#i've been trying to figure out how to approach The Argument for awhile

[carcarcraziiv2]

Heartsteel Sett Boyfriend HCs

~Sett is love, Sett is LIFE. Don't get me wrong, I am barking and on all fours for all of these men but Sett holds a special place in my little heart~

P.S. Asks are open! I am open to requests! P.S.S. I am also open to other League characters, Arcane AU, etc. Just hmu :3

TW: Floof. So much floof. Pet names. You get the picture right? As always, enter at your own risk!

Sett is a l o v e r. PDA overload. Hugs? Always, without question, is up for that. Kisses? You bet your ass he will. Any second, no matter where you are, you could lean in for one and he will squeeze you up against him, and kiss you like his life depends on it. If anyone appears to be giving you some extra attention that he doesn't like, all this big guy has to do is walk up next to you (as if he isn't there already lol) and usually the person doing the thing is smart enough to know better than to continue. "Hey baby, come here. What, can't I kiss you? Let me kiss you. That's my good b/g."

Sett is second only to Ezreal in his joking capabilities. This man can JOKE, and although he is trying to joke with and or at you, he unfortunately tends to make a fool of himself because he is a massive dork. If you pull jokes on him, he doesn't really get upset or offended, but he will pretend to be. His goofy demeanor means he will put a hand to his chest acting all flabbergasted, then tackle you into a hug or onto the bed while calling you a dork. "Haha! You're so funny, but you know I've got skin of steel baby. Oh, you meant it? Yeah right! Comere!"

Sett is an absolute SUCKER for attention. He will eat it up, and if you aren't paying attention to him? You might as well be. He will pester you, throw you over his shoulder, basically DEMAND your attention. Since this is just how he is, you never have to be desperate for his attention either. If for some reason you do feel neglected, he will feel very bad about it. He will make it up to you no matter what that means. "I'm sorry I've been at the gym so much this week, band stuff has just been stressing me out. Hey, I have an idea! Why don't you go with me?!"

Kisses, hugs, and everything fun= SETT. He is a fiend. He is insatiable. He will grab you up and kiss you, no matter where you are. His kisses can be goofy, fun, or downright sensual. Sometimes, when Sett is feeling serious for once, he will take his time with you. Touching you sweetly- he is so strong sometimes he is scared he will hurt you by accident. But man, it's all worth it as soon as his lips touch yours. Sett grabs your wrist, pulling you flush against him. You have to tilt your head to see him, and as he gazes back down at you he tilts his head and studies your face. "You're everything, baby. Everything." He leans down, kissing you gently, before releasing your lips and hugging you even closer.

Sett doesn't like arguing. He gets so pent up sometimes, you fear for the guy he goes up against at his boxing matches. Most of the time, when it's petty little arguments, he will figure out some way to get your mind off of it. Every once in awhile when you actually feel upset about the situation, Sett will take his time to sit down and talk it out with you. He will grab your hands, nod while you explain your side, and carefully display his own. By the end of it, the two of you are usually kissing... and by the end of that- well... "I get where you're coming from, baby. I just think we could have approached the situation differently, is all. Promise you're not mad at me? Thank the Gods. Come on, I wanna make it up to you in the bedroom hehe," He says, grabbing you by the waist and tugging you toward your room.

Sett will be very sad when you leave, or when he has to leave. He is like a little puppy dog who cries when you go (although he doesn't actually cry). He will pout, however, and his irresistible face almost makes you quit everything and stay home just to appease him. When he leaves, he will ask you a thousand questions trying to egg on a reason to stay, but you know he has to get to band practice so that Yone doesn't come pounding down your door, so you usually just give him a reason to be excited to come home later. "I miss you already, baby! Please don't make me go. Nah, look Yone loves me! He won't be that mad... Comeonnnn. Fine, but later we are getting dinner, and you are going to be desert."

[greyvvardenfell]

can i get uhhhhh multiples of 5 for reyja and julian?

