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floraltypes · 3 years ago

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OHSHC Meeting The Parents

Who - ohshc hosts x reader

Type - fluff !

Summary - the hosts meeting your parents

AN - my requests are open so request something!

unedited :/

Tamaki

You had told Tamaki that your mother was dying to meet him

The woman wouldn’t stop asking you questions regarding him after you dropped a hint you were dating someone

So, one day she threatened to lower your allowance if you wouldn’t invite him over

Hence, why you are running around with trying to finish up your hair and the maid trying to help is stressing herself since you won’t sit down

When the doorbell was rung the butler quickly opened it and your mother and you both rushed down the stairs to try and get there first

Tamaki looked nervous in the beginning but his eyes lit up once they landed on your figure

“Y/n!” He called out, jumping a bit

Tamaki was very much dressed for the occasion, no surprise, and cleaned up well

You mother put a hand on her heart while Tamaki squished you into his arms

“So adorable, my little y/n,” Your mother cooed

“Uh, Tamaki, I can’t breathe,” He let you go quickly, put kept his arms on your shoulders

He soon realized that your mother was there and quickly turned around bowing a few times and apologizing for not greeting her sooner

“No worries dear, why don’t we go to the dining room to begin eating. Y/n’s father will be later due to work,” Your mother told him

The three of you sat at the larger table, Tamaki sitting right besides you

Your mother asked him many questions and he happily answered, staring at you most of the time and your mother could just tell how much he was in love

She thought he was so cute on how he kept asking you questions throughout dinner to involve you in the conversation like ‘what is your favorite class?’ ‘Y/n, you like that game too, as well, correct?’ ‘Y/n sure is very intelligent!’

Your father ended up being very late and didn’t eat with you three

You and Tamaki decided to go to a one of your extra rooms where there was a large TV and couch

You both sat down besides each other and watched something on the television, Tamaki holding your hand

At one point, Tamaki was trying to reach over you to reach a drink on the table besides you, but it ended up being farther than he thought and he feel ontop of you

He looked up from your legs with a awkward, yet cute, smile

At that exact moment the doors swung open and your father walked in

“I apologize for being late, your mother said the boy was in he- why are you laying inappropriately on top of my child?”

“Uh, i-, no, never!”

Let’s say your father didn’t think the highest of Tamaki like your mother did…

Kyoya

You were both working on some homework one day when you brought up the idea

“Do you think it’s about time to meet my parents?”

“Should I?” He asked back

To be honest, Kyoya knew he was a respectable man and knew how to behave, but still had some nerves

You also didn’t want to exactly have to sit through a long dinner with your boring parents who only knew how to talk about business deals and money, but it would be something your family would eventually ask you

When it came time, you were meeting Kyoya and his parents at a restaurant with your own

When the two of you viewed each-other your eyes lit up a little

“Hello, it’s a pleasure to meet you both,” Kyoya’s father greeted, bowing in front of your parents who soon exchanged the gesture

You greeted Kyoya’s father, your second time seeing Kyoya’s parents again after the dinner you had with them not too long ago

“Y/n,” Kyoya pulled out the chair for you, which you soon sat down on and he sat right beside you, your other side being taken by your mother

“Kyoya, you’re the youngest, correct?” Your father quickly asked, sending a glare

“I am the youngest son, yes,”

“Ah, so you should know what competition is like,”

“I do,”

“Good because they’re many men competing for my daughters hand in marriage,” He laughed, soon turning his attention back to your mother who was chatting with Kyoya’s parents

He mumbled something to himself and grabbed your hand, intertwining it with his

You rubbed small patterns with your pointer finger as a quiet way to reassure him, sending a small smile which seemed to lighten his mood highly

He knew that with you competition seemed worth it, something he was willing to put up with as long as having a chance with you is the prize

When the two of your guys’s families were getting to depart, Kyoya turned to your father before leaving

“I know competition, and I’m very successful in all types of it, I will win the competition for your daughters hand, I just hope you will be able to accept the victor,”

Hikaru

Telling Hikaru that your mother found it important for her to meet him seemed ridiculous to him

Both of your parents weren’t apart of the relationship, so what should it matter what they think of the other

You loved him and he loved you, he didn’t need anyone else to say otherwise

“Come on Hikaru! My mother will continue to bother me until you finally agree,”

“Only if you promise me something,” He quickly told you, snickering secretly at his brilliant plan

“Anything, I’m so tired of her complaining,”

“A kiss,”

You quickly moved your lips to hover in front of his and connected into a sweet and short kiss

His cheeks brightened to a vibrant pink and he scowled turning his head away

“Not now,” He mumbled.

A week later he was outside your door with a cocky smile and a bouquet in hand, (advice from Kaoru)

“Hello, Mr and Miss L/n,” He bowed, handing the bouquet to your mother

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you son,” Your father put a hand on his shoulder

“Son?” Hikaru asked silently, looking at you with confusion

“My father always wanted a boy,” You tell him, laughing a little

“You look nice Miss L/n,” Hikaru complimented your mother, already

“Oh Y/n, he is so kind!”

Though at first, Hikaru thought meeting your parents was ridiculous, now he’s laughing with them at some joke your father made and being invited over next week for another dinner

Kaoru

He’s another person who isn’t so confident about the idea

You both were snuggling on his bed, his arms wrapped around your waist and head lying on your chest while you combed through his hair

“My grandma wants to meet you,”

“She does?” He looked up with a spectacle look

“She isn’t bad, much more open to things considered her age,”

“It makes sense why she would want to meet me, so I guess,” He sighed, then taking in the comfort from the position he was in.

“I don’t want to make a bad impression,”

“You won’t! She just wants to treat you to one of her iconic desserts,”

The both of you slowly got up from your spots and got ready to go to your grandmas that evening

When she opened the door, she gave you a tight hug and then soon threw her arms around Hikaru, squeezing him tightly

“Y/n says you love chocolate, I made some treats so she can show you to the dining room,”

He ended up losing all his nerves after taking a bite of the cake

“It’s amazing!”

“I’m so glad you like it. You’re such a sweet young boy, take some more,”

He felt really comforted by your grandmother and comes back next week after she sends him a letter inviting him

When you came home after a shopping trip with your friends, and saw your boyfriend chatting with your grandmother in the kitchen you were very confused

“Hikaru, I didn’t know you were coming over. Did I forget to tell you I was seeing my friend today?”

“You did,” He walked over you you and gave you a hug and small kiss on the cheek

“Then, uh, why are you here?”

“Your grandmother invited me!” Soon your grandma walked in with three cups of tea

“Oh thanks grandma, did you here me come in?” You went to take the other cup before someone came in behind her. “What are you doing here?”

“She wanted to meet Kaoru’s twin,”

Mori

The both of you were in the library doing some reading

You had recently been describing this book to him that you fell in love with and he wanted to read it for himself

You just wanted to read in general

It was a quiet time, but the both of you sat near each other and your head was lying on his shoulder

You had totally forgotten that your dad was begging to meet this man

“My dad wants to meet you,” You voiced, looking up at him while he just nodded, eyes still on the page

“Which one is that?”

“Dad is the really energetic one, papa is the really smart one,” You told him, the poor boy still having trouble with the names for your two fathers

“Ah,” He hummed, moving a hand to rest on your thigh

“Great, I’ll tell them you will be over this weekend!”

“Mhm,” He rubbed a small circle on your clothed thigh and the two of you kept reading, basking in each other’s presence

When the day came Mori wasn’t exactly nervous, but he wasn’t excited

He had brought a treat that his mother wanted him to bring over

“Mori, is it?” Your papa questioned, while your dad quickly took the treat.

Your boyfriend nodded his head, and scavenged through his pocket for a little box

He handed it to you, and you tilted you head, letting a small smile take over the features on your face

“ARE YOU PROPOSING TO MY BABY ALREADY?!” Your dad asked, jumping and trying to rush to grab the box from your hands, getting pulled back by your papa

“No, it’s a present, calm down hun,” He said with his stern voice, though your dad could easily tell her was just trying to be considerate of you and Mori

“Thank you,” You looked up at Mori and pecked him on the lips

“DID MY BABY JUST KISS HIM?!” Your dad yelled once again.

“You kissed me after our first date, remember?” Your papa reminded the man

“Mori, please come in, take a seat, eat, smile, talk, dance, sing, whatever you please,” Your dad pushed him into the living room and your papa followed

You soon pulled the two aside, sending a look to them

“Don’t be rude to him, I already told you that he doesn’t speak much and that’s his choice that we need to respect,”

You soon felt arms on your shoulder and looked back to see your boyfriends figure towering over yours

“It’s okay Y/n. I’m willing to answer questions to help soothe your parents worries and to show my love for you,” He smiled down at you and placed a kiss to the top of your head

That was when your papa and dad knew that this man was truly a good one

Honey

“Y/n-chan! I want to meet your mom!” Honey told you one day while the two of you were waiting for Usa-chan to get cleaned at the cleaners

“How come?”

“I want to meet the person who helped make you so kind!” He exclaimed, gripping your hand tightly while the two of you walked through town

“Sure, if you really want to,” You shrugged. “My mom is a big cake fan so I think the two of you would get along,”

“Yeah!!!” Honey cheered and the two of you continued your walk with grins on your face

A couple of weeks later your mom was finally home after her stressful business trip and was excited to meet the boy you had been dating

“Mother, this is Mitsukuni,” You introduced her to the childish blonde who was holding on tightly to his stuff animal

“You can call me Honey! It’s so great to meet you! Y/n-chan told me you like cake, so I brought some!” Your mother put on a fake smile and showed him to a area to place it

She soon put on her shoes and coat and the three of you took the limousine to a restaurant nearby

“So, you’re a third year?” Your mother asked once the three of you were seated at a table

“Mhm! Along with my cousin Takashi, he is one of Y/n-chan’s friend as well,”

“He’s the tall one right, I thought he was your boyfriend, someone you could depend on,”

“Mother,” You mumbled, loud enough for her to hear, hoping she would behave kindly to Honey despite the boy not acting like a normal third year

“Y/n can depend on me! I promise! I’m very dependable,” Honey placed his stuff animal on the ground and sat up straight

“You are,” You looked over at him, agreeing with your boyfriend.

The rest of the dinner was a little awkward and when Honey asked to order cake your mother shot him down, it took a lot for the boy to try and hold on his tears

He thought for sure that he would get along greatly with your mother

“Well, aren’t you a cutie?” A man walked up to you, walking alongside you with Honey on your other side holding your hand, your mother was a bit ahead on a phone call

“Um, can you please leave me alone, I’m not interested,”

“Oh come on now doll, don’t act so uninterested, don’t lie, I know you are,” He was about to place a hand on your shoulder before he was on the ground and Honey was holding him in the position

“Y/n! Y/n! I’m so sorry,” Your mom rushed to you and quickly hung up the call looking at the man on the sidewalk and pulling you into her arms.

“I’m fine mother, he didn’t touch me. Mitsukuni got him for me,” You reassured her, pointing to your boyfriend who was watching the man run away

“Oh Honey! I’m so sorry for how I behaved, you really are a good boy,” She pulled him into her arms. “Why don’t the three of us go get some cake to celebrate!”

Haruhi

It was something your father found important

You and Haruhi had been chatting for awhile and your father had overheard you on the phone many times

The poor single father couldn’t figure if your giggles were friendly ones or ones someone would have when talking to a crush

Though he was intelligent when it came to taking care of the colleges he owned, he knew nothing about girls and their crushes

So, he had to ask his secretary for advice, which he did often since he was raising a girl on his own

The advice he received was to just… ask you?

“Y/n, sweetheart, who are you chatting to?”

“Haruhi, Fujioka Haruhi,” You told him, then getting back onto the phone

He rushed to his phone and asked his secretary to found out some more

When he received the information, he rushed to you again, a bit confused it was a commoner, but open to the idea

“I want to meet this Fujioka, and their parent,”

You told Haruhi and she understood, thinking it made sense that your father would want to meet her, especially since Haruhi liked you a lot and was thinking of ways to ask you out soon!

“I’m Hiro, a pleasure to meet you….?” He looked at Haruhi’s father with confusion.

“Ranka, sorry, I’m coming back from my job,” He apologized, whipping the scarf around his neck a little tighter. “You must be Y/n, Haruhi talks about you often! You’re so adorable!”

“Thank you!” You smiled, then grabbing Haruhi’s hand and dragging her into your larger home

Haruhi was very nervous to meet your father, she didn’t want to say anything and tend to just try and stay glued to your side

“Haruhi, you chat with Y/n often, um, that’s good,” Your father was nervous as well, he didn’t want to make the assumption that you two were dating and risk embarrassing you, something he unfortunately did often

“Yeah, Y/n is nice,” She nodded, and you continued to drag her up to your room, showing her trinkets and books

Ranka and your father went to your garden to chat and have some tea

“You have such a lovely home,” Ranka complimented. “Where is Y/n’s mother, at work?”

“She actually isn’t with us,” Your father coughed. “She passed away after having Y/n,”

“I’m so sorry, Haruhi’s mother hasn’t been with us for a while as well,”

Something in common!!?!

They soon started to talk about the difficulties on raising children on there own, and found each other to be much kinder when the nervous aspect disappeared

(they end up calling each other often when they need more advice with their kids, they become good friends!)

“Haruhi is always talking about Y/n, it’s so cute! My little girl is in love..!!”

“Love?!?!” Your father choked on his tea

“Why yes, it’s so painfully obvious that Haruhi doesn’t even realize it herself! I bet it is the same with Y/n, I hear the way she chats and her giggles through the phone,”

“Y/n is in love?!?!”

“Yeah! I think Haruhi is going to ask them out soon!”

“Ask Y/n out?!?!” Your father was about to pass out on the spot

But, Ranka helped him breathe and she revealed just how great of a daughter Haruhi was that your father didn’t seem too scared

Though he didn’t chat with Haruhi too much because the both of you were too busy chatting with each other, he felt she was a good person

“Well, Haruhi, fine young woman, treat my child well, you are well, um, yes,” Your father nodded and Haruhi did the same

The two won’t go and see a movie together, but they’ll be able to get rid of some nerves soon enough and hold some nice conversations together

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ventisehe · 3 years ago

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being in a relationship with bennett and razor / genshin impact

i main these boys and they make such a great team, i love them so much. i had a lot of fun writing this hehe. again, all characters are aged up, 21 or older unless stated otherwise. this includes chongyun and xingqiu.

requested by: pastelpeachyposts

includes: bennett, razor

warning: unedited, not proofread

You, Bennett, and Razor were an unusual trio, and many will attest to this statement. You differ in personalities and ambitions, even favoring completely contrasting delicacies, and yet there will never be a more lively and iconic dynamic than the three of you.

You and Bennett were the first one to meet when he rescued you from a group of vicious Electro Slimes. He was successful in his intent, but you had to escort him back to Mondstadt where he can be healed by the Deaconess.

You met Razor the next after you grew comfortable with your friendship with Bennett. The latter excitedly told you about another friend of his who resided in Wolvendom and was quite well acquainted with the wolves. Your first encounter with Razor was rather tense, and understandably so. He was wary of you, watching your every move as you strolled around Wolvendom with a gleeful Bennett who was oblivious to the atmosphere between the two of you. Most of his experience with humans are less than ideal but as Bennett unknowingly forced the two of you to spend time together, his walls slowly broke and he accepted you as one of his Lupicals.

As time passed and the three of you grow closer and closer together, a revelation descended upon you, and a startling one at that. You acquired feelings for both boys. It wasn't difficult for you to understand why you grew to like both of them. They were so easy to fall in love with. Bennett is an adventurous and motivated boy who, although had a streak of bad luck in him, has a positive spirit and is very generous and caring towards everyone. Razor is a strong yet gentle soul who is protective over those dear to him, and will always go out of his way to show his affection with his uncommon but innocent gifts.

Unbeknownst to you, the two share the same feelings for you. Bennett knew he liked you when you refused to leave after he saved you, even after he insisted this was a normal occurrence for him. Razor took a while to understand what was that hammering in his chest after you took the responsibility of caring for the wolf pups his Lupicals gave birth to.

It was an awkward situation for the three of you when Bennett and Razor decided to confess to you at the same. When the two of them professed their love for you and offered their gifts with bowed heads and tightly closed eyes, they slowly turned to look at each other with puzzlement, heads tilted and eyebrows furrowed. You, however, stood in front if them with redness coating your face and a thundering heartbeat.

"You like ( Your Name ) too, Razor?" Questioned Bennett, gaping at him.

Razor nodded once. "Like her, very."

Normally, when two people discover that the a close friend of theirs holds the same affection to their person of interest, a quarrel will ensue, and estrangement will follow. But Bennett and Razor were very unlike such an example and instead of compromising their close friendship, the two came to an agreement that whoever you should choose - if you indeed have feelings for one of them - they will remain friends and accept your decision.

