#i've written up. so many reports and reflections | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ozzgin · 9 months

Note

OZZGIN!

May I request an idea/imagine?

It is about yandere! mental asylum patient and psychiatrist! reader, who is very practical and strict regarding her job, takes no BS from others. But, for some reason, she has a soft spot for yandere! mental asylum patient. The reason could either be he had a hard childhood in which he had to do what he had to do, which brutally killed his father, who used to abuse his mother and sister, but when the father tried to sell the sister into prostitution to buy more alcohol, all hell break lose. Psychiatrist! reader thinks what yandere! mental asylum the patient did was OKAY, and she wants to get him out of the asylum. They love each other deeply and would do anything, so far as to kill for one another. If you can, make it as twisted as you can. I live for some dark romance!

Please ignore my request if you are not able to do it. I completely understand. Thank you in advance! <3

Oh my, this request hits somewhat close to home as I have a friend incarcerated for similar reasons. I'm pondering the logistics behind this context you've provided, since murdering someone won't necessarily land you in a psych ward unless there are other symptoms that come with it. And so I've taken the liberty to expand the character's profile if that's alright. (Conveniently enough I still have my psychopathology lecture notes)

I want to add, however, that this story in no way romanticizes mental illness! If anything, one may consider it an opportunity to reflect on the fact that so many people struggling with disorders do not receive the proper care for it, or only do so when it's too late. Furthermore a medical professional should never, ever behave like this and whatever is written here should stay in the realm of fiction!

Yandere! Patient x Psychiatrist! Reader

Featuring a patient that's pushing the boundaries of your work ethic and might even succeed.

Content/warnings: female reader, detailed mentions of mental disorder, violence, obsessive behavior, breach of professional conduct

You roll up your sleeve and check your watch. He should be here soon. Out of habit, you shuffle the papers for a quick case review, even though you already know all the details by heart. You carefully set aside the patient’s MMPI and WHODAS entry assessments, then your first interviews. Your eyes briefly rest upon the resulting report you’ve comprised: Schizophreniform Disorder (Provisional) with good prognostic features; Diagnostic criteria consisting of delusions, disorganized speech (frequent derailment with episodes of incoherence, echolalia) and comorbid catatonia. Responds well to antipsychotic (clozapine 25mg/12 h) with no imminent need for dosage increase. As it currently stands, he will be fit for proper incarceration in less than 6 months. Is it something you agree with? Not quite. You’ve presented your case many times and it has always been met with pitiful shrugs and dismissals.

The door opens and you fix your posture, sweeping the documents back into your drawer. “And? How are you feeling today?” You ask, flashing a professional, cordial smile as the assisting nurse leads the patient to his seat and prepares her leave. “My chest hurts.” The man answers in a low voice, glaring at the nurse. He taps his foot against the plush carpet, seemingly restless. “How bad would you rate it? Chest pain is a somewhat common side effect of your medication.” You retort, following the movements of the woman finally excusing herself and exiting the room. Once you’re alone, the man’s shoulders droop and he visibly relaxes. “It’s not that, you know it. When can I touch you again?” He pleads, despair twisting his features. You tense up at the words. “Behave yourself. It hasn’t been that long.”

It’s not something you’re particularly proud of. In fact, you might even call it one of your great shames in life. You’ve always been a textbook professional, perhaps even too strict according to your coworkers and most patients. Not even in your wildest dreams would you have dared to imagine you’d violate the code of ethics by falling in love with your patient. But something about his situation stirred your sense of justice. Surely one cannot be punished for protecting their loved ones. The only criminal in the equation, at least in your eyes, was that joke of a father and he had it coming. So you found yourself wrestling against a blooming protectiveness and favoritism towards the young man brought here last month.

What would have normally compelled you into action had therefore been silently swept under the rug. Or even worse, you secretly indulged in it. A patient showing signs of affection towards you would instantly be transferred to a different psychiatrist. Yet you couldn’t put away the letters written by this one. Erratic, crumpled notes of “I love you” written countless times, pencil dug so deep it tore into the sheet. Bizarre illustrations that looked almost threatening. His elaborate delusions before medication was introduced, where he’d detail in grand narratives how you were fated for each other and nothing would stop him from having you sooner or later. You do not know what forces possessed you into this addictive plunge, but you’ve come to enjoy his violent, frenzied confessions. So much, that during one of the unsupervised meetings you let yourself pushed into the sofa as his hands tugged at your body in rabid need. It was so out of character that you wondered if it truly happened, though the bite marks and scratches on your neck and chest proved otherwise.

“Are they going to send me to prison?” He changes the subject and stands up, walking towards your desk. “Most likely. What you have is the result of a traumatic event, not a lifelong condition. Sporadic episodes that can be kept under control with antipsychotics aren’t enough of a reason to keep you in the hospital.” You press your legs together nervously and glance at him. “Can’t you just say it’s no longer working?” He suggests, kneeling before you and placing a hand on your thigh. “You know I can’t lie on the report.” You really don’t like it when he manipulates you like this. “Ah, yes, because lying is worse than fucking your patient.” He scoffs, annoyed. “Don’t threaten me like that”, you say as you turn towards him, but you’re stopped by the rough grip of his hand over your cheeks. “I’m not threatening you, I’m threatening everyone else. Listen, (Y/N), I’m not fucking around. I don’t mind pretending to be crazy if I have to. Will the meds still be working if I steal a shaving razor and cut the nurse open?” You try to open your mouth, but his fingers are pressed into your skin, locking your jaw into place. “I’m not going to prison. I’m not. Then I’ll never see you again and that can’t happen. You know that.”

Eventually he releases his hold, allowing you to speak. "I understand. Then there's no choice but to arrange your escape." You sigh, defeated, and he raises his eyebrows. "Won't that get you in trouble?" You chuckle at his statement. "Either way I'll be in trouble. You said it yourself. Might as well quit before I have to stand in front of the ethics board and have my license revoked." You'd prefer to keep the last ounce of pride if possible.

He sits on the floor and you notice his trembling hands. "Nervous?" You ask. "No. Just really happy. I'm not a bad person and you were the only one here to see it. But God, (Y/N), I'd kill anyone if it was for your sake. I can't wait to hold you whenever I want." He gazes at you as a smile widens on his face.

#female reader #male yandere #yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere x darling #male yandere x reader #yandere imagine #yandere imagines #yandere scenarios #yandere headcanons #yandere oc x reader #obsessive yandere #tw yandere

2K notes · View notes

captainthisshipinmyhead · 2 months

Text

Terms of Agreement

Giyuu x Fem!Reader

You'd agreed to a friends with benefits type of situation with Tomioka, thinking that it would be easy to keep feelings out of it. How stupid of you.

Warnings: SMUT, slight angst, fluff, possibly basic and overdone plot, poorly written fight scenes, use of y/n if you don't like that, Giyuu is cold to you but not too mean bc he is a sweetie :(

WC: 5,262

!! This contains SMUT!!! DO NOT INTERACT if you are a minor!

A/N: Hi hi, as I said in my previous post this is my first fanfic in like 11ish years and only my second fanfic ever so I'm excited to post it. I've never written smut or combat scenes before, which... may be obvious lol. I'm open to feedback, but please be nice. I hope you enjoy. <3

“If you insist on this, it has to be without meaning.”

Those were the words the Water Hashira spoke to you just before you agreed to a friends with benefits situation with him. Your attraction to each other upon meeting was practically palpable; something had to be done about it. It clearly wasn’t a one-sided attraction either, as the typically elusive Pillar never fled from a room you were in, seeking your eyes at corps meetings, and seemed to be content conversing with you when you decided to chat with him over meals. His eyes rested on your lips when you spoke, and when he thought you weren’t looking they dipped lower. This continued until you finally ran into him outside of a secluded onsen and, figuring bluntness would be the best way to approach this subject since it would pretty much be awkward either way, blurted out that you would like to sleep with him if he were interested. After a stunned silence, he nodded his head, wide eyed and pink-cheeked.

Tomioka’s original terms of this agreement were simply that no feelings were involved and that you kept this arrangement a secret from the other members of the demon slayer corps. Terms you agreed to without hesitation as you assumed that they would be easy to uphold, and the both of you were wound up tightly with need of an outlet. Unfortunately, it seems that any similar instances in the past that you were reflecting on when making this decision were not at all similar to the one you found yourself in with Tomioka. With Tomioka, your growing feelings for him became undeniable quickly.

All it took was your first night together for you to become putty in his hands- his soft caresses, gentle words, and deep eye contact throughout the whole encounter had you breathless. You had never experienced such tenderness from any romantic partner in the past. You had to practically repeat a mantra to yourself the entire time- no feelings, no feelings, no feelings. It had been futile, proven the next morning when you roused from dreams of being lovingly held in Tomioka’s arms in front of a golden sunset. Ever since that night six months ago, you had been hooked. Try as you might, you couldn’t shake the near-constant thoughts of being more than a hookup with him. You blushed when he made eye contact with you at training sessions, and when he entered a room you had to excuse yourself for fear of him being able to hear how embarrassingly loud your heart was beating. At least in your nighttime trysts, that could be chalked up to the physicality you were experiencing...

You managed to keep your arrangement a secret from other demon slayer corps, though you had run into Shinobu a few times as you returned in the early morning to your room in her mansion to freshen up for the day. She sometimes questioned your whereabouts, sometimes just gave you a sly smirk, though she never asked too many intrusive questions, so you were able to remain tightlipped.

As you walked leisurely back toward your room at the butterfly mansion to retire for the evening you were confronted with Tomioka’s crow stopping short in front of you, flapping to stay upright while he delivered a simple message:

Please report to the Water Hashira residence. One hour.

As quickly as he had come, he flapped off into the direction of his master’s mansion, where you now knew you’d be heading to shortly as well. You continued you way to your room with a quickness to your gait that wasn’t present before. Once you’d had some time in your room to freshen up and gather a few essential items you wished to take with you, you hurried on your way to Tomioka’s mansion.

When you arrived, the front gate of Tomioka’s estate was unlocked and you let yourself in. He stood waiting to greet you on his engawa with a pursing of his lips (meant to be a smile) and a nod. You blushed and cast your eyes downward as you crossed his courtyard.

“You look pretty.”

You raised your eyes to Tomioka as you heard his words, now only a few steps away from him. It wasn’t uncommon for him to compliment you when you were alone; after all, of course he found you attractive if you’d entered into such a situation with him.

“Thank you,” you practically whispered, a blush gracing your full cheeks.

Seeing your reaction, Tomioka’s smile that resembled more of a grimace relaxed into something genuine. He gently looped his pinky in yours and tugged you toward the direction of his bedroom.

