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modern-inheritance · 4 months ago

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Something amusing for your day (MIC Short included!)

I've written some heavily spicy interaction between Eragon and Arya before, and while Arya is the more experienced one in that pairing I figured Eragon would have been...eh, I don't want to say 'forcibly taught' some things, but I'm taking a page out of a very long fanfic I found ages ago where Angela absolutely has a field day recounting to Eragon all the things elf-women particularly enjoy in bed when she learns of his feelings for Arya and Eragon just sits through it all red faced and Angela is just fucking cackling because she loves teasing this kid.

Later on, after Eragon does indeed actually put some of the information to use, Arya tries to pry where he learned such things out of him. He keeps saying books, waving it off as stuff he may or may not have heard while in Ellesmera and Du Weldenvarden, but eventually Arya figures it out on her own and shows up at Angela's tent for an interaction that goes a little something like this:

An Odd Sort of Gratitude (Modern Inheritance Short)

Angela finally lowered her finger and closed the book on a brightly colored string. She took her time setting it on the table just so, brushing off the cover, getting it just the right angle she wanted. All while Arya stood with her fists jammed in her combat jacket’s pockets, face continuing to flush red in the low dusk light.

At last, the witch looked up. “Yeeesss?”

Oh, fuck all kinds of duck. That smile. The singsong teasing lilt to the question. She knew exactly why Arya was here.

The elf cleared her throat. “I gathered you were…giving out advice.”

The impish grin spread further on Angela’s dimpled cheeks. “Well, I do tell fortunes, Arya.”

Arya grit her teeth. “Relationship. Advice.”

“I’m sorry, love, but you’re going to have to be a bit more clear.”

No one could make Arya snap quite like Angela. She knew it was all in good fun, but sometimes it felt wildly beyond it.

Even though she had to nearly bend to a damn ninety degree angle, Arya put her palms on the table the herbalist had set up outside her tent and leaned in so that only they were privy to their discussion. “Angela.” Her voice was a quiet, frustrated hiss. “Tell me. Did you give Eragon a detailed lecture on how to sexually satisfy female elf partners?”

Angela tossed back her head of stormy curls and let out a long, bright peel of laughter. It took a moment for her to contain herself, and it was through small pauses filled with ill-contained giggles that the witch braced her elbows on the table and leaned toward the elf. She clasped her hands together to hide the broad smile and lowered her voice. “He seemed to be in need of an education. The poor thing, he must have missed sex ed when tending the fields. I was worried he’d embarrass himself at some point. Brom wasn’t going to teach him, the old codger.”

“Angela, that was highly inappropriate.” Arya growled, trying her best to sound as exasperated and angry as her lowered brows and flaming blush looked. “As Eragon’s bodyguard, I’m going to have to ask you to not do that again.”

The elf lowered her voice again. “As his mate…I’m going to have to thank you.” Angela’s eyes sparkled with renewed mirth. “And if he asks for more…advice…I ask that you most certainly do whatever you did again.” Arya paused. The low rumble in her chest had started, quite against her will. “Just…”

“Oh-ho, I know exactly what that sound means.” Angela put her hands up, elbows still on the table. “Don’t worry. He’s not my type. It is only an exchange of words and concepts, my dear elf.”

“Thank you.” A fresh surge of heat suffused Arya’s face. “Um…. Speaking of.” Angela raised an eyebrow. “Have you…got any tips for the uh…other side. Of the equation?”

The teasing smile was back, bright tips of teeth sparkling beneath cherry lips. “Sorry, I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at, Arya.”

Arya closed her eyes and swore under her breath before opening them again and refusing to meet the witch’s expectant gaze. “Damn it, Angela. Got any tips for how to sexually satisfy a man?”

“Well, why didn’t you just come out and say that! Come on, in the tent. I’m sure you don’t want half the Varden hearing what I’m telling you.” Angela pushed off the table with a broad grin, dusting off her hands with a flourish and wiggling her eyebrows. “It’s best kept a secret, so it’s more impressive.”

Arya couldn’t decide on if she was frightened by that, impressed, or just extremely embarrassed at having to ask. She settled on just another, mumbled, “Thank you.” before she followed Angela into the tent, quickly adding, “No funny business.”

“Oh, sweetheart, you might be my type, but your mum would have my head if I made a move. Spirits know she nearly did when I tried to with her!”

“...I am going to ignore that, and do my best to never think of that again."

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nutzgunray-lvt · 1 year ago

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Hot Seat

It's finally here! I had the plot more or less outlined from the beginning, but writer's block hit me in regards to the ending. I wasn't sure if I wanted Aizawa to realize how much of an asshole he had been up to that point or double down on it, so I decided to leave it open for the most part. I wrote this fic because the scene this was inspired from (the 4th light novel where the teachers have a get together after the School Festival) really pissed me off. They knew damn well that Izuku had trust issues in regards to going to his teachers for help... and did nothing. Only All Might cared, and everyone else just brushed it off.

The School Festival went off without a hitch, but Toshinori wasn't happy.

After enduring two villain attacks less than three months apart, UA's students got to be just that again: students. The school buzzed with an intense energy that seemingly invigorated everyone present, and the first years in particular presented one amazing event after another, but Toshinori wasn't happy.

It didn't make any sense. He should have been happy. School was closed today, as well as the next, letting everyone have a much deserved break. Everyone had a blast visiting the various kiosks, games, and shows. He was slowly but surely getting used to a life of retirement, and he had gotten his teaching license.

So why wasn't he happy?

After everything had been taken down and the students were sent off to bed, Toshinori had been cajoled into staying up with the rest of the teachers for a sort of after-party (as if they hadn't done enough celebrating during the festival). He wasn't in a particularly celebratory mood, but he didn't really have the energy to fight Present Mic's incessant tugging on his arm as he tried heading upstairs to his room.

"It won't be any fun without you!" the younger blonde had pleaded.

As the other teachers made drinks and broke off into small groups, Thirteen seemed to notice his less than cheerful mood. She pulled him into a corner with two non-alcoholic beers to regale him with stories of the latest nature documentary that had just been released. It had actually worked for a while - he and the young Hero both loved nature and she was good company in general, but Toshinori couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. Out of the corner of eye, he could see Aizawa peering over at him in between sips of his own beer.

It made him feel unexpectedly angry. God, just what did he do this time?

Since starting at UA, Toshinori had quickly learned that the young Underground Hero had some sort of bone to pick with him. Efforts to make things right (what had he done wrong?) had proven to be less than fruitful, so Toshinori gave up and decided to settle on a peaceful co-existence with him. After all, it wasn't the first time he hadn't gotten along with a fellow Hero, and it wouldn't be the last. Seeing as how the man had to be blackout drunk to say anything remotely kind to him, Toshinori knew he had to pick his battles.

But that seemed to not be working out anymore.

Now, Present Mic was looking concernedly over at him as well, and he wasn't being subtle about it either. Thirteen had been gushing about a section of the documentary centered around the Eastern Siberian Mountains, and Toshinori tried to be as engaged as much as he could (she had a hellish recovery from the USJ attack, so she sure as hell deserved that much), but the feeling of two additional pairs of eyes on him was making his skin crawl, and he hadn't even touched his drink -

"Yo, All Might!" Present Mic called out from across the common room. "Why are you so quiet all of a sudden? What's with the bad mood?"

That had gotten Cementoss's attention as well. "Is everything alright?" he asked with genuine concern. The gesture was nice, but now everyone was looking over at him.

Great.

"Sorry," he mumbled, running a hand over his worn face. God, he should have just gone to bed. They could deal with one night of him staying out of the party. Now, he had ruined everything -

"Our colleague is dispirited over the incident concerning Midoriya of 1-A," Ectoplasm explained patiently.

As everyone nodded and murmured to one another about this development, Toshinori let the memories of this afternoon wash over him: how Young Midoriya's phone kept going to voicemail, how the older man had been so overcome with worry that something bad had happened to him that he spent a good fifteen minutes in the staff bathroom, barely holding back a panic attack. He had known the green haired boy for a little over a year and half, and he had already held a very special place in the retired teacher's heart. It's why it hurt him when Ectoplasm had told him about the boy's fight with Gentle Criminal and La Brava. He had bested them and got away with little to no injuries, but why didn't his successor tell him what was going on? He wouldn't have been in any trouble. Ectoplasm and Hound Dog were out patrolling for a reason, and they would have taken over without hesitation. They wouldn't have faulted him for deferring to his teachers - Hound Dog told him that.

Why did Young Midoriya never tell anyone anything?

Did he not trust him?

What was he doing wrong as a mentor?

"He's always doing this, shouldering these burdens by himself. It's like he's incapable of reaching out for help…" Toshinori muttered, sighing heavily.

"Hey, are you seriously getting drunk off of this non-alcoholic stuff?" Midnight teased as she took his drink and double checked the label, admittedly looking more troubled than her comment let on.

The older man pinched the bridge of his nose as he closed his eyes. "This is serious, Midnight," he said as patiently as he could. "First Hosu, then Kamino Ward, and now this? Clearly this is a recurring issue with Young Midoriya, no matter how many times we get onto him about it. I'm terrified that this will get him killed."

Aizawa's expression was grave as he shook his head and muttered, "Yeah, and that sounds just like a certain hero we all know, doesn't it?"

And that did it for Toshinori.

He tried to stay calm, he really did. He could hear Nana's steady voice telling him, "Count to ten. Get control of your temper." But something about Aizawa's remark had made him so angry that it overtook the remaining rationality he had been operating on. He had initially been planning on removing himself from the situation entirely and sleeping it off, but protective rage and unresolved tension between the two put the retired hero on the offensive.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he snapped, trying to calm his shaking hands as he shot to his feet.

The common room was deathly quiet now, the tension so heavy it could be cut with a plastic knife. Knowing that the raven haired man would undoubtedly want to have the last word, he preemptively shot a hand up to stop it. "Actually, don't answer that question. I have something that I've been meaning to say for quite a while now."

He began pacing back and forth, trying to count to ten as Nana had always told him to do when his emotions began getting the better of him. As much as Aizawa had infuriated him in the moment (and since the first of school, if he were being honest), the rest of his colleagues didn't deserve to see him lose his temper on them.

"Aizawa, I know that you'll probably never get along with me, and that's something I've grown to realize and accept. But whatever negative feelings you have towards me have nothing to do with Young Midoriya!"

The other teachers looked amongst each other in varying degrees of surprise and uncomfortableness before staring at Aizawa, who for his part, looked unflappable.

"What are you getting at, All Might?"

"We both know what I'm talking about, so don't play ignorant," All Might responded. "You've had a bias against him since the first day of school, placing him last in your Quirk Assessment Test and threatening to expel him in front of his classmates over his -"

"I was trying to be realistic," Aizawa interrupted, setting his beer down. "He can't keep hurting himself every time -"

"What exactly are you doing to remedy that?" Toshinori asked, his voice getting louder. "All I've seen you tell Young Midoriya is for him to figure it out himself! For that matter, that's all you tell the rest of his classmates as well! Young Kaminari risks brain damage every time he misuses his Quirk, and Young Aoyama -"

"They've had their Quirks for well over ten years, Yagi," Aizawa impatiently said, getting to his feet. "If they don't have control over their Quirks by now, why are they even here?"

Midnight raised a placating hand, her eyes darting between the two men.

"You have a point, Yagi," she interjected. "But so does Shota. The kids should have been regularly seeing a Quirk Counselor starting in elementary school. Surely it should have helped."

The retired hero closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He had wanted to keep One For All and Young Midoriya's past Quirklessness a secret for a reason. Not only was it not his place to go around telling everyone, but it had been for his own protection - especially with the League of Villains and All For One actively targeting the school. But as the saying went: the road to hell was paved with good intentions. In his efforts to protect his successor, it seems to have only caused other ultimately unnecessary problems for him in the long run.

Would there ever be a moment where he wasn't failing his boy?

"I understand where you're coming from, Midnight," he slowly started, not exactly sure where to get where he was going with this. "but Quirk Counseling isn't infallible. And as for Young Midoriya… he didn't get his Quirk until last February."

Silence. Dead, heavy silence.

Out of the corner of his eye, understanding dawned on his colleagues' faces as they exchanged unreadable looks amongst each other. A part of him felt vindicated when he saw Aizawa's brow wrinkle in confusion, but that opened yet another can of worms that he was too angry to keep closed.

One problem at a time. Potentially letting them know the truth behind One For All could come later. Right now, he needed to know why Young Midoriya's homeroom teacher looked so uncomprehending of this revelation of his.

"His Quirk manifested late for his own protection. Had he not had the physical conditioning and muscle mass he has now, it would have killed him. It was in his file that he got his Quirk Status changed the week before the school year started," Toshinori said slowly, disbelief slowly overtaking the anger previously coloring his voice. Surely the younger man at least read his students' files before school had started? Right? Surely, he wouldn't be that negligent. "Did you not read it? Did you not read any of their files?"

The silence that followed his question said it all.

Hound Dog was glaring at the man, crushing his empty beer can in his hand, and even Present Mic shot his best friend a soft, "Seriously, Sho? What the hell?"

"Prejudices exist," Aizawa said, trying to justify himself. "History can be misleading. I'd rather get to know my students as they are now than have my judgment clouded by someone's opinions on them from elementary and middle school."

It took everything in Toshinori to not hit his head against the wall over and over again (it was right there, just another two or so steps). In theory, Aizawa was right on the nose. People changed, especially children. It's why their end of term report cards included comments from the teachers; it was the best way to document these changes. For that matter, teachers could be biased, prejudiced even. The myriad of cases of teachers falsifying student records due to Quirk related discrimination said as much.

But how could Aizawa, a man who prided himself for his logical decision making, be so perceptive yet so obtuse?

"I understand that, Aizawa, and you're right to a degree," The older man conceded. At least the sheer disbelief was calming him down before he well and truly lost his temper. "But have you considered that as well intentioned as that line of thinking may be, it's led you to form prejudices of your own?"

He had clearly hit a sore spot, given how Aizawa glared at him.

"They're not prejudices," he ground out through gritted teeth. "They're rational observations -"

"You saw a child struggling with a strength enhancement Quirk, automatically equated it with me, and proceeded to mistreat him over it. You wax poetry over how biased society is towards powerful, flashy Quirks, yet you completely neglect to help the students you have that are negatively affected by that belief. You also saw another child with a flashy and powerful Quirk, yet you turned a blind eye to his horrible behavior due to his 'hard work'. If that's not prejudiced, then I'm the Pope."

At the mention of the blonde, red eyed boy, Cementoss fished out a value sized Aspirin bottle, popping one in his mouth before handing the bottle off to Ectoplasm. Despite having been expelled back in September, the mention of Young Bakugou was still a headache trigger for his colleagues.

"He was a hard worker…" Aizawa doubled down, seemingly realizing how hollow the reasoning sounded.

"Hard work doesn't justify bullying!" Hound Dog growled, stalking towards the younger man. "As a homeroom teacher, it's your responsibility to make sure your students have a healthy environment to grow in!"

As the counselor dissolved into a mess of growling and barking peppered with "Aizawa" and "emotional negligence", Vlad King guided him outside to help him calm down. As the door to the courtyard was quietly shut, everyone's attention turned back to the man currently in the hot seat.

"I'll admit to my own shortcomings as a mentor," Toshinori said to get things back on track, "because when it came to Young Midoriya and Young Bakugou, I was unable to see the forest for the trees. I also thought that their relationship was a long-standing rivalry that needed to be worked through, but I should have stopped and asked myself this a long time ago: does a rivalry involve such one-sided animosity?"