Imagine the surprise on their faces when you leaned forward and gave each one of them a small peck on their nose, admitting shyly that you have feelings for both of them.

It took some time for the three of you to get used to your relationship. After all, none of you have ever been in a relationship before, not to mention there was the three of you in it. You carefully treaded through uncertainties and tribulations of inexperience, and it took a while but the you, Bennett, and Razor got the hang of how to make your relationship work.

Bennett is always the one dragging you and Razor to adventures. He will come knocking at your door with a wide grin, Razor lingering behind him and giving you a small smile and a shy wave.

"We're going to Windrise today! I heard some adventurers saying they spotted a weird looking Hilichurl with a briefcase! Wanna join us?" Asked Bennett excitedly, eyes shimmering.

Razor glanced at the other boy before returning his gaze at you with firmness. "I will protect you both. No worry."

You can't ever say no to them, especially when both of them look so happy and thrilled.

Razor is the protector of the relationship. With the dangerous enviroment he grew up in and the training he took under the supervision of a human, it was to be expected. He was always on the prowl, prepared to draw out his claymore and defend you and Bennett from any enemies with an evil intent.

You and Bennett are never worried of being attacked out of nowhere with Razor around you.

Razor takes his responsibility as your protector seriously. The rare times he and Bennett come over at your place, he will never allow himself to fall asleep and would sit by the window where he can oversee your residence. You and Bennett would have to drag him to your bed and convince him that you were in a safe enviroment to make him ease down and actually take a rest.

You three share the same bed, and it's always you in the middle. Bennett will cling on to your slumbering form and would snore from time to time, but when you stroke his hair or when Razor softly nudge his head against his, Bennett will quiet down for a while and continue snoring again after. Razor was quite a sight to see when sleeping. Being raised and cared for by wolves, it was to be expected he would mimic their position in sleeping. He would curl up beside you or Bennett, always nuzzling his face against the crook of your necks. You and Bennett will never say it but he looks so adorable when sleeping like that.

You and Razor know of Bennett's unluckiness. Unfortunately, because you're in a relationship, you two are more involved in his bad luck. Bennett is always guilty of putting the both of you in difficult situations and will apologize profusely, even when the two of you insist that it wasn't his fault.

"It kind of sucks that I'm also giving bad luck to the two of you. I mean, you're one of the few good things that ever happened in my life." He admitted in a gentle whisper, a pout forming on his visage as tears begin to appear at tbe corners of his eyes.

You and Razor felt like an arrow shot through your hearts at what he said and you spend your time cheering up Bennett. Although his unluckiness always seemed to hinder your attempts, Bennett appreciated and loved your efforts, which is enough to bring back his big smile.

When the rare times come when one of you are busy and cannot find time for the other two, the latter pair will frequently visit the missing member, often with gifts.

Bennett loves giving you kisses. Not just on the lips, but all over your face. When your relationship was still at the early stages, Bennett would lean forward towards your face and pull back after an awkward amount of time of hesitation. But when you told him that he is allowed to give you kisses and you would love to receive them, Bennett will take all the chances to shower you with kisses. He loves giving kisses more than receiving because he has so much love to give, but when you do the same to him, his cheeks will be painted in a rich scarlet color and his tongue will be tied, unable to anything except stammering.

"A-Ah, ( Your Name ), please, stop - " Stuttered Bennett as he covered his blushing face with his gloved hands, embarrassment palpable in his posture.

You let out a giggle as you took his hands and tried to pry them off. "Aww, don't be like that, Benny. Let me see your cute face. And I know you love my kisses."

Bennett splutteted.

Razor prefers to give you hugs over kisses. His hugs are big, warm, and welcoming. You'll always feel safe when you're in his arms. When you're in his embrace and you're both comfortable, you won't be leaving his arms for a while. Sometimes Bennett will wiggle himself into the embrace and the three of you just cuddle.

"You're so warm, Razor." You whispered as you nestled yourself on his chest.

Razor showed you a small smile. "I make you feel safe?"

You let out a laugh. "And loved."

More often than not, Bennett and Razor will convene and think of something to surprise you. These boys are filled with love for you that even if there's no occassion, they'll come together to buy you a gift they thought of together.

Bennett gives you trinkets from his solo adventures, but even if most of the time they're broken or burnt, you heartily accept them. Razor always gives you items that are found in the wild such as sweet flowers, mushrooms, pinecones, windwheel asters, sometimes wolfhooks, and if he was lucky, an abundant amount of fowls. You mentioned once how you needed ingredients to make food while you're out adventuring alone, or some things for this thing you call ascension. You love their gifts and always make good use of them or take good care of them.

Bennett had long introduced Razor to his dads (a group of adventurers who saved Bennett long ago). When he introduced you to them, you were immediately flocked and you regaled with tales of their adventures back when they were young, and Bennett was just a wee baby then. You stayed with them for hours, just listening. All the while, Bennett just enjoyed watching you get along with his family so well. Since the adventurers were old, you visit them often and help Bennett take care of them.

Some would think meeting Razor's family would be difficult. They are wolves, after all, and they were known for being vicious. But they couldn't be more wrong Anyone Razor trusted, the wolves trusted so they immeditely accepted you in their pack and treated you the way they treated Razor. They surround you whenever they sense danger, ready to pounce on whatever enemy emerges. The wolves would stay close by and let you snuggle into their fur when the weather is cold. Razor really likes it when you play with the wolf pups and help in hunting dinner for his family.

Bennett and Razor talk about you with their families. Bennett's dads approved of you the very second they saw a glimmer in his eyes when he mentions you, and even though the wolves cannot understand Razor's human speech, they can sense the love in his voice and the frequent drop of your name makes them understand it was directed to you.

" - she and Razor helped me fight an Abyss Mage earlier!" Bennett exclaimed, beaming. "If it weren't for them, I would've probably returned back here with more injuries, hehe."

"( Your Name ) made Bennett and me flower bracelets." Razor then proceeded to lift his arms to show the wolf pups the bracelet he mentioned. "Now, Razor need to take care of it, so me not moving around much."

The three of you always walk hand in hand together, you in the middle. You will swing your linked hands together and Bennett will follow your lead. You and Bennett will have to encourage Razor do the same and have to explain the process of it. Razor will be a little confused at first but then begin enjoy the hand swinging once he get used to it.

Dates are frequent, and it'll always be with the three of you. You all promised never to have a date with someone missing. There will be times where the boys will want a private date with you, but most of the time, it's always you three.

Bennett's dates are adventurous - of course - and unique. He'll find some place you haven't seen before or find an activity you three can try. You'll experience a lot of things in his dates, this includes being attacked out of nowhere and having to save Bennett from time to time. Nonetheless, his dates are always fun and will your heart palpitating.

Razor's dates are simple and peaceful. He'll find a nice and safe place with a beautiful view and the three of you have a picnic there. He's always the one preparing the food for you to eat, but you and Bennett will always bring desserts for Razor to try. Razor insisted that he wanted to learn more human dishes and he can find motivation in doing so by having you and Bennett eat them. His cookings at first were not up to standards - or consumption - but the more dates he arrange, the better he becomes. You mentioned once you liked his hash brown shaped as a puppy paw print and strived to perfect it. If you're lucky, he'll even bring a wolf pup or two.

In your dates, you always make sure you cater to your partners interests. You will do something Bennett likes to do, and then what Razor likes, and then something the three of you can bond over. With that, your dates are always chaotic (not as chaotic as Bennett's dates though) but extremely fun.

Bennett and Razor are suckers for your compliments. They always love getting them from you. Although the two have different ways of accepting them.

Bennett cannot easily accept compliments. It was rare for him to receive one with his bad luck and whenever he does get one, he malfunctions. What more if it comes from you?

Bennett will shake his head vigorously as redness painted his cheeks, waving his arms as though denying your compliment.

"( Your Name ), y-you can't mean that! I-I'm not that great!"

"But Benny," You cooed, as you leaned closer to him, smiling. "You're one of the best person I've ever met! You're kind, sweet and - "

As you continue praising him, Bennett will slowly, slowly accept your compliments, and you might not know, but your compliments are building his confidence in himself. Bennett is a happy and positive boy but his bad luck caused him so much troubles and backlash that his self esteem plummeted. Continue supporting and praising this boy, you're making him super happy.

"I guess I do have some good qualities . . . thanks ( Your Name ). You're really cool, too. And very pretty." Bennett admits as he rubbed the back of his head.

Razor's compliments to Bennett are simple and straightforward, and somehow Bennett accepts them easier than yours. Probably because it's simple and straightforward.

Unlike Bennett, Razor accepts your compliments with a smile and always returns your compliments with one of his own. He doesn't know why some people are embarrassed being complimented. It was a nice thing to do, after all.

"You're really strong, Razor!" You exclaimed after watching the Cryo Abyss Mage he was battlinng evaporate in thin air.

Razor faced you, a smile gracing his briks as he wiped a sweat from his brow. "Thank you. You strong too."

"I can fight Hilichurls, but I'll need some backup if it's Abyss Mages." You laughed. "But thanks, Razor!"

Razor and Bennett insisted that they help you train. You have seen how they fought and trained, and you were a bit reluctant because of its harshness, but after contemplating over its benefits like being able to defend yourself, helping more in adventures, and being able to finally properly protect Bennett and Razor, you accepted.

Bennett is very eager to teach you what he knows and has brought you and Razor to a nearby Hilichurl camp to showcase his abilities and give you pointers after. You and Razor end up carrying him back to the Mondstadt with his arms over your shoulders, the Hilichurl camp up in flames behind you two.

"Did I . . . defeat them?" Questioned Bennett. He couldn't lift his head from the exhaustion and pain.

"Yes, you definitely did." You answered.

Razor's training was a bit more proper but you haven't learned much because his training required claymore, and you were far from being a claymore user. Razor demonstrsted how to pick up a claymore but you couldn't even lift it off the ground.

You pouted as your hands lets go of the handle of the claymore. "I couldn't do it."

Razor approached you and patted your head. "Good effort. Maybe claymore not for you."

Bennett and Razor now always goes to you when they need patching up. Now, they could go and visit Barbara like they used to but they preferred that you tend to their wounds for two reasons. One, they love you and love spending time with you. Two, they get kisses on each wound you cover.

Bennett has a habit of running towards you and Razor at full speed and tackling you both down to the ground, hugging the two of you. You and Razor don't mind it and actually enjoy this sort of thing.

Razor named wolf pups after you and Bennett. This causes confusion when you visit him at Wolvendom.

"Bennett, sit." Ordered Razor.

Bennett and wolf pup Bennett both sat down at the same time.

"( Your Name ), stop playing with food." Razor reprimanded sternly.

You looked down at your plate of neatly cut steak strips while wolf pup ( Your Name ) who sat by your feet poking at the meat it was eating whimpered.

When a fight ensues between you three, it won't take long before you relent and make amends. You three have soft hearts and can never stay angry at each other for too long. You apologize and promise to be better and more understanding.

But if a fight arises between only a pair, the one who isn't part of the fight courts the other two to make up already. If you and Bennett have an argument, Razor will push Bennett to talk things out with you. If you and Razor are the ones in the argument, Bennett will panic and will have a hard time choosing who to approach first. You and Razor make up after the two of you try to comfort Bennett at the same time. If Bennett and Razor were the ones in an argument, you can easily talk to them individually and the two will approach the other and apologize.

Bennett and Razor never compete to be your favorite. They know you love both of them equally, and they love you just as much. You have never felt unloved when you're with them. You three are content and happy.

The most wholesome relationship ever.

"And you two got ambushed by a Geovishap - wait a minute - " Your eyelids curtained your retinas as your digits delicately massaged your temples, trying to ease the pressure in your head as Razor and Bennett averted their guilty gazes from you. Their skis were marred in cuts and bruises, their hair disheveled, and clothes torn from what you suspect were large and sharp claws from a humongous creature. " - how did you two even encounter . . . what was it again - a Geovishap? I know there isn't one in Mondstadt."

Bennett reached out to rub a his hand of his over his neck as he tried to dismiss the mystery at hand with a chuckle. "Uh, well, we kinda . . . " He trailed off, clearly not fond of the idea of continuing his sentence.

Your eye fluttered open and you lifted a brow at Bennett. "You what?"

Bennett opened his mouth to answer but right when you thought he was about to speak, he nudged Razor with his elbow and whispered, "You tell her."

Razor turned to you and looked at you with reluctant eyes, shoulders slackening. "Me and Bennett," He began, " - went to Liyue."

You let out a deep at their answer, your hands slipping from your hips. "I knew it. I heard the two of you talking about doing a commission there. I just didn't think you'd go through with it, and without mentioning it to me." You stated. "Do you know how worried I was when the two of you didn't visit me earlier? I had to learn from Katheryne you took on a commission."

Bennett and Razor casted their gazes away, guilt crowning their expression.

You heaved out a sigh. "At least you two are back safely. And alive."

You approached the two boys who have yet to return their sights on you and assessed their forms, scrutinizing each of them carefully. "You poor things. Those look painful." You murmured. "Need me to patch you up?"

Bennett's and Razor's eyes shimmered at your offer, and the two nodded eagerly in response. Any traces of shame vanquished for they know your disappointment has evaporated and they were forgiven. "Yes, please." The two answered in unison.

You permitted a small laugh to escape your lips. "Alright, alright," You tittered. "Follow me, then."

Before you can even move, Bennett interjected. "W-Will we still get kisses . . . " The white haired adventurer turned completely red as he realized how silly his words were. " . . . you know what I mean . . . "

Razor looked down, a shy expression encompassing his features, to which surprised you. "Razor wants kisses too . . . from ( Your Name )."

Your heart jumped in your chest at the sight of their hopeful and coy expressions. Even if you wanted to tease them a little for this as payback, your heart couldn't. You shook your head at them and clasped their cheeks, one hand on the other as you stared into their eyes.

"You two . . . " You whispered, breathing out. " . . . you make it so hard to be angry with you."

Their only response was a grin.

#genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #razor x reader #bennett x reader

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kumacyy · 4 years ago

Note

Hi if it’s ok with you can you do one with Gojo x reader where the reader is a strict glasses teacher also at the school who looks gloomy and keeps to themselves mainly but after work one day he runs into them and he find out that they are actually beautiful looking and laid back, with a punk-styled look, piercings and tattoos? I’ve been reading Horimiya lately so it influence this ask.

Different

Ofc I would be more than happy though I'm quite unfamiliar with Horimiya in unfamiliar I ment I still haven't watched the anime

But I did do some research and watched a few clips of Horimiya and I think I got the gist of it and I hope you like it

I'm assuming that the reader is going to be Gender neutral

Unedited

Gojo, Satoru x Teacher! Reader

wc:2k

"Oya?" Gojo mumbled to himself curiously seeing an unknown person walking aimlessly around the school grounds. He was about to approach you that is until the school principal appeared and talked to them. They seem to be agreeing on something of course being the nosy manchild that he is. He interrupted their little conversation with a smug grin. "Whose this? Yaga?" He questioned while looking at you analyzing every detail he sees on your appearance.

Your big beautiful e/n eyes covered by your prescription glasses and your long and sharp nose to your plump lips and your long h/c hair. You were indeed beautiful/handsome "Y/n L/n" you said putting your hand out for him to shake. "Gojo, Satoru" he said taking your hand instead of shaking it like he should he instead kissed your hand "A pleasure to meet ya" he added while winking.

You just looked at him dumbfounded by his flirtation acts and quickly changed into your usual expression. "Pleasure is all mine." you said slipping your hand out of his and gave him a little bow "I would be the new 2nd year teacher." You said with not even showing any ounce of emotion. 'It's like having another Nanami' he thought.

"Well I shall get going and meet my new students it was nice knowing you Gojo-San." You said and started to head to the 2nd year dorms.

1 Month later

A month has passed you got used to everything that happens which consists of Gojo annoying you 24/7 and actually being friends with Nanami. You had been looking after the 2nd years and yes you have met Yuuta he just recently left to go overseas. Let's just say you got attached to them and vise versa to you. Heck You're practically a mother to them. And you recently heard that there are 2 new 1st years and one of them is actually sukuna's vessel.

You were of course curious so you went to talk to Gojo asking of you could join them in picking up the 3rd 1st year. "Oya? You want to come with me? What did I do to be blessed by your presence~" he said teasingly well that's what you thought but in reality he had been interested in you ever since you met. Call it a little crush he always wanted to get your attention wether it was negative or not he still wanted your attention. He was desperate I mean could you blame him you're a god sent.

Your appearance alone made him like you plus you graduated overseas so you're practically multilingual. You were strict but not too strict wherein you would embarass your own students, no you'll just tell them what's right and that they shouldn't do it again. You were soft at some point well you were particularly soft for Megumi and Maki hearing about their past made you pity them. And you also admire them at how strong they were for living through it.