As soon as you stepped through the doors and slid them shut behind you, his lips were on yours.. Your eyes fluttered closed, and he softly cupped one cheek as his other arm pulled you in tightly by the waist. Sweet pecks gave way to sensual kissing, as his tongue began to prod at the seam of your lips. You opened up for him without hesitation, just like usual.

He kissed you like he’d been waiting for you much longer than three days, when you’d last been a nighttime guest at his residence.

He kissed you sometimes as if he were making love to you—all your clothes were on but the sensuality of his lips and tongue pulled moans from your throat and goosebumps to the surface of your skin as if you were already naked beneath him.

You’d never get tired of this, not as long as the two of you had this arrangement. Kissing him was sometimes almost better than the sex itself. Almost.

He pulled back, breathless, and looked you in the eyes, giving you another shy smile. You returned his expression, unable to resist his kind face. You nodded toward his futon and began taking steps toward it.

Back hitting the mattress, Tomioka leaned down over you once again in search of your lips. As you made out, you hands pushed his haori off of his shoulders, and his fingers deftly pulled at the ties to your yukata. You both made quick work of each other’s clothing and soon enough his fingers were traveling down, down, down until they reached your sex and teasingly ran up your slit.

You gasped into his mouth as he circled your clit, and he ducked his head down to suck on the sensitive spot beneath your ear.

“To- Tomi-,” you tried to gasp out, but he quickly kissed you again, shutting you up.

“What did I tell you to call me?” He rasped, continuing to rub your clit.

“Giyuu, Giyuu please,” you corrected.

“Please what? What do you want baby, say it.”

“Y-your mouth. Please Giyuu, I need you there. Please,” you continued to beg, but he kissed down your neck between his responses, clearly not intending on granting your wish.

“C’mon sweetheart, you know you’ve gotta say it. Where do you want my mouth?”

You were practically whining; you were embarrassingly close already.

“Please eat my pussy Giyuu, please, I need your mouth.”

“Good girl.”

Then he was down at your core, mouth on you faster than you could blink. He pushed your thighs apart, devouring your wetness as if it were water and he’d been in the desert all day. His tongue expertly flicked between your clit and your entrance, and your eyes rolled back in your head at the sensation. There was a reason you’d beg for his mouth-- he knew how to please you this way. Your hips wriggled without any sort of rhythm, unknowing what it is they were in search of-- just wanting more more more… He pulled your legs on top of his shoulders, caging his head in, and pressed a palm flat and firm against your lower stomach to still your frantic movements. His other hand tickled its way up your sensitive stomach and pinched a nipple, rolling it between deft fingers.

“Giyuu I- I’m gonna-“

“Go on,” He mumbled against your clit, lips brushing against it with every word.

The timbre of his voice sent you over the edge. He continued to lap at your entrance through your release. As your shivers of pleasure subsided, you reached out to him, curling your fingers toward your upper half in an indication for him to come back up to your face. He complied, once again sealing your lips with his, now coated in your flavor. He sighed and you moaned into the kiss, both grinding your hips into one another, always aching for more.

You pressed your fingers tips onto his chest and dragged them downward, until you reached his belt. When you got it unbuckled he helped push his pants down his hips; just as eager to feel you as you were him. He positioned himself at your entrance and looked into your eyes as if asking if it was okay. You nodded and surged upward for another peck to his lips; you couldn’t help it. He pressed in- you didn’t feel any pain; only pleasure despite his girth. You’d long ago been carved out to the shape of him, as your nighttime visits never went longer than maybe 5 days between.

Your breath caught in your throat as he sank all the way in, cervix stopping his tip. His eyes squeezed shut as he muttered,

“Y/n….you’re s-so tight, so wet f’me.”

You didn’t try to hold back your moan at the praise, and his head sank into your shoulder as he began to move.

His thrusts were languid and deep, you were whimpering each time he bottomed out. Your legs wrapped around his waist and pulled him closer. Though missionary was basic, you both enjoyed being like this; faces buried into each other’s hair, chests touching as you both breathe heavily in each other’s ears. The intimacy of it all was something you both craved, though you don’t think either of you would admit it out loud.

Giyuu rose up briefly to hook the back of your knees with his arms, planting his hands on the bed and folding you up nearly in half. He got even deeper inside you this way, and you couldn’t help the pathetically loud moans at the new angle.

His groans next to your ear while he fucked you in this new position caused you to tighten around him, building you toward your second orgasm. He took notice of the way you clenched tighter than before, a dead giveaway you were going to finish soon. He increased his speed and worked a hand between your tightly pressed bodies to circle your clit again, just the way you like.

Your hands flew to his shoulders, gripping him tightly at the stimulation. You couldn’t help the way your nails dug into his skin, probably leaving marks; everything felt too good.

Your peak hit you, causing you to tighten your legs around his hips, though he didn’t slow the pace of his thrusts or his fingers. As you came, you could only make garbled noises of praise, whispers and whimpers combining his name with affirmations of so good sprinkled in.

Giyuu, who had been holding his own orgasm off with great effort on his part, began to nearly whine as he came deep inside you, giving a couple more thrusts before he went limp above you and nuzzled into your warmth.

You savored this: Giyuu breathing into your neck and your hearts beating against each other’s, both of you coming down from your high, arms and legs tangled…. It was routine to lay together like this as both of your breathing slowed back down, and though it was truly just a resting period meant for recovery it felt like love. Knowing that it wasn’t an embrace with real emotion behind it sucked, but you took it selfishly each time all the same.

After a few moments your breaths had slowed, and Giyuu removed himself from you and went to fetch a warm cloth to clean up the remnants of both of your releases from between your legs. He tossed it to the side when finished, returning again to your side as he pulled you into an embrace.

This part was what really made you feel like maybe there was some emotion behind what the two of you had. Surely if he didn’t harbor feelings for you as well he would send you on your way back to your residence, right? In your experience with guys before him, they didn’t care so much about aftercare once they finished. They made it clear that your shared night was a one night stand and that you were not to get comfortable enough to stay until morning. You pondered this as Giyuu nuzzled his face further into your neck, pressing kisses lightly to the skin there. His arm lay across your chest, and his hand tanlged in your hair on the other side of your head. He twirled strands lazily around his fingers—the picture of contentment.

Surely... surely this level of comfort is only achieved with someone who you feel romantic emotions toward, right? Since your directness is usually a trait of yours that your value, and what had gotten you into your current position, you made your mind up that it was once again the best course of action to speak up and say what was flitting across your brain.

“Giyuu...”

“Hmmmm?” He hums lazily in response, not loosening his grip on you.

“I... I think I, well... Um, I think I maybe have feelings for you. Like, romantic feelings. I mean like, I’m sure that’s kind of obvious, given.... y’know, but I mean I want-“

You’re cut off by Giyuu sitting up sharply, head turning away from you to face the small windows letting in moonlight from high on his bedroom wall. You immediately miss his warmth and your mind floods with worry, knowing that you said something wrong.

“We can’t do this anymore.”

He said it with such finality, your heart sank low into the pit of your stomach. This is why you worried- Giyuu, such a hard person to get to know, hard person to read, can easily cut ties at a moment’s notice. You figured it’s probably for this reason that he kept himself at a distance from others; it makes everything having to do with emotions so much easier.

“N-no, Giyuu- Giyuu why? I don’t- I don’t want to-“ you work on stammering out a reply, while he shakes his head and begins to turn back toward you, wearing a stern expression.

“We have to, y/n. This isn’t healthy for either of us. I think I may have given you the wrong idea about what this is and I.... For that I apologize. But this can’t continue any longer.”

His eyes never met your face as he said this. Your mouth opened in response, but no sound came out.

“Y/n... I think it’s best that I take you to my guest room. I won’t let you leave now in the middle of the night, but I don’t think it’s wise to share a bed tonight considering these circumstances.”

He stood, pulling his pants back on and folding the blankets back so that you could get up too. Your legs somehow felt like lead and like jelly at the same time so it took you a few seconds longer than it normally would have to stand and re-dress yourself. Giyuu stood by silently, facing the door to the room, waiting for you to follow him out.

You walked without speaking, without hardly breathing even, not wanting to make any noise for fear of upsetting him further and making him change his mind about letting you stay. Not like you couldn’t hold your own, but you’d prefer not to go toe-to-toe with any demons tonight given how fragile your emotional state is. Giyuu stopped in front of a door and slid it open, gesturing for you to step inside. You stepped past him, trying not to tear up as you looked at the floor.

“Please don’t hesitate to come get me if you need anything tonight, Y/n. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, or at least not any more than you probably are.” You could feel his eyes boring into your face.

“Y/n, please say something. Anything you want to say to me, I’ll take it. If you’re angry, I understand.”

You still stood silently, trying to regulate your breathing and formulate a response. You finally came up with something to say, but it wasn’t anywhere near all that you wanted to express to him.

“After tonight, please just leave me alone. I can’t be friends with you after this... after all of this. Thank you for letting me stay. I’m going to lay down now.”

“Y/n....” he trailed off, his expression having softened as you spoke.

“It’s probably best that you don’t address me that way anymore. We don’t know each other intimately anymore and we won’t be able to remain friends, so please address me accordingly.”

Giyuu’s eyes dropped before he nodded and turned his back to you, making toward the door. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think his eyes glistened with emotion. He paused briefly on his way out, to say once more to come get him if you needed anything tonight, then he slid the doors to your temporary residence shut.

As soon as you lay your head onto the pillow of the plain and neat futon you began to cry. You cried until you exhausted yourself and fell into a deep sleep.

It had been two weeks since you’d left Tomioka’s house in the early morning, holding back a fresh wave of tears. You hadn’t seen him except for a couple of brief sightings of him at group training sessions at the houses of other hashiras. You did well at avoiding his gaze, choosing instead to channel the anger and hurt you felt over how you had ended into maximizing the power of your attacks. You had received a few letters from his crow within the first week of your separation, but you tossed them into the fires needed by Aoi to cook dinners since you often helped her prepare the kitchen in the evening for meals.

Shinobu was the first to notice that you weren’t staying out all night at some mystery location anymore. “No midnight rendezvous tonight?” She questioned you cheekily after the first few days, an eyebrow raised teasingly. You had tried to respond with a short no, but you were so choked up at the wave of emotion that ensued that you could only look at your feet and shake your head. Shinobu became concerned as you stayed shut in your room night after night, sometimes skipping dinner with everyone. The other girls in the mansion noticed that you were not acting as your typical chipper self and tried to get you to confide in them in attempts at easing your sadness, but you refused to speak about the source of your heartbreak.

By the third week, the pain lingering in your heart had subsided to a dull ache that only turned stabbing at the sight of him, or the thought of him, or the mention of his name. You were relieved when you received word that you were being sent on a mission to a nearby village with reports of children being stolen from their beds at night. Your strength and agility had improved with the increase in your training intensity, so you felt more than ready to take on this task and save the lives of the innocent village children.