"That's why I paired them against you for the final exams. It was so they could learn to work together -"

"Again, the final exams showed that this lack of cooperation was a one sided problem, Aizawa." Toshinori bluntly interrupted. "May I remind you that Young Bakugou not only assaulted Young Midoriya for attempting to follow the directions of the exam, but he told me point blank that he would rather fail outright than cooperate with Young Midoriya? In what way does that indicate an issue on both ends?"

Aizawa bit on the inside of his cheek, crossing his arms defensively.

"That's not even counting the Battle Trials, which is also my mistake. Young Bakugou was attacking with lethal force, and the only thing he said to me when I warned him to stop was: 'he won't die if he dodges.' He knew he could have killed Young Midoriya, but he didn't care."

"Damn," Snipe muttered from next to Cementoss, shaking his head.

"As I said before, I'm also not blameless when it comes to this. I should have stopped the match right there and lobbied for a stronger punishment. But do you remember what you said after seeing the recording? 'Grow up already. Stop wasting your talent.' You said this in response to him knowingly nearly killing another student -"

"You've made your point, Yagi!" Aizawa warned, his voice raised as he glared up at the older man.

"And their fight the night of the Provisional License Exam," Toshinori continued, his own voice growing louder. "Footage from the Camera-Bots showed Young Midoriya attempting to leave and deescalate the situation, only to be stopped by Young Bakugou, and yet you decided that Young Midoriya was equally at fault for what happened. In light of all of this, let me ask you this: do you hate Young Midoriya?"

He thought that Aizawa was going to go to the grave before giving an answer, given how he gripped his bicep and glared at him. but to his surprise, the Underground Hero shook his head.

"No. I don't hate him."

Present Mic scoffed, shaking his head in what seemed to be disappointment as he stared up at his friend.

"Well, that's what it looks like, Sho," he said with a grave look on his face. "Do you ever think about how you sound when you talk to him, or how it comes across when you talk about him to us?"

The Underground Hero couldn't quite hide the betrayal he felt, but it was mitigated by the guilt and knowing shame he was fighting not to express. It seemed like he wasn't used to Present Mic going against him in matters like this.

"The rest of us," the English teacher motioned to the other teachers, "really enjoy having Midoriya in class. He's kind, cooperative, and incredibly smart." His point was punctuated by Midnight, Cementoss, and Ectoplasm nodding in agreement. "You, on the other hand… you're constantly calling him 'Problem Child' and you don't acknowledge him unless you're threatening to expel him, punishing him, or otherwise criticizing him for something. Come to think of it, I've only heard you say one positive thing about the kid. One, and it wasn't even about him alone. Can you really blame people for thinking that you hate him?"

Aizawa slowly shook his head, sinking back into his chair with an uncharacteristically troubled look on his face.

"I just don't want him to get himself killed with his recklessness," he said more so to himself as he stared at his lap.

"There are way better ways of showing it instead of acting offended by his very existence," Midnight piped up, looking thoroughly unimpressed with his answer. "You can't treat people like this and expect them to completely trust and rely on you. Why else do you think he keeps going behind your back and getting into dangerous situations? For that matter, why else do you think your students are terrified to come to you for any questions they have on their assignments or anything else school related?"

Frustration clouded the younger man's face as he shrugged his shoulders.

"Trust and respect is a two-way street," Ectoplasm said. "Midoriya has been making wonderful progress in regards to his Quirk control, but that effort rarely goes acknowledged."

"We understand the hardships you've endured as a Hero," Cementoss added. "But you shouldn't take your negative feelings out on your students. They've done nothing to deserve that behavior from you."

"Your expulsion record speaks for itself," Snipe said, having been silent up to this point. "If it were just a handful of kids, we wouldn't think anything of it. because some of them just aren't cut out for heroics. But over 100 students? Something's clearly not adding up, and it's not the kids."

Aizawa opened his mouth, then closed it. For someone who always needed to have the last word, it was a little disorienting for Toshinori to see him at a loss for words. Though he still looked unflappable for the most part, the way his eyes moved showed that his colleagues' words clearly hit home for him. But whether or not he took these words to heart was something that was left up in the air.

After all, Aizawa was an incredibly stubborn man.

#mha fix it fics #anti shota aizawa #anti aizawa shota

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songoftrillium · 2 years ago

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Dead Mountain Development Update #2 03/08/2023

Hello kinfolks! I'm happy to say the team has already grown! We are now working with a friend named Sif (they/xe) that's agreed to take on copy editing and chronicle layout, and my partner Chee (they/she) has come aboard as the dedicated proof-reader! Additionally, one of my players, ExcelGarou (she/her), has granted us permission to use her data in this project, and her contributions along with everyone else's will be fairly paid a share of the profits from sales. And now, on to the project updates:

First Up: Our Discord Server is now live!

Come say hi, check out some of what we already have to share, get early access to chronicle content, follow announcements, ask questions, and get involved!

Podcast Updates, and a poll!

As for the chronicle itself, we've hit some major marks on the audio production front. We're now about 8 sessions in on this chronicle with my players, and that's a total of 16 podcast episodes. I am working on editing episode 6, and I gotta say it's really coming together. I'd say we're about at that point where we have enough of a buffer of episodes that we could technically start releasing them now. The first 4 episodes have a bit of mud in their mixing, but by episode 5 I've started dialing in the ACX audio standards, and I think by episode 7 we'll have pretty much nailed getting it about as close to radio drama as we can hit it with our extremely limited budget. For a series recorded with all voices on a single track on consumer mics, I'm really tickled with how well this has all come together. Our plan is to release this series to the public for free, with each session released in two parts, and episodes published on Wednesdays on Podbean. And that leads me to wonder if there's any interest out there for me to start releasing episodes in the near future, or wait until August for the series to completely wrap recording sessions and officially conclude our playthrough of Act 1. My players and I think we really have something special, and would love to share our story with you.

If you like what you see, please give this post a share for visibility!

Production Progress: 60% complete

33,667 words written

Great news is we are WAY ahead of schedule in terms of how long I thought this would take to produce, but also we're getting into the more drawn out parts: the actual chronicle. There will be multiple speedups and slowdowns over the course of chronicle development. Below is a breakdown of development and progress.

Content Guidelines and Chronicle Framework: 100% complete

We've settled on Storyteller's Vault as our primary release platform, and are adopting their content guidelines for publishing. The book will be presented as a softcover sourcebook laid out in a style consistent with Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition, but it will be limited to a softcover print with black and white text and monochrome artwork on the interior, keeping aligned with prior edition chronicle sourcebook aesthetics. All statted NPCs are being put together using ExcelGarou's Build-a-Veteran standards, keeping their stats around the same power and ability curve as similarly build antagonists and protagonists. Prior to releasing the full edition, I hope to release a text-only screenreader-friendly edition if I can find someone to assist when we get closer to Fall. This chronicle is systems agnostic, but utilizes terminology from 5th edition.

Chronicle Outline: 100% complete

I have all my chapters and stories sorted in my own notes, and just this last week I finished the concept of the core villains that will close this act, as well as how to get there. To that end, I have the entire 'big picture' of this chronicle all complete and ready to deliver to my players. The real work here involves transcribing my notes into legible sections that someone other than myself can parse out lol and on that front a ton of progress has been made. To that end we can kind of go over the different stages of this rollout

Outline

Rough Draft

Proof-Read

Revision

Approve Final Text

Assess Readiness - Establish art quotes and licensing agreements valid for the duration of the crowdfunding period - All writing completed and committed to publishing - All copy editing completed and committed - All content reviewed with a lawyer to ensure compliance with STV Content Guidelines - All images sourced from Werewolf print stock placeholders or produced in-house - Minimal advertising in appropriate circles: self-funded - Set up a subscription system based on early access, playtesting, - Generate interest by growing out the server through word of mouth, forums, reddit et al and using that as the first-point of contact for news and information. - Set up a sync with the tumblr to send content to a news stream in Discord Server - Commissioned flat color graphic of Dume'fa for back cover and screenprinting licensing

LEGENDS OF THE GAROU: 12% complete

This section is happening in 9 parts told as an epic set 3,000 years before the Ipergium, when Sept of the Trillium Glade was first founded. It is a 9-part epic, in sections meant to be recited at moots in-game. To create locations, names, and spirits that align with this primordial time, I've taken the time to develop a root language for garou tongue that I call First Tongue. I have enough of an infrastructure on this language complete enough that I am able to go about assigning names to the various nouns in this act. In addition to this groundwork, I have pt 1 of the epic completed, mostly exposition, but that's the nature of epics. Now that the language part is done, the rest should fall into place. I am intending to use geological events to sorta dictate a lot of these stories, to help ground players in the setting. I anticipate work on this will be progressive and it's completion will mark the beginning of layout.

Geography: 57.5% complete

This section was generally where I started my world build and is far-and-away the most complete, both in terms of the world of mortals and the protectorates of the garou that live there.

Trillium: 100% The town is completely finished. I have maps complete and ready to publish, and all points-of-interest have concise summaries and story seeds.

Macredie Station: 95% The community west of Trillium is nearly finished. I need to complete a write-up of H&H Mining, but am holding off committing it to paper until my players have to visit the site in-game.

Protectorate of Ephemeral Mist: 50% This is the region that lies in between Eugene and Waldo Lake. I have a few sites committed here, but I haven't completed fall creek, a description of Highway 712, or done a write-up for the ephemeral pools that can be found here or Spirit Falls.

Protectorate of Hammer Butte: 30% This region has recently been introduced to my players, where they visited Hammer Butte and the Newberry Caldera, andy hunted Thunderwyrm. There are a number of important stories that take place in this protectorate, but are more likely to come to fruition when this Chronicle enters it's endgame.

Antagonist Territories: 0% Unfortunately, none of this is to be revealed until after this chronicle's climax. I wont spoil it for my players!

Spiritual Topography: 60% The umbra has mostly been handled. I addressed this early on while establishing the factions and conflicts early in development. I do however need to flesh out this section and create stats for it's denizens. One thing that will hold back completion is the Warm Springs protectorate, which covers this region from the umbra; this protectorate will likely be encountered in the chronicle's endgame

History: 62.5% complete

This section has been the most difficult, both in the difficulty in learning first-nations history in this specific locale, and in creating spiritual representations that are respectful of the very real cultures around this region. This has simultaneously been one of the most fun parts.

Natural History: 100% This one was really straightforward. I have lived here quite a long time and have grown familiar with the many species of animals from here, plants, rocks, and soil life, all of which are things that fall within my band of interests. Following historical records and data on this region, as well as trips to various locations in the time I've lived here has granted me a very clear picture of how this region was formed. The completeness of this picture is what has most heavily informed the design of it's current regions and spiritual topography, along with things like selections of common existing spirits encountered here and various biomes that would make for suitable sites for various story chapters.

Garou History: 60% Rooting this setting's history in a primordial era before the impergium has presented me with an unprecedented opportunity to build a mythology grounded in an ecology that predates civilization. To that end I've been able to establish good snapshots of this region's history, with a large portion in that pre-impergium period. That said, most periods from the Concords through to WWI are still hazy and need to be fleshed out.

Human History: 30% Mainstream history references only really tell half of the story. While Dead Mountain itself isn't citable in online-accessible media about any cultural significance. However, the Willamette Valley has a dark history with the first-nation tribes that lived here during colonization, and with the garou so deeply tied to both the spirits and the human societies that eventually developed here, that it would be imperative to provide an honest representation of that history to better inform it's spiritual topography beyond ambiguity, which will in turn inform it's garou history. A contributing factor is that the Kalapuyans have not a single entity but are a union of subdivisions, further adding to the complexity of the culture here beyond what basic science papers can cover. I am currently trying to find a consultant from the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde that can provide insights on history prior to colonization in the pacific northwest.

Spiritual History: 60% This closely aligns with garou history. I have a pretty good picture of this history up-to the Missoula Flood, but a lot of it gets hazy after that point. I expect solving the missing parts of Human history will complete this picture.

Rules: 87% complete

This section has been really fun and challenging to work on, and I think this provides a lot of the meat of this chronicle. Werewolf: the Apocalypse, for all that's good with it, is deeply flawed and exclusionary to marginalized groups. In the interest of opening up this chronicle to as many players as possible, some fundamental changes are needed to take a first step in remedying those problems. At the top of it all comes the announcement that this game introduces an alternative to The Litany as an alternative draft:

Combat The Wyrm Wherever It Dwells and Wherever it Breeds

Respect The Territory of Another

Accept an Honorable Surrender

The Sanctity of Gallain Must be Respected

Respect Those of Lower Station, for all are of Gaia.

The First Share of the Kill for the Benefit of All

Ye Shall Not Eat the Flesh of Humans

The Veil Shall Not Be Lifted

The Leader Shall Not Be Challenged During Battle

Ye Shall Take No Action That Causes a Caern to Be Violated

The progress made thus far is not quite there yet, but we're definitely nearly there.

Ableism and Cultural Appropriation: 40% I have eliminated Metis as an available breed. Rather than the impergium ending in-part due to inbreeding, it instead resulted in inviability. Garou can no longer produce viable offspring by mating with eachother and must be supported by their network of kin. I need to finish writing a narrative history that follows this change while keeping a good chunk of the old history intact. Removing metis entirely still leaves disabling conditions intact in merits and flaws. M**** gifts are going to be redistributed between Ghost Council and Galestalkers to make up for the elimination of their problematic gifts. It doesn't fix it all though, and I hope I can get feedback on issues that I haven't covered.

Codified Abuse: 100% Losing inter-viability between garou caused the nation to carefully reexamine the role kinfolk play in the lives of garou. In the Concords, the litany was drafted to protect and honor this network of support, as well as allow accomplished kinfolk to hold sept ranks.

Combat: 100% Some rules around combat are weirdly broken or unusually punitive towards players that don't have advantages to their initiative rolls. A few rules are being implemented to fix these things, as well as streamline game combat.

Genetic Favoritism and Systemic Exclusion: 75% Pure Breed and Ancestors is now a new background called Animism, which acts as a channel through which one allows spirits to work through them as a conduit. This introduces several Animist aspects that provide all of the benefits one gained from pure breed and ancestors, as well as several additional aspects through which spirits may be used throughout gameplay. This means that any garou from any background has the potential to channel the great garou of legend without having to follow any kind of blood lineage. It doesn't fix everything, but it fixes a LOT of it while filling an important void in the garou's relationship with spirits.

Attribute Specializations: 100% There is nothing individually wrong with Attribute specializations, but the changes I aim to make are to enable attribute specializations to be as ambiguous as the attributes themselves with expanded specialization rules.

The Nazi Problem: 100% No Get in my chronicle. Get of Out. If the garou have a history that casts various tribes in a bad light, that bad light still hangs over them in this game. What they did wasn't ok then, and it's not ok now. As far as I'm concerned, Stargazers Leaving is what pushed that tribe over the edge to Hauglosk, and that's the canon in this setting. And while the get have a cool history outside of the ACTUAL NAZIS, the fact of the matter is Nazis like them way too much, so I can't let them come play with the cool kids. They brought room temperature beer anyways. And since some of my own family are themselves jewish, I can't in good conscience stomach having them at my table, or in my stories, with any representation.

