#//but as always be mindful of what you see online and always research in case of scams or misinformation

[btnclmrttn]

L Lawliet NSFW HCs

[Some crumbs for the dying simps]

Actual hands-on experience is minimal. The amount of online and research he’s done is immeasurable. It was all curiosity, so he says

I said before that he’s switchy, but if you give me any character, I could make a switch out of them. Choosing between dominant or submissive, he’s dominant.

Boosts his ego if he can get you flustered, and will always try to do so. He wants to put that work in. When he gets you shy, he will dig to make it worse.

He will stare shamelessly at your body. Sometimes, his conversations are directed to your body. Will carry out an entire conversation talking to your tits. It’s not necessarily a “hint” either, just L being L, and he’s a pervert.

He always asks for consent with everything he does. You will never be directly surprised with anything just to be sure you’re okay. When he’s certain you are not busy with anything on your mind, he’ll sit you down and discuss things long before even trying. He never stops asking and talks you through everything. He understands how vulnerable things can get and would never want to put a strain on this kind of trust with him.

His curiosity could put him into a BDSM category. He wants to try everything. Everything. Now, he has a physical outlet to get mad curious. (Also why he takes your consent so seriously) 

Something a lil specific: Remote-controlled vibrators. Interested in seeing how well you can hide your arousal when you’re among company/in public. You always get a nice reward for making it through his game.

No secret he’s got money. Lingerie fixation. What he wants you in, he’s buying. Has swiped your underwear on multiple occasions.

As for libido, it has phases. He handles high-stress cases well, but you're a big help. If a case is tough to crack, he just descends into this unhinged freak of whore nature. The same goes for if he’s too bored. 

Prefers giving over receiving head. Like his sweet fixation, you earned a place up there and now considered a necessity to his overall well-being, so he says. (Certainly, it’s universally accepted that L is also good at it. You see how he munching his desserts?)

#death note #death note x reader #l lawliet n/sfw #l lawliet x reader #death note l #l lawliet x reader smut

[cy-cyborg]

We have communities - Writing disability quick tips

So often, stories centred on disabled characters, especially in modern settings, emphasise how lonely or isolated the character is because of their disability, especially if it’s a newly acquired disability or one that non-disabled people assume would have a big impact on our ability to do “fun stuff”. This will often be accompanied by statements of “no-one understands what living with [insert disability here]” is like!

And while isolation and loneliness are things a lot of disabled people deal with, a lot of us are not completely alone either, especially in the modern day.

Just like any group of people with shared experiences, we find one another. Sometimes this is through formal systems; some spinal rehabilitation centres for example, will pair newly paralysed people up with a mentor who’s had a similar form of paralysis for much longer to help guide the person while the adjust to their new disability. Other more formal systems can look like disability sporting organisations - the one I used to work for used to specifically encourage very newly disabled people to join so they didn’t feel like the had to learn everything about their disability alone, or support groups.

Other times though, these communities are much less formal. They may look like online forums, such as the ones on Reddit, built by and for disabled people to talk about their experiences and seek recommendations from others in the same boat, or parts of larger social media sites. For example, on Tumblr, there aren’t really any formal groups, but thanks to the hashtags we use in our posts, we often find one another fairly quickly there. We sometimes also carve out our own little subsections of fandom or hobby spaces, brought together by the shared interest itself, how things like disability might impact the way you interpret or interact with it, and how we can modify it (in the case of hobbies) to make it work for us.

A lot of disability communities, formal or otherwise, also form out of necessity, such as advocacy groups run by and for disabled people, and those built around ensuring the rights of disabled people are protected.

Isolation and loneliness are problems within the disabled community that many of us deal with, but this tends to be more in the context of isolation from the wider public, exclusion from public spaces and events (despite there being laws that are supposed to stop this because they’re often not enforced), disconnect from non-disabled friends and family, etc, most of which are the result of systematic issues or the lack of understanding or care and support from non-disabled people in our lives. Not always, but often.

The communities made by and for disabled people though are often (at least in part) made to help make up for this, and they’re more common than you might think, you just have to know where to look. It would be nice to see more creators reflecting this in their work a bit more often, or at least acknowledging that they are there, even if your character chooses not to engage with them.

However, as a reminder to authors and creatives: These communities, especially the online ones, are for disabled people, they are not there for you to use as a reference as a creator. Some communities are ok with you being there to learn, so long as you listen and don’t try to speak over/bombard their members with questions. Others are not. The ones that are, typically will have something written somewhere if it’s online (e.g. subreddits that accept writers wanting to write disabled characters will often have it written in the “about” section or the rules). There are also dedicated groups and platforms for non-disabled people seeking to learn more about us and our communities, which can be excellent resources for creatives like writers. Just remember to be mindful of where you are and respectful of people’s spaces and boundaries when doing your research.

#Writing disability with Cy Cyborg #Quick tips #Disability #Disabled #Disability Representation #Writing Disability #Writing #Writeblr #Authors #Creators #Writing Advice #Disabled Characters #On Writing

[canmom]

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, 000-012

Or, what if that mural was the heart of a web serial.

I'm reading The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, thanks largely to the enthusiasm of @azdoine and @lukore on my dash over the last few months.

This is absolutely not gonna be a liveblog in the level of detail of the great Umineko liveblog project. Rather I'm gonna be aiming at something like the comics comints series or those occasional posts on anime. Or indeed what I wrote about Worth The Candle last year. I must create a robot whose purpose is to watch to see if I start writing detailed plot summaries and hit me with a stick labelled 'remember you have a job now'.

That outta the way, let's talk flower!

No, not that flower!

I will start with an anecdote. When I was at university, I ended up attending a talk by court alchemist senescence researcher Aubrey de Grey, who at that time did not yet have a 'sexual harassment allegations' section on his Wikipedia page. The main thing that struck me at the time was his rather spectacularly long beard. But I did listen to his talk about ending aging.

de Grey's schtick is that he, like many people in the transhumanist milieu, believes that medical technology is on the cusp of being able to prevent aging sufficiently well to prolong human lifespans more or less indefinitely. He believes that the different processes of aging can be understood in terms of various forms of accumulating cellular 'damage', and that these will begin to be addressed within present human lifespans, buying time for further advancements - so that (paraphrasing from memory) 'the first immortals have already been born'. He has some pretty graphs to demonstrate this point.

At that talk, one of the audience members asked de Grey the (in my view) very obvious question about whether access to this technology would be distributed unevenly, creating in effect an immortal ruling class. de Grey scoffed at this, saying he always gets this question, and basically he didn't think it would be a big deal. I forget his exact words, but he seemed to assume the tech would trickle down sooner or later, and this was no reason not to pursue it.

I'm sure de Grey is just as tired of being reminded of how unbalanced access to medical technology is in our current world, or the differences in average life expectancy between countries.

So, I was very strongly reminded of de Grey as The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere laid out its major thematic concerns and characters. I was also put in mind of many online arguments in the transhumanist milieu about whether it would be a good thing, in principle, to end death.

In particular, of course, comes to mind transhumanist Nick Bostrom's short story The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, in which death is likened to a huge dragon that demands to be fed trains full of humans every day. In the story, humanity's scientists secretly build a giant gun to kill the dragon. Naturally, despite all the doubters and naysayers who foolishly feel obliged to justify the existence of the dragon, the gun works. Bostrom's imagery is incredibly heavy-handed (particularly the trains à la Auschwitz), but just in case you didn't get it, he also spells out the moral explicit at the end: basically, every day not spent putting resources to abolishing death is adding up more and more bodies to the pile of people who don't get to be immortal.

So far, Flower seems to be shaping up to be a critical intervention into that milieu, with a much more grounded view of death and a much stronger model of society - admittedly not a high bar but it's going good so far!

At the time of writing this commentary, I have read the prologue and first two six-chapter arcs, namely Mankind's Shining Future (1-6) and Pilgrimage to the Deep (7-12).

the general shape of things

We are introduced - from the perspective of sardonic, introverted Su, who is going to be the protagonist of our time loop - to a group of brilliant young medical wizards, who have just been invited to visit the headquarters of a secret society whose mission is precisely to abolish death. Su's grandfather was some kind of controversial luminary who was expelled this organisation, and he also did something to her, which is giving her some kind of ulterior motive to find her way into this society.

We know pretty much from the outset that this is a time loop scenario: Su has been explicitly given the opportunity to replay the scenario in the hopes of find an alternative outcome, by some kind of presently mysterious parties. This first part is the 'control' loop, i.e. probably more or less how things went down 'originally'.

I believe Umineko is an explicit inspiration for this story, and the influence is pretty evident. But parallels with the Locked Tomb series, especially Gideon the Ninth, are also quite noticeable. @lukore spoke of it as the STEM to Locked Tomb's humanities, and I can already kinda see it, although we haven't got into the real meat of the scenario yet. This story began serialisation four years ago, making the two works roughly contemporary. The latest chapter was published in the last couple of weeks - no idea if I've arrived just in time for the ending!

Stylistically, it's generally pretty heavy on dialogue and long asides. The characters are a bunch of mega nerds who love to have big philosophical and political discussions, but their dynamics are well enough realised and their dynamics clear enough that it can double up as naturalistic characterisation. So far, the discussions have been interesting to read.

Below I'm going to make some notes and comments on various elements of the setting and story. In a followup post (because it got too long) I'm going to talk a lot about entropy. Perhaps you will find this interesting!

the world

The first few chapters are dedicated pretty hard to exposition. We find ourselves in a distant-future setting - one in which it seems reality has totally collapsed and then been rebuilt using magic, creating a somewhat oddball universe which lacks things like the element iron, and also electromagnetism. This seems like it would have pretty severe implications for just about everything!

However, the 'ironworkers' have, after producing a series of trial and error 'lower planes' that didn't quite get it right, landed on a fairly close approximation of how things used to be on the old world. Though by 'fairly close approximation' I mean like... it's a bowl-shaped world and the sun and stars are artificial lanterns. But still, there are humans, and they seem to work more or less like we're used to humans working, apart from the whole 'magic' thing.