You had been on the mission for 2 days without finding any trace of the demon. This confused you; this was a low level demon and they often were clumsy and unable to disguise themselves cleverly from slayers. You strolled seemingly aimlessly, twisting and turning down paths between homes and shops that were all locked up for the night, seeing nothing with each survey of the streets. As you turned what felt like your thousandth corner, you froze.

There was a demon standing at the end of this alley, back turned to you. He was just standing, like he were waiting for someone. How hadn’t you sensed it? You knew it had to have heard you approaching, but you still took slow and quiet steps to close the distance between the two of you. Your body was tense as you prepared to launch into an attack, hand at the ready on your nichirin blade.

Just as you got within blade’s distance of the towering figure, it whipped around, long taloned hand stretched to you, and slammed your body into a nearby wall.

Ouch. You mentally scolded yourself for not being faster on your feet, but then again you’d never fought a demon with such speed before either. You couldn’t even take a breath as you stood up because it already had its claws wrapped around your torso, lifting you high above his head. You had somehow managed to hold onto your blade, so you slashed with all the force you could muster at the demon’s head and neck. You were able to inflict a deep wound in the creature’s face, though of course not fatal. Its grip on you loosed, and you were able to wriggle out of its grasp and drop back down on your feet to the ground below.

At this point, you locked in and began fighting the demon with a vigor you’d never had on missions before. Your recent heartbreak fueled a new passion in you that strengthened your grip on your sword and sharpened your mind to form battle strategies. You were able to slash wildly and accurately enough with your blade that you had backed the demon into a corner in its retreat, crouching as it reformed the arm you had slashed off seconds ago. It appeared you had the upper hand, so you raised your sword for the killing blow while the demon was looking at his new limb regrowth.

Suddenly, a scorching hot pain consumed your left side. The demon had scored large and deep cuts across your torso while you had been too focused on its other arm and hitting its neck. You muttered a curse—both at the demon and at yourself for your failure—and fell to the ground. Your ears rang and your eyes blurred, mouth filling with cotton as you lay on the ground. You thought you heard your name being called faintly, but as your eyes drifted closed, you couldn’t find the will to care.

Blinking against harsh light, you hissed at the brightness of the room you were currently lying in. You felt groggy and exposed at the same time, beginning to move your head side to side in search of someone else nearby who could answer some questions that were slowly populating in your mind. It looked like you were in the infirmary at the butterfly mansion, but why would you be here as a patient? Nothing had happened to you that you could remember....

To your left, you noticed that there was a pillow and blanket draped across a chair in the corner of the room nearest your bed. A book lay open on the side table, a half empty cup beside it; clearly someone had been sitting with you and hopefully they were coming back before too long to retrieve their things.

Movement caught your eye on the other side of the room, and looking over you saw Shinobu step through the doorway. Her eyes were already on you as she crossed the room’s threshold, and you noticed the falter in her step and the widening of her eyes as she registered that you were awake.

“Y/n! I’m so happy to see that you are awake. I was just about to re-check your vitals while you were asleep, and I’ll proceed to check them now that you’re awake. Once I get them, I will go fetch Tomioka and let him know that you’ve woken up.”

“T- Tomioka?” Your voice was rough as you questioned the mention of his name. Why would he come see you? He didn’t even like you really, he had cut things off with you with such detachment he surely didn’t care about your wellbeing too much. Bitterness flooded your mind at the memory of your secret relationship with him and how hurtful the end of it had been.

“Yes of course! He was the one who brought you in; he found you on your last mission greatly injured- it turns out the demon we had thought to be a lower level threat was a lower moon. He’s been sitting with you every day since you’ve been recovering here in the infirmary. He even denied a mission that he had been assigned so that he could remain here to watch over you.” Her eyes sparkled as she told you this, as if she knew something that you didn’t quite yet.

What? Surely you were still unconscious. There’s no way that this was true. Tomioka had never refused a mission for any reason, especially not a reason as trivial as a.... friend.... being injured.

Shinobu had already left the room before you could ask further questions, so you settled back against your pillow as your mind raced. Not even two minutes later, Tomioka rushed through the door with a quickness normally reserved for battle.

“Y/n, are you feeling alright? Do you hurt anywhere? I can ask Kocho to bring you something for pain...” He trailed off, looking back toward the door he had come through, already having kneeled by your bedside.

“T- Tomioka, I’m confused-“

“Giyuu. Call me Giyuu, y/n, please.”

Your brow furrowed further than it had been already, Giyuu’s eyes finally having reached your face and registering your expression.

“Okay, Giyuu. I greatly appreciate you saving my life of course, but I’m confused about why you are here. Shinobu said you’ve been here the entire time I’ve been unconscious also, which is... actually I’m not sure how long, but-“

“A month,” he answered matter of factly.

“A month?! You’ve been by my bedside for an entire month? Tomioka, you-“

“Giyuu.”

“Giyuu, you don’t even like me to my knowledge. Please don’t interrupt me anymore, by the way. You cut things off between us with hardly an explanation as to why. I was perfectly content with the arrangement we had but you cut me off, quite coldly. I was hurt by it, deeply.” You couldn’t help the way your expression arranged into a scowl at the memory of the pain you’d felt.

“And I saw that. I’m so sorry, y/n. I never meant to hurt you, I thought that by ending things with you I was doing you a favor. That last night with you, when you ........., I realized that the feelings on your end were real also and I didn’t want to hurt you further by denying you later on and leading you on.” He reached for your hand as he said this, grasping your cold one in his strong, calloused warmth.

“Wait, also? What do you mean by also?”

“I... Y/n, I thought it was obvious. I love you. I have loved you since the first time we spoke, and I’ve been terrified of you finding out when we would see each other in the night. But how could you not know? I called on you so much, I... I thought I was being transparent, but I couldn’t make myself resist you if you were willing to be with me that way. I’m sorry, Y/n, I’m so sorry to have ever hurt you.”

Your brows remained scrunched in confusion. He loves you? Then why...?

“But, that last night, you told me we couldn’t see each other anymore. I don’t understand why you did all that if you felt the same way.”

“Honestly, as scared as I was of losing you, I was more scared of truly being with you in a relationship. I didn’t think I could give you what you need, what you deserve....” He cast his eyes down. “Y/n, you deserve better than me, and I thought that by cutting you off before things got too real I could spare you.”

Your mouth hung open in disbelief at what you heard, a laugh without humor bursting forth from your lips before you answered.

“Spare me? The pain I felt was unbearable, Giyuu. I fell for you long before that night. It was way too late at that point. You should’ve talked to me.”

“I know that know. But when I found you with that demon, there was so much blood and you looked so hurt I... I didn’t know if you’d make it, and it scared me more than anything else I’ve ever gone through. And though I still think I’m undeserving of having the privilege of calling you mine, I can promise you that I will try every day to be the man you need me to be. I want to be worthy of you, I just.... I just want you, Y/n.”

His eyes met your gaze with an intensity that made your heart leap in your chest. Or maybe that was the weight of his words, or the warmth of his hand covering yours, or a million other tiny perfect aspects of this moment that you shared with him. You couldn’t fight the tears that flooded your eyes, your lips turning up into a watery smile. All you could muster was a nod, a confirmation that you wanted this with him, that you wanted him just as badly. Unable to refrain any longer, you reached your arms out and looped them around his neck, pulling him into an embrace that he was more than happy to return, wrapping his strong arms around your waist and burying his face into your neck. After a few moments of holding each other Giyuu pulled his face back slightly, a question in his gaze as he glanced between your eyes and your lips. Without hesitation, you brought your mouth to his and sank into his kiss. You could feel his lips turn up into a smile as they moved against yours, and your body relaxed further into his embrace as your fingers reached around to tangle in his hair. You’d missed this so much, and now you’d never have to be without it.

Someone cleared their throat and you both broke away, turning to look at who it was, though neither of you broke your embrace. Shinobu stood holding a tray of varying medicines along with some food and water. Her ever-present smile adorning her face held a genuine warmth looking at the two of you.

“I apologize for interrupting, but Y/n, I need to administer your medications. It won’t take very long. Tomioka, you can stay if you’d like.”

He backed from your bedside, though his fingers remained tangled in yours and his lips remained upturned. His hand stayed locked in yours through the administration of your medications, and after that, your meal and your nap was well, and when you woke up from it he was still at your side, brushing the hair back from your forehead and smiling down at you tenderly. He gave you a peck right above your eyebrow before pulling away.

“I love you, y/n. I’m here now, I always will be.”

#kny giyuu #giyuu tomioka #demon slayer giyuu #demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #anime #demon slayer fanfic #kny fanfic #giyuu x reader #anime and manga #smut

235 notes · View notes

39oa · 2 years

Text

(nonsensical hrpf data exercise) degree centrality graphing & other archive insights

intro/prior work

hello 🙇‍♀️ i'm not sure this post will make any kind of sense at all, but i love analyzing ao3 data and i especially find it fascinating in the realm of sports/hrpf because of the amount of player- and team-related attributes that offer dimensionality to fandom analysis when examined in parallel with archive metrics. i've already kind of done hrpf overviews on two separate occasions over the past year or so, but my method of collection differed in each instance and also always gave me new things to chew on and potentially explore, such as expanding on the link between player talent and shippability and whether high-draft picks have more fic written for them on average.

i most recently examined player data based on aggregated relationship counts since 2022, but this was a limited snapshot meant to piece together recent ficdom trends (see top ships since 01/01/22) and not be representative of fandom overall. basically, things i want to visualize/talk about now are:

hockey is so widespread as a sports fandom because there are 32 teams in the league, which when compared to a community like f1 makes it difficult to succinctly summarize primary relationships for. there is no self-contained grid of 20 drivers that remains generally fixed within a season, where every move in/out of that "roster" is highly reported upon and instrumental to fandom makeup, but instead a more amorphous network of malleable rosters featuring high-variance cascading orders of character visibility; in short, the difference between the most and least popular driver in f1 fandom is not the same as the difference between sidney crosby and that one ahl lifer who was called up to your 4th line two months ago because your team is utterly decimated and gunning for bedard.

