call an ambulance?” he asks as he reaches over to rub your back. His hands rubbing circles gently against your back .You feel taken care of but at the same time your skin feels hot to the touch. You can’t stop yourself from choking on the water.

“No” You finally manage.

A moment of silence passes between the two of you as you try to regain your composure.The silence passes on which lets you hear the music blaring through your earbuds. You tended to listen to music at loud volumes whenever you ran,

A song called the 7th sense by a group called NCT plays. They are a niche group you had recently found out about. They stuck out to you because they were not limited by any sound or concept.. Every song they did, every lyric, every genre, even the fashion was all made out of their own choice.In this way they seemed free, A kind of free you wished you could be.

The hip hop and dreamy vibes of the song continued to blast through your earbuds.

“Is that NCT?” he asked

“Oh you know of them?” you asked. You are so intrigued that he knew of the band that you don’t feel flustered that he can hear your music through your earbuds.Did you just meet someone who you not only found yourself attracted to but who shared an interest with you?Not many knew of NCT. They were a truly underrated band with fresh talent offered. However ,that raw potential wasn't discovered by the general audience yet..

“Yea I do! I love their limitless concept” He says as he smiles.His smile is warm and inviting.It makes your heart flutter and it makes you feel light.

“Me too! They’re so underrated!” You beam. You feel as if you could talk about this for hours. You bored your best friend jungwoo with this topic. He always complained about how you talked endlessly about the topic. Now have you found someone who wasn’t annoyed by your interests?

“Yea me too!

“I’m Sungchan by the way” He introduces himself as he stands up. He stretches his hand out to you to help you up. Your heart throbs as you accept his hand. His hand engulfed your small one. He is able to effortlessly help you up.

“I come by this track every morning before practice,” He continues. “I just started university nearby so I might see you around” Now that both of you are standing you can clearly see the difference in your heights. He stands tall at at least 6 feet. And you… hardly make it to 5 sad feet. But for once your limitation on height doesn’t bother you, you find yourself glad that he towers over you. For some reason the way he towers over you has you wanting to throw yourself at him. You feel as if he would be able to save you, his size able to guard you and hold you safe and sound.

You usually kept to yourself for the most part, only keeping a few friends and your family close but for the most part not depending on anyone. It was done out of pride and to keep some ounce of control in your life. Usually you didn't want to appear weak or vulnerable in front of anyone so you made so your trusted few. But standing with him and talking with him made you aware of your smallness but you weren't ashamed for once, In fact, you were glad that you were this small in front of him.

You watch him as he bends down to get his stuff. He looks back at you and waves.

“Take care alight?” he smiles and you think it's the warmest smile you’ve ever seen on anyone before. For some reason it comforted you, it made you feel like the day was gonna be okay, like things were going to be okay.

“ Thank you for helping me out, I don't know what would've happened if you weren't there” You say as you knit your hands together

“It's not a problem don't worry about it” He gives one final wave before he begins walking off. As you watch him walk away, something plucks inside of you. A feeling of longing, curiosity and desire. You wanted to know him.

It wasn’t right though. You had just found out he was not just a university student but a freshly new university student. Which made him younger than you. His position placed him at a different stage in life than you. You had no place in taking interest in what was probably barely a legal aged boy. You’d watch him disappear. The sun would set, new days would arrive, and he’d remain a familiar stranger.

You would act with resolve and do what you always did: the right thing.You closed your eyes as you turned your back and walked the opposite way of the familiar stranger.

#nct #sungchan #taeyong #jungwoo #nct writers #nct network

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halfusek · 5 years ago

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Still Life (Batim Portal AU)

Chapter One – “An old man walks into an abandoned studio” sounds like a beginning of a bad joke. It is.

Summary: We here at Joey Drew Studios are very, very happy to inform you about a special upcoming event. What shall the event be? Now that’s a surprise, but we can promise plenty of old faces, reunions, party and some real entertainment. And cake!

First chapter: [you’re here]

Next chapter: [coming soon]

✪ ✪ ✪

The taxi driver kept looking at him in the rear view.

And not like looking looking. Not with a bored nor curious peeks every now and then, no, no.

Cautiously glaring. Interested but suspicious.

Weird. Sure, the destination was rather special but here’s the thing. A special destination in a small not-so-special town that’s been there for a very long time? Nothing special about that.

The animation studio surely used to wake some sensation thirty years back (alongside many complaints) but these days… it shouldn’t be anything more than a part of the local ecosystem. It even “grew out” a bit on the outskirts. Never integrated to the rest of the place, as if the streets tried to reach there before but, like roots hitting a stone, changed their directions to literally anywhere else.

