#in general tho not much of a comic reader either I enjoy how they look a lot but it's just a lotta work for me to read thru em | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

retrievablememories · 4 years ago

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picture me | johnny (m)

title: picture me pairing: vampire!johnny x black!reader genre: fantasy, romance, smut, fluff, angst summary: you meet a vampire-slash-photographer whose self-identity is increasingly lost to him, and you try to help him find some purpose again. word count: 18.3k warnings: age gap (cuz you know, vampires...but everyone is legal), mentions of discrimination/prejudice based on species, self-identity issues/self-deprecation, general angst, sheltered!reader, mentions of blood and drinking blood, oral sex (female and male receiving), fingering, thigh riding, loss of virginity, corruption kink, use of lube, unprotected sex (do not try at home), creampie, johnny is packing in this fic ok! a/n: today (the 28th) is my birthday, so i’m posting this 100% self-indulgent fic that i’ve been working on between requests since september. it was very hard to get johnny’s characterization right for this fic and idk if i actually succeeded but i’m not revising this for the 1000th time lol. i love this fic with my whole heart tho.

i haven’t seen many vampire fics that really explore the whole “doesn’t show up in mirrors/photos” concept (shout em out if you know em) and...there’s probably a reason for that, this shit is hard af to write and there are some logic issues but whatever 🤪

(the beginning quote is from “criminal,” stan taemin!!)

The moment I fall for you is the end of my innocence

—

He sits in the same coffee shop everyday, like it’s a habit he just can’t break. But who are you to judge? You’re there, too. Watching him like a creep. Or maybe like an interested coffee shop patron, trying to be discreet and failing at it.

He wasn’t hard to notice. You’d never been to this coffee shop before, but your friend recommended it to you mostly for their in-house-made pastries; she claimed the coffee was good, too, but she wasn’t much of a caffeine person. You decided to give it a try when you had time between classes and a moment to breathe, not needing to talk to this advisor or that professor.

You saw him immediately when you walked past the shop window. He was sitting at a table near the front, staring down at his phone with a small cup of coffee sitting in front of him. Its miniscule size was almost comical in contrast to his...everything. He was tall—that much was obvious even with him sitting down—and imposing, wearing all black. His hair was equally pitch-black, his bangs hanging to one side and the rest shaved in an undercut. If you didn’t know much better, you’d think you’d stepped back into 2007 and landed dead in the middle of the emo craze.

He was interesting to look at. Not in a bad way, but in a way you don’t see very often. Deciding to walk in before you made yourself look totally weird staring at him through the window, you’d stepped into the coffee shop, the small bell dinging above your head. A barista greeted you at your entrance. Out of the corner of your eye you saw the man, to your left, still looking at his phone.

You’d given your order and waited for it to be ready before taking it to a table on the other side of the shop. From that vantage point, you had a good view of the man. You tried to keep your eyes on your food and your phone, not wanting to spend the whole time looking at him, but it was a little hard not to.

When you took a bite of your pastry, you quickly discovered it was just as delicious as your friend promised—probably even more so. You made a noise of approval before you could catch yourself, and you glanced around the shop in embarrassment to see if anyone nearby noticed. Didn’t seem like it, at first. But then you glanced over to the man again only to find him looking at you below his eyelashes with a small, amused smile on his lips. He only kept his gaze on you for a second before returning to his phone.

What? You hadn’t thought you were that loud. How did he hear you from over there, and above the noise of the café? Even now, you remember how embarrassed you’d felt, ducking your head and looking away.

The man finished his coffee not long after that; he slipped his phone into his pocket and stood up. You glanced up only momentarily when he stood, but your eyes soon slid back to his form when you noticed something odd. On the wall behind him, there was a big oval mirror sitting pretty in its elaborate silver frame. He stood just a few feet in front of it, yet there was no reflection of him. The only thing you could see was the other side of the café reflected back, with another man sitting alone at a booth enjoying his own coffee. The tall man’s reflection was nowhere to be found.

That was when you figured he must be a vampire.

You’d never met one before. At least, you didn’t think you had until then.

Unbeknownst to you, vampires are notoriously able to blend in more easily than most other supernatural beings—until faced with situations like that one in the coffee shop. Ultimately, there’s no faking a reflection no matter how hard you try to remain inconspicuous.

The man had caught your eye again. Thinking back on it, you aren’t sure of what expression you had on your face or what it must’ve looked like to him. It must’ve been something akin to surprise, though; you weren’t quick enough to disguise your reaction at his lack of a reflection.

He gave you another smile, though it felt sadder than the previous one, and walked out of the store, the small bell on the door ringing at his departure. He disappeared down the street in a swirl of black fabric, almost like something out of a movie, and you watched him retreat until you could see him no more.

You scraped your index fingernail over the wood table your food was resting on, your mind whirring with all kinds of thoughts. Your interest was piqued. And yet there was no way for you to know if you’d see him again.

—

At least, that’s what you believed then. Luckily for you, your subsequent visits to the coffee shop have proven fruitful; the strange, tall vampire is there more often than not, always in the same spot in front of that same mirror. Sometimes he reads a book, other times he looks at his phone, and other times still, he stares out the window at the passersby.

He acknowledges you whenever he sees you, either with a nod or a smile. You’ve never spoken to each other, though you know what his voice sounds like from hearing him talk to the baristas. It’s a nice voice, rich and handsome like him, and you find yourself gradually wanting to hear it spoken in your direction. But you aren’t sure how to talk to him, or what you should say.

There’s a lot you want to know about him and his vampirism, but you don’t think it’s fair to bombard him with questions right after meeting him—if you could somehow work up the nerve for that first step.

When you were young, your parents made sure to keep you safely sheltered away from anyone who could potentially be a vampire or any other nonhuman being. This game kept up until you went to college, where they could no longer “shield” you. Because of their lifelong fear and disgust, your knowledge of nonhuman beings is scarce and mostly inaccurate.

The man’s skin isn’t deathly pale like you’ve heard others say vampires always are. It’s nicely tanned, in fact. Nor are his eyes red, or his canine teeth abnormally sharp. And obviously, he has no aversion to sunlight, otherwise he wouldn’t be out here during the day. The only visible marker of his inhuman nature is his lack of a reflection. Maybe he’s not a vampire at all? Maybe he’s another type of being entirely. That only makes you more curious.

It’s not rare to come across supernatural beings, but they only make themselves known if they want to, or if it’s imperative to their survival. Most of them would rather quietly assimilate amongst humans or stay safe and hidden within their own communities. Humans are still too judgmental towards those who are different from themselves for nonhumans to feel truly safe or welcomed—at least not on a global scale. Small pockets of communities forged with human allies are helpful and sometimes vital for survival, but not always enough.

These small tidbits of information cycle through your mind as September gradually bleeds into October. You continue watching the thoughtful man in the coffee shop and making up your own secret theories about his life. You haven’t told anyone from school about this, because you already know the reaction would be nothing short of awful. Your parents would only let you go to school at the one university in the city that explicitly didn’t allow supernatural beings; it goes without saying that your classmates don’t view them in a positive light.

Part of you feels like you might be breaking the unspoken rules just by being at this coffee shop all the time and allowing this man to take up space in your mind. But who will know what’s inside your thoughts except you?

One day, your friend decides to accompany you on your lunch break, finally stopping by the café she recommended to you. The man is already there, as usual, and he smiles slightly when you and your friend enter. She doesn’t catch this, too busy wondering what she’s going to get off the menu today.

“I haven’t been here in forever, I wonder if Sam still remembers me?” You know Sam to be one of the baristas there, having read it on their name tag before.

“I doubt there are very many people who’d forget you,” you answer.

When you both have your food, you take a booth farther away from where the man sits, though you can still see him easily from this distance. Your friend settles into the seat in front of you.

You try to keep things inconspicuous throughout your conversation, but you must glance over at him one too many times, because your friend eventually raises her eyebrows questioningly. She turns around in her seat, making it obvious that she’s looking, and you groan as you keep your eyes in the opposite direction towards the window.

“Who’s that guy you keep staring at?”

You cough. “No one.”

“He’s obviously someone. Someone interesting enough to hold your attention.”

“I don’t know the man,” you say curtly. You shuffle your napkin and spoon aimlessly, your nervousness rising. What if he has some kind of enhanced hearing and can hear what you’re saying right now? He definitely heard you make that noise that first day.

Your friend looks at the ceiling and blows air out of her mouth. “Whatever. I’ll find out who he is sooner or later.”

You take a sip of your drink and lower your voice to just above a whisper. Although you want to leave the subject alone, you’re curious about one thing. “You mean you’ve never seen him before? This café was your hangout spot before it was mine.”

She shrugs. “No, I think I would’ve remembered someone as...visually striking as him. Why are we whispering, anyway? It’s not like he can hear us above all this noise.”

You think to yourself, I’m not so sure about that, but you merely shake your head.

You spend a few more minutes talking before movement catches the corner of your eye. At this point, it’s practically a reflex for you to look in that direction. You try not to, but your friend has already caught you and turns her head to spy, too. The man has gotten up for whatever reason to say something to one of the baristas at the counter. Your gaze darts back to your cup after you’ve gotten your eyeful, but you’re nearly startled into dropping the cup at your friend’s gasp.

Oh. The mirror.

She grips the edge of the table. “He’s a vampire…?”

You don’t know what to say to that, and you feel oddly guilty for some reason you can’t pinpoint. Like you’ve been caught with your hand in the cookie jar. “U-um, I don’t know…?” You can hardly finish your thought before your friend is scrambling to grab her purse. She hurriedly stands out of the seat, tugging your arm as she does.

“Come on. We shouldn’t stay here.”

“Are you serious—?” You feel embarrassed heat rip through your body at her display; some other café-goers are already looking at her curiously, probably wondering what the hell she’s doing. She tugs more incessantly, and you already know she’ll get louder if you don’t get up now and defuse the situation. Leaving your half-full cup behind, you grab your things and follow her out of the store, keeping your eyes firmly on her back as you pass by the man. You don’t know if he looked up, or if he could sense the reason for your sudden departure—you’ve never left the shop before him until now—and you don’t want to know.

Neither of you talk until you’re well down the street and around the corner. “That wasn’t necessary,” you huff, your hands still sweating from the spiked adrenaline at suddenly being rushed out.

“Yes it was! We all know bloodsuckers and all these other weirdos are dangerous...even if they think they’re being well-intentioned by living among humans. I hope you don’t go back there.”

“Whatever...you’re the one who told me to visit the café,” you mumble, unable to muster up the energy to say anything more. You both know very well she can’t tell you where to go, but you hope she doesn’t mention this to your other acquaintances on campus and make it into a bigger deal than it is.

When you part ways with your friend and get back to your dorm, you realize you’re missing your planner. The planner with all your upcoming assignment dates in it. You sigh heavily and roll your eyes, knowing it must’ve happened in the chaos of her pulling you out of the shop. Maybe if you’re really lucky, it’ll still be there, picked up by an employee or simply left untouched. Knowing how many people go through that café in a day, you’re not optimistic.

For the first time since visiting the quaint little shop, you’re not anticipating returning and seeing the man again, afraid he’ll ignore you or look at you with distaste—like you’re just another unsympathetic human. And would he be wrong to think that? You’re only strangers to each other.

You try not to dwell on it too hard when you go to bed that night.

When lunch rolls around the next day, you hesitate a couple times on your way to the café, not wanting to show up. However, the desire to see what became of your planner pushes you forward. You don’t even have to stay; if it’s there, you’ll take it and leave. If it’s not—oh well. You can still leave. It’s not hard to buy another.

He’s there when you arrive, of course.

He nods at you when you step inside, though he doesn’t smile as he’s become accustomed to doing. You nod back, but you can’t ignore the renewed rush of embarrassment you feel. You linger at the entrance for a second longer, wondering if maybe you should say something. Apologize, even? But what if he really didn’t know what was going on yesterday? Then how odd would you look for bringing it up?

You decide to move on and go back to the booth to search for your belongings, but his voice stops you. This takes you by surprise.

“Did you come back for this?”

You turn to him to see him holding your planner in his hand. You stare, momentarily dumbfounded, and almost shake your head before realizing it is yours. Definitely the same sticker-covered, scribbled-all-over planner.

“Oh—y-yeah. Thank you.” He passes it to you, though you notice he’s very careful not to let your hands touch. You’re a little perplexed about why, but then the rumors about vampires having cold skin pop up in your mind. Maybe that’s actually true, too. “I usually don’t lose things so easily, but…” Your voice falters, and you don’t know how to finish that sentence without bringing up the other day’s events.

He doesn’t seem to mind as he replies, “It happens to all of us sometimes...I don’t know what I’d do if I lost my camera.”

“You take pictures?” you ask, a tinge of curiosity in your voice.

He nods. “I take photos of anything that interests me. Which often ends up being everything I see. I work at an art museum, so I guess having an eye for photography comes in handy.” He hesitates for a second, then says, “I could show you some?” He waves his phone, indicating that the photos are there.

“Oh, sure.” The man gestures for you to sit down in the empty chair in front of him, and you do so. He swipes through his phone a few times until he settles on what he’s searching for, then puts the device on the table and slides it to you. You lean forward to look at it and see that it displays an album full of pictures, simply titled with the emoji “🌌.”

“It’s okay, you can pick it up.” He chuckles. You pick up the phone and swipe through the numerous pictures. Many of them are nighttime shots of the moon, trees, half-empty streets, darkened storefronts. Others depict nature scenes at sunset or the beginning of sunrise, with the sky colored in darker hues. No matter what the subject matter is, they all look to be professionally taken, even for an iPhone.

“Wow, these are nice. You said you work at a museum…are you a professional photographer, too?”

The man shrugs, and as you look at his slight grin, you realize you still don’t know his name. “Something like that, I guess.”

“You should be if you aren’t already,” you say, looking through more photos. “I’m sure you’d make a lot of money.” When you reach the end of the album, you go to hand the phone back to him but realize he’ll probably want to avoid contact again, so you slide it across the table. He takes it and slips it into his pocket.

“I don’t really care about the money,” he responds. “I just like it because…” He trails off, unsure how to convey his thoughts, wondering if he should even get that personal with a stranger. “It...helps me pass the time.” He’s not quite satisfied by that answer—it doesn’t feel like enough—but it’s all he can think of on the spot.

“Well, that’s nice too. It’s always good to have a hobby just for the sake of it...not for anyone’s benefit but your own.”

“Do you have one?” He takes a sip of his coffee. You don’t expect to be asked about your own interests, and your mind goes blank as you try to think. Why does this always happen when I’m asked these kinds of questions?

“Um, just different things here and there.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he says, amused.

“It’s not that, I just don’t have a ton of hobbies or anything. I’m kinda boring, so…” And wasn’t allowed to do much of anything until I left home.

“Being boring isn’t always a bad thing.”

You lean back in your seat, shrugging slightly. “Maybe if you see it that way. My friends don’t.”

“Would one of those happen to be the same one who dragged you out of here yesterday?” He speaks casually, putting his cheek in his hand. You slump further down in your seat, feeling exposed. Of course there was no escaping this topic. He notices your mood shift and shakes his head. “You don’t have to feel so bad about it. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.”

“I’m sorry for all that mess,” you murmur, unable to meet his eyes. “Really, I am.” You stand up from the seat, gripping your planner. “Thanks again for this. I don’t want to take up any more of your time today.” You’re about to turn to leave when he speaks again.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, you know…you could talk with me whenever you feel like it.” That’s the last thing you expect him to say. His voice takes on a quality that’s...not what you’d call begging, but it’s clear he’d enjoy some company. Maybe he’s doing this for your benefit as well as his own, because it’s obvious how your eyes always stray to his little corner.

You nod, giving him an apprehensive smile. “I’ll keep that in mind, then.”

The rest of your day after that is uneventful, full of classes and unexciting lectures, but you keep thinking of one thing. Though he appears to enjoy his time in the coffee shop, how lonely must he really be? There’s never anyone else around him. His eyes when he’d spoken to you held a certain sadness.

And you still didn’t get his name.

You don’t see him for the next few days, mostly because you aren’t at the café. You’ve gotten busy with a new project and haven’t had as much time to return to the coffee shop, mostly spending your time in the library instead.

When you finally get a chance to buy lunch outside campus, he’s not there. This disappoints you more than you thought it would, and you wonder what his absence means. Did he just decide not to come today, or has he found another place to frequent? You kind of hope the second option isn’t the case, though you also don’t know why you’re even caring this much about where someone else goes on their own time.

You get a drink to-go this time, deciding you’ll just take it back to the library and continue your studies there. The entryway bell rings behind you as you wait for your order to be made, though you don’t pay it much attention; half of your mind is still occupied with what you need to do next for your project.

When you turn around to leave the shop with your drink, you’re surprised to see the man standing there, waiting to get his own coffee. “You’re late,” you blurt out. You immediately feel silly for saying it, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

He gives you a slight smile. “Yes, I am.” Then he spots your to-go cup. “Are you leaving?”

“Uh, well,” you glance at your drink, “are you staying?”

He nods as he steps up to the counter. “Yeah, I’m staying. My offer’s still open, by the way.”

Right. The offer to talk to him sometimes. You’re tempted to stay awhile and talk to him now, though you don’t even know what about. Your project? That’s boring. Him being a vampire? Too invasive. Your school? Also boring, and probably not the best idea considering which one you attend.

“I...think I’ll stay, then.”

You both sit at his usual table, with you grinning nervously.

“How are you? I noticed you hadn’t showed up in a while,” he asks, settling back in his chair.

“Yeah, I’m doing fine, I’m just busy with school stuff. These teachers don’t give us a break.” You laugh a little, shaking your head.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He grins. “I never did go to college, but I’ve always heard others talk about how tiring it is. And expensive.”

“They’re right.” You roll your eyes at the thought of it. “But I guess it’ll all be worth it in the end. Maybe. If the economy isn’t in the toilet.” The sound of his laughter is nice, and you’re glad you could make him laugh. “Also, I’m sorry—I don’t know how this flew under the radar, but I don’t know your name.”

He shrugs. “Nothing to apologize for, really. It’s Johnny.”

You tell him your name, too. “Since I haven’t seen you lately...how are you doing?” You circle your hands around your to-go cup, feeling its warmth transfer to your palms as you await his answer.

“I think I can say I’m the same as always—which is fine. Life slows down a little when you have a lot of time on your hands.” Johnny’s lips quirk up at that, and you think he might be referring to his vampirism. Your eyes widen a little.

“What’s that like? Having so much free time. I wouldn’t know much about that right now, but…”

“Maybe not as pleasant as you think it’d be. But there’s good in it. Like coming and going when you want to. And you can take up whatever interests you want without worrying as much about busy schedules.” You already know he’s alluding to his photography. “I do like having a job, though…it gives me structure.”

“You’re probably right…I wouldn’t know the first thing to do if I had a ton of free time…like, which hobbies to pick up first.” You consider how you initially thought about him being lonely and wonder if that’s one of the unpleasant parts he hinted to. “Speaking of hobbies...did you take any new pictures lately?”

Johnny nods. “Most of them were on my camera this time, but some are on my phone. You want to see?”

“Yes!”

Johnny lets you have his phone again to look through the newest pictures he’s taken. There are varying shots of car-lined streets and storefronts, some of the latter decorated with glowing jack-o-lanterns for the onset of October. A pigeon sits on a streetlamp during the daytime, holding its head up like royalty upon a throne. In another image, a stray cat and her kittens huddle in an alley, the babies grooming each other while the mother looks quizzically at the camera.

You recognize a few photos from the nearby park; he also had some pictures of it the last time you looked. “Do you go to this park often?”

“Yeah, it offers some great shots. It’s especially pretty if you go just before the sun sets...the light filters through the tree leaves and it looks kinda like a kaleidoscope.”

“Ah, I’ve never seen that before…” you say a little sadly. Your parents didn’t much like taking you to that park when you were younger because of how far it is from their house. And since living away from them, you’ve only been able to visit it during the early hours of the day—like now.

Johnny looks closely at you. “Would you ever want to?”

“If it’s as pretty as you say, I should.” You slide the phone back across the table to him, not catching what he’s trying to hint at as you keep talking. “Do you go anywhere else besides here and the park?” As soon as you say it, you realize this might sound a little rude and try to make a quick save. “I mean, do you have any other favorite places? I’m not trying to say you don’t have a life or anything!”

Johnny laughs at your slight panic at thinking you’ve offended him. “Nothing too out-there, I guess. The bookstore, the photography store, the theater. Pretty much all the same places others visit.”

“The movies are fun.” You trace your finger across the table’s surface, thinking of your own favorite spots. “Me and my friends like to go downtown. There are a lot of cute little shops down there…”

You and Johnny talk for a while longer, and you almost forget you have to get back to campus until you glance at the wall clock. “Oh no, I’m gonna be late.” Flustered, you jump out of your seat and crumple your empty cup. “Sorry to cut it short, Johnny, but I gotta go back now.”

He smiles good-naturedly and nods, his dark bangs sweeping his face. “I understand.” As he watches you gather your things and get ready to go, he speaks up again. “Actually, if you want to see the park at sunset sometime...I could show you? It’s up to you.”

You pause, suddenly curious at the thought of seeing him outside the café. In the back of your mind, you feel a little paranoid and afraid of your friend or maybe even your parents seeing you there with him, though the latter is extremely unlikely. It’s hard to shake that familiar fear of judgment and ostracism when it’s been ingrained in you since childhood. “That sounds good. If it’s not any trouble for you…?”

“Never too much trouble. I usually get off around 4 on Fridays, just before the sun sets at 5. Unless the weekend is better for you?”

You nod, holding your books tighter to your chest. “Friday will work for me! I’ll meet up with you then.”

Johnny smiles. “Great; I’ll see you then, kind stranger.”

Maybe he says it to be joking or quirky, to sound like one of those characters in a movie or drama, but it makes you smile. Nodding to him again, you step out of the café and rush towards the direction of your school. Johnny watches as you retreat, your roles reversed.

You meet up with Johnny at the park that Friday, just as you both agreed. You spot him sitting on a bench near the park entrance, waiting on your arrival.

Johnny’s wardrobe is still mostly dark, but it’s a little lighter than usual today. He’s changed things up with a white polo shirt underneath his black sweater. Seeing him dressed like this, you wonder what he’d be like as a student, or maybe even a university professor.

He stands up when you get closer, hearing the sound of your footsteps approaching and turning towards you. His camera sits safely around his neck, the lens catching in the light of the sun.

When you stop in front of him, he smiles at you warmly. You try to relax into the genuineness of that smile and ignore the still-lingering traces of anxiety about being out with him. “Hi, Johnny!”

“Hi, Y/N.”

You and Johnny walk around the park as he looks for something interesting to shoot. He snaps a few shots of the trees, fallen leaves, bushes, and other natural elements along the way, though it seems like he hasn’t quite captured what he wants yet.

“Are you looking for something specific?” you ask, peering at his camera as he holds it in his hands.

“There’s an aster bush around here,” he responds. “It hadn’t fully bloomed yet the last time I was here, but it should be open by now.”

It turns out he’s right as you two finally come up on the bush. Its blooms make bright purple smudges against the rest of the landscape, which is a monochrome red-and-orange palette from the leaves changing their hues. You watch as he comes up to the bush carefully and quietly, like it’s a small animal he’s afraid to scare away. Johnny is very attentive while taking pictures of it, always conscious of getting the correct lighting and securing the exact angles he wants to capture. “Compassionate” is not a word you’d usually associate with the act of taking photos, but that’s the only word you can currently think of to describe this display. He treats the flowers with a peculiar sense of respect, as if they’re a human subject.

After he’s gotten the images he wants, Johnny offers you his camera to take a few of your own. You’re anxious about holding his prized possession and are afraid you’ll find a way to mess something up, but he promises you it’s fine. You take a few shots of the sky, still with a few wisps of clouds left, and a nearby tree that’s almost stripped bare of leaves. You know the shots will probably end up blurry from your unsteady hands, but Johnny tells you you’ve done a good job anyway.

Something about getting his approval makes a pleasant warmth settle in your chest.

As you both walk down a long trail, you finally ask him, “Sorry if this is invasive, but I was wondering how old are you? Like...as a vampire.” Your voice becomes hesitant on the word vampire, even though you’re the only two in this part of the park.

He chuckles a bit. “I’m 85.” You try not to look surprised. “I’ve been turned for 60 years. Old, but probably a little younger than most vampires you’d think of.”

“Kinda,” you say quietly. “They’re always like 2,000 years old in movies.”