So, an alt-physics setting. Praise Aealacreatrananda, I love that shit.

While electromagnetism might be out, the more abstract physical principles like thermodynamics still apply, and the humans of this universe have managed to find analogues to a number of things in our world. Instead of computers, they have 'logic engines' which run on magic. Horses seem to have made it in, so we get delightful blends of historical and futuristic concepts like a self-driving computer-controlled horse-drawn carriage taxi.

The biggest difference is of course that in this setting, magic - more on that in a bit - has solved most medical problems and humans routinely live to around 500. The setting is ostensibly a semi-post-scarcity one, although a form of money exists in 'luxury debt', which can be exchanged for things like taxi rides, café food and trips on the space elevator.

Politically, we are told that the world has enjoyed a few hundred years of general peace, broken in living memory by a revolution which put an end to a regime of magical secrecy. There are lots of countries, and an alliance overseeing them.

There's a few other oddities in this world. Something called a 'prosognostic event' can happen if you see someone who has the same face as you, and whatever this is, it's bad enough news that everyone is constantly reminded to veil their faces in public and there's some kind of infant 'distinction treatment' to mitigate the risk. Given that, in the regular world, nothing particularly bad would happen if you ran into a long-lost identical twin, it suggest there is probably something a little fucky about how humans work in this world!

There's evidently a fair bit of effort put into the worldbuilding of fictional countries and historical periods. The important elements seem to be roughly along the lines of:

our world is currently in what they call the 'old kingdoms' period, which is poorly remembered;

next up comes an 'imperial' period of high transhumanist shenanigans in which society was ruled by 'gerontocrats' who got exclusive access to the longevity treatment, but this all somehow led to a huge disaster which destroyed og earth;

the survivors built the Mimikos where humanity currently lives using magic and created some kind of huge iron spike that holds the universe together; there was subsequently a 'fundamentalist' period in which a strict cutoff point was put on human lifespans and a lot of the wackier magic was banned;

now we're onto a new era of openness following a small revolution, while the major political structures remain largely intact.

Writing a far-future setting is hard, because trying to deal with the weight of history without the story getting bogged down with worldbuilding details is a fiddly line to walk. The Dying Earth series of Jack Vance might be a relevant point of comparison. Vance leaves the historical details vague - there are endless old kingdoms and strange artefacts and micro-societies for Cugel and co. to stumble on. Far more important than the specifics of history is establishing the vibe of a world that's seen an unimaginable amount of events layered on top of each other and is honestly a bit tired.

Flower makes things a bit more concrete and generally manages to make this work decently well. I do appreciate the asides where Su talks about, for example, the different architectural styles that layer up to make a place, or the way a technique has been refined. It establishes both that Su is the kind of person to notice this sort of thing, and also helps the world feel lived-in.

the names

The story doesn't do a lot with language. The story is written in English, and the narration will occasionally make reference to how things are phrased (e.g. how divination predates the suffix -mancy). We can probably make the standard assumption that this is all translated from $future_language, with the notional translator making a suitable substitution of whatever linguistic forms exist in that language.

The characters are named in a variety of languages. Our main character's full name is Utsushikome of Fusai. We're told that this is "an old name from Kutuy, and means something like 'mysterious child'" - so Kutuyan is one of the languages spoken in this world. It's blatantly got the same phonotactics as Japanese, and indeed if I search up 'Utsushikome', I find an obscure historical figure called Utsushikome-no-Mikoto, wife of the Emperor Kōgen; she has no article on English Wikipedia, but she does have a brief one on Japanese wiki. Just as Su says about Kutuyan, 'Utsushikome' is written 欝色謎 in Japanese, but it relies on archaic readings of those characters and wouldn't read that way in modern Japanese. We could perhaps assume a good old translation convention is in effect where Kutuyan is replaced with Japanese.

A lot of characters have Greek names, as do various setting elements. One exception is Kamrusepa, or Kam, who is named for an ancient goddess of medicine worshipped by the Hittites and Luwians. I know basically fuck all about Hittites and Luwians but it's a cool little nod to mythology, and it won't be the only one!

I'll run down a list of characters and my comments about them in a bit. But many are named after gods or other mythological figures.

the magic

Most of the divergences come from magic existing. Certain humans are 'arcanists', who are able to use the 'Power', which is a magic system with a highly computational flavour. Thanks to Su's expositional asides, we know that an incantation is something like a short program written in cuneiform with the ability to gather information, perform maths, and manipulate particles. An example we are given is a spell called "entropy-denying", which is the following string of cuneiform:

"…(𒌍𒌷𒀭)(𒌍𒁁𒀭)𒅥𒌈𒆜𒈣𒂠, 𒋢𒀀𒅆𒌫𒃶,𒈬𒊹."

We're told that spells always start with phrases ending in 𒀭, and end in 𒊹. Beyond that, I'm not sure how far the author has actually worked out the syntax of this magic system - probably not in too much detail! Seems like the kind of thing it's better to leave vague, but also she seems like kind of nerd who would (positive). It's conceptually a reasonable magic system for a world where more or less realistic physics applies.

The use of unusual scripts for a magic system isn't that unusual - the old European occultists who wrote the [Lesser] Key of Solomon loved to write on their magic circles in Hebrew, and in modern times we could mention Yoko Taro's signature use of the Celestial Alphabet for example - but the specific use of cuneiform here seems like it might be a little more significant, because a little later in the story the characters encounter a mural depicting The Epic of Gilgamesh, which of course was recorded on cuneiform tablets. Remains to be seen exactly what these allusions will mean!

The magic system is divided into various disciplines defined by the different ways they approach doing magic, with the disciplines breaking down broadly along the same lines as the modern scientific disciplines. For example, our protagonist is a thanatomancer ("necromancer" having become unfashionable), which is the discipline dealing with death; she's specifically an entropic thanatomancer, distinguished by their framework viewing death as the cessation of processes.

Magic relies on an energy that they refer to as 'eris' (unknown relation to the Greek goddess of strife and discord). We are told that eris must be carefully apportioned across the elements of a spell or shit blows up, that it can be stored, and it accumulates gradually enough that you don't want to be wasteful with it, but so far given little information about where it comes from.

Magic in this story generally seems to act as a kind of 'sufficiently advanced technology'. It's very rules-based, and used for a lot of mundane ends like operating computers or transport. Advancement in magic is something like a combination of basic research and software development. But the thing that makes it a magic system and not merely alt-physics is that it's at least a little bit personal: it must be invoked by an individual, and only certain people can operate the magic. We're told a little about how wizards are privileged in some societies, indoctrinated in social utility in others, and expected to be inconspicuous in the present setting. It's not clear yet if you need some kind of special innate capacity to do the magic, or if it's just a matter of skill issue.

With one exception, our main characters are a gaggle of wizards, and exceptionally skilled students at that. They're at an elite institution, carrying high expectations, even if they are themselves fairly dismissive of the pomp and ceremony. They have grandiose plans: Kamrusepa in particular is the main voice of the 'death should be abolished' current.

the cast

We're entering a cloistered environment with high political stakes hanging off of it. Even if I hadn't already heard it described as a murder mystery, it would feel like someone will probably be murdered at some point, so lets round up our future suspects.

Su (Utsushikome) is our protagonist and first-person POV. She's telling this story in the first past tense, with a style calling to mind verbal narration; she'll occasionally allude to future events so we know for sure narrator!Su knows more than present!Su. She's got a sardonic streak and she likes long depressing antijokes, especially if the punchline is suicide. She will happily tell us she's a liar - so maybe her narration isn't entirely reliable, huh.

Su is more than a little judgemental; she doesn't particularly like a lot of her classmates, or people in general, and generally the first thing she'll tell you about a character is how well she gets on with them. She introduces the theme of 'wow death sucks' in the first paragraph, but she is, at least at this point, pessimistic that anyone will manage to do anything about it for good.

Her magical specialisation is entropic thanatomancy, roughly making processes go again after they working coherently.

Her name is a reference to an obscure Japanese empress, as discussed above.

Ran is Su's bestie from the same home country. She is generally pretty on the level. She likes romance novels and she is pretty sharp at analysing them. She will cheerfully team up with Su to do a bit or bait someone else when an argument gets going.

Her magical specialisation is Divination, which is sort of a more fundamental layer of magic, about gathering information by any means. In medicine it's super advanced diagnostics.

Her name is too short to pin down to a specific allusion. Could be one of a couple of disciple of Confucius such as Ran Geng, or a Norse goddess of the sea.

Kam (Kamrusepa) is the de facto class prez and spotlight lover. She's hardcore ideological, the story's main voice of the de Grey/Bostrom death-abolishing concept so far - I think she straight up calls someone a 'deathist' at some point. She loves to tell everyone what she thinks about everything, and getting the last word.

Her magical specialisation is Chronomancy, so time magic. It's described as secretive and byzantine, but also it can do stuff like (locally?) rewind time for about five minutes. No doubt it has something to do with the time loop.

As mentioned above, she's named after a fairly obscure ancient deity of healing and magic.

Theo (Theodoros) is a fairly minor character. He's scatterbrained and easily flustered, he has a similar background to our protagonist, and he's not great with people. His name is shared with a number of ancient Greek figures, so it's hard to narrow it down to one allusion. I don't think his magic school has been mentioned.

Ptolema is a cheery outgoing one, someone who Su dismisses as an airhead. And she is at least easy to bait into saying something ill-considered. Her specialisation is applying magic to surgery. As a character, she tends to act as a bit of a foil to the others. Bit of a valley girl thing going on.

'Ptolema' is presumably a feminised version of the renowned Greek philosopher Ptolemy.

Seth is the jock to Ptolema's prep, and our goth protag Su doesn't particularly like him either. ...lol maybe that's too flippant, I may be misapplying these US high school stereotypes. To be a little more precise then, he's pretty casual in demeanour, flirty, likes to play the clown. He specialises in Assistive Biomancy, which revolves around accelerating natural healing processes.

