#ok there's my extremely self-indulgent post for the week lol

[cerromoreno]

Starbula Week, Day 3: Alcohol / Jealousy

Now for something completely different...a GOTG/Parks & Rec headcanon! (I tried to keep this relevant to everyone, whether or not you've seen Parks & Rec...though everyone definitely should, as it's a fabulous show!)

Context: I recently finished a Parks & Rec rewatch, and thanks to Starbula/GOTG being on my brain, I began imagining ways for the characters to be part of Peter's life, post GOTG Vol 3. So for Starbula Week Day 3, here’s my brief overview of how Parks & Rec characters became part of Peter Quill’s Missouri found family, and the *~jealousy~* that one of these people ended up feeling towards Nebula… 😏

Just look at how cute they are 🥺

Ok, here's my headcanon:

After Peter has settled into life back on earth a bit, his grandpa has an idea. Being part of a grief support group had been a lifeline for him after Meredith’s death and Peter’s disappearance. Maybe it would be helpful for Peter to try one out, too, in addition to the therapist he’d recently begun seeing?

Peter agrees that it sounds like a good idea, and finds a new group that has space for one more. When he shows up for the first meeting, he meets...the Parks & Rec main cast, just their alternate MCU versions. (And all living in Missouri instead of Pawnee, Indiana, of course 🤓)

Side-note: I have no idea how grief support groups actually work, but in this fic, I'm saying people have to join a new group for a set number of sessions instead of just dropping in. It's relevant to the headcanon, and it's how the MCU in my brain works!

During that first session, while everyone introduces themselves, Peter learns about the different types of grief they're all dealing with: losing family members, friends, clothing stores (that would be Tom), etc. Ron Swanson is the only attendee who doesn't want to be there; he's been court-ordered to attend a grief support group, probably after some kind of crazy shenanigans with Tammy II 😆 And of course, April Ludgate is only there because she's fascinated by death and observing grieving people lol

After the first session, led by none other than Chris Traeger -- who seems like he'd be delighted to do something like this -- everyone (aside from Ron) is pretty shocked by how cathartic it was, and they all decide to keep coming.

The support group keeps meeting weekly and grows very close, and once the official term of the grief support group ends -- let's say, after four months -- they all decide to continue meeting together, just unofficially. And like in the show, this eclectic little group becomes a lovely found family. It's so sweet to think about Peter having amazing people on earth and Knowhere who love him so much. And I love thinking about how, even so, he still eventually decides the place he truly belongs is back on Knowhere. Somehow, I feel like his decision to be on Knowhere, and (eventually) with Nebula, is even more special knowing that he also could have had a happy life in Missouri.

I also love the idea of the P&R characters gradually observing Peter's journey of healing/moving on from Gamora and his growing feelings for Nebula. I love imagining him getting advice from Leslie or Ron about what to do with these confusing new feelings, and what to do with his life in general.

Ok, onto the Starbula Week stuff...

All the while, April, who's only in the support group because she wanted to observe/enjoy everyone's grief, ends up staying in the group and growing as a person, just as she does on the show. And in a similar vein, she develops a major crush on Peter. (Also, she's in her mid/late-twenties instead of in college because that age gap is Too Much.)

Unfortunately for the April of this universe, of course, Peter just sees her as a good friend and remains oblivious to her growing romantic feelings for him. Sorry April :((

The jealousy (and alcohol) of today's prompt come to a head when Peter's support group friends and his Knowhere family all meet for the first time, about a year after his arrival on Earth. Peter has just finished his GED and, after his graduation ceremony, everyone (aside from his grandparents) goes out to celebrate. Thankfully, Peter is no longer tempted to numb the pain with alcohol anymore, so he can have a drink or two with his friends. He's just excited to dance with them -- overjoyed to finally have both his earth and his space friends together in one place.

In the meantime, April's feelings have been growing stronger for Peter over the past few months, and she's decided that tonight is finally the night she'd confess her feelings to him. She is scared but excited.

Throughout the day, Peter had been focused on being a good friend to everyone, and to spend time with everyone equally -- even though he really wanted to be near Nebula whenever possible. Peter wanted everyone to get along and have a good time, and that had been his main focus. Now, finally at the bar and able to relax and have fun, Peter finds himself naturally gravitating toward Nebula. He finds that he really wants to dance with her, to tell her about the weird new earth musiians he'd been learning about that were currently blasting on the dance floor.

After dancing by her side in the larger group for a while, Peter couldn't resist. He reaches out and grabs her hand, trying to make his voice teasing when he asked, "Dance with me?" Nebula, of course, desperately tries to hide how flustered she is, and the two begin dancing.

Of course, this all is taking place while April was at the bar getting a round of shots for everyone. She's still formulating her plan of how she'd hint to Peter of her feelings, walking back to the dance floor, when she spots Peter and Nebula dancing. And her stomach drops.