“The ancient vampires are purebloods. They keep to themselves and avoid mingling with turned vampires, let alone humans. Some people are even skeptical if they exist. Supposedly, they use humans as servants or blood banks.” He gives you an apologetic look after saying this, though you don’t really know why. You don’t get the feeling he’d do that to another being, but he is still mostly a stranger... “At least, that’s what my mentor told me.”

Your curiosity is roused at all this new knowledge. “You had a mentor?”

“An older woman. She was also a turned vampire.”

“Turned, huh…”

Johnny nods, toeing at a small pile of leaves on the ground. “She went away eventually, said people are meant to pass in and out of each other’s lives. I don’t think she ever had intentions to stay. But I enjoyed her company while she was there.” Johnny stops at a short bridge above a small manmade lake, and you both look down into the water.

You place your arms on the bridge railing so you can lean over more. You notice he doesn’t have a reflection in the water, and this startles you more than you expected. Before meeting this strange man, you’d never thought much before about why vampires don’t have mirror reflections, but it seems even more unnatural to see this phenomenon happen again in the lake.

You find yourself looking at the side of Johnny’s face, trying to read his expression as he peers into the water’s depths. He turns to you, and you flinch at being caught staring, but he only smiles slightly. You force yourself to form words and break the silence. “What—what did you do after she left?”

“Lived on my own. She taught me a lot of things to help me live independently as a vampire, so it wasn’t too difficult to get along without her...but emotionally? A different story.”

“You sound like you had a very close relationship with her.”

“Yes. Quite close…” Johnny’s tone suggests something deeper, more intimate than a regular friendship. You feel a bit astounded at the idea of him having an older, more worldly lover while being only a newly changed vampire. Your reaction makes you feel foolish, inexperienced. Still, you can’t help imagining a scenario of them living in a big, dark mansion somewhere in the mountains, rolling around in a bed with bloody red sheets—and maybe drinking from the occasional naïve, misled human hiker.

Strangely, too, you feel jealous at his freedom, his ability to go wherever and do whatever with whoever he wants without overbearing relatives always just a step away.

You continue staring at the ripples as they circle in and out of the water’s surface, the motions triggered by a small orange leaf falling into the lake. You’re unsure of what could be the right thing to say to his admission, so you blurt out whatever comes to mind next. “You said she taught you to live independently as a vampire. What does that mean? How do you get...you know. Blood?”

“There are ways,” Johnny says cryptically, which makes your own blood rush faster. He turns to you with a grin, like he finds your naivety endearing. “It’s nothing drastic, though. At least, not for me. I never drink directly.” It does make sense that there are other ways to drink human blood without taking it straight from their necks, though you can only speculate on which methods he prefers. “Drinking directly is lethal, and often not worth it.”

“So, it’s true that vampire bites can kill?” You watch as Johnny pushes himself off the railing, and you follow him as he continues down the trail.

“It’s not false. But it’s never really that simple.” Johnny’s answer is mysterious, and he doesn’t elaborate further. He turns to you. “Where did you hear that, anyway? Your university? The one that bans all nonhuman beings?”

“You know where I go to school?” You feel embarrassed, thinking he must assume you’re like the rest of the student body who hates nonhumans but still nurtures an odd obsession with them.

“I saw it on your notebook one day, the school insignia. I’m not a stalker, by the way.” You laugh only slightly, and Johnny seems crestfallen when he notices your apprehension. “I don’t care if you attend school there. Just because you do doesn’t mean you think the way they do.”

“You must think I’m some weird opportunist, then,” you mutter, heat finding its way to your face. “Asking you all these questions...I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think anything except that you’re a pleasant person to be around.”

You’re quiet for a moment, letting the compliment sink in. You think you should probably give him one of his own, but before you can, he says, “Look. The sun’s already setting.” Just like he told you before, the dying rays filter through the tree leaves and create impossibly intricate patterns on your surroundings. You hold your hand out and watch the latticework that the leaves create dance over your open palm.

You let Johnny take a picture of your hand with the tree shadows flitting over it, but you shy away from the camera’s lens when he points it higher to your face, a questioning look in his eyes. “Maybe some other day.”

You walk around for a while longer until the sky bleeds into a dark purple. “I guess I should be going soon. It’s getting late,” you say, though you’re also a bit sad over your evening with Johnny meeting its end.

“Do you want me to take you back to campus? You shouldn’t walk back alone. My car is just in the parking lot there.” He points to it where it sits in the distance.

You look at Johnny with a confused gaze. “But you can’t come on campus. They have...things to ward off vampires.” Like gates made of pure silver, displaying intimidating, elaborately designed crosses. You don’t know if any of it actually works, but it’s probably better not to find out.

Johnny doesn’t seem bothered by this information. “Yeah…I know. I can just drop you at the street across from the main gate.”

You hesitate a moment longer but eventually agree. He is right; you’d rather not walk alone at night, and getting a ride with him is better—and cheaper—than calling for a rideshare.

The ride to the college is fairly quiet, with the radio filling the silence. It’s not an awkward type of stillness, at least, which you’re grateful for.

As he said he would, Johnny parks on the side of the street that sits in front of the main gate, just outside the immediate vicinity of the campus. The metal crosses stare back at the both of you, glinting in the light of nearby streetlamps. You turn your face away from them, biting the inside of your cheek.

You unbuckle your seatbelt. “Thanks again for the ride. I guess I’ll see you back at the shop next week, yeah?” Again, you get the urge to say something, anything, to remedy or cover up the foreboding source of discomfort sitting just in front of you, but there’s no one sentence you could say to wipe away decades of hatred.

Johnny nods and smiles, and still he shows no signs of being disturbed. He doesn’t cast another glance at the gates. “It’s no problem. See you then.”

You get out of his car and cross the street to get inside the gate; it’s early enough in the evening for it to still be open. Any later, and it’d be locked shut to even humans. You risk another wave at him before turning back around and heading for your dorm, which sits a few yards from the entrance. Johnny lets the car idle on the side of the street until you’ve walked into the dorm, and only then does he drive away.

It doesn’t take very long for you to warm up to Johnny inviting you to other places. The next time you and him go somewhere other than the coffee shop, you accompany him as he buys some film for his camera on one of his free days. You don’t know a ton about photography, so you’re more than happy to let him tell you all about how film works and why he buys certain kinds over others.

The place he frequents is a specialty photography shop that still carries older varieties of film—ones that fell out of favor once digital cameras became a thing. The store looks noticeably old, but not in an unkempt or decrepit way. You can tell it’s been around for a while, holding all kinds of history in its structure.

“There are so many different types.” You look over a shelf of film rolls in awe. “How can you tell them all apart?”

Johnny laughs. “It gets easier if you’ve been doing it for a while…or a few decades.” He picks one up from a row of them and holds it in front of you. “35mm is the most common type, which is what you’ll find the most of when you look through any film shop. That’s what I use.”

He sets that one down and walks past another display of film rolls, gesturing toward them. “There’s also 120 and 220 film formats here…those work for even older cameras, sorta like ones you’d see in 1930s movies. You can even turn a film camera into a digital camera.”

You nod to his words, looking over what seems like millions of film canisters—and occasionally glancing at the lines of his broad back as he walks ahead of you. “You should teach a photography class. I’d be more willing to listen to you than some old professor.”

Johnny snickers. “Huh, I don’t know. Not a professor, but I am old.”

You both continue walking through the store, with Johnny giving you the rundown on every item that catches your interest.

Like the coffee shop, there’s another mirror in this store. Many more, actually—there are whole rows of them on a series of shelves, all in varying sizes and shapes. They create a fragmented view of your form as you stand in front of them, though you don’t initially realize you’ve crossed into their glassy line of sight. You’re busier with looking at a roll of film Johnny’s handed you. When you notice your reflection shifting in your peripheral view, you look up.

Johnny’s only a few feet behind you, and you know this because you can hear him and feel his presence. Yet, it’s strange to see yourself as the only person in the aisle.

Eventually, he notices what’s got you preoccupied and comes to stand next to you. Though you see him clearly in front of your eyes, there’s no trace of him in the glass reflections.

Suddenly, you’re hit with the aching loneliness of it—how it must feel to never see yourself. You can see him with your own eyes, and so can everyone else who encounters him, but what must it be like to be virtually invisible outside of other peoples’ perceptions of you? You almost feel utterly alone even though you know he’s beside you.

Noticing your sudden melancholy, Johnny takes the film roll from your hand and tosses it up in the air, making it look like it’s moving on its own in the mirrors. He means to lighten the mood, if only to see the cloudiness disappear from your expression. It works to a degree, though you still feel downcast deep below.

“It’s not good to dwell on it.” Johnny presses the film roll back into your hand, still carefully avoiding skin contact. He has no problem meeting your eyes, though, and you shyly look away from his dark gaze after a few prolonged moments.

“You’re right,” you say softly, turning back to the aisle and away from the rows of mirrors.

—

You and Johnny head to the coffee shop after your trip to the photography store. Once you get your drinks and sit down in your usual spot, he speaks suddenly. “Something’s wrong.”

Your eyes dart around the shop, thinking he’s referring to one of the patrons around you. “What? What’s wrong?” Your voice comes out a bit panicked. He doesn’t want to laugh, but he does.

“No, I mean...something’s wrong with you. You seem far away.”

“Oh…” You wonder if you should even bring it up and potentially ruin the mood. But you have been curious for weeks now, and you don’t think you’ll get a trustworthy answer by asking anyone other than him. “I just...I was wondering why you don’t have a reflection. I know it’s a vampire thing, but I’ve never really known why...you don’t need to answer, though. Like you said, it’s not good to dwell on it.”

Johnny makes a motion like a half-nod once your question is revealed, his eyes darting to the window and back to the table. His fingers trace across the rim of his coffee cup, a thoughtful but stormy expression on his face, and you’re afraid you shouldn’t have reawakened this topic. “You know...being undead means being in two places at once.”

“Two places?”

“We are caught between the living world and the world of the dead. Something that’s not really supposed to exist, yet…” He’s quiet for a moment. “You can only imagine the kind of issues and side effects that can cause. One of them being no reflection.”

“I never thought of it like that,” you say. “Two planes of existence...what does it mean to be a part of the world of the dead?”

“Our blood runs slower. Ours is more like sludge compared to yours. The heart beats only a few times per minute. Don’t need to eat or sleep, either, though many vampires still do.” Johnny pauses. “How much do you really know about vampires?”

“I don’t know much about any of this...stuff.” You gesture vaguely, meaning all supernatural beings and not just vampires. “No one ever told me these things growing up, and it’s hard to tell truth from fiction at school. People will say anything, horrible things, and you just take it at face value, I guess. I never really thought to try to find the reality.” You sigh. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t know anything.”

“Learning is good. You can always learn. I don’t think it’s too late for that.” Johnny’s voice is a little lighter. “Anyway, everyone’s knowledge is different. Sometimes it slips my mind that everyone doesn’t know what it’s like to live as a vampire, though the world never lets me forget for long.”

“Then…do you hang out with other vampires who do understand? Or…maybe humans who can sympathize?”

Johnny gives a humorless laugh. “Most humans are hesitant to interact with us, if not full-out terrified or disgusted. At the museum...it’s less pronounced because all the employees already know. They…tolerate it. But every time someone else realizes what I am and doesn’t take well to it?” He shakes his head, acts like he’ll say something else, and then abandons that line of thought. “And do you really think I’d want to spend my free time around other bloodsuckers?” He tries to play it off as a joke, but you’re more inclined to think he actually feels that way. You can only nod, feeling bad for him but also a little disturbed by his view of his own kind.

“I think you’re a kind person, and you being a vampire doesn’t affect that,” you say hesitantly. “I like talking to you. And even if you feel that way about other vampires, I…wish you wouldn’t feel that about yourself.”

Johnny remains quiet, but he nods. You wonder about the struggle occurring in his mind. The only outward hint of his uneasy state shows in the furrow of his eyebrows and the tense set of his mouth. With his right hand resting on the table, he rubs his fingers together absentmindedly, like he’s analyzing your words. You have a sudden and startling desire to hold his hand, to twine your fingers together and feel his skin on yours for the first time, but you don’t dare cross that boundary.

He finally replies with, “You’re much kinder to me, an old and bitter vampire, than you probably should be. But maybe that’s a good thing about you.”

“I think it’s a good thing,” you agree, your voice low. “Every living being needs companionship. Good companionship, anyway.”

The corners of Johnny’s lips shift in something reminiscent of a smile. He turns a rueful gaze once again to the window, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. “Aren’t I lucky to have yours, then.”

On a day when you don’t have as many responsibilities to juggle, you visit Johnny at the art museum after his working hours are up. He’d already invited you to come to the museum any day you felt like so he could show you around.

When you get there, he’s waiting in the visitor’s lobby for you, framed by receding sunlight as the day starts fading into night. He looks the same as he always does when you see him in the café on his lunch breaks, but within the context of the museum, he suddenly seems more…alive? Vibrant? He could’ve served as a muse for one of the many statuesque, perfectly proportional sculptures in the museum, and you’d never know anything different.

Your heartbeat increases at the sight of him, just enough to be outside the normal range.

“Hi, Johnny. I hope your day went well?”

“It was fine, nothing too crazy. But it’s better now.” And he smiles at you, sincere enough to make your heart ache.

“Oh—that’s great.” That’s it? You scold yourself internally, but you aren’t quick enough to think up a witty reply to his comment before the topic shifts.

“Is there anything in particular you wanna see first?” Johnny asks, leading you further into the museum.

“I guess I hadn’t thought too deeply about that…do you have a favorite exhibit? I want to see what you like.”

Johnny smiles faintly. “Let’s see, then.”

The dark-haired man takes you to a section of the museum filled with oil paintings, all by one singular artist. At first, all you see is varying shades of black and gray and red, with some white splashed in between. When you begin looking at the paintings more closely, it’s easier to see that each one depicts a different scene of chaos. Maybe a sort of organized chaos, but disarray all the same.

There is one picture that holds a clearer subject than the rest. One of the oil paintings is of a vampire—obvious by the fangs—with bloodied lips and anguished eyes. You pause when you catch sight of it, your steps stilled by the sheer frenzy in the other being’s painted eyes. Their hands reach out for the viewer as if begging for an escape that can only be provided by whoever’s observing.

“This one was painted by a fellow vampire, you know. The same one who did all the rest of the paintings in this gallery,” Johnny explains. He points at the placard next to the painting that displays the artist’s name and a short description of the piece. The word fellow comes off his tongue wrapped in cynicism. “And it was one of the ones I personally chose for this exhibit.”

You glance at him, a tinge of surprise blooming in your chest. “Really?”

He nods. “Who better to depict the ills of vampirism than a vampire themselves? I thought it was a…fascinating change of pace from all the humans who try and fail to do so, ironic as that is.”

If you look at the painting for long enough, you think you can recognize sadness in the corners of the vampire’s eyes—pure, unadulterated sadness. Different from anguish or panic. A similar mask of sadness you’ve seen on the man next to you.

You say nothing for a while. You simply feel the painful throb of your heart in your chest and listen to the small sounds around you. Even now, there are still other people exploring the museum and walking through this very exhibit, but you can’t hear or see any of them. Johnny notices the disconcerted look on your face, and his forehead creases. “But I’m sure you want to see something less…morbid than this, right? Come on.”

“Uh, I-I don’t mind,” you insist, even though you feel like you’ve just awoken from a painful trance by the sound of his voice. But he’s already gesturing for you to follow him elsewhere.

The next set of paintings you end up in front of are a series of sunflower studies. One frame depicts the long green stems; another provides an up-close view of their lined petals. One zooms in close on the flower’s brown center, only small glimpses of yellow left at the edges of the frame.

“This is definitely very different.” You look at him, a small smile pulling at your lips. “But it fits you. I see why you like it.” You remember him back in the park, taking careful pictures of the aster bush and of your hands…and then offering to take one of you. You don’t know why that last one makes your stomach jump.

“I thought you might like it.” Johnny’s eyes linger on your face as he observes your reaction to the paintings. He’s seen these flowers probably a hundred times by now in this permanent exhibit, but the wonder in your expression is new to him.

—

You both walk through a few more exhibitions after that, all with different subjects and mediums—some consist of sculptures, others are clay vases and figures. There’s still a lot to see in the museum, but you’re starting to get hungry, and you know Johnny has already heard your stomach growling.

After the 2nd time it happens and you think you might melt from embarrassment, he grins at you and makes a suggestion. “Let’s go to my office. I’ll get my things and we can eat. The restaurant here is pretty good—or at least that’s what everyone else says…”

When you get to his office, you feel almost like you’ve stepped into a room from years past. Your gaze drifts across his desk immediately; it’s not sleek and modern like you’d expect, considering the rest of the museum’s aesthetic, but wooden and heavy and vintage-looking. It’s olden quality resembles everything else in his personal space. Even his desk chair, a big and plush thing, feels vintage with its soft leather and rustic design.

This feeling is far from a bad thing, though. You enjoy the aged look of the bookcases, the picture frames, the chairs, the small decorations here and there—everything about this room.

Johnny notices how you look around, studying everything in sight, and smiles. “It’s not the most modern, but I like it.”

“It’s perfect. Like a world of its own.”

“A woman of taste, I see.” Johnny puts a hand over his heart, giving an expression like he’s truly touched, and you can only grin sheepishly. When he has his belongings, he leads you out and locks the door behind him.

“Let’s see what they have on the menu today, then.”

—

You get dinner at the museum’s restaurant, just as Johnny recommended, and he even decides to eat too. Maybe he does it so you won’t look odd being the only one eating, or because he really just wants to; he doesn’t let on. Either way, sitting across from him like this in a fancy restaurant with both of you having a nice meal feels almost like a date. You let that thought amble around for a few minutes longer before tucking it back into one of your mind’s many small niches.

“I’ll probably be digesting this for the next few weeks,” he says jokingly, pulling a mock-disappointed face at his plate.

“That sounds like the worst constipation in history.” He snorts at your comment, his eyes creasing as he laughs. You notice he has a dimple when he smiles, and your grin mirrors his. You don’t think you’ve seen him laugh quite so genuinely before, but now that you’ve experienced it, you want to hear it again and again.

Anything is preferable to the perpetual gloom, always slinking around the corner.

—

When Johnny gets back home after dropping you off at the university, he undresses himself and showers and pulls on his bedclothes, which are nothing more than his underwear and a pair of sweatpants. His upper canines ache in his gums the entire time he goes through these motions, like two pulses of red-hot heat positioned on either side of his mouth.

He takes a blood bag from the fridge and drinks it in bed, leaning his arms against his knees. A sudden remembrance manifests itself in his mind; he hears the hazy echo of his mother’s decades-past voice in his head, reprimanding him for eating in bed. A sharp pain grips his chest, and he tries to send it back to the depths where it belongs.

When the blood hits his stomach, the pain is eclipsed by the bloodlust, which is no better. His fangs drop immediately, spiking into his lower lip. Johnny closes his eyes and, very gingerly, allows himself to draw a picture of you in his mind, of your blood in his mouth and your heartbeat roaring in his ears. The way your blood would flow out so delicately, crashing into his tastebuds like the high tide. He is usually better than this at curtailing his bloodlust, not even letting it reach the point of his canines hurting—he can’t remember the last time that’s happened—but being around you sets him on edge. Awakens him in some strange, raw way.

That only makes him more wary. And more guilty about imagining himself drinking your blood. He shouldn’t even be around you if he’s losing his grip on his hard-won control. But although it makes him feel ashamed, it also causes his heart to rush.

He drains the blood bag to the last possible drop. To his relief, it calms him significantly, though the thoughts of you don’t leave. More innocent ones now, of your outing earlier in the evening. Deep beneath, they are tinged with his ever-present guilt at his vampiric nature.

Johnny doesn’t need the sleep, but he drifts off anyway, if only to quiet the conflict sending daggers into his mind.

You’ve known Johnny for a few weeks now, not counting the time you spent silently staring at him in the café, but you find yourself intertwining yourself further into his life. You end up visiting his apartment sooner than you anticipated. You didn’t think of anything as ridiculous as him living in a coffin or sleeping in the rafters like a bat, but you also had a hard time imagining what his place might look like.

You come over on a weekend when you have more time to simply hang out and not worry so much about anything else.

Like usual, he waits in that spot on the side of the street for you to come out. In the daytime, you’re more apprehensive about him being here and someone potentially seeing him and trying to cause trouble for him, but there’s a part of you that likes the rebellious aspect of it. And if he truly doesn’t mind coming near the campus to pick you up, you don’t have much issue with him doing it.

Johnny’s apartment is clean—and a little sparser than you’d expected. Maybe he’s a fan of minimalism. One side of the wall is taken up by a wide bookcase, which features a bunch of different knickknacks, books, and a collection of larger hardcovers that look like photo albums. On the other walls are a few framed pictures of different scenes, and you assume they’re ones he must’ve taken.

“This is a nice place,” you say as he takes your jacket for you and puts it up. “It must cost quite a bit, too…” You sit down on the couch, stroking the soft material of it.

Johnny shrugs. “Thanks. It’s nothing I can’t handle...being nearly a century old gives you plenty of time to save money.” He appears charmingly self-satisfied when he’s able to make you laugh. “Do you want anything?”

“Water is fine…thank you.” Johnny nods and goes off to the kitchen.

Despite trying to keep your eyes on the wall photos, your gaze follows him as he leaves. You discreetly watch him move around his kitchen. With his dark clothes, he’s like a splash of black paint against the pale tile and stainless steel.

There are blood packs in Johnny’s fridge. Lots of them. You know because you saw them from your vantage point on the couch when he opened the fridge door. They look like the blood bags you’d see in a hospital, which makes you wonder how he even gets access to those. Another mystery you struggle to wrap your head around.

He comes back to the living room with your water, and you take it gratefully, though you also feel a little awkward. You think maybe the blood bags are something you shouldn’t have seen, although you know he probably would’ve made more effort to hide them or put them away if that were the case.

“You have a good supply of blood, a nice apartment, and a great job. Does every vampire get these kinds of perks?” Admittedly, it sounded better in your head. Your attempt to stave off the awkward feeling—which was really only coming from your end—only makes it more intense. Johnny laughs dryly in response. You can’t tell if he actually finds it amusing or is just trying to humor you, which makes you feel incredibly silly.

“All of it’s government-issued if you promise never to bite any humans.” Johnny gives a wry smile. “But it’s a mistake to think vampires live glamorous lives, filling up on blood and having no cares in the world.”

“N-no, I get it,” you stutter. “Bad joke.”

“I’m not trying to embarrass you or be mean. It’s just the way things are.” Your roles are suddenly reversed, and now he seems to feel some sort of sympathy for you, like you’re just an ignorant little human who doesn’t know any better. The last part of that is more your insecurities speaking out than anything else, but you try to ignore that and take him for his word.

Johnny gets up from the couch to go over to the bookcase as you sip your water. After looking through the photo albums intently, he takes one off the shelf and hands it to you. You set your water down and hold the album carefully as you open the front cover. The cover itself has a neat little label that reads Telluride 1976 - 1980, so you can already expect what you’ll find in it. There are numerous photos of trees, bushes, snowy mountain ranges, lakes, brilliantly vibrant flowers, and woodland creatures. You stop at a picture of a deer looking straight ahead, its black eyes wide and curious as it examines the lens.

“I lived in the mountains back then, a little after my mentor had left. I spent some time trying to reconnect with nature...and all that other hippie shit people used to do back in that era.”

You chuckle. “Did you wear the same kinds of clothes, too? Bell bottoms and tie-dye T-shirts and all?”

Johnny laughs and shrugs. “Maybe…but that’s only for me to know.”

You grin and look at the photos again. “Well…did your plan work, at least?”

Johnny gives a wistful smile. “In some ways, I think it did.”

You continue looking through the rest of the album, which you could probably do for hours if you had the time—just sit and trace every possible line, curve, and ray of light. Johnny sits beside you as you do, occasionally explaining some pictures and their backstories.

“Lately, I’ve been wanting something else to take pictures of...someone else, maybe.”

“What, like a subject?” you ask.

“Yeah, it’d be nice...I haven’t taken pictures of another person in a while.”

You nod quietly as you flip through the pages—another possible hint flying right over your head. Then a thought comes to you—one that makes your skin warm. “Have you ever taken pictures of anyone you were...involved with?” You don’t say it directly, but you hope he can get the gist of what you’re asking.

Johnny nods as if he doesn’t want to admit to it, a nervous smile gracing his lips. “A few different people…but I always gave them the pictures after we, you know, stopped seeing each other...so there’s none left here.”

“I see…” For a few moments, your thoughts circle around that concept. What was it like to bare yourself in front of someone else like that, immortalized on film? What might it be like to allow Johnny to see you like that, to take pictures of you in your most vulnerable form? The idea doesn’t make you as downright anxious as you expected it to, though you can’t completely shake the lingering embarrassment about it.