Seth is named for either the Egyptian god (domain: deserts, violence and foreigners) or an Abrahamic figure, the third son of Adam and Eve granted by God after the whole Caim killing Abel thing.

Ophelia is someone Su describes as 'traditionally feminine' - soft-spoken, demure etc. (Gender in this world appears to be constructed along broadly similar lines to ours). Indeed we get a fairly extended description of her appearance. Her specialisation is Alienist Biomancy, which means introducing foreign elements to healing (not entirely sure how that differs from the Golemancy mentioned later).

Ophelia is of course a major character in Shakespeare's Hamlet, best known for going mad and dying in a river.

Fang is the only nonbinary member of the class, noted as the most academically successful. They're not on the expedition, but the characters discuss them a little in their absence, so maybe they'll show up later. It seems like they have a bit of a rebellious streak. Their magical specialisation is not mentioned.

Fang is a regular ol' English word, but I gave it a search all the same and found there's an ancient Chinese alchemist of that name. She is the oldest recorded woman to do an alchemy in China, said to know how to turn mercury into silver.

Lilith is the teenaged prodigy in computers logic engines, and Mehit is her mother who accompanies her on the trip. They've got a big Maria and Rosa (of Umineko) dynamic going on, with Mehit constantly scolding Lilith and trying to get her to obey social norms, though in contrast to Maria, Lilith is a lot more standoffish and condescending to the rest of the gang. Lilith specialises in 'Golemancy', which means basically medical robotics - prosthetic limbs and such. She spends most of her time fiddling with her phone logic engine, and will generally tell anyone who talks to her that they're an idiot. Sort of a zoomer stereotype.

Lilith is named for the Abrahamic figure, the disobedient first wife of Adam who was banished and, according to some Jewish traditions, subsequently became a demon who attacks women at night. There may be some connection between Lilith and the lioness-headed Mesopotamian chimeric monster Lamashtu, which I mention because Mehit is an Egyptian and Nubian lion goddess.

'Golemancy' is probably playing on the popular fantasy idea of a 'golem' as a kind of magic robot, but given the Jewish allusion in Lilith's name here, I do wonder a little bit if it's going to touch on the Jewish stories of the Golem which inspired it - a protective figure with a specific religious dimension.

There are some other characters but they're not part of the main party on their way to the function, so I won't say much about them just yet. Also it's entirely possible I went and forgot an entire classmate or something, big whoops if so.

the events

In true Umineko tradition, the beginning of the story narrates in great detail how the protagonists make their way to the place where the plot is going to happen.

To be fair, there's a lot of groundwork to be laid here, and the characters' discussions do a lot to lay out the concerns of the story and sketch out the setting, not to mention establish the major character relations. A murder mystery takes a certain amount of setup after all! There's plenty of sci-fi colour to be had in the 'aetherbridge', which is a kind of space elevator that lifts you up to a high altitude teleporter network. (It's technically not teleportation but 'transposition', since teleportation magic also exists in the story, with different restrictions! But close enough for government work.)

They go to a huge space citadel, which is kind of a transport hub; some cloak and dagger shit happens to hide the route they must take to the mysterious secret organisation. They find a strange room with a missing floor and a mural of the Epic of Gilgamesh, albeit modified to render it cyclic. What does it meeaaaan?

The idea of a secret society of rationalists is one that dates back to the dawn of ratfic, in HPMOR. It was kinda dumb then, but it works a lot better here, where we're approaching the wizard circle from outside. The phrase 'Great Work' has already been dropped. I love that kind of alchemical shit so I'm well into finding out what these wizards are plotting.

the dying

A lot of the discussions revolve around the mechanics of death. Essentially the big problem for living forever is information decay. Simple cancers can be thwarted fairly easily with the magic techniques available, but more subtle genetic slippages start to emerge after the first few hundred years; later, after roughly the 500 year mark, a form of dementia becomes inevitable. It's this dementia in particular that the characters set their sights on curing.

One thing that is interesting to me is that, contra a lot of fantasy that deals with necromancy (notably the Locked Tomb series), there appears to be no notion of a soul in this world whatsoever. The body is all that there is. Indeed, despite all the occult allusions in the character names, there is very little in the way of religion for that matter. Even the 'fundamentalism' is about an idea of human biological continuity that shouldn't be messed with too much.

Su distinguishes three schools of thought on death, namely 'traditional', 'transformative' and 'entropic'. The 'traditional' form attempts to restore limited function - classic skeleton shit. 'Transformative' sees death as a process and uses dead tissues together with living in healing. Su's 'entropic' school broadens this 'process' view to consider death as any kind of loss of order - a flame going out as much as an organism dying. At the outset of the story, Su has discovered a 'negentropic' means to restore life to an organism, which she considers promising, even if for now it only works for fifteen minutes.

This is an interesting perspective, but the devil is in the details. Because processes such as life or flames, necessarily, result in a continuous increase in the thermodynamic entropy of the universe. And yet this idea of death-as-loss-of-order does make a kind of sense, at a certain level of abstraction.

Elaborating on this got rather too long for this post, and I think it can stand alone, so I'm going to extract it to a followup post.

the comments

As is probably evident by the length of this post, I am very intrigued by The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere. The setting is compelling, and it seems like it's got the willingness to bite at the chewy questions it raises instead of acting like it has all the answers, which is I think one of the most crucial elements for this kind of scifi. I like how unabashed it is at having its characters straight-up debate shit.

Of course, this all depends where they go with it. There's so many ways it could be headed at this point. I hear where it's going is 'dark yuri' and 'Umineko-inspired murder mystery', so that should be really juicy fun, but I do end up wondering what space that will leave to address the core theme it's laid out in these first few chapters.

Overall, if this and Worth the Candle are what modern ratfic is like, the genre is honestly in pretty good shape! Of course, I am reading very selectively. But this is scratching the itch of 'the thing I want out of science fiction', so I'm excited to see where the next 133 chapters will take me.

Though all that said, I ended up writing this post all day instead of reading any other chapters or working, so I may need to rein it in a bit.

#fiction #web serials #the flower that bloomed nowhere #tftbn #sff

[ya-zz]

Hii! I love your work and I'm a recent follower, so I wanted to request something a little selfish for me! If it's okay, and if you're willing, could I have some headcannons with Ramattra, Genji and Lifeweaver with a deaf!reader? I'd love to hear your thoughts about how quick they would pick up on sign language, and maybe reader giving them a cute allias in sign language? Per example, instead of signing Genji ’s name letter by letter, I would simply sign "My Dragon". Again, this is an extremely specific request so if you choose to pass it on, it's completely okay! Much love to you 🌺

This was such a cute thing to write, selfish or not. I don't really see many fics or hc's out there about this sorta thing, so I am glad to write this! Hope this is what you were looking for! ♥

RAMATTRA

Ramattra never knew why you didn’t speak to him, only when someone mentioned that you couldn’t hear him did he realise the issue. 

It also explained why you never answered him. You didn’t even know he was talking.

He researched how to apologise so he could have some peace of mind. He wasn’t mad, but he did wish someone would’ve told him sooner.

He searched for any module possible to instantly talk to you. 

However, there was the issue of finding the right module. 

With the many variations of sign language, he had to find the one that matched yours. 

It took some time, but when he found the correct module, he was practically fluent in sign language, though he was still slow at talking. 

It warms his circuits the moment he first signed to you and you smiled with a sparkle in your eyes. 

His joints weren’t used to doing intricate hand signs, but over time, he got used to it. 

Day after day he would sit with you to learn how to sign efficiently. 

It was a learning curve to him, one he was grateful for as you were the one teaching him.

He was advancing in a way he had never imagined, especially with a human. 

One day while signing with him, having what seemed like a normal conversation, you had signed something he hadn’t seen before. 

It took his processors a moment to work it out and when he realised what you had signed, he chuckled, signing “thank you” towards you with a tilt of his head. 

“My omnic”.

GENJI

You had been responding to the ninja fairly well, but when you didn’t respond to his callout once, he wondered if you had ignored him. 

He approached you, a little cautious in case you were annoyed at him, but when he realised you were constantly looking at his lips, it clicked for him. 

Genji was close to you, figured you were just the quite kid, but being deaf was something he hadn’t thought about. 

He spent that night researching and practising sign language.

It was a slow process for the ninja; he was always too distracted, but he picked up words and phrases to impress you. 

Maybe a month went by before he finally managed to say a full sentence without any mistakes, but the fact that he was trying was enough for you. 

After awhile, Genji would try to learn more.

He would take online classes to make sure he was doing the correct hand movements; that he was making sense. 

Sometimes he would mess up, but that was okay.

The ninja spent his free time learning full sentences, eventually leading up to a full conversation with you.

It made you warm with happiness that he went through the effort to learn something new. 

Sign language was hard, and with Genji being constantly distracted, it only made it slower to learn and he was several months in to learning. 

Though, when you signed something to him that he had never learnt, he stumbled, thinking about it for the rest of the day before he researched what you had said. 

A genuine smile appears on his face when he learns what you called him. 

“My dragon.”

LIFEWEAVER

Niran had some knowledge of sign language prior to meeting you.

When he heard you were deaf, he was excited to speak to you, though his speech was limited. 

Seeing him interact with you was comforting, even if he did get embarrassed about his mistakes. 

He would spend most of his nights practising, relearning what he already knew and focussing on his weaker points.

Niran would always go to you for help, wanting to know if he’s signing right and what he needs to work on. 

It was like you were a tutor to him, one he felt comfortable around. 

When he wasn’t working on his biology and science, he would study some more.

There was always room for improvement. 

His mind was taken up by you, the want and need to impress you, no matter how many mistakes he made. It was all apart of the process.

Everything was going smoothly. His nightly studying was paying off and he was starting to fully understand conversation.