:3c

5. What activities do they enjoy together?

Pub trivia (they have different but equally broad scopes of knowledge and fantastic memories for facts so good fucking luck beating them), working (sometimes if you want to spend time with your workaholic partner, you have to go where he is), cooking (if it happens which is rare but julian likes being told what to do and reyja likes not having to do everything herself)

10. Write a ~300 word argument scene for them.

arguments in the north/devorak household are exceedingly uncommon because julian will cave immediately if he realizes an argument is happening, regardless of how he actually feels about it. he enjoys banter, but if he catches even a whiff of an actual disagreement, he is Out. they have occasional clashes over not taking care of themselves, a problem they are equally prone to so they usually end in a stalemate since pushing for self-care is hypocritical on both sides, so while they both get upset if the other isn’t eating or sleeping or whatever, a simple “you don’t either” will end it and a “we’ll do better” pact is made.

there is only One major argument that actually qualifies as an argument, and remains the only proper fight they’ve ever had. and it’s about reyja’s extreme jealousy which boils down to her not trusting julian to love her completely and he is rightfully angry about that.

15. What are traits they dislike in one another?

julian snores, which sometimes wakes reyja up and she does not tolerate having her sleep disturbed. (the catch is that reyja also snores and has woken mr. light-sleeper devorak up before but he doesn’t mind nearly as much). that’s not really a trait but it’s the first thing that came to mind. 

reyja is super prone to jealousy, as mentioned, and it stresses julian out. not only because it reflects poorly on him as a partner but it’s also stifling and disappointing. he has chosen to turn down roles at the theater if they have any sort of romantic aspect before, for fear of upsetting reyja. (which it would, because she’s just that jealous, but she needs to address it damn it and he’s so averse to hurting her in any way, including times when it would be infinitely more helpful if he would just take that step). by the same token, julian is protective to a fault. sometimes it’s nice and comforting, other times it’s annoying because he doesn’t want her to “have” to go to the market herself, just in case.... his isn’t rooted in jealousy though, just fear of having something happen.

20. What is a promise they have made to each other?

other than the obvious marriage vows, they’re very committed to making sure both are comfortable with all of their many kinky experiments. they do a lot, and some of it is hard kink, and while consent is the very least that one should expect in kink scenarios it’s also the most important. they’re also just... devoted to each other. they want to grow and change together, and decide to love each other every day. it’s cheesy, but one of the biggest promises they’ve made.

25. What moves do they know work on the other?

julian: he’s sensitive, like, everywhere, and turns into horny goo if his nipples are played with or his hair is pulled. and honestly he just likes his ass touched: fingered, rimmed, pegged... his masochism can be easily pacified by leaving his dick alone while stimulating everything else. indirect pleasuring prolongs the experience and also turns him into a writhing, crying mess. he likes that.

reyja: regardless of the role she takes, she wants to feel desired. if julian is begging for her while she’s domming him, or if he’s tending to her while she’s subbing, she’s happy. she also likes to be bitten: it’s such a primal response to stimulation. honestly, most forms of body worship will please her, especially in public. if julian likes to be overwhelmed, which he does, reyja likes doing the overwhelming.

30. Write a short exchange of dirty talk between them.

ohhhhh once again i should write a new thing and once again i’m not going to.

“What has you so captivated this morning, hmm?”

Julian’s been openly staring at me across the table for a while now, his coffee abandoned and growing cold. “Only the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen,” he replies huskily.

“Yeah?” I slide my oatmeal spoon into my mouth and remove it with an audible pop. “Who might that be?”

“Oh, I think you know her.” He licks his lips. “Fiercely intelligent, staggeringly funny, hips to die for.” He pauses for effect as he leans across the table. “And she’s a hell of a tease.”

[...]

“Is she? Sounds like you two would get along well."

"Famously, even! The chemistry between us would be, dare I say, magical?” Julian waggles his eyebrows and grins.