To be fair, he too did hit that rock.

Being outside of the cab, Henry Stein took a deep breath of fresh air. Don’t get it wrong, the location was nice. All this nature around.

Still. Anywhere else.

He was glad to have gotten out. The atmosphere started to lay heavily on his shoulders. Even the lack of usual small-talk was off-putting and he wasn’t the most talkative person!

Something clicked and his attention snapped back to the vehicle he just exited. It was the trunk. Seems like the other man won’t be that kind to help him with the suitcase. Not that he would ever demand such a thing but maybe he’s gotten a bit used to it. Especially nowadays, with so many years on his back.

Besides, he knew it wasn’t an act of unkindness.

The driver didn’t want to get out, Henry figured while paying him through the window.

Huh.

“I’m sorry, am I misunderstanding something or did the price for the ride go up compared to what it was before?” he furrowed his eyebrows. It’s been years but he remembered the road from the town’s center to here well. Oh, very well, “It’s as if… the price has doubled?”

The driver had an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He was moving it around with his mouth. Probably wanted to lit it for a while now.

“No, the price’s the same. I already counted for your way back.”

“Ah,” Henry smiled politely, “But you see, I don’t know when I’ll need to get back, so-“

“When I finish my Pall Mall, that’s when,” there was a slight impatient growl behind his voice, “Look, pal, I don’t know what you’re expecting to find there, but this gold ore has been mined to death. You are going to kiss that beautiful door handle goodbye and wait for me to finish my smoke.”

Old animator stared at him, flabbergasted.

Then he stood straight with the polite smile back on his face.

“And I thought I couldn’t believe I’m really going to be back there. Still, I do have a very believable invitation and therefore my request to pay for just one ride stands.”

Loud sigh, shuffle of papers, flicker of a lighter, and Henry, followed by the sound of his suitcase’s wheels, was on his way to the building.

Meanwhile, the man in the cab kept followed him with his eyes, turning away only to let the smoke out of his car.

Had it not been the money, he would have already left the place. But gas had its costs and he didn’t want to waste it on turning around when this crazy old man finally realizes there’s nothing grand there waiting for him and calls for a ride back. Calls him that is, as he was the only ride around here.

Knocking ashes from his cigarette, he looked around. It really was a wild place. Abandoned. The town hall wasn’t even bothering to keep the road in a good condition. It was getting a bit bumpy but not like anyone would care anyway.

Then his gaze went back to the traveler, or more precisely, it landed on the parking lot that the said traveler was walking across.

There weren’t any cars save for rusty few parked close to the entry to the workshop.

Weeds managed to crack through the concrete in many places. No one wiped off the leaves.

In years.

He turned the engine back on.

✪ ✪ ✪

Maybe it was because he was even older, but the old man didn’t seem bothered by those sights. To Henry, what mattered was how different the building looked like in the terms of its size. Just look at that thing! More floors, wings on both sides, surely there were some additions on the other side too.

His hand was on the handle. He took a deep breath.

Not out of fear nor worry.

Excitement. He was back.

Slightly chapped lips formed a big grin.

The driver’s jaw dropped and his cigarette quickly followed through.

✪ ✪ ✪

The door opened.

✪ ✪ ✪

Had Henry turned back, he would notice the terrified expression on the other man’s face. Maybe it would have changed something.

Who knows.

But in this story, Henry has entered Joey Drew Studios once again.

✪ ✪ ✪

What is he seeing? The actual surroundings? All the memories playing in his head that happened around them? Both past and present trying to fit in together in his sight?

What is he feeling? Is it nostalgia? Is it happiness? Is it anxiety? Some kind of blend?

Oh… so familiar and yet so different. He found himself looking with shiny eyes at every little detail he remembered, no matter if it was as important as the logo with wheels still turning around the exact same way they used to when he helped to install them, or if it was as mundane as skirting-boards. And then, such a weird thing, how intimidating the different things were. Again, simple changes, like the new chairs, or something popping the eye right away, like the prizes, the decorations, the reception, the-

And just like that the balance pan favored the side of what’s been making him uneasy.

No one was present at the reception.

Actually, there was nobody at all.

Henry wrinkled his nose and adjusted his glasses, turning around.

Surely someone had to be there. The electricity was on. The wheels were turning. The lights were on.

And the door wasn’t locked.

And the letter-

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper that looked… a bit less neat now that it spent a few hours under his butt.

But what it said remained just as clear.