"I just want to meet the 2 new 2st years and sukuna's vessel don't assume stupid things gojo-san" you said ignoring what hi said. "You know y/n-chan you should start calling me sotaru ya know? We've bonded so much from the past month" he said looking serious for once "bonded? More like annoy me" you said giving him a glance and you saw his grin falter a little "But I'll think about it sotaru" You added mumbling the last part.

He immediately brightened when he heard you say his first name and started grinning like an idiot. "Oh and yea you can come with me picking the 3rd 1st year up tomorrow morning at Morioka station" He said happily and left probably going to the first year's dorm.

Time Skip to tomorrow morning

You have arrived at Morioka station alittle early because some Manchild didn't tell you what the time of the pick up is so you explored the place a little. That is until you saw a familiar black spiky hair talking to a boy with pinkish hair and red Hood. You approach them immediately "Megumi!" You called out to him.

"y/n-sensei what are you doing here" he questioned you "I wanted to meet the vessel and the new 1st years" you said and looked at the boy with pinkish hair "is it you?" You added he nodded immediately "Hai! My name is Itadori, Yuji and my type is someone like Jennifer Lawrence!" He introduced himself while bowing you gave him a little nod "it's nice to meet you ita-" you said but got rudely interrupted by the Manchild.

"Sorry for the wait!" "Oh-!" "Y/n-chan you came!! And itadori you wore it" he said 'is it just me or he sounded happier at y/n than itadori/me' both Megumi and itadori thought "Sensei why is my uniform different from megumi's?" Yuji questioned "oh that's because you can hand in requests for the uniforms" Gojo replied "oh but I didn't request anything" Yuji said

"oh that's because I did it I just thought it would look good" Gojo said "oh- what happened to the uniforms I sent you?" He questioned "so it was you" you said " yes! So why didn't you use it?" He asked confirming your thought and with that you glared at him "I burned them" you said

"Huh?! Why??" He whined "who even in the right mind would even wear those" you said referring to the clothes he sent you well don't bother you don't wanna know. "You're disgusting Gojo" you said making a face (ya know like tanjiro's face to zenitsu) after seeing your expression he immediately stopped and started pounting "what happened to Sotaru?" He mumbled to himself hearing you call him by his last name.

"What a child" you and megumi thought. Then you saw a girl wearing what looks like the jujutsu tech uniform "that must be the 3rd 1st year." You mumbled "hey! Over here!" Gojo called out to her which conformed your assumption. And also attracted multiple unwanted attention many complimenting gojo which boosted his ego and made him happy and some talking about how you look good which made his expression falter.

Then after that you all went to a public locker (is that what it's called I'm not sure) where you put money in it to lock it. To put her luggage in and you all started introduce yourselves "the name's kugisaki Nobara" she said "you're lucky to hang out with a girl like me!" She added "I'm yuji itadori and I'm from sendai." He said 'what a hick. Probably a kid who ate his boogers as a kid.' Nobara thought "Megumi Fushiguro" he said 'Just his name? I hate guys who are all high and mighty. I bet he likes terrorizing seagulls by lighting them on fire or something.' Nobara thought then sighed.

"She just looked at us and sighed!" Yuji said then you stepped out behind gojo because he was in front of you (yeah you're short here hehehhehe) "Sorry I was blocked by someone" you said then glared at gojo "My name is Y/n L/n the 2nd year teacher of jujutsu tech" you said putting your hand out to shake "it's nice to meet you." You added "finally someone reliable." Nobara said

"Well! Let's do it a tour of Tokyo!" Gojo stated you and megumi had the same reaction nothing because one thing's for sure and that is he's just going to trick them while the other 2 however immediately fell for it. They started arguing not that you cared it doesn't really matter "we're going to Roppongi!" Gojo said

And that caught your attention you never been to roppongi before and let's just say Gojo noticed that he may be interacting with the 2 excited 1st years but his eyes and attention is all you looks like he is starting to fall in love.

Your Hopes of actually going to roppongi was crushed immediately and same goes with the 2 1st years when you all went to an eerie building that has a curse in it. It was actually a test for the new 1st year to see how "crazy she is" gojo quoted. And after that you all went to eat and went back to the dorms.

Skip to a day later

It was all normal and fine after the meet up no problems happened throughout the day. Well that is until you found out that a certain 1st year just died you were shocked of course. Yesterday he was just fine so you were currently wondering around Tokyo to clear your mind it was raining so it made you calmer most people think that a clear day is calmer you thought otherwise you always preferred staying indoors so you liked the rain.

You were currently wearing your usual clothing when going out, you know like shirt and shorts or something and since you weren't in school you could freely wear your piercings. Well you can wear your piercings in school you just preferred not to you don't want your students to get a piercing because of you, you'd be angry with yourself if that happens.

While walking around you saw a familiar gravity defying white hair and iconic blindfold who looked awfully dejected. From about a few meters from you who looked like getting soaked in rain (just imagine that he isn't using infinity) so you immediately went to his rescue and shielded him from the rain with your umbrella. He immediately looked at the reason why the rain stopped and was shocked that it turns out to be you in casual clothes and wearing piercings.

You looked beautiful/handsome before this just made your beauty skyrocketed to a thousand and he was now more interested in you. The way you have multiple ear piercings and that it's attached to both your ear without looking way too tacky is great and your lip piercing drives him to a frenzy especially when he saw your tongue piercing he just wants to drag you to his house and just do it.

You looked absolutely stunning. And it shocked him even more when you asked him to come with you to your apartment. He of course agreed because who wouldn't want to be alone with their crush I know I wont .

So once you guys went inside your apartment you immediately went straight to the bathroom to bring him a towel to dry off and extra clothes from your brother (If you don't have a brother just imagine you do in this bcs he needs clothes TT) who used to live here and hot coco to keep him warm. He was of course shocked to see that you have mens clothing and thought you have a boyfriend which saddens him but it wouldn't hurt to ask now would it? So he did ask.

"Whose clothes are these" he asked while sitting down on the sofa in front of the TV. Hoping it wasn't from your boyfriend "they were from my brother who used to live with me now he's living with his boyfriend" you said " he was quite a big man I think you guys have the same height so I thought it might fit you" you Added he let out a relieved sigh knowing you're still single. Then it clicked why have you been shutting down all his shots in trying to pursue you.

"Why do you always turn me down?" He asked which made you flinch "I-" you started thinking of a good answer to him "I'm afraid of commitment" you said while looking down (same gurl🤧🤧) "I had a bad past when it comes to relationships it always ends with them cheating me so I try to avoid it." You added "I can change that" he said looking at you holding your hands "I like you I really do" he said eagerly "I like you too" you mumbled he of course heard it "what? What did you just say?" He said trying to know if he wasn't hearing things "I-I said I like your hands" you stuttered and getting flustered.

"Oh..." he said dejected when you saw his expression you immediately felt guilty and left you didn't know how to handle emotions very well so you left to make dinner. He felt sad that you denied it instead of telling him the truth he couldn't blame you you were afraid of course but he wouldn't let that stop him he just grew more confident because of what you said earlier. After making dinner you went to check on him "um do you wanna join me for dinner?" You asked him " it'd be nice to have some company when eating for once." You added

"Yea sure why not" he agreed after dinner you guided him to the door and said your good byes "uh bye" he said about to leave but you stopped him by holding his hand which got his attention. And made him look at you and let's just say he was shocked when you pecked his lips and said "I like you too" then slammed your door to his hitting his face and ran to the kitchen to do the dishes.

To be continued...

Hey guys if you want a part 2 just message me maybe I might even make it a smut one.

So I hope you like it and I still do requests it came a little later than usual but it's because I got sick all of a sudden.

So thank you for reading!!!

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randomnumbers751650 · 4 years ago

Text

Long, unedited text in which I rant about comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell and his monomyth,

Back in 2012 I wanted to improve my fiction writing (and writing in general, because in spite of nuances, themes and audience, writing a fiction and a nonfiction piece shouldn’t be that different) and thus I picked a few writing manuals. Many of them cited the Hero’s Journey, and how important it became for writers – after all Star Wars used and it worked. I believe most of the people reading this like Star Wars, or at least has neutral feelings about it, but one thing that cannot be denied is that became a juggernaut of popular culture.

So I bought a copy of the Portuguese translation of The Hero of a Thousand Faces and I fell in love with the style. Campbell had a great way with words and the translation was top notch. For those unaware, The Hero of a Thousand Faces proposes that there is a universal pattern in humanity’s mythologies that involves a person (usually a man) that went out into a journey far away from his home, faced many obstacles, both external and internal, and returned triumphant with a prize, the Grail or the Elixir of Life, back to his home. Campbell’s strength is that he managed to systematize so many different sources into a single cohesive narrative.

At the time I was impressed and decided to study more and write in an interdisciplinary research with economics – by writing an article on how the entrepreneur replaces the mythical hero in today’s capitalism. I had to stop the project in order to focus on more urgent matters (my thesis), but now that I finished I can finally return to this pet project of mine.

If you might have seen previous posts, I ended up having a dismal view of economics. It’s a morally and spiritually failed “science” (I have in my drafts a post on arts and I’m going to rant another day about it). Reading all these books on comparative mythology is so fun because it allows me for a moment to forget I have a degree in economics.

Until I started to realize there was something wrong.

My research had indicated that Campbell and others (such as Mircea Eliade and Carl Gust Jung, who had been on of Campbell’s main influences) weren’t very well respected in academia. At first I thought “fine”, because I’m used to interact with economists who can be considered “heterodox” and I have academic literature that I could use to make my point, besides the fact my colleagues were interested in what I was doing.

The problem is that this massive narrative of the Hero’s Journey/monomyth is an attempt to generalize pretty wide categories, like mythology, into one single model of explanation, it worked because it became a prescription, giving the writer a tool to create a story in a factory-like pace. It has checkboxes that can be filled, professional writers have made it widely available.

But I started to realize his entire understanding of mythology is problematic. First the basics: Campbell ignores when myths don’t fit his scheme. This is fruit of his Jungian influences, who claim that humanity has a collective unconsciousness, that manifest through masks and archetypes. This is the essence of the Persona games (and to a smaller extent of the Fate games) – “I am the Shadow the true self”. So any deviation from the monomyth can be justified by being a faulty translation of the collective unconsciousness.

This is the kind of thing that Karl Popper warned about, when he proposed the “falseability” hypothesis, to demarcate scientific knowledge. The collective unconsciousness isn’t a scientific proposition because it can be falsified. It cannot be observed and it cannot be refuted, because someone who subscribe to this doctrine will always have an explanation to explain why it wasn’t observed. In spite of falseability isn’t favored by philosophers of science anymore, it remains an important piece of the history of philosophy and he aimed his attack on psychoanalysis of Freud and Jung – and, while they helped psychology in the beginning, they’re like what Pythagoras is to math. They were both surpassed by modern science and they are studied more as pieces of history than serious theorists.

But this isn’t the worst. All the three main authors on myths were quite conservatives in the sense of almost being fascists – sometimes dropping the ‘almost’. Some members of the alt-right even look up to them as some sort of “academic’ justification. Not to mention anti-Semitic. Jung had disagreement with Freud and Freud noticed his anti-Semitism. Eliade was a proud supporter of the Iron Guard, a Romanian fascist organization that organized pogroms and wanted to topple the Romanian government. Later Eliade became an ambassador at Salazar’s Fascist Portugal, writing it was a government guided by the love of God. Campbell, with his hero worship, was dangerously close to the ur-fascism described by Umberto Eco (please read here, you won’t regret https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf).

“If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge – that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.”

Campbell did that a lot. He considered the Bible gospels and Gnostic gospels to be on the same level. Any serious student, that is not operating under New Age beliefs and other frivolous theories like the one that says Jesus went to India, will know there’s a difference between them (even Eliade was sure to stress the difference).

But Campbell cared nothing for it. He disliked the “semitic” religions for corrupting the mythic imagination (which is the source of his anti-Semitism), especially Judaism. When I showed him describing the Japanese tea ceremony to a friend who’s minoring in Japanese studies, she wrote “I’m impressed, he’s somehow managed to out-purple prose the original Japanese”. So, it’s also full of orientalism, treating the East as the mystical Other, something for “daring” Westerners to discover and distillate.

What disturbed��no, “disturbed” isn’t the word that I need in the moment, but what made me feel uncomfortable is that, in spite of all his talk of spirituality, the impression I had of Power of Myth is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more materialist than him. Not even Karl Marx, founder of the Historical Materialism, was as materialist as Campbell.

At one point in the book, he was asked if he believed in anything and he gave a dismissive reply and said “I want to get experiences.” A man who studied all the myths of the world available, apparently didn’t believe in anything. Is that what spiritual maturity is? A continuous flux of experiences? Being taken by some sort of shamanistic wind like a floating plastic bag?

In nowhere in the interview he talked about virtues. In rebellion with his Catholic childhood, he said that we should go to the confessionary and say “God, I’ve been such a good boy”. Any cursory reading of the Gospel would say otherwise. Wasn’t this exactly Pharisee’s prayer in Luke 18:9-14? While the wasn’t the publican, who went with humility and asked for forgiveness, the one who walked out with an experience? And not only in Christianity, since in Tibetan Buddhism, a tulpa is something you have to kill, not foster like an imaginary friend like in some internet circles, contamined with this obsession with experiences.

The way I came to see Joseph Campbell as a man who was so stuck in his own world that nothing could move him out of it. All he wanted to do was this big experience, but in the end it’s as wide as the ocean, but shallow as a puddle. Even when Campbell speaks about having a “cosmic consciousness”, all that New Age jargon, claiming it’s about people discovering they’re not the center of the universe, it’s still so…self-servicing. It addresses a crowd so obsessed with experiences, but wants nothing to do with anything that requires compromise. He quotes the Hindu concept of maya, that life is an illusion, but I wonder how right he is about it.

I want to share this critique, by a researcher in comic studies: “We do not remember The Night Gwen Stacy Died because Gwen’s death reminds us of our own mortality, ‘the destiny of Everyman’, but because the story exposes the fragility of Spider-Man reader’s fantasies. Even icons can die.”

The exposition of the fragility of myths, especially the Hero’s Journey, never happens in Campbell’s work. It never talks about the potential of myths hindering entire societies, causing strife and causing people who can’t fit to become outcasts. Not even the cruel ones, like the Aztec death cult is treated as sublime, ignoring the fact that the Aztec neighbors helped to Spanish because they had enough of the Aztec myth.

I have changed my article. While I will still write on the hero entrepreneur, I’ll take a more critical view. The focus of the entrepreneur as an individual has many issues, because it ignores the role of public investment (necessary for high risk enterprises, like going to the moon or creating touch screens) and it treats with contempt the worked wage. Cambpell also treated with contempt the “masses”, who cannot be “heroes”. The theory on the entrepreneur is the same, treating the entrepreneur as a hero and the waged workers as lowlifes who have nothing to do, but to work, obey and be paid – to the point it feels like some economists treat strikes as crimes worse than murder. Not only that, but they can exploit the worker (see a book named “Do what you love and other lies about success and happiness”, it could be replaced with “Follow your bliss…”).

Campbell wrote in a time that there was no Wikipedia. So his book was the introduction of myths to a lot of people. It helped it was well-written. He considering his approach apolitical, but it’s clear that’s it’s not exactly like that (though this is a reason why Jordan Peterson failed to become the next Campbell, since he’s also a Jungian scholar, but he tried to become a conservative guru and this was his downfall). And, nowadays, Campbell is still inevitable in the circles that his themes matter, unlike Freud and Jung. Read it, but be aware of its problems, because it has already influenced what you consume.

#my rants #this is just a rant #so don't take it as a final word #sources can be provided on request

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corvidry · 4 years ago

Text

All About RP Icons For Beginners by Birdy

Hi OP, I’m not sure how experienced you are with all the nonsense surrounding the making and using of RP icons, so I’m gonna come at it as though you don’t have any experience with it at all and I’m sorry if that’s too simplified for you, but also if I’m gonna write many paragraphs about one topic I may as well make it accessible for as many people as possible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This post goes into what tools are out there for the popular methods of finding/making RP icons in the first half and my personal methodology for choosing and using them in my RP for the second half. This is a very surface level answer to the question and is not meant to be an in depth tutorial for the more labor intensive aspects of the process, but if you guys want more information and can’t find it elsewhere, please ask and I'll know what I should be talking about next.

Also I’m also contractually obligated to mention to the masses that I do take commissions both for the drawing of RP icons and the service of capping, cutting, recoloring, and framing canon icons. Sometimes I even post batches of canon character icons for free on this blog so like,,,,, hit me up if you want. But!! You don’t need me, you can absolutely do all of it yourself!! I go into the broad strokes below.

Question 1: “How do you get icons?”

This is kind of a broad question and the answer depends on what your needs are. The right answer for you is gonna live in one of two camps

Find some that already exist that are free to use

Make them yourself / commission somebody else to make them for you.