It only took a couple months for him to be fluent, the perks of being a fast learner but also sticking to a regime.

There was the odd occasion where he would mess up, but even you wouldn’t lie that you did it too.

He was fond of your presence, much like you were fond of his.

Niran was surprised when you signed a different name for him, one that made his cheeks flush the same pink colour.

“My lotus.”

#overwatch #ramattra #ramattra x reader #genji #genji x reader #lifeweaver #lifeweaver x reader #genji shimada #niran pruksamanee #overwatch fanfiction #reader insert #yazzfics

[doin-just-fine]

MAJOR UPDATE: Questioning systems or systems in a doubt spiral pls read.

I recently told my therapist about potentially being a system. This was a scary move because she has previously had some iffy takes about systemhood. But I told her because I trusted that she would meet me where I was at and help me navigate , at the least, the general idea of not understanding my own brain if nothing else which I was ok with. I told her and it went as expected. I explained why I thought I might be a system but also the doubts I had about it and how it was distressing me to not understand myself. She agreed to use the language I was using for it and was happy to help me through (as is her job) and also because whether it was systemhood or not it was something in me that was trying to be seen and we would work on figuring out what it was.

Fast forward a few session, and I was going through another bout of "what the fuck even is my brain". I was starting to realize that my "systemhood" is very different from the things I've been seeing online. In the ways that it's different to other systems is: - I'm always in the front, always in the captains chair - I have no amnesia because I never switch out - My hyper-vigilance never lets me dissociate fully though i definitely "check out" in my own way - Head mates just feel like vague ideas or emotions

But the ways that are similar are: - These vague ideas or emotions have opinions and feelings that are different from my own. - Though they are vague, I can definitely tell they are separate from what I have come to understand as "me" - I become "a different person" in the sense of my attitude, vibe, behavior, and opinions change from where they were 5 mins ago, but I am still me, just a different me.

Anyway, I was already trying to make sense of all of this and was not planning on talking about it with my therapist because nervous... However, my therapist ask me about it first. She asked some clarifying questions about my partners system vs my own and how they are different. When I explained what I just wrote above to my therapist she said "Thats what I thought and I owe you an apology."

Basically, my therapist, like any good therapist should when confronted by something they don't know a lot about, had been doing research on complex forms of trauma and coping. Things in the same vain as CPTSD and Plurality including those two topics. She had specifically been reading a book called "The Body Keeps The Score" (TW it is a book about trauma and studies of trauma so it has details of case studies that some people may find incredibly triggering). I did some research on what exactly the book was talking about in regards to "systemhood" and from what I've found, chapter 14 at the end of a section called "Writing to yourself" and the first parts of chapter 17 have interesting information regarding systemhood and how its not entirely limited to things that are diagnosable like DID or OSDD. It seems to talk about how we all have several selves and trauma can get in the way of those selves communicating effectively. My therapist told me about this book and what she learned from it and apologized to me because the book made her realize that she was wrong and that I was in fact a system....

The session ended and I just kind of sat there... not sure how to feel but definitely feeling relief and validation.

After doing research on the book to write this I have some words of wisdom: If you are a questioning system or are doubting your validity remember this: The human brain is such a complex organism and no one actually understands how it does anything beyond physical functionality... the conceptual abilities of our mind are a mystery. How we define self is just theory. If you don't fit into boxes, labels, identities, or diagnoses that does not mean your experiences aren't real. You're going to be ok. Understand YOUR mind and how it works for YOU, not through a label or diagnosis. I am a system. Simply. No types, labels, or diagnosis. I am a system. I may not have people in my head in the traditional sense but I'm also not alone up here either. I am a system. I am a system. I am a system. Nobody has the right to deny me this for they do not live behind my eyes.

As I understand myself: I am a system.

#median system #questioning system #plurality #system #actually plural #actual system #actually median #questioning median system #plural community #neurogenic

[beansprouts]

“The act of revolt is common to the human experience.” -r/AskHistorians

r/AskHistorians has a well-earned reputation for quality: its moderators work very hard to uphold high standards for research and civil discussion, resulting in among the most beloved history-centric forums online today. Unsurprisingly, they are among the subs protesting API changes right now, and because u/spez is a bastard and not backing down, they are still protesting post-blackout: most of the sub is currently in private (read-only, effectively) mode.

r/AskHistorians moderator u/CoeurdeLionne pinned this writeup on revolts to the sub, which I quite liked and wanted to share to my primary hellsite.

Post Transcription follows (emphasis mine, links are from original):

Welcome back Historians! Like most of Reddit, we are in the midst of what many news outlets have described as a ‘revolt’ against proposed changes to Reddit’s API policies that will hurt the functionality of our platform, and hinder our ability to continue providing moderated content.

You can read our previous statements here, here, and here. And if you would like to see a sample of r/AskHistorians’s broader outreach to mainstream media, you can read our statements:

The New York Times The Washington Post CBS News SFGate Forward

The act of revolt is common to the human experience. Humans rebel for a variety of ends, often to preserve a norm or institution being threatened, or to destroy one viewed as oppressive. The very act of revolt or rebellion can take infinite forms and have equally diverse outcomes. Some end in small victories that fade into the tapestry of history, while others lead to immense social change that dramatically change the wider world. Even when revolts fail, they leave lasting consequences that cannot always be escaped or ignored.

We are inviting our contributors to write about instances of revolt, rebellion, revolution and resistance. No rebellion is too small, or too remote. From protests against poor working conditions, to the deposing of despots, tell us the stories of revolt throughout history, and the consequences left behind.

Floating Features are intended to allow users to contribute their own original work. If you are interested in reading recommendations, please consult our booklist, or else limit them to follow-up questions to posted content. Similarly, please do not post top-level questions. This is not an AMA with panelists standing by to respond. Such questions ought to be submitted as normal questions in the subreddit.

As is the case with previous Floating Features, there is relaxed moderation here to allow more scope for speculation and general chat than there would be in a usual thread! But with that in mind, we of course expect that anyone who wishes to contribute will do so politely and in good faith.

Comments on the current protest should be limited to META threads, and complaints should be directed to u/spez.

#COMPLAINTS SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO SPEZ! #fuck spez #reddit #reddit blackout #r/AskHistorians #AskHistorians #reddit migration

[auroraesmeraldarose]

Professor Gale modern AU fic, feat a definitely not just me but hotter (lies) OC, Helene (pronounced like Eleni)

Part 1 of… ???

Welp, here goes. Truly self-indulgent and written almost entirely as a way of dealing with real life… Which is much like this fic but without the hot prof. If anyone likes it I may post more, but really it’s just for me!

Helene sat at her computer, a cup of tea next to her, her desk littered with books already. Her first English Literature Masters degree tutorial began in seventeen minutes, and she was already nervous. She opened her new notebook to the first page, and in emerald green ink wrote the date in the top corner. Helene knew it was unlikely there would be much to take notes on today, as it was only an introductory session; but she was determined to do the best she could in this course, so she would rather be prepared. She had always wanted to further her education; Helene had already completed an undergraduate degree, before her teacher training, and now nine years of teaching later she finally found the impetus to get her MA, too. It helped that the course was all online, and in the evenings, though she feared at the end of a long work day the tutorials may be a little dull and difficult. Even with the lack of in person classes, the suggested forty hours a week of study was pretty impossible alongside her almost full-time teaching job, with only weekends and one day off a fortnight to dedicate to it… But she would manage, somehow. Or at least, she hoped she would.

Twelve minutes to go. Helene found herself overthinking when was the most appropriate time to join the online tutorial. Too early, and you might find yourself awkwardly alone with the Professor; too late, and you might look like you didn’t care. She settled on eight minutes before the session started, that seemed both keen but not embarrassingly so. She wondered what her Professor would be like… There were six, in total, teaching the course, but only one assigned to be her tutor; supposed to be the first port of call in case of any questions or concerns. She had searched his name online, and looked at some of his research, to try and get a feel for him. This man would be important; he was the one marking her essays, so she wanted to know as much as possible about him in advance. Professor Gale Dekarios - she already liked the sound of him, just because they shared Greek names. Helene wondered if he spoke any Greek, like her, and although she knew she was being a teachers’ pet wondered if her own knowledge of Greek might impress him. She had enjoyed reading his research on 19th Century European Literature, which was a favourite topic of hers, though she found some of his more obscure works on plays of the period beyond her experience.

Eight minutes to go. Helene clicked on the button to join the session, and put on her headphones. As the screen loaded, she saw it was divided into four: the main portion of the screen was a slide of information which read “WELCOME” in big, purple letters; a nice serif font, Helene thought to herself. The other sections included a smaller box, in which a list of the names of seventeen participants appeared, alongside a chat box which was currently empty but for one or two “good evening” messages. The final section of the screen showed Professor Dekarios, sat in front of huge, neatly organised bookcases, with a tabby cat lying happily on the desk in front of him. Helene took in the image, grinning, as the thought crossed her mind; god, he’s kind of hot… and he has a cat! She had seen a picture of Professor Dekarios online, a standard headshot, and yes, she had thought him handsome, but those author headshots could make a potato look good. It was a bit of a surprise to find that in real life he was equally good-looking: olive skin; a short beard; brown hair peppered with grey down almost to his shoulders; deep brown eyes. Was that a tattoo she could see just poking out from the top of his shirt? Maybe these online tutorials might not be as dull as she feared…

“Good evening and welcome! Now, is that the English Helen, or like the Greek Eh-leh-nee, or the French Heléne?” The Professor asked, smiling cheerfully into the camera.

Helene began typing quickly into the chat box.

- Good evening Professor; it’s the Greek, thank you for asking! Nobody ever gets it right! -

“Fantastic, and are you Greek, or just named as one, Helene?”