“I’m sure she’d be open to testing your theory. If she’s who I’m thinking of, she likes the…” I pause, drawing out the word as I smile seductively. “Hard sciences too.”

[autumnslance]

I've got a writing question that's been on my mind for a while: how do you keep your OCs from becoming self inserts? Every time I think of developing an OC I realize that it's attributes that I

Oops, you got cut off! But in general: all your OCs are going to have traits of yours; it’s inevitable. Sometimes big things, sometimes small things. It’s how we relate to them, and also just natural, I promise. We write what we know, and we know how we interact with ourselves and the world.

But there is a difference between sharing some traits with a character and making them a self-insert. It’s letting their life, their community and culture, their experiences, also influence their traits and thinking, in ways that might be different from how you would respond in a similar situation. Even if you share those attributes.

This is me so let’s go behind a cut shall we?

Dark Autumn is as introverted and solitary by nature as I am; she can and does interact in professional and friendly ways with people (as I try to do), but needs alone time to recharge. However, Dark also has a very different outlook and relationship with her family than I, since her family is large and supportive, very close knit. If family is a lottery, I got the $50 scratch off prize while she hit the Mega-Millions. So I take that into account when thinking of her relationships not just with family, but with friends and potential romantic interests; Dark sees things through a lens of positive, low-drama familial relationships that I can barely fathom. This also means she has a support network and resources myself and other characters don’t, so gets some wish fulfillment of working through issues with care and grace instead of remaining in unhealthy places. She is my “comfort OC” so gets a lot of good things I wish I had—which shapes how she responds to others, like taking care of a FCmate and becoming something of a big sister figure for him, or the responsible older sister figure of my group of OCs. Which is me, really, idealizing my own older sister tendencies into this giant woman who’s better at it.

Aeryn was written to be on the ace scale; not my first character to be so, but the first written that way as I began to realize where my own orientations lie and wanting to examine that through fiction. That she fell for a certain rogue in the process of playing through MSQ again was not at all intentional. I like Thancred as a character—he hits a lot of tropes I enjoy—but in my own mindset, he’s a frustrating younger brother. I didn’t think I’d do NPC x WoL shipping. But there it is, because in determining Aeryn’s own experiences and how those shaped her, it ended up working out that way (and I spent the better part of 2 years writing the characters separately to figure that out and if it could work before writing them together because it’s not something that comes naturally to me).

Aeryn’s internal anger is something I have a difficult time with; it’s outside my own nature to carry things like that. I have my angers, certainly, but they are different from hers. I tend to need a lot to set me off and then it burns out hot and quick. Aeryn’s more of a long boil she keeps bottled up. I’ve gotten a few things through various fics, I think, but it’s why I do things like reference arguments but rarely depict them. Being non-confrontational myself (I’m meek and have hangups thanks to my own life) it’s a challenge. Aeryn responded to childhood traumas (that I never dealt with), bullying (that I did), losses (that I haven’t yet), and the responsibility she’s been given (thank goodness I don’t) far differently than I. Maybe I’d be more volatile, too, if I had her life. But I understand where her anger comes from sharing some of the reasons, I just shape it differently than my own.

There’s a lot of things about Dark and Aeryn that are accidentally similar, just due to the timing of their character generation and other RP OCs made for other games along the way; “Oh I haven’t done X or Y in a character in awhile” sort of thing, but how each approaches those similarities and why—their quietness, their issues with using magic, their tendency to “adopt” others as family—all come from different places and resolve differently, too.