Still: because rosters are so malleable and trades happen with some amount of frequency, and because hockey is still an "insular" ecosystem in terms of geographic accessibility and junior-age development (for better or worse; mostly for worse, but that's neither here nor there), players intrinsically have a low degree of separation between one another, whether it be as teammates now or as friends growing up in the ohl, ntdp, etc. i therefore wanted to take that a step further and look at it through fic metrics especially: can we use a summary of ficdom's real, tangible output and visualize it through a similar network? (+ where and how does that network differ from player connections in practice?)

back to the impact of draft pick # and assessments of talent relative to popularity, i also wanted to look at the most "successful" ships in ficdom from this network and evaluate the different distributions and impacts of their respective attributes. are certain player positions more popular? which nationalities are the most commonly shipped?

etc. But let's just get into it.

process

getting any kind of information from a 60%-locked fandom on ao3 is a nightmare and introduces a myriad of data-collecting limitations, so i do feel it important to disclaim that what i present in this post functions more in the realm of Approximate Interpretation and Potential Correlation than any actual 100% objective representation of fandom metrics.

a perceived limitation i have with character tagging metrics on ao3 is that they don't exactly reflect shippability; that is, if q.hughes is tagged as a character in a n.hischier/j.hughes fic, it gets attributed to his character tag but doesn't actually say anything about how many Relationship Fics exist for him on a whole. my best solution for this was essentially uncovering most of a player's relationships and summing their individual fic counts to create an approximate # of "relationship fics" for each player. so any kind of shippability graph going forward will use that metric.

i used ao3's relationship tag search and filtered by canonical in the men's hockey rpf fandom and only pulled relationship* fics ("/" instead of "&") with a min. of 20 works. ao3's counts are... Not the most accurate, so my filtering may have fudged some things around or missed a few pairings on the cusp, which again is why all the visuals here are not meant to show Everything in the most exact manner but function more so as a "general overview" of ficdom. although i did doublecheck the ship counts so the numbers themselves are accurate as of time of collection.

(*i excluded wag ships, reader ships, threesomes to make my life easier although i know this affects numbers for certain players, hc/gm ships, and any otherwise non-NHL Player ship. for ex., this eliminated anna kasterova/evgeni malkin, tyler brown/tyler seguin, and kyle dubas/william nylander, just to name a few)

all ship data was collected march 16, 2023.

PART 1. SC87 ship networking

when i first began this exercise i tried graphing ships for all the first-overall picks from 2003-2022 because i wanted to get an overarching sense of their connections. however, doing so made me realize that sidney crosby was by and far the most-connected node in the graph (and basically all hrpf in general) with a degree of 11, and that he was centering one huge component to which only two ships failed to connect (op/kj and slaf/xhekaj). basically:

so then i was like, right! let me instead use sidney crosby as my sole starting node, map out all ships with 20+ works from him specifically, take the players he connects to and map out their corresponding ships (excluding sid) and just keep iterating until i basically reach a final child node. through this, i yielded 112 ships and 98 unique players, with my final connecting node coming 9 degrees of separation away through brady tkachuk ↔ tim stützle/quinn hughes. unfortunately i can't actually host this little code snippet anywhere lol but i also wrote an input to check the pathways between any two players which was kind of fun:

here is the actual network graph with colors from automatically generated clustering, which doesn't really mean much but i thought was one nice way of presenting it. the edge width refers to the sum of fics for each ship and the node size refers to the degree, or number of ships, for each player.

i then also joined my player set with a dataset that included draft year, drafted team, position, etc... and through that color-coded the graph with the team each player was originally drafted to (i always struggle between using current team and draft team because which one matters more is super contextual, but... using draft team made my life easier this time so i hope it's still interesting.) here i only included colors for 13 teams that had 3+ players each:

→ [full-size graph]

we can do a bit more analysis based on this specific sidcros network, like which players are the "most-shipped" or overviewing cross-team shipping tendencies:

but! of course, not ALL big hrpf ships lead back to sc87. using him as a central node essentially just helped me filter out excess "noise" when searching for relationship tags on ao3, because now i could exclude anyone connected to him at all (note: the relationship fics from my set equaled upward of 19,000 works, accounting for 60.4% of the entire men's hockey rpf archive) and hit other significant tags more efficiently.

through this method, i singled out a new set of 76 ships and 134 unique players (notice the significant decrease in overlap), which i then combined with my sid ships to create one massive set of Hockey Ships With Over 20+ Works On Ao3 that i could analyze holistically. no idea if this makes any sense but bear with me:

PART 2. general ship insights

i won't bore people with endlessly listing out ship rankings but here's the previous top chart with the new ships slotted in:

now for some overall player analysis!

first i wanted to look at how attributes like draft round, nationality, and position (F/D/G) are represented in the player set.

the nationality distribution is pretty close to all active nhl players this season, so there aren't major disparities there. however, the vast majority of players 1) were drafted in the first round and 2) are mostly forwards, with the forwards also seemingly reflecting the general philosophy of faster development/higher recent-round representation. we can take this overview a step further and actually examine the fic averages for each characteristic as a proxy for measuring shippability/ficdom popularity.

first, i scatterplotted all players by their draft pick and number of fic to (try and) show the heavy skew toward top picks (inspired by the gar draft pick value curve and other similar plots). this is... well, limited in many ways, and if i had an actually adequately large dataset i could specifically plot averages per distinct pick number and try to present something there, but the problem is that a lot of these later pick numbers only have like one player so there's way too much variance LOL.

but just for the sake of this exercise i excluded j.benn as an outlier and grouped fic averages by round (left below). again, noting the sample sizes, let's just say that first rounders on average seem to have the most fic written about them, even if it's not a particularly shocking insight. we can also try creating a histogram for "shippability" by draft year, binning here for every 2 years, to see which draft years appear to have had the most success (right below). note the peaks around 2005 and 2015, aka the sc87 and cm97 ~Generational Years~ 🤔

i've also been interested in figuring out which positions are commonly preferred—since centers are so often the faces of a franchise and are essentially the most sought-after position, and since goalies occupy a positionally static role/are less oriented toward contact (and the presumed homoeroticness thereof) in the way skaters are, is that reflected in the fic metrics as well? turns out: yes.

some ship analysis

learning more about player data in a vacuum is fun, but we also have all of this relationship data that lets us examine how different characteristics interact with each other, which is meaningful as well! for example, we know that forwards are heavily represented in the dataset, but is center4center the most common combination? or is there love for a franchise center and his beloved winger or the team's dependable 1d?

(fought for my life trying to figure out how to map this properly so please accept a horrible bar chart instead) as it turns out, the most common combination is centers/wingers, followed afterward by centers/centers. i don't know whether this really means much to me because i'd like to dissect the combos even further (is C/C more often 1C 2C or cross-team rivalry 1C shipping? are C/W usually linemates? etc.) but 🤷‍♀️ here's a graph.

i also distributed ships by their nationality combination, displaying to the surprise of no one a heavy preference (a whopping 66.4%!) for north american-exclusive shipping. i also thought stacking by "draft year" (= averaging the draft year between both players for each ship) offered some interesting insight into usa4usa shipping having slightly younger representation. also i do think usa/germany being singlehandedly driven up this chart by one family is remarkable and hilarious LOL.

also in the realm of draft year analysis, i wanted to look at draft year differences and whether fandom preferences seem to lie by way of same-age-ish pairings and In-Class Bicycling so to speak. graphing ships by these differences spanned a range of 20 years, with the oldest "age" (draft) difference being 20 years between zdeno chara and charlie mcavoy. overall, of 175 ships with a drafted player, 60.5% were drafted within 2 years of each other (18.2% in the same draft), and only 5% had a draft difference of 10 or more years.

then, of those 32 ships drafted within the same year, i distributed their counts by year to see which draft classes featured the biggest in-class clusters, leading us again to the Famed Class of 2015:

closing thoughts

i'll stop here :saluting_face: something else i had on the agenda that i don't really know how to adequately explore with this dataset is basically stanley cup champion stuff, e.g. looking at players and ships and fic counts from winning teams and how/whether a sort of "winning bias" has been trending down as of late (see the relative success of ships from teams like phi/ana compared to tbl/stl)—temporal data is so particular and difficult to wrangle with ao3 though so i'll have to let this one percolate a little bit.

finally, another thing (!) that i love examining is captaincy and how it often helps inform shippability; C/A/guyswithletters shipping obviously generously overlaps with being drafted early, high-impact players, some positional stuff like Young Star Center having the role foisted onto him, etc. and many of these aspects are immediately identifiable in top ships like 8771, 1634, 1386... just to name a few obvious ones. unfortch i don't really have the time or space to look at that here but it's something i'm still interested in maybe expanding on, and i also never ended up collecting actual skater *performance* data which would be super fun to eventually get to, e.g. mapping ficdom output to not just background identifiers like draft year/pick but also 1) actual tangible evaluations of player goals/points/(salary?!?)/etc. and 2) some dimension of draft outperformance/underperformance, which is pertinent for scenarios like late-round picks who have defied career expectations (see outlier jbenn having a shit ton of lifetime fic) AND early-round picks whose trajectories have not panned out as expected for whatever reason; often the ~tragic~ frustration of being a bust actually invites more narrative focus and scrutiny, but at the same time ficdom trends have pointed themselves to being attracted to many historic, talented, generational, and so on players, who more often than not are also winners, which potentially posits a need for some sustained line of access/visibility to high-expectation players significantly before they're regarded as "busts" in order to organically grow and generate initial interest that can survive the renewed reality of their situation. but who knows

again, i don't know whether any of this even makes sense or is interesting to literally anyone at all, but i personally enjoyed just dicking around graphing shit and getting to join a ton of tables together for absolutely no reason lol. that's all!

#(extremely long post warning)#*m #stats #>guy who needs to reflect

486 notes · View notes

haleswallows · 2 months

Note

✄ and ♡ for you! I know it says 'pick a fic' but can I just ask about the entire Incident Report series for the favourite line? If not then just do the first one.

Editing process! I work in big word documents. When I'm jumping back in, I'll reread a bit. Fix typos/errors, rephrase things. Very recently, I've started writing out of order. This let's me rearrange scenes. Also, keeps me writing because I'm always working on the part I want to be, not slogging through to get to that beautiful scene in my brain.

Hahaha, we're doing all 6 Incident Reports!

“The Lord of Fear is born from the collective human memory of terror. As long as mankind has feared the unknown, of what lurks in the dark, I have existed.” Bro.

Because I love how irreverent Tim is this entire first summoning. He's like "Bet. This is happening. Wanna help me be a stalker?"

And meanwhile Fright Knight is like "This child does not comply with my understanding of children. I have Concerns."

“So like, spirit. The Ghost of Human Terrors Past and Future can use a phone? How does that work? Did the academy secretary hear the screams of the damned during that call?”

I just love the entire phone call bit.

Impossibly, Fright Knight straightens further. “It is what we do in spite of the fear. For there's the rub, to endure or to concede. Thus, many have fought against me and prevailed regardless of odds.”

Awww Frighty being like "humans are great" while not minutes earlier he was bitchy about Tim being a soft fragile human.