The dance moves aren't intimate, per se, but their eyes. The two can't take their eyes off of each other as they move together, in sync to the music. The blue alien's lithe form moves smoothly and quickly, and April can't look away. Neither, of course, can Peter.

All of the sudden, April understands what was happening -- what had been happening for months and months, as she'd heard more and more mentions of Nebula's name. How could she have been such an idiot?

Leslie notices her younger friend staring and comes to check on her, giving April a knowing, sad smile. "You okay?"

April scoffs. "Dammit, I can't even hate this bitch -- I mean, look at her, she's fucking awesome."

Leslie nods, staring back at the pair dancing. It's clear that neither Peter nor Nebula were seeing what every single one of their friends did, and she has no idea how. It's pretty obvious, from her vantage point over here, that the two are absolutely head over heels for each other. They'll figure it out eventually, she thinks. My main focus is being there for April tonight.

Putting an arm around April, and ignoring her cries of protest at the unwanted physical contact, Leslie lays her head on April's shoulder. "You know, you're pretty awesome, too."

The two drink a shot in solidarity, watching Peter and Nebula dance together until the song ends.

---

Ok that's it -- sorry for the Starbula-light content, but for any fellow Parks & Rec fans, I hope this was fun to imagine!

Just think of how fun all the P&R cast would be at a future Peter/Nebula wedding... because I definitely have lol

And in closing, it's time to bask in these amazing characters being adorable together, imagining that all the photos below are actually post-Vol 3 Peter Quill instead of Andy Dwyer... 🥰

@starbula-week

[rozaceous]

mariko, violence, and the meta of violence in fanfiction

ok so it’s apparently not enough that i write the most indulgent kind of fic, but now i’m writing an essay about my fic. this got so long, abt 2k total. if i said sorry, it’d be insincere, but at least no one is making you read it?

i want to piggy-back off the post i made earlier this week where i was talking about how mariko was not well-adjusted, and was, in fact, doing extremely poorly. what this post turns into, however, is an analysis not only of mariko’s relationship to violence and her subsequent trauma, but a meta-analysis of how violence is treated in canon more broadly, and how that ends up translating into fic. because, and i mean this in a way that is distinctly not about tooting my own horn, i’m approaching violence with a different lens than what i've found in a majority of fic, but also in a way that is unique to SI fic.

‘to continue being alive is also an art’ starts in medias res ch 1 with mariko haring off to the confrontation at the bridge in wave. we find out later, she’s fresh from just having killed people for the first time. kakashi and mariko have their little chat abt it in ch 2, but it’s treated as done and resolved afterwards. it was self-defense, she was protecting others, she was justified and shouldn’t lose sleep over it.

mariko also kills during the chuunin exams itself (members of the sound team) and during the finals (she on-screen beheads a foreign ninja). there’s a sort-of killing w the itachi puppet in ch 15, and a mention of sasori, but otherwise we don’t get any particular details of her killing people until the events of ch 17, where she kills danzo and the rest of the elder council, as well as whoever was caught in the bombings. (i’m going to word-of-god this for everyone right now and tell you that there were people caught in the bombings, just like i will confirm that she’s killed other people in the interim of the time skip.)

from a writing-level, i approached violence in a very specific way. most of the violence is off-screen and mentioned as a retrospective; what occurs on-screen i tried to keep brief and matter-of-fact. graphic, maybe, but not gory. i also try not to play violence as something that’s done for laughs, like how sakura will beat naruto up in canon when he annoys her. (we’ll come back to this.) and a lot of this has to do with how mariko herself deals with violence.

i mentioned in that previous post, that mariko grows up in a militaristic culture where violence is a norm and acceptable, as someone who is not actually a kid who can be acculturated into that thinking in the same way. mariko comes from a culture and personal history where interpersonal violence is abhorrent. she tries to duck out of canon events and any requirement of violence on her own part by being a medic, but the team assignments (the narrative/me, if we’re wanting to get meta abt it lol) prevent her from achieving this relatively more peaceful role.

when mariko gets assigned to team seven, she has to get real comfortable with violence real fast. she’s already befriended naruto (and hahahaha you may remember that she does so by punching a guy 🙂) and she cares about kakashi and sasuke. she’s come to the realization that this is her lot, these are her people, they are her responsibility. as she notes in ch 2, she’s not good enough to solve her problems without killing. this is also to say, she’s not good enough to problem-solve without violence. it’s beyond her capacity and skill when the stakes are as high as they are. let’s also consider that caring about everyone is a luxury that mariko cannot afford, widespread mercy is potentially a death sentence, and so she narrows that care down to a handful of people. and so if she’s taking the well-being of her teammates as her ultimate good, she will absolutely let the ends justify the means.