What you'll choose is gonna depend a lot on your character first and foremost. The big determining factor in most cases is whether or not the face you want has been in anything you can take pictures of.

If you have a canon character who exists in visible media--

--you're in luck! The chances of you finding some resources that exist already is higher when you have a canon character who is in at least a few pieces of media. OP asked about Pearl from Steven Universe, and she's a great example of a character with a lot of resources. Searching for rp icons of a popular character will often yield packs of icons on Tumblr, Dreamwidth, Livejournal, etc. Most of these will be completely free to use or have very reasonable conditions for use (like credit the person who made them for example.) It's often a good first step to see what preexisting resources are available to you even if you still plan on making your own icons.

If you have an OC or a character that's not all that popular--

--you're gonna fall into the second camp. If you want icons, you have to have them made. So what are your options?

Help! My character appears in no media! What are my options?

If your character appears in no media you're in a tough spot. Different people approach this problem in different ways.

Face Claims

One option you have is to choose a face claim to represent your character. In roleplay a face claim or ‘FC’ is a person or character whose appearance you use for the physical description of your character. I personally am not big on doing this, I prefer drawn icons and I tend to RP as animated characters, but some people really like using celebrities and stuff to represent their characters. When I was playing Angus McDonald he hadn't appeared in any visual media yet, so I sometimes used Bryce Clyde Jenkins as the face claim for certain types of threads.

If you're somebody who likes to use face claims there are loads of resources out there for finding the perfect one, including here on tumblr. Try searching up RP Faceclaim Directory and playing around with some of the ones that pop up.

DIY RP Icons

The other option you have is to create those icons from scratch. Draw them yourself based on icons you like or commission an artist to draw some for you. If you can't draw yourself, I've seen some people get really creative with this. Some people create their character in the sims, dollmakers, or their favorite RPG and then take screenshots of that to use for icons. There's also no law that says every icon you use has to be your character's face. When I was writing a trashy mermaid AU I got a lot of mileage out of icons that depicted harbor and oceanic scenes with no actual faces. Get creative, go nuts, have fun.

Icons Aren’t That Important

The other thing to remember that icons are not a must in many RP circles. It's perfectly possible to have a great time and write cool stuff without any pictures at all. Depending on your platform of choice there are probably also other interesting ways you can make your posts unique to you by formatting the text or using symbols or emojis or otherwise denoting your personal style in text.

Help! My character appears in lots of media! How do I make icons?

Again, there are a million and one answers to this question and it really depends on what tools are available to you and what your preferences are. This section is not a tutorial but it will outline some of the options you can look into.

The icon making process is typically in 2 stages-- stage 1: get all your images of your character, and stage 2: edit all of those images into icons.

If you have access to the source material, any version of Photoshop, and software that automates the collection screencaps from video (KM Player, VLC, etc) you're pretty much gucci. You're gonna have no problem getting loads of nice icons in a reasonably short amount of time and there are a million different tutorials on how to use those things whichever way you prefer.

If you don't have access to those things you still have options.

You can still screencap things manually, and you can screencap in batches by holding down the windows key and pressing PrtSc any time you want to save an image. They should be saving to >pictures>screenshots unless you’ve set things up differently. It’s a good way to take a lot of screenshots without stopping in between.

( EDIT / UPDATE: to say that if you use automation for taking screencaps remember to turn that shit off when you’re not using because it oh mylanta it WILL continue to take images without you realizing. Figured out where all my disk space has been going with this rookie mistake, thanks OP)

Additionally, PhotoScape X is a really great little tool for windows and mac that I've never seen anybody talk about, but I use it sometimes and it's totally free with the exception of a few paid features I’ve never once needed or wanted. This program is not as efficient as using Photoshop but it has presets for cropping images easily as well as batch editing options for some basic borders and color retouching. While it’s not as powerful as Photoshop, you can get a lot done with it reasonably quickly compared to other choices. You can also take and edit snips of anything on your screen with it, which is really really useful if you don’t have access to the video or image files you would need on your hard drive for other version of this process. The program looks like this:

Also, not to be like a minimalist about it, but you can also just fucken use Microsoft Paint or whatever you have. Like, whatever, there’s no law. You graphics dont have to be comlpex or deep fried. Half of my icons have been made or edited in paint at some point. It wont be as fast as some of these other methods but a lot of us aren't out here making icons in batches of 100 at a time.

Anything that you can use to make smallish images of your characters face will work to make icons.

If you want more information about any of these methods of icon creation let me know and I’ll talk about them.

Question 2: “How do you make your icons ‘work’ in posts?”

I'm a little confused on what you mean by "make them work" so I'm gonna cover my bases here. I'm assuming what you're getting at is a sort of sense of cohesion in the icons I use, or having the "right" expression for the scene I'm writing. Either that or them not stretching and looking weird thanks to tumblr. I’ll get to both of those.

And before I go into my own rationale for icon choices I feel I should point out that a lot of people who aren't me do successfully manufacture cohesion out of their images by doing fun stylistic things like recoloring their images all the same way or putting cute borders and stuff around them or making them fun shapes, and that's totally something you can learn how to do if it interests you. I do this for icons commissioned by other people and I’m not against talking about how to do those things, but I don’t really bother with them for my own icons all that much. That stuff is all fun and it’s a neat thing you could get into that can make your icons all look really nice together.

BUT ANYWAY --

Since the character you asked about is Pearl, I’m going to focus on her. Nearly all of my Pearl icons are completely unedited and a lot of the credit I would have to give regarding icon quality goes to Pearl herself and the consistently good lighting that the show uses. I don’t have a huge need for editing or color retouching beyond making memes or whatever other goofy things I might be getting up to. Pearl is extremely expressive compared to other characters I have written and since she's in nearly every episode, I've managed to collect…

...oh god, that’s too many icons.

Pearl is a main character and I've been RPing as her for over 6 years now so I have a fuckload of images to choose from and I'm not gonna pretend that doesn't help when I wanna “make things work”. She gives me a lot of options.

That said, you absolutely don't need 3000 images to make a good post. The way I've collected and organized these images may be of use to you even if you dont have as many icons. I've done a lot with my setup to make finding the right icon very easy.

For starters, a minor subset of my Pearl icons are grouped by a particular defining feature. I have one large Pearly folder full of icons and then a few smaller folders inside for icons I thought worth grouping separately. For example, all icons of SUF Pearl in her new jacket are in the same folder. All icons of Pearl in short term alternate outfits are in the same folder. Anything I sourced from Attack the Light is in its own folder. I do this with anything that has a very specific use, such as writing AU content or flashbacks to specific time periods. If I can picture an icon in my head, I usually know where in my ridiculous hell collection to go to find it.

This folder was originally just for her pre-canon outfit but now all of her outfits that only appeared temporarily are in there.

Perhaps more important for the sake of cohesion is that nearly all of my icons that aren’t squirreled away in some smaller folder are loosely arranged by episode. What that means is that most of the time I have icons from the same scene right next to one another. It makes it incredibly easy to make my RP replies appear as though it's all one cohesive scene even if I use more than one icon. When you do it this way it becomes very easy to choose icons that have the same lighting or that appear to lead from one expression seamlessly into another. Exhibit A:

While the vast majority of my icons are numbered, I do take the time to name ones I find myself using a lot or that have particularly unique expressions. Usually I'll choose names that I'll find descriptive or easy to remember based on the context of the icon. You can have a lot of fun with that and never lose your favorites.

Also don't be afraid to lean on icons you got from weird places if you like them. The icons of Pearl from the official comics run don’t look like most of what I have. I think them being different would turn a lot of RPers off, but I use them a lot because I like the style and I almost never see other Pearl RPers using them. It either makes me stand out or it makes me tacky, one of the two, haven’t figured out which, but also I’m not stopping.

And just to reiterate, you can use icons that aren’t your character if they’re thematically relevant or vague enough to look like them. When I’m capping I’ve started saving a folder of miscellaneous environments of interests, hands, and other everyday types of scenery that appear in the thing I’m taking screencaps of.

You can use any size you want for RP icons but the most common is 100x100 or 150x150 pixels. Any smaller than that and the image gets to be difficult to read and work with in my opinion. That doesn’t stop people, of course, but I’m elderly and need glasses now, so no tiny icons for me. On that note, I rarely see RP icons larger than 300x300. Any larger than that it tends to get bulky and be in the way of other people’s comfortable internet browsing experience, especially on mobile. Of course, these are just my suggestions. What you choose will ultimately be up to you, but somewhere in that 100 to 300 px range is pretty safe.

A very tumblr specific thing to know is that any image that is wider than 300 pixels will be stretched to hell, so you probably want to keep it smaller than that.

Thanks, Tumblr, I hate it!

Also, don’t be afraid to make trash images for fun if you’re so inclined. People love that, or at least I do. Not having the right icon can be fun and lead to a very silly solution. Lean into being a shitposter if that’s what you’re called to do.

So yeah, that’s basically what my suggestions are. Collect your images in a way that helps cohesion and ease of use. Keep them a good size. Don’t be afraid to get unconventional with your choices or make memes or whatever. It’s all for a fun time.

Anyway, that’s all I can think of right now, but more info on any of this can be obtained at the price of one ask, I know it was a lot of different moving parts.

#rp #rp icons #birdy answers #my graphics #my icons #long post

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ladykateofledfordpark · 5 years ago

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Brighter than the Stars (Beckett x MC)

This fic is inspired by Day 17 of the Choices July Challenge hosted by the amazing @kinda-iconic under the profile @choicesjulychallenge !

Ok, I know this is late, but I’ve been busy the past few days. I’ll work on the missing ones soon. ^-^

Anyway, this fic is really fluffy. Enjoy! xD

Dedicated to the amazing @jlpplays1 @mariaoz and @itsbrindleybinch, my fellow Beckett enthusiasts! =)

Tagging also the beautiful @lady-kato and @desiree-0816 ! <3</p>

Day 17 Prompt: Light

Pairing: Beckett x F!MC (Kate)

Summary: As Beckett continues on his vacation in the Tuneless world, Kate and him go to an observatory.

Notes:

Unedited

I may have written in the past that Kate’s a Fire-Att. Well, now she’s a Metal-Att!

——–

“I still haven’t shown you much of the Tuneless world,” I tell Beckett.

We’re lying under the shade of our Willow tree, basking in the quiet of the day. The summer sun shines all around us, its heat comforting and threatening simultaneously. Beckett smiles, his magickal hands rubbing my bare arms, taking all the unnecessary warmth in my body.

“There, that’s better.” He says once he finishes. He lies with his back to the tree and lets out a heavy breath.

I turn so I’m positioned above him the way he sat before. “Show me how to do it,” I say, a smile on my face.

Beckett grins. “I like your enthusiasm,” he declares, a teasing lilt to his voice. “It’s a relatively simple spell. We skipped it in our studies since it, like many other spells, it isn’t considered useful enough. Here, I’ll show you.”

Beckett takes my hand in a gentle grip and touches my wrist lightly. “Do you feel the humidity around us?”

It’s almost impossible to sense anything other than the tingles running up my arm, but somehow I manage to find a few drops near me.

Beckett continues once he sees my success. “Good. Now, all you have to do is take the water and carefully, gradually, soak it in the skin. Be careful, you don’t want to overwhelm the body.”

I do as he says, and smile as the water cools my body, my unease with it. Beckett beams at me as he sees my success, almost like a proud teacher. And then his smile disappears as he clears his throat. “There’s still a lot more to work on, but for a first attempt this was adequate.”

“You can just say you were impressed.”

The smile returns to his face. “Maybe.”

“Can I try it on you now?”

He opens his mouth in protest, but I’m already touching my hand to his skin. I carefully follow the instructions he gave me, and slowly he relaxes. “Kate…” he takes my hand, a pure smile back on his face, “thank you.”

He hesitantly kisses it, his cheeks turning red. I laugh, and he immediately lets go of me. “I don’t know why I did that,” he admits.

“It was cute.”

Beckett clears his throat. “So what else did you want to show me?”

“Well, there’s the planetarium not far from here. We haven’t seen that yet.”

Beckett meets my gaze. “What is that place? I’ve heard about a lot of things of this world, but never a planetarium.”

I start walking toward the car. “Follow me.”

It’s dark by the time we arrive to the big domed building. Beckett jumps out the second I park, and when I reach his side he’s studying the place.

“Do you have to go to different destinations with this… automobile?” he asks as I near him.

I shrug. “Not all of us have portal mirrors.”

“I guess it’s for the best. So… where do we go?”

I take his hand and pull him with me. I check that the door is locked, and when it is I hurry to open it.

“Why are we going here when it’s closed?” Beckett asks as he plays with his cuffs absentmindedly. In the Attuned world, he would take the lead, quickly getting rid of all our obstacles. However, in my world he only has his curiosity. The pride of his achievements is gone, because here… he’s a stranger.

“If the planetarium is locked, that means no-one’s inside. Which gives us lots of time to ourselves.”

A wide grin rises to my face as the door clicks open. I carefully press on the its handle, and close it with the gentlest click there is. I don’t need the surrounding towns to hear us.

I fumble for the light switch, and smile when light rushes in. Once that’s done, I quickly scan to make sure I didn’t leave any unnecessary evidence. Can’t be too careful.

With a relieved sigh, I turn back to Beckett. He watches with a mix of affection and surprise, but I don’t wait to hear what he has to say. Instead, with a giddy smile, I take him with me. “Come on!”

I’m not a stranger to this place. As a kid, my parents brought me here many times. There were lots of games and quizzes I loved to play, which were a big reason I loved coming here, but…

I stop once I reach the room. I freeze, a rush of nostalgia running through me, and Beckett stops right beside me.

The solar system looks down on us, starting from the sun to Uranus. Each planet shows its beautiful colors, some standing in the middle of a black sky, while others are surrounded by other shining bits.

And yet, somehow, they all fit together.

But this isn’t the reason I came here.

I turn to the sun. It shines not far from us: reds, yellows and oranges mix and match on its surface, radiating sheer power that seems both threatening and alluring. “This was my favorite exhibit when I was younger. I had an unreasonable infatuation with it, as if it itself was my mother. Mom used to tease me a lot about it. Every time we returned, it was mainly for this.”

Beckett quietly assesses everything. “I never knew Attuneless were capable of so much.”

“There’s much you don’t know about us, Mr. Harrington.”

He meets my eyes, and suddenly I can’t move. “I suppose that’s true, but that just makes you even more alluring. I never know what to expect from you, and it only makes me more enthralled with you.”

He cups my face, and his warm breaths gently touch my lips. I blush, but Beckett doesn’t laugh. He just gazes at me in adoration, running his warm thumb on my cheek.

“Your eyes shine when you’re excited, or when you learn something new. It’s as if your happiness reaches out, grabs on to whoever’s nearby, and never lets go.”

Beckett takes my hand with a small smile before turning toward the stars. He mumbles something, and colors now flash across the projection’s sky. Pink, purple, blue, green… anything one can imagine.

“Beckett, this is amazing. How did you do this?”

“Maybe you just unlocked it inside me. Maybe the way you looked when I taught you that spell did it, or the way your eyes shine when you look at the sun. Kate, a year ago I never would have done something like this, but now… this is all thanks to you. I never would have done this otherwise. If you never would have won me over so long ago, this wouldn’t have happened.”

His head nears me so much, that by the time he stops our lips almost touch. “Your eyes shine brighter than any star.”

And then his lips touch mine, and I know that for him, I’m the only star.

In the world, magickal and not.

In the universe.

And in his heart.

#choices #playchoices #choices stories you play #beckett x mc #beckett harrington #the elementalists #the elementalists beckett #choices te #te #te beckett #mc x beckett harrington #beckett harrington x mc #mc x beckett #choices fanfiction #playchoices fanfiction #the elementalists fanfiction #choices july challenge

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violethowler · 5 years ago

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Disclaimer: This is not a dig at any one specific person, this is just a semi-funny, semi-serious take on the reactions some segments of the fandom have had towards those pushing for the unedited season and finding evidence of who was responsible for what happened in S8 and why:

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LM & JDS: act incredibly stiff and uncomfortable when saying the things that angered the fandom, as if theses answers were from a script they’d had to rehearse. When not giving these answers, they are very casual and relaxed. When they aren’t saying their rehearsed lines, they say the series started as “a show for boys 6 to 11 to sell as much toys as possible.” They say that Dreamworks was easy to work with and the push-back came from the IP owner.

Bex Taylor Klaus: Says that the IP owner thinks of VLD as a show to sell toys to six year old boys.

Official podcasts and con appearances: Bob Koplar, head of World Events Productions, is the owner of the Voltron IP.