This one is hard to pick for. Not because it isn't good, it's one of my favorites. But it's more of an exploration, not zings or one-liners. But I love this symmetrical moment:

A stranger looks back at Tim from the mirror. Tim doesn’t recognize himself, more ghost than anything else. Everything feels far away.

And

When he looks back to the mirror, Fright Knight stands behind him. Tim doesn’t turn, opting to observe the spirit through the reflection. It’s familiar. It’s different. Everything is so fucked up.

When I was writing, I was thinking of Tim feeling unsteady. He looks and doesn't recognize himself. He looks again, and finds something familiar. I wanted a push/pull of Tim getting to know himself. Fright Knight gives him guidance during that time through confronting fear, but also being a safety net.

“I believe you are familiar with the definition of insanity.”

“Sure, I am. Would you prefer Merriam-Webster or Oxford English?” Tim quips with a smirk. The glare intensifies and he can't help but laugh.

This is one of the funniest things I've ever written. Convince me otherwise. My other choice for #5 would be Fright Knight looking at the photos.

“Uncle Frank Night? Uncle Frank Night?”

“You named him what?” Phantom crows. “Fright Knight, elder spirit, endless fear incarnate. And you named him… Frank?”

“I was sixteen and stressed!” The defense falls flat.

“I can't believe you tried to pass off this,” Dick gestures at Fright Knight with a jab, “as a living relative!”

“Hey, that's not fair –,”

“-- please know, I'm going to call him –,”

“-- Fright Knight has feelings and you're being rude–,”

“-- he's a haunted suit of armor, Tim!”

“-- Frank during court from now on –.”

“-- yeah, Dick, and I've known him longer than you –.”

Actually near impossible to pick for this one. Honorable mentions: Danny's explanation of how he knows Jason, Fridge haunting/food unionizing, Alfred and Fright Knight colluding, Dick continually losing his shit.

#My writing #Ask game #Shadow-pixelle #I'm on mobile and formating is ass

8 notes · View notes

my-castles-crumbling · 2 months

Note

hi cas!! okay im just gonna pray to the lord that this wouldnt come out racist. week ago my little sister asked me “ people get upset when they draw black people white, so why dont they get upset when they draw white people black??” i honestly never give that much thoughts before so this question really threw me off guard. bc of that i cant give a proper answer to her and shes been asking the same question since then. i was kind of afraid people will saw it as racism so i was hoping that you would understand it and if its not a bother i hooe you can give me an answer to this

loveed the new chap of clandestine btw!! your jegulus makes me feel single in the best way posiible!! hope you had a good day

Ooo okay so please keep in mind that I'm white, so the things I'm saying are based off of what I've learned from research. Please please if someone sees something that is wrong, correct me!

First, I think it's important to listen to what POC have said on this subject. Here is a link to a youtube video I just watched by a POC creator and artist that does an amazing job of breaking down why this is an issue and how to correct it- even going into techniques for drawing darker skin. At time mark 4:25, he answers your specific question. This is, hands down, the best place to get your answer.

Basically, society has a history of whitewashing. For centuries, POC have been erased- taken out of history, not been given proper/literally any rights or voices, literally killed and hunted down. Both their achievements and the way they have been targeted have been purposely not discussed or reported on, and please be aware that even though people disagree, this is still a constant problem. It's not going away.

Society whitewashes in so many ways it's impossible to count them all- giving white people credit for the work of POC; casting white people for the roles of POC characters; basing healthcare rules on research conducted only on white people; teachers taking points from students if they don't use 'Standard' American English and instead speak using AAVE or HVE terms even if they still get answers completely correct; schools only teaching the history of historically white countries and populations; the list goes on and on and on.

Keep in mind too that for years, diversity in literature and media was close to nonexistent in most places. Why? Because any literature created by POC or about POC is not taught or as widely distributed. Think about the books you were/are given in school. Any books from years ago don't have racially diverse characters, and if they do, they either are a caricature of their race, or are solely written about based on the 'struggle of being their race.' They are not given the 'luxury' of personality traits outside their race. It is only recently, as POC have spoken out about this issue and are being given the chance to publish their own work with characters that reflect them, that main characters can both be black AND solve a murder mystery- amazing! (/sarcasm). So now that we are starting to see more diversity in media, it is vital not to take that away.

So, with that knowledge about the history behind whitewashing and lack of racial diversity in media, you now know the context. So when a person chooses to draw a black character as white, they are taking with them all of that history and context. And in a moment, by drawing that character white, they are bringing back that context, and taking away the diversity that is so needed in literature.

And- why? Why do people insist on drawing canonically black characters as white? There is no good reason. People can say "oh, I think she'd be better as white" but that's just racism, plain and simple. If an artist doesn't know how to draw dark skin, they can look up a video.

In contrast, drawing a canonically white character as a different race doesn't take anything from them. It doesn't bring up a history or context with centuries of racism behind it. The only thing it does is add diversity to a fandom and allow people to see characters that look like themselves in media where they might not have.

I hope this makes sense and I hope I've done the topic justice! Please know that any racist or hateful comments on this ask will be deleted, but if someone has anything to add or any corrections to make, please let me know!

#ask #asks #ask cas #fanart

19 notes · View notes

mejomonster · 1 year

Text

Okay so I've been reading Red White and Royal Blue the novel and I'm thrilled to report it IS a different experience.

I saw the movie first? Phenomenal. On its own merit, as it's own experience, hands down best movie I saw this year. And definitely one of my fave romances I've seen (along with But I'm a Cheerleader).

This book? I can see already the impression that the movie simplified, softened, and changed some things in some areas. I think the movie, based on the 100 pages I've read so far of the book, changed enough that the movie does read as different characters In The Spirit and Themes of the book. Movie Alex is like book Alex, but almost another universe of him (like Guardian Zhao Yunlan in chinese drama versus book). Henry so far reads as similar in novel to movie, but movie did not have the time to do his traits with as much nuance. Which like. I think many movie differences were made for making a concise movie length story, a slightly more on the nose story to make the main points hit audiences strong enough to get understood clearly, and to of course emphasize more of the points the movie script aimed to emphasize and focus on in that limited time.

I'm reading the book now. And delighted to say Alex's family is handled with much more nuance. Also the book is fascinating in my experience as the first fictional novel I've ever read with so much clear real life applicable casual political references. I've seen biographies and nonfiction books do this on occasion, but it's fascinating seeing a fiction novel do it. I think it's a brave and higher risk writing choice as it's both individual to author and even more so using the political as a reflection of characters, drawing concrete lines by which to judge them in the sort of terrifying "this stuff effects people's lives" way real public figures get judged. Fitting in seeing Alex and June as Public figures, but also risking as a writer your characters No Longer conforming to the "everyday man" character everyone can project onto. Bella in Twilight has a lot of Mormon related cultural experiences bleeding into how she's written, but the author didn't make her overly Mormon with a church she belonged to and overt commentary on that religious view of the world in relation to say Vampires and marriage and sex. (There are books that do tho, I've read realistic fiction like The Poisonwood Bible about missionaries which very much heavily directly discussed real religions and those beliefs effecting people's personalities and actions in the story). It's interesting to see a Romance novel go for the specific at the risk of making those characters less easy to "project" onto. I prefer this choice, the same way Fingersmith by Sarah Waters is one of my favorite romances and those two fucked up women sure aren't "everyday" average joes you can project onto. This writing choice makes the points made in Red White and Royal Blue a lot more pointed qnd with a lot more to back them up. It's interesting seeing. The movie definitely toned down things in this regard (while still including more overt politics than I've seen in many romances except say But I'm a Cheerleader with its brazen condemnation of conversion camps). I can see how the movie flattened Ellen to make her a more likable less flawed person, because it's easier to sell a loving mom President in a movie under limited time to give her no Significant Flaws. But the book has time to hammer her stubbornness has destroyed personal things, at times clashes strongly with her son who turned out so much like her (and is partly why June does not click with mom the way Alex does), how moms choices and personality were not necessarily good for June and Alex at times, how Alex clearly learned to be a workaholic qnd avoid his personal pain by being stubborn like his mom. She's someone he admires, and someone he emulates both good and bad, and someone he's infuriated that has those stubborn workaholic realistic traits he's copied. But a movie doesn't have time for the good and the bad, the realism of the damage all parents in some ways cause even if unintentional, the realism of what going through divorce means for each partner and their kids. The movie doesn't divorce them, because it's easier to sell a married mom as a positive (like the book lol comments on). I get it.

Anyway more on Alex's family. I deeply appreciate they're flawed and realistic in the book. In the movie, in its own interesting way I found it interesting to watch Alex (raised primarily with secure attachments and open loving secure support from both parents Together) with Henry who did NOT have the same emotional relationships foundation from family (only his Sister being a Safe Enough relationship to trust to emotionally rely on). Versus now the book, seeing they actually both can bond over these imperfect situations of their families. Which in its way, is realistic to many people who've found love. It gives them more to see understanding with each other in. And in Alex's case in the book in particular, his background details give us more about who he is qnd what drives him. The movie had to simplify those elements of him qnd Harry outside romance in order to tell a timely romance story. The book has more space for those individual character stories of trauma and pain and growth and connection.

#lb #red white and royal blue

30 notes · View notes

dewitty1 · 2 years

Text

Fic Recs Wrap Up - February 2023 (ノﾟ∀ﾟ)ノ⌒･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*☆

Vis-à-Vis-à-Vis by Vukovich @vukovich

Harry’s assignment was simple. Close out Draco Malfoy’s missing persons case so he can be declared dead.

But who’s making withdrawals from Malfoy’s vaults? How is a death omen-turned-Unspeakable involved? Is an organization known as the Moirai to blame?

Harry brushes it off until he can’t. Until The Prophet is flooded with sightings of dead people. Until Robards throws himself on his sword. Until Ron turns on his own family. Until Harry scarcely trusts his own reflection in the mirror and trusts the stranger in his bed even less.

Until all that stands between war and peace is Harry, a name plate, a stadium of murderers, and Draco Malfoy.