added onto any personal sentiment is that, as far as mariko knows, if anyone on team seven dies, the entire world is fucked.

mariko one hundred percent and sincerely believes that violence is wrong. even when it’s justified, self-defense, etc., mariko views it as ugly. there may be situations where she assigns herself less blame, but she is always blaming herself for being too weak to find another way, because her (somewhat unrealistic) view is that violence is the sign that you’ve run out of other options to get your way.

however, with the stakes being as they are, and with the world she’s in treating violence as a form of currency, mariko sees violence as a necessity.

so we can see the dissonance, right? she has to use violence to protect not only herself, but the people she loves, and the entire world. and mariko’s fundamental optimism is that people are worth helping and that the world is worth saving, because if she doesn’t believe in that with her whole heart, she’d literally just curl up and die. she wants to be kind and to help and nurture and build, but her most effective tools—once again, she views using violence as a failure—are the ones she hates the most. but she has to use them. more, she has to be very, very good with them.

this isn’t a small-level dissonance, it’s a diametric opposition. so in terms of narration, mariko can’t think too much about the violence she’s enacted because it would destroy her. she knows this about herself. she hates it. but it’s necessary. and so she doesn’t think about it. and if she does think about it, she’s very clinical and writes it off as unfortunate and necessary and—well, it’s done, no use crying over it now. she’s disassociated herself from it. and i wanted that perspective reflected in the way i wrote about violence.

the other aspect of how i wanted to handle violence is from how i approach the canon. we’ve all read the fics where konoha is a grimdark dictatorship, with death and torture around every corner. and, uh, it is? it’s a fascist war machine, plainly. it’s child soldiers and state-sanctioned assassination baked into the world economy? there’re multiple instances of genocide? it’s a fucking nightmare.

i, personally, am not able to brush aside those things. i like the meta and the reading-into-things and the what-if’s that happen when you don’t take things at face value. so for me, the writer, i can’t glorify violence. there’s a reason i wrote mariko walking through the uchiha compound in the way that i did. so i’m not going to write like killing a thousand people in one go is anything but horrifying (staring at you, minato), even if i’m not interested in directly interrogating every particular instance of violence within the narrative.

but canon doesn’t approach it from this angle. for canon, this is all the quirky backdrop, and violence and killing are bad, but very few people tend to die in a meaningful sense. violence doesn’t often have lasting consequences. (this is, also, the evolution that Naruto goes through as a series, where it starts off as a critique of the state and then turns into bootlicking, but that’s another meta that plenty of others have written better than i can.) in canon, the ability to do high-damage moves is considered a cool power-up. in fact, your power level is directly correlated with your physical danger level—ie, your ability to do violence.

moreover, casual violence is funny in canon. (we’re back to sakura beating up naruto and it being treated as a joke.) these things are entirely the conceit of reading/watching canon, and it’s what we do with every piece of media. this isn’t a judgment! we are suspending our disbelief and buying into the premise of the story that gets told. and i would hardly have written over 50k of naruto fanfic if i didn’t find it innately compelling and, yes, fun.

so this is where the presentation of violence in fanfiction can get dicey, because not every author is approaching canon with the same spirit that canon itself has. i also want to make the blanket statement that i don’t think any one interpretation is right or wrong, it’s that they’re all interpretations. i’ve read and liked fics of all varieties; i’m not morality policing, i’m trying to place myself and my own fic within a broader phenomenon of how fics present the morality of violence. i don’t personally care what one fic thinks is morally good, nor do i think that a particular presentation necessarily corresponds with what the author thinks in real life, or even that a presentation has to be consistent from fic to fic. these are all lenses/perspectives, and fanfic is inherently about playing with the little details of canon and going, “And?”

so on one end, you’ll have some fics that 100% correspond with the attitude towards violence that canon has and aren’t too interested into getting into the grittier moral quandaries of the canon past what canon presents as good or bad. on the other, you’ll have other fics that will rip the morals of canon to shreds. again, i like both! it always depends what the focus of your story is!

i feel like i’m somewhere in the middle. i feel like a lot of naruto fics commit hard to either of the above scenarios from the start and i...don't (as one commenter pointed out). there's a level of progression I'm trying to portray. and, i have to say, part of the comment that @vermillioncrown left on ch 17 really resonated: “She's sunk as low as them, she's just as fucked up in this second life despite knowing another moral framework and society. And she's mud-wrestling them down at ground level lol.”