Bob Koplar: says in various interviews with the Let’s Voltron podcast that he wanted VLD to be a continuation of Voltron Force, a show that he was EP of where the iconic pilots of the lions were largely replaced by a new set of characters, and where Lotor was portrayed as a one dimensional Zarkon 2.0 after being brought back from the dead. Says he sees Voltron’s target demographic as six year old boys and their dads.

Season 7: Introduces the MFE pilots, a new group of characters who are clearly being set up to serve as the protagonists of a spin-off series and receive enough focus that some fans were scared that the Paladins were going to be killed off and replaced by the MFEs entirely for the rest of the show.

Season 8: Lists Bob Koplar as an EP alongside LM and JDS. Gives additional focus to the MFE pilots. Kills Lotor and hammers in that he was evil and manipulative despite all narrative subtext indicating an impending reveal otherwise.

Also LM and JDS: Indicate that the IP owner didn’t want LGBT rep in the show. Say that the MFE pilots were added in late in production, forcing the animators to do a lot of extra work to create enough content for the MFE crew that they needed to give the animators a break via The Feud. Said that the divisive epilogue was created in less than a day.

The Feud: The Paladins are forced to play games at the behest of an all-powerful being named Bob. They protest, but are ultimately forced to play by his rules. Ostensibly the filler comedy episode of Season 7, it breaks the flow of the narrative, none of the characters are amused by what’s happening, and it ends with everyone agreeing that Bob was a jerk.

The Epilogue: Ties the series up in such a way that a sequel series is impossible: the lions have flow off into the unknown, all of the heroes are retired, the cool ninja allies are now a relief organization, and the only way to have a transforming robot in future installments is through the Atlas, which would require Shiro to come out of retirement.

Fans campaigning for the unedited S8: Hmmm... Perhaps... maybe... the IP owner interfered with the production of Season 8 because he wanted the show to sell more toys and set up the continuation/successor of Voltron Force that he wanted all along?... And maybe that the EPs did the epilogue in such a short time as one last “screw you” to the IP owner who forced them to mangle the conclusion of their story for toy sales and spin-offs by making it so that the only way to have a transforming robot in a sequel series was to have a gay man as the lead?

A vocal portion of the fandom plus a few geek news sites that have been bashing the EPs over everything for years: You’re crazy. It was totally Lauren and Joaqim’s fault and they did it all because they’re horrible/clueless people.

#freevlds8 #voltron season 8 #voltron fandom #voltron legendary defender #voltron meta #executive meddling #world events productions

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glowwormsmith · 6 years ago

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Joseph’s Birthday Bash

Uh-oh, sisters! You think the Far Cry 5 Birthday Bash was over? When I told my boyfriend about the event, he decided to make a special gift for me. I loved it. He also gave me full permission to share this on Tumblr, so to celebrate the last day of March, here is my boyfriend’s gift to the Far Cry 5 fandom. God help us all.

This is also unedited with only minor grammatical changes to make it read better. Enjoy the fic~

Summary: It’s Joseph’s birthday and everyone in Hope County is invited. Things can only go well from here.

Warning: This is a crack fic. Expect OOC-ness (though he says it’s an accurate portrayal of all the characters), general silliness, fourth-wall breaking, off-color jokes, and anything else associated with a humor/crack fic. If anything needs to be tagged, let me know.

AN: In truth, I know very little about Far Cry 5.

Joseph's Birthday Bash

It was a clear and sunny day at the Project of Eden's Gate compound, colloquially known as “The Father's Church.” As opposed to the compound’s usual stark and austere look, today it was vibrant; the fence that was torn open from a recent helicopter crash was fixed, and what looked to be white moonflowers were tied into every single link of every chain. Even the sign that on any other day of the year proudly displayed “Project at Eden's Gate” was covered up with a black tarp that instead was spray-painted to say “Happy Birthday!”

Truly, it was a surreal site.

“Oooh, it's perfect!” A young woman in a white frilly dress exclaimed, as she took in her handiwork. “Now we just have to finish the outside of the church! Go on, mush!”

In response, the ragtag group of strangely-dressed bald men who were the ones actually tying the flowers into the chain link fence turned to give a glassy-eyed stare to their commander.

“Mush.” She repeated, snapping her fingers and pointing to the church.

Sluggishly, the men picked up their basket of flowers and headed to the church.

“Ah, Faith.” A long-suffering sigh came from just behind the gate as a man with a perfectly coiffed beard and a three-hundred-dollar coat stepped through. “As usual, you're truly an inspiration to observe. I wish I could be half as sympathetic to those in my region.”

“John!” The aforementioned Faith beamed at the new arrival. “As usual, you're acting like a posh bitch!”

John's head jerked back slightly at her bluntness and he was just about to retort, until another, much larger man came and put his hand on his shoulder.

“Enough.” The large redhead grunted “Don't the two of you start. It's insufferable.”

“Wow!” Faith said with a sing-song lilt. “‘Insufferable?’ Isn't that a little too many syllables for you, jarhead?”

Jarhead gazed at her and gave an unimpressed grunt.

“Really, would it kill you to act a little more ladylike?” John asked the girl. “This is why you're not in the Christmas photos.”

“This is why you’re not--” She mimicked.

“Really. Stop.” Jarhead said. “Joseph's going to be here soon. You know how he gets about the two of you bickering. I'd rather not hear it for once.”

“Sorry, brother,” John mumbled.

“Sorry, brother~” Faith mimicked, to everyone's distaste.

“Rachel.” Jarhead warned, making her grimace slightly. “Stop.”

Faith stuck out her tongue at him for a brief moment, then turned her head towards the church and fell silent. Suddenly, a small cloud of dust kicked up from one of the cliffs above them accompanied by a hum of an engine.

“He's here.”

A Jeep with tinted-black windows came into view from over the cliff, driving down into the gated compound. In moments it pulled unto the gate right in front of the three siblings. The driver's side door opened and out stepped a man who practically glowed with an enlightened aura. This was the most notable man in Hope County, Joseph Seed.

He was also wearing a blindfold.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Jarhead barked. “Where you driving that thing blindfolded!”

“Jacob, my brother!” Joseph greeted, turning almost (but not quite) to face where Jacob was and spreading his arms. “My escorts told me that I had to wear this, otherwise I'd spoil the surprise.”

“Your escorts were supposed to drive!” Jacob growled, looking towards two men in red balaclavas who stepped out of the passenger and rear seats, respectively. “I am disappointed.”

“B-but...” One of the strangely dressed men stuttered out. “The Father--he wanted to drive!”

“Blindfolded?”

“Now, Jacob.” The still-blindfolded Father consoled, patting his brother on the shoulder. “It's like John 9:25 says, ‘I was blind, and now I can see!’.”

“It's not.” Jacob sighed. “You still have that thing on.”

“You never were the most spiritual, brother.”

“Oh for--” The tall ginger ran his hand down his face. “Can we just get on with this whole thing?”

“I dunno,” Faith said, twirling a flower in between her fingers. “This is kinda fun to watch.”

“No, don't listen to her.” John wheedled his way between his two brothers and grabbed Joseph by his bicep. “Come, Brother, let us show you what we prepared!”

Ignoring the disapproving stares from pretty much everybody, John sidled up to his brother, in a way that one could say was unnervingly close even for siblings, and led him into the compound. Stopping just before the church, John held his breath before motioning for his siblings and the followers to gather around and quickly ripped off Joseph's blindfold.

“Surprise!” Everyone hollered. “Happy birthday, Father!”

Joseph serenely took in the whole event, gazing at his church, defaced by clumsily pasted on moonflowers behind his piss-tinted aviators.

“Were you wearing your glasses under your blindfold?” Jacob asked, stunned by his brother's dedication to fashion.

“Well, Brother?!” John ignored his favorite brother's apparent psychosis. “Isn't this a wonderful surprise?”

“It is no surprise, my children.” Joseph smiled back at all his followers, eyes crinkling slightly at the corners. His visage was that of one who has truly reached enlightenment. “For I have foreseen this.”

“D'Ohhhhh!” his followers cried, shuffling their feet, as Faith nodded sagely, completely eating it up, and John looked crushed.

“Of course you did,” Jacob sighed, wondering why he spent any time with his family.

“Now, John.” The Father gazed around the decorated compound and nodded his head before turning and beckoning to his younger brother. “Bring me your Devil Box.”

“My what?”

“Your devil box,” Joseph said, as if he was talking to a small child. “Which you use to broadcast the past onto other, squarer devil boxes.”

John looked as if he was about to have a conniption. The rest of the followers weren't much better.

“Your camera,” Jacob grunted.

“Oh!” John exclaimed. “But why, Joseph?”

“Why John, today is the birthday of our Savior,” The Father chided. “Me. Obviously today should be a day of armistice and coming together.”

“No,” Jacob interjected, already seeing where this was going.

“Therefore, I suggest--”

“No.”

“--That we invite--”

“Seriously. This is dumb.”

“--The deputies and their friends!”

“Joseph.”

“Worry not, my dear brother, things are going as foreseen.” Joseph settled the matter with a deft hand and turned to his other siblings. “John, Faith, we must prepare for our guests.”

“As the Father decrees!” Faith screeched, turning to her homeless-looking followers who gave their agreement with a cacophony of inhuman moans.

Elsewhere

The town of Fall's End had seen a major downsizing since the Project at Eden's Gate had started. While it was never what would be described as a “booming town,” it had a scattered few stores with a surprising variety of goods, tailored to the unique individuals that lived in Hope County. Now all stores were closed but two: a bar called the Spread Eagle, and a hardware shop that sold guns.

It was unfortunate for the town of Fall's End that even the followers of the Project at Eden's Gate couldn't rid them of their town idiot, though.

“DEPUTY!” A grown man with a roughshod beard and a stylized American flag shirt shouted, as he waved his hands and ran down an empty street. “DEPUTY!”

His shouting continued until he entered the Spread Eagle.

“DEPUTY!”

“Hurk!” The bartender, a blonde woman, shouted back as she cleaned her glasses with a wet rag. “Quiet down! You're bothering my customers!”

“Oh! Hey man, sorry,” Hurk said, looking around at the scattered few patrons giving him the stink-eye from over their mugs. “I was just looking for—OH, THERE YOU ARE!”

“Hurk!” the bartender threatened.

“Oh, sorry, man.” The town idiot nodded back again, then proceeded to walk towards a patron who was doing their best to not look at him. “Hey, man, where have you been? I've been calling your name for the last hour!”

The person Hurk was addressing was an iconic figure of Hope County, Deputy Rook. The deputy was, even by Hope County's standards, a complete and hopeless weirdo. They were a small person, standing maybe 5'7”, and not a single person besides their parents probably knew their gender.

Why one might ask? Because Deputy Rook always wore some kind of weird mask on their head. Be it a big chicken mask, an alien mask, or even what they were wearing today, a gigantic eyeball mask. No one truly knew what Rook's face looked like. The deputy even wore a big horse mask to their police academy graduation, which was probably the reason they were assigned to this podunk town.

Even more than that, they were slight of build, had shaved and waxed legs, and never spoke. Ever.

“Hey man, have you seen the TV?” Hurk questioned Deputy Rook, who in response continued to give the impression of not looking at Hurk (which was doubly impressive, given that they were wearing a gigantic eyeball on their head) and poured their beer into the cornea of their mask.

As expected, it didn't go into the mask and splashed everywhere.

“Yeah? That's cool, man. But seriously, you should check it out,” Hurk continued, seemingly oblivious of Rook's indifference. “HEY, MARY MAY!”

“Hurk. I'm going to kick you out,” the bartender countered.

“DON'T BE LIKE THAT, MAN! JUST TURN THE TV ON TO CHANNEL 3!!” “Hurk, the only channel we get anymore is channel 3,” Mary May sighed, as she picked up the dusty TV remote from behind the bar and turned on the small CRT that they used in the past to watch the Cougar's baseball games. “You can just say ‘turn on the TV’.”

“WILL DO, PRETTY LADY!” Hurk screamed conversationally, as he turned back to the Deputy. “Hey man, look, it's Joseph.”

The deputy quickly glanced up to see that, indeed, on the TV was Joseph Seed. They then got up, turned their bar stool around and continued to splash their beer around.

“Greetings, my children,” TV Joseph spoke, static slightly modulating his voice into a deeper, more seductive tone. “I am broadcasting this message to give good tidings to you all!”

“Oh man, I don't know what that means, but it sounds sinister, don't it?!” Hurk questioned the Deputy, who raised a finger in the air to silence him.

Mary Mae poured them a shot glass of clear liquid, which they proceeded to throw all over their mask.

“Yeah, I like the liquor too.” Hurk nodded.

“Today marks the day of the birth of your Savior.” TV Joseph looked over his piss-goggles for a brief moment “Me.”

“What an asshole.” Mary May came to the general consensus as she poured herself a shot glass of clear liquid and proceeded to throw it back.

“As such, today will be a day of peace!” The camera zoomed out to show the entirety of the followers of the Project at Eden’s Gate crowded around what looked to be Joseph's church, but it was covered in badly placed flowers. “I invite you all to my church to partake in the merriment. I hope to see you all there!”

TV Joseph lowered his aviators again. “Especially you, Lamb of God.”

“Huh, wonder who he was talking about.” Hurk scratched his head as the recording abruptly cut off and repeated itself a moment later. “Must be his secret weapon.”

Deputy Rook scooted their chair as far away from Hurk as they could. They were, unfortunately, between him and a wall, and therefore had to press themselves up against a wall to get as far away from the idiot as humanly possible.

“But you know, man, what this means we need to do?” Hurk questioned the Deputy, who was sidling the wall and trying to very sneakily escape. “WE NEED TO GO CRASH THAT PARTY!”

“Alright Hurk, that's it! Get out of my bar!”

Elsewhere, sometime later

“This is a waste of time, Joseph,” Jacob grunted from his seat at the porch of Joseph's church. “Our enemies aren't just going to waltz into here.”

He couldn't have picked a worse time to say that, as a helicopter came into view on the horizon and the sound of a horn blaring from an 18-wheeler echoed down the cliff side of their compound.

“Faith, brother.” Joseph gave Jacob the smuggest grin.

In short order, a convoy of vehicles pulled up to the gate of the compound: an 18-wheeler with a flame decal, a shitty-looking jeep with a Gatling gun on the roof, some gaudy looking sports car, a black sedan, and a handful of ATVs. The helicopter came and landed next to them, followed by a red biplane that didn't quite stick it's landing and rammed into the gate slightly, knocking over a 50-foot section of the chain link fence.

“Lovely that you all have come,” Joseph said serenely, waving to the group of people who were filtering out of their vehicles and checking the safety on their weapons. “Truly, it is a day for celebration--and don't worry, we've made enough macaroni salad for everyone!”

“Bleh!” Hurk said in sync with a young man holding a flamethrower stylized with a shark motif.

“Come, my children,” Joseph beckoned, conveniently ignoring anything that didn't fit his worldview. “We shall begin to make with the merriment!”

“Check your guns at the door,” Jacob added.

As it turned out, the community gathering didn't immediately dissolve into a crazed slaughter. There was (surprisingly for the Seed’s) a good amount of liquor provided. Deputy Hudson, the only (at least proven) female deputy, managed to integrate herself with a group of Jacob's hunters and were quietly discussing amongst themselves what the best shotgun slug on the market was. Whitehorse had a surprising love of fashion and was discussing Mumu's Fashion Week with John, who was an avid collector. Deputy Rook even managed to be companionable, if silent, after one of Joseph's followers commented that they liked the gaudy, skeleton-embroidered gloves they wore. Everyone else was laughing at the Project at Eden Gate followers suffering through the classic Seed macaroni salad. All in all, it was a good time.

“Everyone,” Joseph called out. “It's now time for the exchange of gifts!”

Alas, all good things come to an end.

Whitehorse motioned to Deputy Rook, who leaned their dumb eyeball mask close to their boss. “We were supposed to get gifts?”

Rook shrugged. It was a birthday after all.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Whitehorse demanded. Rook turned their eyeball mask fully to face the sheriff down in a stare-off.

“...Fine.” Whitehorse relented. “You make a good case. You're lucky you’re such a damn good speaker, Rook.”

A deep sigh came from the mask before Rook turned back towards the Father.

“Me first!” John shouted, pushing his way to the front of the crowd. He cleared his throat and presented a perfectly wrapped box to his brother.

“Thank you, dear brother,” praised the Father as he carefully unwrapped the box. As he reached inside, he pulled out a painting frame. “...Modern art?”

“It's the first sin I carved out of myself!” John proudly displayed a scar on his left underarm, “Are you not proud, brother?!”

Slightly green, Joseph nodded, setting the framed piece of flayed skin in a pile he mentally marked as 'trash'. “Very. Next, please.”

No one moved.

“Come now, no need to be shy.” Joseph looked around the crowd who was trying very hard not to meet his eyes. “How about Faith? Come now, my child.”

“Err...” Faith's eyes darted around like a rabbit staring down a shotgun. “How about Jacob first?”