After you finish looking through the entirety of his Telluride adventures, Johnny shows you some recent pictures he’s developed, and you’re giddy to see your own blurry creations among them. Now that you’re holding them physically in your hands, you can agree that they look nice, each with its own little personality.

“I thought about putting them in a new photo album,” he says, “but you can keep them, if you prefer.”

You hold them to your chest. “Yes, I’d like to keep them. Thank you.” You smile. “I’m sure I’ll leave you with plenty other photos to put in your album, anyway.”

—

The sun is close to setting again. You aren’t ready to leave yet, though, and Johnny is content to let you stay longer. He pulls out another album for you to look at, this one dated with 1960 - 1964. Unlike the others, there’s no title to describe what’s in it except for that year range.

“This is a picture of me someone took before I was turned,” Johnny murmurs, sitting back down beside you. He turns the album to you, and in the middle of the first page is a sepia-toned photo of him sitting on a bed—or maybe a couch?—wearing a suit. White, handwritten lettering on the bottom right of the photograph reads August 4, 1960.

“Oh wow...” You touch the photo gently over its protective lining. “You look exactly the same. Of course.”

“It’s the only photo I have left of myself,” he sighs, leaning back on the sofa. “If it weren’t for that...I’d feel almost like I didn’t exist at all.”

“Do you remember this day?” you ask.

“…Vaguely.” His answer doesn’t feel like the whole truth, and the way his eyes dart anxiously as he says it confirms your suspicions. Then he sighs again, heavier this time, and he seems to be exhaling all 60 years of his burden along with it. “I was...going to be married. It was for our wedding shoot.”

You’re surprised for a reason you’re unsure of, never even imagining that Johnny could’ve been married at one point in time. Could’ve had an entire life and a family, if it hadn’t been for...

“I’m sorry, Johnny.” You know you never would’ve met him if things hadn’t happened this way, and that knowledge tugs at your heart in a way that makes you feel intensely selfish.

Johnny shakes his head and avoids your eyes. “It was long ago.” He wets his lips and his jaw clenches like maybe he wants to say something else, but he remains silent for a while.

You continue exploring the photo album in silence. With its thin size, there aren’t as many pictures in it as the others��much less, in fact, but each one is still enough to keep your interest. Your mind keeps drifting back to the one of Johnny.

You hand the album back to him when you’re done. He takes it from you, but in a gesture you don’t foresee, he allows your hands to touch for the first time. You make a tiny flinch at the unexpected coolness—not ice-cold, but enough to be noticeable—but you don’t draw away from him. You let his fingers slide across yours as the photo album leaves your hands, and it sends electricity racing up and down your spine.

“S-sorry.” You’re not sure if you’re apologizing for flinching or for making contact at all, though there is no reason to because he initiated it.

“Doesn’t it ever disturb you at all that I’m not human?” Johnny asks softly, still holding the album.

“What?”

“You’ve taken all this so easily...much more easily than many others. You aren’t even disgusted at my cold hands.” A ghost of a grin comes over his face.

“If I were disgusted, I wouldn’t even be here,” you say, trying to lighten the tension. It’s not the kind of tension that arises from anger, offense, or upset, but something else that you are lost on comprehending in this moment. “Some of it’s unfamiliar, obviously, but I’m not disgusted.”

He glances down at the album in his hands, as if contemplating something. Maybe thinking about the only living photo of himself beneath the cover. Or maybe he’s thinking back to how he was turned in the first place and subsequently lost the life he was about to have. He still hasn’t told you anything about how he became a vampire, and though you’d like to know, it’s obviously a sore spot for him.

Eventually, he nods, willing himself to smile at you. “I’m glad.”

—

Night has fallen by the time you’re done exploring the decades of his life, though there is still much you haven’t seen and don’t yet know. You let him drive you back to the school as you stare out at the passing cars, wondering how many more of these people sitting in their vehicles are nonhuman and you’d never know it.

You hesitate after he pulls up across from the main gate.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Uh, nothing really, it’s just—I still don’t have your number or anything.” And I want to talk to you more often. I want to hear your voice more often. You don’t want to say anything overly dramatic or cheesy, so you just keep those last thoughts to yourself.

Thinking it had been something serious, he smirks at your concern. “Oh, I see. I’ll give it to you now, then.”

Once your numbers are safely in each other’s phones, you finally bid each other goodnight.

Though you try to steer your thoughts towards other things, you keep veering back to Johnny. His apartment. His fridge full of blood bags. His photo albums full of years of history. Even when you get into bed that night, you can’t keep him off your mind.

You wake up gasping and sweating when you dream of him with his fangs in your neck, your own blood running down your neck and chest. You glance over at your roommate to make sure you haven’t woken her and rest your head on your knees, trying to catch your breath and settle your racing heart. Your skin still prickles with how you could practically feel his heated breaths on your neck, ice-cold hands gripping your shoulders.

The worst part of it is that you can’t quite say you completely disliked it.

“It doesn’t make much sense to have a Halloween party and dress up as the very beings that you hate, but whatever…” you mumble, looking through a rack of costumes with a certain impassivity. You’re not very enthusiastic about going to this Halloween party, but your friend refuses to go alone. You haven’t been spending as much time with her anymore—partly because of Johnny and partly because you feel even more out of place around her than normal—and with all her begging and pleading, she refuses to let you opt out of this one.

“It’s about having fun, no one really cares Y/N. They’re freaks, aren’t they? That’s why people dress up as them, they’re practically meant for this.”

You become even more apprehensive about the party after hearing that, if that’s even possible. You smooth your hand over the fabric of a witch’s robe and sigh again, shaking your head. It doesn’t feel quite right to keep spending time in her presence—or anyone else who goes to your school—but you feel trapped on all sides, left without much of a choice. You would never hear the end of it if you tried to switch universities…or even drop out.

Your mind strays back to Johnny as always, with his melancholy aura and weird jokes and pretty pictures and monochrome clothes. The smell of his cologne, the lingering scent of roasted coffee beans, and his toothy smile, when he does show it to you. Something in you makes you want to drop everything you’re doing right now and go to him. It might even be nice to settle in his arms, feel them strong and solid around you—though he’d probably need just as much comforting as you.

“Dress up as this!” Your friend breaks the reverie as she prances over to you with a pair of fake fangs, the tips of them painted in acrylic blood. She holds them up to your mouth, and you struggle to manage a smile, if only to sate her enthusiasm. “It actually reminds me of…that vampire at the café. Say, have you seen him since then?”

You shake your head, moving away to sift through another rack of outfits as you try to maintain a detached expression. “Nope, not a glimpse. Haven’t even thought about him.”

When your friend doesn’t suspect anything, you let your expression drop just a tad, breathing out quietly.

The night of the party, the full moon is heavy and bold against the black blanket of the sky, which feels horribly cliché. You wonder if there are any werewolves out tonight, and what they might be doing right now.

“We’re going to have a good time tonight,” your friend insists as you both walk up the front steps of the host’s house. It’s someone you only vaguely know, a friend of a friend of a friend, but clearly a person who has an abundance of money judging by this expansive home. You don’t know why she feels the need to convince you, but maybe it’s because you haven’t seemed very enthusiastic so far. You only give a thumbs up to her words, which feels like an unconvincing gesture. Luckily for you, it works.

After a few hours, the party is still going strong but your head is starting to hurt from the music, and you’re growing weary of all the men crowding in too close, looking at you in your angel costume like you’re something to be devoured. You’ve rolled your eyes at way too many of them and their haphazardly put-together costumes, dressed up as vampires with terrible fake fangs or werewolves with manes of matted up fur.

Your friend keeps flitting around the party, talking to whoever she recognizes from classes or campus organizations, and you’ve given up on trying to follow her around any longer. Every time you turn around, she’s somewhere else. Noticing that you’re currently solo, a guy from one of your history classes comes up to you and begins what he thinks is an interesting conversation on how angels actually look more like Eldritch abominations than the cherubic humans depicted in paintings—so your costume is “technically inaccurate” —and your eyes glaze over as you pretend to listen to him.

You eventually manage to get away from him and get to an undisturbed corner, wedged next to two girls drinking cider and critically rating all the guys’ costumes. You pull your phone out and think about calling for a ride back to campus, but your thumb hovers over the message icon. You press it without thinking too much about it, and Johnny’s name appears as one of your most recent conversations. Though you feel somewhat nervous, you will yourself to open the box and begin typing.

To: Hi Johnny. I hope I’m not bothering you, but can I come over? 🙏🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿 I’m over this party

You put your phone back in your purse, trying not to get your hopes up for a quick response. You know there’s a good chance he’d still be awake at this time of night since he doesn’t need to sleep, but he has his own life and is probably off doing...vampire-y things. Whatever those things could be.

However, your hopes are met when your phone pings only a couple minutes later.

From: Of course. You’re not scared about spending your Halloween with a vampire? 😏

You smile at that.

To: I think I’ll be fine…as long as you don’t bite me.

From: 🦷🩸

—

You get to Johnny’s studio apartment not too long after, and you hang around outside his door for a few moments before knocking, suddenly feeling bashful about your costume. Maybe you should’ve changed before coming over here; what if he thinks it’s childish? Or maybe too revealing? Does he even care about that kind of stuff? Doesn’t matter now, though. You’re here, and there’s no way you’re turning back around.

He answers a few seconds after you knock, wearing a sweater and black pants. You notice his sweater is a cream color and not the usual black. He looks a little surprised to see your costume, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

“Wow, you look pretty. Nice of you to visit me after falling straight from Heaven.” You cringe at his cheesy line, though you also cannot deny that you secretly enjoy every bit of it.

“Thanks, Johnny...” you say timidly, stepping into his home as he lets you in. “Nice work with changing up the color scheme.”

He’s confused for a moment before realizing you’re talking about his clothes. “Oh yeah, that...um, haha. Thanks.”

Unbeknownst to you, the back of his mind is buzzing with a form of excitement he hasn’t felt in a while. Not the clawing, frantic spikes of bloodlust, but a more physical kind of desire. It’s pleasurable, but he also feels guilty about pining over how sweet and innocent you look in your all-white outfit, stockings hugging your legs perfectly and your dress just short enough to tempt the imagination. Really, you’ve painted a picture of perfect purity, and the only thing he can think about is ruining you. Putting his hands on you and peeling your dress off to reveal the soft skin underneath.

He casts those thoughts aside as you sit prettily on his couch, legs crossed at the ankles—though it’s hard to do so. “Do you want something to drink? Or eat? There isn’t a whole lot of food here, but I can order something…”

“Do you ever make your own coffee?” The question seems a bit random at first, and you try to explain. “You know, since you always get it from the café.”

Johnny smiles. “Do you want coffee? I can make it.”

You nod. “That would be nice…whatever you have.”

“I pretty much have your usual order memorized by now, so I should be good on making it.” Johnny walks to the kitchen. “You can look through the albums while you’re in there. The ones you haven’t seen yet.”

“Oh, thanks.” You feel a little nervous to be looking through the shelf of his treasured photo albums by yourself, but you’re also glad he trusts you enough to let you do it. It makes you feel important. Maybe even important to him, as silly as that might sound.

It isn’t long before the scent of coffee wafts out into the living room. Johnny returns soon with two cups of it, and just as he promised, yours is made just the way you like it.

“Thank you.” You set the album back on the shelf and take the cup from Johnny. For a while, both of you talk of nothing important—just filling the space with the details of your days.

“So how was the party?” Johnny finally asks, and he raises his eyebrows as he scans your outfit again. You grin halfheartedly.

“It was…alright. Kinda weird. I think it’d be more fun if I went to a regular university, but you know…”

Johnny shakes his head. “I can’t blame you for bailing out.”

“Yeah…I’ve been to college parties before, but the Halloween theme was a bit…”

“Strange for an institution that bans all supernatural beings?” Johnny finishes your sentence. He doesn’t look offended or irritated by it—only slightly amused.

You shrug, biting your lip. “Yeah, that.”

“Well, look on the bright side. I wouldn’t have gotten to see you in your natural form otherwise.”

This one almost goes over your head, too, but you catch it just in time. Johnny’s compliments make you feel warm all over, like you’re sitting under the sun. You grin and look down into your cup of coffee, unused to receiving such bold praise and unsure how to respond to it. Something pops into your mind, though, and you think it might be a good idea to run with it.

“You could...take a picture of me, you know. If you want to...since I’m all dressed up now anyway.” You meet his eyes only for a second and then look away, twisting the mug in your hands.

Johnny sits up a little straighter at your words, trying to catch your eyes, though you don’t hold his gaze for long. “You’re sure?” he asks.

“I’m sure. Go ahead! Before I change my mind.” You laugh nervously and carefully set your half-empty mug on the table.

Johnny’s camera is never too far away from him, so he grabs it and plays with the settings for a bit before looking back to you, a small smile on his face. “I’m gonna start, okay?” His voice is surprisingly soft. This, yet again, reminds you of him and the aster bush. He acts as if you might run away at the first shutter click, which makes you feel babied, but you don’t totally hate it.

The first few photos are a little awkward—at least to you. You aren’t sure how to pose, or if you should try to look more casual, though Johnny assures you you’re doing well. He gives you directives throughout, telling you to look in his direction or angle your face a certain way, and you follow his instructions to the best of your ability.

At one point, one of your dress straps slips down. When you go to fix it, Johnny says, “Wait. Could you keep it like that?”

You look at him, your body heating from the suggestion.

“Is that okay with you?”

“…Yes.” Your throat is dry, and your body reacts in a way you don’t expect—little nervous thrills in your hands and feet, though you try to internally explain it away as the coffee’s effects. Johnny takes a few more photos like this, and then he steps closer to gently touch your chin, guiding your face to the angle he’s looking for.

“So good for me.” It slips past his lips in a reverential murmur before he can really consider what he’s saying, and you both freeze. Your heart rate increases, and you wonder if he can hear how hard the red organ is beating in your chest. Probably.

You want to hear him say it again.

Johnny laughs awkwardly, his hand coming back to his side almost a little too quickly to be natural. “Um, I’m really sorry. That was a bit...”

“It…it’s fine.” You avoid his eyes. Johnny takes a few more photos, but the set of his mouth is a little tight, as if he’s stressed about something. Or regretting what he let slip, maybe. You want to tell him you really don’t feel bad about it, but you aren’t sure how to do that without making things more awkward…or revealing your true desires.

When Johnny has taken enough pictures of you to be satisfied with, he sits next to you on the couch, setting his camera on the coffee table and looking suddenly timid.

“I can’t wait to see them,” you say, attempting to break the tension that never really cleared the room after his earlier comment. He blinks for a moment like he doesn’t know what you mean, and then realizes—obviously, he’ll be developing the photos.

“They’ll come out nice, I’m sure. I think you’ll photograph well.”

“Thank you,” you murmur, and now it’s your turn to be unsure of how to resurrect the conversation.

“You’re beautiful.” It’s an abrupt comment. It makes your stomach twist in a pleasant, fluttery way, and you become hyperaware of his form sitting next to yours.

“Haven’t heard that one much, but thanks.”

Johnny turns to you. “Anyone who’d think otherwise is a fool.”

There’s a pause after this where you both simply study each other, watching for hidden reactions that can’t be read on the surface. The way he says it is…decisive, assured. But it also manages to be tender, as if he needs you to know what he thinks of you. Needs you to see yourself the way he does—the same way you do for him. You don’t know where the confidence comes from, but maybe his tone and his words and his endlessly dark eyes have pulled it out of you. “I want to kiss you.”

Johnny’s lips part. “Are you certain?”

“I’m certain.”

He doesn’t hesitate anymore. Johnny moves closer to you and cups the back of your neck. Something awakens in his eyes in the seconds before he presses his mouth to yours. Though he wants to drink eagerly from your lips, his kiss is languid to avoid overwhelming you, and there is an audible smack of your lips whenever he pulls away and presses back in.

His mouth tastes like the coffee you just drank, but underneath that you swear you can taste a hint of the deep iron of blood, and you don’t know how to feel about that. You think about what his fangs would feel like scraping against your bottom lip, if he’d ever show them to you, and you moan quietly.

“Do you want this? With me?” Johnny confirms once more, pulling his gaze away from your lips and up to your eyes. His own eyes are yearning, but there is also an element of something like fear roiling in them. As if you’d turn him away, even though you’ve already shown your desire for him.

“Yes. Just you. No one else.”

Johnny’s body gravitates towards yours, and you think he’s going to push you down onto the sofa, but he scoops your legs up and carries you to his bedroom instead. Even his hands on your waist and legs makes you burn inside.

This is the first time you've seen his bedroom. The sheets are cloud-soft when he sets you down on them, and his window lets moonlight shine through the open blinds and scatter in thick beams across the floor. The only other light source is the bedside lamp, which emits a comfortable yellowish glow.

Johnny joins you on the bed and lets you climb into his lap—encourages you to do so. His cool hands pulling at your thighs as you settle them on either side of his waist makes tingles go through your body. You don’t hesitate to bring your lips back together, kissing each other deeply as one of his hands cradles the back of your head and the other settles on the small of your back.

You are certain vampires don’t have any powers of enchantment—that’s for magic wielders. And yet, you feel like you’ve been put in a trance by his kisses alone, and you wonder how you could’ve lived this long without knowing how his lips feel—how they fit perfectly against your own. As if everything up to now has purposely led you together.

You shift in Johnny’s embrace, and the movement causes his thigh to slide between your legs. Your heat is pressed against his thigh directly now, your silken panties catching against the denim of his pants. You murmur against his lips, not really saying anything of substance but wanting to vocalize your desire to him. Johnny’s hand tightens slightly on your back, and he experimentally lifts his leg higher and slides his thigh across you. That draws a gasp from you.

Noticing your positive response, Johnny continues rocking his thigh up against your pussy and kissing you until you’re breathless and your nipples are straining against the fabric of your dress. You pull away from him for a moment to try to ground yourself, feeling like your nerves are already being singed with fiery pleasure. Johnny’s face is noticeably more flushed than before, but he also looks much more composed than you feel at the moment.

“It takes longer to get hard,” he explains, as if reading the lingering question in your own expression. “Since...you know. Slow blood.” You rock your hips over his thigh more enthusiastically, motivated to get him hard underneath you, and you listen to his choppy breaths as you move. Your movements aren’t the smoothest, but he helps you guide your hips in a way that feels good for you both. You’ve never been with anyone before, so it doesn’t much matter to you how long or quick it takes for him to get there as long as he does.

Feeling the bulge grow underneath you excites you. Johnny groans against your lips as you kiss him and rub yourself over his member. The sound comes from somewhere deep inside him, as if it’s something he’s been containing for a long time. Your hand goes to his waist and tugs at his belt loops, then drifts closer to his belt buckle, pulling the leather and metal apart. Johnny pauses when you get off his lap and slide further down, grips your arms like he doesn’t want you to go. “Are…you sure? You don’t have to…if it’s too much—”

“I want to, Johnny.”

With your affirmative, he lets you kneel between his legs, pull his zipper apart, and trace your curious fingers over the bulge beneath the fabric of his underwear. Johnny loses his breath when you drag his underwear down, sliding it over the heated skin of his dick. His length is thick and long—even with him not being fully hard yet—and the tip glistens wet with precum. You weren’t sure what to expect, but this is much bigger than you think you might be able to handle. It makes your face warm and your stomach do another series of flips. Still, you want it and you want him, so you aren’t going to stop now.

You lean closer to press your lips against his shaft, leaving a few soft kisses behind. Johnny’s mouth parts when your mouth touches him.

Johnny gently holds the back of your head as you leave small licks over his shaft, tasting the salty skin on your tongue. He lets out a shaky breath as he watches you, his other hand brushing the side of your face.

“Just like that…” he murmurs, his voice heavy with lust as you circle your tongue around the thick, darkened tip, catching drops of his precum. He never takes his eyes off you, and this makes you feel a little exposed, but you continue with your actions. When you suck Johnny’s tip past your lips, his thighs tense under you, the thick muscle reacting beautifully to your actions on his body.

More precum drips from him, and you find the taste strangely pleasing. It makes you want more of him, of whatever he has to offer you. You wrap your hand around his shaft, though it doesn’t fit entirely around, and begin stroking him in a way you hope feels good.

Johnny’s hand slips over yours to guide your movements and show you how much pressure to apply, what pace to stroke him at. “Like this, baby…yes, that’s so good…” He showers you with praise as you get the hang of it, and he eventually lets your hand go so you can do it on your own, his own hand drifting back to the bed to grip the comforter.

It’s hard to quantify just how much seeing you like this turns him on, you kneeling between his legs with his cock between your lips while wearing your pretty, angelic outfit. His previous guilt about “corrupting” you descends to the very back of his mind as he savors every moment of your hands on his cock and your tongue circling his slit.

“I’m close,” he whispers. You quicken your movements on him, hollowing your cheeks tighter around his dick, and the moan he gives shoots straight between your legs.

Johnny carefully pulls your head back so you won’t choke before he comes, streams of his seed shooting into your mouth and running down his cock. Your hand still squeezes around him as he comes, and he slowly thrusts into the tight circle of your fist as you milk every drop from him. By the time he’s spent, your mouth and hand and part of the sheets are completely sticky with his release. You imagine it must have been a long time since he’s last had an orgasm.

The vampire watches intently as you swallow his cum, which causes his softening dick to throb in your hand. He takes your face in his hands and kisses you deeply, uncaring of the taste of himself in your mouth. His hair tickles your face as he kisses you feverishly, his nose bumping yours and his tongue prodding past your lips.

“Come here, angel.” Johnny pulls your body up onto the bed before you can get yourself up there first. The pet name makes warmth flood through your body, like drinking a hot chocolate at the café, except a thousand times more satisfying. Johnny’s hands are once again caressing your thighs, though this time they slide up underneath your dress and squeeze your hips. “Can I take these pretty panties off you?”

“Please.”

He hooks his fingers into the sides of them and pulls them down your legs and past your ankles. One of his hands goes underneath your dress to feel you soft and wet against his fingers, and you both moan at the same time. He slides his digits through your lips and over your clit, and him leaning forward to bring his mouth to your throat is enough to have you nearly overwhelmed. His fingers tease your entrance but don’t push inside until you nearly have to beg him.

“Please, Johnny…” You push your hips up to get his attention.

“Do you want my fingers?” he asks softly.

“Y-yes…” At your words, he eases the middle one into you, slowly enough to avoid discomfort. It feels strange to have someone else’s fingers inside you. His finger reaches further than yours can, touching you more deeply than you’ve felt before; it makes you gasp a bit too sharply.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, freezing and thinking he might’ve done something wrong.

“N-no, I’m fine. Keep going.”

Johnny’s mouth edges closer to the cleavage of your dress as he starts thrusting his finger into you, warming you up enough to take a second digit. Shakily, you bring your hands up to slide the straps down and make it easier for him, and his breath hitches when you pull the top of your dress down.

His mouth envelopes one of your nipples as he slides the second finger into you. His fingers encounter a part of you that makes you moan unexpectedly and grab onto him, a little surprised at the sudden spike of pleasure.

“You’re so pretty,” he purrs, his lips moving against the curve of your breast as he speaks. “And so responsive.”

As Johnny’s mouth and fingers work you closer to an orgasm, you marvel at how handsome he looks and how good he feels. He opens his eyes to see you staring at him, your pupils wide and mouth desperate, and he separates himself from your chest to kiss you deeply once again.

When you come around his fingers, Johnny whispers more compliments to you about how good you are and how he wants to watch you come undone because of him all the time. When he thinks you might be on the brink of overstimulation, he takes his fingers out of you, slipping them into his mouth to taste you.

“I’ll take this off now. Is that okay?” He whispers this into your ear with his hands on either side of your hips, caressing the fabric of your dress.

“I-it’s okay.”

Johnny slips your dress off, leaving you in nothing but your white sheer stockings. The sight of you sitting there on his bed, breathing heavily from your climax in your pretty thigh-highs, has his cock throbbing and rising to life once again.

“Lay back on the bed.” You do, and he settles himself between your legs like you did for him earlier. When you glance at him, his eyes are heavy and piercing. In this moment, you are acutely reminded of the fact that he is not a human, with how he looks like a beast of prey about to devour a meal. You are too nervous to look back at him for long, so you stare at the ceiling with your legs shaking from anticipation.

Johnny’s mouth on you is almost jarring in how wet it is, and you arch up into him in surprise and a rush of pleasure. He gently presses your legs back onto the bed and continues licking into you, parting your lower lips with his tongue and making your thighs tremble under his grasp.