Transphobia: 100% This is a retcon of whoever it was that overrided already approved writing to hamfist their agenda into into someone else's careful writing in Changing Ways. For that, I'm putting your genders on the fridge until you learn to play nice. In this game, the spirit world does not comprehend sex; only the self. Being half-spirit, this manifests with the garou as a truer representation of the self, including gender in all forms other than the one they were born with.

Chapters: 10%

The actual stories of this chronicle! This part gets hazy, as I have the least written here that's that's committed to publishing. This is a section that will see constant progress made up-to release and will be expanding on a weekly basis. For this reason I am holding my chapter progress at 10% until we get closer to release. The biggest holdup is fiction to tie it all together, and I need to write a lot more to get it there in terms of immersive fiction and monologues to accompany chapters.

Appendix 1: Systems: 60% complete

This section has been pretty straightforward, but also complicated, as it includes a lot of the 'meat' of these new mechanics and features. Thus far, this chronicle has two separate appendices.

Allies and Enemies: 70% This section is nearly complete. I have good who/what/where/when/why descriptions of each NPC and faction broken down and ready for your perusal on Discord! Stats and enemies will be published when the game publishes.

New Backgrounds: 90% This introduces the new Animism background that serves to supplant Pure Breed and Ancestors with a better alternative. This new mechanic needs to be tested at a few tables by other storytellers.

New Fetishes: 60% This chronicle introduces 5 unique fetishes, including 1 stationary legendary fetish.

New Creatures: 13% There's a dearth of certain critters indigenous to this location, and so I am having to introduce a fair number of them, including corrupt counterparts. Currently this section includes stats for two new varieties of Thunderwyrm, four new types of Meat Puppet, and stats for banes that afflict wasting disease! That's right, ZOMBIE DEER STATS! This section has been a treat to work on

New Rites: 66% With new patrons and an expansion on wolf society come a series of new rites! I have 2 of 3 completed thus far!

Appendix 2: First Tongue: 59% complete

I'm developing a functional language for garou that predates Garou Tongue. It creates culturally unambiguous pronunciations for legendary garou, items, spirits, objects, and places that are ancient to garou culture. It will provide a tool for storytellers to generate names or unique words that hold historical significance in their chronicles without having to rely on taking from any one culture in order to accomplish it.

Case System: 85% Coming up with this part was easy and it's mostly complete. I'm leaving some wiggle room for additional phonetic combinations and suffixes.

Syntax and Grammar: 30% This is the most exciting part for me. This language is built on a triatic gendering of pronunciations that represent different aspects of the triat to create, reinforce, and corrupt concepts of communication. Remaining work needing to be done is creating a series of corresponding howls, growls, and snarls and what the engendering of these expressions mean in terms of conjunction.

Dictionary: 90% The dictionary of idioms relies on object association to convey adjectives through both how the word is gendered, and how it's conveyed, giving each word 4 different expressions, and any combination of 20 suffixes and howls to form adjectives and verbs. Most of the work here is formatting the data correctly.

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redbug · 4 months ago

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Pot 1

I had a lot to talk about after work today and not a soul to spill it all to, so I guess all good things (being generally ignorant of tumblr) come to an end. I honestly wasn't feeling too great about my job all summer, I was a little bored, my house was uncomfortable (historical New England house, figures it was meant for when Maine was still cold and didn't feel like 95...thanks exxon), my workplace was sort of messy; overall it just felt really unfulfilling. Like a summer job. And I feel like I'm at the point in my life and academic career where I can, and should, do more than that. But things have nearly completely turned around over the past week.

Recently (as in literally last month) I've become obsessed with lobsters. It started because we got two brand new ones in at my job. They were wild caught and sitting in the market crates when one of our researchers found them. They're both 1/30 million in rarity; one is completely orange (she looks like she's already been cooked, lol) and the other is "calico" or "cinnamon" (very dark brown with yellow speckles). For the purposes of anonymous blogging, I'm just going to call them Orange and Calico. Calico is crazy to look at, and by crazy I mean cool. I've never seen a lobster that looks like that. It was like love at first sight (little did I know how little answers I would get about why-she-even-looks-like-that, but for another time). But from that point forward I have done absolutely nothing but think, talk, and read about lobsters.

Within the first few days, easily 20 hours of reading. That number's about doubled now, as of the time of writing this. I never really even considered liking lobsters to begin with. I knew nothing about them and didn't care to before Calico. As it turns out, though, they're really interesting animals in nearly every regard. I mean, these animals have fascinating chemistry happening in the cuticle just to "produce" color, they have long and complicated courtship, their anatomy is freakishly cool, and not to mention how historically and culturally significant the fishery is here- though I suppose perhaps that's thanks to people. Either way- a criminally underrated animal. Not a food, but an animal. It feels weird to type that being that I study zoology- and even more so being that I concentrate in entomology. Lobsters are, really, just wet bugs. After being on a lobster tirade and borrowing several of her books (thanks btw), my boss, T, approached me in the main room on one crowded day and said, "if I go downstairs [wet lab] and get you a lobster, could you do a lecture outside on the porch?" and, well, sure, I could come up with something. That some-thing is now a whole-thing. Every hour I do this damn lecture and god I don't think I can get tired of it. The guests just go nuts for it too. Sometimes I even do personal and private lectures for special tour groups that we have come in. I get such thoughtful and insightful questions about lobsters afterwards and it makes me believe that nobody ever gave the public the idea that this was an interesting animal, either.

I was taking out the trash after we closed one day and a couple of the administrative staff for the department I work for said that they love the lecture and they always open up their office window so that they can hear it from just across the breezeway. I keep my mic on during questions- they say they just keep learning new things. Apparently they were so fond of it that they decided to let our bureau director (who was previously the head lobster biologist) know how great this random thing I had put together on the spot was. I've actually now grown quite fond of Orange, I know her a little better than I do Calico, because T chose to bring Orange up that day I sealed my fate as the lobster information booth. We were struggling a little bit with guest expectations because people are afraid of change, and the building is entirely different from when it closed down during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic (which is still happening by the way!). Once this lobster thing took off we knew we had to keep it. I've written down loads of information and scripting for my coworkers so they can do the lectures in my absence, T made signs to advertise it, they gave me a bigger microphone, hell, they even set up a new tank for it so that I don't have to walk a live lobster around like an idiot. Though Orange decided she'd had enough and went on a minor hunger strike, so fair enough, and we now use our Cotton Candy lobster- who's 1 in 100 million. He's kind of a drama queen but once you pick him up his attitude can be summarized by "I guess I'm here now". And he's continued eating, so, probably more fit for the bill anyhow. We have all of the weird colors except for white and split, by the way. It's like I'm trading on Animal Jam again. They all have different rarity rankings.

During this whole thing I've been keeping contact with the current lobster biologist, F. She's awesome. Her and her colleagues gave us a great presentation on the fishery during our training and they're all a wealth of knowledge. Today she decided to meet with me in person to chat a little more about trends we're seeing in the Gulf right now as far as conditions and populations. I'll cut to the more exciting chase: They are going to try and get me on a contracted lobster boat to observe a real vent-less trap survey this month. Just to see! I'm so excited. I think the physical experience will be really good for me. It's one thing to read about it and hear about it- it's another to be there. Besides, what an amazing opportunity? Invaluable to experience that in my undergraduate career- especially because I just happened to be really good at talking to people about wet bugs.

I can really, hardly contain my excitement, in all seriousness. It's not a promise or a certainty but damn, I hope so! I originally asked F if there were aaaaany programs she knew of that could maybe get me out on a boat someday- I totally wasn't expecting for the answer to be 'yeah, with us'! It's slightly frustrating that I have to keep this news on the dl at work or be quite literally bombarded by my coworkers- who are capable of and encouraged to email the lobster scientists, too, if they want, but only ever seem interested when I do it- because it's not that they are interested in lobsters, but rather that they suffer from terrible FOMO. Our facility is small, and all of the sort of "lower" employees live together in provided housing, and if there's one thing I've learned about them, it's that: if you do it, and if you have it, they have to too. It's really strange sometimes. Regardless of whether or not they get that sorted out, I have been thinking a lot, too, about the people I might meet on this trip. Getting to learn where people came from to wind up in their research is oddly encouraging to me. Plus, more people to pester about lobsters. I wonder what I'll be doing. I wonder what the boat will look like. I wonder how many lobsters I'll see. I wonder! Eek!

Aside from lobsters (thank god it's over amirite?), lots of other really fortunate things are happening at work lately. Everyone has seemed to pick up on and enjoy my knack for preserving the occasional dead animal we (inevitability) end up with. They're nice teaching tools for the facility, in my defense. About a week or two ago now a man approached me because of the shark on my name tag and asked if we wanted his 9-foot hammerhead shark mount (with real jaws!) as he was moving and couldn't take it with him. I wish in that moment I said no, I want it, but alas I did the right thing and directed him to my boss. Well, T wants me to be the one to help retrieve it! How cool! I saw pictures of it- it's beautifully done. Shark "mounts" are usually fiberglass, lightweight composite, or casted- which of course depending on the skill of the artist can look tacky if the paint job is bad or the shark's features are.. exaggerated. I was very impressed with this one though. Beautiful, graceful and realistic. I'll be picking it up for the facility at the end of the season.

It truly does not end there. Two years ago, my workplace put in a permit request to collect some specimens from this sort of depository that the state has of materials from otherwise illegal-to-possess animals to be used for science/education purposes. Well they finally heard back with a yes. T actually wants my help curating whatever collection of things that we take. My university doesn't offer any curation programs/courses/experiences, or I'd have taken them in a heartbeat. She gave me a list of species and asked me to read through and take note of what I'd like to grab if available. I'm not sure when we'd be receiving them but I can't wait for it, either.

Speaking of curation, after one of my lobster lectures today my coworker, who is working here on an internship through her university, introduced me to her.. other boss? Not sure what to call her, H. They must have already been talking about my affinity for playing with carcasses because she opened the conversation after the handshake straightaway with how she has this space that her and her colleagues are working on, I don't remember what she called it, it's meant to be educational but the important part is that she wants to fill it with bugs, skulls etc. I looked at her like this when she said that, I think. So I told her of course I would be happy to help and offer a couple of pieces because it sounds like a nice place, and that I'd shoot her an email. And then she drops this bombshell, "Well, we have grant money for this, so, we would probably want to pay you". Any annoyance I felt when my coworker promptly begged me to 'please teach her everything!!!' (despite having explained the entire process of cleaning a carcass, proper pinning technique, and what chemicals of what concentrations to use for wets at least twice EACH) for the fifth time this week (I mean, seriously, just read. You're going into science) was immediately overlooked and overshadowed. I felt at this point that I had received so much good news and so many good opportunities today that something catastrophic was bound to happen. Eek! Somebody has yet to pinch me, is all that I'm saying!

I say at work that I'm "wiggling" or "stumbling" into these positions, or that I'm having great luck, but truthfully, it has to be me, too, right? I've been working really hard- to do good, to be knowledgable, to be professional, and I really think it's paying off. It can't be coincidence that all of these people see something in me worth mentioning, worth bringing on boats, worth tasking, and worth hiring. I was feeling so down and unsure about myself at the beginning of the summer, and about my potential as having a career begins to become a more serious idea, but this has all been really pleasant and really affirming that I am where I should be, and most importantly that I'm making it. This is a message to be kinder to yourself, I guess. You could try liking lobsters too, maybe they'll bring you their (apparently very many) blessings.

That's really mostly everything from work I wanted to get off of my mind. My hands regularly get fissures from some immune issues I have, and I, unfortunately, think that the open skin contracted an infection via the ~ubiquitous touch tank~, so it's amazing I've been well enough composed for all of this considering the medication I had to take this morning makes me a liiittle.. drowsy. In other mundane news, I've gotten really great at cooking fish, I think. I wish I fished as often as I fished at the beginning of the summer.. you can't beat a nice oven-baked striper.

I turn 21 in 2 days, so that's cool! Can't wait to shoot pool with a DRINK this time! Any pool lovers!? Any drink lovers!?? I think I'll order a mojito.

#daily blog #diary #dear diary

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someoffbrandvampire · 4 months ago

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If you don’t mind me asking, I would love to hear about your life at UA. As I never got to go, I wanna hear what it was like. Some days I wish I could have been a hero…

-Dabi

Where do I even start? I want to reiterate that while I am grateful for everything I was able to learn from UA and the students there, that I was taken forcibly. I wasn't given a choice really. I was sort of a test guinnea pig. For a good while I was ostracized, all of the students were scared of me. But that's beside the point- it's not what you asked. Anyways!! I wasn't immediately put into regular classes as a student, but I feel that's more of what you're interested so I'll skip to that! Once I was actually a "student" I honestly really enjoyed it. Going to classes, regular high school basics but also hero-course classes. I did have to put in a lot of extra work to catch up with everyone since I was quite behind. But the teachers were a lot of help, especially Present Mic and Aizawa. They showed me a lot of kindness, and gave me any extra tutoring or support that I needed. The campus was just beautiful. I spent a lot of time outside, studying at any little picnic table I could find, laying in grass, just enjoying the warmth of the sun.

I did have a bit of a hard time making friends. I wasn't super close with anyone, but that was mostly on me and not wanting to become too vulnerable. Actually, I did make one friend. We weren't close at all, but it was more of a mutual respect for one another. Shouto Todoroki. When I was first beginning to train and spar, there were a handful of students who had been selected and/or volunteered to be my training partner. Eventually it was decided that Todoroki would be my partner. There was a silent understanding between us. We both had come from bad family situations, yet we had gone down two very different paths. Sorry, didn't mean to focus on him so much. Just miss my friend.

I almost forgot! Eventually I was moved into the dorms! They were very cozy. I have to give thanks to Momo, as she was the one who gave me a tour of the building and even offered to buy me anything I need (that girl has so much money like omg,,,).

I still wasn't very close to anyone though, usually stayed inside of my room.

But, over time Class 1-A warmed up to me, they began to invite me to class outings, movie nights, game nights. Just the usual things like that. (I think Izuku had something to do with it, which I am again really grateful for) Anyways- I'm not sure what else I should share? I feel like I've rambled a whole ton. If there's anything specific you'd like to know just ask! :3

#toga answers #kin blog #mha kin #bnha kin

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dzpenumbra · 1 year ago

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6/15/23

Two full nights rest in a row? o.O Unheard of!

I swear, the second I start getting consistent sleep I start seeing so clearly that it's the primary cause of most of my problems. I mean, don't get me wrong... I have other problems... but sleep is such a root cause of everything for me. And as much as it's really weird and disorienting to be going to bed at 7 AM... and to only have a few hours of daylight every day... just feeling more at ease and comfortable in my own skin is such a fair trade. I just feel much more emotionally level when I've gotten good sleep.

Yoga wasn't bad, I find myself sorta alternating between two routines I liked in the past - one for psoas and one for lower back/hips. I breezed through it without breaking a sweat. Though I'm not really as... excited about yoga as I used to be. Mostly because it's become more of a warmup than the main event. Because right after, before I get to eat? Exercise time.

I did that deliberately. I eat dinner around... well... starting between 9 and 11 pm usually, depending on when I get around to it. But I'm almost always done eating by midnight. Then I don't eat my next meal until... usually around... 5 or 6 PM the next day? So... that's a good 17 hour unintentional fast going on there. Lately, I've been putting a little "midnight" (2-3am) snack in there to stop myself from being woken up starving. My big intention is to sorta... capitalize on my body being in this state and exercise at that point. Then my body really doesn't have any fuel to burn except fat. I'm trying to keep myself aware of energy levels and shit, so I don't like... unintentionally pass out or anything, I don't think I'm even close to at risk for that, but yeah. I honestly think it's working. And it makes sense, like... if I haven't eaten anything in 12+ hours, what the fuck else is my body going to use for fuel? Of course it's going to tap into my fuel reserves. That's literally what it was storing the fat for!