God save the Ministry. Rec Post

Harry Potter and the Chariot of the Sun by Philosopherscribe

Hot on the trail of a Dementor-worshipping cult, Harry plays a dangerous game with an old enemy. Rec Post

Little Deaths and How to Avoid Them (or Draco Malfoy’s Guide to Stop Dying and Start Living Instead) by dustmouth, nerakrose, art by dustmouth, written by @greaseonmymouth

Malfoy is way too interested in coroner reports for somebody who’s definitely not looking for ways to die, Harry wants to be friends with him, and Ginny wants to break up with Harry. Rec Post

The Garland Gay by Vaysh

Draco Malfoy has it all – sex, money, power. But a family secret threatens to become the undoing of the successful head of Malfoy Bank. His troubles bring him to private investigator Harry Potter, who lost it all – girlfriend, Galleons, Auror career – over a tenacious obsession with a certain blond. Both become entangled in the vengeful schemes of a stranger from the past. As much as Draco tries to resist, in the end, he must make a fateful choice for the man he is destined to love. Rec Post

Eagles in Truro (Alt: That filthy one that snuck in a plot.) by Vukovich @vukovich

Hermione Granger just wants to get laid and maybe someday become Supreme Mugwump. Ronald Weasley just wants to build a dubiously-criminal empire and hug everybody. Harry Potter just wants… he’s not sure, but it might be Malfoy. Draco Malfoy just wants to survive the post-war world. And snuggles. A story about four lonely people in a mineshaft in Cornwall, and blasting a home in bedrock when nothing else quite fits. Hermione: Excuse me. This is a political thriller, but it’s also how I ended up in a really complicated relationship. Ron: It’s not that complicated. And it’s a love story. Draco: He’s right. Harry: You always side with Ron. It’s an action story. I got stabbed. Draco: Sorry about that. But you’re all wrong. This is art. And SMUT. All: Oh… Rec Post

My Best Friend, the Serial Killer by trishjames @thusspoketrish

Draco’s best friend and flatmate Pansy Parkinson is a lot of things: she’s beautiful, intelligent, doting, and a bit unnerving…but Draco loves her all the same, even if he has to clean up after her bloody – ah, messy romantic breakups more than usual. He doesn’t mind, after all, what are best friends for?

But Draco starts to question just how far his love can go when Pansy brings home her next victim – ah, boyfriend, Harry Potter. Rec Post

Here are a few more fics I've read recently that y'all might like to check out as well! (ﾉ^ヮ^)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

By the Grace by lettered @letteredlettered

Harry is an Auror instructor. Malfoy wants to be an Auror.

Away, Away by Aelys_Althea @aelysalthea

Abandonment didn't sit well with Harry. Not at all. After the calamity that was the end of the Triwizard Tournament and the dismissal of his friends over the summer, he decides: enough is enough. He's done. Done with it all. He just wanted to get away. But the Wizarding world, as it happens, isn't quite finished with him. No matter how far he runs, it always catches back up to him. Years after turning from those who left him, Harry is dragged back to that world once more. Many find him far changed from the boy who'd once known. Some - some very few - even like that change. Draco Malfoy just happens to be one of those chosen few.

In the Shadow of Your Heart by lq_traintracks (lumosed_quill) @lqtraintracks

And thus began the very strange circumstance of their fake dating in public and real fucking in absolute secret. It was, with no comparison, the weirdest relationship Draco had ever been in – which was to say, it wasn't one.

what husbands are for by softlystarstruck @softlystarstruck

To settle tensions between werewolves and vampires, Harry volunteers for a political marriage. But it turns out he's marrying Malfoy– cold, untouchable Malfoy, who he hasn't seen in ten years. Throughout contention and politics, werewolf pub nights and grudgingly shared meals, they have to make it work.

And in the midst of it all, Harry finds something he already gave up hoping for.

( •ॢ◡-ॢ)-♡ I hope you enjoy these fics as much as I have! Happy reading, y’all! xoxo Carey (◍•ᴗ•◍)♡ ✧*💜💙💚💛❤💗💕💖

59 notes · View notes

kitsunerokko · 1 year

Text

"When destruction came for our lonesome island, the Turaga knew it would be time for a new group of heroes to arrive. They would be our protectors, our champions... our Toa. But surely something must be afoot. Those chosen by the stones surely cannot be Dosa Nui's heroes! They had, and continue to have, many... problems, that don't inspire confidence in the Turaga, or myself. Their forms even seem as if the Great Spirit saw our image of the ideal Toa and twisted them. They are not the heroes we wanted, but they are the heroes we've got. And so I must, I must believe in them. Or we are all lost." -Chrouhi the Chronicler

So in the past two days I decided to give my OC Toa team a bit of a facelift, reflecting more of what I've learned of using stud.io since my older renders of the team!

Background Image in the Group Photo is edited from a Creative Commons photo by Horia Varlan.

And for individual character blurbs (written from the perspective of the Chronicler character, and so adescribe them before their character development), can be found after the jump!

"Takara is the team's Toa of Fire. His Toa Tools are the Grand Firestaff and the Flare Buster. As I've chronicled many, many, MANY times, he's long been something of a troublemaker, with pranks, ill-thought-out plans, and plenty of disruption. Including intruding on the duties of yours truly. He initially was considered the leader, until his boneheadedness led to disasterous results and lost him the team's respect. Being a Toa has not changed him one bit, much to my dismay."

"Kaumi is the team's Toa of Water. Her Toa Tools are the Mariner's Boneblade and the Zamor Soaker. She is very headstrong and stubborn, never giving up until she gets her way, no matter whom she may anger. Despite her butting heads with, well, anyone, she has at least proven she has a good heart. I've lost count of how many times she was the head of positive social change in our island's history. No doubt this is why she is leader of the Toa Dosa now."

"Okolu is the team's Toa of Ice. His Toa Tools are the Ice Axe, Zamor Snowshot, and, bizarrely, the Hot-Plasma Launcher. He's... eccentric, is the nicest way to put it. He's got lots of positive energy for sure, but seems to have absolutely no filter and other people always seem to be bothered by him. It's actually kind of sad... especially since he's the source of the current singular friendship among the Toa. Granted, this friendship is with Takara so who knows where that influence will end up. Hopefully Okolu's version of 'annoying' wins, personally."

"Kraani is the Team's Toa of Air. His Toa Tools are the Exoskel Shield and the Airblaster. I've heard complaint after complaint about this guy and his snooty, better-than-everyone-else attitude as a Matoran. And much like the others, no change seen so far as a Toa. While he claims to be more effective and smarter than the rest of the team, he has displayed no such standout prowess, though he blames this on his teammates. A Toa really needs to understand the value of teamwork or the team.. will not work."

"Opuro is the Team's Toa of Stone. His Toa Tools are the Twin Dirk and the Chain Ripper. Opuro is extremely competitive and I've written many incident reports where he took things very far when playing sports, doing tasks... if there's a measurable way to outperform someone at something, he'll do it. Sort of like, if Kraani could actually back up his ego. That's Opuro, though at least Opuro is nicer, somewhat. He seems to at least want others to 'get as good' as him, relishing worthy challenges. As such, after becoming Toa he has been very excited, perhaps even too excited, to fight. We'll see if he can last like that..."

"Leonu is the Team's Toa of Earth...? I think. I've never actually seen him use his elemental powers, and apparently no one else has either. Kaumi thinks he might be of another element entirely, and I may be inclined to believe that. I actually don't have much on him compared to the others, he's almost never come up in any news or events I've covered. And interviewing various Matoran around Dosa Nui doesn't yield much either. He's just, very quiet, very keeps to himself, to the degree people just don't know much about him. Anyway, his Toa Tools... the Inika Staff and the Laser Drill."

#bionicle #rokko's bionicle OCs #long post #i spent way too long writing the descriptions fjdhkjdhkjhgkjdsg

16 notes · View notes

idreamofhazeleyes · 8 months

Text

Written in Blood

This is the re-write of "Ties in Blood" I've been putting off for the past couple years. Aeryn Malone is a nursing student at a major Michigan college when she's suddenly introduced to the supernatural world.

@squirrelnotsam @impala-dreamer @mrswhozeewhatsis @idreamofplaid

Chapter 1

“Hey, Emily,” I greeted as I dumped my class books onto my cluttered dorm desk.

Exhaustion crept through my body as I reminded myself that I had work in about forty five minutes. Third year nursing classes were kicking my ass. I wasn’t sure what drove me into taking the nursing program at the Southeast Michigan college. Yet here I was working my way through college. A fleeting thought of calling my brother passed through my mind.

“Hey, Aeryn. Harper called a floor meeting soon. She wanted to make sure we’re all here for it.”

“For what? We’re half way through September already.”

“You’ve heard about the animal attacks, right?”

There had been a few bodies found in the trails and parks in the city that surrounded the university. Reports from the city officials and police said that the victims were missing their hearts and nothing else. No one knew what animal in the area that could take down a fully grown human and just take the heart.

“What about it?” I asked, half knowing what it was about the animal attacks.

“Probably has new safety things for us to follow,” Emily said.

Any hope of a shower had gone out the window thanks to the floor meeting Harper wanted to have. A quick wash at the sink and putting on some makeup would have to do. I pulled out my make up bag and shuffled through it and decided on little make up due to the time. Enough to make me look less tired. My icy blue eyes reflected back in the mirror. My skin was pale despite the late summer sun. Too many hours indoors for classes and laboratory work. No amount of make up would cover up how tired I was.

“Come on,” Emily called when I finished with the makeup.

“Hold up.” I stepped out of the bathroom. “I’m nearly ready.”

Back in the room, I pulled out a women’s v cut shirt for work that show enough cleavage to be flirty and slipped off the men’s shirt I’ve worn all day. A number of patrons at the bar I worked at seemed to respond with flirting if I wore clothes that flatter my figure.

Emily was at the door when I finished dressing. We left the room and made our way down to the common area where other women our age had gathered.

“Okay, everyone,” Harper called over the general chattering of the dozen or so women. “I know you all have plans this evening, but this is important. The University is stressing the òimportance of being careful when going out at night. We don’t know what sort of animal is causing the maulings, so whenever you all go out at night, do your best to travel in groups. If you cannot do that, tell anyone in this group where you’re going and how long you may be gone for. Let anyone know when you’re on the way home from work or the library or classes. Understood?”

There was a gathering of nods or acknowledgements.

“Alright,” Harper finished. “Be careful out there and be aware of your surroundings.”

The group of floor mates started to disperse and talking about the new guidelines while Emily and I worked our way back to our own room.

“Any idea what the creature is?” Emily asked when we walked back in.

I shook my head. “I doubt that there’s any animals that are big enough to take down a fully grown human or would just take the hearts and nothing else. I don’t know any creature that could do that. Do you?”

Emily shook her head.

I gathered my bag and ensured that I had everything in it before heading for the door.

“I’m off to work. I should be back around ten.”

With my bag in hand, I made my way out of the dorm building and out onto the street. I melded into the crowds of students that were out after a long day of classes. A number of them seemed to have the air of being at the university on their parents’ money. I’ve had students like that in the bar and I refused to serve them. If the students had an issue with being denied service, I would call over a bouncer and have them escort the student out.

Getting to the back door of the building, I saw a couple of the cooks sitting nearby while sharing a joint. I waved in greeting before going in. Taking the elevator down to the kitchen and cutting through to get to the landing, I dumped my bag on the top of the cabinets.

“Hey, Aeryn,” Tami called from the top of the stairs.