If you had to describe it in words, you probably wouldn’t be able to. He kisses your pussy the same way he kisses you on the mouth, passionately and with more than enough tongue to satisfy. Johnny slips his fingers into you again as he curls his lips around your clit, and you moan unabashedly.

You’re quickly spiraling towards another orgasm, maybe quicker than you expected; but it makes sense with you still being so raw from the climax you just had. You gain enough courage to give another glance down at Johnny, and you see the way his other arm moves back and forth from beneath the bed, stroking himself while he eats you out. Something about that pushes you over the edge, and you cry out as you come on his tongue.

As Johnny gives you time to calm down again, he stands and finally pulls his clothes off, baring his body to you. You’re not sure if you’ve ever seen a man so beautiful.

He goes to get a condom, and your words stumble from your lips before you can psych yourself out of saying them. “I-I’m on birth control.” Johnny looks back at you, his gaze filled with something you can’t quite read. He comes closer to you, holding himself above you on the bed so his face is hovering just above yours.

“You want to feel me raw?” he whispers.

You nod under his burning stare, feeling like you’re on a high you won’t be able to get off of. “I need you, Johnny.”

Johnny climbs fully onto the bed then and positions himself between your legs. His cock is thick and heavy between his thighs as it bumps against your inner thigh and leaves a smear of precum behind. After putting some lube in his hand, he slicks himself with the sticky substance, preparing himself to fuck you open. Something deep in your abdomen shudders, and your walls clench around nothing as you watch him stroke his shaft, the squelching, wet sound of his hand on his dick loud in the quiet room.

When he’s done, he grabs your thighs and pulls you a little closer to him. “If it hurts, tell me, okay?”

“O-okay.”

The slick tip prodding at your hole makes you want more, though you are a bit afraid of how this is going to feel. When it finally pushes inside of you, you gasp. Johnny watches your face for signs of pain as he slides forward further.

With two previous orgasms and the lube to help, his cock stretches you open with some discomfort, but not the kind of sharp pain you expected. Your nails leave little half-moon shapes on Johnny’s biceps as you squeeze his arms and try to keep your lower half relaxed, wanting to take all of him in—or as much as you can manage, anyway. You try to keep your breathing even as he pushes into you slowly.

Your eyebrows crease and your mouth tightens when he slides deeper still, and he pauses. “Johnny…” You worry your lip with your teeth, feeling like you’ve been stuffed to the brim—and he’s not even all the way in yet.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” you beg, maintaining your grip on his arms. “Just…try moving.”

Johnny pulls out and slowly thrusts back in again, angling his dick to find that sensitive spot within you. Your mouth falls open silently when he does; this feels much, much different from his fingers. This is better.

Johnny repeats the movement, being mindful not to push himself too deep—only enough for you to handle. Beneath him, your body begins unwinding at the pleasure he’s delivering to you, and your eyes flutter closed as the ecstasy takes over your mind. One of his hands goes to tease your clit as he settles into a good rhythm, and you cry out at the extra dose of pleasure.

“You’re taking me so well,” Johnny mumbles as he sits back and watches himself slide into you, both of your lower halves slick from lube and your own wetness. “So warm and wet, angel…” You can tell he’s using a lot of his energy to keep his pace controlled and gentle enough for you to actually enjoy. The idea of being fucked harder makes you ache deep inside, but you figure it’s best to save that for when you’re more used to this. You already know it’ll be difficult to walk in the morning after this.

Johnny leans forward to kiss your lips, changing the angle again and circling his pelvis into you, and a choked gasp escapes your mouth at the slow wind of his hips.

Johnny lavishes your neck and throat with kisses, and though he is a vampire, you aren’t worried about him biting you. His fangs have not made an appearance since all this started, and you doubt if he would ever bring them out in front of you. You don’t know if you should ask about it, either, wondering if it’s too soon after only a month and a half of knowing each other—but maybe you could say the same about him being inside of you right now.

“Johnny…” you whisper into the air, your fingers scrabbling against his sweaty skin. The mounting tension in your abdomen is close to snapping, and you are almost frightened by how intense it already feels. He moves his face from your neck to be face-to-face with you again and plants a heavy, dizzying kiss on your lips.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs against your kiss-swollen lips. “I’ve got you, Y/N.”

Falling apart in Johnny’s arms feels like a form of Heaven that’s meant to be kept hidden, because you might become addicted to it otherwise. Your inner muscles squeeze around his dick as you come. His name flows from your lips in a high song. You can’t imagine any physical sensation that could be better than this, his hips rocking into you as you tighten and cream around him, and you know innately that Johnny has ruined all chances of you ever feeling this fulfilled with anyone but him.

The constant pulse of your walls against his dick is too much to withstand for long, and Johnny’s muscles pull taut with pleasure when he comes, groaning into your neck and spilling overflowing streams of thick cum into you. His hips falter in their former rhythm, and he resists the urge to push himself as deep as he can into you.

When he pulls out, you whine from the discomfort of it, but also because you wish he could stay in you forever. You know you’ll be sore when you wake up—and you can already feel the very beginnings of exhaustion and ache settling in your body—but you’d do it a hundred times over without changing a thing.

—

Johnny curls himself around you after he’s cleaned the both of you up, as if he means to shield you from the world. You’re quiet for a while as you listen to his slow-beating heart and feel his cool skin against yours.

You look up at his face, which is hard to see distinctly in the dark of the room. With the lamp turned out, the only source of light comes from the moon now, but you can decipher enough to make out the shape of his lips and his glittering eyes. You know he can see much better than you in this light, and he takes his time tracing his fingers across your face and cheek, studying your features.

“Would you ever…make me a vampire?”

His body tenses at your question. “Don’t say anything ridiculous. You still have a whole life ahead of you to live. What I have here...this is no existence.” He’s not mad, at least not at you, but his voice hardens at the very idea of it.

“But what if I wanted to live it with you?”

Johnny takes a breath, but he doesn’t say anything to that. He just continues stroking your face and looks at you for a long time, like he’s searching for something. You don’t know if you truly expected an answer from him, or how you would feel if he did give one.

Eventually, your eyes begin to fall low, and sleep overcomes you. The last thing you register is Johnny’s chilly hand touching your cheek. When he notices you’ve drifted off, he pulls the covers tighter around you both. Then he presses you to his chest as he tunes out the sound of cars rumbling on the streets below in exchange for the beating of your heart—still alive, so red with blood.

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peevishpants · 2 years ago

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gosh i wanna ask you every question lol. how about 5 28 + 29?

5- answered already :D

28. Any art events you have participated in the past (like zines)

I have done so many zines it'd be tedious to list em all! My current opinion of zines is that you gotta be REAL careful either as a participant or a customer bc SOME REAL SHADY STUFF HAPPENS! Speaking of which, I'm currently trying to salvage haikyuu flowers zine from the shit hole it fell into over the last year and a half. i'm in hell

Aside from zines, I've attempted inktober pretty much every year (a lot of u probably know me from outfitober 2021!), and I do Hourly Comic Day but it's for my friends' eyes only usually. I've been meaning to do swordtember this year but hoo boy i'm unprepared and unmoisturized we'll see we'll see

29. Media you love, but doesn't inspire you artistically

Oh, almost everything I watch/read nowadays! I feel like I decide to engage in a piece of media either because it's something I want to study for its artistry from the getgo, OR something I want to consume as a consumer, tho not opposed to having some of its elements trickle down into my mind as "inspiration" later on, but not directly

Here's a list of stuff I like and will probably not get into drawing fanart for or mull over my mind in a "studying" capacity, but makes me think nonetheless:

Suits (netflix show about lawyers, it's presented like a series of tense conversations where a cast of asshole lawyers yell at each other in their offices then storm out, over and over again, ad nauseum, i love it)

Funny shows - Silicon Valley, American Vandal, Middleditch and Schwartz, whatever James Acaster has ever spoken in any form at all (they're FUNNY)

Mistborn (book series by brandon sanderson. visually everything is grey/black and i will never draw it but it rocks)

Show Me The Money (korean hip hop survival show. insane and stupid. what more could you want)

Our Flag Means Death (banger. i'm not gay enough to draw OFMD fanart and do it justice)

Dimension 20, Game Changer, Noise Boys (I'm a BLM stan)

3 body problem (love 2 shill it 24/7, but i don't like drawing rockets and black holes)

Omniscient Readers Viewpoint (webnovel. I haven't read the webtoon. I do want to draw MC one day only because the webtoon and fanart usually makes him look handsome which conflicts with my favourite thing about him: that he is canonically really ugly)

Most songs I listen to (I'm not really directly inspired by music! I like to jam out and enjoy listening to it, but I'm generally immune to its mood/thought-altering properties)*

*except Must Have Been The Wind by Alec Benjamin, I still cry every time i hear it and ive never experienced this with any other song i don't know why

#ask #artist ask #anon #thanks!

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lesbianakaashi · 4 years ago

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The Forgotten Shounen: Katekyo Hitman Reborn

This is not a “Why you should watch/read khr” or anything like that. This is just me going into the deep dive and throwing my findings at you. I’m making this because khr used to be my favourite series when I was 15 (I had plushees, posters, tradingcards, the art book etc) and now as an adult I constantly find myself baffled at how unknow it seems to be.

1. Okay first what is khr?

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! or just Reborn! is a series by Akira Amano which was published in Weekly Shounen Jump from 2004 to 2012 (with 42 volumes) and got an anime adaption which run from 2006 to 2010 on Tv Tokyo (with 202 episodes and one OVA).

2. What’s it about?

Khr is a parody of the italian mafia and plays in a world where the mafia is heavily influencial. The protagonist is the japanese middle schooler Sawada Tsunayoshi who is known as “No good Tsuna” because of his failing grades, general weak and cowardly personality and weak physics.

He becomes aware of the mafia world when a 2 year old baby called Reborn arrives at his house claiming to be the greatest hitman and declaring himself his home tutor. Reborn was send by the 9th head of the Vongola famiglia who is ready to retire and looking for a new heir. Which of course, is supposed to be Tsuna and now it's Reborns job to shape him into a worthy sucessor.

Tsuna rejects the violence of the mafia world and refuses the position as the 10th. Thanks to Reborn and his general craziness Tsuna meets different people and starts to make real friendships. Reborn wants 6 of those friends to be Tsuna's future guardians, basically a group of people which will be closest to him in the vongola famiglia. Tsuna might have no interest in those positions but the friendships he builds with them become really precious to him.

Reborns arrivial also brings in the enemies of the Vongola family which leads to Tsuna being forced to engage in battles. Generally Tsuna openly avoids fights and prefers to run away but will put himself in danger for his friends' sake or because of something Reborn did.

Through out the series Tsuna matures and gains strenght but he never becomes a power fantasy. He's just a guy with many flaws who grows through the human connections he makes.

Personally I think the relationship between Reborn and Tsuna is one of the best student teacher reltaionships in all of manga only topped by Mob and Reigen from Mob Psycho 100. Especially the last arc really underlines their unique relationship to me.

Furthermore, khr offers a new and unique battle system: The flames. I'm not gonna go into to too much detail but the general idea is that one fights with their dying will flame which basically turns off your the savety switch so you can fight with everything you have. The flames are seperated into different categories such as: sky, storm, mist, rain, sun, lightning and cloud and have different attributes asigned to each one. Tsuna's use of the sky flame and his transformation when using it is still one of my favourite shounen transformations to this day.

3. What happened?

The series did really well and then not so well over the course of its serialisation. After the manga got an anime adaption it increased in populairty and video games, light novels, and other products such as CDs were created based on the series. Reborn is one of the best selling series of Weekly Shōnen Jump and has sold around 30 Million volumes overall. It was and still is very popular in Japan but rather unknown in the west.

According to the article "The Rise and Fall of Weekly Shonen Jump: A Look at the Circulation of Weekly Jump" khr was the 10th bestselling series in Weekly Shōnen Jump, with a total of 7 million copies sold in 2007.

This number increasing to 15 milion in 2008. Which placed khr into the 4th best selling series of 2008 in Japan.

Between 2008 and 2010 those sales declined but still kept strong with khr as the 6th top selling manga in 2009, 8th best selling in 2010 and then 24th best selling in 2012.

In November 2014, readers of the Da Vinci magazine voted khr number 17 on a list of Weekly Shōnen Jump's greatest manga series of all time.

After the anime came to an apprupt stop in 2010 for unknown reasons the manga sells took a visible hit. (Apparently the studio wanted to put the anime on halt because they were busy with other projects and give Akira Amano time to develop her story but I couldn't find any source for this claim) Furthermore, the rushed last chapters of the manga in 2012 declined the popularity of the series even more. There's no offical statement as to why the manga was ended in such a way but it's reasonable to assume that Jump either cut it considering the decreasing sales or Akira Amano choose to end it for personal reasons.

Nontheless, Tsuna not being included in Jump Force (a fighting game where you can play as different characters from Jump) in 2019 even tho he made it in earlier Jump Stars games also underlines the decreased interest in the series.

Rumors on a reboot or anime adaption of the last two arcs surface from time to time but are genereally unlikely. Artland the studio which made khr has gone bankrupt around 2015-2016. It might be taken on by another studio but rather uncommen especially with such an old series.

4. Art style

The khr anime ended over 10 years ago and the old art style might not be appealing to newer audiences.

Especailly because the anime adaption follows Akira Amanos old art style which heavily developed within the years. Here a picture comparing characters in the new art style:

A modern anime adaption in the new art style would be aesthetically pleasing. It would probably look similiar to Psycho Pass since Akira Amano did the concept art for this series.

(My personal art student hot take is that both art styles are unique and fun. Up to this day Akira Amano still has my favourite art style and even if the amount folds in the characters clothing is a little extreme I love it dearly.)

5. Criticism

The show is not without flaws and even if I greatly enjoy it it wouldn't be right not to adress them.

Daily Life Arc:

A lot of people view the first 20 to 25 episodes as fillers and quickly lose intererst in the series. This is due to the fact that Akira Amano inteded the series to be a gag manga and focuses the first chapters on world building, character introduction and comical narratives. It's rumored that the decision to develop the story into a battle shounen was made because the sales weren't doing well enough at first. So the first chapters/episodes may seem titidious but are necessary for the story and the development of the characters. The tonal shift from a more gintama like gag manga to a darker battle focused story can also be offputting to some viewers.

Either way a lot of people blame this arc when discussing why khr never got an english dub or didn't end up on Toonami. I've also read that the manga never finished serializing in the north america. However, it finished in other western languages like german and spanish.

Censoring:

The anime censors A LOT. From Gokudera's smoking habit, Yamamoto's whole character arc which deals with heavy themes such as depression and suicidal thoughts. The general bloodiness of the manga was censored and sometimes whole chapters and characters were left out even if those were important to the devolopment of others.

Filler episodes:

Out of the 202 episodes the anime has around 29 filler episodes which makes roughly 14 %.

Sexism:

Even if Reborn was written by a woman most female characters are rather flat and their storylines often tied to a male character in one way or another.

Genereal things:

Khr, like many other long running series, is sometimes criticised for a lack of world building or unpopular narrative choices.

6. Hope?

Khr isn't exactly dead. As stated before the series is still very popular in Japan and still gets new merch pretty regulary. There are also petitions floating around for a reboot or a new anime season but those never get a lot of traction. Furthermore #Reborn2期アニメ化 (#Reborn2ndAnimation) used to get some traction on twitter not too long ago. Last year the Anime News Network did a poll on which anime the readers would like to see a rebooot of and khr placed second.

Either way here's a collection of recent khr things I could find.

- In 2018 a new bluray set was released in north america

- The khr stage play reached yet another new season

- A mobile game was released last year

- Currently ongoing anime cafe event called "Concerto di Vongola"

- Last month there was an event with the former VAs and stage play actors where they discussed their favourite khr episodes.

- There has been an increase in blind reacts to the openings on youtube which might bring in a new fan base. The biggest one I could find had around 90k views and was made in 2019. On this note check out the soundtrack. The first openeing Drawing Days by SPLAY still makes me go insane (but I'm biased of course)

There also renewed hope for a new season/reboot because Shaman King, Inuyasha and Bleach got anounced for new seasons after a long hiatus. It's important to keep in mind that the circumstances for those series are differnt tho. For example bleachs new anime is often tied to the immense success of the gatcha game.

7. Conclusion

Khr is a series which used to be a flagship for Weekly Shounen Jump and is deeply beloved by it's fans, especially in Japan. It influenced other shounen series like bnha. It would be nice to see it gaining a bigger fanbase in the west :)

#khr #khr meta #anime analysis #shounen jump #katekyo hitman reborn #mirytalks #long post #manga

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common-blackbird · 4 years ago

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it’s time... for a dragon age 2 playthrough post. scroll on!

The things i loved most:

1) the frame of the game - Cassandra interrogating Varric.

What a great way to get hook the player. Like, the opening of guards dragging this poor dwarf with cuts of the title, and then Cassandra demanding answers... Whoaaa! I have no idea if that’s usually done in games or not, but it’s definitely such an amazing intro with characters introducing themselves as well as the story so perfectly, it captivates instantly. The tutorial has a charm to it bc varric is messing around. Which serves to show more of his character. Cassandra’s personality was pretty much blank here but her presence is so powerful. Something happened, something huge and they know and i was about to find out. I can’t describe how excited that intro made me feel. Each time the scene cut to the interrogation scenes, my eyes were glued more than ever. Just GREAT.

Also it makes for a very convenient scapegoat for every plothole ever with the argument “it’s just his version of the story”.

2) The story.

It’s tragic. It’s amazing! The further you play, the more you can see that no matter what you do, everything leads to a disaster. Hawke doesn’t want to take sides, tries to mediate, does not want to get involved, but just can’t stop it. For every thing gained, Hawke loses two more. Your friends come with packages that get you involved in terrible stuff. Your good intentions result in disasters. The whole game you spent time climbing the social ladder not only to reach the top hauntingly alone after losing all of your family, but also losing even that empty title and watching as the city you started to find your place in fall apart in blood. UGH! GAH! FEELS!

3) Kirkwall.

“ But, I beg you my dear readers, never forget that, no matter the subject of any story that might ever be explored between the cliffs of Kirkwall, She will find a way to steal the thunder of the protagonist. Or become the antagonist. Kirkwall is never a mere background. We could even understand it so: the challenge for you dear readers is to prevail against the smokescreens and observe to what extent our characters are players or played by the merciless black souled stone giant. Enjoy playing the dare of the ages between the lines of these humble memoirs. “

Memoirs from the Downfall - Act I. Mirage by Pfefferminze on ao3 (fic rec!)

This paragraph summs up what Kirkwall is better than I ever could. This shrouded mystery that surrounds Kirkwall keeps you on toes. From the first intro when Varric describes it (paraphrasing from memory) “Kirkwall. The city of chains. It is a free city - keeping in mind i use the the word loosely”. You already start seeing how dark Kirkwall gets. The name, that derives from its black walls (interestingly, the walls in the game aren’t black...), the history of slavery etched into every corner of that city and its surroundings - the names (The Gallows, the Bone Pit, the Wounded Coast, the pub The Hanged Man), the scenery (sculptures of slaves, the sunken ships by the Wounded Coast, slums and underground of the Lowtown and the Darktown).

I was really digging the History of Kirkwall and it loved it. Kirkwall has a history of violence, from the times of slavery of the Tevinter Imperium, to Qunari conquests and liberation from Orlais. Many revolts and uprising. And though free now, it’s suggested that, seeing that the Templars hold the most influence, Kirkwall is in the hands of the Chantry.

It’s full of cultures mixing together. I love how not one of your companions is a native to Kirkwall, and it feels like a crossroads to every character’s life. a very tragic crossroads in their life, seeing there’s nothing ever good waiting for you in Kirkwall.

Also there’s these codex entries you look for about the Enigma of Kirkwall. It was when i started digging that up that i fell in love with the city and all. Combined with the History of Kirkwall and every codex entry for every place in and out of Kirkwall, I was pulling my hair out reading about the Enigma. I..i’m still not quite sure what happened. Did the magisters use blood of thousands upon thousands slaves to unbound a forgotten one? if so, is that corypheus? And around what time did that happen?? I get that part (or all?) of Kirkwall’s mysterious violent agency is owed to corypheus slumbering relatively close to the city, but is that all? or is there something more? In either case, the Band of Tree are my heroes.

4) The characters.

I’ll talk more about them later, but in general, i just love how they oppose each other, how complex they are, and there is just not pleasing everyone. They feel genuine. They are all deeply flawed. They all have a solid background that makes their beliefs and actions convincing. The friendship/rivalry points are shaky though, and sometimes really don’t fit the character, but i guess there must be someone hating/loving your bad choices for the sake of the game regardless of characterisation. But all in all, i really appreciated each and every character, and loved how their viewpoints challenged me.

First i want a disclaimer: i love each and every character in the game, whatever i say against them doesn’t diminish my liking of them. My issues really aren’t significant. Also, i might and probably will say smth wrong bc i’ve only played it once. I’m a baby.

let’s start with Family:

Mama Hawke:

i really loved mama hawke. after reading her codex entry and an excerpt of some book on this site, i really feel for her. I mean, imagine going back to your home city where you only remember being respected and wealthy only to find out everything you remember is gone, you are forced to live in poverty, your kids are doing dangerous jobs and you can’t stop them bc you do need that money, you write letters trying to get the old connections but keep failing (at least it was implied?), it’s really been hard for her. I get why she was so obsessed with her legacy. She wanted her childhood home back. She can’t feel like Kirkwall is her home until she is home.

Also loved her antagonism towards Hawke. It seems she can no longer treat him like a child, so she criticises him instead. and honestly, hawke is doing some crazy things so he defintiely deserves some criticism. And stopping Hawke from taking carver with him is just logical to me, idk. since she knows she can’t stop Hawke from going, she will at least attempt to prevent the last kid from going into mortal danger. I’d do the same. AND AFTER HAVING CARVER DYING IN DEEP ROADS I AGREE WITH HER

All in all, i don’t think she’s a perfect mom, but there is no perfect mom, and Leandra does care a lot for her kids. The All that remains killed me too :’(

Bethany

RIP :(

Her codex is not long, but i guess she wasn’t happy with her magic :(

CARVER

My favouritest bestest bro in the game. A secondary character with an inferiority complex towards his sibling, with no sense of humour, blaming everyone else for his inability to get a life? I see a lot of myself in him. He is sooo bitter, but doesn’t even realise (or at least doesn’t admit) that he’s his biggest obstacle. He feels like it’s Hawke’s fault for Carver not getting his place in the sun, but honestly, it’s Carver’s devotion to Hawke that keeps him from getting a life. He’s just tied with that responsibility and can’t break from it unless forced to.

His interactions with other characters are so funny. Either he’s bitter or he’s awkward, i die every time ;;__;;

Anyways, he became a templar in my game and i thought it fits better thematically (throughout the game the grey wardens felt more like a fanservice material since they really aren’t connected to the story), but after reading that meta about carver and seeing the striking difference between warden!carver and templar!carver i wanna reload and redo everything ;;__;;

i mean... carver isn’t exactly a templar material. The codex entry for templars says that the wanted characteristics of templars are strong faith and utmost obedience, none of which carver really has... . But that moment when he stands up against meredith was *chefs kiss* worth it. I’m just wondering what happens after, is he still a templar? is he with hawke? is he in Kirkwall or if not, where did he go?? so many questions ;A;

Uncle Gamlen

I feel bad for him. Mostly he’s mean but i like to think it’s bc he’s so ashamed that his sister sees what he’s become. And he’s bitter about his own life. I was so happy when i realised he has a personal mission ;__; I feel bad that he didn’t come to live in the hawke estate tho, especially since Hawke is also alone there :(

COMPANIONS!

Varric

There are no words that can properly convey the amount of love for this guy. He is simply flawless. He’s a charming godfather of the dwarven mafia. I wanna have a charming godfather of the dwarven mafia in my life... He already becomes interesting with the intro, and i gotta say, out of all ~storyteller~ types of characters, he is the best. he puts a disclaimer at the beginning with that game tutorial, and during the whole interrogation he’s like “well, how do you know i’m not lying? i could be.” Also, his voice is the second best voice in the game.

As for his personal missions, oh wow, that thing with his big bro really hurt. I also gave him the red lyrium... was that a mistake? will i regret it? ;__; I know the true friend would prevent him, but i also trust that varric knows how to handle dangerous stuff...

On a side note, since i’ve read the comics (no self control whatsoever), i loved the beginning of the Until We Sleep, where varric mentions it’s easier to imagine all the people he had to kill were evil than to face the fact that those were normal people just doing their job or trying to survive. Man, it hurts TAT

*garret hawke’s voice when he looks a certain way at the family crest in the hawke estate* ISABELA!