So yeah, it can be a bit tough mentally to get myself to do half an hour of yoga and then an intense workout before eating... but that breakfast after is like none other.

Today's exercise was actually really easy. I guess it was a rest day or something. Today was Day 6, it's crazy how fast it's flying by.

I played Rimworld some more. Shit went down in my colony, lost a main character, gained like 4 more. I'm considering ending the colony and starting a new one to do a series with... but...

I put a lot of time and energy into stream stuff today. A lot. I rerouted the audio for my stream, so I can manually control which audio is going to recording/VoD and what audio is going live. It wasn't too complicated. That was the good news. The bad news? I tested the second mic that I have, that I was going to set up at my art desk. And... it doesn't work. And it's not the cable, it's definitely the mic itself. Now... I do have my normal broadcasting mic, this second mic is a clone of it that my little brother didn't want for some reason. But I can't really set it up where it can reach both my computer and my workstation. The mic stand arm is just too short. This has been a long-standing problem. So... what that means is... if I do art on stream, it's going to have to be digital. Or I'm going to have to move my mic arm... --- oh... hey, I could just... move the mic itself... that way I don't have to move the arm... I could just pop the mic out of the cradle and put it in the other one. Then I don't have to worry about blocking the mic stand or anything, I can just leave them clamped and swap the mic... that might actually work pretty easily. Hmm... Welp, I guess it's not all bad news after all, this might work out fine!

So... I got that sorted. I changed my little animated chat place where I have chat on screen for in-between scenes where it's just kinda sitting and chatting with Twitch. I changed the background picture from a river in winter to a river in spring/summer. It's nice. Pretty much everything is set up, I just need to remember to set up game audio captures for new games. Other than that, I should be good to go.

The rest of the night was put into working on the fractal piece some more. I feel so much better about it now, it's actually really coming to life. It's so weird how off it felt before, and how now it just feels perfectly natural. It really wasn't that different. I guess it's just a gut-feeling kinda thing. I usually get on my own ass a lot about going back and erasing shit when I'm doing improvised work, but this one... I don't know, I trusted my gut and it worked out, so I'm not questioning it.

That's about it. OH. I finished the simple necklace I made yesterday. It's.. very simple. It's not bad. I'll probably get used to it in time. But yeah, that's... pretty much all I have to say about that... Nothing huge or impressive, just a simple humble practical piece made for me so that when I feel really anxious before something, I can just use it to do a quick circuit of 13 breaths to chill the fuck out.

Tarot time.

Past - Two of Pentacles, inverted (Multitasking, being pulled multiple directions at once. Focus and rhythm are necessary to keep them in balance.) Present - Four of Wands, inverted (Stability, a sense of completion. A major milestone, taking a moment to reflect on accomplishment so far, before moving to a new future.) Future - Two of Wands, inverted (Planning, scrutiny, taking risks and moving a plan forward. The active force needed to put a plan into motion.)

This one doesn't seem too difficult to read. Again... another all-inverted read. Those can often feel like a "fuck you", but really... it's not great to read it that way. All positive stuff can feel affirmative, but negative stuff can be very clear in what is causing dysfunction, which is a clear indication of what you can do. It can provide more direction. Affirmation when you're struggling is nice, but direction can be just as helpful, if not more... just in different ways.

The thread starts with inverted Two of Pentacles, a new one for me. The Two of Pentacles is about multitasking... which I am notorious for struggling with. It was actually a big part of my diagnosis with ADHD and my push to get help with that. I really struggle to balance all of the plates necessary to be an "adult". I always have. I'm too much of a daydreamer. And I wasn't really taught how to do half the shit I'm expected to do. I mean... I have a stinky bag of trash that needs to go out that I still haven't gotten yet, every time I walk by I remember how much I struggle with this. So, the Two is about needing focus and momentum to keep multiple tasks in order, and it's inverted... clearly showing the disarray.

This leads to... Four of Wands, inverted. Four of Wands is portrayed in this deck as a birthday party. Important milestones in life that are the result of your achievements, and celebration of those milestones. Inversion here I would read as me turning away from, or feeling unable to engage with this image.

This is connected to... inverted Two of Wands. Two of Wands is about planning, taking risks and moving forward with ideas. The image is a determined man peering forward, surveying the land and preparing for action.

So... because I struggle to juggle the many responsibilities of life... because my focus and momentum are either completely scattered or narrowly fixated on one or two tasks... I kinda miss out on celebrating accomplishments. Which doesn't seem to make complete sense at first glance... but when you think about it... I'm always playing catch-up. Even when I accomplish a huge task like my Desire Path project, I have 20 other things that were backlogged because I had put so much work into it. So, I end up just going and catching up on those instead of celebrating, instead of sitting and eating my birthday cake. And this leads to trouble moving forward. Trouble planning, trouble taking risks. Why? Because... that last project "flopped". Why do I feel like it flopped? Because... I didn't celebrate or appreciate it. Why? Because I was playing catch-up with all the other responsibilities I had put aside while I was working on it. And round and round we go.

So... since kicking my own ass about my struggle to multitask has been fruitless... Maybe I can try a more self-compassionate approach to this. Maybe I need to give myself more permission to celebrate my victories. How about I start now.

I have nearly effortlessly accomplished 6 days of working out in a row, and I'm very proud of myself for doing so. I finished the necklace today and I have a feeling I'm going to get attached to it in time. I am really stoked with how my work on the fractal piece is coming along, and I have a plan to be able to share my work with others, so others can hang with me live in the studio as I work on this unfathomably large piece. And we can listen to whatever fucking music I want while I work. And I can start tomorrow if I like. That's a lot of accomplishment, and I should be proud of myself for that. :)

#diary #journal #online journal #stream of thoughts #stream of consciousness

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zukishaylupo · 1 month ago

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Lol, love that! I guess I sort of had a problem with becoming people's sibling in some way as well, lol.

Izuku, who was [one of] my childhood friend(s), was the first person to be considered by me as a little sibling, lol. I actually called him my little brother a lot.

I at first was actually not really close to Tokoyami, I relate it to the territorial bird [and other animal but mainly bird in this case] instincts and shit. But after a bit, I managed to start to see them as like a sibling or cousin, although I am unsure if I ever actually said anything about this.

Hitoshi was probably the second one that I realized I was seeing as a little sibling, though. And it just became more prominent when I got adopted by Aizawa and Mic, who had adopted Toshi before me [I also call him Toshi a lot].

Eri is my only other legal sibling cause she was also adopted by Aizawa and Mic. Though that was after me. She was my little sister, and I was very protective of her and would do pretty much anything for her.

Todoroki Shouto was pretty much like my brother in law without the marriage aspect. Him and Izuku were together and really loved each other. So I was like a weird older (I think I was older than him? Unsure of birthdays a bit) sibling in law, lol.

Trying to think of others that I saw as siblings or cousins or something like that, lol.

I kinda also felt very much like an older sibling to Uraraka after a little bit of being her friend. I got extremely protective anytime that someone would be rude to her [including the Sports Festival shit, fucking assholes]. She and Izuku didn't have a thing for each other in my canon like in the manga/anime btw. Her and Tsu got together at some point, and I think Toga might have also been in a relationship with them, but I am unsure, lol.

With Bakugo [who was my other childhood friend], I sort of saw him as like a brother or cousin, but not really? I think Toshi had ended up liking Kats [and 2 others] romantically, which is where the weirdness comes in, lol. But it's not really that weird cause they didn't see each other as family like that, and how I saw Kats could even end up being described in a way like Todoroki.

There's probably others that I'm missing, but these are the main ones I can think of rn, lol.

- Zuki Shay Lupo (They/it/hx) :3c

Hello, I decided to come say hi and shit in an ask, lol.

I'm not good at starting conversations, but I would like to hear about any alterhuman or nonhuman experiences or memories or anything that'd you'd be willing to share!

- Zuki Shay Lupo (They/it) | a fellow noncanon MHA being/creature :3c

aaa hihi!! good to hear from you, i definitely feel you on the 'bad at starting conversations' lol!

the first thing that comes to mind a memory of playing video games with Tomura and Shuichi. I wasn't very good at it, but it was good bonding and i loved playing with them. I would only play the 'silly' games like Mario Kart or Smash Bros, they got too into the 'serious' ones for me. I finished in last place every time lmao, so i mostly spent my time teasing whoever was in second place. Dabi would sit with us too sometimes, either lazily scrolling on his phone or bothering the three of us, trying to help whoever would give him the most attention lol. The others joined in sometimes too, Himiko and Jin and rarely Sho and Toshi if they were hanging out. Himiko would shriek excitedly and bump us while Jin cheered her on and cursed her out. It was good.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to ramble lol!! Feel free to share any memories/thoughts you have :D

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buttercream-squad-imagines · 3 years ago

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Tinder in Real Life

Pairings: Harry Lewis x fem!Reader, Sidemen x platonic!Reader Word Count: 2k Warnings: Language some people may find offensive, sexual themes, recycled lines from Sidemen Tinder in Real Life because I'm not at all creative Request: Hey! Could you do reader x Harry imagine where the sidemen do a collab video with the reader who is also a big youtuber and Harrys celebrity crush. And during the video the reader is very flirty, leaving Harry a flustered mess when the flirting is directed towards him, but very jealous when its with any other sidemen.

The Sidemen were one of the biggest groups on YouTube and one that you were very familiar with. At the age of 23, you were a fair bit younger than some of its oldest members but yet you had a close relationship with JJ, whom you had met through YouTube.

You had started your channel when you were 17, just under four years ago, making makeup videos, which was a passion of yours when you were younger. Not that you were any good at it back then. Those videos quickly become unlisted when your channel started blowing up in late 2016, now nearing 20 million at the present time.

It wasn't long before you expanded your horizons and had started making different sorts of videos, including vlogs of your everyday life - which wasn't and still isn't that exciting in your opinion - and those where you just had a laugh, attempting to do stupid challenges that were so popular back then. It was those, however, that grew your channel. Your fans seemed to love them and so you gradually started to make more.

As your small channel began to grow significantly, it caught the attention of KSI, a member of the Sidemen, who reached out to you to for a collab. You were ecstatic. You couldn't believe it at the time, why would someone like KSI with 20 million subscribers want to collaborate with you? By that time, you couldn't exactly call yourself a small channel anymore, with almost 5 million subscribers but it still didn't make any sense to you.

You and JJ quickly bonded after filming together. You had a very similar sense of humour and interests. As the years went, the older boy became one of your best friends, the nature of your relationship being very teasing and flirtatious but the both of you knew it was a joke. It was just the way you both were.

Though despite having known him for nearing 3 years now, you had never met the rest of the Sidemen, with the exception of Simon, as he lived with JJ. Which is why when he texted asking you to collaborate with the Sidemen, you couldn't turn the offer down. You were a fan of the group and the content they were producing. You thought the videos that they made were exceptional, that they were pushing the envelope of the standard of content on YouTube and often found yourself excited for new videos.

He had explained that they were filming another of their 'Tinder in real life' but a YouTuber version with the likes of BambinoBecky and ChiWithAC. You were so excited. You were finally going to meet the rest of JJ's friends and you had the opportunity to be a part of a Sidemen Sunday.

You arrived at the studio the boys were filming at in the afternoon, finding and greeting JJ before he introduced you to the other sidemen in addition to Lux, Freezy and Stephen.

"And you've already met Simon." He finished.

"Yeah. Nice to finally meet you all. JJ tells me a lot about you guys." You laughed.

"Because that's assuring." Ethan pointed out with a chuckle, the other boys letting out agreements.

"Not all bad, I promise." You teased, winking at him. Ethan felt the blood rushing to his face, immediately becoming flustered and stumbling over his words. You found that you often had that effect on people as you could be very direct and flirtatious even when you didn't mean it. To you it was just friendly banter.

"Geez Y/N, stop flirting with people you met literally five minutes ago." JJ rolled his eyes.

"You sound a bit jealous, Jide." You smirked, a teasing grin spread across your face.

"Nah, allow it." There were eruptions of laughter around the room, coming from the boys. You were quick to notice Harry standing out of the way and was significantly quieter than the others, with what seemed to be a forced smile on his face.

Harry was in his own head, barely paying attention to what was going on around him. When JJ had told him that you were going to be in the next Sidemen video, he panicked. You were an accomplished YouTuber who he was quite fond of to say the least. Well, that would be an understatement, he had a fairly large crush on you. A crush that no one but Freezy and Lux knew about.

He knew that JJ had been friends with you for some time now but never considered the possibility of even meeting you. His anxiety acted as a barrier to even the thought of it. But he was currently in the same room as you and had said nothing more than a short 'hello'. He longed to have the confidence Ethan had to speak to you, even more so for you to look at him the way you were.

Already you were flirting with JJ and Ethan, something that caused a pit to form at the bottom of his stomach. He wouldn't admit it, but he could slowly feel the jealousy forming. Not that he had anything to be jealous about in the first place!

You continued to speak with the boys as you got your mic set up, telling them stories you were sure would embarrass JJ.

"Y/N, stop." The older boy whined. He could be like a child sometimes, but it was one of his more endearing qualities. He simply wouldn't be JJ if he wasn't.

"No, carry on." Simon laughed.

"Oh, don't worry, there's plenty more where that came from." You teased.

"I think it's time we started, don't you think?" Harry grumbled.

"Right." You smiled at the boy, who's cheeks became tinted red. He ducked to hide his face and walked around to stand in the line, hiding himself in the middle.

"Hi, I'm Y/N, I'm 23 and I'm from Y/H/T." You spoke to the camera once you were given the go ahead.

"I'm Simon, I'm 28. I like to practice safe sex."

"Always a good start."

"I could tie you to the bed, so you don't fall off." He finished with a giggle. You acted like you were pondering it for a moment before letting out a laugh and swiping right.

"I'm down for that." You teased. The boys all let out rumbles of laughter

"Hi, I'm Ethan, I'm 26 and kiss me if I'm wrong, but you're gonna swipe right."

"What would you rather?" You joked. Ethan shrugged his shoulders and walked closer to the board, sticking his head through with his lips puckered, eliciting a cry of protest from Harry that this wasn't allowed. You laughed and made an over exaggerated motion to swipe to the right, causing him to pout playfully but walked over to the right anyway.

"Hi, I'm Josh, I'm 28. KSI has a top ten single, but you're the only hot single I can see."

"Wow, that was smooth!" You said with a grin. "Definite yes from me."

"I'm Callum, I'm 26. Are you into fitness?" Freezy asked.

"Can't say I am." You replied, unsure of what turn this could take.

"How about you fitness dick in your mouth?"

"I wouldn't get too excited babes, I gag on my toothbrush." You laughed. "We could try though."

You swiped right on him, chuckling as you watched him let out a yes before joining Simon, Ethan, and Josh. You frowned slightly, a crease forming between your brows as you saw Harry whisper something furiously at his friend but ultimately got distracted by Vik stepping up to go next.

"I'm Vik, I'm 25. My ex-girlfriend always said I'd never do better than her, wanna prove her right?" You could hear the cries of the boys in the background, some scolding him, others laughing.