mariko ‘knows better’ but isn’t better. she doesn’t feel like she’s a good person. arguably, she isn’t a good person. she has enough of an outsider perspective to see the system for what it is, but she is still inherently within the system. she is absolutely playing the game, and doesn’t have any moral high ground. she kills, she lies, she deceives, she betrays. she harms people. her intentions might be noble, but as tumblr loves to say abt causing others harm: intention isn’t magic. mariko wants better and is trying to achieve it, but she’s in the system and can’t get out of it because we all inherently live in a society, and removing yourself from society isn’t exactly as feasible as our ideals might like.

and because tcba is, mostly, from mariko’s perspective, her understanding of violence colors the narrative. because mariko is an SI/OC, her perspective is one that is ALWAYS going to be a negotiation of ‘canon at face value’ and ‘me personally doing an analysis.’ and i think that’s really cool and interesting, which is why i’m doing it!

but—and this is not me throwing shade or getting mad or singling anyone out—this is also a take that is a little counter to broader fandom habit that aligns with ‘omg she was so badass when she killed that guy!’ or ‘yes! fuck it up!’

reiterating that i’m not trying to scold or slight anyone, bc this is the ‘canon at face value’ take, where we are supposed to see these things as badass and praise-worthy, and often these are climactic scenes where mariko is ostensibly cast as the righteous victor! and if people don’t see what i’m trying to do as different to that take, that’s also on me as the writer, especially bc, as i already said, this is a story that is trying to negotiate those different perspectives on violence. but i also want to point out that there’s more than just ‘violence as badassery’ happening. this is also ‘violence as tragedy.’

and since the meaning and role of violence isn’t a theme that’s going to go anywhere any time soon, i thought it was worth discussing.

[monsterkitties]

please talk more abt ur simpsons self insert im in love

OK THIS WAS SENT SO LONG AGO AND NOBODY TOLD ME NOT EVEN TUMBLAR AM SORREY :(

so hihi hello im SO FRICKING!!! glad (and surprised!!!!!) you are interested in my lore. i must say though that i have much to share story wise because my brain thinks about 15 different things at once. by the time i go to bed it feels like ive been awake for TWO days instead of one

 my. SIMPSONA as the kids might say. is seraph ✨✨ short for seraphiael, and other shorthands for this name include serapheme, seraf, serif, cera, sera, etc. he/she/they/it is an angel! he sounds like LESLIE JORDAN and he looks like;

this! :3 (did nt draw that little headshot; thats a credit to eggvvhore, right there, it is) his design has changed a lot from the first drawing i posted of ‘im though BUT is technically still canon because he DOES dress like that and he DOES have longer hair which he eventually cuts and it starts to curl at the ends and then hes just got a lil poff 🌨️🌨️ :3

story stuff under a cut becauseeeeee its so self indulgent and kinda long lol

so basically reverend lovejoy is a fallen angel/not technically a demon since he hasnt died and gone to hell and hes so pissed off about god that hes like “fuck this im gonna kill your followers bitch” so like 200 years after hes fallen he starts murdering christians lowkey over the years BUT ONLY AFTER they commit a sin so he knows for SURE they’re going to hell instead of heaven

hes chilling in european parts of the world mostly at first since they love jesus the most and then when american happens, he jumps his ass right on that boat and he moves all across the bible belt for like 300 years UNTIL the 1970s when he meets helen and is like aw fuck yes oh my god holy shit finally someone who GETS me. i will marry you immediately so we can be best friends forever (eventually it evolves to something more romantic but this is how it starts out)

SO THEY MOVE TO SPRINGFIELD (and in this canon i share with two, technically three, other friends of mine, springfield is a fucked up town where like time froze at some point or some shit idk im not the friend that works on that LOL thats Shattered Man Jokis’ job)

so at this point lovejoy has been on earth for 700 years total and that equals 7 days in heaven! so hes been gone a whole week.

god like, looks down at the earth, he’s doing a routine check, whatever, HE SEES LOVEJOY AND HE’S LIKE. OHHH MY GOD HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THIS FUCKING MENACE IS SO CLOSE TO MY MOST LOYAL IDIOT SUCKER NED FLANDER (lovejoy is definitely planning to kill flanders) so he sends his highest ranking most powerful angel possible to kill him before he kills ned (this wasnt a decision on my part, i just looked up the name seraphiel and apparently thats literally the name of the prince of angels so i was like. ok i guess this guy is prince bitch)

preface; god is an asshole. hes just an asshole. he gets all his power from the worship people give him and his angels are powerful because halos are something that literally gives the angel connection to god’s power and also connect them to a constant stream of god’s thoughts so instantly they know exactly what he wants done at any time (halos can be broken or ripped off; breaking them allows the connection to fade away which still leaves you with abilities for quite a little while after but ripping it off severs your connection permanently and removes almost all magical properties and is EXTREMELY painful. this is reserved for angels who have been banished from heaven USUALLY)