Ok ok, so, i love Carver bc i relate, i love Varric because he’s simply perfect. But I love Isabela because she’s the most intriguing.

She just crashed in Kirkwall and really didn’t sign up for all the trouble she got. She never likes to have deep conversations, she is always downgrading herself and you just wonder, what is it that happened in her life, and you know her past mistakes haunt her, and she’s doing her best to move on. Her arc was i think my favourite. I think the comic Those Who Speak really adds a lot to her arc in DA2 and makes some of her choices more understandable. Her whole story is about her internal conflict of whether to survive or do the right thing. Her story about freeing the slaves got her ship wrecked is great and all for making her be a pirate with a golden heart, but that story about her drowning all the slaves few years previous make this freeing of slaves a big character moment for her. She finally did the right thing. And she got for it was more trouble, because she’s a pirate which means she can’t afford to just do the right thing. And throughout the game, that same story is going back and forth. She runs off with the Relic bc she’s done the right thing before and it got her nowhere, so now she decided to put her own survival as a priority, but comes back bc she’s too kind to just leave Hawke standing like that. And again, with the slaver papers, it’s the same reasoning: it’s her or the higher cause. She needs that ship. She chooses herself. It’s her biggest flaw. But hey, between pros and antis in your party, it was really refreshing to have someone who, along with varric, just gives you a break with moral high-grounds.

I only wish we actually got to see her more as a captain in power in the game or that she showed me that amazing hat she saw in lowtown. It’s cool that it’s implied that her crew doesn’t like her and she also lost most of them during the crash while the others probably left her after.

I love it when she says she goes sometimes to the docks just to watch the ships. That there is no feeling like sailing. I just want a spin-off with captain isabela’s terrible adventures (´A`)

Also, isabela’s VA is my fave, she really did an amazing job. she voices so smoothly, i wouldn’t know if i was playing a game or watching a movie. And has such a pretty way of talking...

Aveline

I’m really neutral towards Aveline. I like her personality and i like that she’s found herself a purpose and advanced in the guards, and she’s always looking out for everybody. I just wish her personal missions went in the vein of the one in act 1... i feel it would have been more interesting to see her having trouble in her position and that you can’t just waltz into Kirkwall and take command. It’s implied she’s being pressured, so i guess she’s just dealing with it herself, but i just... eh. She’s ok.

Merrill

Merrill actually has one of the if not the most tragic story-line that really challenges you both morally and emotionally.

Her cheerful and cute personality is dampened by her constant dark leitmotif of willingly practicing blood magic. And i think her story really showed well the indirect consequences of it.

Not in one instance was Merrill’s practice of blood magic an active culprit for all tragedy that surrounds her. First, it seems that blood magic is practiced in the clan, seeing there is no freeing Flemeth without it, but i’m guessing it’s seldom practiced and with great caution. So Merrill wasn’t in any danger of being prosecuted for her blood magic. It’s actually her wish to study it further with the help of the demon that makes her an outcast. That and the magic mirror that apparently is forgotten for a reason. Also, it’s made quite clear that Merrill would be welcomed back no questions asked if she at any point decided to ditch the demon and live without the study of magic mirror. She, on the other side, is driven by the higher cause, the idea that figuring out the forgotten purpose of some evil mirror might help her clan, and is willing to be an outcast if it means reaching her goal and helping her clan. Fast foward to act 3, the clan is still there when they should have moved away, and it’s only when you face the demon possessed Keeper, you realise why. She knew Merrill would sooner or later bargain with the demon again. And she sacrificed herself, trapping the demon within her, as to prevent it. And i think that is why the clan stayed so long there. She waited for Merrill because she wanted Merrill to kill her, and hopefully with her the demon. It didn’t go as planned, obviously, but i really think she had good intentions. When Merrill does manage to kill the Keeper she’s forced to face the clan and i chose the wrong option of telling the truth which resulted in a massacre. Merrill gets back and regrets everything. She, however resolves to help the alienage.

The thing is, there is no one to blame Everyone had the best intentions. Everyone is working for the safety of the clan. it’s a story of sacrifice and when sacrifice feels like the wrong choice (whether it truly is or isn’t depends on your worldview) and it’s really done well.

But here are my issues with Merrill. I love her as a character, but i don’t agree with her decisions. It’s a personal issue. Merrill is giving up everything as to help her clan by learning history of the evil mirror. And while this is a game where old things are important and significant, her mission is always explained as this duty of preserving history. And while i agree that preserving history is very important, there is a limit to it. you should never put history before the present. If your research endangers the present, you give up on that line. The other is that you need to make peace with the fact that many, many things are forgotten and will be forgotten. It’s sad, but you gotta make peace with the fact that some things are just gone.

And Merrill, who is a magic historian, fails to see that. So that kinda irks my historian moral codex. And in the end, as far as i know, Merrill doesn’t succeed in reviving the evil mirror and dedicates herself to help the alienage. It was a terrible way to learn that some things aren’t worth it.

The other, less personal issue, is that none of this had to happen. I mean, the keeper obviously didn’t think Merrill was experienced enough to actually deal with demons and therefore distrusted her and warned the clan about it. So, if Merrill was a little bit more patient she could have just studied normally under the keeper, and when she herself becomes the keeper, she could have fraternize with that demon however she wanted without much complications. So yeah... i guess youth is made of idealism.

But as i said, minor issues. Her story is really, really great.

Fenris

Fenris and Anders are my “i love you but i am soo annoyed by you but i still love you” characters. Half of the time they’re just there to make you feel guilty for being a neutral party. Which sometimes has me rolling my eyes. If Fenris and Anders actually got along with each other, slavery and mage oppression would have ended in 2 days. Which makes it all the more frustrating that they do not.

Fenris.. his voice. What a nice voice colour. So elegant, but kinda rough, sometimes he talks like he’s 80 years old, sometimes like he’s a teenager. I love it.

As for the rest, i mean, i don’t agree with his methods, but very often, the guy’s got a point. I get his experience with mages colours his view on them, so while i symphatise, it’s really hard to have him on my “free mages” missions when he’s my best tank and i want him to be on friendly terms with Hawke so this makes things... difficult. That aside, it’s interesting that fenris doesn’t see mages as evil per se, but rather victims who, in his experience, will always, always going to succumb to a demon. It’s an inevitable reality to him. And this makes me wonder if he ultimately, despite being his friend or lover, is just waiting for the day he will be forced to kill Hawke too :(

As for his missions, they were ok, it led up to culmination and i didn’t let him kill his sister bc Hawke has just lost his mom, don’t do smth you’ll regret ;__;

also, somewhere around the end of act 2 i decided to romance fenris bc i love to suffer, so i worked the whole act 3 trying to get more aproval points and also wondering why are there no romance options when i talk to him... turns out that one night stand with isabela romanced her and canceled fenris. But i never even finished the romance with her so i’m just ??? about it all.

I wish it was more explained about the tattoos fenris has? I just thought the tattoos would play a big role somewhere in the game and it just never happened. There was a banter with Merrill about how his tattoos are similar to valaslin, so i thought, hmm, interesting, maybe the two are connected. But nah they just glow in the dark and make you pass through walls. Whatevs.

also dude just goes and kills without a second thought, i’m just “mate, you gotta calm down”. But that’s his thing. He’s constantly bitter and is very bad at anger management. I can’t blame him, considering he lacks around 10- 20 years of experience due to amnesia.

He’s the only one who left me when Hawke sided with mages, and i was like, “ok i getcha, it’s been nice knowing you”, but then when i asked him to join me 5 minutes later he just went “ok changed my mind” which was so funny, like, where did all that integrity dissappear??? It would have been more impactful if the dialogue went in the line of “i want to stand by my principals but you’re a living breathing proof that not all mages are weak to succumb to demons so i’ll join you in the end” (and then side-eye “i told you so” when orsino turns into a demon)

And i wanna read the fenris comic now bc my question for every character here is what is their fate after kirkwall. I only know that isabela & varric are working for alistair and merrill wants to help the alienage. Aveline is i guess either dismissed from her job or got a pass after cullen took the command. But Carver?? Fenris?? Anders?? They never talked about long term plans...

Anders

ooh boy, here we go. there are many questions i have for him and am generally just hmmmm. First, as for his pro-mage rights - it’s like opposite fenris so i just have the same feelings: you mean well, i don’t agree with your methods, your experiences define your worldview so i let some things slide, but other things i will not agree with. Though, question: in how many circles has Anders been? He knows the kirkwall circle, he knows the fereldan circle. Seeing he has excaped 7 times, did they send him to a different circle each time or was the fereldan the last one? or the first one? Or maybe it was his boyfriend they transferred? did i miss something?

I’ll just whisper: awakening!Anders >>> da2!Anders. I just miss the old anders. Which says a lot bc during the awakening i was just “shut up anders”. I miss his bad jokes, his terrible attempts at flirting, his enjoyment of freedom, nagging all the time, and generally being more moderate in pro-mage rights. Like, in awakening, because it was not the only thing he talked about, it felt more personal and intense. Here mage-rights are the only thing he ever talks about + justice. I mean, please correct me if i’m wrong, this was just general impression. But to defend da2!Anders here, it makes sense that merging with mixed both of their personality, and i like that they did that. It’s also very sad.

The thing is, when i’m thinking about anders, i love his story and character. Just as it’s terrible that Fenris, having no memory from before being Fenris, Anders can never go back to being just Anders. And this, people, is why you don’t fraternize with spirits. He’s obviously afraid of how justice is affecting him and there are some bare traces of his old personality and i guess he wouldn’t be as radical if he didn’t have justice personality that can’t stand the injustice. And in combination with anders quite selfish personality (form awakening, and i say that lovingly), it makes him do things that justice wouldn’t condone. Anders is literally a walking bomb.

Again, same problem as with fenris, i really thought that the justice glow would have a incredibly significant culmination, and it didn’t, it was just to show that anders and justice are very bitter. Eh, ok.

Also, i let anders join after he blew up the chantry, bc he started it, so might as well follow it through.

Some minor characters that i remember

Senechal Bran for the next Viscount! He hated hawke so much but still put up with him.

Feynriel is the coolest mage in Kirkwall. I think his missions were my favourite. Dude goes from “oh no i’m a mage” to “i will just dreamwalk to tevinter and learn control the reality” to “i dream-killed bad people from thousands of miles away”. Does he appear in the next game? I want him on my side. He’s so cool.

I think the Maker is sending Cullen signs to quit being a templar. First job: evil mages that tortured you. Instead of “this job will kill you” h took it as a “never trusting mages again, got it”. Second job: your boss is evil possessed paranoid maniac. Man, talk about bad luck.

What is the story of the Lady Elegant?

Flemeth had that big great talk at the beginning of the game and i thought by the end of the game i’d realise what it meant, but nope, still no clue.

Ok so I defeated Corypheus, but there was this looong shot of Larius walking away. Corypheus possessed larius, didn’t he? He’s out there. In a madman’s body. I know he appears in inquisition.

Many thoughts

I gotta say, in Kirkwall, at least, it didn’t feel like much of a challenge to pick a side. Like, there was no mage who said “hey i actually really like it here in the circle, the templars aren’t so bad”, and having templars actually smuggling mages from the circle says a lot to say the least. Every time a mage talks to you, unless you go with “oh they’re 100% lying”, their stories invoke sympathy and of course you want to help them. And then in 99% cases they turn to blood magic bc there was no other way. Except that dude who always hanged out with the wrong people, he only did blood magic to save Carver. But yeah, that turning to blood magic was like having Fenris side-eye me with an unspoken “i told you so” bc every mage, whether in desperation or hunger for power, will turn sooner or later into a demon. Regardless, blood magic was always in the act of desperation and self-defense. The only times where magic was actually evil was the slavers and the serial killer, who is a madman.

When i was reading the Enigma of Kirkwall, there was a part that talks of a blood-mage conspiracy and i was all, oh shit, there is a reason why templars are mean to mages! maybe the conspirators are framing innocent mages on blood magic crimes that they actually commit, maybe Meredith is actually on trail of the conspirators, maybe there is a reason for animosity on both sides. After all, Kirkwall was known for having a bigger number of apostates, a bigger number of blood magic cases and far more ruthless templars. It added up.Thinking back now, i never even got any specific reason why meredith was so intensely anti-mage, other than going mad.

But yeah, no conspirators. Just sad mages and mean templars, and good templars that get screwed by desperate and mean mages.

While in Kirkwall it’s easy to be a pro-mage, i was thinking a lot about mage-rights in general so let me indulge myself: there are circles, but the mages aren’t oppressed. Rather, the circles would be educational centres and society in every larger city where one learns how to properly handle magic bc magic is dangerous. You can leave when you pass the final exam and also come back anytime to hang out with mages who decide to live there since the institution would support mages.

Also, when one gets possessed, i’d invest more into “walk into their head and free them of demons” specialists. It’d be cool if you could have a dreamer who does that bc no lyrium spent. Honestly, why don’t they ever do that? How did the keeper do that rite for Feynriel? Was it blood magic?

I guess, you’d still have to answer for your crimes, tho no death punishment and degradation allowed. Blood magic wouldn’t be punishable by death, but rather have specialists who study it, but practice with extreme caution and use of another person’s blood is strictly prohibited.

Templars would still exist but completely reformed. No more “mages are all potential disasters”, but i’d rather make it that mages can too be templars, since they both have abilities that prevents the others from casting magic. This way the control system would be much like the dalish: if the keeper(mage) is possessed, the clan (which means the non-mages and the first(mage)) need to kill them. You could argue that you don’t need templars as non-mages, since mages can do it too, but seeing that in general people fear magic and feel inferior to it (since there’s a collective memory of the great tevinter imperium), having non-magic specialists would make them feel like on equal ground. The extra-reformed templars would be under Circle, not under direct command of the chantry, and circle, depending of whether chantry is reformed, might or might not be under chantry.

(a side note, i was thinking about templars recently and i can’t recall an instance where it says who had the clever idea to chew lyrium first? i just wanna know)

I know that DA2 wasn’t about grey wardens and therefore not about darkspawn, but seeing as in legacy we get corypheus being... an evil version of the Architect(??), i was only wondering do we get more answers about the darkspawn? is there hope for them? is the Architect still alive?

And oh, to turn to the Anders question:

Is he a terrorist, or was that just activism? I mean, i don’t see why those two can’t go together. blasting a building with a symbolic significance killing and harming many innocent people to get a message of your radical activism across belongs into a schoolbook of terrorism. Does he have a good cause? He sure believes so, and i, too, agree that mages should not be oppressed for just being mages. But does that mean this is the right way to do it? Personally, i do not condone any act of violence in service of a political or religious cause. I know it’s sometimes inevitable, but i like to believe there are more diplomatic ways, or at least not including an attack on civilians.

That aside, the moment where anders goes in front and just announces that the church was gonna blow up in a minute was the best anders moment for me. Until that point i more or less just viewed his activism as a hobby since he just did it in his free time, but now he put his money where his mouth is and freaking went all out. Cool character moment. And incredibly heartwrenching. He was aware of how many innocents he killed, but just didn’t see other way to get the point across.

I still don’t agree with his idea of blowing up the church tho. Maybe if he told Hawke, they could have done something to empty the church previously and further people away from it and then blow it up?

But still, blowing up religious buildings isn’t the answer. If i was the radical mage activist, i would have gone for the open assassination. Seeing it worked in WW1, i don’t see why it couldn’t start a fantasy war.

Some random things i liked:

uniportant but lovable interractions in the house: it starts innocently with gamlen’s house, to see how you’re doing, and becomes really fun during act 2 when you see your friends have been here and left you things. In act 3, however, it feels melancholic. no more family to come back to, just ghosts of friends that have visited, Bodahn and Sandal being there for you, Orana still not getting some sunlight and your dog at the fireplace. The Hawke Family Suite is playing, and you feel older than you are, lonlier than you should be. just... ouch. I hope Bodahn adopted Orana and took her out of Kirkwall :(

t i named the dog “Maker” which is very funny to me bc every time i summon the dog i just imagine Hawke yelling “Maker help us”. Carver hates the name bc he needs to chase the dog often in the streets. Mama Hawke never ever calls the dog Maker, but she never has to call the dog anything: he’s super obedient towards her.

Fighting wasn’t as hard as in origins, i like that.

The haunted house mission was so cool.

When random people greet aveline in Hightown.

And that’s i think about it. There are probably plenty more things i loved, but i think this is already enough. if somebody told me i’d be playing so much this year, i’d laugh, but I already want to play the next game ;;___;;

#don't klick keep reading if you aren't ready to scroll endlessly #a very long post #in which i:#love everything #stan carver #cry over fictional characters #need a romance manual #form political opinions in a fictional game #give a random fic rec that is so worth your time #if you've read this you're a hero and i'm sorry #da2 #spoilers for those who plan to play #it took me a week to write this god

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lgalacticjayl · 5 years ago

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Ok so homestuck review time just to get my thoughts out there. Also this is just my opinion so take it as you will. Also of course this has spoilers.

Lets first start off with general. I've been hearing about this comic and the characters for years now and already had some bias and preconceived notions going into it mostly just around the characters. The story itself is really good like ive said im definitely obsessed and was within the first act even. I love when stories bring this back from like the beginning like subtle little things its so funny and i just love those instances like where you can tell its forshadowing like john picking hammerkind and saying oh it won't be important later. Like we all know it will but just that little line is so funny. Or repeating jokes that are even funnier when they refuse to repeat, like naming everyone when you meet them. I also love puns and this story is definitely not lacking in the puns department. Its a very goo blend of like silly goofy scenes immediately following a really serious scene.

The story itself is not difficult to follow and I think it does a good job of sticking with a certain plot for long enough to grab your interest them jumping to another plot just so everythings not as boring. Time is a huge factor in this story and usually time travel and stuff can make your brain hurt trying to understand them but even tho the story is messy and has so much going on its still easy to follow. Most of the story you are kind of out of the loop but you just realize that your questions will be answered later so might as well keep reading. The use of going between multiple different plots that all connect is also really helpful in seeing the big picture of the story which helps peice together some information that isn't revealed. And helps you not lose focus of course if you were to just read it from John's perspective all at once.

I love the art styles used as well. The level of detail put into a panel really shows how important that panel is and makes it much more interesting then just the really simple sprites. The details are great for really impactful scenes and linking scenes together in videos and between panels. I love parallels within stories as well and there's a lot as well which is really fun with even just the look of two panels together mimicking each other is really impactful

Adding videos is also really fun. Most of the story is told through text between characters and explanations but there are times were a videos play and I love them cuz you just sit back and enjoy them and they are wordless but have great soundtracks to go with them. They are also just so cisually appealing as they are animated and you can tell a lot of work went into them and are used to show things as they happen without having to press next a bunch of times. They usually don't explain like complex time stuff but they do a great job of grabbing your attention and letting you know what is happening in their world.

Every now and then there is also a more video game style which is really interesting as the whole thing is ment to feel as if its a video game and you are controlling them but sometimes you actually get to control them. It doesn't work the best on my phone as its either typing in each command or watching a video that sometimes goes too fast for my reading speed. I like the talking element of them as it's usually when characters are face to face like john and the salamanders or with the trolls so its a great substitute for the pesterchats and gives some cool new sprites for the characters which i enjoy. The interactive element is very unique i think as most webcomics ive read dont involve the reader which is totally fine but it makes this very special.

Lately at the end of Act 5 with doc scratch there's an interactive part where you can pick which panel to see which is very unique as its usually a couple of short stories then you move on the next set and its a small continuation and then at the very end a 14 minute video that ties all of them together and while the video almost had more plot points the panels let you into the motives and thought process and background. I love reading every text i physically can just so I dont miss anything but it's been very fun to do here.

Thats kinda all for my review on hows it written and presented I will probably do o e for each group of characters, Beta kids, beta trolls, exiles, midnight crew, and others like scratch and jack, separately as their own reveiw and talk about their stories within each other hopefully but I hope you enjoyed and I'll hopefully post in the same month this time.

#homestuck #homestuck discussion #homestuck review #andrew hussie #let me tell you about homestuck

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comicteaparty · 4 years ago

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July 22nd-July 28th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from July 22nd, 2020 to July 28th, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

How have your reading tastes for webcomics changed over the years?

carcarchu

i think i used to read exclusively romance webcomics but now i'm really into the historical stuff. also i'm not so into the strictly straightforward stuff anymore, i need a really strong hook or something that makes it different enough to be enjoyable because i'm really tired of reading something that is indistinguishable from other similar webcomics. also i think i've gotten pickier when it comes to the quality of art and writing. there's just so much stuff to pick from now that i want to dedicate my time only to stuff that i really enjoy. i just don't have enough time to read every single webcomic i come across anymore

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

in the past I used to read a bunch of comedic absurdist humor comics (I still do) but it's been buffed out by romance . Same vein like Cara said, I'm just picking and choosing which comics I spend my time on but I do want to try to read as much as I can tho!

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I feel like I used to read LEGO comics a lot lol... I'm not sure how many of them still hold up. In terms of genre, the only comics I struggle to read are ones that are more realistic, or darker. Historical comics often fall into this, as do most horror comics.(edited)

RebelVampire

For me, my tastes haven't necessarily changed in terms of the what I like. What has changed is what I dislike. As the years have gone by, I've really been more open to at least giving comics a try before deciding they aren't for me, especially in the genres I consistently don't like like comedy. So I've gradually disliked less comics. Not to say I like them either or they're for me, but it's a step up from dislike since now I can appreciate what the comics are trying to do more. I think the bigger change for me was art styles though. While I still do have a specific sort of art preference, I've also been more open to giving certain art styles I don't normally like more of a try as well and I've found the styles I dislike (personally, not objectively in terms of talent) to be a much smaller pool than it was before.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Oh man, I'm the opposite. I feel like I've gotten pickier

varethane

I can't tell if I've gotten pickier or if the bar has just gotten high enough now that if I only have the bandwidth to read X number of webcomics (let's say 20 as a random example), and I'll be picking from among those which stand out to me, those 20 comics will be on a totally different level than the 20 I might have found 10 years ago

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I think I've also gotten pickier

The biggest change, I think, is that I've gotten way pickier about storytelling

While I used to be able to read a comic with subpar storytelling. I drop comics in an instant these days if the story doesn't speak to me pretty quickly(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I think it's because when I started reading comics, everything was new and novel. Now there're more tropes I recognize? And more problematic things that bother me, when before I would not have noticed

Deo101 [Millennium]

I dont think I've gotten pickier, per se, I think I just have very specific tastes and many things dont fit them which feels picky? but i can enjoy all kinds of genres, I kind of go into something 1: not wanting to think 2: not wanting to be offended and 3: wanting to laugh a bit? which isnt exactly a high bar to pass, but not many things will do that for me, which isnt because I'm a picky person, its jsut cause a lot of things arent made for peope like me?

varethane

I'm not consciously looking for 'only the best quality' by any means-- if there's anything I'm really looking for, it's a sense of passion and uniqueness, that feeling that the author is having a blast with the thing they're doing. But I feel like it's gotten harder to draw my attention (and readers' attention in general) without having a certain level of skill involved

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Oh, same. As my art gets better so does my eye for it

varethane

....and, yeah, I guess I've also gotten tired of certain tropes. Once I read 2 or 3 webcomics that do kinda the same thing, I'm less likely to pick up a fourth with the same general premise, even if it looks like it's well-made.

(sorry isekai....)

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I just absorb a lot of storytelling in many forms, so if the story doesn't grab me right away, I feel like I'm wasting time reading something, where I could be fulfilling my desire for more worthwhile storytelling elsewhere

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Oh true, there are so so many comics out there now

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Art quality plays into it a bit for me, but it's honestly primarily the storytelling

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Everything I read I could be reading 100 others of similar quality Really, why does anyone read my comic at all?

varethane

"good art will get readers to take a first look, good writing is what makes them stay"

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Art quality is very important to me but I've still read and loved a few stories will amateurish art

varethane

for me personally, the art's just gotta be good enough for me to not be distracted by it while I read

Deo101 [Millennium]

idk I think a lot of people stay through bad writing even if something looks good

also yeah i feel the same, about not wanting to be distracted

"does the art serve the story?" is all I really care about

varethane

art serving the story is the most important part. Art can LOOK amazing, but if the body language or expressions don't fit the story being told, it can make the writing seem worse lol

a friend of mine once referred to it as, like watching a well-written screenplay but with terrible miscast actors

Deo101 [Millennium]

mhm, cause the only words we get are dialogue, the art has to be all the descriptive language. so if theyre not describing well, a lot is missing.

varethane

yeah

Deo101 [Millennium]

or I guess some comics have narration, too

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Narration can't do ALL of the work

varethane

yeah haha

Deo101 [Millennium]

yeah, one of my professors said that a rule of thumb of his about comics is "if you can read me the words and I know whats going on, it's not good comics."