DEAR MISTER STEIN,

WE HERE AT JOEY DREW STUDIOS ARE VERY, VERY HAPPY TO INFORM YOU ABOUT A SPECIAL UPCOMING EVENT. WHAT SHALL THE EVENT BE? NOW THAT’S A SURPRISE, BUT WE CAN PROMISE PLENTY OF OLD FACES, REUNIONS, PARTY AND SOME REAL ENTERTAINMENT. AND CAKE!

WE HAVE SOMETHING THAT THE WORLD OF ANIMATION REALLY NEEDS TO SEE AND WE WANT YOU TO BE A PART OF IT. BUT FIRST, WE NEED TO SHOW IT TO YOU. THE VETERANS! THE PIONEERS! THE ANIMATORS THAT BROUGHT TO LIFE THINGS WHICH STAGGERED THE IMAGINATION OF MILLIONS! IN FACT WE HAVE A LOT WE NEED TO SHOW YOU. IT’S ALL IN HERE, AT THE OLD WORKSHOP.

WE WOULD BE THRILLED TO BE GRACED WITH YOUR PRESENCE. TREMENDOUS FUN AWAITS!

JOEY DREW STUDIOS

And then addresses and all that stuff. He didn’t make it up. The building looking as if it was working wasn’t made up. None of it was made up!

Then… where were the people that sent him this letter?

He left the suitcase behind the reception’s desk. Just now he realized that he really was (was he?) alone – while he was rereading the invitation, the taxi driver finally took his leave.

Right. The taxi driver. His words. His… behavior…

Henry shook his head. No. Come on. You can’t make this up.

The old man took a few courageous steps towards the corridor. Again, full of new wonders just as of the old grind.

He stopped. There were words written at the end of the hall. In large letters.

In ink.

Blue eyes squinted to read them from this distance.

Oh, it was a banner.

Oh-

He beamed.

Suddenly his steps became a lot more energetic.

At the end of the banner’s message there was an arrow pointing to the right. He followed it.

It read: Surprise this way.

Of course. Ominous but, goddamnit, that was it. It had this energy.

His energy.

He hurried through the next corridor. There were balloons on the sides. Arrows pointing at a door at the very end.

What people are going to be there too? Oh, he would love to see Norman again. Or Sammy, or Wally- actually, why has he not seen them all this time?

Another door handle. He opened them without a care in the world.

And there was no world behind those doors. Or, maybe, a completely new one.

As in – it was really dark in here.

To be honest, now, that he stood there, seemingly all alone, in front of pitch black darkness, he wasn’t feeling so brave no more.

Nonetheless, he took that step forward. He searched for switch.

And there was the light.

Not from the bulb.

There were candles around a circular symbol that he seemed to have stepped into-

All balloons popped. The noise altogether was like a loud crack.

And then it was dark again.

✪ ✪ ✪

His alarm was going off.

Henry groaned as he turned under the sheets. He felt really tired. Why was an alarm set anyway? He wasn’t getting anywhere, must have set that by accident.

His arm lazily reached out of the bed in search for that devilish device. Where is it, where is it…

It was hard to reach with his suit limiting his moves and his glasses knocked askew because of the pressure between his head and the pillow.

Wait-

He fell asleep in his glasses? And clothes?

His hand didn’t reach anything. There was a worrying sense of… nothing.

When you sleep at the same house for years and years without moving the furniture around too much, you get used to things being in their place.

And they weren’t.

Blue eyes snapped right open.

What he saw was a wide room with multiple beds. Each had a cabinet on the side and there were a few shelves with products that looked like medicine, screens, speakers.

There was a camera high up.

Oh, shit. He was at a hospital.

Wait, no.

He slowly got up, massaging one temple with his hand.

No, no, no.

This layout…

He sat on the bed.

…he was still in the studio.

Or rather… he was at the studio. He actually was there. Could have been a dream.

But no.

Finally, his attention went back to the sound of the alarm. It was coming out of a device that resembled a radio more than a clock. He took it into his hands and turned off. Strange technology but wasn’t too hard.

As he was putting it back, the speakers screeched, almost causing him to drop the darn thing.

Then he froze.

“Hello! Joey Drew here! Welcome to the Joey Drew Studios Infirmary! I hope your brief detention there was a pleasant one…”

No. No way.

“If you’re hearing this message, that means all the damage you may have been experienced has been noted/taken care of, and that we can continue on with the work. There’s sure a lot of it to do!”

Henry frantically looked around the room.

Was it some sort of a cruel joke?