preface 2; after falling lovejoy’s only supernatural qualities he’s retained after so long are MINOR EXTREMELY minor shapeshifting and he’s crazy strong (his str + def are sososo high but nothing else really lol)

so seraph gets there, lovejoy immediately knows who he is, they get into an anime fight because those are my favorite types of fights, destroying everything wow awesome big huge and then somehow its fine three days later

seraph loses! because i think lovejoy is just that determined about not dying + he has plot armor, and they fight a couple more times, and seraph loses some more, so seraf’s like FUCK this i guess. and just decides to literally stalk the shit out of reverend to make sure he doesnt kill anyone else (”YOU COULD HAVE JUST LET ME KILL YOU BUT NOOOOOOW I HAVE TO STAND HERE, RIGHT HERE, SEVEN FEET BEHIND YOU, FOREVER.”)

he really doesnt need to do this? but hes so so fucking mad that he couldnt kill lovejoy he’s like “i cannot go back to the Lord and be like. yeah i fucking failed” ARE YOU KIDDING HE’LL DIE. so instead he just intently follows lovejoys every move

eventually they form a relationship and then they kiss and then seraph and helen kiss and they all kiss and wow its content not for anything other than for me to be interested in. all of this is tailored to me bc i really liked lovejoys design/voice/personality and it spiraled from there :)

there’s more stuff after and even between this shit but it involves other peoples characters and this is already a lot SO if anyone is interested in our self indulgent little au? send another ask go right ahead 💖 id love to answerb

[bronanlynch]

bi-weekly life update time

have these past two weeks been good? not really! did I consume any media worth talking about in them? some!

listening: in honor of the Partizan post-mortem, I’ve been listening to the Partizan soundtrack so let’s talk about what an absolute fucking banger RADIOSTATIC. HIATUS. REDSKY. is. like the whole soundtrack is amazing but this one’s iconic. ominous and eerie and evil, just like the character who shows up while it’s playing

reading: mostly fanfiction tbh. I bounced off of The Longest Night by E.E. Ottoman (historical romance) despite being really excited to read it (how many t4t m/m romance novels exist? not many) because, and I mean this as respectfully as possible, it was very clear to me that it needed just one more read-through by an editor before it was published and the typos were too distracting for me to just keep reading. I’ll probably finish it eventually but not right now

favorite things I’ve read recently are my friend's extremely fun Dishonored fic about Billie and the Outsider being roommates and this incredibly cool epistolary/archival materials fic about the legacy of Sokrates from Counter/Weight written by one of my twitter mutuals for the Secret Samol exchange event

watching: more Supernatural. look, I’m unemployed and depressed, do you expect me to watch good television?

however, season 12 is uh. really bad. it’s close to being interesting sometimes, with the Mary coming back to life stuff, and damn they really turned up the queerbaiting in any episode that Cas is in (this is the season with “I love you” [shot of Dean’s face] “I love all of you”) but the British Men of Letters storyline is. well. they want to teach American hunters how to do a more efficient genocide, and yeah, they are the villains but not because of that, somehow. Sam & Dean dislike them because they have gadgets and bureaucracy and that offends their sense of American individualistic masculinity, and because one of them went rogue and tortured Sam at the beginning of the season, not because it’s absolutely horrific and evil to propose murdering every single ““monster”“ in the entire country after it’s been shown again and again that ““monsters”“ are people. also, even more fucked up considering that sometimes the beings referred to as monsters are sacred to indigenous cultures. if the BMoL were the villains because the narrative framed their goals and actions as abhorrent, that would be one thing but that’s super not how it’s framed. some guy gives a powerpoint presentation about how they’ve systematically murdered every vampire in the entire northern midwest/plains region and no one ever stops to be like “wow are we sure this is a morally ok thing to do” and at the end of that episode Sam decides that he wants to join them after all. you really do hate to see it. shout out to my roommate for very patiently letting me message them about all of the horrible nonsense that happens in this hot mess of a show.

playing: Knife of Dunwall, still. got into the Legal District finally and then had a very difficult time trying to get through Timsch’s house because he has So Many guards and servants holy shit. favorite glitch is when I shot the maid in the basement with a sleep dart and she said “oh no” and froze but didn’t fall over unconscious like she’s, y’know, supposed to when you get hit in the head with a sleep dart and you don’t know anyone is around. so I assumed she was unconscious but just didn’t fall because the game glitched but no! when I got closer she started yelling at me and I had to reload and go back and try again