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

The art definitely serves the story (or is supposed to), but if the story is bad from the beginning, I don't care how good the art is.

varethane

I have complicated feelings on that one, because I feel like it's actually pretty rare for me to consider a 'story' bad (at least insofar as we're talking about the core ideas of the plot). Most premises (if they're not actively offensive/poorly thought through), if written out as just a skeletal outline, could work just fine. IMO bad writing is a problem of execution, most of the time, rather than concept. (hedging my language here because there's always exceptions lol)

Deo101 [Millennium]

I would say I agree with you. I think writing and story are different concepts. There is also sort of a macro/micro element to writing, as well, and either one can be messed up

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Yeah, I misspoke, what I mean by "bad story" is more "bad storytelling/writing"

but yes

carcarchu

a friend of mine once referred to it as, like watching a well-written screenplay but with terrible miscast actors

@varethane oh i have read stuff like this. like the art was INCREDIBLE really detailed renders, very consistent and technically fantastic art but so often it just devolved into shot / reverse shot talking heads and the characters didn't really emote beyond changing the position of their eyebrows so it kinda felt like watching dolls interact with each other

RebelVampire

I mulled over the fact I took the opposite route as everyone else. XD For me I think it's three factors. First, I was actually ungodly picky in my youth across the board with everything, not just comics. As such, I've missed out on a lot of things other people love. Second, with each passing year, I've come to appreciate more the work people put into their indie projects. And for me its like a show of respect in a way to acknowledge that hey, you worked on this thing I may not like, but I'll try it because you clearly love what you created (or I hope you love it). Third, and probably the bigger factor, I stuck myself in a positive feedback loop. The more I opened myself up to things and learned to not initially dislike things or be as harsh, the more I ended up finding a gem I really loved. In fact, while this is across diff industries, I'd say this has been the biggest influence for me with webcomics because so many webcomics I was like "Well I'll try it gotta be open and not just dislike it," and then I came away going "Wow this is a diamond in the rough!"

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #reader favorites

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spockandawe · 7 years ago

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So you’ve heard Spock is the actual literal devil

Have you heard that I’m a terrible person? A plagiarist? Have you been told that I’m only into transformers at all because I wanted to make this one random guy unhappy? If you’ve been told that, you’ve probably also been told that a year and a half later, I’m still making fanworks just to upset him. You might have even heard that shhhh, don’t disagree with Spock on anything, or they’ll hunt you down and harass you.

Right, okay. This is one hell of a saga that I will attempt to tell in as compressed a form as possible. It’s a lot. Years ago, back in HS, there was this one guy who policed the hell out of one of the character tags. I’m going to call him C. He’d pressure people not to make the content they were making, decry the hateful people reading with a malicious eye who thought the character would ever do anything bad (the character was a creep). And because being obnoxious wasn’t bad enough, if you didn’t cave to his demands, he just might do things like start whisper campaigns about how you support rape, casually out you as a survivor, cute little things like that.

This is not a story about that guy.

This is a story about C’s one-time attack dog, eventual boyfriend, and current ex. We’ll go ahead and call him R. I’ve tried real hard to avoid namedropping on my blog before, but could people find him from this? Probably. Have I stopped caring? Absolutely.

TL;DR, unsubstantiated accusations of serial harassment are a little questionable when they’re coming from someone with a years-long, extensively documented history of serial harassment and a personal grudge against me.

Cut for length.

Edit 7/2/2017: R has posted that he regrets making these posts about me, and admits that he said things that were out of line. And he’s stated that he’s going to try to do better in the future. I genuinely, truly appreciate that. I’m leaving this post up because there have been lies about me floating around for a while and I reserve the right to defend myself, but I really do appreciate that.

Oh balls, none of this makes sense without backstory (I’m so sorry)

If you think I suck or my work sucks, that’s fine! You do you, go enjoy the things that make you happy.

If you think I’m the devil because this one guy told you about my evil, evil past and all my terrible misdeeds, without anything at all to back up his words? You can ask me. I don’t bite, and oh lordy do I have receipts.

To be clear, R is totally allowed to hate me! I don't care. I don't care if he hates my writing, I don't care if he hates me as a person. But now he's escalated to spreading lies about me, and people are believing him, and I’m not enough of a doormat to let that just stand.

And I’m going to cheat a little. Here’s a memo with the cliffs notes version (not the original memo, I made a copy with C’s urls cropped out since he hasn’t attacked anyone in a long while). Warning, digging any distance into this turns up violent fantasies, violent sexual fantasies, creepy interactions with a minor, and lots more, it’s all really, really unpleasant. Evidence is thoroughly documented, please tread with care.

You would not believe how truncated that is compared to the reality.

Now, the worst of this came via C. Who has calmed down a lot these days, and I’m really happy that’s the case. Good for him. I hope his life continues in a direction where he doesn’t find it necessary to do this stuff.

Lucky for me, R was standing by to pick up the slack.

It doesn’t show up as much in the memo, which is mostly C-focused, but R was standing by C this whole time, defending his right to spread around private information about someone’s abuse history, sending nasty messages on the other guy’s behalf, and much,much more. it’s long, it’s awful, it’s unpleasant. R personally hurt people in some significant ways that I don’t want to link directly, for their sake. He expressed deep remorse a few times, but it never stuck.

Here’s my personal favorite quote from R. He’s speaking to the CSA survivor that C casually outed (with information given to him in confidence), and who they’d been running a long, long whisper campaign against, and who was understandably a bit upset over the whole thing:

oh go wank to your own tears [name]

#and get your sympathizers to help #nasty fucking people #maybe if you cry enough youll be able to go into second grade in the fall #ooc

Said, again, to a CSA survivor they outed and harassed. That person is such a sweetheart, and this screencap still infuriates me.

The first time I saw C pick a fight he had lots of friends. Shockingly, as he did things like loudly fantasize about how he wants to mutilate people and rant about how autistic people should die, those friends mostly drifted away. I know one person had a friend even help them stage a faux relationship-ending fight, so they could be sure they’d be able to completely cut and run from C. R stuck with him, though. Eventually they even started dating.

‘Spock followed R into transformers to harass him and stalks his favorite characters just to harass him more’

Then, transformers. Here, let me show you the first post (by R) that ever brought MTMTE to my attention. I spent years being aggressively uninterested in transformers, but this caught my eye

and honestly, ppl (adults too!!!) shipping someone who has the mentality of a child and is quite glaringly lacking a world of experiences and general understanding of things outside of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, with an adult, is just. very alarming and gross to me.

and honestly, the fact that there is a large portion of people who want him to become romantically (and sexually!!!) involved with either one of two fucking adults in canon, and hell, esp those defending it with ‘hes an adult too tho!!’ is really gross.

you can pretend all you want that hes ‘an adult’ because his body is, but theres no way jro didnt intent to code him as a child. stop fetishizing children lmao,

#pedophilia -/-/- #cygate -/-/- #if someone comes at me screaming ‘rule 38′ im gonna shove them in a locker

I didn’t know transformers, but I was pretty sure this was some straight-up bullshit.

(but don’t worry, he ships it now! no hypocrisy here, no sir)

It’s “really gross” to ship this adult with other adults. Mm. Given the reasonableness of the claims these guys have made in the past, and given their extensive history of harassing people over those claims, I hopped to the wiki to check it out. I read a bit about the comic and the plot, and all of it sounded so fascinating that I just had to give the comic a try.

Reader, I married it.

I shotgunned MTMTE 1-47 in two days, started doing fanworks right out of the gate, and I’ve never looked back. A lot of my art was cygate, because come on, the comic wants you to ship it so bad, my first readthrough ended with issue 47, and that was the first ship I’d ever read about for the series, even before I dove in.

Now, both these characters punch me right in the heart, in some painfully personal ways. Tailgate’s the more relevant one here, but I don’t even know if I could do justice to the emotions both of them give me.

I’m still not a fan of how R’s lies about me have edged me into needing to say this in public, but okay. I’m developmentally delayed. It’s been a rough ride. And Tailgate hits me in some of those spots so hard it just takes my breath away. I’ve got a lot of baggage over not being a real adult, and not in the funny oh-no-how-do-taxes-work way, more like an extended months-long meltdown my first year of college because I can tell that my friends are years ahead of me and I don’t know how to even start catching up, and just existing, as myself, is humiliating.

All of my relationship milestones have come painfully, painfully late. The whole thing is still one awful emotional bruise. I hate it, and I hate how easy it is to convince myself that yeah, of course you don’t actually deserve to be treated as an adult and you never will. Just look at you. So then it is unbelievably important to me that I can see someone someone who is like me, being treated as a legitimate adult, and being able to have an adult relationship.

Hearing that shipping someone like me is essentially pedophilia is the opposite of that.

But he ships it now, so everything is fine :)

Yeah, you know what? Another fucking receipt.

uGHGH im so tired of all the rabid cy// /gat// //e fans like even cy’s giving em a look like ‘leave my fucking child alone’

#i just #im hoping jro has some taste tho and doesnt make an adult date a child #and if not im hoping the outcome blows over soon bc im so tired of seeing people defend pedophilia #pedophilia -/-/-

Parental.

This continued even after JRO explicitly confirmed Tailgate was an adult.

Bonus ableism: shipping Whirl (another character who hits me way too hard) isn’t okay either. Even though there isn’t the excuse of ‘but he only lived three years--’ No, at that point, you’re saying that an adult who fails to adult correctly does not count, and isn’t allowed to have romantic relationships. It makes my skin crawl, and it is an issue which is very personally and directly important to me.

So some of my cygate was porn from the start (it’s what I write. it’s what I draw.), and some of the porn was made because I was upset over discourse that says someone like me needs to be treated as a child. I played with cywhirlgate too, because omg how could I not, and some of that was porn as well. It was ages ago, so I don’t remember the details for every little thing I made. But when I saw someone saying that Cyclonus and Tailgate had a parental relationship, I’m sure that helped nudge me in that direction. Maybe R thinks I should have channeled my emotions by starting a whisper campaign to exclude him from fandom spaces. But I think my way of working through bad emotions might have been a little healthier than that.

So when R accuses me of making cygate content to spite him? Half true. Just true enough to be real fucking dishonest. R spent a nice long time insisting that cygate was pedophilia. I channeled my outrage over that ableism into fan creations.

I didn’t attack him. I talked about him some – on a private forum, with people who’d already been aware of him and had been watching him and C hurt people for years, plural. I haven’t told people on tumblr any real details about him until now. And R still is happy to talk about how it was his toxic ex’s right to post torture/rape/murder porn vent fic about actual people.

Tell me, how exactly am I in the wrong?

Bonus pettiness: I posted some cywhirlgate porn. The next day, R vaguely whined about robot pedophilia and turned around and wrote some obviously-a-response cywhirlgate. Where it was super platonic and the text explicitly said it was super platonic and it even had platonic thigh nuzzling. With two “children” involved. Of course I turned around and wrote more fic of my own, because jesus h christ that made my skin crawl. You want to play this game? I guarantee I can write faster than you, let’s do this. (he did not follow through on that)

I’d also like to say that forgetting inconvenient little details like this is a thing with R. Hard to call me terrible for writing spitefic when you write it yourself.

A history of Spock’s personal involvement

Let’s backtrack a tiny bit. You may notice I am up to my elbows in this nonsense for no clear reason.

I was friends with some of the people C was taking shots at, and I was unfortunate enough to believe his original smear campaign about that one artist (I’m still ashamed about that). I cared about a number of people C was trying to hurt. I think one or two fanworks of mine upset him, but he already had loads of targets. I kept tabs on him and R, because anxiety is the gift that just keeps giving.

Eventually, C fantasized about wanting to put my former datemate’s hand through a meat grinder (ey wrote a fic that portrayed his fave in a negative light). And R defended his right to do that.

The person he posted about is still feeling the effects of that incident. I’m still feeling the effects of that. And it wasn’t even directed at me, just someone I care deeply about.

R has recently posted that ‘oh my goodness, C sure was awful, remember when he posted this thing about a meat grinder and how unreasonable it was?’ Thanks buddy, glad you noticed, now just go ahead and keep on blaming me for the aftereffects of what your boyfriend did, and what you defended.

After that, it was months before I could properly look away from either of their blogs.

C posted extensively about trying to track down the street address of his ~enemies~ (including the one whose genitals he fantasized about mutilating). He posted about how autistics should die. He had skype chats about wanting to do amateur brain surgery on people. All while posting very often about finding real addresses.

Yeah, it’s more than a year later, and every so often I get a stab of anxiety and have to head off to double check on what these two are up to.

I will repeat that C has been pretty chill lately. He’s got a career he’s aiming for. Good for him, go find success, please don’t slip back into being an internet bully. It’s sad and upsetting to see R echoing some of the early patterns of his ex, and it’s so strange to see me labeled as his own personal enemy.

‘Spock will totally come harass you too’ and/or various accusations of ableism

So there are some things I did in the mix in this history that I regret. Occasionally, I went out and flipped through the blogs of C and R’s friends, seeing if maybe they’d had said something in their notes, did they have any vagueblogs C liked, did they post about— It got unreasonable. I admit that. Anxiety was at the root of it, but it absolutely got unreasonable. And also it is a massive time sink, and I can’t remember the last time I bothered with it. I enjoy life much more when anxiety and paranoia issues don’t have their claws in me. This hasn’t been an issue in a very long time.

I came down hard on some of the kinfeels and system stuff too, which I do walk back a bit. C’s approach was… hahaha. It was something. And he was my intro to the kin and system paradigms. I saw R talking about C’s approach being unreasonable too, pretty recently. So that was an unfortunate bit of poison in how I processed the next people I met who did that sort of thing. I don’t do kin stuff, but I get it. And DID may not strictly apply to all systems, by the formal diagnostic criteria, but I’ve learned there are plenty of other dissociative disorders out there. And I met people who were multiples and who did kin things that weren’t these two guys. Which helped a LOT.

But the big one, hmmm. C wrote a fic. The idea was interesting, but the execution frustrated me. Everyone but the main lead felt so… flat. Everyone was constantly cruel to the main, for no reason. I saw a way to riff on the original text while staying true to its shape, and writing my bad emotions out is also a major, major thing I do to cope. Now, my big thing is that I should have asked before I remixed. I’d been thinking in terms of, y’know, transformative fanworks. Even with authors like Anne McCaffrey and Anne Rice, who fought against fandom, people have still felt that it should be allowed, even against their wishes. So I wrote the remix. I gave full credit on ao3 in the ‘inspired by’ box, linked to the original with positive words, the whole shebang.

The guy was still furious, and… that’s fair. I thought I’d written a thing on self-sabotage that was pretty sympathetic and compelling, and the self-sabotage actually drew a lot on my own personal history. But I gave the main flaws he strongly disagreed with, and I didn’t ask for permission. I get why he was/is angry over it.

I’ve been a fixture on their shitlists ever since :P

It’s remarkable, even while R posts now about ‘oh my god, remember how C wrote the creepiest things?’, I’m still the one who’s the the actual worst, for being skeeved out by the creepy things and finding a constructive way to deal with it. R’s controlling ex gets full freedom when it comes to vent fic, even when it’s about wallowing in torturing, raping, and murdering an avatar for a real person (the original one they harassed!), or punching someone in the face until they agree to be your friend (another artist these guys targeted). But R’s position seems to be that only C is allowed to vent (even if it’s genital mutilation fantasies), and I’m definitely not.

Oh, and R has now expanded this remix into me totally having a consistent pattern of stealing ideas and plagiarism and so many remixes that are obviously done as revenge on anyone who pisses me off. So that’s nice.

So R hates your writing. Is that seriously why this post exists?

Ha, no. Let’s look at the concrete things R is saying. Here, let me post a little sampling of evidence.

These aren’t just things he’s shouting into the void, people have responded saying wow, I never knew that! These are lies that people are believing about me. And then yesterday, June 30, 2017, he warned a friend not to disagree with my meta, or I’d come harass them. A friend I’m aggressively leaving out of this, just as I’m leaving out other responses, because these people don’t deserve to be dragged into R’s bullshit.

Let’s have bullet points. Some of these are the silly spock-is-bad-at-writing complaints. Those are here because this whole mess is pretty fucking depressing and the ridiculous claims make me laugh, but these are all things he says.

Spock is evil – You know what, he’s not calling people pedophiles, which is a step up. I’ll take it.

Spock is a plagiarist – I remixed one fic with full credit, said only good things about the original, and linked to it in extra places so that people would have extra opportunities to click through and check it out. I arguably remixed inappropriately, but that’s not the same thing. Words have definitions. If I’m a plagiarist, so is everyone who’s ever written a fanfic.

Spock is something something mean when people disagree – I don’t even know, man. I’m actually shockingly conflict-averse. Is this because I make walls of text and explain why I hold opinions at great length? I enjoy talking about a thing I love. I’m autistic, I’m hyperverbal, and this is my special interest, so is it that I talk a lot? That’s the best I can do. I’ve talked about things I disagree with on a private forum, in which case mister pot has had a lot of fun in public on twitter, not only talking shit, but also spreading outright untruths. Maybe he wants to rethink this one.

Spock will come harass you if you disagree – You need to back the heck down, pal.

Spock’s meta/fic/characterization is bad and they should feel bad – Hahaha, fite me. He won’t, because I can articulately defend myself at significant length, and his criticisms seem to stop at ‘spock sucks’, but hey.

Spock used ableist language about Whirl - I... what? This one confuses me and makes me laugh so it stays here. Also, holy double standards, batman.

Spock is only into transformers to harass R – I checked out transformers because I was pretty sure R was being disgustingly ableist (he was). I stayed in transformers because I adore it. I had to adore it a lot to make me willing to share fandom space with these two. My god, I have better things to do with my life than spend all my time on something that bores me just to annoy one asshole on the other side of the internet. I’d ask if he thinks I spent dozens of painstaking hours cross-stitching Starscream just to bother him, but….. yep, pretty sure he does.

Spock goes after all of R’s favorite characters to upset him – R latches on to just about every interesting and/or sympathetic character that shows up. When he was dating C, they covered most of the cast between them. I don’t care who R likes best because I don’t agree with his opinions. I tend to stay away from his opinions because I don’t like reading things that bother me. This is asnine. I’m only allowed to like the characters R despises, I guess.

Spock makes fanworks for things R likes just to make him see them – Oh my god, I don’t caaaaaare. I write about things that interest me, unless I’m venting. Say, venting about the way R and his ex have deliberately hurt a shockingly high number of people I care about. ‘Spock made rodistar because I liked it--’ I made it because I wrote a thing about their parallels, and shipping was the obvious next step. R isn’t that important to me. Promise.

This is just exhausting, man. The anxiety bugs had been dying down, and it had been ages since I checked out this guy’s anything. C, who drove the whole initial blowup that led to this, has been quiet and chill on tumblr. But R has learned from his ex’s old example and has been having fun spreading lies about me.

In conclusion

Some fun history.

R was 18 when he told a CSA survivor upset about being outed and harassed to wank using their tears for lube.

He was older than that when he defended C’s right to post about wanting to mutilate someone’s genitals (for the crime of saying C’s logic didn’t make sense).

He was older than that when he complained about that person’s spouse being ‘vicious’ for reacting badly to C’s genital mutilation fantasy.

He was older than that when he nodded along as C called autistic people retards and said they should die.

He was older than that when he talked about being happy that someone he disliked was triggered, and nodded along when C fantasized about that person drinking bleach.

And he was older than that when he defended C, his twenty-something boyfriend, against the thirteen-year-old that C had been having incredibly inappropriate conversations with, despite skype log proof and everything.

And despite all this, I’m still the bad guy, because I didn’t think what they were doing was okay. I’m the bad guy for being upset by C's actions, even though... R is now upset by C’s actions. The ways I responded to C were inexcusable. My only motivation is to hurt people. Every thing I did that ever upset them still means I’m terrible, even though R is saying this while he’s busy posting about how awful C is. And this all means that he needs to warn his friends not to catch my attention, or I’ll come harass them.

So, I’m tired.

I’m very tired.

I’m glad he’s trying to grow past that history. Good. Maybe he can do that without making up a story about how I’m unrepentant villain who lives for villainy and who only takes joy in causing him pain. I’m sure it helps him, because it’s a story that brushes aside the shit he did that he regrets, and makes his past less painful to think about. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with him telling lies about me.

I don’t know why I’m the one boogeyman he has left (I kid, it’s because I’m in transformers, and because he thinks I’m popular. he harps on it a lot, and it’s weird for everyone). I mean, whatever. I’ve aggressively avoided publishing drama details on here for a very long time. But there are two blog tags, miscellaneous other untagged blog content, three forum threads, and hundreds of pages of skype logs with hard evidence of this bullshit.

I’m pretty sure that if he tries to defend himself, one, he’ll place some blame on his ex. That’s fair. C was pretty darn controlling and demanding. But R is still absolutely responsible for his own actions, and is especially responsible for the harm he personally caused. He’ll talk about how it’s bullshit to pull up all these receipts from so very long ago. In that case, his receipts for me (whatever he even has) are equally old, so aren’t they null and void? No, because Spock is the devil. And it’s not so much bullshit if he’s clearly learned nothing, and has gone back to spreading outright falsehoods about people.

To be clear, a lot of the lies he told about me were told a while back. Weeks to a few months to a year. I was letting it sit, because I’d really, really hoped this was over. Yesterday, June 30, 2017, he warned a friend not to publicly disagree with my meta or I’d come and harass them.

It’s been three years since I first saw him doing this. I’ve watched him hurt a lot of people, and I’ve watched him admit, multiple times, that he has hurt people. I thought he’d learned to stop following these toxic patterns. Apparently he has not.

Edit 7/2/2017: To repeat the edit up above, R has said he regrets posting these things about me, and that he's going to try to avoid slipping into this in the future. I very much appreciate that.

#drama tag #abusaa tag #tw: all #i can't list them all it's too many #just tread with care

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pivitor · 7 years ago

Text

Ask meme

Two different people have tagged me in this recently, so I’m gonna combine em together.

RULES

1. Always post the rules 2. Answer the questions given by the person who tagged you 3. Write 11 questions of your own 4. Tag 11 people (or however many you want)

First, @eighteenbelow:

1. Have you ever played a musical instrument?: I play bass! Not super well, but I’ve been in a few fun garage punk bands. Making music with people is amazingly fun even if you’re only marginally talented.

2. Where do you see yourself in ten years?: Oh god, hell if I know. I just keep hoping I win Publisher’s Clearing House

3. Do you like any foods that are considered weird? (ie lutefisk or something): I am a super picky eater, so I don’t think so. I like honey on chicken and/or fish, but I don’t think that’s that weird.

4. What genres of movies do you typically like?: Superhero movies, action, comedies, dysfunctional families

5. As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?: I cried myself to sleep as a child because I never wanted to grow up. It wasn’t something I ever gave any serious thought.

6. What was your favorite subject at school?: English

7. What kinds of things/coping strategies help calm you?: DISTRACTIONS. I’ve gotta find a way to distract myself. Sometimes it’s just social media/a good show or book, sometimes if it’s present and intense I’ll have to leave the situation making me anxious.

8. Classic Calendar Man or Kite-Man: which would you prefer as your new friend?: Kite-Man, hell yeah!

9. Which rock or mineral is your favorite?: I wish I knew more about rocks and minerals. I’m gonna say Amethyst, but only because of Steven Universe

10. Do you prefer coffee or tea?: Tea. I don’t drink either much though. I’m not big on hot drinks in general, but coffee makes me have to pee every fifteen minutes for the rest of the day, so tea gets a benefit there.

11. What kinds of things do you like to collect?: I collect comic books haha. When I was a kid I collected magnets in the shape of states and was trying to assemble the entire country. But in general I’m not much of a “collector,” I don’t have enough room and money to buy things just for the sake of having them. I have a lot of comics, books, and music, but because I use all of it.

And @angrypedestrian tagged me too!:

1. What was the last song you listened to?: Firefight by Jimmy Eat World

2. Favorite childhood toy?: When I was very young, my stuff Dalmatians (From 101 Dalmatians). It was my Batman action figures when I got old, and specifically my giant Batcave/Wayne Manor playset

3. What did your childhood imaginary friend look like?: I, sadly, didn’t have one. I had this little baby doll I pretended was my little brother Andrew, but that’s about the extent of it. I had a big imagination and was (am) always daydreaming, but I was never convinced that any of it was real.