“Hey.” I came up into the server area to see Tami and Nikki there. I ducked out into the sitting area and over to a computer monitor and pulled up the clock to clock in.

“Did you hear about the animal attacks?” Nikki asked when I returned to the server area.

I nodded. “Yeah. My RA had a quick meeting before I came here about it. Basically travel in groups or communicate with our dormmates about where we’re going and when we might be back.”

We all eventually dove into serving people. The shift went by quickly enough and there weren’t anyone I did not have to remove. At the end, I cashed out and collected my bag. With a quick text to Emily on the way out, I started to make my way back to the dorm building.

The streets were relatively quiet on the walk back. There was a small breeze that ruffled the leaves. I swore there was a noise on that breeze I could not place at first. It came around again and that time it sounded like a howl. My heart started racing and adrenaline flooded my system. I fought against the urge to run back to the dorm building. If it was a predator, it would be a bad idea to run.

As I turned a corner, I saw a large body on four legs and feeding on a prone body. My own body froze in fear. I stood there for a few moments before noping out of the area. I turned in that weird calm way and started back down the street. There was another way I could take to get back to the dorms.

My hands fumbled a little as I reached for my keys to unlock the main door for the dorm building. I double checked that the door was closed and locked behind me once I was inside. That thing was not a normal creature. Definitely too large for a normal wolf, and there were no wolves in the area. Coyotes, yes. Definitely not wolves.

Emily was passed out on her bed with a class book and study papers before her. I left her to sleep while I gathered things for a shower. The thought of studying passed through my head as the hot water washed over my exhausted body.

<<Chapter Two>>

#spn fanfic #supernatural #john winchester #dean winchester #original character

6 notes · View notes

oromanticism · 2 years

Text

CREEPIN’ PART 1

A/N: Hey guys, this is the first fic im posting here and the first one I've written since my My Little Pony era so in the words of Adele go easy on me.

Word Count: 0.9k

Summary: You're a terrible hider both you and Shuri know this so after being caught and having your plans foiled so many times you decide to conjure up a more elaborate scheme.

Themes: Fluff, Comedy, Very unserious

Today would be the day.

After numerous attempts in the past two weeks, all of which resulted in blank stares and cocky laughter, today would finally be the day you scare Shuri. Shifting quietly in the uncomfortable dark closet you decide to reminisce on all your failed attempts while waiting for your target to arrive

Last Week

“Your highness, I should report Y/N is currently down in the lab”

“Again?” Shuri said through a laugh of both humour and disbelief. This was the third time this week you had tried to scare her and every time you’d forgotten to take off your kimoyo beads that revealed your exact location. If she wasn’t so amused by your persistence and terrible hiding skills she would find this little game quite annoying. But she loved you and she loved winning so in that moment Shuri decided to play along…again.

In a dark corner of the lowest levels in the palace you stood still as a Dora. You were proud of yourself. Learning from your past failures you were dressed in black from head to toe and wore the plushest pair of socks you owned.

Your first attempt ended in Shuri asking what an oversized packet of bubble gum was doing sneaking up behind her. Reflecting on that day made you wonder why you thought wearing pink pyjamas and trying to sneak up on someone standing in front of a mirror was a good idea.

Shivering slightly from the cold floor of the lab, Shuri’s comments about your heavy rhino feet giving you away only stung a tiny bit but at the very least gave you some constructive criticism.

You were ready this time, today would be the day.

The zipping of the elevator informed you of her arrival. Your breath ceased and you proceeded with your best impression of a statue.

Even from the top of the lab Shuri could see you. Given her vision had enhanced significantly since drinking the heart shaped herb but even the oldest of council elders could see you standing in the corner trying not to breathe. At first Shuri thought to simply announce her arrival to make you aware of your fourth failure but just as the words were about to leave her lips the spirit of mischievous took over and she reached for the light switch.

At first you were confused and let out the breath you were holding ‘Was she locking up for the night??’ You thought in a panic ‘Oh no I’m gonna be stuck down here’ The perceived reality of the situation set in and you began to frantically feel around in the dark trying to navigate your way back to the elevator.

“Shuri? Shuri! Wait for me please, I'm still down here!” You pleaded to no response. Panic began to rise up your throat, not only were you stuck down here for the night but it was really dark and you hated the dark.

In a split second just as your foot contacted with the second platform you felt something wrap around your waist and pull you to the floor.

The scream that escaped your body would make even a Dora flinch. Your life began to flash before your eyes and you mentally began your apologies to Baast and your ancestors before a familiar laugh rang through your ears.

“Shuri!” You shrieked, eyes blinking feverishly trying to adjust to the low lighting.

“Griot, turn on the lights” Shuri's voice commanded through coughs and heaves and graced you with the gift of vision again. You turned to your loving girlfriend capsized on the floor laughing and your face began to heat up.

“It’s not funny,” You pouted “You could have given me a heart attack!” Shuri turned to your sulking frame, tears still forming in her eyes and cooed at you.

“I’m sorry love but you make it so easy”

Present Day

Shuri knew you were there. She knew because when she went to grab something from your shared bedroom your kimoyo beads were on the dresser, something you never do unless you both quarrelled in the morning ‘Must have learnt from last time' she left the room in search of her sneaky lover.

When she enquired her favourite AI assistant about what corner you had tucked yourself into Griot responded with

“I have been asked to withhold that information your Highness, my apologies” Shuri scoffed again, since when does an AI not follow her instructions, maybe her mother was right about that. Nevermind Griot’s disloyalty, she knew where you’d be hiding because it’s the same place you hid the other five times. The lab.

Arriving on the bottom floor the elevator doors opened to a suspiciously quiet laboratory. No heavy breathing, no stifled laughs, and no comically timed stomach grumbles. If Y/N was in here she was doing a great job at not making it known. Shuri shut her eyes. She was in search of any sort of clue to where you’d be hiding. She waltzed slowly through the lab whipping her head round corners and swinging closet doors open in an attempt to startle you. When she finished, it was as though a tornado had made its way through the room and yet still no sign of where her girlfriend was hiding.

‘Maybe we fought in the morning and I forgot?’ Shuri disregarded the silly idea because if you two did fight she would have felt a lot worse throughout the day. Shrugging her shoulders Shuri concluded that you must have been hiding somewhere else and she was going to find you.

A/N: reposting this cause tumblr hid my first one, hopefully this one goes alot smoother

#shuri x reader #shuri udaku #shuri #black panther #wakanda forever

138 notes · View notes

girderednerve · 5 months

Text

i read another book! i mean i read it a couple days ago but i forgot to post about it so i am posting now

the book is 'the hammer' by hamilton nolan. it reminded me a lot of 'fight like hell,' which i could not finish (it's not bad but i lost steam; also, the narrator enunciated both Ts in "atlanta", which i might also do if i were narrating a book but nevertheless sounds deeply wrong to me). both of these books are by journalists on the labor beat, and were a little unfocused for my taste. there's a good amount of bouncing around between subjects of past reporting, which is reasonable but doesn't really feel like it's book writing, you know? harder to keep on a central argument.

the central argument of 'the hammer' is that there are a lot of workers who want to organize into unions, that unions desperately need to expand their membership in order to be able to do anything, and that there is a disastrous & ongoing failure of established labor institutions to strategize & commit sufficient resources to new organizing campaigns. i think this premise is very reasonable, so many points there, but there were a few weird choices in this book, probably as a result of the 'bouncing around between subjects of past reporting' thing & the specific time in which the book was written. there is no substantial discussion of the UAW or the election of shawn fain, which feels weird because shawn fain's whole thing is that the UAW is swinging big at labor organizing in the south & they're fighting to get more workers included in UAW contracts, especially in EV manufacturing, and also because shawn fain was elected in no small part by the academic workers in UAW. the 2865 strike was an unholy mess in some very important ways (as an outside observer with an inside friend), but it was still a huge deal in the labor movement. i kept waiting for it to come up and it didn't! instead, there was a ton of stuff about sara nelson. like, not just her high-profile role in the labor movement or that time she called for a general strike or her aspirations for the AFL-CIO, her religious background & her health issues & (for some reason multiple times?) her appearance. i like sara nelson fine but i found this sort of dull.

especially because there is some good stuff in this book! we spend a bunch of time on the culinary union in las vegas (unfortunately, nolan narrates this book himself and he pronounces it as "kyulinary" for reasons i don't understand); there's a lengthy discussion of the complicated work that went into getting child care providers united off the ground in california, which requires one to poke the legal definition of a union; we spend time with workers in a fast food joint in a small west virginia town who tried to organize. this stuff is engaging and thoughtfully reported. there's also a bunch of reflection from nolan's own involvement in organizing his workplace, back when he worked at gawker. (i think the book was written before the bottom completely fell out of online journalism, because he doesn't really talk about the fate of the efforts to unionize online journalism, just takes a moment to dunk on the people who said it couldn't be done.)

i've never been in a union, but i liked what he said about being in his: that you argue a lot, it's frustrating, but it's also a kind of direct & immediate democracy that you don't really see anywhere else. there's a bit where a shop steward for the culinary union in a huge vegas casino stops to write down that the casino changed the layout of the gelato case and the workers there don't like it, which was memorable to me because i thought it was such a concise & specific & convincing argument for the idea of a union, even in the absence of glaring abuses. i vividly remember having stupid problems at work because someone who had a nice office & no idea what i did all day had had some kind of clever thought, & having no particular recourse in those situations; i would have loved to have some sort of formal avenue to go, 'hey, chucklefuck, you added fifty cents to all the prices but didn't give me any change in my cash drawer, fix your shit' or whatever.

anyway! that stuff was cool. i struggled a little more with nolan's political vision of the american labor union. the book ends with this like, long meditation on what labor needs to do (organize more workers) and speculation about why that doesn't happen (workers in unions want to protect what they have and aren't directly motivated to invest in organizing new workers, even though, as sara nelson puts it, power grows when you use it; there's no actual system to catch workers who are thinking about unionizing & connect them to local unions in their sector who can help). i found this part kind of preachy & historically vapid. nolan spends time on two failed union campaigns (the west virginia fast food place, and one guy in new orleans who tried to unionize his lowe's store), and in both of them workers tried to organize because of existing ideological commitments. one of the west virginia workers 'always wears a red bandana,' which, nolan explains to us, is part of west virginia's radical labor history & the legacy of the battle of blair mountain. the lone hero who tried to unionize lowe's did so because he knew about unions from marxist friends. it feels very strange to say, here are these two workers who got some genuine momentum rolling on unionization campaigns because of their political backgrounds (well, i'm counting the red bandana, even though WV politics can get weird; you can thank socialists a hundred years ago for the fact that we have any records of blair mountain at all, and socialists & their allies of ten years ago for the fact that the battle site wasn't stripped for coal), and then just. you know. completely ignore the aggressive anticommunist turn of american labor politics in the last century. we discuss john l. lewis, we criticize the AFL-CIO's disconnection from marginalized workers & the continued membership of police unions, but we just don't mention this turn at all, even though the book is called, you know, 'the hammer'? weird choice! it talks about the connection between labor unions & democrats, mostly to say that these relationships have been transactional (we push for better policies for you, you get your members out to knock on doors & vote), but that they don't have to be, and then, um, talked about how great it was that UNITE HERE was canvassing. so i think that was going somewhere but maybe it wasn't going as decisively as i might've liked

overall i thought 'the hammer' was a pretty good time & a lot of it was very interesting. i would not call its political analysis incisive, and also it doesn't spend nearly enough time on labor safety. it mentions black lung briefly though so points there too

#booksbooksbooks #if there is a labor history book you like please recommend it to me especially if it has an audiobook #or if you have read this book i would be curious to hear other opinions!!#since i finished this book i have been reading star wars fanfictions again. not sure what this choice says about me

4 notes · View notes

archivyrep · 2 years

Text

Archives and archivists are anything but neutral [Part 3]

Continued from part 2

In the first episode of Recorded by Arizal, Arizal begins to define what an record keeper means, to her.