"Man actually said prove her right. Not wrong." JJ shrieked with a shocked look on his face, holding his head with his hands.

"You need to find someone for that." You snarked, swiping left on the boy, who shrugged and walked off.

"Damn! You got told!" Lux cackled.

"Uh hi. I'm Harry. I'm uh 25, no I'm not I'm 24." He stumbled. "Are you sure you're a muggle? Because that ass is magical."

"You should see how magical it can be." You spoke before cringing at yourself and laughing, swiping right to avoid a reply. The boy's face grew a bright shade of red, closely resembling the colour of a tomato.

"Geez, is that an offer?!" Freezy yelled from the right side. You laughed, observing how Harry whispered furiously to the boy to stop and winked at him once he had could see. Your laughter only increased as you watched JJ step up.

"I'm JJ. I'm 28 and are you a raisin? Cause you're raising my dick." The boy in question stood in front of you so confidently, hands clasped together in front of him so seriously that you just lost it. By the time you composed yourself, there were tears almost falling from your eyes.

"A* for effort." You laughed, swiping right eliciting a cry of success.

You had wrapped up filming your segment of the video, which conveniently was the last of the day. You found JJ who you spoke to whilst the other boys were otherwise occupied talking to each other.

"Cheers for coming, Y/N/N. You've been great."

"Anything for you." You joked.

"Don't tempt me." He laughed. You could feel eyes on you, eyes that were burning into your side. You turned your head to see Harry staring you and JJ down before looking away after being caught in the act, and suddenly felt very uncomfortable.

"Does Harry not like me or something?" You whispered to JJ, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden.

"Not that I know of." He frowned looking at the younger boy. "He can be a bit awkward at times and gets flustered a lot."

"Right." You agreed. You excused yourself before sauntering up to the boy in question, calling his name to snap him out of the daze he appeared to be in.

"Oh, um hey Y/N." He stumbled.

"Hi." You smiled gently. "I uh, I was just wondering, do you... have I done something to offend you?"

"Offend me? Why, uh, why would you think that?" He rambled.

"It's just... it's nothing, it's probably just me overthinking things." You waved it off, feeling like a complete idiot.

"I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that I don't like you. I don't not like you, in fact I really like you! Oh, um I mean I like you, you're very pretty." The boy couldn't stop rambling which made you laugh. "No, wait."

"You think I'm pretty?" You blushed interrupting him. Harry felt his mouth go dry, not being able to get anything coherent to come out. "Well, Harry, I really like you too."

"What?" His eyebrows shot up so far it was almost comical. "Really? So, you don't like the other guys?"

"What? No." You laughed. "That's absurd. Why would you think that?"

"You seemed very..." The boy trailed off, not wanting to offend you after you had admitted to liking him.

"Flirty?" You finished, causing him to nod. "I'm like that with everyone, I don't mean to be half the time."

"Oh."

"Well, how about you give me your phone number and when you finally grow a pair, you can ask me out?" Your confidence levels had shot up spontaneously.

"Uh, sure." His cheeks had become a dark shade of red as he passed his phone to you so you could put your number in. You kept looking up at him as you typed, putting your name under 'Y/N x' in his contacts before handing it back to him.

"Y/N! Come on! We're going to Nando's!" JJ called from the other side of the room.

"Call me." You winked. Your bottom lip was caught between your teeth and was currently the only thing from stopping the wide grin from spreading across your face. A grin that hadn't disappeared from your face for the rest of the day, much to the curiosity of JJ, who was disappointed when you refused to tell him why, or more appropriately who, had put the smile on your face.

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andr0medafallen · 2 years ago

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The Gaslight

A/N: Reposting old fics. Lightly revised.

Pairing: Llewyn Davis x Reader

Warnings: Existential dread, depictions of smoking, brief mention of cancer in relation to smoking, kind of fluffy ig?, lmk if i need to add anything

Description: New York isn't anywhere near as great as it's portrayed by Frank Sinatra or any of the greats of your time. Maybe the only person with a chance at changing your mind about that is someone who feels the exact same way.

Word Count: 2.1k

Everyone who says that there is “so much to do in New York” is wrong. There’s plenty of random bullshit to do the first couple hundred days living there, and then by the time you’re so over it that you’d rather be doing anything else, you’re stuck because you sold your car for rent and you don’t have enough energy or ambition to send out resumes to employers outside of the city and wait one million years for a letter of rejection. You suppose that that may be the reason the telephone had been invented, but every time you even touch the damned machine, you're overwhelmed with a debilitating flood of anxiety that only goes away after you’ve promised yourself you’ll never touch it again. Honestly, it would probably be best to stop spending the crippling $25 a month for the rotary, but you’d have to call the phone company, and that falls under the list of things you would not like to do.

What may come as a surprise to the vast amounts of small-towners moving to the big city is that the over-romantacized gum spattered streets, unaffordable rent, and constant rat infestations all get old really fast. But how can you honestly judge? You were one of those small-town girls with big dreams, once.

Maybe what you really hate about New York is its tendency to point out the worst in you. Somehow being constantly surrounded by 7.78 million people only manages to make you feel more lonely. As if the city is pointing out that even when it is impossible to avoid people, as you often yearn to do, you are still incapable of making a single genuine friend.

As if it’s any sort of consolation, once you realize that there is nothing to do in New York, you start finding like-minded individuals. It was those very like-minded individuals who led you to The Gaslight today. Course, you weren’t here with anyone. You just got handed a flier at Donna’s apartment. So here you were, at The Gaslight Cafe. Sticky tables, dirty floors, some sort of New Yorker reputation that you were blissfully unaware of.

When you entered the bar, the singer hadn’t yet made his appearance.You were five minutes late, but it was the city, so of course that made you ten minutes early. Honestly though, the room was actually kind of nice. It all seemed so comfortable and modern with its stone walls and chic lamps and real wood tables. The room was low-lit with a couple of warm-toned spotlights pointing towards the stage, where an empty oak-wood chair and a metal mic sat. No matter how hard it tried, though, it still didn’t beat the classic dilemma of any bar: Beer-sticky surfaces and the smell of tobacco, hanging in the air like a sacred canopy.

When you were younger you had been a regular at plenty of different venues in your hometown. Some were all ages and family-friendly, some were teenage rock’n’roller’s garages, and plenty were bars like this one where the owners innocently turned a blind eye to your baby face. Those bars usually had vinyl tables, though. What your teenage hangouts all had in common, though, was that you had known people there. The owners, maybe a drummer or two. Plenty of boy-crazy lasses and lads. Maybe you were jaded, but you’ve been finding it harder and harder to remember what it’s like to know and be known. Some days, maybe even today, you thought of what it would be like to build that sort of community for yourself, and the task felt near impossible.

On the bright side, your concert-going experience meant that you knew the best places to sit when you went to this sort of thing; Close enough to the singer so that you could see them, but not so close that it would seem like you cared.

You’d almost finished your first drink when the singer came out. His curly hair was messily piled atop his head and he wore clothes that were very obviously picked out from a thrift store or a clearance rack. Of course, you were the last to judge, because you certainly did the same. It had been a long time since you had been able to afford anything on the main floor of a Macy’s. But honestly, the rugged look suited him. His olive skin looked pale, as if he never went outside except for on his commute to these nighttime gigs, like a modern-day vampire, and his eyes looked tired, like they held the murky depths of the Hudson in them. You wondered how he would be spending his Sunday night if he weren’t here.

All of this was just idle thought though, the bored wonderings of someone who was just about ready for a second drink. It’s not like you cared. That is, until he started playing. You remembered the shows from when you were young, played by fellow adolescents jamming out to Elvis Presley and Howlin’ Wolf. You thought they were so fun, yet still usually left early to go fuck around somewhere else. This was nothing like that. When the singer's deft fingers gracefully twirled between strings, when his voice sang a song of anguish passed down generation to generation, you had never felt so seen. You thought maybe this was it. Some sort of sign that it was alright now and you no longer had to spend every day worrying about bills and how to put your next meal on the table. You didn’t even go to the bar for another drink, you were too enraptured.

When your thoughts did wander, it was all about that man sitting on that chair on the low-hanging stage strumming a guitar. You wanted to know his whole life story. How he ended up here, how he couldn’t leave. Maybe he was a traveling musician, but maybe he was like you. Like Sisyphus, being pushed back into the confines of the city any time he tried to escape its grasp.

When his last song ended you felt like crying. Maybe you already had been crying. Sometimes it was hard for you to pay attention to that sort of thing. Sometimes you get so enraptured by the music that you can’t even manage to wipe your tear streaks until the end of the song, when you frantically will them away with the sleeve of your sweater and the will of a god. This was one of those times.

There really was no real reason to stay once he’d finished his set. You were fairly far from drunk, but hopefully intoxicated enough that you wouldn’t have a lot of trouble getting to sleep. With one last glance at the singer, you slipped out the side door into the freezing New York winter. You were far from cold, though, because when you looked back through the door, your eyes met his brown bark gaze, heating your cheeks with a rosy warmth. You quickly tore your eyes away and shut the alleyway door before fumbling with your cigarette case. Your quickly numbing fingers took their time flicking the lighter going, but once you managed it, you took a deep inhale, hands cupped in front of the cigarette cradled by your lips. The smoke burned through you, warming you from the inside out.

You glanced at the door as it creaked open next to you, once again inhaling from your cigarette. You knew it was a bad habit and apparently some doctors now believed that it caused cancer or something, but you couldn’t remember the last time that you actually cared.

Once your own cloud of shit smelling cigarettes (you bought the cheap stuff, 25 cents a pack) dissipated, you realized that it wasn’t some trash man or drunk guy needing to puke, but your very own sad man in thrifted clothing holding a beat-up hard shell guitar case. Your heart fluttered, standing this close to him. It was your fatal flaw as a New Yorker, one that you refused to admit to anyone. You got starstruck so stupid easily. Usually not even by stars. Sure, you live in New York and there are plenty all over this shithole city,but it’s the smaller ones you adore. You couldn’t give a shit about Frank Sinatra, but one time you saw your favorite 6pm News anchor grocery shopping in Manhattan and got so excited that a paparazzo started taking pictures hoping that it was some B-List celebrity that he wasn’t familiar with.

And so, when you stood in front of this man, who was not famous, and who you hadn’t even known –of– for very long, but you felt like you might burst into flames in his presence.

He had this aura about him that preached of pain and empty hope and that somehow called to you like a beautiful sonnet.

He even had the audacity to look surprised to see you, as if you hadn’t made eye contact when you’d used this door just a few minutes prior. It was clear that he had come out the side exit rather than the front exit in some attempt to avoid having to talk to people, and you thought about letting him do just that, but maybe you still believed in fate just a bit, and maybe she was giving you a second shot just now. You weren’t one to ignore divine interference.

You silently offered him your cigarette, and he seemed to consider it for a moment before settling against the red brick wall beside you and accepting it. You don’t miss how his eyes seem to darken as they take in the red smudges which your lips had placed on the tipping paper just moments ago. He takes a hit from the half-smoked cigarette and there is something so casually intimate about the both of you sweetly caressing a lifeless piece of paper rolled with death and dopamine without a single direct touch between you.

When he made no move to speak, you took the initiative. “I liked your set,” you mumbled, taking the joint. You blew out the smoke in a steady stream. You knew plenty of folks who thought that blowing rings made them all sophisticated or whatnot, but anytime you did it you felt like a JRR Tolkien character–the old wizard guy. Gandalf? The singer (who still hadn’t told you his name) exhaled his smoke in puffs, like little storm-clouds.

“No, it's… it’s not.” His response made no sense in the context of what you had said, but somehow you understood its meaning anyway. That feeling of incompetence, where no amount of praise can make up for any past rejection.

“Well. I liked it,” you responded coolly, as if his opinion on his own music obviously meant less than yours. You turned towards him. The new angle revealed how close the two of you truly were, less than a foot away from each other, and it made your heart increase a few paces.

When you told him your name, it elicited the tiniest of smiles in response, and he held out his hand for you to shake. He didn’t seem to smile much, but he still had the most beautiful laugh lines around his eyes. You shook his outreached hand, its warmth dulling the stinging pain of the cold.

“Llewyn Davis,” He introduced, before pulling his hand back to his side. A part of you missed his warmth already.

“Llewyn.” You tested the word out on your lips, drawing it out slowly as if tasting it. “It’s a pretty name.”

Llewyn’s eyes crinkled in response, and you responded in kind with a toothy grin. Pretty, pretty, pretty.

“Well, thanks for the smoke. I should probably head home before anyone starts worrying,” he spoke, snubbing out the spent cigarette on the brick wall and readying up his guitar case.

As he turned away to leave, you raised an eyebrow at the man, not quite believing his story. “And where is home for you, Llewyn?”

He turned back towards you, surprised by your antics, and shrugged. “Anywhere with a nice enough couch, I suppose.”

You smirked at him, giddy at having caught him in his white lie. “Well I can’t say my couch cost more than twenty dollars, but my heater works. Deal?”

The way his eyes seemed to soften at your words made you unbelievably happy. He wasn’t quite smiling, but he seemed so much less stressed.

“That’s…that’s really nice of you,” Llewyn mumbled. You hesitantly reached forward and took his hand, fingers brushing his palm before closing around his calloused left hand, which had so expertly been holding down bar chords and hammer-ons moments before. He squeezed your hand in response, as if to tell you that this gentle act of intimacy was acceptable. When he saw you looking up at him expectantly, he realized that he hadn’t yet answered your question. “Yeah, deal.”