“No, no. I'm sure your gift will be wonderful,” The Father countered with a smile.

“Sure, yeah! Wonderful.” Faith inched away. “I just have to go get it! I'll be right back!”

The young woman bolted away. A couple minutes passed, then five, then ten. Most of the gathered guests wondered if she was going to come back (most hoped that she wouldn't). Any concerns were allayed and hopes dashed moments later, however, when she came back with a poorly wrapped and heavily-taped, ball-looking object.

“Happy birthday, Father!” Faith exclaimed with a proud smile as she shoved the gift into his outstretched hands.

“Thank you, sister.” Joseph serenely intoned, carefully picking at his gift in order to most carefully unwrap it, only for it to spill all over his suit. “...Dirt?”

“It's symbolic,” Faith explained.

“Oh?” The Father was quite interested. “How so?”

“It's symbolic,” Faith repeated, sweat beading down her face, her ever present smile trembling slightly.

The Father looked over his glasses at her with what half the crowd would say was disappointment, and the other half would say was understanding. “I see.”

“Jacob!” Faith screeched grabbing her actually-not-really brother by his huge bear arm and dragged him forward. “You're turn.”

“Fine,” he huffed. Reaching into his inner coat pocket, he withdrew a small, unwrapped cardboard box, not much bigger than a soda can. “Happy birthday, Jo.”

“Thank you, Jacob.” The Father smiled, comfortable in the knowledge that his eldest brother would actually bring him a regular gift. He opened the box and examined the plastic object. “...What is it, exactly?”

“It's a speed reloader,” Jacob explained, picking up the gift and holding it in what Joseph assumed was the correct configuration. “You load your bullets here, and if you ever need to reload, it'll barely take you a half-second.”

“A speed reloader?” Joseph was baffled. “For an assault rifle?”

“What? No.” Jacob was beginning to be as baffled as his brother and pointed to the gun at his waist. “I've never seen you with a rifle. That's for the revolver you're always totting around.”

The Father stared at his brother for a solid two seconds before bursting out with warm laughter. “Oh Jacob, I'll never actually use this weapon.”

“Joseph, I know you don't like guns, but--”

“No, no brother. It's just a character design element,” The Father explained. “Why, using it would be silly.”

“I don't understand what you're saying.”

“Don't worry, all is as foreseen,” Joseph said, falling back to his cop-out line.

“I'm done.” Jacob gave up, rubbing his forehead in suppressed rage, he gestured to the deputies and their compatriots. “One of you idiots can go next.”

“Oh, I'll go, I'll go!” Hurk waved his hand and ran up to Joseph before shoving what looked to be a shopping bag right in his face. It made a satisfying “bonk” as it rebounded off his forehead. “I know we had our troubles, man, with me dropping out of the cult and all, but this has been cool.”

“Thank you, young Herakles,” Joseph said benevolently, ignoring the throbbing pain in his head. “I'm glad—”

“Yo, man, where did you hear that name?” Hurk tried to whisper, but it came across even louder. “My name is Hurk.”

A rasping chuckle came from the weirdo in the giant eyeball mask in the crowd.

“Young Herakles,” Joseph said. “You should be proud of your name. It has heritage and—”

“WOO-HEE!!” Hurk screamed. “WHO KNOWS WHAT THESE PEGGIES ARE SAYING, AMIRITE?!”

“I'll just open this now,” Joseph said, opening his shopping bag and taking out a rather nice bottle of wine. “Young Herakles, this is one of the bottles of wine I bought for this party.”

“I know, man!” Hurk agreed. “I knew you'd like it.”

Joseph looked at the bottle in his hand and set it beside him. He looked to his eldest brother and made a motion of cutting his throat. “I see.”

Jacob grunted, grabbed Hurk by the shoulder and guided him back to his friends. “Next.”

“Sure.” A black man with a smooth voice stepped to the front of the queue. “I've got something to give Joseph.”

As the Father saw this guest, his eyes lit up. “If it isn't my old friend, Jerome!”

“‘Old friend’. Sure,” Jerome said dryly.

“I missed you, friend,” The Father continued. “Remember when we used to camp out together?”

“You mean when you squatted in my church?”

“Or when you had me as a guest preacher?” Joseph pushed on.

“You wouldn't stop interrupting my Mass.”

“Such good times.” Joseph said. “What tidings do you bring, old friend?”

“This.” Jerome placed a half-drank water bottle in front of the father emblazoned with the words ‘Holy Water’ in still-wet, permanent marker ink. “Blessed it myself. I'm curious if you'll spontaneously combust when it touches your skin.”

“You blessed it yourself?!” Joseph gasped. “I'll treasure it. Thank you, my friend.”

Jerome just glared at the Father.

“And no hard feelings about the thing with your daughter, right, friend?” Joseph pushed.

Jerome continued to glare at the Father.

“Haha, of course not old, friend. What a story.”

Deputy Hudson quickly went up and dragged the preacher away before he went to strangle Joseph.

“That will be a hard act to follow,” Joseph warned.

The gathered looked at each other and started shoving each other to try to push one unwilling sacrifice to the head of the crowd. After a couple moments, a man stumbled out at the head of the crowd. “I suppose I'll go,” said a dirty man with crazy hair. He walked up to the Father, dug through his pocket, and dropped a crumpled cardboard business card on his place mat. “Here.”

“Why...Thank you,” Joseph said, inching away from the filthy man. He gave a glance at the business card before grabbing the tongs from the macaroni salad, and used it to pick up the card and bring it to eye level. “A free, 1-year subscription to...Zip Kupka's NewsBattles?”

“It's my internet talk show,” Zip Kupka explained. “You can get it on XM radio, too. It tells about all the hard-hitting news, like the bliss in the Henbane turning all the fish gay!”

“Lies!” Faith shouted, perhaps a bit too loudly. “Baseless slander!”

“Wait,” Skylar Kohrs, the young fishing champion of Hope County, muttered. “Is that why there are no Demonfish out this season?”

“What are Demonfish?” Staci Pratt, local emasculated deputy, asked the butch fisher-girl.

“You know,” Skylar explained, holding out her hands to their full wingspan. “About this big, dorsal fins, huge teeth.”

“Skylar,” Staci said in a slow voice, as if talking to an idiot. “There aren't any sharks in Montana.”

“I know,” Skylar shot back. “They're Demonfish.”

“Children, children.” Joseph held up his hands, forestalling their argument. “We're getting away from the important thing here. Me.”

Deputy Rook idly wondered if the buffet table sporks graciously given out for the macaroni salad would make a good enough weapon to stab Joseph. Before they could act on that train of thought, an old, bearded man in an apron jogged into the middle of the crowd, shouting unintelligible madness.

“Mphyadn, Shawdamnh Birthday,” the seemingly crazed man said. “Hadph, doart cake mera fer lpod.”

“My child, do have peanut butter in your mouth?” Joseph offered the man a glass of wine. “You sound like you could use a drink.”

“No Padfd Btha.” The man shook his head, but took the glass from the Father and downed it all in one quick throw. “Baday cake Tephda, Aldkh?”

“Err,” Whitehorse broke in, seeing as none of the cult members (or their leaders) could understand this man. “Chad here's saying that for his gift, he made a birthday cake for you. He was asking if he could clear off some space to bring it out.”

“Of course, my child!” Joseph said. “But leave the macaroni, all my children seem to be enjoying it.”

Chad looked disbelievingly at the Father as a cry of “Your macaroni sucks!” came from the crowd, but nodded and went to his truck where he retrieved the cake, made some space on the table near Joseph, and set it down.

“Quite an...” Joseph looked at the giant meatball in front of him. “...Interesting-looking birthday cake.”

“Mera o Mtabaffth,” Chad explained.

Wordlessly, Joseph turned to the Sheriff.

“It's more of a meatloaf,” Whitehorse said. “Chad's a world-class BBQ chef. It makes more sense than him actually baking a cake.”

“I see.” Joseph nodded, carefully cutting a small piece of the giant meatball and eating it. After a couple moments of chewing, his eyes lit up and he took a bigger piece. “This is actually quite good! What kind of meat is this?”

Chad smiled and then said, in perfectly understandable and unaccented English, “Bull testicles.”

The Father stopped chewing, and audibly gulped. He set his tableware to the side and nodded. “Thank you, my child. I think I'll save the rest for all my guests.” “Oh wow, you sure?!” a man in aviators and a flannel vest pushed his way forwards before grabbing a literal handful of the cake. “Look, Kim! They got testies!”

“...Great job, honey.” A pregnant Asian woman congratulated him from the gaggle of guests as she hung her head in shame.

The Father watched on in fascinated horror behind his glasses as the man savagely ate the handful of testicles with an “Om nom nom!”

“Is it really that good?” one of the Project at Eden's Gate followers wondered aloud.

“It must be, look at him go,” another said, pointing at the man filling his cheeks with testicles. “Chad is a world-class BBQ chef, after all.

“Hey, yeah, let’s go try some.” And so, the entire crowd of guests meandered their way forward and made quick work of the testicle cake.

“Oh my,” Joseph said drolly. “I wish my macaroni salad would go as quickly.”

The worshipers looked away from the Father. A cry of “Your macaroni sucks!” came from somewhere in the crowd.

“Hey man, it's like, nature.” Sharky Boshaw, Hope County's resident firebug, said, spraying bull testicle everywhere as he did so. “You can't stop nature. Everyone wants to get some balls in their mouth.”

“Young man,” Joseph preached, gesturing towards where his siblings stood. “Of course, you can go against nature. Why, look at my siblings.”

Turning, Joseph only saw Jacob there, with a disassembled gun in his lap.

“Where did John and Faith go?” Joseph asked his brother. Jacob grunted and motioned towards the table with his head. Turning, the Father came to the sight of his youngest brother and sister stuffing their face with testicles. Looking at his siblings voraciously eating the balls, Joseph could only come to agreement with the young man in front of him. “Nature is truly a frightening thing.”

“Yeah, man. Anyways, happy B-day,” Sharky said, before digging in his pocket and tossing the Father a lighter. “That's a favorite of mine, real sentimental value.”

The Father examined the bright blue plastic lighter. “It's a Zippo.” “Good brand,” Sharky agreed with a nod.

“It has a 99-cent sticker on it,” The Father argued, before spinning the striker. “And it's empty.”

“Real sentimental value.”

Joseph set down the lighter in the “trash” pile next to John's gift. “Thank you, my child.”

“Oh yeah! Sharky kills it again!” The pyro pumped his fist. “Beat that, po-po!”

Sighing, Deputy Rook rose to bring their gift to the so-called prophet.

“Oh, the Lamb of God!” Joseph rose from his chair and held out his hand. “Wait, wait!”

The Father grabbed the left shoulder of his suit coat with his right hand, and in one fluid movement, ripped off his whole suit top and dress shirt and threw it to the side, revealing his tattoos to the world. He looked over his glasses at Deputy Rook and held his arms towards them, motioning for them to 'come hither'. “Come, my child.”

The Deputy's whole dumb eyeball mask rolled. They woodenly marched forward and reached into their jacket and dropped, into the Father's outstretched hands, a remote bomb. On it was a sticky note that read, ‘Not every problem can be solved with a bullet. This isn't a bullet.’

Suddenly, everyone was pointing weapons at each other.

“PUT THE GUN DOWN!” John was yelling at Sharky as he pushed his gun against his forehead.

“YOU FUCKING PUT THE GUN DOWN!” Hurk yelled back as he pushed his rocket launcher against John's liver.

“YOU AREN'T GOING TO FUCKING DO IT!” Faith shouted as she rapidly moved her shotgun between them.

Deputy Rook, meanwhile, rolled the detonator between their palms.

Joseph sighed and set the gift down in the trash pile. “Peace, children, peace.”

“Joseph,” Jacob grunted. “You're sitting next to a bomb. Peace is a little out of the picture.”

“Now, brother,” Joseph said placatingly, pulling out a silver stopwatch and checking the time. “Let's wait until we get the last gift.”

“What last gift?” Jacob hissed at his brother, who turned his head skyward.

“That.” A whistling was heard in the distance. Then, Joseph's church exploded in a shower of wood, sawdust and moonflowers. The kinetic energy from the blast sent everyone except Joseph, who was standing in just the right spot, hurtling to the ground, ears ringing.

The Father walked up to the object jutting out from his now destroyed church, and lay his hand upon its cool, metal surface.

Jacob was the first of those not blessed by (a dark) God to recover. He looked up at his brother to see him stroking an undetonated ICBM. On it was Cyrillic characters that he recognized; Russian. He only knew a brief smattering, so it took him a moment to translate what it said, but when he did, he could only mutter, “Crazy bastard.”

On the missile it read, Happy Birthday, Joseph – God.

Smiling, Joseph meet his older brother's eyes. “It is all as foreseen.”

Then the world was covered in cleansing fire.

Fin

#far cry 5 #long post #fc5 #far cry 5 fic #joseph seed #john seed #jacob seed #faith seed #far cry #deputy rook #eden's gate #hope county #behold my boyfriend's work and despair

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bigsoftmarshmallow · 5 months ago

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One of My Beloved OCs/Self Inserts

Doc - Rei Nakatomi, the My Hero Academia ‘self-insert’ who is more her own character by now.

QUIRK: Biokinesis (She can manipulate anything living -such as plants/animals/humans/organic material that is alive)

DRAWBACKS: She can pass out if done too much (length of time varies, it can take weeks at the most severe), requires living material to work to lessen drawbacks (plants are preferred, but can use living creatures)

Is never seen without her iconic coat (A mixture of a doctor’s long coat and a lab coat, made with plants when Kawii was young and still new to her own quirk). Her coat has 2 forms, as she can manipulate it with her own quirk: A normal coat with long sleeves that goes down to her knees for when she is out normally/working, or a sleeveless trench coat with a hood when she’s out with ‘special’ work, with a mask to cover her face (mask has a green plus sign). Usually has her hair up in a messy/neat bun, depending on where she is working that day (Messy for league work, neat for clinic work). Avoids wearing clothes that show a lot of skin unless at home, so her usual look in public is long business pants, heels, sleeveless turtleneck, and her coat. When dealing with Overhaul, gloves and surgical mask is applied. Sometimes wears glasses to add to the ‘look’ of being a doctor, especially if meeting a new client. She doesn’t wear jewelry normally, unless given by Kawii.

Doc is a stern, more serious woman. Distrusting of most, if not all, of humanity, except those she is already associated with. Kawii, her beloved younger sister, is the only one who gets to enjoy the full unedited form of in-private Doc, who is a gentle, kind woman who only wants to live life the way she wishes and provide for her beloved family. Otherwise, they meet her public form, who is a very blunt, almost cruel woman who cares only for reward and money, if they can be bribed to assist with anything in the first place. She runs her clinic with an iron fist, or at least that's how most see it. Her pricings for any modifications are near extortion, villains willing to pay her prices however are never disappointed. However, villains are not the only ones who she takes as clients. Any and all who come into her clinic are welcomed, and depending on who they are, they are gifted a different side to the ‘legendary’ doc. Civilians get a deadpan Doc, who states their prices (far cheaper than most doctors) and gives them a full work up. Children and animals are given more kindness, usually given assistance without payment required. Vigilantes are given what she is given, the friendlier they are, the more polite she is. Heroes… may not leave alive, depending on how close they are to Kawii and what they came in for.

Doc is Demi, both in romance and in sexuality. She has to be able to trust someone fully and completely before she would ever allow such emotions to take hold. Due to the trauma she has dealt with in her youth, she truly cannot see herself trusting anyone outside of her family. If she did, however, Romance with Doc would be a very wonderful thing. She would work tirelessly to ensure that her partner would be well taken care of and they got everything they desired. Doc is a very loyal partner, a poly relationship would not be best for her. Once someone is her’s, they are HERS. She does not share. Marriage would be a long drawn out process, as she is not the type to marry quickly. It would take a few years, perhaps even a decade, of being in the relationship to get her to consider actually getting married. Seeing as she is more on the villainous side, you would think she wouldn't want a wedding and it would be a marriage in-spirit only… However, deep inside, Doc would enjoy an actual wedding, with the legalities included. Children would be a very hard sell to Doc, as she does not want them cursed with her quirk nor have to go through what she did. It would take years of trust and communications to even get a serious talk with her about having children. Even then, it’s more than likely a lost cause… for biological children. Adopted children however are much easier to convince Doc to take care of, especially if they are downtrodden or come from bad homes. The law would not have a chance to stop a Doc from saving a child. She would be an awkward mother at first, however she would soon get into the swing of things. Children raised by doc would be stubborn, proud, and extremely intelligent.

I got the idea of her from reading a fantastic work called 'The Greatest Healer in the World" by Mai_Beyblader, which you can read here!