4. What was the last nice thing someone did for you?: Good question! Other than people holding doors for me, I guess it’s a good friend I don’t get to spend a ton of time with inviting me out to hang last night?Oh! Nah, it was another friend giving me a ride home from when I wanted to ditch my family yesterday.

5. What’s your favorite day of the year?: Is it weird to say September 29th, the anniversary of the day I was Roadie for a Day/first met Saves the Day? I always like remembering that. Otherwise my favorite days are when new seasons of TV shows start or when new books come out of when I get to go to a good show, and those come randomly throughout the year.

6. Who was the best teacher you ever had?: My 12th year English teacher gave me a lot of encouragement in my writing. He kept the paper I wrote about Young Frankenstein to show future classes as an example and even read the novel-length Dragonball Z fanfiction I wrote that year, which only becomes more momentous the older I get. I appreciated him a lot.

My fourth grade teacher was basically Miss Frizzle, I loved her too. We always had great field trips, class experiments, and we had a class pet snake. The entire school would come each week to watch it eat a mouse.

7. What is the best TV show of all time?: There’s probably no such thing because what everybody’s looking for in a TV show is different. Of shows I love, I’d say only I Love Lucy and Mad Men are even in competition. But man, no other show makes me feel the way Parks and Rec does

8. How many black t-shirts do you own?: I just counted 12 (plus a couple of black sleeveless shirts), but not all fit me atm

9. Are you a fish person, or a lizard person?: Definitely fish.

10. If you could live anywhere, where would it be?: I feel like I’d need to see more of the world before I could fully make that decision. Like, I’ve never been off the East Coast. Based off my limited experience, I’d probably say Philadelphia. I have a lot of friends there, it’s a great place to see shows, and it’s still very close to my friends and family in Delaware. And I don’t lose that sweet Northeast show traveling location.

11. What was the last book you read?: I am very ashamed to say that I haven’t read any novels in 2017. I’ve read a metric ton of comic books and graphic novels and a bunch of Readers Digests tho.

I had to look it up and it’s The Book Thief, which I enjoyed but isn’t a very interesting answer.

(I have a Microsoft Word document of every novel I’ve read since 2011, which apparently amounts to 110 in total. I miss reading books. I need to get back to it)

Okay, so my 11 questions: 1. What’s the worst retail experience you’ve ever had, as a worker or a customer? 2. Any guilty pleasures? 3. What was the best day of your life? 4. Tell me about the worst person one of your friends has ever dated. 5. What’s something that’s normal in your family that you later come to realize is definitely not normal? 6. Do you know your extended family very well? 7. What’s something you’ve always wanted to do that you’ve never been able to? 8. Have you ever tried energy drinks? Do they work for you? 9. What superhero do you want most to have a movie that hasn’t had one? 10. What’s the most you’ve ever sweated? 11. Dream tour?

I tag: @yodalicious, @zombieseamonster @aherofortheapatheticnation @comicallycool @fish-nut @jade-ellsworth @piratejenne @premiumcottonsquares @televangelionist @theheartattacked @thepleasureprincipal and anybody else who wants to do it

#Pivitor #me #memes #eighteenbelow #angrypedestrian

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luvleekaotix-imagines · 7 years ago

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Just a note, some of these asks are literally from MONTHS ago and I’m fucking TRASH and just left it for too long, I’m so sorry.

Anonymous said:

Do you plan to write any imagines for Fire Emblem? Cause i know some people there that i would love to smooch their lil face

I don’t have any plans, but I never have any plan for what I write to be honest/ FE muses might come outta no where and suddenly there’s a fic, so... YAH. If it happens, look forward to it? Hahah!

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

Do you play Final Fantasy XIV? :) You can get a cactuar vanity pet that follows you around, and does a twirly twirl. <3

I do play FF14! I’ve actually been on a decent hiatus, but I’ll be back for SB. I’m on Tonberry if anyone is curious <3 I know of the Cactuar pet, but I don’t have it! I guess I’ll have to go looking :3 <3

★★★★★

seirensou said:

Can you make a sequel for the University AU Jack :3 i think he deserve a "series'" like Gabe~

Hahah yass Jack anything tbh. I love Jack Morrison so much AND I DON’T KNOW WHY LIKE WHY THIS VANILLA SUPER SOLDIER TROPE WHAT IS IT LIKE ?????

anyway yes I have to get back to Uni AU, but I’m pretty sure I promised Amalie/Widowmaker first! But I’m always down for Jack anything, just so you know.

★★★★★

zanthiasplace said:

Hello, I'm your waifu. I follow you since god knows where, and I will ALWAYS do, till the the end of times. So prepare yourself to be bombarded with more stuff to fill your fics and mind, because if I go down, you will come with me MUAHAHA

I love you so much Z, like you have no idea. I love when you message me here, or like my stuff on any of my blogs or message my on Facebook like fifhdishfiudhs <3 You’re such a big part of my life. I’m really gonna have to work hard to visit you because ilu so much and we HAVE to meet for realsies xoxox

★★★★★

il-legible said:

Ack- I sent you my message of admiration BEFORE you invited us to introduce ourselves and say hi and now I wanna do it formally. Hi! I'm Rain! I'm pan, Vietnamese, Scorpio, love love love horror movies, bunnies, your writing, comics, and video games. I speak 4 languages, I just want to make more friends. Oh. I live in Canada. YEAH. HI. AGAIN.

Hello darling!! I’m pretty sure it’s been mentioned before, but I’m viet too! Yasss. I mean I don’t speak a lick of the language (I speak teochew, its what my parents taught me instead of viet for some reason), but YEAH.

I love a lot of the things you do an dI also want to make more friends. I’m actually really bad at it, but I’m doing my best. ;w; <3

Love ya Rain xoxo

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

Please O great KC Jaal please or some turians please

I WILL HAVE TO WRITE TO JAAL, EVFRA AND TIRAN KANDROS AAA. Alien baes forever. But omg Kandro you poor babe working so haaard aaaaa

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

Just wanted to say thanks. You had me laughing 'til my stomach hurt and your reader-inserts keep me alive during the day. So please whatever you do to be this awesome keep it up!

Aww I’m glad I could make you laugh! I’m not sure if my humor ever comes through because people don’t generally laugh around me/I’m not known for being funny, so it makes me happy to hear you like funny stuff that’s being written.

Or you could just be laughing at my writing, which tbh is also okay long as you’re enjoying yourself I guess lol <3 lol

Love you anon! xxoxo

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

speaking of dark haired characters wearing red and black, do you have any interest in Persona 5/the persona series in general? *u*

I have only just started P5 and then I haven’t had the time or energy to play it. Like Persona is one of those games where you have to SIT and SET ASIDE time to play it so you can take it all in. Its very hard for me to find time to do that nowadays, but I want to continue playing it AAAA.

Ryuji is my fave so far tho. Kill me, I’m weak for those kinds of boisterous, well-meaning rebels. I’m probably just old.

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

More genji plz my yummy boi

Don’t worry! I’ll write more Genji even if I don’t want to cause I hate to admit it, but he’s my strongest OW muse. He’s super easy to write for.

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

Omg KC you are gorgeous x 1048392847!!! Like I wish I could pull of lipstick the way you do and your fashion sense is super on point! That stupid skirt can cash me ousside. You are goddess and deserving of everything and anyone who disagrees can fight me lol

Oh you can totally pull off lipstick like I do; just put it on lol. And while I’d love to think I have good fashion sense, it’s actually cause I tried a brand ONCE and found out their clothes are exactly my style and their sizes fit me pretty perfectly, so I pretty much only buy that brand. Kitten D’Amour. The downside is... I HAVE LIKE NO CASUAL CLOTHES NOW. I’M OVERDRESSED FOR EVERYTHING. ALSO THESE CLOTHES ARE SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE why am like this

I love you very much anon, YOU are the deity, not I~ and you very much deserve everything <3 xoxoxox

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

I follow for Overwatch (I couldn't even tell you how long ago rip) but, even after I unfollowed a lot of Overwatch blogs, I mainly kept following you bc your writing is amazing!

Oh sweetie, I don’t even know if you’re still with me, but that’s so sweet! Even if you’ve unfollowed me anon, it’s okay. There’s always a chance we’ll meet again in the future. I’m sure the other blog owners feel exactly the same way.

Following and unfollowing blogs is part of this website and just because you’ve unfollowed doesn’t mean you can’t follow again in the future if the blog ever shifts back into your interests.

Just so everyone who reads this knows, if you feel like unfollowing, you absolutely can of course and I wish you all the best. <3

Love you, anon! xoxox I always will

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

Listen if you write a n y t h i n g for RE I am here for it (cough Leon, Chris, and/or Wesker cough)

I’ve never known the draw of Wesker, but oh my gosh, Leon and Chris. I’ve always looked for reader-inserts for them and could never find any, so I might actually have to start writing for them. Leon tho hhhhhhhhhh. Chris hold me in your big strong arms plsssssssss

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

That thing about lacking inserts? I struggle for anything for Watchdogs, Destiny and Pokemon! Specific characters? There is a severe lack of anything decent for Guzma, Defalt or Cayde, I would write them but I cant write very well.

I haven’t written for Pokemon yet, but I have done a couple Cayde things now (and probably more in the future) and I’ve done WD2 stuff, but not WD unfortunately since I couldn’t finish the game (couldn’t get into it :( ). I’ll have to revisit WD maybe, because it seems there are a few characters people really liked in WD.

Regarding your writing, I bet you write just fine. If you don’t keep writing, you’ll never improve either, so if you want to write some stuff, even just for yourself, you should really do it!! <3 I believe in you~

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

your writings are so wonderful they make me wanna cry ;w; (in a good way tho)

Aww honey!! You’re the sweetest. Thank you so much for letting me know you like my writing. It alwas baffles me, but it makes me smile!! I’m sorry for making you though ARGH!! But so you know, sometimes I cry when I write stuff lmao IF I’M NOT FEELIN IT I CAN’T WRITE IT I GUESS

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

You're stuck in the Fire Emblem hell too? OMG YES! COME OVER HERE! *runs to you but trips over a lobster(Ryoma) and never gets up*

I’m always in Fire Emblem hell tho and I married Ryoma as soon as I could ngl. I love my royal lobster husband.

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

Please write more CaydexReader fics because there are none really in existence and the one you wrote was not enough on its own to satisfy the beast that is my fanfic hunger.

I’m sure there are some, but I’m happy to write more!! I don’t know too much about Cayde-6 though, so I’m very cautious. I’m never sure if I get his character right and it’s so important to me that I do, otherwise it feels like a mockery of a character the fans love :(

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

Ok I just say I just found your Delsin fic and oohhhh my goddd I love itttt thank you for writing it it's so good

AAAAAAAAAAAA I LOVE DELSIN ROWE OKAY I have to write more for him sometime in the future I hate it so much he actually makes me a weak giggly mess its WEIRD I DUNNO WHY I can’t actually think of another character that does that WHAT THE FUCK DELSIN

★★★★★

lombax-lombardi said:

Speaking of Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn and how fabulous everyone looks it also makes them look very illegal. Like hello you can't be this pretty, this is wrong and illegal stop toying with me. But they will never stop toying with your emotions. gdi pretty boys in Fire Emblem how DARE

This is an accurate summary of how a majority of FE fans feel, I think!! When I was playing through FE Awakening and Fates I was like “I wanna marry them, NO THEM, Wait nO THERES MORE THAT ONE MAYBE? Okay no I’ll go baCK WHO IS THIS THO”

hhhhh.... the introduction of the avatar system was a blessing and curse.

★★★★★

doublerainebow said:

Please take your time in writing! I realize how hard it is to have the creativity flowing as a writer myself 😭😭 Just being able to talk to you is fine with me anyways!

Thank you, my love!! When I’m stressed my usual creatively is pretty much murdered. I’ve been in a major slump in basically everything in my life recently, but I’m actually tired of that mentality now. I’m gonna work hard to make some minor adjustments until I feel like I’m back on track again.

I love talking to you guys, I do. Thank you so much for your messages xoxox <3

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

I loooove Auriel and Brightwing. I'm a support main, though, so I love all of them. 👽💚

Aaa I love Auriel!! Brightwing is honestly the spirit animal we should all have. We should all be happy with things like rainbows and love and thE BLOOD OF OUR ENEMIES you know?

I play Zagara and Lt. Morales mostly! I can also play a few other supports and a couple of tanks, but I suck ass at assassins like fml.

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

Man I was going through your blog and I like all the stuff you write and I'd be totally down for some Fire Emblem stuff because 1. The older games need some love and 2. Tibarn nuff said and I am GLAD you enjoyed GotG2 so good.

Yess there is a serious lack of older FE fics. Some characters are just so amazing. If only there was a remake with the avatar system sO WE CAN ROMANCE THEM QQ.

★★★★★

yoshikuno said:

i love your dmc headcanons!! it give me inspiration for and a fic XDD. sorry for the bad english n_nU

Your english is fine, darling! And I’m glad you liked the headcanons. I need to write some DmC reboot stuff though, just to even things out with the original crew haha.

Have fun writing the fic, I’m sure it’s amazing! <3

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

The cayde-6 x reader was perfect! Could you write more soon? :D

Anonymous said:

i loved your Cayde-6 imagine! There's never enough Destiny fiction so I was wondering if you know of any other Destiny writing blogs?

Thanks for the love on the Cayde-6 imagine guys!! I’ve been concerned with how I write him because I haven’t played Destiny much :( I’ll be getting on Destiny 2, it seems, once it’s out on PC :)

I don’t actually know of any Destiny writing blogs, but if anyone reads this and knows of other blogs, send me a message or reply to this post!!

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

Is it bad that while reading the beginning of your latest Blackwatch agent fic "Fly", I thought of the Art of Slay series? lol Keep up the cool work, KC!

YESSS it does start very similarly cause you’re cursing your fellow comrades out for putting you in a compromising position. In ‘Fly’ it’s a lot less sexy, but hey, you beat everyone up with a shoe and I feel like that makes up for it lmao <3

★★★★★

Anonymous said:

Take your time, KC! Life is more important. I hope things start looking up for you. 👽💚

Anonymous said:

We love you, KC! Hope you find peace and relief from the stress! 💖

Anonymous said:

it's totally ok that you don't want to write !! seriously no pressure, dude. we all love you and I hope you get through what you're going through. :)

latinxshepard said:

KC!!! plese try to take care of the issues first!!! we need you to be well and good so you can provide us your magnificent presence!!! take your time and just keep rebloging for a while if thats better to you!!! that everything get better soon!!!

Thanks for the love, guys. It’s been rough as fucking fuck. I can’t go through everything because so much happened over the past like month or so (it feels like longer than that) that I would be writing a novel if I had to explain it.

The short of it is that everything came down on me at once, personal/family life, social life, work life and some things that happened in the past that won’t stay dead. They struck all at once and I’m pretty much dead inside.

BUT I’m tired of feeling this way, so I’m gonna try and make some minor quality of life changes and just try and get over it. It’ll take time though, as these things do.

Thanks for being so patient with me and for staying with this blog even though I haven’t been able to give you quality content for a long time. You don’t understand how much that means to me, on top of all the amazing messages of support I’ve been receiving. You’re all beautiful people that make life all the more brighter. xoxoxox

★★★★★

queen-lluvia said to luvleekaotix-imagines:

How are you doing?😉

I’m trudging along!!! Did you see the Red Hood Injustice 2 gameplay trailer tho. Ohhhhhh Jason wrecks face and for some reason it’s so attractive. I’m a broken human being aaa

#answered asks

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leeviathans · 7 years ago

Text

I ganked an OC ask list so here’s the whole thing for Max.

1. What’s their full name? Why was that chosen? Does it mean anything? Maxwell. It was chosen becauseee that’s what his dad named him? Idk. It doesn’t have any significant meaning to it. 2. Do they have any titles? How did they get them? Eeeeeehhhhhhh 3. Did they have a good childhood? What are fond memories they have of it? What’s a bad memory? His childhood was pretty ok, save for his stepmother being physically and verbally (mostly physically) abusive. But he learned how to avoid her for the most part and otherwise his childhood was very uneventful. He spent a lot of time hanging around his dad’s lab (aka the basement) as a kid. 4. What is their relationship with their parents? What’s a good and bad memory with them? Did they know both parents? Only knew his dad, his mom is very dead. He was very very close to his dad though. 5. Do they have any siblings? What’s their names? What is their relationship with them? Has their relationship changed since they were kids to adults? He does but the only one I’ll talk about is his half sister. Her name is Liza. Their relationship was always very distant, they grew up practically being just... strangers who happened to share a house. When they’re adults their relationship is much different, they become very good friends. 6. What were they like at school? Did they enjoy it? Did they finish? What level of higher education did they reach? What subjects did they enjoy? Which did they hate? He hated school in general and was an awful student. It was’t that he was bad at the classes he was in (he’s actually quite smart), he just absolutely couldn’t be bothered to care. He dropped out his senior year, basically as soon as he was able to do so without anyone stopping him (when he turned 18) 7. Did they have lots of friends as a child? Did they keep any of their childhood friends into adulthood? NOPE. Max really didn’t have any friends at all. He was a weird kid and just kind of couldn’t click with anyone. He did have one friend for a good amount of years of his childhood, though. But his memories of that friend are very fuzzy. 8. Did they have pets as a child? Do they have pets as an adult? Do they like animals? I mean yeah he likes animals just fine but I don’t think he technically has any pets himself. 9. Do animals like them? Do they get on well with animals? He gets along ok with most animals, nothing remarkable one way or another. However, he does NOT get along with dogs. They don’t seem to ever like him. Just as well, he doesn’t like them either. 10. Do they like children? Do children like them? Do they have or want any children? What would they be like as a parent? Or as a godparent/babysitter/ect? He’s actually GREAT with kids. He doesn’t think so, but no he’s awesome at dealing w/ them. Not sure if he’d actually want kids or if he ever has any at any point in his future. 11. Do they have any special diet requirements? Are they a vegetarian? Vegan? Have any allergies? Nahhh. But in his wolf state he will eat like all the meat in the house. Or go find fresh meat. 12. What is their favourite food? He LOVES junk food. Pizza’s his favorite. Spicy food’s also good, and he has a godawful sweet tooth. 13. What is their least favourite food? Not sure? He’s not horribly picky. Probably acts like super healthy food is nasty though. 14. Do they have any specific memories of food/a restaurant/meal? ...no... this is such a weird question. 15. Are they good at cooking? Do they enjoy it? What do others think of their cooking? He’s very good at it, and loves doing it! He doesn’t do it often though because he’s incredibly lazy so I doubt anyone really gets food made by him much at all. 16. Do they collect anything? What do they do with it? Where do they keep it? As far as I know he doesn’t collect anything! 17. Do they like to take photos? What do they like to take photos of? Selfies? What do they do with their photos? He’s actually not big on photos. He’s indifferent toward others taking them and has zero interest in taking them himself. 18. What’s their favourite genre of: books, music, tv shows, films, video games and anything else Trash. Especially in terms of movies and tv shows. The worse the writing and/or acting is, the more he loves it. 19. What’s their least favourite genres? Probably stuff like sitcoms or daytime TV dramas, things that he really can’t get any amusement out of. 20. Do they like musicals? Music in general? What do they do when their favourite song comes? He likes music a lot! He’d prob just turn the volume up obnoxiously high and sing along with it. 21. Do they have a temper? Are they patient? What are they like when they do lose their temper? HE HAS THE WORST TEMPER. He has a really short fuse and it doesn’t take much to make him snap if you’re pushing the right buttons. What he does when he loses his temper varies depending on the situation and who he’s angry at, but his outbursts are usually pretty quick and end just as fast. He holds a HELL of a grudge afterward though. 22. What are their favourite insults to use? What do they insult people for? Or do they prefer to bitch behind someone’s back? Can’t say he has a go-to insult? But he’d insult someone if he felt insulted first. Without hesitation. 23. Do they have a good memory? Short term or long term? Are they good with names? Or faces? Generally speaking his memory’s pretty good! It’s really nothing remarkable, just kind of average. 24. What is their sleeping pattern like? Do they snore? What do they like to sleep on? A soft or hard mattress? He snores horribly. Sleeps on a really soft and very beat-up and old mattress. Is not aware that mattresses are a thing that need to be replaced eventually. Builds up a very large collection of blankets. 25. What do they find funny? Do they have a good sense of humour? Are they funny themselves? He finds really dumb things funny. Usually things that aren’t really meant to BE funny. I’d say he has a good sense of humor? 26. How do they act when they’re happy? Do they sing? Dance? Hum? Or do they hide their emotions? He’s VERY visible about it when he’s happy. Smiles a lot, probably hums or sings under his breath, generally is much more sociable and friendly when he’s in a really good mood. 27. What makes them sad? Do they cry regularly? Do they cry openly or hide it? What are they like they are sad? He completely shuts down when he’s upset. He has a habit of isolating himself and utterly closing himself off to others. He becomes very distant, very unwilling to talk. He doesn’t usually cry like... at all, but when he does it’s really not something he can hide. 28. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared? He does have a weird fear/aversion of clowns/jesters/anything like that. He usually responds to being scared with anger and defensiveness. 29. What do they do when they find out someone else’s fear? Do they tease them? Or get very over protective? For the most part he’d just acknowledge that it’s really none of his business. He might lightly tease them about it here and there, but otherwise he’s not gonna go sticking his nose into such a personal thing for others. 30. Do they exercise? Regularly? Or only when forced? What do they act like pre-work out and post-work out? HAHA NO HE’D DIE. 31. Do they drink? What are they like drunk? What are they like hungover? How do they act when other people are drunk or hungover? Kind or teasing? Never struck me as the type to drink much, just occasionally. He is the type to be STUPID-HAPPY when drunk tho. Like everything’s awesome and hilarious and super good mood all around. He’s indifferent towards others being drunk around him and will usually just kinda respond like he normally would to them? 32. What do they dress like? What sorta shops do they buy clothes from? Do they wear the fashion that they like? What do they wear to sleep? Do they wear makeup? What’s their hair like? The boy frequently looks like he fell into a closet in the dark. He usually just buys what’s cheap but he has no idea how to dress to his body type so none of his clothes fit properly. Boring probably-super-worn-out pajama pants to bed. Doesn’t wear makeup. His hair is just kind of a thing that exists and he might brush it like once in the morning and that’s it. 33. What underwear do they wear? Boxers or briefs? Lacey? Comfy granny panties? Boxers 34. What is their body type? How tall are they? Do they like their body? VERY VERY thin. He has a very fast metabolism so he just flatout does not put on weight. He’s... some very tall height above 6′6″, haven’t quite figured out how tall he is exactly. He’s decidedly indifferent toward his body, it’s just kind of there and he has no opinion of it really. 35. What’s their guilty pleasure? What is their totally unguilty pleasure? He has no guilty pleasures, only things that are stupid and awful that he feels no shame in enjoying. 36. What are they good at? What hobbies do they like? Can they sing? He can! He’s good at singing and cooking, interests he picked up years ago from a friend. 37. Do they like to read? Are they a fast or slow reader? Do they like poetry? Fictional or non fiction? ...he likes to read comic books does that count... otherwise he really doesn’t enjoy reading. He doesn’t have much of an attention span for it. For what it’s worth though he can read pretty fast. 38. What do they admire in others? What talents do they wish they had? Sometimes he wishes he were more patient or altruistic and admires those traits a lot in others. Though he’s totally capable of being these things already. 39. Do they like letters? Or prefer emails/messaging? Nah on both levels. 40. Do they like energy drinks? Coffee? Sugary food? Or can they naturally stay awake and alert? SUGARY FOOD. And soda. And coffee with a lot of sugar in it. 41. What’s their sexuality? What do they find attractive? Physically and mentally? What do they like/need in a relationship? I have no idea, I just know he thinks his girlfriend is the prettiest thing to exist and is crazy about her. 42. What are their goals? What would they sacrifice anything for? What is their secret ambition? Gonna skip this onnnneee. 43. Are they religious? What do they think of religion? What do they think of religious people? What do they think of non religious people? He’s not, and has no opinion of those who are other than that they’re just dong their own thing. 44. What is their favourite season? Type of weather? Are they good in the cold or the heat? What weather do they complain in the most? He likes warm weather. Warm springtime weather is probably ideal. He has zero cold tolerance and will complain a lot if he has to go out in the cold. 45. How do other people see them? Is it similar to how they see themselves? It realllly varies from person to person, since the way he acts depends a lot on how well he knows someone and how comfortable he is with them. 46. Do they make a good first impression? Does their first impression reflect them accurately? How do they introduce themselves? He CAN make a good impression? But he’s usually standoffish with new people. 47. How do they act in a formal occasion? What do they think of black tie wear? Do they enjoy fancy parties and love to chit chat or loathe the whole event? He’d have a good time it if it’s something someone really wanted him to go to, but he really wouldn’t socialize much. He’d prob just lowkey cling to people he knows or stay where the snacks are. He’s not the type to want anything to do with formal events on his own, though, and he feels weird dressing up. 48. Do they enjoy any parties? If so what kind? Do they organise the party or just turn up? How do they act? What if they didn’t want to go but were dragged along by a friend? He’s not big on them, but like with formal events he’d be fine if someone else wanted him to go. Otherwise he just really gets nothing out of them? 49. What is their most valued object? Are they sentimental? Is there something they have to take everywhere with them? He has a sentimental attachment to the beat-up old baseball cap he wears, and especially to the tooth necklace he wears. He’s almost never seen without that necklace. 50. If they could only take one bag of stuff somewhere with them: what would they pack? What do they consider their essentials? He’s psychic. He’s a big cheater and would just bypass this by teleporting whatever he wants/needs at any given time. But generally speaking, when he travels he doesn’t bring much of anything with him.