making: finally doing more work on that cosplay project that I’ve been vaguely noodling away at since like June or whatever. (listen it’s very hard for me to motivate myself without a deadline and who knows when cons will come back. and it’s not even like this is an outfit I can wear around the house, it’s entirely white and we have a black cat who sheds a lot) I finally have all of the jacket mock-up pieces cut down to the right size (hopefully) except the sleeves, which means I can start sewing the mock-up 2.0 together. and worry about the sleeves later, because fuck the sleeves. I have accepted that they’re gonna be kinda messy when I sew them on, even on the real jacket, but luckily epaulettes can be used to cover many fabric crimes (EDIT: forgot that I didn’t even seam rip the bottom half of the jacket so I’ll need to do that and then I’ll need to do math so that I take away the same amount from the bottom half as I did from the top half. so I’m less far along than I thought I was. oops)

no pictures because there’s nothing to look at yet, so instead here’s Lilac, sitting on the blanket-cloak my roommate made me as an early birthday present. they thought they were making something to keep me warm, but turns out Lilac likes sitting on it more than she likes sitting behind me in my chair, so actually my roommate got me the gift of back support

writing: posted two things that had deadlines last week that I’m pretty proud of: my gift for Secret Samol about Milli & Broun becoming friends, and the fic I’ve been working on since the summer for a Persona 5 big bang which is like, part fix-it fic and part opportunity for me to be self-indulgent and pretentious. no idea what my next project is gonna be, which is kinda nice actually, to not have any deadlines looming other than uh. the important paperwork kind of deadlines lol

[rontra]

ANONYMOUS ASKED:

i really like mwot and was wondering, do you wanna talk/loredump/etc about mwot during this blessed month of pride? (if not that's totally cool!!! i really like the au and am curious about it!)

REPLY:

YES!!!!

umineko spoilers below and LONG POST KSDJDKSKD i really went infodumping......you got me right in an infodumping mood....

also im being very casual in this post so if something is like weird or vague its probably because i got tired of thinking about it and skipped ahead. SKJDSJD

mwot is an umi au and its very gay and very trans because i, a gay trans, decided it was TIME to INDULGE

LIKE A MOUNTAIN WIND FALLING ON OAK TREES also known as MWOT, MW/OT, Mountain Wind + Oak Trees, MW+OT, or literally any combination of its parts, is an eva/natsuhi au, set in a vague modern big city setting

https://rontra.tumblr.com/tagged/mountain-wind-oak-trees

it’s a comedy, mostly? it has elements of backstory transphobia and  stuff like that but that’s not really the story i want to tell with it, so  i don’t go too deeply into it in the main fic. it’s mostly comedy and Self Care: The  Story (once these nerds get around to acknowledging that self care is  good, anyway!!!!)  

Eva is 20, nb lesbian (though she doesnt know half of it to begin with). generally a bitchard at the beginning but also deeply craving that Validation. Invested in making the fic harder to write due to pronoun shenanigans (shoutout to the lengthy section of intimate emotional scenes that uses no pronouns at all for eva but is narrated by them in 3rd person)

Natsuhi is like 21 i guess because im a sucker for her having like an annoying 1-3 years on eva bc eva would get mad about it. Also she’s trans, gray-ace, hopeless romantic, generally full of “quickly raising your eyebrows and looking away while sipping your drink and thinking Yikes” energy. weaponizes indifference but is no stranger to harder means. she’s a smart cookie

Sayo is also 20, gender clown car living her best life. Presents differently depending on mood and whim

krauss is like 22 or whatever. for housekeeping’s sake, rosa and rudolf are too young to matter (8 and 10, or something like that). dont even worry about it

honestly the weirdest part of the au is eva and sayo being the same age

also this au is the origin point of me & my friends using akikaze as nat’s maiden name. the more you know!

-

USHIROMIYA GOLD dishes up that yellow metal like you wouldn’t believe. led by kinzo whos so fuckin good at sniffing out that sweet sweet gold people are half convinced the man has psychic powers. Any piece of land he’s got his eyes on, he WILL get his hands on, no matter who owns it right now.

the land kinzo wants At The Moment is owned by the AKIKAZE FAMILY who have been notably on the decline recently. they’re in the economic shithole so this land is basically all they’ve got right now, so when kinzo wants it and it suddenly Has Value, they’re like “oh, shit,

anyway the deal basically shakes out that like, he gets the land and all the gold that may or may not be in it. he offers his eldest son in exchange for this land, to marry their daughter: in the bonds of marriage graciously ensuring a part of the winnings will spill over on them, while keeping them under his control without money coming into the picture.

Everything’s working out great and coming up kinzo. the deal is closed and everyone’s happy (i guess). until ONE DAY, just a few narrow weeks before the akikaze girl is set to move in with the ushiromiyas,

KINZOS

OLDEST

SON

DISAPPEARS

!!!!!