My beloved sibling did art of Doc and I love them so much for it:

#mallowresponse #mallowoc #I love Doc so much #I daydream about her daily #She is a rolemodel #Well #not really #She kinda unalives people #But shes loyal and works hard in her own clinic!#girlboss gaslight gatekeep

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bretthowden · 6 years ago

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hi il your gifs! can you give a tutorial??

Wow thanks so much! 💖💖Under the read more, I managed to put together a gif tutorial that I (hope) makes sense. Let me know if you have any questions. I rambled a lot in this and wrote most of it at like 1:30 in the morning, so apologies in advance if it gets weird lmao.

Keep in mind, I have been using photoshop for years, but I really have only been making gifs for like, 8 months and I still think I can improve in soooo many ways. But, that being said we all gotta start somewhere!

Let’s make a gif!

Alright, y’all. Let’s make a fucking gif. You will need:

Photoshop. Kind of a given lol. I use Photoshop CC 2018 and I pay 9.99 a month for the photoshop/lightroom package that you can get online from Adobe. I used to use a downloaded version that I found on tumblr for the longest time as well. So if you don’t want to pay monthly, there are free versions out there that work. Just download at your own risk!

A basic knowledge of photoshop. In this tutorial, I’m just gonna assume you have used photoshop before and know how to use its basic features. If not, I’d recommend finding some beginner photoshop tutorials to help you out! Also you can totally feel free to shoot me any questions if you need me to clarify anything, and I’ll do my best to answer them!

Patience and practice. Making gifs can be frustrating and tedious sometimes. If you don’t love what you’re making or aren’t having fun with it, it can be really difficult. I literally love making gifs for some weird reason, which is really the number one reason why I make them. Also, remember that every gif isn’t gonna come out perfect. I make so many gifs and then look back and think ugh that coloring was awful wtf was I thinking?? But it’s important to keep practicing and keep at it because that’s how you’re gonna get better!

Alrightyyyyy let’s get started!

STEP ONE: Download your video. You’re gonna need the video of whatever you’re trying to gif saved to your computer. If you’re giffing a video from youtube/social media or something, there are a bunch of different websites out there that will download videos for you. However, I’m a fucking weirdo and usually just screen record whatever I want to gif because I just think it’s easier. I use Quicktime to screen record which is included on Macs!

We’re gonna be making a gif of my angel rookie Brett Howden for this tutorial. I just screen recorded his postgame video that I wanted to use and saved it in 1080p.

[PRO TIP: Keep in mind, if you want your gifs to look nice and HQ, it starts with a high quality video, and that means, using videos that are 1080p. I very rarely will gif anything in 720p, unless it’s something I really really want to gif, and I def won’t use anything below 720p because it just looks really low quality no matter how much you try to edit it, imo.]

STEP TWO: Open photoshop and go to file -> import -> video frames to layer and this window will pop up

These are the settings I use. I choose selected range only so that it will only select what I want it to, and not the whole video. I also limit to every 2 frames because for the most part, using every frame is unnecessary. See those little toggle icons at the bottom of the screen that I’ve circled in red? Drag those around to select what part of the video you want to gif. Then click ok.

Here’s what you’ll get once you hit ok.

As you can see, your timeline with all your frames are on the bottom. On the right are all the layers!

STEP THREE: Select all the frames, and set your frame delay. The frame delay basically just controls how fast or slow your gif is gonna move.

Select all the frames and click on the bottom of one of the frames (where i’ve awkwardly circled in red) and you should get the dropdown menu shown above. Click other. I almost always choose 0.07 for my delay because it’s not too fast and not too slow and that’s how we want our gifs to look, right? 0.07 is a good starting point and you can always adjust slightly if need be. I wouldn’t recommend going below 0.05 because it’ll look way too fast.

STEP FOUR: Convert that shit. We’re gonna convert to a video timeline by clicking the button in the lefthand corner of your timeline window. I’ve circled it in red. Make sure all your frames are still selected!

Then we’re gonna convert the layers for smart filters. This makes it easy to edit and color the gif because it’ll basically condense all the layers into one. Select all your layers and go to filter -> convert for smart filters. Bam, converted.

STEP FIVE: Crop and resize your gif!

Tumblr has specific dimension sizes that are pretty important when cropping your gifs, so you’ll have to decide what kind of gifset you’re making. If you’re making a gifset with just one gif across (example), the width needs to be 540px. If you’re making a gifset with two gifs across (example), the width needs to be 268px. The height doesn’t matter and can be whatever ya want!

For this gif of Brett I’m going to be cropping it to 540x270 (my personal standard gif size that I use for gifsets with one gif across). After that, go to image -> image size and adjust the width and height to 540x270.

After all that crap, we’ve now got a very basic, unedited gif!

This gif looks okaaay, but looks kinda flat and plain and dull. Which brings us to……

STEP FIVE: The most important step, sharpening and coloring.

To sharpen your gif, go to filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen

I use the same settings as everyone on this website which is this:

This is what the gif looks like now. Brett is looking SHARP.

Sharpening is so important and it’s literally the best like look at how much better this gif looks already!! But we still gotta color it.

Coloring is a different ballgame than sharpening. Everyone has their own preferences on how to color and what they want their gifs to look like. There’s no right or wrong way to do it imo, as long as you like the way they look! Some people like really bright, vibrant gifs with whites so bright they’ll blind ya, and some like gifs with more muted colors. My personal preference depends on what I’m giffing and the lighting. If you look through my gifs you’ll see that my coloring changes depending on if it’s an on-ice video, a locker room interview or something else.

When I first started making gifs, I downloaded different psds from tumblr, which are basically just colorings you can download and use on your gifs. They’re a really great starting point if you have no idea what you’re doing and also just super convenient. A quick google search “tumblr psds” “tumblr photoshop resources” or even just searching “psds” on tumblr, will give you tons of stuff to choose from.

Anyway, if you’re not gonna use a premade psd, the two biggest settings that I use to color (and as a beginner they’re really the only settings you need to use) are brightness/contrast and selective coloring.

First, we’ll add some contrast. Go to layer -> new adjustment layer -> brightness/contrast. For the most part, my brightness/contrast settings stay the same and look like this:

My contrast almost always is set to 60. I’m all about high contrast in my gifs. My brightness setting is set to 0 in this gif because it’s already bright enough (just look at the light reflecting off Brett’s forehead lmao) Oftentimes I’ll set the brightness to 10 or 11 if the gif seems too dull or dark, but I usually won’t go higher than that. Just play with the setting until it seems right to you!

This is what it looks like now:

Looks good! But it still looks pretty yellow and Brett’s face is still too bright. This is where selective coloring comes in. Selective coloring basically helps you enhance or change specific colors in your gifs. It comes in handy a lot with videos that have shitty or weird lighting (looking at you, Rangers video department).

Go to layer -> new adjustment layer -> selective coloring. Like I said before, every gif is different so there’s no one specific way to set your selective coloring settings. My biggest thing with selective coloring is making sure the subject doesn’t look too yellow/red and enhancing the darker colors to create more depth/contrast. Play around with the colors until you like what you see!

And this gif is done! Brett looks beautiful and so does this gif. But we have one final step

STEP SIX: Save your gif.

To save your gif go to file -> export -> save for web (legacy) and this window will show up.

For your gif to work on tumblr the file needs to be under 3M otherwise when you post it, your gif will be frozen and won’t move and uh, that’s not ideal. The lower left hand corner will show you how large your gif is. Mine is 2.817M so we’re good.

Finally, please, please PLEASE make sure your looping options (found in the lower righthand corner) are set to forever.

If you don’t have your gif set to loop forever it literally will stop moving, so it’s real important you remember to check that it’s set to loop forever. One time I forgot to do that and now there’s a dumb gifset of Nolan Patrick that only loops once and then freezes and I didn’t notice it until it already got a bunch of notes and it’s just out there on fucking tumblr dot com and it drives me crazy and makes me so mad that I forgot to loop it. So don’t be like me and remember to loop your gifs! lol.

Anyway that’s the tutorial! I hope this helped! Again, sorry it’s so long and full of rambles. Remember you can ask me ANY questions you may have and I’ll do my best to help!

#asks #anonymous #gif tutorial #photoshop tutorial #i really hope this helped!#i probably rambled too much #long post

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whatifexo · 7 years ago

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Goodbye - Scenario Dump

Hello, everyone~ This is quite possibly the last thing I’m going to post on this blog. It’s a dump of three unfinished scenarios I wasn’t able to finish in the past 2 years. As you all probably saw coming, I can no longer find the motivation to continue updating this blog and writing on a daily basis. I could write a whole novel on why I’ve decided to leave, but I’ll keep it short: Life changes and so do we. These last 3-4 years with you all have been almost surreal. From your kind messages to our crazy drabble games, I really felt welcomed as a writer and contributor to the fandom. Thank you so much for sharing this creative space with me. I will miss you all dearly. For those who are willing to stick around with me a little longer, I’m actually way more active on this blog! I’m also working on writing a little fic there, and after it’s posted, we’ll see if I do more. But for now, that’s where you can find me.

And now, for the word vomit you’ve all been waiting for under the cut. These are unedited and unfinished so pls forgive me if you find errors, lol. Thank you, everyone! See you on the flip!

Red Carpet - Jaebum

New Year ’s Eve.

You’ve grown used to spending it with the familiar waft of cookies and hot chocolate, the crinkle of wrapping paper, and carols softly playing on the radio. This year, you spend the last night of the year alone, ironically so amidst the energetic chaos flying about backstage. At some point, you’d escaped the insistent hands of your stylists and bowed past several of your seniors, never lifting your head to make eye contact. Utmost respect meant quick greetings. No questions asked. No suspicions. No one took notice when you slipped out the back exit and ascended up the flight of stairs leading into the rooftop.

Nausea hits you as soon as you peer over the edge and spot the red carpet below, still bustling with activity. The flashes from the paparazzi are blinding even from far away. Around them, fans crowd behind the barricades, holding up signs and gifts. A wall of security stands guard at the sidelines. Sleek, black vans with tinted windows roll slowly down the street, dropping off the stars of the night. Just hours ago, you were one of the many idols who walked down that glamorous path.

Your stomach flips at the memory of the event.

There was an overwhelming response to your arrival, even more so when your name made headlines after your iconic debut stage.

______,The Rising Star. Korea’s Next BoA. The Nation’s Pride.

Crippling pressure weighed on you as soon as you first touched limelight. Your fans rapidly accumulated. Your albums sold out in mere days. You received offers for commercials and acting roles, you were invited to guest on entertainment shows. Your company’s sales soared, and in turn, they prioritized your promotions over your label mates’. After all of this, tonight, on the red carpet, they had asked you how you felt.

You now chuckle sadistically to yourself, grabbing onto the metal railing and hardly feeling the cold there.

They think you’re ecstatic. Absolutely thrilled and honored to be here amongst the leading celebrities of the country, ending the year with trophies and explosive performances. Tonight, the world expects you to live up to their expectations.

How can you possibly fulfill these demands when your stomach is in knots and your throat is chocked with anxiety?

Dropping your hands from the railing, you step back with wobbling knees. Your dress suddenly feels tight around your body, locking you in a wicked grip. The worst of your fears race through your head.

What if you don’t deserve all of this attention after all? What if you break on stage? What if your voice falters and cracks in the middle of your performance? What if your fans are disgusted by your self-composed songs?

If they hate it…

The shock of this thought shoots through your bones like lightning, and you stumble back, your heel snagging in your long dress. You yelp in surprise as your body loses balance and falls backward, colliding with a broad and solid chest.

A pair of gentle hands catches you by the shoulders.

“Breathe, sweetheart.”

The voice is deep and quiet. There’s familiarity in the man’s tone, as if you’d heard it before in a passing conversation. Your guard raises, and you pull away to face the stranger who you assume to be a passing senior or staff member.

“I’m sorry. I’ll head back in-“

“I don’t think taking a few breaths calls for an apology.”

Im Jaebum, leader of Got7, stares back at you inquisitively with a raised brow.

Your heart stutters in your chest. The last time you’d seen him, it had been in the dressing room hours ago, when he’d been sitting in front of the mirror having his hair styled. You were passing by in the hall and your eyes met briefly through your reflection on the glass. He looked startled, smiling politely before blushing by the tips of his ears. The staff had abruptly the door to his dressing room before you could react.

In contrast to then, the Jaebum in front of you now no longer seems so shy. Dark eyeliner accentuates his eyes, adding a heavy undertone to his gaze that warms your insides. You panic slightly under the weight of his undivided attention, eyes unnervingly focused and…concerned?

Surely, you must be wrong.

“If you’re questioning my motives, then yes, I actually did follow you up here,” Jaebum’s lips curve into a smile. Your face warms in response. “You looked sick and pale, and I know that look all too well.”

“You do?” you blurt out, eyes widening at yourself. You never do this. Never respond to your elders informally or entertain colleagues who made their advances. In revealing something more than your stage persona, you were afraid of exposing your vulnerabilities. So you became a shell. Bathed in the spotlight, but never letting anyone touch your core.

Jaebum has thrown all of your practice out the window.

“I remember when I felt that way,” Jaebum nods, as if confirming something in your eyes. He’s reading you as easily as an instruction manual, and you can’t bring yourself to look away. “I felt something like it after Jinyoung and I stopped promoting as JJ Project.”

Jaebum’s gaze softens. He slides past you to look over the railing where the activities of the red carpet event have begun to dwindle. You watch his back and taut shoulders for a moment, hesitating. He could be up to something. Leading you to let down your guard so he can tease and torture you about it later.

You’ve heard stories during your training period. How seniors sometimes pressured rookie artists, manipulating the rules of seniority in order to bully the ones on the lowest of tiers. The end goal was to drive the rookies to quit, weeding out the competition so the ones at the top may stay there. It was a sick, twisted game played by a select few, but still a possibility in this line of business.

But to be played by Im Jaebum?

You shake your head.

He’s better than this. You know it with certainty. Those eyes that met with yours in the mirror held the truth, and somehow, you know you can trust him.

Joining him to stand by the railing, you watch Jaebum examine his hands, calloused and stretched on the back of his palms. With a start, you remember watching an interview of Got7 weeks ago while you were on standby in the waiting room. Jaebum recounted a story of his stray cats in the dorm, each who had bizarre, yet strangely endearing personalities.

You find yourself smiling before he even begins to speak.

“I think my whole world fell apart and rebuilt itself when I re-debuted with the boys.” he folds his hands, toying with his fingers in awkward movements. “I hated them for a time just because they were new and inexperienced. But God, did they grow on me fast. I wanted to show off as their senior, but who was I kidding? I was still shitting my pants before our debut stage.”

You laugh out loud at this, and Jaebum turns to you, mirth in his eyes despite his unfortunate story.

“You know why they call me out for being so hyperactive out there?” he jerks his head to the side, referring to an imaginary audience.

You shake your head, and he sighs softly.

“Because I don’t think I’ll ever forget the energy of my first stage. As in, my first genuine stage. I was happy. I didn’t care about what others might think of me in that moment or afterwards. I was out there losing myself in my craft, and that’s the only thing I hold on to when I perform. That should be your only concern tonight too.”

His eyes dart over to the red carpet briefly, and you shiver, both from the chill of the night and the implication of his words.

“How did you know?” you stare up at him, wondering. In a matter of minutes, he’d figured you out. Related with your emotions and churning thoughts. Though all he did was talk about himself, you don’t think this is really about him. Not completely. Otherwise, he would have approached this conversation with much more arrogance.

No, that’s not it.

He’s comforting you.

The realization has your pulse quickening.

“You can say I know from experience.” Jaebum grins with a degree of shyness, as if reading into your thoughts.

You hold his gaze for a few beats. The familiar flush on his ears has returned, but his eyes are unwavering. For the first time tonight, you let out an unlabored breath. Your heart is still running a marathon, but this time, in a good way. Jaebum is still watching you as you let your eyes flutter shut.

“Thank you.”

“For what? The pleasure is mine.”

There’s mischief laced in Jaebum’s voice.

You crack an eye open.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know.” Jaebum says incredulously, lips quirking into a smile. “I’m actually one of your biggest fans.”

The world freezes for a second.

The distant camera flashes halt to a stop, the sound of screaming fans dim to an acute noise, and the cold air lifts from your skin, warming your body from inside out. Your vision blurs from the intoxication of Jaebum’s confession. His timid smile is all you can see.

“Why me?” you ask more to yourself than to Jaebum, recalling all the times you’ve quietly watched him with awe from behind the scenes, the charismatic leader of his team. Someone as occupied and charming as he wouldn’t have time to admire a rookie idol like you.

“Why not you?” Jaebum challenges, raising a brow.

“Because…” you struggle to reason with him. You’re not up to par with him. He’s several years your senior. You have not yet shown your full potential. “…because I’m me.”

“You’re being unfair, _______.” Jaebum chuckles, though his tone is bitter. “I didn’t come up here to get rejected.”