#llewyn davis x reader #reader insert #mine #llewyn davis fanfic #llewyn davis angst #llewyn davis fluff #inside llewyn davis #oscar isaac fanfic

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modern-inheritance · 3 years ago

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Modern Inheritance: Dras Leona Interlude

(A/N: Longer A/N at the end adressing some stuff from in the fic. Cheers! Remember the timeline changes!)

~~~

Her head was pounding.

Arya groaned, squinting her eyes against the bright lights that assaulted them. Waking up with a headache was always rough. Waking up with an apparent hangover in what seemed to be one of Farthen Dur’s stone cut gutters, face wet with drool, was exponentially worse. The added feeling of self-hatred for being so careless as to consume that much dwarven brewed alcohol didn’t help matters

As her eyes adjusted, the elf started to take in her current state through the fog of her migraine. She was curled up on a cold stone floor if the feeling against her cheek was anything to go by, and her wrists and shoulders must have been tucked behind her at an odd angle during the night. The muscles around her joints shrieked in quiet protest of movement, stopping her from changing position.

That’s when Arya realized she actually couldn’t change position…and her arms were locked behind her back, a set of shackles at her wrists and another clamped around her ankles.

Mind-twisting panic gave the elf enough strength to wrench her protesting body into a sitting position. The nauseating shock of pain forced her to bite down onto a knotted cloth firmly wedged between her teeth. The brief clarity the surge of adrenaline brought sliced through the haze to reveal not stone cut dwarven gutters but the circular room she and Eragon had dived into. The amethysts, humming and flaring bright with internal light, cast reflections that danced madly across the patterned floor in a sickening whirl.

Eragon. Arya couldn’t see him. Her alarm grew until, reaching back with her bound hands, the combat liaison’s fingers brushed against a similarly shackled pair. Arya craned her head back as best she could and caught a glimpse of chestnut brown streaked with honey just as she felt the rough hills of thick calluses. There you are. Good.

The relief was short-lived. If Eragon was here, he was captured as well. They, whoever they were, would hurt him in ways all too familiar to the elf.

The thought brought a fresh rush of panic, a keening whine filling Arya’s ears and drowning out the low murmur that pervaded the room. This couldn’t be happening, not again. The room tilted, reality bending and sinking in on itself as the icy memory of Wyrden’s death sank into the elf’s bones. It was happening again, down to one of them dying in a wild chase.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, chest aching as she fought to get her breathing under control. In a situation like this, with her history, panic wasn’t unheard of. Hell, it was expected. But as Arya struggled to pull her knees under her body, that ever present voice kept telling her that now. is not. the time. She ground her teeth into the sodden cloth in her mouth, fighting the urge to gag against its encroachment towards the back of her throat. Forced herself to take measured breaths through her nose, nails digging into her palms to ground herself in the present and not the past.

I’m not there. I’m not there. I’m not there. I’m in Dras Leona. I’m not in Gil’ead. I’m in Dras Leona. I’m not in Gil’ead. I’m in Dras Leona….

It helped. The deep ache in her sternum eased somewhat, the tightness receding enough for the elf to begin a blind attempt at slipping her cuffed wrists under her legs. That was step one, it was always step one. All the buried instincts were coming back, the little things one picked up only through experience.

It took only seconds for the elf to realize the attempts were for naught. Not only were her hands cuffed, but their captors had used rope to tie her arms at the elbows as well. That didn’t stop her from working the loops against her back, trying with increasing desperation to rub the bindings down far enough to slip them off. She needed to get Eragon out of there, get him away from whatever hell awaited them.

Every movement increased the burning in her wrists. It grew until, in a sudden rush and a sickening ripping sensation, Arya felt warmth begin oozing over her hands along with a blinding shock that bolted up her arms. Glenwing’s nagging rose in her fogged mind, his frequent warnings that her odd sense of pride in leaving her old scars could be dangerous. Only now did she grimly acknowledge he was right.

She knew what she would find if the shackles at her wrists were removed. The bands of scar tissue left from Gil’ead, formerly faded to a purpled silver from their old angry red, would be raw. Blistered to the point of mirroring scalds. She could feel the fragile skin tearing every time she shifted her arms, sliding away from the flesh beneath.

Her bloodied fingers brushed against Eragon’s hand again.

Arya bit down on the gag and wrenched her shoulders forward with renewed conviction. Eragon would not live with the same scars.

The rope was finally beginning to move, rolling down her elbows in maddeningly small increments. Once it was off she could slip her hands to the front with a quick dislocation of her shoulder, and then she would be free to work on Eragon’s restraints.

The elf could feel the Rider’s even breathing at her back, still dead to their situation. She wanted it to stay that way. Didn’t want him to acquire that ingrained, stomach wrenching fear deep in his bones that reared up whenever something slipped around his wrists. Whenever someone else closed the door behind him without warning.

The ropes were so tantalizingly close to falling away when a flicker to the left sent Arya’s mind reeling again. A cold hand suddenly seized her neck from the side, and with a half strangled yell the elf threw her weight behind her shoulder and slammed into the attacker.

The murmuring in the room rose, amethysts blazing in response. Arya felt her body impact flesh for a brief moment, vision tilting, and then her head cracked against the polished floor. Spots flashed in the same pattern as the ring of crystals around them. Through the blind patches she saw, for the first time, the people arranged around the room, arms and stumps of missing limbs raised up to the ceiling. The amethysts pulsed in rhythm with their steady chanting, the ever-increasing glow absorbing the power of their words.

The robed man the elf had collided with stepped forward and leaned down, hand outstretched. An instinctive growl from low in Arya’s chest ripped through her throat as he approached. That hand was painfully familiar in the ghostly light of the amethysts, pale and lined with angrily flexed tendons.

But he wasn’t reaching for her. With a jolt Arya wrenched herself up again and knocked the man’s arm away with her shoulder. For a moment a dark thought, echoed in his mocking voice, of just how pathetic she must look flitted through her consciousness. Arms and ankles bound, shoulders hunched and knees spread for balance, snarling and snapping through a sodden gag like a chained wolf.

But she would not let them touch him. Not Eragon. She would take whatever tortures they had in mind, but not him. He was her responsibility. He was...was….

Damn it. Why did thinking of Eragon being harmed send such a cold stab of frantic horror, of hurt, right into her chest? The flashbacks weren't like this. This was more painful, but oddly...welcome. Unlike the flashbacks, this fear sharpened her resolve instead of blinding her with panic.

The man moved to reach for Eragon again, approaching from the side and wholly unperturbed by the maddened elf. Unable to move much more than a few inches, desperate, Arya dove into the magic of her blood and flung a mental spell towards the hooded wretch. Broken bones would slow him.

Except the moment the spell slid from her thoughts, Arya felt her mind shatter.

A broken yell tore through the gag. The destruction of her concentration and the oh-so-familiar pain crashed through what grip she had on the present, sending sights, sounds, sensations laced with the scent of blood all careening to the forefront of her mind’s eye.

Struggling, clawing like a drowning soul against the flood of memories, Arya saw the man regard her with a cold, contemptuous stare. Then he turned, and began dragging Eragon’s slumped body away.

~~~

(Post A/N: So, a question that might come up is ‘why didn’t Arya try to use magic immediately?’ Several reasons! Through her time in the Varden’s squads and larger fights/battles, Arya has adopted a ‘magic is absolutely the last resort’ mentality. You won’t always have time to get your strength back and you don’t know the capabilities of whoever’s fighting you/posing a threat. It’s safest to keep magic in your back pocket until emergency healing and the most desperate times. She also wasn’t fully aware of who else could be in the room so didn’t want to attract attention, and the PTSD all wrapped up in this I think just assumed she wouldn’t be able to use magic until she thought Eragon was in immediate danger.

So, yeah. That’s it. Cheers!)

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cooloddball · 2 years ago

Text

JIB10 CLOSING CEREMONY ANALYSIS

for daisy anon

let me start by saying that I will forever analyse jib10 until the day i crack the code because this panel was the messiest these two have ever been (and we all know they are messy af). let it also be known that everytime i watch it, i cringe so hard i have to stop and then a few months later i go back and repeat the entire process. it’s like some sort of madness but that’s what cockles has done to us all.

PS. I'll be using two videos to analyze it since some angles are not visible in one video.

on to the closing ceremony ↓

the panel is over and what in the gay hell (as one of my followers would ask) is this moment? guys stop, no please don’t.

the entire cast present walks out with briana buckmaster beelining for jensen as usual. okay this is not a snide comment, they are actually besties and she’s often hanging around jensen during jib (re: jib8,jib9, jib10, sns) and that photo they took ladies in red giving off bi4bi energy. anyway I digress. now, as briana is hugging jensen misha seems like he’s lost and doesn’t know what to do with his hands until rob comes along and they hug (rob is so adorable i just want to squish is cheeks) the funniest thing about this situation is that no one goes to hug jared or anything. It’s rather odd don’t you think?

anyway, back to cockles. jensen looks over at robisha? giving each other some love and i think he just wants his man's attention again because he goes over to the fireworks thingy or whatever it’s called is throwing sparks and jensen with his whole chest and his cute little bowlegs stands in front of it to show off? I love this man but half the time i don’t know what he’s doing but he looks adorable doing it so i enjoy it. after his shennanigans, jensen turns to see if his husband is looking at him being goofy and all but at this point misha is busy talking with rob, rob’s hand is on misha’s shoulder and man is jensen not amused. this was so funny like dude chill, he’s just having a wee chat with rob, you know rob your straight (?)friend rob. dude is looking at them for a whole three seconds (yes i counted) like it’s getting creepy and both misha and rob are oblivious just chatting away. I was afraid he might go there and ask rob to back off but thank jack he didn’t because that stare was intense. I wish i could get a video taken from the other angle because i'd like to see what his face was doing. it’s heartbreaking and funny and adorable all at the same time because jensen you are a grown ass man and a father of three and yes we understand you were extremely needy that particular day but let misha catch up with his friend for just a sec, jfc.

so jensen decides nope, nope that’s enough i can’t not have my man look at me so i’ll show him who he needs to be looking at. let me do something crazy so he starts walking off the stage and misha looks back at jared and says something. so as misha and jared chat away and try to figure out what is going on with the green eyed grasshopper, jensen goes ahead and sits on someone’s lap, yes, he sits on a fan in the audience. okay if that happened to me i’d probably d word because it’s jensen ross ackles sitting on my lap. I know he smells amazing and is sexy af i’d probably be stuck there like a koala and i wouldn’t let him go but i digress.

while jared is uncomfortably smiling wondering wtf is going on, misha is hiding his face in shame like nope sweetheart what are you doing? that’s not cool you know you can’t just be out there sitting on fan girls’ laps please stop. even jared is rubbing his forehead probably wondering wtf is wrong with his friend.

jensen starts to scream into the mic while looking at his colleagues on the stage and as he does that. misha moves from where he was standing right in front of jensen and goes down the stage to talk to daniela.

meanwhile jared is still rubbing his head like what is happening? everyone else is laughing but jared is surprised that misha has left he seems confused??? And so am i because wtf jensen? misha? can you two just be normal like for once? you are 40+ year oldmen acting like teenagers with a crush like tf? okay i love to see it but also it’s so cringey i can’t keep up. jensen looks over at misha and daniela and when he sees that misha is going back on stage, he gets off the fan too but misha goes to stand at the very end of the line next to jason manns. it looks like jensen is beelining for misha but i think he decides against it since he's the mc and he has to stand in the middle of the room. at this moment i would like us to take a moment of silence for jensen for having to keep it together while working very closely with misha for all those years. i mean if he’s behaving like this in public in front of thousands of fans what was he like on set? i know i’m needy when it comes to relationships but i feel like he’s needier. let’s take another moment of silence for misha for having to deal with a needy/bratty jensen ross ackles for over a decade.

idk what jared is telling rob but rob is laughing while looking at jensen who is walking towards them on stage. it’s all good between rob and jensen. of course no one can stay mad at rob for over a minute he’s too damn adorable. NB: I don’t think jensen was mad at rob for talking to misha i just think he was feeling abandoned by his man so he got a little desperate and did what he did as described above.

there’s a flying unicorn (steve is that you?) and surprse jensen kicks it as usual *eye roll* what did unicorns ever do to him?

he is finally done with his shenanigans and starts the closing ceremony. now what stands out here is the way he introduces people. so he starts with rich who is the second person to his right, then after he goes ahead to introduce jason manns who is at the far end of the line next to misha. i mean he leaves out rob who is closest to him and adam fergus who is standing between rich and jason. now what's more interesting is his pitch of voice when he introduces them that makes it sus. anyway…the way misha is looking at jensen here is just so...heart eyes. he has an ear to ear grin and he’s just looking at jensen so adorably like c’mon jensen just said jason manns and that was enough to make misha happy. like am i missing something or? so when jason is called, he playfully hides behind misha and misha just looks at jensen and jensen looks at him and it’ so funny because this is so funny to me.

the way jensen and misha look at each other here…it’s just s funny because like guys you just had a whole hour of shennanigans together tf? and it goes on for 3 seconds as well like ??? in retrospect, jensen could’ve been looking at jason but since he was so close to misha i’ll just assume it’s misha because misha was also looking at him.

the way he announces misha’s name like sir are you okay? do you need to be that loud? dlso did he just moan? i heard a mmh...ahh somewhere in there but maybe it’s just me. the way he’s looking at misha guys i want to hide this is so…i can’t look. jensen hasn’t taken his eyes off him for 5 seconds now like can someone help him? they are looking at each other i’m crying because i am feeling so many things all at once.

it’s funny how even though he announces adam fergus the same way he announced misha, he barely looks at him. like i know they are friends but it’s just the difference between how he looks at misha and the way he looks at adam. i gagged.

so he goes ahead and introduces everyone else and he barely looks at them which is a glaring omission considering how he was behaving earlier when it came to misha. he doesn’t even look at jared. i don’t think i have enough expletives for the feelings i have rn because i’m reeling. jensen is intentionally looking away from jared while misha and jason are busy talking about jensen and whatever is happening at that moment probably something like “he looks done” and jason agrees because they laugh.

jensen also doesn’t look at briana once. also what’s even funnier he looks so done like he’s rolling his eyes? Idk what’s up with that but… he goes on to introduce everyone else without even a glance.

now it’s finally his turn to be introduced and what happens next is so surreal i had to watch it in slow motion. so jared who is right behind jensen reaches out as if reach for jensen’s hand? which is awkward because jensen is standing like a statue his hands holding the mic in a defensive way like he doesn’t want to be touched. even when jared introduces him he has to push him like he’s a boulder stone being rolled down a hill. i thought i'm dramatic but jensen is on another level because wtf is he doing? is he that done with the whole situation or jared for his bs earlier in the panel that he doesn’t want to even be near him? i could be wrong but it’s just a glaring difference between how he was with jason, rob, rich, and misha and how he’s acting with jared. nothing to see here just the jivorce simmering like a volcano under the jibcon floorboards. idk what i’m saying so i’ll just walk away now.

look at that grin on misha’s face. aww :) you can ‘t hide love can you? he’s so happy to see jensen like that’s his man and even if he was bratting the whole panel he just loves him so much. what’s even more adorable is that after jensen blows a kiss to the fans he turns to look at misha and they look at each other. in a room of people all i see is you. i’m not crying you are. literally i’m crying because they are so adorkable i can’t cope bobo do you have any other advise to deal with beautiful gay situations please?

but i’m about to spoil that sweet moment because as he's looking at his blue-eyed cutie patootie jared is in the back spanking his ass like can you not sir? jensen doesn’t even react to that because he’s still looking at misha and walking in reverse back to his position. i think he didn’t want to have to see jared’s face. jk but no seriously that’s what happened. jared still can’t read the room because he’s now tapping jensen’s shoulder. jensen still isn’t paying him any mind. This is get too painful and embarrassing to watch, like jared stop, you are embarrassing yourself. oh god now he’s touching both jensen and briana. jensen has to bend so jared lets go of him like how embarrassing is that? jared's whole body is turned towards jensen but jensen is facing towards daniela paying him no mind like why is he still doing this to himself? It’s too cringe to watch.

so finally jensen puts his arm around jared’s neck since they are both hugging daniela but he still hasn’t looked at him once.

so daniela says that there will be another jib and you know what jensen does?he fucking looks over at misha . he even raises his eyebrows like ‘do you hear that babe? we will always have rome.’ but misha’s not looking at him so the momentpasses. adam fergus is laughing in the background and jensen is just waiting for his babe to acknowledge him but misha is minding his own business. he looks at misha for 6 seconds . from here to here. wow.

intermission -> i have seen posts about this moment that mentioned that jensen was glaring at adam for talking to misha and that’s why he was looking that way but that’s not the case because when adam and misha were chatting away, jensen didn’t see it because he was busy hugging daniela so that’s not what happened. he was looked over at misha after daniela mentioned that they should have another jib. but i could be wrong so… moving on.

finally jensen spares jared a glance but it only lasts a second. adam makes a joke, jared and jensen thank daniela. It’s over.

after the closing ceremony jensen takes misha to the loading dock, pins him to the wall, kisses the hell out of him and takes that gay ass selfie before he leaves for dubai/australia.

okay okay i have an idea as to why jensen said he would’ve loved to have slept in while staring longingly at misha, why he was bratty during the panel and why they took that selfie it’s nothing big it’s just that maybe the previous night they didn’t get to spend enough time together for obvious reasons and they had to wake up early and spend the entire day at the con centre and hence he was being so bratty because he wanted all of misha’s attention because he knew he wouldn’t see him again in like a month or so. but again, i'm just speculating.