- My grandparents were Greek, and I read and write it decently, although my speaking isn’t great; not much chance to use it unfortunately, Professor. -

“Ah, lovely, we can be a pair of Έλληνες. And please, all of you, Gale is quite acceptable. I don’t even like my undergraduates calling me ‘professor,’ so I think those of you who have got this far into your study have earned the right to speak to me as an equal.” Gale’s smile really was quite something; even through a screen, you could see his dark eyes glittering.

Helene was glad she didn’t have her camera on, because she found herself already blushing a little. She rolled her eyes at herself; thirty-two years old and getting a crush on a teacher. What an idiot, especially when she was a teacher herself! It was a relief that Prof- Gale- (she corrected her own thought) had moved on to welcoming the last few people into the session, speaking each of their names as they entered the virtual room, as he had hers. As the clock ticked to seven, he began his session proper.

“Before we begin, I suppose I should also introduce our guest lecturer, Tara,” he stroked the tabby cat gently, smiling. “I’m afraid she may feature in most of our tutorials, though she doesn’t offer comments often. I have tried to shut her out of my study for tutorials before, but she tends to scratch at the door and meow quite distractingly! I hope none of you will mind her sitting in.”

With that, he began outlining the course, the assignment dates, the key areas to be covered. It was a lot of information all at once, but somehow Gale managed to make it all feel… manageable. He was reassuring, and spoke warmly about each section, constantly reminding the group that if there was anything they needed it was his job to be there for them. By the time the first hour had passed, Helene had made a number of useful notes about dates and resources, and the first page of her notebook was covered in her swirling green writing.

“Well, technically, we have thirty more minutes… But I think I’ve covered everything I intended to. Perhaps, if anyone has any questions, or if you’d like to just hang around for the final half an hour to get to know one-another, we could make this a bit less formal? Of course, feel absolutely free to leave, and enjoy the extra time to yourselves and your families!”

Of the nineteen group members, the professor being the twentieth person in the virtual room, only six remained for the final half an hour. Helene, of course, stayed. She didn’t really have any questions, but the combination of wanting to appear as interested as possible in the course, and the burgeoning crush on Gale held her there.

“Well, as there are so few of us left, perhaps, if you’re amenable, we could all use our microphones to speak now, rather than typing? I won’t force you to, of course, but it might make discussion a little easier…” Helene wasn’t sure if she dared… It was much easier to hide behind a chat box. It gave her time to think before speaking, and appear as intelligent and witty as possible. When two of the other group unmuted themselves, though, she felt she should probably join in, if she wanted to make an impression. She pressed the button, and hesitated briefly before speaking.

“Thank you for tonight, Prof- sorry, Gale. You’ve been very reassuring. I was starting to think, with all the pre-reading I’d been doing, that I may be in over my head a little!”

“Ah, you are most kind. I’m sure you’ll be fine, as long as you keep up with your reading, and make use of the tutorials. Was there anything particularly worrying you?”

“Just… Well, I suppose trying to do it all, while also working. I know the whole course is designed for that, but it feels a bit daunting.”

“Yes, that is often the biggest worry for our distance students. Tell me, Helene, what do you do for work?”

“I teach, English, in a secondary school.”

“I understand your concerns, that is not an easy job, and I imagine your free time is quite limited! But on the plus side, you will likely find you already know quite a bit more about research and essay-writing than many, so you won’t need to worry about learning that. Just do the best that you can, and drop me an email if you ever find yourself in need of guidance, or a deadline extension.”

“Thank you, Pr- Sorry, Gale. I will get used to that eventually!”

“Not a problem, Helene, anything you need, I am here to help. Now, does anyone have any other questions?”

A couple of the others asked questions about the course, and the assignments, and the final half an hour of the session passed quickly. It felt like mere minutes when Gale was waving them goodbye with a final reminder that if they needed him, he was only an email away.

For a few minutes after the end of the tutorial, Helene sat, her tea long gone cold, untouched as she was so immersed in listening. She wanted to do well in this course; she had wanted that long before she met “Gale.” But she couldn’t help but feel even more determined now, she wanted to impress him. Helene almost laughed at herself; it was silly, to even have such a crush at her age… But it was harmless, and if it gave her motivation to work even harder, why not indulge her fantasies a little? It wasn’t like there was ever even the slightest possibility of being able to act on her feelings. It was a distance course; they’d never be closer than opposite sides of a screen, he might be on the other side of the country, the world, even. And, of course, she was a student… And he was probably already happily married anyway. By the time she’d had a few more tutorials with him, she would likely be over this silly little crush. May as well make use of the sudden extra motivation to get some decent work done, before the mania faded! Helene opened the page that detailed her first assignment question, and worked late into the night researching, the thought of gaining the handsome professor’s approval keeping her from sleep.

#fanfic #bg3 gale #bg3 #gale dekarios #professor gale #alternate universe #modern au #cringe

[the80srewinders]

Inside The Mind of a Sysmed: An Experienced Guide

by Finley, host

Sysmeds are system exclusionists- they think you need trauma to be plural. They often push that DID/OSDD only develops from trauma and, although that might be true, I've found evidence it might not be always the case (way after we made this blog.) They use the basic well known facts about DID/OSDD to pull you in, because its how they build trust. Then they tell you the misinformation about systems of all types.

Why do they do this?

I used to be a sysmed when I found out about DID- because I fit a lot of the symptoms, and was in denial I had trauma, and felt like I needed trauma or I'd be broken, I closed my mind off from any possibility endogenic systems, much less DID without trauma, was possible. If I believed that, I'd start thinking I was endogenic, and I'd feel like I was broken and an insult to real trauma survivors- I already felt like that. People who were traumatized as children don't remember all of their trauma and there's a select group that remember very little or none. Society pushes the "trauma is something you remember that shatters and severely hurts you mentally that you always remember and want to forget" narrative alongside people who claim they remember their trauma and are "proud survivors. " I grew up believing that and as a result, I thought the only trauma I had was bullying and sexual assault/rape in public school, and my cousin sexually abusing me. Remembering very little details of all those traumatic events and having mostly depersonalized memories of those events, I didn't see where it could be bad enough to cause DID. I also thought I never dissociated until I found out I could have DID but I later found out the things I called weird about myself were actually dissociation- the sysmed view just didn't make it seem that way. I had to go through six months of research to find out dissociation was experienced differently by person. I was on r/DID a lot when I was in the diagnostic process (which took months) and learned so much misinformation about plurality I was suffering with denial severely. I thought I didn't have DID and I was just born broken, I was nothing like these people. Switching all the time, being in distress because of dramatic disorienting dissociation, having vivid flashbacks to trauma all the time. I was none of that. The denial of my trauma ate me up and left me with a hole of invalidity to fill with validity. So I would hold sysmed views to make myself feel valid and say those online when I needed to boost my sense of validity. But the more research I did, the more I found that endogenic systems were valid and often do have trauma- its just not what made them plural. And that everything I experienced was in fact in favor of DID- amnesia of trauma, depersonalized memories, not noticing switches, randomly hearing alters thoughts intruding into my consciousness instead of full on conversations with them thinking theyre "imaginary friends", unstable identity, and after I found out I had DID, headaches when trying to communicate internally with alters.

Basically, sysmeds are sysmeds because they are in denial of their trauma, and the society stereotype on trauma doesn't make them feel any more valid. Mix this in with the singlet created stereotype on DID in media, and how psychology often falsely validated these presentations until 1994 with the DSM-4 which renamed the disorder accurately, and sysmeds don't feel valid at all. They feel inherently broken and like they're nothing without trauma (or at least trauma they can remember.) Their denial of trauma eats them up and makes them miserable, and in an attempt to feel valid, they are filled with hate toward anyone who would make them feel like they're not valid by just existing. Sysmeds let their trauma or denial thereof turn them into miserable exclusionists who knowingly spread misinformation and bait an entire community into being seen as bullies. All because instead of therapy, they chose to go with what feels good in the moment out of anguish.

So yes we are pro-endogenic. Because when we had enough of the pain caused by denial and the "denial-be a sysmed to cure it" cycle, we chose to do research. All it takes is researching trusted websites about plurality, including medical websites that have validated endogenic systems. Sysmeds love trusted sources especially government medical websites, don't they?

And you'll find that there's really no need to be a sysmed at all.

Edit: Sysmeds have different reasons for being sysmeds. Just because these are the sysmeds we encountered and why I became one, doesnt mean its why every sysmed is a sysmed. It could be because they just don't see how endogenic plurality can exist, they strictly believe in the theory of dissociation, or they were exposed to sysmedicalist content like r/DID or r/systemscringe. (We're not against the theory of structural dissociation, we just think that applies to posttraumatic/dissociative disorders only but there's other ways systems develop.) Those are their reasons for hating each other as well. Our experience isn't universal and we realize that.

#dissociative identity disorder #actually dissociative #other specified dissociative disorder #osddid #dissociation #system stuff #endo safe #pro endo #syscourse

[kafus]

for the did ama, what's something you wish more people understood about did? (this can refer to singlets, people newly diagnosed, stuff that the community in general just may not know or acknowledge, etc)

i kind of share something similar to this in this ask to do with child alters if you wanted to see that

anyways there's probably a lot of angles i could go at this with but hm. i kind of hate how the online community is SO focused on alters themselves, identity alteration, like i think to a lot of people to be perceived as a Valid DID Haver you have to have alters with different names and different pronouns who act totally different from one another and that's just... not... not necessary or even common.

i took a bit to answer this because i wanted to pull up this study which has this quote, referencing some kluft research:

Many clinicians and lay people believe that DID presents with dramatic, florid personality states with obvious state transitions (switching). These florid presentations are likely based on media stereotypes, but actually occur in only about 5% of DID patients [60]. The vast majority of DID patients have subtle presentations characterized by a mixture of dissociative and PTSD symptoms embedded with other symptoms such as posttraumatic depression, substance abuse, somatoform symptoms, eating disorders, personality disorders, and self-destructive and impulsive behaviors [23, 61].