#My OCs #Max

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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

Text

February 5th-February 11th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from February 5th, 2020 to February 11th, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

How does knowing or not knowing a webcomic’s creator(s) personally affect when you read, how you read, and similar?

carcarchu

It actually affects my impression of their work because there's this one webcomic that I really like but I find some of the things the artist has done in the past to be unsavoury. I don't want to hold it against that artist because I want to believe that they are able to grow and apologize for their mistakes (although they never actually did apologize for what they did as far as I know) but every time I read their comic there's always this nagging thought at the back of my head about what they did and it really limits my enjoyment of their comic which is otherwise amazing(edited)

Capitania do Azar

I read a lot of comics first, and only after I go look for their authors. So in that regard, no. Most of the times I get to know the author it doesn't affect me much, but I can't say it never happened (but it was mostly if the personality traits I disliked actually managed to bleed into the comic, tho I understand that I am more prone to noticing them in the comic after noticing them in the person)

Deo101 [Millennium]

For the most part, I only start reading a comic once I get to know someone and like them. Its a way I show them I support them and their work, and oftentimes it really helps me enjoy it way more than I otherwise would.

I'm kind of already invested, and I have a baseline understanding of what they're doing before I start, which helps me a lot because I have a hard time understanding things, personally.

DanitheCarutor

Usually I don't really care? I don't connect the creator with their work in the sense that they're technically two separate entities, and while one can't be possible without the other, whatever type of personality the creator has doesn't affect my reading experience because I don't really care about the creator as a person... as cold as that sounds. There are some exceptions. If a creator acts super comfortable with me, I'll feel more comfortable with them and be more into promoting pretty much everything of theirs, I'll probably also like their content more because of the interaction. If they treat me like crap, like actually being abusive, then I'll be soured to consuming their work. I attempt to have this apply to generally awful people too, like sexual predators, abusers, peadophiles, etc. Although I admit I'm a weak bitch for (these not webcomic related) artists like Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Caravaggio (a late 1500's Italian painter who was also a convicted murderer), H.P Lovecraft and Carlo Gesualdo (a 16th century composer who was also a murderer). It really sucks because there are a lot of works out there that are really good, in my opinion, created by less than great people. I may as well deprive myself of most art to avoid morally reprehensible, or potentially morally reprehensible people.(edited)

But to get back on topic! Yeah, no, I don't really care about what type of personality you have. Whether it's salty or sweet, we're flawed people and it's dumb to expect webcomic creators to act like examples of human perfection, or be role models for everyone. At least in my very bias opinion... as someone who gets a lot of crap for having a blunt, non-sugary personality.

NOT saying people who's reading experience is affected by certain personalities are dumb! I just find it dumb for me personally, other people can do whatever they want. (I can't English this morning.)(edited)

Capitania do Azar

Caravaggio stans in the house

RebelVampire

This is a tricky question for me that comes in many layers. I don't really need to know a creator to want to read their work. So not knowing them rarely has any effect for me. If I think the work is good, I'll generally read regularly. Though it makes me less likely to comment, that doesn't change whether I think the work is good or not or my enjoyment of it. But then there is knowing the creator, which is a messy topic for me that is kind of a double edged sword. On the one hand, knowing the creator may make me more likely to comment, chat, and engage with the work as I read it - especially if I find the creator to be laid back and happy to let readers have fun with their content. I am also generally more inspired to re-read and analyze the work much more deeply than I would during a normal read too. Even if I don't think the work is that good, knowing the creator can make a difference for me in that realm too. Especially if I think the creator is super nice and overall a pleasant person, I will read their comic to support them and show appreciation for their work. But on the other other hand, there have been a few instances where I've been turned off from reading something because of knowing the creator. Which make no mistake - I wholeheartedly believe in separation of creator and their work. So for me, if a work is good and doesn't promote the same sort of stuff I disliked the creator for, then I'll probably still read it. However, if I don't think the work is good in the first place, and I find the creator to just be too toxic, I do admittedly stop reading it completely, if only just to avoid the creator at all costs.(edited)

DanitheCarutor

@Capitania do Azar

Capitania do Azar

@DanitheCarutor

BadSprite

I'm usually really attentive towards the comics my friends make. Since I talk to them on a more regular basis, it's easier for me to remember to keep up reading. That aside, I really don't look into the author when reading a comic I usually let the content speak for itself.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Knowing the creator doesn't typically affect my reading habits, unless I was sort of on the fence about continuing to read their work in the first place. So if the comic is meh... and I found out that the creator is not so great either, I will likely drop the comic. But on the other hand, if the creator is really honest and open with their audience, and generally kind, I can forgive a lot of their artistic mistakes. I will say though that with comics that I am really engaged in, I usually seek out the artist's social media to learn more about them. And the more I learn about them usually only makes me more involved in engaging.

kayotics

I don’t HAVE to know the author to read the comic, but knowing them does change my reaction to their comic. I have a lot of friends who are authors, and I’m more likely to read their comics when I probably wouldn’t have found them otherwise. On the other hand when I’m reading a comic and something happens that makes me like them as a person less, it’s harder for me to enjoy the comic, and I usually end up dropping it. Overall, I prefer to not learn more about authors of comics that I’m already invested in.

Ranger

I don't personally know any other creators, so usually I take the comic alone, but sometimes the creator turns out to be more interesting than the comic. penny-arcade.com is one like that, for me, I don't regularly read anymore but I follow the miniature-painting that they do, still. Someone mentioned hoping that comic creators learn and apologize, and that has been the case for that particular comic, as well, they've done some stupid stuff and apologized for it, and hopefully grown from it. It would seem to me that if you have an active social media presence you're going to eventually make a stupid mistake, so I hope if it ever happens to me I can apologize and change, as well.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Don't know any comic creators irl. But even just talking about people on this server I'm definitely more invested in Phantomarine and Ingress than I otherwise would be because I've seen the authors on this discord and others. Also some comics I've found through other discords or forums. I would still be reading the comics otherwise, but maybe not following week-by-week. There are also many other comics from people here that I've checked out and found to be not my cup of tea, but I read way more of them than I otherwise would have. Maybe in an ideal world we wouldn't be affected by our opinions of the authors, but I can't help it. Anyways, one of the most unique things about webcomics is our ability to talk to comic authors and readers directly.

Question to other comic creators here: Do you think that your own social media presence is one that makes people like your comic more?(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I don't know if it has made my readers like my comic more. In fact, very few of my readers actually follow my social media accounts. That being said, I think social media has gotten me a few new readers.

It's more of an audience growth thing than a discussion about my comic

I wish readers would discuss my comic outside of the comment section more, haha

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

If I find a comic I like, I often want more of its 'side content' - and I often get that side content by finding and following the creator and seeing other things they do or like. So many times, the webcomics we create are little windows into ourselves - things we like, hold dear, hold to be important, want to say, etc. So seeing the creator just be themselves, it's almost like I'm getting more of the flavor of the webcomic, but under a different light. And it does keep me much more engaged if I know them and they know me. I think a healthy social media presence can absolutely help build an audience - I'm lucky that all of my comic's 'fans' (that still sounds yucky to say, blech!) have become my friends in some way. I've often thought my work is like a friend trap - if people like my comic, and my comic is an extension of myself, they might like me too. So we end up befriending each other anyway

Deo101 [Millennium]

That kind of "friend trap" idea is how I feel about it too hehe

Ranger

I get way more traffic on my website for my comic than I have followers, so I guess it probably is more that my media funnels to my comic than my comic to the media.

DanitheCarutor

Eeeh Unless it's comic related I'm not much for small talk, or openly letting people know what kind of person I am. I'll talk about my interests, and some mental health stuff because I know being open about that is important, but that's it. Personally I would rather readers 100% focus on my comic without noticing me.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

If a friend of mine makes a comic, I want to read it, even if it’s a genre I really don’t like. It helps me understand them better, because I know I personally express a lot of myself through my comics. I’m not a very open or trusting person, so I will express things through my art that I won’t otherwise talk about, and I think it can be the same for other people, as well. Apart from friends, I really do like getting to know the creators of comics I like. I like when they share a bit about themselves under the comic updates, even if it’s not about the drama of their life; just talking about little things like movies they watched or a book they enjoyed. I like to know there’s a person behind the art, and I often feel less engaged by comics if the creator stays detached and never writes blogs or participates in the comments. I want to get to know them at least a little, and I love when a creator is willing to have conversations with their readers. So overall, my engagement is very much affected by whether I know an artist personally. I’m more likely to read and continue following if it’s someone I interact with, and much more willing to try comics outside of my interests.(edited)

As for whether my enjoyment of a work is affected by a creator’s behaviour.... I have to say it 100% is. I wish I could separate artist from creation, but I have a really hard time with that. My ‘guilt by association’ reflex is very strong, and a negative experience with the authors makes me feel unsettled or outright distressed whenever I see their work. A really good example was one of my favourite comics way back in ‘the early days’ of webcomics. I won’t name any names, but there was a comic I absolutely loved. It was fantastically written, had imaginative and very well thought-out world-building and had so many good messages of love, bravery, and acceptance in it. I followed it for years, always eagerly anticipating the next page. Seeing a new page posted could literally make my whole day. Well, one year the author overhauled his website, and there was a new chat room attached to it. One day I ventured into the chat, only to find it filled with political vitriol. The author spent his whole time insulting and slinging mud at people on the other side of his political alignment. I was shocked and dismayed that someone who had such a wholesome comic could behave this way (just for the record, I have plenty of friends who have both the same and complete opposite political views as me. I don’t hate people for their political alignments, but I can’t stand when anyone hurls insults at people who believe differently than they do). It completely ruined one of my favourite comics. Every time I read a page where the characters expressed love or joy or acceptance, those vitriolic insults I’d seen the author write floated up into my head. All I could think about was how much hatred he was filled with. How much he hated people like me. The whole message of the comic, which had felt like a beacon of light to me for years, now felt like a lie. I couldn’t read it anymore.(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

That sucks, Cap. I can never understand how situations like that occur, where the author is so different from their work. Especially because I think of my comic as being very reflective of myself, like I'm sure many others here do. I wonder if in situations like that it is just me interpreting the work more charitably than it deserves, or if the author intentionally writes with a different voice? Or maybe it's a kind of doublethink, where people don't think to apply their morals to themselves?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I’m the same, My comics are very much an expression of myself, and written as a way to process some of the things I’m dealing with. I’ve the feeling in this case it was the latter; that the author honestly believed his messages, but was not self-aware enough to realise his behaviour was completely contrary to what he was writing. It was unfortunate and a great deal of why I felt like his comic was now a lie. That someone could sincerely believe they were loving and accepting while also spewing hatred at people different from them was too much cognitive dissonance for me to deal with.(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I wonder how he would have reacted if someone called him out on it?

Probably poorly(edited)

DanitheCarutor

It might be a sort of escapism thing. There are some psychology groups out there that discuss the subject of relating depression with comedy, and how extremely troubled individuals like Robin Williams or Richard Jeni were comedians. I don't remember who it was, because I saw the video a long time ago, but I vaguely remember a stand-up comedian talking about how they love making people laugh to offset how bad their life was or how bad they felt. Something along those lines. Maybe it's something similar with storytellers/writers. I've actually seen a lot of cases where what a person's writing or drawings are the polar opposite to their outlook on life or their personality, and follow some artists who say they like the escapism/catharsis of it. Like, maybe the person was making a comic about being a person they wished they were, or a life they wished they had. Although I might just be looking too deep into it, and the author is just a douchebag hypocrite.

But yeah, I may not be able to relate since I'm so... me, but that does suck, and I can understand how you would be affected by an experience like that.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

It's definitely pretty hard to stay engaged in a story when the author so egregiously opposes my core beliefs. This happened to me after I read a novel I enjoyed, and then I found out that the author was a homophobic jerk. Left a sour taste in my mouth whenever I thought about how much I had enjoyed their book.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Could it have been Orson Scott Card? Think he's the most infamous for that kind of thing

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Omg

Yes

I wasn't gonna mention names

But yes

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

eh when people get to that level of fame I think it's okay

Like saying how JK Rowling likes TERF stuff on twitter(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yeah....

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

she's big enough that journalists have reported on her already

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I won’t name names as to who this webcomicker was because I don’t like throwing others under the bus.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Authors shooting themselves in the foot tbh

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

But yeah, I can’t read HP anymore bc JKR is a TERF. Which is a shame bc I was a HUGE HP fan for many years. I was one of the ‘liked it before it was cool’ kids. Now... it definitely leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I try to read the books.(edited)

It’s always heartbreaking when I discover that a creator who made something I love and connected with despises my entire existence.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

But yeah I liked Ender's Game as well. Read some of his other books too, but those were more reflective of his personal opinions, I think. In his case I feel like his religion and strict ideas about family affect his public opinions, but maybe he writes books with how he subconsiously thinks an ideal world is? For JK Rowling maybe it wasn't a coincidence her most evil character was also the one that modified his body the most.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I think one of the few exceptions of ‘hate the creator’s public behaviour but love the creation’ for me is Hideki Kamiya. The guy is an absolute asshole, but I don’t think anything could stop me from loving the game Ōkami. Although games being a huge group effort helps, as he wasn’t solely responsible for bringing it to life.(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I also don't think OSC's books are unaffected by his opinion. Don't know how far you got in the series, Cronaj, but if you read Speaker for the Dead it was very weird and jarring how Ender meets this single mother and fixes her whole dysfunctional family by being a male influence and then randomly marries her and adopts her children even though they have practically no chemistry. It was like OSC was forcing his idea about everyone only being able to find true happiness through raising a family into the book.

Don't know anything about Hideki Kamiya, but can sort of relate. Rurouni Kenshin's author was arrested for possession of child porn but I still love that series : (

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

OH NO, WHAT?? I... did not know that. Rurouni Kenshin is one of my old favourites. :C(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2017/11/21-1/rurouni-kenshin-manga-author-charged-with-possession-of-child-pornography

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Uuuugh.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I read it as a kid and I'm still nostalgic for it. One of the only manga I've seen where a fighting character actually gets permanently injured from his battles.

And gets weaker over time

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) I only read Enchantment, which I thought had some cool historical world-building in it, but after finding out about OSC's beliefs, it made it really hard for me to continue reading his work. I used to be Mormon growing up, but obviously Mormon honphobia and sexism (among other things) left me unsettled, and I left the church. So yeah, pretty hard for me to forgive someone in that situation.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

It can be hard to break away from a culture you've grown up in. I used to be in a homophobic church/family as well, and really believed what they were saying. I just didn't think about it, because kids tend to accept what their parents say unquestioningly. Of course, unlike OSC I got over that stuff when I was in middle school. And my internalized homophobia ended up hurting me more than anyone else :'DD

Deo101 [Millennium]

I was also someone who was raised in... unsavory ways. I did definitely hurt some people before I started to see how wrong I was, and I dont expect the people i hurt to ever forgive me. But, I have grown and I want to be better. So, I don't try to assume people can never grow, but it's sad when it does seem like they have no interest in it and it's been pointed out to them many times.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Church is weird, guys. Even though I'm not religious now, when I go back I almost want to believe. Holy spaces and big groups hijack our psychology and it can be hard to break free if you're immersed enough in the culture or have a lot to lose.

Deo101 [Millennium]

it's an interesting kind of peer pressure.

I don't know though, I don't like to fault people for having beliefs and i dont think it will inherently make them a bad person.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Yeah, I remember telling this kid in middle school that I didn't think gay marriage should be legal. Then in high school I found out he was gay. So that sucks. But he's more successful than me now, so I guess he won in the end

Deo101 [Millennium]

I think there are some institutionalized issues with churches at large, but it's not inherent that someone who is religious will be bigoted so I don't like to lump religion and bigotry together

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Not everything about you can be blamed on your surroundings though. With the internet as it is anyone can change if they want to.

Agree with that thing about religion and bigotry, I know lovely religious people and churches. I just associate the two because of my own experiences

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

To clarify, I don't think that being religious or being Mormon makes you a bad person. I have met many people, religious or not that are good. And I have also met many people who are reprehensible irrespective of religion or secularism. Your religion does not define you as a person. There is more to you than what is written in religious texts or talked about on holy days. I know a woman who is bisexual AND a member of the Mormon church, and she is constantly fighting bigotry and trying to find acceptance, but being Mormon is only a small part of the bigger picture. So I don't like OSC because he is a bigot. Not because he is Mormon. Anyway, we're getting a bit off-topic, guys

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

On the other end of this I feel like I need to keep my own political views and all kinds of personal baggage hidden in case of readers being turned off because they disagree with me on something

I try to keep the stuff I say “on brand” with the political messages of the work

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I said my comic is a reflection of myself, but it's also a very edited and thought out and proofread version of myself. If all my readers read my forum posts or random crap I say on discord, would they find me obnoxious?

I especially feel this when I'm trying to promote my comic

so I don't really do that anymore...

DanitheCarutor

@sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD) Hahah yeah, that's another one of the reasons why I prefer to keep to myself. I've never had a good personality, and I have a lot of shit going on in my life, I don't want to ruin a good thing by being open with readers. (at least no more than what I've already done in my time on the internet.) Also people on the internet are super judgey, make the slightest mistake or have an opinion that the right person doesn't agree with, and your ass can get slaughtered!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

More on topic: Yeah, I generally do keep my opinions about hot-button topics to myself in my online life. I don’t discuss politics or religion or my strong opinions on very controversial issues. Part of it is those issues tend to attract trolls. Part of it is that I hate confrontation. Part of it is making the experience of reading my comic as pleasant as possible for readers by not turning my site or my social media accounts into battlegrounds. I have very obvious views about tolerance and acceptance that isn’t hard to parse by reading my comics. My characters themselves can be very opinionated, but under pages where they express harsher, more close-minded views, I put disclaimers underneath that say my characters don’t always express my own beliefs because they are written to be complicated, flawed people who sometimes have intolerant opinions. This recent page of Ashes was probably a good example: (https://www.flowerlarkstudios.com/comic/chapter-9-a-twisted-reflection/page-09-04/). While I write the messages I believe in, my characters don’t always behave in a way I condone, because my comics acknowledge how messy people are.(edited)

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

My comic is going to have a strong message on imperialism and nationalism

DanitheCarutor

@Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) Man, about having character you don't agree with, I've been feeling that so much! Since the first chapter! I don't agree with how any of my characters are handling the situations in their lives, but they're supposed to be people, with flaws and all that junk. Although in the end the story is supposed to kinda be about learning healthy ways to cope with stuff, and learning to love yourself... or at least tolerate yourself. So I gueeeess the characters have to suck at life first in order to get better at it later. :/ I admit to sometimes taking an open, more lighthearted, jab at religion but usually with other like-minded people. Also I just love talking about the christian cult church my mom grew up it and I partially grew up in as an "outsider", it's so fascinating and so very much a legit cult.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I'm definitely more likely to jump into a comic if it's being written by someone I like vs someone I know nothing about (or worse, someone I dislike). Like I'll often see a commenter on my comic and go "huh, you seem like a cool person, I should check out your comic". Sometimes it's not my cup of tea, but usually it works out well (: . Given that I usually encounter new comics through forums & chats and stuff... It's honestly kind of hard not to get at least some impression of a creator before reading a comic? Unless it's a comic from #ctp_bookclub written by a creator who's never been on the server. It's odd... in the webcomic space at least, I don't think I've ever encountered "love the work, hate the creator". Like if there's some creator who's loudly proclaiming something I really disagree with, more often than not their comic is an obvious mouthpiece for the position they take in public. Though I generally try not to click on comics of people I dislike unless I get overcome with morbid curiosity. I'm not sure I'd say my comic matches with who I am publicly, but it matches with who I want to be? Like my comic has a lot of themes of learning to know thyself, figuring out how to handle your emotions, and most relevantly to me learning to have a positive image of yourself.

renieplayerone

I think im absolutely more likely to at least once over someone's comic if I know them in real life, even if its not necessarily a genre im into, but this mostly applies to closer friends. On the internet, however, i am absolutely more likely to read the works of people i follow simply because i get the update reminders. I also am more likely to read comics i see the update notifications for on twitter or instagram in general. Fanart i try to limit to people i know and who at least cursorily know me, just because for me i find fanart a personal thing if it comes from me (although all fanart i receive is welcome and makes me cry haha)

Shadowmark Productions

When a person is growing up there are certain impressions made upon them in terms of beliefs and opinions. When these attitudes are impressed upon you before you can speak, these are called pre-linguistic beliefs and they’re extremely, extremely difficult to shake. The reason being that they are instilled in you before you can reason. Speech is the ability to reason. They are beliefs that stem from a place that is intuitive and instinctual rather that logical. That’s why when you question bigots and such most tend to speak in terms of feelings, or they talk about right and wrong but with no logical argument to buttress those opinions.

keii4ii

My tastes are so narrow and specific, that I can't make myself read someone's comic just because I like them as a person/friend. I also feel uncomfortable about the other way around: I would not want someone to read my comic just because they like me. (Checking it out is one thing; making themselves read it even after they go 'oh, this isn't my bag of tea' is a different story...!) The thought of someone reading my comic as a personal favor despite not really enjoying it... Even if they're not expecting anything in return (they often do, but not always), it honestly makes my soul shrivel. Of course, if they like both me AND my comic, then that's awesome! I did have one experience where I came to appreciate someone's works on a new level, after coming to know them IRL. I always liked their stuff a lot. It's just there were some Things about their work that I couldn't personally connect to. But after seeing them in person, seeing how passionate they were 24/7 (my other artist friends met them too, and they all agreed this person's passion was on a new level), it helped me see what those Things meant to them, why and how those Things excited them. I came to develop a deep respect for this creator, as well as an acquired taste for those Things that I previously was not into.(edited)

DanitheCarutor

@keii4ii Even though your reasoning is different, it's nice to know I'm not the only one who detaches the creator from their work. Also I didn't think about the whole reading something just because you like the person, yeah, that is really uncomfortable! 100% I would rather someone just read my comic because they like the comic, not force themselves to check it out just because they think I'm a nice person... especially since my comic can be such a hard read for some people.

meek

Definitely knowing the creator or knowing about a creator influences how I perceive their webcomic and how much I read it, talk about it, engage with it, etc. I have several friends who make comics and I put their comics at the top of my priority list to read, and being so busy all of the time, my friends' works comprise most of what I read. And then from there it goes from whoever I remembered or whoever I liked or what kind of comic I'm feeling at the moment or so on. I do think, reading through some of the other comments (and sorry in advance for being discourse-y/that guy), but there's a vagueness I can't quite get behind when it comes to "separate the art from the artist." There's definitely levels and nuances where the creator's personality or behavior outside their work cannot be ignored and with art being so personal, I don't see how you could ever 100% separate a creator from their work because they put themselves in every word they type, every line they draw. But like I said, there are levels. If I find a creator mildly unpleasant or annoying but not truly malicious or offensive (e.g. being generally abrasive or rude), then I'll roll my eyes and probably leave their comic to read for another day. But if it gets more than that, then I don't want to support them in any way with my views. Like, if I know someone has bullied before/still bullies people in the present, I can't ignore that because their comic is cute. Knowing a person's character really flavors any interactions, direct or indirect, for me and it's something where I can't look past that, especially if it's an ongoing recurring thing.

but uhh to answer the question more directly: I like knowing webcomic creators. I find it easier to get more invested in a story if you can see behind the scenes, see them talk about their characters, their influences, see them have fun and the love that they have for their work. Even if it's just a very shallow, one-sided, "I'm just following their twitter"- I think it's good to know creators a little bit. But knowing them Too Much can also negatively impact my opinion of them and their work, so I dunno.

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