#cockles #jib10 closing ceremony #jib10 #jensen was being brat and i sure do hope misha gave him whatever it is that he needed after the panel

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rayshippouuchiha · 3 years ago

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HELL YEAH I LOVE THIS SUIKAWARI MY HEART THING SHOUTA'S SO T H I R S T Y ok real talk deku absolutely knows who eraserhead is right??? hes an eraserhead fan right???????

"These seem kind of ...short," Izuku can't help but point out, hands coming down to tug futilely at the swim shorts that had somehow replaced his standard blue and yellow Mighty Swim Shorts(TM) he's had for years now. "And tight."

"As god Herself intended," Hitoshi mutters from where he's laid out on the concrete of the changing room floor. "Praise be to Yaomomo."

"Praise be," Izuku automatically echoes out of longstanding habit.

A beat of silence passes between them

"You know that floor is beyond filthy, right?" Izuku can't help but ask.

Hitoshi just peels one bleary eye open and stares up at Izuku silently.

"Fair enough," Izuku agrees as he goes back to fussing with his shorts.

"You nervous?" Hitoshi asks a few seconds later.

"Yeah," Izuku admits sheepishly. "Seems kind of dumb huh? Being so nervous over a charity event like this? But ... what if I look stupid?"

"Not possible," Hitoshi immediately denies.

Izuku loves his friend so much. Getting arrested together with Hitoshi at a rally really was the best thing to happen to him in a long time.

"Very possible," Izuku counters. "Highly probably in fact. Everyone else participating is super cool with super cool moves, with or without their quirk being involved. I'm just ... me."

"Look," Hitoshi says as he eels his way across the floor until he's laying right beside where Izuku's standing. "Just go out there and do exactly what you did at practice. Trust me, it'll go perfectly. Especially since Todoroki's not here to catch the vapors or the drapes on fire."

"Still don't know why the entire group had to come to that practice," Izuku grumbles just a bit. "Or why Momo had to host it. Or why Uraraka recorded it."

"Kirby's making mint by now," Hitoshi mumbles under his breath.

"What?" Izuku asks.

"Nothing," Hitoshi waves his question off lazily as he finally rolls over and pushes himself up onto his feet.

He throws an arm over Izuku's shoulder and rests his sharp chin on the crown of Izuku's head.

"Like I said before," Hitoshi reaches his hand up to poke at Izuku's cheek, "just go out there and be your regular sunshine broccoli self and do what you did at practice night. You've got this."

And by this point all Izuku can do is believe him.

~~~

Crate of watermelons firmly in hand, Izuku bounces just a bit on his toes and focuses on taking deep breaths of fresh ocean air.

Dagobah Beach is still as beautiful now as it was all those years ago when he cleaned it for Toshi-sensei at the start of his apprenticeship.

On the other side of the small, curtained off backstage area the crowd that's gathered is going wild.

Honestly, Izuku would rather be out there watching the Miruko crush watermelons than here waiting for his own turn to go on stage.

But, eventually, is turn does actually come.

"...the showstopper himself, the one, the only, the #1 Can Do Hero Dekiru."

Present Mic's announcement ringing in his ears, Izuku takes one last deep breath, does his best to smile, and moves out into view.

The crowd is deafening and Izuku has to admit that it always makes him feel more than a bit awestruck to have so many people cheering for him. Especially over something that's more than a bit silly even if it's for a collection of good causes.

He shoots the crowd a small wave as he sets his crate down.

"Show us what you've got!" Present Mic demands from somewhere to Izuku's right. "And let's give him some encouragement listeners!"

The crowd begins to chant "De~ki~ru!" and Izuku picks up his first watermelon, determined to follow Hitoshi's advice.

The first and second melons break easily enough, just as they had at practice, but the crowd seems happy.

So Izuku moves onto his third pose, the one that the others had made him repeat a handful of times a few nights ago.

A flex of his thighs and a twist of his hips and his lap's covered in sweet pink flesh and sticky juice.

"Oh god," a voice, low and husky, cuts across the crowd, "I wish that was me right now."

Even as the crowd goes abruptly silent Izuku's attention immediately zeroes in on the source.

He immediately feels his entire soul leave his body.

Because standing there beside Present Mic, arms crossed over his chest and face blank, is Eraserhead.

The Eraserhead.

The same Underground Hero Izuku's been a huge fan of since the moment he found out he existed. The notorious hell teacher of UA whose very name sends shivers of fear down the majority of his friend group's spine.

The same Eraserhead who was Hitoshi's mentor.

And who Izuku may or may not have a strange, second-hand sort of not-crush on.

In his defense, Hitoshi's stories about his mentor are always highly entertaining to Izuku. And what he's learned about Eraserhead through his friend just makes Izuku think the man is someone he'd really like to get to know.

Which is what makes being here, topless, covered in watermelon juice, and with an actual audience to witness the semi-sexual remark Eraserhead had just made about him, a special kind of torture.

Because Izuku's never admitted it to anyone, and especially not Hitoshi, but Eraserhead lines up pretty closely with what Izuku would consider his type.

The man understands heroics, and according to his capture and expulsion rate and Hitoshi himself, has a lot of personal dedication and drive. The stories Hitoshi tells about him show he's got a soft streak he keeps well hidden and he's intimidatingly smart.

Plus he's tall, has hair that Izuku admits he wouldn't mind getting his hands tangled in, and looks like he'd be mean in all the right circumstances.

All of that is probably why Izuku finds himself speaking without really giving himself permission to open his mouth.

"Ah," Izuku hears himself say, "maybe we could go on a date first though? If you'd like?"

For a long moment it's so quiet Izuku's pretty sure he can hear himself dying cell by mortified cell.

Eraserhead's face somehow manages to go even blanker.

And then, he smiles.

'Oh wow,' Izuku can't help but marvel as he takes in the expression he's seen palely echoed on Hitoshi's face a million times, 'that's ... unexpectedly attractive.'

He can feel even more heat rush to his face in response as he chews nervously on his lower lip.

"Hope you like coffee," Eraserhead finally says, "and cats."

And Izuku can't help but grin because yes, yes he does.

But he's pretty sure he's going to end up liking Eraserhead even more than all of those put together.

~~~

"Hell is empty," Hitoshi intones when Izuku finally manages to get free of the semi-rioting crowd so he can rush back into the changing room to clean himself up. "All the devils are right fucking here."

Izuku stalls out for a moment, unsure of what, exactly, he's supposed to say to that.

"You've got a date with Eraserhead," Hitoshi plows on.

The expression on his face is caught somewhere between gleeful and absolutely unhinged.

"Yeah," Izuku can't help the grin that steals across his face as he wipes himself down. "Or at least I hope he was serious."

"Oh he was serious," Hitoshi reassures him. "As serious as the heart-attacks basically everyone we know have probably collectively had."

"Do you think he's gonna like me?" Izuku can't help but fret just a bit.

"He's gonna marry you," Hitoshi snips back. "And we're all gonna suffer. Thank the gods you won't be breeding at least. Whatever the both of you are ends with you."

"That's kind of a quick jump to make but quirk science has come a long way," Izuku says absently as he pulls his shirt over his head. "Most couplings are genetically possible these days you know?"

"That was not a challenge," Hitoshi hisses, horror overtaking his expression. "I swear to god Izuku do not spawn with Eraserhead."

Izuku just waves him off as he trots back towards the door to the changing room.

He has an Eraserhead to track down and, hopefully, date plans to iron out.

#RayRambles #Suikawari My Heart AU #BnHA #AiDeku #EraserDeku

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radiosandrecordings · 3 years ago

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I would love to try and take a stock of the types of diegesis used in audio fiction and how it’s changed over time. It feels in more recent stuff like it’s fallen out of trend to have an in-universe reasoning for the story like “It’s a radio station you’re listening to” or “It’s old recordings you found!” just because that was such a saturated market towards the start of the AD boom that I feel like if you do that now people are going to presume you’re just trying to ride on the coat tails of one of them now (To the point where Night Vale and King Falls AM crew got in a twitter spat about similar themes). I think another reason it’s often passed over these days is just how much it confines your story, to the point where classic AD’s that had schtick’s for How We’re Hearing This like The Bright Sessions or Wolf 359 just gave up halfway through because it became too much of an inconvenience to justify the diegetic formula while still maintaining a good story and not having to shoehorn recording devices in, and this is something newer ones have learned from.

Giving an in-universe explanation really shapes your story for that reason if you commit to it. Night Vale always stuck to it to my knowledge in some form or another, wheras TMA made the tapes not just a fun layer of meta but crucial to the plot itself. Wheras you might have Zoo or Jar of Rebuke be tape recordings but the reasoning for them seems to be to justify the narrative style of having the main character sharing their inner thoughts diary-style, which creates engagement that you wouldn’t get if they weren’t airing their thoughts to something rather than just having us observe them living their life.

This can also play into sound design because if you have A Device That Is Recording, your whole soundscape is gonna be based around that. How close are people standing to it. Do they move closer or further away? Does the recording device itself move? Can you use panning here? Does the recording device itself emit a noise?

BUT these things do also come into play in something without an in-universe recording device, where often one character will be chosen as the POV and audio will be centred around them. This can be especially cool in something like Juno Steel or Kane & Feels where they lean into the noir genre and have a character monologuing for reasons that aren’t actually explained, you’re just expected to run with the non-naturalism because it allows you an insight into the character’s mindset. This can even involve panning and stuff such as the opening of Kane & Feels episode 2 where one character is monologuing to the listener and the other cuts in, interrupting their train of thought because, and they’ve recorded further away from the mic than the close up of the one monologuing because the character is on the other side of the room from the first, giving a sense of spatial proximity and immersion by letting us experience things how the POV character does.

Then you have things that sort of straddle the line of diegesis because they won’t have a reason they’re being recorded, but they’ll often have fourth-wall breaking elements like The Silt Verses being primarily read as if it’s a story being told to the listener by the character, even if there isn’t an explanation for this, it just is how the story is structured. It leans into being first person and supplements it with actual scenes scattered between. Or Paired, where it’s never stated but from the fact that we move with the character, and you hear bits of static and glitching when needed you’re lead to assume you’re hearing whatever is picked up by the recording device that is the character, but weirdly that’s never a confirmed thing because despite some scenes that mess with the formula and go for second person adressal to whoever is listening, it’s still a bit unexplained and not directly To An Audience

But of course these are just my personal insights from the AD’s I’ve consumed so I’d love to map it all out and see what the trends are for these sort of things, if creators give specifics reasonings for why they chose a justification or not. Because it’s not something that’s common in film or TV? At least to the extent of prevalence that it is/was in podcasts, and it’s not even really a holdover from radio dramas so I want to know what caused this surge when it came to podcasting. Was it just a case of looking at what everyone else was doing and copying a trend? Found footage was by no means a new genre when podcasts were starting to get big (Using 2012, Night Vale’s start date for lack of a better timeframe) but it did seem to have an uptick in popularity in 2013 in film according to wikipedia. It seems to be a technique almost always used for horror so the fact that a lot of AD is horror could contribute to it, but I think it might share a reason with why movies started to be made like that around the time, and it’s that it was cheap. It was a low budget way to frame things because it excused other production values. Your camera could be shaky, and your sound could be shoddy, and it was fine because you were supposed to believe it was recorded on a handheld camera or phone, it was all part of the framing. Most AD’s started recorded in someone’s bedroom on a tiny budget so they were gonna be poor quality, if you say “well it’s supposed to be, the character could only afford a £10 recording device (I could only afford a £10 recording device)”, or better yet you slap a tape whurring or radio static filter over it to mask the background fuzzy from an uninsulated room and you’re good to go.

.... Oh, what you thought there was going to be a summary or conclusion for this? Yeah so did I when I started writing it but genuinely I went down so many research rabbit holes I’ve forgotten what it was, so now it’s just an infodump <3

#My Post #Long Post

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thesolferino · 4 years ago

Text

True Calling

⤷ dream x f!reader.

⤷ word count: 3.9k

⤷ requested: yes, by this lovely anon!

— summary: dream meets his favorite singer on an among us livestream.

“Dude, what could go wrong? Just do it.”

“What could go wrong?! Literally so many things, you ass.”

Dream heard Sapnap sigh through the mic right into his headphones, the dim grey of his Discord background doing barely anything to illuminate his features as he stared at his open messages blankly.

“First of all, don’t.. speak to me like that, I am doing you a favour by sitting here and listening to you panic about stupid shit. Second of all, nothing big could go wrong. What, you’re a little awkward in the beginning, maybe, and that’s it.” Dream adjusted his headphones a little bit, Sapnap’s rant flowing into his ears but dissipating somewhere halfway to his brain, because, yes, things could go wrong and he can’t be proven otherwise.

“Did you forget that I’m a public figure? And that my fans are insane? I say one wrong thing and it’ll be memed and haunt me in my dreams. Did you forget that SHE’s a public figure? And that this is live? God…” he retorts back, listening to Sapnap helplessly sigh once again in response. He anxiously switches from his Discord to Twitter, then to YouTube, to Twitch and then back to Discord, frantically clicking around. In reality, he knows Sapnap is right, and it’s anxiety whispering into his ear that he’s gonna somehow fuck up, but maybe it’s simply easier to stay and argue with him into the night instead of actually responding to that message.

The stream is still going. Quackity’s voice speaks over Sapnap’s quiet breathing. “Damn, he’s still not responding. Um, let me try Tubbo, maybe?”

Before he knows it, the opportunity to join the stream is slipping out of his fingers, and Dream isn’t sure if he’s happy about that or not. On one hand, he gets to meet one of his favorite artists whose album he’s played way too many times to count, and on the other, the chances of him embarrassing himself in front of that same artist and a hundred thousand other people are extremely high, and he’s not sure if he likes the odds of that.

“Man, I don’t know. You won’t listen to me, anyway. Don’t join if you don’t want to.” Dream hears the annoyed tinge in Sapnap’s voice, and that’s what pours the last bit of courage into his veins because the best way to do anything in life is to follow Sapnap’s advice after you’ve already irritated him to the point of defeat, and he murmurs a quick “bye” and hangs up before the other can even respond, typing a rapid “Sure, send me the VC link” back to Quackity.

He hears a delighted exhale coming from his Twitch tab just as Quackity forwards him the link. “Okay, nevermind, we’ve got Dream! He’ll join in a second.”

With that, he swiftly closes the Twitch tab and with an encouraging sip of water, he finally joins the Discord voice chat with the rest of the players. Your Discord image sticks out like a sore thumb to him despite being a super basic, Googleable picture of you that he’s probably seen a million times by now, and upon seeing it, reality slaps him right over the face and he realises that, oh shit, he actually joined.

“Hey everyone.” Dream speaks into the mic and a mix of excited voices greets him at the same time as he loads up the game. Your icon is missing the green halo. He stares at it, as if you’ll magically speak up if he stares long and hard enough. That, apparently, works.

Pokimane’s “Dream, hi!” seems to set something off in your brain, and you speak again.

“Oh, Dream?” the green halo appears, and Dream resists the urge to say something stupid or bite his hand or anything of the sort when you say his name. “Aren’t you the guy who listens to my music all the time?” you giggle.