Krauss dislikes being told what to do, and his father’s ideals never lined up with his own. He thinks this entire thing is sort of fucked up and can’t live under his dad’s thumb anymore. That's why, immediately following Kinzo’s agreement with the Akikaze family, Krauss disappears. He’s just kinda left for greener pastures, to unfold his own life and pursue his own interests independent of the Ushiromiya name. He leaves behind a letter explaining it & basically he forfeits both name and inheritance, and Kinzo’s incredible deal is suddenly in jeopardy.....

obviously this is kinzo though, and all of his solutions are like, 20 times more complicated than they have to be? he’s DETERMINED to have this land so he’s like “i need an eldest son. shit rudolf is only like 9. fuck. well okay i have an eldest daughter with a deeply complicated need for validation and success entirely driven by her overall neglect at my hands“ and the rest. as they say. is history (???)

Ushiromiya Eva always saw Krauss as unworthy of the inheritance, and to her, his disappearance confirms this. She grew up always being made to feel inferior to her older brother, usually being ignored in favor of him, and it's bred a complex need for validation in her. Her values and strengths are more like Kinzo’s than her brother’s, and Kinzo recognizes this in the wake of Krauss’ disappearance.

basically he concocts this really wild scheme where eva has to pretend to be his oldest son and marry this girl or whatever so he can seal this stupid gold deal and she’s like “well lol if i get to be family heir” and hes like “yes that’s what im saying” and shes like “awesome let’s do it”

all of the servants are in on it too of course. specifically kinzo enlists SAYO who works there as normal staff and isn’t otherwise tangled into this family’s mess in any way whatsoever. she’s just here to serve tea and looks. anyway he’s like “you work on this with eva--i mean evan, my son, you must have misheard--and eva you have to listen to whatever yasuda says” and eva is like “that last part will not be frustrating for me at all”.

Yasuda as reigning Household Gender Presentation Expert is like “i think i just got orders from the master to bully eva?” and eva is like “i wish i could fire you but my dad just banned me from doing that” and then gradually...over the course of the project......they become....friends.........

(the au is tagged eva & sayo for a reason. they become FRIENDS!!)

mostly its just various combinations of shkanon dunking on eva and its all VERY good.

during all these shenanigans we make some startling realizations like “gender euphoria is a hell of a drug” and stuff, which is extremely harrowing for everyone (note: not for everyone. just for eva, who makes 10,000 realizations every day, and should not have been counted.)

(ok sidenote did anyone else put on their first binder & go like “hmmm. i live here now” because. mood. im projecting entirely into this fic)

Gender Clown Car yasuda (currently as lion) is like “you know there’s like more than 2 genders” and eva’s like “you fucking wehat”.

i also make a REALLY INVOLVED JOKE ABOUT CASTIGLIONI GOLD, THE RIVAL COMPANY, and how BEATRICE’S KID LOOKS A LOT LIKE LION, and EVERYONE thinks this is all VERY funny

(i would like to see it. also kinzo owes beatrice castiglioni $20 and she’s never let him forget it.)

now wrapped up in this stupid impostor scheme AND full of big wild nonbinary energy AND!! WITH AN INFURIATING NEW FRIEND!! IN THE STAFF!!! this one funky ushiromiya is all ready to get in on an arranged marriage or whatever. provided NO ONE EVER FINDS OUT that they’re faking it and replacing the Actual Heir, which would no doubt ruin the scheme AND bring kinzo’s wrath on everybody involved, of course.

-

AKIKAZE NATSUHI IS READY TO PUNCH HER FIANCE IN THE THROAT IF HE EVEN LOOKS AT HER but she understands what’s happening here. she knows she didn’t have a say in this from the very beginning. that the deal was sealed for her as soon as the name “ushiromiya” was said. she knows her family married her off quick in a bid to get rid of her. if she’s humiliated by this ordeal, she is far too proud to show it. she packs her bags and walks into the mansion with her head held high........and immediately has this exchange with her fiance

and this one

so that’s kind of the energy we’re going for with these two.

(natsuhi’s line in the second cap was going to be removed for being Way Too Intense, but everyone i talked to said it was too hot to cut, so i decided to indulge us all. blame the lesbians)

they IMMEDIATELY don’t get along but they kinda agree to like, mind their business, since neither of them are interested in playing house here. if they can get the wedding to go off without a hitch they can basically go back to never talking to each other again.

natsuhi’s entire angle here is essentially: her family was not that good, and this family likely won’t be better, BUT here she has a chance to build something new for herself. she’ll be out of her parents’ house. She needs this deal to stay for her own sake, but she has to get out ahead of her husband and set up a dynamic that favors her. when she meets evan she essentially gauges the kind of person she’s dealing with and picks her approach accordingly: this is not a soft man, and she has to be hard in turn to avoid being steamrolled.

and its VERY hot

anyway some stuff happens and it eventually they both sorta get each other’s secrets. eva is not the firstborn son and natsuhi is not the card kinzo thought he was pulling from her family’s hand and theyre both toast if word hits the public. directly after the wedding they establish a tense alliance of keeping each others’ secrets....

and then they.....fall...in l

there’s some fun tensions and realizations. eva is like “so im quickly catching on that no praise i ever received from dad was on my own merit and he’s kind of a dirtbag all around and his validation is kind of not worth it” and nat is like “word our parents are chains” & they run kinzo over with the down w cis bus. it’s fine. they get postcards from krauss sometimes. he has a motorbike now.