“However, before we get back to it, please, keep in mind, that although fun, those activities are your work, alright? And here, at Joey Drew Studios, we work hard. But happy, so to keep that spirit up do follow the guidelines and refrain from-“

The old man jumped in bed as the voice became incomprehensible.

“As always, thank you for participating. You are contributing to this wonderful bosom of creation we call art. Remember, dreams do come true! Now, let’s bring this thing to life!”

Minutes passed as Henry sat in silence after the end of what he realized was a prerecorded message.

He didn’t know what kind of person would make him listen to it but it had to be prerecorded.

Joey died fifteen years ago.

#bendy and the ink machine #batim fanfiction #batim portal au #henry stein #joey drew #halfart #halfwriting #halfpost #still life #long post #so i got inspired to write for this thing lets see where it goes lol

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weirdlandtv · 6 years ago

Text

Like the 1960s generation had The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, the Big Three of the 1980s were Prince, Michael Jackson, and Madonna. Their new albums weren’t just song collections, they were messages uttered by the Oracle up on the mountain, echoing across the valley. They were events, statements, re-incarnations. Each new album presented a new persona for fans to imitate and for critics to evaluate, or, in the case of Prince, decipher. (Artists, back then, had to change with each new release or else be considered irrelevant. David Bowie entered the 1980s a smart yuppie, George Michael in the span of 7 years went from sparkling teen idol to sensitive, searching biker cowboy.)

Michael Jackson and Prince were regarded as rival gods, with the former more commercially successful but the latter preferred by most serious music critics (though in reality, fans, like me, liked both). Michael Jackson played games with tabloid journalists, who in turn responded with growing hostility; Prince played pranks on music critics, who wilfully allowed themselves to be deceived and wowed by this inscrutable prodigy.

Michael Jackson’s Avalon was Neverland, a fantasy dream that always invited ridicule (though not from me); Prince’s Mount Olympus was Paisley Park, a place deemed so mythical that fans constructed their own maps from the few photos and bits of footage that existed of it, and then endlessly speculated on what life was like inside of it: the parties, the concerts, sacred rituals, whisperings, the spontaneous nightly sessions. “Did you know,” they’d say, wide-eyed, “Prince has this huge vault of original masters and unreleased music right under Paisley Park? Only he knows the key code.” Whole albums (all masterpieces of course) had disappeared into that vault, never to be heard by ordinary mortals. And he never slept: nobody had ever caught him sleeping. He just went on and on, creating music. That was Prince, the enigmatic wonder, the living love symbol, and flamboyant question mark.

I still find it strange to realize so many of the artists I just mentioned, who so energetically populated my childhood and early teens, are dead. Michael Jackson, Prince, David Bowie, and George Michael all died within 7 years of each other; but there’s also Whitney Houston, Freddie Mercury, Kurt Cobain, and so many more. (Compare 1960s giants Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, who are still touring and releasing records.)

When Prince died, a little more than three years ago today, I was on Texel, an island to the north of Holland, where I live. I checked my phone, checked the news, like you so stupidly do every now and then, and then saw the incredible headline. A sunny day, clouds seemed to appear that moment. Some people love celebrity deaths and follow juicy rumor sites about who punched who and who stepped out of the limo without their knickers on; me, I get depressed. It’s like having swallowed a stone. The sensationalist cries around every celeb death to me are like a beehive of bad vibes, a pest, and I have to stay away from it as far as possible if I want to protect my mental health, or what’s left of it. Prince’s death made me take things slow for a week or so. I have to mentally chew on such things, change my settings, ease into the new reality, let my heart adjust to its new weight. I’ve often had to deal with death in my life, sometimes it’s as if every high-profile death shocks me back into that familiar feeling of dread and despair.

Though Michael Jackson’s Neverland has turned into a derelict theme park that carries the curse of being unsellable, Prince’s Paisley Park has become a museum. Occasionally, browsing the internet, I see photos of it, and I’m always struck, kind of uneasily, about how soulless it seems. What does the lair of an extravagant hermit look like? What did I expect? Not something that looks like the atrium of a New Age company maybe. Looking at the interior, those sad police photos that were released last year, I can’t help but see the stupendous mundanity of it all. The building itself, somewhere in a suburb outside of Minneapolis, resembles a bunker, and though the pyramid skylights, that vaguely resemble guard towers, provide some natural light, the rest of the building is artificially lit, but dark. The recording studio is just that. Some of the walls have sayings like “Everything You Think Is True”. Stained glass with stars, clouds, and guitars. There’s a potted plant here, and an ugly tangle of phone cords in the corner there. Prince’s bedroom was sparse with empty green walls, and a plastic trash can you can buy at your local Walmart (but he never slept of course). The legendary vault reminds me of the storage room of my dad’s old electronics company, with its disorderly shelves and half-opened cardboard boxes. And everywhere, in every corridor and every space, there’s Prince iconography, but it’s rather bland, like the cover of a cheap unofficial biography.