Quackity laughs loudly in his usual fashion, and Dream feels his hands go cold as the Among Us loading page pops up. “Wh-huh?”

“Yeah, you-you listen to my music a lot! Your fans always tag me under that… ‘Dream’s Spotify’ Twitter account, I remember you.” Dream swears his heart is about to jump out of his chest and start bouncing around on the floor because his ribs are way too restrictive for that type of movement, but he tries his best to play it cool and laughs lightheartedly.

“I do! I’m, like, your biggest fan.” he grins, as if you can see him, and you laugh in return.

“Yeah, man, you pay my rent. Thanks.” you say and a couple of people laugh while Dream inputs the code and his character finally pops up, immediately running around like the rest of the group. He runs around your purple character and hears you chuckle as you run around him too, but not for long, because the game starts and everyone mutes themselves. He audibly sighs, because he can afford to, considering he’s not streaming and nobody can hear the amount of courage this whole thing is taking him.

A notification pops up on his screen - the Dream Team group chat seems to be talking. Must’ve already found some way to make fun of me, he thinks to himself as he huffs out a large breath and runs through cafeteria and weapons to do his tasks in navigation. Corpse is hot on his tail the whole time, and not to say he’s an untrustworthy guy, but Dream isn’t really looking forward to getting killed before even speaking to you properly, so he runs around, trying to find somebody to stick with so Corpse doesn’t shove a knife in his back while he’s doing a task.

Thankfully, Karl emerges somewhere from the direction of storage right into communications where Dream was going, too. Just as Dream starts finishing download and Corpse and Karl line up behind him, his screen flashes bright red and white and the bold letters “Dead body reported” pop up. Everyone unmutes themselves and his eyes bore into your character, immediately.

“Alright, the body was in top left of the… uh, upper engine. I need everyone’s positions.” Rae immediately spoke.

“I was in electrical, I-I went through cafeteria to the upper engine with Poki, there was nobody there, we did our tasks, went down to lower engine, then Poki left with Toast, and I went to electrical and the body was reported.” Sykkuno said, and Pokimane confirmed with a hum of agreement.

“Dream?” Rae asked, and he spoke up.

“I never even went that way, I went through weapons to nav, and then to communications, and then the body was found. Corpse can vouch for me because he was following me the entire time and I kinda thought he was gonna kill me. And Karl saw me in communications, us three were all together when you… reported the body.” He rambled, trying to defend himself.

“Yeah, it’s true, he was with me the whole time.” Corpse supported.

“Karl, which way did you get to communications?” Toast asked.

“Uh, through storage.” Karl replied quickly.

“That’s funny, ‘cause I was in security, and I could swear I saw you walk past.” Toast said, and a couple of “ooh”s echo through the call.

“That makes no sense because even if I did go that way, I wouldn’t have time to get to communications and start doing my task with Dream and Corpse if I killed Ethan! And Rae, you-you saw me do my task in storage!” Karl loudly defended himself.

“...that… that’s true, yeah.” she said.

“If you ask me, Toast, you’re being real sus for lying about that.” Karl threw it back at Toast, who protested.

“Listen, I didn’t say you killed anybody, I just said I saw someone run past!” he claimed.

“Bretman and Y/N are being real quiet, though.” Corpse points out, and the green halo around your icon lights up once again.

“Oh shit, I didn’t realise I was muted. Sorry, guys.” you laughed. “Um, I was with… Quackity, in… what’s that shit on the right called?”

“O2.” Quackity quickly jumped in.

“Right, O2. I went to… top left, first, and I did my tasks there, and then to weapons and then to O2, and then the body was reported.”

“You were in top left?” Rae repeated.

“Yeah.”

“And was there anyone with you?”

“Um… no? I was alone, and then I saw Quackity in top right, and then we went to, uh, O2 together.” you said and Corpse sighed loudly.

“That means she could’ve had the time to kill Ethan and run.” Toast points out.

“Hey! I didn’t kill anyone! I don’t even know how this game works…” you whined into the mic and Quackity laughed.

“Yeah, I dunno Y/N, you were dancing real suspiciously around me…” he said, causing you to defend yourself louder.

“Why would I kill anyone?! I don’t even know how to do that, I’m a nice person!”

“I don’t think she did it, guys.” Dream pipes up, tugging at the wire of his headphones absentmindedly.

“Shut up, you simp.” Quackity fires back instantly, making everyone in the call laugh, including Dream.

“Damn right, I’m a Y/N simp. She can do no wrong. I mean, look at that innocent face! She did nothing, I’m-I’m sure.” He argued, making you cover your mouth and giggle.

“Their face is literally the same as everyone’s! We’re all astronauts!” Rae protested, but Dream kept shaking his head.

“No, hers is more innocent.” he said. “Toast, why are you so set on accusing everyone, anyway?”

“Oh, you’re so not attacking Toast right now-”

“Guys, I think we should skip.” Sykkuno pipes up to calm the conversation, and everyone agrees, even though most of them mumble “sus” under their breath as soon as they mute their mics.

Dream’s tiny green astronaut stomps his way over to the left side immediately, changing paths this time and making his way into the Upper Engine, trying to finish his tasks in time and possibly find someone to accompany him so he at least doesn’t have to argue over his alibi. He had four tasks left, two of them in Upper Engine, so after that he was free to roam around wherever his heart desired. Just as he started doing one of them, he watched your purple character step in and run circles around him, earning you a quiet laugh that he didn’t know he uttered until he heard himself do it and silently scolded himself for getting that flustered at something so simple.

The two of you did your tasks together before going down to reactor. Just as Dream started doing one of his tasks, a dead body was reported again and he unmuted himself as Toast immediately started borderline yelling into his headphones.

“Bretman just killed Sykkuno RIGHT in front of me. I literally watched him do it. He killed Sykkuno in COLD BLOOD.” he confidently claimed and Dream, quite uninterested, grabbed his bottle of water and lightly sipped on it, wiping beads of sweat resting right above his eyebrows with his forearm, blindly looking around the darkness, trying to get his eyes to adjust looking away from the computer screen. His eyes searched for the window - it was open, just enough to let a fresh breeze inside, but it never seemed to do that, letting humid air in with open arms like a welcome guest. Florida is fucking hell, he thinks, gulping down some more water.

“No, I didn’t! I seriously did not, he’s the one who killed him and is trying to frame me now. I swear to God, Toast…” Bretman shouted into his worn mic, trying to argue back.

“Yeah, to be honest, Bretman, you were silent the whole time when Ethan died.” Rae reasoned, earning quite a lot of “ooh”s and causing little “voted” signs to appear next to Poki, Toast and Karl’s names as Bretman tried his best to fight back.

“I didn’t know I was muted the whole time! You know I’m bad at this! Why would I... you know what, nevermind! Vote me! Vote me! You’ll see when Toast kills you all, I don’t care anymore. I literally saw-”

Dream slumps further into his chair, sure that the foam would have a dent of his body shape imprinted even when he’s long gone from it, and unlocks his phone with a quiet sigh. He opens Discord, and wishes he hadn’t, because Sapnap and George are always on the front lines and ready to make fun of him at any chance possible. He types back a stupid joke, calling them losers, but before he can press send, a Twitter notification pops up on his phone that almost makes his painfully sweaty hands lose grip of the phone.

“this is so boring” your message reads, from your official Twitter account. Dream blinks a few times, and looks up from his phone to observe his murky, empty room, eyes flashing from the window to the ripped chocolate bar wrapper that somehow made its way onto the floor to a cup of coffee from this afternoon. Did the humid air finally get to him? Hallucinations?

He clicks on the notification - it proves to not be a product of his imagination, after all. Three dots dance around on his screen cheerfully, but they suddenly stop. His ears tune in. Bretman is still defending his honor. Something else must’ve interrupted you. His shaky hands barely hit the right letters.

He takes a handful of screenshots amidst his euphoria, and forwards them to the group chat with no caption besides an emoji sticking its tongue out - he wants to tell them to suck his dick, or something along those lines, but your message remains a priority as he rushes back to the Twitter app to reply.

“Right” he manages to write without a typo. “They’re annoying”

Three dots immediately return to his screen like a happy memory, and he almost can’t believe you’re texting back so fast. George would probably humble him by saying it’s because you have nothing better to do, but what George doesn’t know can’t hurt him, Dream supposes, and clicks on your profile instinctively as he adjusts his headphones on one ear. By the time you finish typing your message, the group decided to vote out Bretman, who ended up not being an imposter.

The three dots disappear as quick as they came, and so does the anticipation that bubbled up in Dream’s throat as he sourly leaves to finish the rest of his tasks. The rest of the game stays as boring as it started, save for the giggles and hushed laughter that came from you at every few jokes he made - of which he made quite a lot, in a desperate attempt to make you laugh, at least a little bit. Of course, Quackity was there every step of the way to accidentally mention how Dream sounded a lot more hype and alive during this game than he does ever, but you win some, you lose some, eh?

In the next game you actually decided to set up proximity chat, so of course Dream followed you around everywhere, hot on your tail at all times - what else is he supposed to do, when the chance presented itself, really?

“Are you imposter?” His character obnoxiously ran circles around you as you did your wires task slowly and unsurely since this stream was your first time playing.

“No, but I wouldn’t tell you even if I was, dummy.” You replied, running around his own character briefly before running up to do the rest of your tasks, watching the green astronaut follow you close behind.

“Why not?” Dream questioned, eyes following all your movements since he didn’t have anything better to do considering he finished all his tasks.

“Do you not know how this game works?”

“Yeah, but you’d tell me, right? I wouldn’t… rat you out.” He heard a sigh coming through his headphones in response, and his grin widened just a little, watching your character walk away from him.

“I know you wouldn’t.” you replied. “I’ll tell you if I’m imposter, I guess.”

“You wouldn’t kill me, would you?” Dream spoke into his mic, reaching to fix it and realising the way his hand trembled a little, fully aware he was walking the line between flirty and obnoxious more than usual. He lowered his gaze just to see his keyboard reflect the light of the computer back to him - the sweat from his palms seemed to seep onto the keyboard. He refused to think about the mocking things his best friends would say if they found out how nervous he was just to talk to you.

“No, of course not! I wouldn’t be able to kill you.” You chirped just as a dead body was discovered and the two of you were torn from the conversation.

In the next one, his screen flashed an ominous black and red with the word “Impostor” and your purple character stood proudly next to his green one, and he snickered to himself, adjusting his headphones one more time (the more he did it, the more he was convinced it was one of those anxious habits of his).

Shifting in his chair, he started moving and couldn’t believe his eyes when he realised the two of you managed to lock yourselves in a room with Corpse and Sykkuno, accomplishing a double kill in barely the first two minutes of the game. The two of you vented while Dream muttered curses under his breath, breaking out in a sweat wondering if you’re going to get caught or not as you casually hummed to a random tune while faking tasks, hitting the notes in such an effortless way that it made Dream relax and get even more nervous at the same time. It didn’t take too long before the body was found, and you seemed to adapt to the game very quickly, as Dream just sat back most of the time and watched you stretch out a whole essay on why you and Dream could NOT have been imposters.

“Why would they stick together the whole time? Couldn’t they get at least someone else to vouch for them?” Toast complained.

“Girl, Dream wants some… alone time with Y/N, obviously.” Bretman said, despite being the one most sus of you in the first place, forcing laughter out of the whole lobby, Dream’s sticking out the most as his mood constantly swayed from finding the whole thing funny to being worried sick if you actually find him weird.

“Exactly! And we’re gonna have our alone time if we want to, thank you very much.”

Well, Dream thinks, taking a stressed gulp of water from his bottle, at least we cleared that one up.

“I don’t think that sounded the way you wanted it to, Y/N.” Karl pipes up, making Quackity burst into another fit of loud laughter, and you immediately protested.

“It sounded exactly the way I wanted it to! Now, vote Rae or else.”

When the meeting was over, he ran after you through cafeteria, grin splitting out on his face before he even spoke.

“You’re pretty…” his silence extended as he watched your character stare at his. “...pretty smart.”

You snorted. “Right. You’re pretty…” you extended your silence in return, mocking him. “...too.”

His heart jumps. “You forgot a word there.” he says as you stomp out to storage.

“I said what I said, Dreamy.”

He swears this can’t be healthy for his blood pressure. In the corner of his eye, Discord notifications pop up like crazy. The boys must be watching your stream. His heart swells with both pride and dread, knowing he’s about to be called something along the lines of pretty Dreamy for the next two months.

“How do you know I’m pretty? You’ve never even seen my face.” Dream replies as heat creeps up like a spirit rising from soil, from the back of his neck, seeping into his ears and cheeks somewhat equally. His eyes dart to the window again. Of course it’s the stupid Florida weather that has him burning up, flustered. Maybe he should open another window.

“Is this an invitation to see it?” you say, a teasing tone clinging off your voice and he can practically hear you smiling.

“No, I’m just saying! If you want to see it, though, that… that can be arranged.” he bites his lip as a physical attempt of holding back the smile that breaks out as he waits for your response, chest puffing in both nervousness and odd confidence.

“Can it? I mean, I don’t need to see it, I just know already, you have those… pretty boy vibes. But I wouldn’t…” you chuckle. “...be opposed to seeing it, for sure. Don’t count on me not to leak the pictures, though. I want the clout.”

“What do you MEAN you want the clout, you’re Y/N! You don’t need clout from a Minecraft YouTuber!” He argues back, a small wheeze escaping him mid sentence as you giggle and run around, with him following your every move.

“You keep my fucking lights on, man! Whenever your Spotify Twitter account thingy tweets that you’re listening to my stuff, the streams go up! I need your clout.” you say as you run into admin and snap Toast’s neck and run back out casually, as if nothing happened.

“Yeah, that’s how me listening to your songs on repeat works.” he says and you let out some sort of irritated groan.

“Shut up, smartass.” Just as you say that, somebody seems to find the body and you’re pulled into a meeting, where Rae susses both of you immediately.

“No, because both of you are always together! And someone always spots you walking by the place where the bodies are found! At some point that can’t be a coincidence, right?” she accuses, practically yelling into the mic.

“Of course they’re always together, check- check fuckin’ Twitter! They’re trending on like three different spots already!” Quackity jumps in, loud as always, and the lobby gives off mixed reactions.

“What? We are?” Dream asks, and Quackity confirms with a “yeah, man! Check!” and so he complies, quickly pulling out his phone to check the trending tabs. Sure enough, among the politics and sports, “DREAM Y/N”, “PRETTY BOY” and “DREAM FACE” are crammed, sat at 7th, 14th and 18th place, respectfully. A satisfied grin breaks out on his face. At least they see it, too.

“This has to be the first time Dream has trended for something heterosexual.” Karl points out, earning loud laughter from Quackity and Bretman, less loud on your part.

“Exactly! We’re a power couple! Stay mad!” You shouted, with Dream supporting you in the background, although still shyly adjusting his headphones every few seconds, unable to comprehend that oh, this is actually happening.

Both of you get voted out during the next few minutes, but that really means nothing to Dream - they actually do him quite a favor, because the two of you get to excuse yourselves and he sees those three familiar dots dance on his screen again as he leans back into his chair with a dopey grin, playing with the strings of his sweatpants, waiting for your next and next and next message.

He opens Discord on his computer to type one last message into the groupchat before turning it off for the night:

Dream (03:14): maybe Minecraft wasn’t my calling after all

Dream (03:14): can’t believe I just met my soulmate on Among Us

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