DID is a heavily covert disorder for many and while it's not unusual or even surprising that going into therapy and purposefully interacting with alters + using social media where that sort of behavior is expected/encouraged can cause us to become more "florid", many of us aren't like that... at all! and the lack of representation for people with DID who don't have super distinct alters or who simply don't want to share that information online is actually kind of appalling to me. DID is a dissociative disorder caused by childhood trauma first and foremost and comes with all the struggles related to those things. alters are just one piece of the puzzle. and the continued focus on alters harms both singlets because they don't understand DID outside of that, and people with DID... i can't tell you how many times i've talked to people with very obvious DID who thought they didn't have it because they didn't match social media depictions of the disorder. it's like everyone's trying to be like Sybil, subconsciously or not, and that's just... not always how it is!!

of course people with DID who have florid presentations are valid too and there are aspects of my DID that are very Not covert but growing up my situation was a lot more subtle and even now, there's so much about my DID people don't see because the only acceptable way to parse or talk about your symptoms and experience online are by well defined alters and the majority of our alters are just Not like that. i have so many alters that are just "me but slightly to the left" who would be hard to detect personality changes with, etc. many such cases.

tldr very good to keep in mind that people with DID are traumatized and dissociative individuals with a variety of symptoms that may or may not fall into the "idealized" standard depiction of DID on social media and in fiction, and i REALLY wish there was more discussion on the other parts of this disorder more often

#kiki was here #asks #the DID ama #mephilesthegay #i think it's easy tofall into the trap of only talking about alters #cause talking about alters can be fun! #it's like an escape from the bad of it all sometimes #and some talking about alters is good #just wish there was more balance yknow

[xcherryerim]

this isn’t a request, more of a question! How do you start off a tumblr for writing? Smuts and what not. Any tips? I especially like the way you decorate each post and space it out!

Hello! thank you so much for asking me this omg

I will mostly talk about smut content because that is mainly what I write but some tips can be used for fluff, angst and what not! (also pls keep in mind I started writing like a month ago so i’m new to this too!)

So…

1. I will always recommend to read other people’s work!

This is the best way to see how other people describe certain feelings, settings, emotions and even characters!

2. Write in the perspective of the reader, not the writer.

What this means is make sure to be detailed on your writing, and also try to be inclusive as possible. Doesn’t matter if you’re writing for gn!reader, afab, fem, amab etc. For example, don’t describe the reader (if you’re writing for readers ofc) that they’re skinny, pale, that their flesh is pink (for smuts), that their ‘chest is big’ because that might not the the case for everyone. I would say lean more on the surroundings, the noises, and the sensations rather than the body itself.

3. Do your research!

if you’re writing for gn!readers for example, try to look up for tips on how to write for them. This is what I normally use.

When it comes to smut, one of the hardest things for me is to come up with the positions. So, I look for sexual positions online (the examples are drawn out) or watch actual porn. AND IK HOW IT SOUNDS BUT come on, I’m writing literal porn. This is to see visually how the body reacts realistically to certain positions.

(Yes, i’m a visual learner)

4. This is more if you have a ton of ideas like me. Anytime you come up with something WRITE IT OUT ASAP (if you can ofc) doesn’t have to be dialogue or too specific. It can be as simple as “He is your roommate and ends up having shower sex with the reader.” (this is taken out of my ideas list lmao)

I also wanted to say that if you really want to write a scenario that has been overdone (Derek x reader assistant or a story related to Mike and his vest) that does not mean you can't write it, just make it unique and yours!

5. Finally, do not get discouraged. Writing at first is overwhelming, and if you’re like me you’ll always think your writing isn’t good enough but remember, there will always be someone out there willing to read and appreciate your work.

Also if we get more technical, I use Google Docs, Grammarly, and Nautral Reader (when I’m tired of reading my work).

Hope this helped, and if you have more questions, please let me know! Again, thank you so much for asking me about this.

#I literally just woke up #writing smut #smut writing #smut writing tips #smut tips #writing tips #writers on tumblr

[zahmbie]

If you’re comfortable can you write fluff and comfort for Evan and habit with a reader who has FND or seizures? Struggling atm and need some comfort - 🌸 anon

Evan and HABIT comforting a reader who gets seizures

Note: This one took a little longer than I hoped because unlike the other things I’ve written so far, I have no experience with seizures! I’ve been researching them cause I didn’t want to get anything wrong, but I’m basing a few points in here around stuff I read online. Please let me know if I got anything wrong and I’ll be more than happy to fix them! And I hope you feel better soon anon <3

(No content warnings I know of)

Evan

Evan gets a little panicky when he learns you get seizures. You tell him that you’ve been living with them for longer than you’ve known him, but he loves you so he’s going to be a little worried. Just give him some instructions on what to do in the event of a seizure and he’ll do literally everything in his power to help you. He also asks Jeff for any advice on seizures, his closest friend works in a hospital, Jeffs gotta know something right?

Jeff told him that stresses can be a trigger and healthy habits can help with some seizures and Evan is on it. He’s offered to teach you yoga if you wanna try and use it to destress, and he’s very good at making sure you’re always drinking water and keeping a good sleep schedule. 

He struggles a little with some of the things he has to remember, but he’s never once forgotten about any meds you need to take. He’s not gonna baby you about it or anything but he’ll give you a gentle reminder about taking your pills if you need it.

Evan’s by far the best cuddler out of the EMH group, and the best at comforting by extension. He’s gotten his bedroom set up with snacks and drinks, he’s got your favorite CD playing, and he dug a bunch of extra pillows out of his closet to make his bed as soft as it could be. He’ll stay next to you as long as you need him- he’s honestly considering calling out sick to work the next day if you want him to stay with you for longer- talking to you about anything that comes to your minds. Any shows or books you like, some new xbox game he got, how work or school’s going, how filming EMH has been. There’s no place he’d rather be than next to you.

HABIT

Adding to my list of “things HABIT can sense”: seizures. He’s like a medical support dog, he can just smell it coming before you can feel it.

You two are just hanging out, playing with the cat, and he suddenly sits up straight, looking alert. Before you can ask him what’s wrong he goes into some grounding stuff. He’s good with distractions and decent asking questions to help you with reorienting. Some reorienting questions just don’t work great with him. “Where are you” and “what year is it” don’t have clear answers when you’re hanging out in HABITs weird little hell dimension.

Very bad at reminding you to take your meds but he still wants to help, if you didn’t have a pill case before he’ll steal find you one the next time he goes out.

The longer he’s been around you the better he’s been getting at comforting, at least physically he’s still working on verbally. He’ll curl up with you in a blanket on the couch, put your head on his chest, and ask about your day. He’s normally the more talkative one of you two so it’s an interesting change.

Sometimes when he gives you affection he’ll act like he’s only doing it for your benefit, like you cuddling him isn’t something he adores, but during these times he’ll let you see a peek of his true feelings. He’ll drop everything he’s doing to be close to you, and if you want anything you only have to ask and he’ll set out to get it. Yeah he’s got a guy tied up in the attic but that’s not important right now, you take priority for him over anything else.

#🌸 anon #emh x reader #everymanhybrid x reader #evan myers x reader #evan emh #everymanhybrid #Habit emh x reader #zahmbie writes #Again got a lot of info from google so please let me know if i need to fix something!

[that-gay-guy-from-hell]

Phantoms of the Past: Vergil x Male Reader

SUMMARY: Vergil has always had nightmares and night terrors for as long as he can remember; however, when he met you, those began to subside more and more. Over the years, he had begun to forget what it was like to wake up in a cold sweat and terrified; that is until a few months ago. Once more, his mind has been plagued by these agonizingly real dreams.

BEGINNING NOTES: HAH! YOU THOUGHT I WAS DONE WRITING SAD FLUFF WITH VERGIL; WELL THINK AGAIN (He really is my comfort character--I swear). There are 12,886 words in this… This beats my last one so now this is the longest chapter I’ve written--It’s like 23 pages in google docs lmao. ⚔️🛡️⚔️ ▪️I couldn’t find an exact answer to this so I will put this here: a grin refers to the lil’ smirky smile Vergil gives Dante in DMC5 while a smile is closer to like showing your teeth. I hope that helps clear things up a bit lmao ▫️I use an in-game combo term (DMC 5)--just a head’s up. ▪️When I reference triggering unless I say specifically “Sin Trigger” I am referring to Vergil’s regular trigger (the pre-DMC 5 form; however, I use the concept art for DMC5 as my visual reference… I know that’s kinda complicated. Just look at his fandom page and then the gallery; you’ll see the concept art for DMC5.) ▫️I’ve never personally had a concussion before so I did some online research; forgive me if it is a bad representation of having 🛡️⚔️🛡️ 💠Vergil x Male reader; I tried to write G/N but it got confusing, sorry. 🔹Pre-established relationship--married and living together. 💠Fluff… well more angst; I got kind of carried away. 🔹Minor accusations of physical abuse; THE KEYWORD IS ACCUSATIONS. (trigger warning) 💠Minor blood warning; from both of you. ⚔️🛡️⚔️ READER RELATED 🔹The reader uses: Beowulf and Revenant 🔹Reader is overly chill about things; I am a rather passive person so it ended up being that way with this story, sorry. 🔹It is mentioned that you are younger than Vergil--and closer to Nero’s age. 🔹Reader does throw up; only mentioned it isn’t like graphic or anything--still figured I should warn just in case. 🛡️⚔️🛡️ VERGIL RELATED 💠Vergil has PTSD-related nightmares/actions. 💠Self-harm? Vergil skins himself accidentally; so I am not sure if that is self-harm per se. Plus it’s only in one part so it’s not that big of a talking point. 🛡️⚔️🛡️ Slight spoiler, don't read if you don't want to have things spoiled: To add some explanation to Vergil’s bit where he swore and freaked out: I figure that when Vergil lost his autonomy for so long as Nelo Angelo, he ended up becoming hyper-aware of what he is doing at all times. So when he does something that he either can’t remember doing or didn’t want to do that it would send him into a panic; fearing that he is going to lose his freedom again.