Star Wars is not the only series with these themes. Recorded by Arizal seems to hint at the idea that "archiving will never be neutral" and is not a neutral act. This is because the protagonist in that series, which will likely never be made into a full series, Arizal, dreams to be a record keeper. In that series it is a person who will "travel across the world, trying to document it for those within the city...with the records she collects and creates." This recording of information, through a series of vlogs, will undoubtedly be shaped by what Arizal sees as important to preserve, with other aspects falling by the wayside. She will be collecting records for an archive, bound to the "records themselves, and their creation" as a keeper, even though her efforts will make the history of her city that much richer and fuller, for all to understand.

Reprinted from my Wading Through the Cultural Stacks WordPress blog. Originally published on Feb. 9, 2022.

The same could be said about Peridot in Steven Universe. As I've written closely, what she does is closest to a records analyst, while engaging in some tasks like an archivist. In those capacities, she is tasked with gathering information about the Cluster. What she is collecting is colored by her knowledge of Gems and her beliefs, which is steeped in the Homeworld ideology that the Diamond rulers are superior while everyone else is lesser and insignificant. They are "pebbles" as she terms them at one point. She later learns her way out of these destructive thoughts, beginning to love the Earth, and everything on it. What she collects and records changes as a result.

The basement archives in The Ghost and Molly McGee, Phineas and Ferb, The Regular Show, and Stretch Armstrong all have collections which have their own organizational systems, even it is portrayed as haphazard at times. These systems are clearly not neutral and are arranged in such a way that it reflects the biases, beliefs, and actions of those who organized them, and the rules governing those arrangements.

Of these series, Stretch Armstrong features an archivist. He is named Grandpa Park, a Korean-American man who is the grandfather of one of the protagonists, Nathan Park. He is a former reporter who is wise and knows the secret identities of the protagonists. The stacks of basement newspaper archive is organized by whether something is "local" or "worldwide." It was one of the earliest posts on this blog and I remember being so excited to watch it, as it featured an archivist, unlike anything I had seen up to that point. There is no doubt that his experience as a reporter affects how the archive is organized, along with his personal biases, although he is not hemmed in by institutional rules, as this archive is all his own.

Different media formats, as presented by Archie, in the season 4, episode 30 episode of Regular Show, entitled "The Requirements to Waken the G.O.O.F."

Like Stretch Armstrong, The Regular Show also features an archivist, named Archie the Archivist. He is also known as Archie and works in the library. Other than the fact he is a Laserdisc Guardian who defends the protagonists from those who want VHS to be dominant, very little about him is known. He only appears in two episodes, "The Last Laserdisc Player" and "Format Wars II," and never again after that point. Even so, it is clear what he is doing is not neutral. Rather, he is a keeper of data from "bad" people as he is taking sides in a conflict.

I could go through many other shows that I have watched since 2020 with archives and archivists. Even so, I feel that this post is a good starting point to this topic, and one that can, hopefully, built upon in the future in ways that discuss this in depth.

Update: As I half-expected, people on /r/archivists were annoyed by this post. One cranky archivist declared "any article that uses Attack of the Clones as evidence of anything in the real world is not well." Another said it "seems like a bad faith post" because "a lot of people get that information and organizational systems are products of people and have biases but this is not the argument that is being made," adding the "blog post barely touches on real archiving before it focuses almost entirely on fictional archives in pop culture." Its almost like these people don't understand what this blog is about, jeez. I'm really just waiting until I get banned from /r/archivists, as I think it is coming. We'll see what happens. In response to this, Sam Cross told me "This is why I stay away from Reddit most of the time" and I can agree with that.

8 notes · View notes

agallimaufryofoddments · 2 years

Text

For those of you who are also slow on the uptake, Chapter(?) 3 of the Baccano! ~from the 1700s~ manga released on January 25. The best time for us to buy it was release day, but buying it is better late than never. As always, (the prospect of) new Baccano! media depends on consumer support.

Buy it despite DMM's "DMN" DRM, for we have no choice.

On the one hand, I hate DRM. On the other, if selling this manga via a DRM-strict retailer/platform succeeds in making people purchase it when they would have otherwise tried reading it for free, then. Fine. FiNe.

Remember to rate each installment. I think it's possible to do it without leaving a review: read the chapter in your browser, click the star on the end page, then click five stars on the review input form that pops up. It seems to save my five star rating even when I navigate away from the form. Leaving reviews themselves wouldn't hurt, unless...they're in English...probably. Do you think we could get away with leaving machine-translated ones? How many strangely-written reviews would it take to sound the 'overseas purchaser' alarm?

Edit: Or maybe not. The ratings I ‘gave’ aren’t reflecting on the listings for 2 and 3. Maybe a review is necessary after all.

Chapter 3 reactions under the cut.

Looks like this depicts parts of LN11 Interlude II and Chapter 4. I did have to manually transcribe some of the dialogue. This took way more time than I can afford.

The opening scene depicts the killing of the 28th victim/witness, an aristocrat named Lord/Sir Alonso. This must be the murder that Larolf reports to Esperanza in the latter half of LN11 Interlude III? Larolf describes the victim as a "boy" who witnessed the Mask Maker right before Niki did in the novel, but this Sir / Lord Alonso is certainly not a child. Hm...

I believe the bit of Niki we see in this chapter is her telling Esperanza the food is delicious from the beginning of Interlude III. However, the manga seems to be omitting the part where Larolf reports [Alonso's] murder? It shows Niki walking away with a maid, whereas Niki runs away when Larolf makes his report...and there's no moment where Esperanza is angered by the bruise on Niki's face per the LN.

Moreover, am I right that the manga also omits Monica and Elmer's encounter with the bald man and Maiza in Chapter 4? There's no marketplace with children singing the MM song, no bald man, no Maiza...

...but the previous chapters also omitted Elmer's first encounter with Maiza, didn't they? So the mangaka's been deliberately holding off on Maiza's introduction from the start. I guess the manga's going to move the bruise reaction, Larolf's report and the bald man/Maiza-Elmer-Monica encounter to another day? How will that account for Elmer's wound, though, since Elmer doesn't show up to class after being stabbed?

I probably need to reread manga chs. 1–2 and actually take note of what was and wasn't adapted. I should do that anyway, since that would be useful for the wiki.

Okay, some positives...

Larolf depicted! (I only know because he was depicted in Chapters 1–2, so this is a belated celebration of a Larolf Hancletia design. Ch.2 gave us Huey's mother, too.)

Warehouse depicted!

Patisserie lady depicted!

Hey, it's Elmer's room at Esperanza's place!

Elmer wounded! Bandages on Mask Maker's arm are neat.

Monica has a lot of fun expressions. Manga is leaning hard into the classic twitterpated teen girl archetype and her 'tells' (big eyes, blushing), and these do serve the purpose.

Denkurou and Zank (albeit seen, not heard)!

Elmer's back scars...

Some mild complaints:

Zank's body should be as dark-skinned as Zank's head. Did the mangaka forget to color the torso? If this is a lighting thing where Zank's head isn't in range of a light source, then Denkurou's body should reflect that too. It's such a weirdly stark difference in hue that it really looks like a coloring error.

Am I allowed to feel lukewarm about Elmer's design? Maybe the fact that I've never seen Elmer with flat (slicked?) hair is throwing me off (aka it's throwing me off a lot), but there's something about his head's shape as well. The big forehead?　The eyebrows floating halfway up the forehead? The flat hair is contibuting to the forehead's largeness.

To be totally fair, this is gawky teen!Elmer, not adult!Elmer, and Elmer on the LN11 cover does have a rounder face (than adult!Elmer) that I guess the manga is honoring.

And...

Elmer's back scars.

I am whelmed. I guess I've built up my mental image of the scars for so long that probably any illustration is doomed not to meet expectations. It might be unfair of me, but I can't help think that a mangaka could go all out on the scars, since they only have to be drawn for 1—3 panels—honestly, why not just devote a full page illustration to it or one panel that fills most of the page?

Ex: Contain Monica's horrified expression + Huey going ??? to one panel. Overlay that (opt. and the next panel) with a small panel of Huey's face to emphasize Huey actively following Monica's gaze. Thus, rather than showing a Huey!POV of Monica looking at Elmer, you could dedicate one big panel exclusively to Elmer's full back and arms. Go all out.

There, one and done.

Here's the LN description of Elmer's scars for comparison.

Elmer was stripped to the waist, squeezing his clothes out, and his back…

…was covered in scars.

And it wasn’t only his back; uncountable scars covered the parts of his arms that had been hidden by his sleeves.

Currently, not a single wound was bleeding, but if all those scars became wounds again, he couldn’t even imagine how much they would have bled—

That was how mutilated Elmer was.

He might have had even more scars than Huey’s mother had in his memories of her.

They weren’t just cuts. There were marks as if something had been used to gouge out divots of flesh, and an enormous burn that covered the top half of his back. Not only that, but the burns appeared to be covering countless more scars.

Where's the enormous burn? Those scars are pretty countable. I see plenty of unmamrred skin. Yep, I'm nitpicking now. Please give my apologies to the mangaka; my expectations were simply too high. Ultimately, I am grateful that Elmer's scars have finally been depicted in an official publication.

(Quick! Enami! Draw Elmer shirtless as a 20th anniversary treat!)

Defying Description

Esperanza

#Baccano!#Baccano #Baccano! ~From the 1700s~#inexqueuesable #February 11th 2023 #Author: Rev #queueing and hoping it doesn't publish until I'm back because I might have more to add #Post: Text #11th #February #2023

7 notes · View notes