For Prince, it must have been strange living in your own mausoleum.

The music that came from that place though. I believe PARADE (1986) was the first full album he recorded there, and then everything that came afterwards. My uncle was a real Prince fanatic, taking a slew of albums with him whenever he stayed with us, bootlegs too, so from an early age I became quite well-versed in all things Prince. Bits of his lyrics are as familiar to me as old family sayings. Personal favorites are the albums 1999 (1982), BATMAN (1989), and the LOVE SYMBOL ALBUM (1992). I like the street-smart humor of his early stuff, the raw passion, the in-your-face sex metaphors, with symbols as loud as cymbals, just the wild mercury sound of it; later on, his work became more spiritual, and harder for me to follow. His whole being though was music, every movement was a melody, every step a beat; he created music the way other people breathe. He had more songs in him than a duck has quacks. If you listen to the posthumous release, PIANO AND A MICROPHONE 1983, it’s as if the piano, microphone and artist aren’t three separate things, but one organism, bleeding and generating music; it features some wonderful, loose playing. It seems to me that towards the end of his life, in physical pain and unable to play a piano or guitar unless stuffed with elephant tranquilizers, he started to drift, and drift further, until he fell over the edge.

Like Bob Dylan, whose mystique and inaccessibility he shared, Prince had a habit of frustrating his fans, by deliberately excluding a great song from an otherwise so-so album and storing it in his vault, or by making his music hard to buy or even find (online, before he died, there was almost nothing). That’s one reason I kind of stopped following him; the other is the depressing decline of his songwriting since the 1990s. Looking at his later albums, which I first dutifully bought until I didn’t anymore, there’s hardly anything I really like. None of the best-of compilations collect anything from after the 90s. What happened? Age is part of it of course. A decline in quality is inevitable, most musical artists do their best work in their 20s and 30s. It’s also possible Prince’s brand of singing about his women like they are divine vaginas simply went out of style. Once cheeky and outrageous (his work was why Parental Advisory stickers were invented), his songs no longer shock us 21st centurians. We’ve seen so much already. Dirty sex wasn’t the only topic he sang about of course (far from it), but it’s the one he pushed forward the most as part of his image; his “royal badness” was part of his appeal. (The BATMAN soundtrack originally was going to feature Michael Jackson as Batman, the force of good, and Prince as the Joker, representing decadence, sin, evil.)

But his supposed “badness” was an act of course. The cocky poses, flashy gestures and mean diva looks were an obvious shield against the outside world, a theatrical defense mechanism. An attempt to dazzle people before they can get to you. When you’re shy—and he of course was the shyest—you feel like everyone is constantly watching you, and you become overly aware of how you look, how you walk, how you come across; you are constantly aware of your physical being taking up space. So what do you do when you’re an artist? You perform. Everything you do becomes a kind of performance, a conscious act. It gives you a feeling of control: you know why people are watching, because you’re making them watch you. But the essence of it is always shyness and nerves.

There’s something endearing about that 1983 footage of him being invited on stage for an impromptu jam by James Brown, who a few minutes earlier had invited Michael Jackson up. Ready to upstage his rival, who had just performed some killer moves, Prince takes the stage, struts, plays some random riffs, struts some more, suddenly takes off his jacket and does some tricks with the microphone stand, claps to whip up the audience—and then as he wants to make a fast and sudden exit, he clumsily goes down knocking over a prop, stage hands hastily arriving from all sides to help him up.

He died in an elevator near the lobby, but the spot itself has been covered up by a new wall (it’s near the watchful eyes in the third image). I keep wondering what happened. Was he making his way down to the ground floor from his production offices, or was he going up from the recording studio to his bedroom to maybe sleep? One associate, questioned by police, stated that Prince had told her he “was depressed, enjoyed sleeping more than usual and was incredibly bored”, and that at his last concert, he felt like he was going to fall asleep on stage. Those were rare remarks. An intensely private person, he mostly hid his problems, not just from others, but even from himself. The end, then, was inevitable. As with Michael Jackson six years before, the drugs relieved him of his pain, and then of his life.

He never slept, and when he did, it was 4ever.

#prince #paisley park #photos #inside #interior #studio #music #pics #pictures #images #house #home

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