==

INSPIRED BY: And when thy heart ceased to beat--By: Craig 

Please give this a read. It is what originally inspired me to write this, plus it is just a really good story and takes a pretty realistic look at what Vergil’s life could/would be like after everything that’s happened. 

==

     A cold wind swept through the arena as all movement stilled. 

     At the edges were the two remaining contenders; circling one another. One, a male human equipped with Beowulf, was out of breath and exhausted: the other, the olive-armored Nelo Angelo, had barely warmed up and diligently awaited the human's next move.

     Seeing how the man defeated the slew of lesser demons that Nelo had sent prior, he decided to take things into his own hands. The devilish swordsman was confident that he’d win this fight; even if this particular human has been more of a challenge than anticipated--as the pair has been going at it for nearly an hour now. 

     With gritted teeth, the man sprinted at Nelo, cracking the ground in their wake. He was going to try and grapple with the large knight. Right before he was able, Nelo swung his greatsword. The silver blade was suddenly halted as it hit the Beowulf gauntlets. Even though the man was unharmed, the momentum of the attack was enough to fling the human far across the field. 

     Using the claws of the gauntlets, the man shredded the arena’s floor and stopped himself. Nelo turned to face him and waited for the incompetent warrior to stand back up. Noticing that the knight stood still, the man began to grow frustrated; knowing that the devil was taunting him to try again. 

     With a pounding heart and exhaustion only worsening, the man stood up with a grunt. He rolled his shoulders, cracking them loudly, and took a deep breath. Once more he sprinted at Nelo. When the man was close enough, he decided to jump off one of the nearby walls. Springing himself above the Black Knight and performed Starfall. 

     Nelo dodged but wasn't quite fast enough and was nicked along one side; which only further irritated the Black Knight. The second the man's feet landed, Nelo kicked the underside of their knees--bringing them to a kneel.

     Not wasting any time, Nelo raised his sword to strike, only to be blocked once more by the Beowulf gauntlets. The pair locked in a bind; Nelo’s sword heavily pushing downwards onto the forearms of Beowulf, which were painfully held above the man’s head.

     No matter what way you put it, a devil's strength is insurmountable to a human’s, even if the human is wearing the armor of a former devil. Nelo knew this and drove his weapon harder into the demonic protection as it began to falter.

     Knowing it was only a matter of time before the gauntlets shattered, the man moved into a position where he could dig his feet into the ground. This allowed him to stand ever so slightly. Not having any better ideas, he used this small amount of space and attempted to jump. This, in turn, used the demonic energy of the boots to push the gauntlets up harder into the greatsword; allowing the man to stand up further. Without wasting any time, he jumped once more and noticed small cracks that began to spider on their forearm guards. However, he had enough room to break away from Nelo; making the knight slam his blade into the ground. 

     The man grumbled as they looked down at his gauntlets, seeing that they would shatter if hit by the sword again. 

     Nelo pulled his sword back up and huffed. Now it was his turn.

     Nelo sprinted at his opponent and lunged with the broadsword; catching the man off guard; as he only barely dodged the sharp edge, rolling into a stand. Before the man had a moment to think, Nelo attacked once more. A large sweeping motion from the broadsword hit the gauntlets and blue sparks flew off the sword from the impact; sending the human flying into a wall of the arena. 

     Standing back on his feet, the man looked at his forearms; Beowulf had fractured all the way through. Seeing Nelo begin to move in again, he quickly shed the broken armor and dodged. Using Beowulf’s boots, he jumped onto Nelo’s shoulders and used him as a surface to bounce off. 

     The devil turned to face the man and heard him say something unintelligible; and yet, something so familiar. Nelo ignored it with a small dismissive shake of his head and continued the fight. Once more he moved to attack. The man attempted to dodge in the same way again, not knowing what else to do. However, Nelo wasn’t created yesterday. He was quick enough to grab the man's leg in a flash. 

     Nelo used the human’s limb as a handle to swing the attached body into the ground. The floor cracked from the extreme force as the man's flesh made contact; followed by an ear-piercing scream and the sound of an unimaginable amount of breaking bones. 

     A strange feeling ghosted at the recesses of Nelo’s mind, a feeling of terror--a deep underlying urge to stop what he was doing. However, the knight had to finish what he started. The demonic swordsman grabbed the man by his neck; making him scream once more. 

     Despite their wounds, the human still attempted to fight. He grasped at Nelo’s face and horns, pulling on them; all the while, the man was saying something Nelo was still unable to understand. 

     It didn’t matter, the struggle was pointless.

     Like a hot knife through butter, Nelo plunged his broadsword through the man’s torso. Nelo felt the human’s body go limp and their hands released the tight grasp on his face. The dead man’s blood trickled down the silver blade and onto Nelo Angelo’s olive-armored fingers. Before the knight could enjoy his victory, he decided to get a better look at his opponent. 

     A loud clatter emanated from his sword as he dropped it and the fresh corpse. The Black Knight’s hands shook as he looked at the blood that was dripping from them, horrified at what he’d done.

     Vergil shot upwards with a loud terrified scream. 

     He frantically turned his head around to get his bearings. He was sitting at home, in bed, with you. Vergil’s heart was racing and his skin was clammy. With short panicked breaths, Vergil gripped his face tightly, unknowingly tearing at his skin with his claws, as he replayed everything in his mind. 

     “Vergil? Is everything alright?” a confused and very concerned voice called from the space beside him.

     The blue devil nearly jumped out of his skin upon hearing you speak. You sat upwards upon noticing his terrified state.

     “Hey,” you whispered and gently touched his bicep, making him flinch.

     Vergil turned his head to you and just stared. You noticed that his arms were partially triggered, his eyes were glowing dully, and there were small pin-prick-sized bleeding marks caused by his claws on his face. His stare was blank with his brow ever-so-slightly creased. He looked afraid… almost as if he were lost.  

     “Another nightmare?” you softly kneaded against his arm, hoping to bring him back from whatever terrified thoughts he was in, “It’s okay, Vergil. You’re safe. Nothing is going to hurt you.” 

     His stare moved down to your chest and he slowly reached outwards. Confused, you let go of his arm--allowing him to fully pivot to see you. Barely-there scaled charcoal-black fingers ghost down your midline. You noticed a slight tremble in his lips and his stare had softened a bit.

     Slowly you grabbed his arm, making sure he could see what you were doing (and to be cautious of his forearm’s blades), “I’m right here, Vergil. You’re safe and at home. Everything’s okay.”

     He opened his mouth but no words came out, just a weak crack of his voice. The both of you just sat for a few minutes; his palm resting firmly over your stomach while you rubbed his forearm. You continued to try and ground him back in reality with your words, hoping to keep things from escalating. 

     When Vergil’s trigger began to subside, he cleared his throat and spoke in a barely audible voice, “I didn’t…” his voice trailed off once more.

     “It’s okay Vergil,” you noticed his expression had shifted and he seemed to be more present, “You’re safe. I’m safe. We’re alright.”

     Vergil nodded slowly, his free hand moved to yours that you had on his forearm. You let go of him and watched as he removed his palm from your skin. He placed your hand in between both of his. With trembling fingers, Vergil ran his digits over your hand and arm while staring down at the interaction. 

     Another few minutes passed, Vergil’s trigger had fully subsided and a few stray tears fell from his eyes. It pained you to see him like this; to see him so scared and not know how to help him. A small pang of hurt tugged at your heart; you had a feeling that whatever the nightmare was, it involved you as (you presumed) most have. However, tonight was different; Vergil didn’t attack you.

     Over the past few months, Vergil’s nightmares and terrors had been getting steadily worse. Just two weeks ago he woke you up by almost dislocating your shoulder. A week ago? Vergil triggered in his sleep and gouged the crap out of your back--enough that you had to get new bedding because of bloodstains.

     Tonight, you finally managed to get him to sleep for the first time in a week and he had another agonizing nightmare. It was also the first time he had tried to speak to you afterwards; rather than sit in silence. 

     A stuttering breath caught your attention. You looked into Vergil’s eyes as he spoke, his voice still laced with a terror you’d never heard from him before, “I couldn’t… You...” the blue devil’s jaw quivered, not being able to bring himself to finish his thought.

     “You’re okay. I’m okay. Everything’s okay,” you moved to get closer to him, “I promise.”

     He pulled you into his lap and buried his face into your neck and continued to mumble, “I’m sorry,” over and over as he shook against you.

     You gently wrapped your arms around him and rubbed his back, “It’s not your fault, you don’t have to be sorry.”

     The two of you remained this way until you both fell asleep. Vergil, thankfully, did not have another nightmare; however, his sleep was far from restful.

==

     A ringing phone woke you from your sleep and you moved to grab it, only to be stopped by a strong set of arms. Vergil had wrapped himself entirely around you--legs and all.

     “Vergil,” you whispered, “I need to get up.”

     He grumbled in response and loosened his grip just enough for you to slip out of bed. You grabbed your phone and went to the bathroom. While in there, you saw that Dante had tried to call you and text you:

     “You coming in today?”

     “Hello?”

     “I am going to keep spamming you till you respond,” and that he did. 

     It looked like Dante had been doing this for the past 30 minutes. 

     After you finished up in the bathroom, you called Dante.

     It rang once before the red devil picked up, “Mornin’ beautiful.”

     You rolled your eyes as you made your way back to the bedroom, “Do not call me that; Vergil will kill you.”

     “Be one hell of a way to die--make sure to put it on my grave, yeah?”

     The both of you laughed, “So, what’s up? The shop finally burn down or something?”

     “Honestly… I don’t think the fires of Hell could burn this place down…” you could hear Dante’s chair creak as he leaned forwards, “You both forgot about that job this morning, huh?”

     Your face went pale, “What--”

     The younger twin laughed, “Verge and you had a contract for today. It’s nearly noon and you both are still at home?”

     “Son of a bitch!” you yelled, forgetting that Vergil was still sleeping, “We’ll be right there.”