C’oretta comes from a part of me that doesn’t quite want to grow up. That wishes I had been more of the peppy, active, cheerful, risk-taking, live it up stereotypical party kid, that “popular girl” archetype I felt so often on the outside looking in about. As my second character, I wanted her to be different from Dark Autumn—visually, emotionally, mentally. Where Dark is steady, C’oretta is flighty. While Dark is people oriented, C’oretta’s a bit selfish (like I often feel). Dark’s introverted, C’oretta’s extroverted. Much of C’oretta’s attitude is a deflection against the hurts in her life, a way to fight back against some terrible things. It’s a way I could never react. But I also can’t get away from a character who loves to learn and wants to try new things—but where other characters gain the ability to stick with and see them through, C’oretta gets my easy frustration and boredom, and then the “ooh shiny” of a new interest. There’s a history of ADHD (or whatever the acronyms are now) and even autism and learning issues in my family; it’s possible I have some undiagnosed ND stuff going on, and people have noted these things in C’oretta that I’ve based on my own experiences and those of people very close to me.

Many of my characters have traits I wish I had, or were better at; patience, kindness, consideration, convictions, courage, thoughtfulness, and so on and etc. They’re good at skills I haven’t the knowledge in, or the ability to do. They’re certainly more active than I am, or could be! Because I can take the time to think and plan and research and write those things out better, and just maybe along the way not only learn something myself, but try to practice it better myself. I can even sometimes let them teach me what I can possibly do or be, not just imagine it as an ideal that’s out of reach.

I try to let my characters make mistakes I wouldn’t—or in some cases, have in my past, and that’s OK. Especially if I learned from them, but maybe the character does not. Maybe they do but it takes awhile, or repeated instances until it sinks in. Maybe I let them make errors I still make, as a way to puzzle out better solutions I should probably entertain for myself.

Character voice is something I’ve felt I struggled with in keeping my OCs distinct. Do characters ‘sound’ alike, in dialogue and prose? Having distinct ways of speaking helps; C’oretta’s breathless chatty run-ons are certainly different from Dark and Aeryn’s quieter tendencies. I have to remember to trim down Aeryn’s dialogue more often, say less aloud, add more gestures and facial expressions. I tend to be a talker, an over-explainer (if you can’t tell), while the only times she gets like that are specific. Dark’s somewhere in the middle of those two, like I am. A lot of the reason I like writing NPCs and try to keep them close to my interpretation of canon is to practice distinct character voice to get better at it in my OCs, so they don’t sound like me!

And something I’ve never admitted to before is that I think for me, it helps that from the time I was a kid watching various series of Star Trek, I always have had an in-my-own-head-only self-insert. She’s always a support character (that’s what I’m best at). She has cool and unusual abilities to help the actual heroes, cuz heck it’s my internal fantasy and that’s fun. She has traits I want to be better at or wish I had, developed over time with more energy and focus than I can actually muster in reality. As time’s gone on, she’s become more of a mentor and Mom Friend as I’m now older and see a lot of protagonist characters as “my kids” now. She appears in nearly every story I’ve loved over time, in one iteration or another. And because I have a headspace character where I can say “this is what I, ideally, would say and do and be capable of in this situation…” My other characters that I actually write about can vary between doing something similar (if it suits them) to doing something completely different (cuz darn kids never listen) as I can compare them to the self-insert and decide where to diverge.

So it’s a mix of myself and my traits and knowledge, but taking into account how each character would respond and use those same attributes differently than I do or would. Write what you know, write who you are—and then add in some wish fulfillment, some what ifs, some bad choices, some good choices, and shake things up. Give the characters tics and tricks different from yourself and let that shape them, too, by remembering to take those things into account (even if you have to tape a note to your monitor).

And finally, don’t be ashamed of your self-inserts; I’ve known some great characters that started as self-inserts and grew, through their experiences, into wholly different people than their writers over time. Heck, the epic romance my original WoW priest was part of was with a character that started as a self-insert; his player began the game knowing nothing of the lore or roleplaying, but as he learned the story and how to RP, and determined how his character fit into the world and how that shaped him, the character diverged over time, while still sharing some key traits (some endearing, some frustrating, as people are and all part of that friend). It’s not a bad starting point at all. The rest can come over time and practice, especially if you make a lot of OCs and try to make them different from each other while also being aspects of yourself.