Your eyes shoot up to his in alarm.

“I wasn’t-“

“Rejecting me? I know, it’s hard not to.”

You barely manage to keep yourself from cringing.

Jaebum, on the other hand, completely fails to hide his horror. Even in the dark, the dim glow of the moon is enough to expose his flushed cheeks.

Vicissitude - Part 3 (Chanyeol)

“Care to tell me why you haven’t been to work for the past three days?”

Kyungsoo is scary.

He entered the kitchen twenty minutes ago without saying a word, silently tiptoeing around you and your laptop at the table to brew some coffee. You’d almost forgotten he was there until he cleared his throat, paused for a solid few seconds, then dropped the big question.

You were hoping he wouldn’t notice.

But his low profile tendencies have a reason behind it, which is being highly aware of his surroundings and noticing changes. Which you’ve clearly made.

You’re actually doing your homework.

A lot of it.

Along with other things.

“Oh, you know,” you say over the whirring of the coffee machine. “Places to be. People to meet.”

“In the middle of nowhere.”

You never knew Kyungsoo had so much sass in him. The quiet, deadly kind of sass that catches you off guard because he’s being so painfully casual for someone who’s about to pry for information.

And his back is still turned on you.

“I still haven’t gotten my paycheck, by the way.” you’re stalling, which is painfully obvious. “I’m going on strike.”

Kyungsoo finally shows his face after pressing a button on the coffee machine, the whirring immediately subsiding after he lifts the mug from the base of the machine. He studies you quietly without an ounce of emotion on his face, and you try to mimic the same neutral expression but you know you just probably look like you’re constipated.

“Paychecks come out every two weeks. And considering that you’ve also skipped out on the past few days…..” he doesn’t finish knowing that you understand the deal here.

No work, no pay.

You sigh, acknowledging defeat and turning back to your laptop to finish up that government paper you’re only halfway finished with because you didn’t actually start writing it until three days ago. Somewhere along the line, you’ve turned writing papers into a form of distraction.

In actuality, you hate writing. But it gives you something to do and think about other than the lingering touch of Yixing’s lips and the thin layer of guilt there that you’re still trying to figure out.

As usual, forgetting things isn’t as easy as it seems.

“Please tell me you’re going to go away soon.” you say without looking up from your laptop, because you know very well that Kyungsoo is still standing there with his coffee and he hasn’t shown any sign of movement.

He’s also making you think of things again which is bad. Very bad.

“I’m waiting.”

He wants answers.

He’s been hanging out with Baekhyun too much. He’s slowly getting just as annoying. And by annoying you mean being able to read right through you even with the façade you’re showing.

Are you really that readable?

“Then keep waiting.” you pull down your laptop screen and grab for your coat behind your chair, and only now does Kyungsoo set down his coffee in mild surprise.

“Where are you going?”

He sounds like your mom whenever you ask her if you can hang with some friends she doesn’t recognize the names of at any time past nine in the evening.

Mind you, it’s only three in the afternoon right now. Therefore, Kyungsoo can’t call you out on this.

“On a walk.” you offer him a salute, which he doesn’t take very well as he scrunches his brows in thought back at you.

Amazing how much character development he can show within only a week or so after meeting him for the first time. There’s also the fact that you’ve somewhat taken a liking to him during your time at the lounge whenever you’d exchange random pleasantries in between working breaks.

Or how he randomly takes care of the people around him without much thought through simple things. Such as waking Baekhyun up every morning without yelling at him about his alarm that wakes just about everyone in the cabin except for him. And how he’ll diligently listen to Chanyeol’s guitar playing and actually give feedback unlike Jongin who merely offers a nod of approval whenever Chanyeol asks for his opinion.

The way he’d wash Yixing’s favorite purple hoodie every night and run it through the dryer because that’s how often that boy wears it.

Now he’s trying to ease off some of the burden from you too.

Except this isn’t his fight.

And he must realize it too with the way he’s fallen silent again.

That is, until you reach the front door and he calls out for you right before you slip outside into the freezing temperatures. You can’t help but stop and wait for his word of advice.

“If you can’t tell me, tell someone who deserves to hear it.”

~~~

Your little ‘walk’ lasts about ten minutes tops until you decide to turn right around and come back to the comfort of the fireplace indoors. It must be below zero degrees today, with the fog making it nearly impossible to spot anything more than a foot away from you.

You’d only gone out about half a mile or so, but twenty minutes later you’re still walking and slowly beginning to panic as time continues to stretch and you fail to spot the cabin or the others that should be nearby.

Your vicinity isn’t exactly at its best given the circumstances.

To add on to the already dangerous situation, you hadn’t brought your cell phone with you either.

Brilliant, _________, just brilliant.

You wanted to drift far away from your problems but you didn’t actually want to be this far away.

Not even a sign of civilization.

You’ve never hated yourself more than you do now.

Another set of time passes, you have no idea how much, but by then your nose is frozen and you’re certain you’re only minutes away from getting frostbite on your toes. Along with that, you’re also left with some thinking time, and said thinking time encompasses just about everything odd and dramatic that has occurred throughout the course of this trip and what exactly you need to do to survive this and finally untangle the tangled affairs of your heart.

And just when you think you might die without clearing up your ongoing issues, salvation comes.

There’s a guy wearing a bright orange jacket walking in the opposite direction as you, and at first you think it’s Taemin because you’re very familiar with that jacket.

Though when you yell out and frantically flail your hands to catch his attention, you realize two things.

One, the guy is certainly not Taemin. His shoulders are too broad to be Taemin and he’s also a few inches taller than Taemin.

Two, Kyungsoo’s words of wisdom just slapped you in the face.

“_______? Are you okay? What are you doing out here? God, you’re freezing.”

There are hands on your cheeks. Warm ones. Warm hands in the middle of Arctic weather. And if you close your eyes long enough, you can almost picture home.

“Chanyeol, I’m cold.”

His hands slip from your cheeks and you hear the unzipping of his jacket, crunching of the snow, and then there’s fabric being wrapped around your neck.

You open your eyes, instantly regretting it after finding Chanyeol standing closer than before. While he’s focused on burrowing you underneath his scarf, you take in the bits of snow nestled in his bright hair and the urgency in his movements.

The deep line of worry across his forehead.

You don’t know what to make of this. You don’t know what to make of anything.

All you know is that you have to tell him something.

Anything.

“Let’s get you back inside.”

He’s tugging at your arm, and when you don’t respond, his hold slips to your wrist and he forces you to stumble after him.

He’s not asking any questions.

Which worries you more than the cold piercing into your skin.

“Chanyeol.”

“We’ve got about fifteen minutes before you start developing frost bite, but I don’t think we’re too far from the cabin. We’ll make it.”

That all sounds great and relieving but it’s not exactly why you called him in the first place.

“Chanyeol.”

“We should really pick up the pace, though. Just in case I’m wrong about where we are and we both end up-“

“Yeol.”

That seems to quiet him.

He slows his pace but doesn’t stop. You still consider it a small victory as his ears flare a hint of pink at his newly birthed nickname, and you feel yourself flush too. You aren’t concerned with that because your whole face is too frozen to show a hint of color anymore.

It’s just the embarrassed feeling that lingers.

That’s not stopping you.

You need to say this before you get back to the cabin and the magic of being alone and somewhat courageous out here begins to wear off.

“In sophomore year, my favorite instrument was the guitar.” you feel his grip on your wrist loosen which means he’s finally listening. You sniff and breathe out, watching your breathe puff out in a white cloud before disappearing into the fog surrounding the two of you like a heavy cloak. “And then I went out with Yixing.”

Chanyeol stops so suddenly you nearly walk straight into him.

He turns to face you, and as soon as he does you launch into an unpracticed narration of a story you haven’t told in a while and count down the minutes you have left before you really need to book it back indoors and possibly hide forever.

“I was ignorant to music until I heard him one day in the practice room, strumming some random song I wasn’t familiar with, and I don’t know why I stayed but I did until the very end of my lunch period and he looked up past the glass on the door straight into my eyes after the song ended. I knew I loved him the moment he sang to me that same song in front of the whole student council.”

Chanyeol’s eyes have gotten so wide his whole pupils are showing.

“People said things, of course. We broke the sacrilegious rule of seniors exclusively dating seniors. But that didn’t matter. I didn’t care as long as we were together. What really mattered was that he scored a scholarship in Europe and he was bound to leave the day after his graduation.”

You’ve started shaking and it isn’t from the cold.

Chanyeol reaches out towards your shivering fingers, hesitates, then stuffs his awkward hands in his pockets as a final resolution, and you mirror his position as you bite back tears.

“He gave me a note through his music player. Some sort of voice note on why he didn’t want to leave. But you see, I knew he had to. I wasn’t worth a promising future music career. There was so much waiting for him over there, but with me, he’d forever be stuck over here. I wanted to be selfish and that thought scared me.”

You’re almost done here. It’s obvious the ending sounds near and Chanyeol knows it too. He’s looking at you as if the world is falling. You’re glad the crisp, cruel air dries your eyes and snatches any chances of tears trickling down.

“The last thing I heard from him was that he loved me. And the last thing I told him was goodbye.”

There’s a hole in this story.

Not a fairytale ending or a solution, but an important puzzle piece that you’ve missed. One that’s been there all along, hidden, unknown until you heard the gentle strings of the guitar again two years later.

And that single piece throws you off kilter. Rearranging everything else in a whole different picture.

What terrifies you the most is that it’s standing right in front of you.

“Was it, though?” Chanyeol’s voice has gone quiet in a way that you recognize because that’s what people sound like when they’re shattered. “Was it really a goodbye?”

Yixing and Chanyeol are friends.

You weren’t aware of this and from the looks of it, neither was he, which means that Yixing has kept more secrets than you realize and maybe Chanyeol knows more than what you give him credit for.

You want to call it unfair that one day, you’re still stuck trying to get over the image of your first love and then in the next, he’s tugging at your heart again but it’s refusing to follow. Not anymore. There’s a new reason behind the pounding in your chest and you hadn’t expected to identify its source in the middle of nowhere.

Where it’s just you and the boy who’s asking if you’re willing to give the past a second chance.

“I don’t know.”

Chanyeol nods in slow motion, like he’s confirmed something scientifically. His feet are heavy when he turns, his boots driving deep into the snow, and you want to follow him and ask why he’s trying to solve a mystery that you feel is only a misunderstanding.

That would’ve been easier to do if you hadn’t seen him bite his lower lip before shutting you out.

He’s not the only one who’s made a breakthrough.

It doesn’t hit you suddenly, but it settles in as slowly as Chanyeol is trudging away. The image of Yixing trapping you that day against the shelves flashes through your memory, and you faintly remember closing your eyes, feeling tender lips that are certainly not Yixing’s.

You know how his mouth fits against yours already. You’ve always known.

The moment you closed your eyes and imagined someone else was a different story. Nowadays, you wish you never have to close them because there’s only one thing that enters your mind and it has nothing to do with Yixing.

Instead, it has everything to do with his friend, and what it would be like to melt against him.

Today - Jaebum

September 22, 2017

Contrary to what they say in trashy teen magazines, first love doesn’t always begin with a heart fluttering, innocent and graceful encounter. You feel obligated to correct that misleading piece of information. You almost mark it out with your pen, correcting the writer’s mistake, but then you remember that you’re not supposed to be the critic here.

You’re supposed to be searching for inspiration. Finding a subject for your next article. You’ve sat in this God-knows-where cafe for an hour, pouring over a pile of publications, desperate to find something. Blindly reaching for an unborn idea.

“Your stories have become bland.” Mark, your editor and usually kind companion, had delivered an uppercut punch before he even finished reading your last feature article. His blatant criticism shocked you. Not once has he ever complained about your writing. It quickly became a quest to please him again.

“This writing no longer sounds like you. Are you even enjoying this anymore?”

It’s not that you’ve lost interest. It’s just that sometimes, you find yourself holding back.

“Write me something compelling and don’t even think of that promotion until you win me over.”

You didn’t think he was cruel enough to hang the managing editor title over your head. Additionally, he had struck a chord by sneaking in several romance pieces in your resources pile.

You get the hint.

In fairness, there used to be a time when you would eagerly compose romantic writings and hold on to love stories as if they were your own. Your former self embraced romance and took any risk that came your way. That was before he taught you to think twice. He taught you the reality to false beliefs. He taught you everything you know today.

These days, you’ve learned to choose your battles. Today, you find yourself surrendering to the nearly forgotten memories. As you read further down the advice column on first loves, clearly written by a young and inexperienced writer, you’re brought back to the first time you ever gave your heart away.

The very first meeting. When it was nowhere near how the fairytales described it, or how you imagined the love of your life would come to you.

Because the weather is fair, because Mark is telling you to, because you don’t have much choice, you allow yourself to remember.

Just one last time.

~~~

September 21, 2013

The crash happens while you’re attempting to merge lanes.

You swear you made sure to look, not once but thrice, gauging the blurred lights on your side mirror and passing in front of the car that had seemed far away enough. You could say it was because of the rain. You could say that the pressure overcame you, that you were racing against the passing time that refused to wait for you.

A minute ago, you’d been accelerating without fear of the wet roads, pleading that you make it in time for your first internship. A minute later, you’re hearing the screech of metal and your body is being jolted forward. You don’t realize your car has lost control until you feel the wheels under you skidding sideways to a stop, just missing the guard rail, your life quite literally flashing before your eyes in an instant.

You find your hands shaking when you glance up at yourself through the crooked rearview mirror.

Except for your flushed cheeks, there are no signs of injury. No blood. All limbs intact.

The storm of honking behind you brings you back to your senses.

“Are you fucking crazy?”

The driver of the other car is knocking on your window.

Drenched in rain, he has his phone pressed against his ear, probably calling for the police. Instead of worry, anger lines his face like the crack of thunderbolt.

His rude shouting somehow dissolves your fear and aggravates you, while a part of you admits that you’re mostly at fault. But your swelled up pride wins out over admitting your faults. The idea of losing even such a trivial and obvious battle as this one is utterly humiliating and embarrassing for you.

Especially since you just made a rookie mistake by trying to rush to work.

At least you’re willing to admit that you’re about to do something incredibly stupid.

Instead of rolling down the window and apologizing profusely or trading insurance information like what you’re generally supposed to do after a crash, you unbuckle your seatbelt and step out into the rain.

The guy is in mid sentence on his phone--something about giving directions and reporting a crash caused by ‘a dumb bitch’--when you slam your door closed and look up at him with blazing eyes.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware that the idea of courtesy died with the beginning of your very existence.” you shout over the roar of the storm, the cars whizzing by, and the driver’s angry conversation over the line.

He stops yelling into his phone for a moment, jaw dropping open at your brazenness. You can see that he’s pissed, absolutely insulted, and you can already tell what kind of response he has in store for you.

“What did you just say to me?”

He steps forward with a threatening glare, puncturing your personal bubble until your back hits the side of your car. From up close, you can tell that he’s young, maybe around the same age as you. The sharp angles on his face create an illusion of older age. You know better than to be fooled, because a proper adult wouldn’t choose to wear ripped jeans on a rainy day or drive at sixty miles in a forty zone. A proper adult wouldn’t stand in the rain long enough just to fight a reckless girl and get their clothes soaked.

You’re aware of all this, yet you’re still fanning the flames.

“It’s shitty enough that I’m late for my internship. But to get hit by a self absorbed asshole? I must’ve murdered a whole town in my past life.”

“Are you kidding?” the guy scoffs, pounding his hand against your car. “I think you’re forgetting who fucking swerved into my lane without even thinking about it!”

“If you care to know, I checked three full times and saw a clear road!”

“Well damn then, let me call an eye doctor for your blind ass while I’m at it!”

“My ‘blind ass’ happened to keep your speeding ass in check!”

“Fuck me, you’re one to talk!”

“I may have lost a very important job opportunity because of you!”

“And because of you, my boss is going to slit my throat once he finds out that I wrecked his company’s car!”

You’re close to throwing fists by the time the police and ambulance arrive. You only break apart when an officer threatens to arrest the both of you if you don’t stop disturbing the peace. This makes no sense to you as the thunderous sky and building traffic are nowhere close to peaceful, but you step back and allow yourself to get examined by the paramedics.

On the other hand, the driver that had hit you is preoccupied with inspecting his car, running his fingers over the dent on his hood somberly as if he’d just lost a precious member of his family. Obviously, he has more concern for his vehicle than an actual person.

“Insolent prick.” you mutter under your breath when he later joins you in the back of the towing truck.

“I heard that.” he hisses back, the driver next to you shifting uncomfortably at your exchange of hostilities.

It takes hours to settle your dispute and walk away as calmly as you can with your car totaled and many dollars to spend. You contact the internship (Mark)

You hadn’t even bothered to learn his name.

#honestly i feel so relieved #bye #exo scenario #got7 scenario

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