DID I MENTION THE PRACTICE KISSING

BC THEY HAVE TO PRACTICE! FOR THE!! PUBLIC WEDDING!!!!

and thats mwot i guess. it’s my au where natsuhi’s accent color is red and some other stuff happens too. happy pride month

[uniformbravo]

i rly love my ocs ok im just gonna make this one of those posts where i talk about my life but this is the special OC Edition

idk i’ve just been working with them a lot lately and im so into it , my resolution this year was to work on that big webcomic project & everything and ya i’ll still do that but i’ve been so in love w/ my older ocs i want to fix their old shitty stories and bring them back to life, i’ve even been considering maybe using one as comic practice?? idk which one bc i keep bouncing back and forth between the two stories but ok

i always assume that nobody knows anything abt my ocs since i never really talk about them in depth but Basically i have my two casts from their respective stories: silan/sythra/chris are from may 16th, alex/andy/chrissy are from devil’s peak (edgy title from 9th grade oooo it’s just the name of the town they live in lmao)

this past week i’ve been on a may 16th kick because, well, it was literally may 16th on tuesday lol so i’ve been thinking abt them a lot and, like, i’ve been writing again?? just working on this really fuckin self-indulgent thing i started like a month ago, i picked it back up again this week and i’ve been weirdly in the Mood to write, so

idk it’s really exciting?? it feels super good to get back into writing, especially with this little for-fun no stress project, and also im feeling rly sentimental about writing these specific characters again? because i made them back in 8th grade and they were my very first gay characters and silan in particular has stuck close with me through all these years so he’s like really, really special to me

and i still have everything i wrote that year: i used to write on paper and in notebooks so i have all of those, and a couple of them are falling apart a little but i treasure them; every now & then i go back and reread it all and it’s So Bad but im so in love with it i love this stupid dumb story with these stupid dumb characters doing stupid dumb things and i get rly nostalgic and sentimental about it every time

because i dedicated a year of my life to writing this story! i had it all planned out from start to finish and wrote enough bits and pieces of it that if you read all of them in chronological order you’d be able to follow the plot quite well and that’s just huge to me?? it was gonna be an entire book there were different arcs and conflicts and everything & like im making it sound way better than it actually was through the power of Being Vague but Damn this was a huge project for me and i wrote a lot of it, i poured so much time and passion into creating it aahhh

i did write a couple other things for it here and there after that year, but technically they were non-canon? well actually i mean one was a scene i had previously written but from chris’ pov, but the actual book was from silan’s pov so it didn’t really count- the point is i haven’t actually written anything for them in about 7 years (give or take), so working on this thing i’m doing right now feels really.... significant

and ok i guess technically this scene isn’t actually canon either, it’s more like an exercise with the two of them (and also i just really really wanted to write it), but it could be canon if i could figure out a few things and that’s all that matters right

it’s like.... i’m coming back to them after some big changes? like when you haven’t seen someone in years and then you talk to them again and so much has changed since the last time you saw them but it’s still them, that’s what this feels like

because their characters (as well as their entire story) have gone through so many changes since that first year of writing them; i may not have written any actual story content over the past several years, but i’ve absolutely done a lot of brainstorming and characterization stuff with them so that they’re much more fleshed out with a lot more personality than either of them had originally (this goes for sythra too actually), and now this is the first time i’ve written them since all of those changes and it’s pretty special

i guess for example chris used to be extremely boring tbh? he had no personality other than “The Boyfriend” basically, everything he did just kind of conformed to whatever i needed from him to propel the story forward, and he went through changes that made no sense? like in the beginning he was um an asshole to silan but then the second they got together he did this complete 180 and became super nice and caring out of nowhere and it felt rly out of place, and all of it was to conform to the plot like there was no real reason for him to be acting that way on his side

now i feel like i place a much higher importance on treating characters like people instead of props, so chris has internal conflict that sticks with him and drives him to do the things he does in the story and he feels so much more alive to me now; i’m writing this thing from his pov and it’s so fun to play around with his thoughts and reactions and just like seeing what kind of a person he is as the scene plays out, it’s so good and exciting & im so proud of him hes my son & hes grown up so much im getting emotional bye

god i’ve spent way too long on this don’t let me talk about my ocs ever bc i dont know when to stop i just.... i love them so much lmao ;v;;;;;;;;;