     “See you soon,” you could practically hear Dante reveling in the fact Vergil messed up.

     “Mhm, yep,” with that, you hung up the phone.

     “Dante?” Vergil grumbled from the bed, making you jump slightly.

     The bed creaked as you sat on it, swinging one leg on it, “Yeah… We are late to work…”

     Vergil moved to set his head on your lap and sighed, “I will undoubtedly never hear the end of this mistake.”

     “Mhm,” you gently ran your fingers through his naturally down hair, “knowing Dante.”

     “Brillant,” Vergil looked up at you and had a strange pained look.

     “Something on your mind?” 

     His lips parted slightly as he took a hand and reached up to your face, not saying anything.

     You kissed his palm, “I’m right here, Vergil.”

     He closed his eyes and nodded with a sputtering exhale. This had also become a regular occurrence in the last few months; even before the terrors began. You had noticed that Vergil would often stare at you with this sad and distant look on his face. One night, he finally acknowledged that he did so and admitted why; that he was afraid you aren't real.

     After a few moments, Vergil removed his hand and sat upright. An air of remorse emanated from the twin as he whispered, “I did not harm you last night, did I?”

     You shook your head, “No,” you set a hand on his bicep, “You did talk to me a bit, though.”

     His brow furrowed as he tried to remember and looked over his shoulder at you.

     “You kept… apologizing, telling me that you didn’t know..? I won’t pry, but…” you locked eyes with the blue devil, “I am here if you ever want or need to talk about it, okay?”

     He turned to you, “Thank you for your offer… But I assure you that I am fine.”

     “Vergil,” you placed a hand on his and spoke softly, “You don’t have to be fine all the time; it’s okay to be upset, to have problems.”

     A weak grin was all he gave you in return, squeezing your hand tightly. 

     The eldest twin knew exactly what had set off this spiral of increasingly terrified thoughts; however, he was ashamed to admit it, even to you. 

==

     It had been a job just like any other; clear out demons here and destroy a nest there--a piece of cake really. However, the weather was far from amiable; being overcast and heavily raining.

     “Fuck me!” you growled as you violently yanked the Beowulf boot from the mud. 

    The demonic hardware is rather heavy, at least for your human legs, so it is not ideal for muddy rainy weather--often getting stuck. Vergil noticed your grumbling and scrunched-up expression from the corner of his eye as he stifled a laugh. 

     “Don’t even--” you insincerely growled at him, “I swear I will throw them at you.”

     Vergil smirked slightly and huffed a laugh through his nose, “Perhaps you’d prefer me to leave you here?”

     Playfully you shoved his shoulder, “You wouldn’t dare.”

     His eyes narrowed, "I wouldn't?"

     You raised a brow, "You'll sleep on the couch for a week if you do, mister,” your voice was heavily layered with sarcasm and playfulness.

     Without responding, Vergil grabbed you by your waist and hoisted you over one of his shoulders like a sack of potatoes.

     “Hey--!” you squirmed in his grasp.

     “Stop struggling,” his grip tightened as his fingers dug into your skin, “Or I will drop you.”

     With a shake of your head and a smile, you laughed, “What a romantic husband I have.”

     “Tch,” Vergil was scowling, but you knew it was disingenuous.

     The two of you walked like this for some time, enjoying the comfortable silence (which if you listened very closely, you could hear Vergil purring). A part of you had almost forgotten that the both of you were on a job; that is until Vergil yanked you from his shoulder and plopped you on your feet. 

     He placed a stiff hand on your shoulder, “Stay,” with that, Vergil dashed off behind you. 

     Confused, you turned around and watched Vergil zip around a group of miscellaneous demons. You lovingly wolf-whistled at the silver-haired hunter. 

     Similar to a peacock showing its feathers, Vergil did these solo fights to show off--to flirt with you. You knew that this was the case because he would always finish the fight with a fancy move; be it an over-the-top judgment cut or using his doppelgänger in a combo. Today he opted for the second type.

     You smirked widely as you watched Vergil return the Yamato to its scabbard and dismiss Doppel.

     Lovingly, you cooed at the devilish swordsman, “I love watching you work, you know that?”

     His face was emotionless, holding intense eye contact with you. His lips were slightly parted as he seemingly tried to come up with a response. 

     Under your breath, you laughed quietly and approached him, “my Dark Slayer,” you winked and gave him a large grin. 

     He closed his lips and looked down with a tiny smirk, a trace amount of bashfulness ghosted his features. As you got within reach of him, a loud noise made both of you snap to attention. The two of you moved closer together, back to back; as per typical routine. The source of the noise sprung from the nearby buildings. It was a group of four Scudo Angelos and two Proto Angelos. 

     Vergil’s lip twitched as he huffed in irritation. He would always take care of these two types in particular, alone. Right now, however, it is impossible to get you away to a safe distance without a high risk of hurting you. 

     “So, you got a plan?” you calmly asked over your shoulder to Vergil.

     With a small click of his tongue, Vergil spoke, “You take care of the Scudos; I will take the Protos.”

     “Sounds good,” you nodded and the two of you broke apart. 

     Using Beowulf, you made quick work of the smaller demons’ shields. The talon heels of the boots are always a great tool for crushing the demons’ thick skulls. It didn’t take long for you to have them all but bloodied remains beneath your heels. You turned to address Vergil, figuring that he had finished his fight alongside you; however, he was still in combat. 

     You raised a brow as you watched him take on both of the knights. Confusion pricked at the edges of your mind, it was unusual for Vergil to take longer than you. The closer you watched the more off he seemed; his movements were overly stiff and his technique was sloppy. Deciding to help him, you moved in on one of the Proto Angelos. It didn’t take long for the demon to notice you. It charged at you and, just as it swung its broadsword, you parried the attack using your gauntlets. Taking advantage of the small gap of time that it took for the demon to pull its blade upwards, you hit it square in the chest. 

     The Proto Angelo stumbled back a bit but was relatively unphased by the uncharged punch. Now circling each other, you waited for the demon to attack. Once it did, you jumped upwards and were able to perform Starfall upon the knight. Grinding your taloned heels into the flattened olive-armored demon, you did a fancy flip off of it; deciding to have some fun. Which was a major mistake. 

     You hadn’t noticed that the second Proto Angelo also had its attention on you as it had knocked Vergil into a far-off wall. Hearing movement, you spun around to defend yourself but it was too late. 

     A searing pain shot through you as the demon’s broadsword slashed horizontally along your torso. With a loud shout, your knees buckled a bit as you stumbled backwards. You placed your arm along the slash, feeling it with your fingers--as to not break eye contact with the demon. The wound was bleeding profusely and was much deeper than you anticipated. 

     “Shit,” you grimaced and noticed the first Proto Angelo stand up. Thinking quickly, you sprinted at the second one and jumped off its shoulders. With another loud shout in pain, you landed using a shoulder roll. Your head was spinning as you slowly moved to kneel with your back to the demons. 

     A bright blue flash caught your eye and you felt a gush of wind pass you by. Once you managed to stand, the pair of Proto Angelos had been desolated into nothing but specs of dust in the wind. Where the demons once stood was Vergil in his sin trigger. Instantly, he was in front of you, making you jump a little. 

     With a huff and a weak smile, you jested, “Kinda sad I missed that,” you winced a bit as you felt your gut twitch in pain.

     A large grey-scaled hand gently touched your wound. Despite the heavy distortion of his sinful voice, you could tell he was worried, “You are hurt?”

     You did your best to play it off as you set a hand atop his, “I’ll be fine; it’s just a scratch.”

     He huffed loudly and pulled his hand from your body, looking at his palm that was covered in your blood, “I am sending you home--”

     “What-!” you shook your head, “Vergil, you can’t be-”

     The blue devil snarled lightly, “This is not up for discussion,” he sighed with a shake of his head returning to his human form, “It is not worth the risk to keep you here.”

     With parted lips, you did your best to formulate a sentence despite your anger, “I’m not just going to leave you,” you shifted your jaw to the side, “We’re partners, remember?”

     “As if I could forget,” Vergil’s eyes met yours as he mumbled, “That is why I am doing this.”

==

     “Vergil?” your voice pulled him from his thoughts, “You okay? You’ve been zoned out for a few minutes.”

     “Forgive me,” he removed his hand from yours, “I was lost in thought.”

     You looked at him curiously.

     Vergil shifted to the other edge of the bed, “We should get ready,” with that Vergil left the room.

     You pursed your lips and sighed through your nose as you stood up; admittedly, you had hoped he might indulge you on what he was thinking about. 

     After a few minutes, Vergil returned to the room. You already had the majority of your gear on and were in the middle of tying your boots when the ringing of your cell phone caught your attention.

     Before you could answer it, Vergil snatched it off the bedside table, “What do you want, Dante? "

     Although you couldn’t hear the younger twin, you could tell that he was poking fun at Vergil for being late. 

     “Have you called only to pester? Or is there a reason for this conversation?” Vergil’s lip twitched as he huffed through his nose.

     A small smirk tugged at your lips at Vergil’s feigned irritation at his baby brother.

     “I see,” Vergil slowly looked over to you and eyed you up and down, “My partner and I will discuss it and let you know,” he turned his gaze from you, “Goodbye,” he hung up the phone and placed it gently down on the bedside table as it was before. 

     Vergil moved to the closet and grabbed a dress shirt, his jaw moving slowly around as he mindlessly buttoned the black fabric. Your boots hit the floor with a soft thud. Humming a soft tune as you moved to the dresser to grab Revenant off of it, sliding it into the horizontal holster on the small of your back. From the corner of your eye, you noticed Vergil standing behind you. 

     “Oops, shit-- sorry,” you shuffled out of the way.

     “Do not apologize, I am in no rush,” he opened one of the drawers and grabbed a pair of pants and his belt.

     A bright smile adorned your face as you resumed your humming. You grabbed your coat and his off the nearby wall hooks and walked over to him.

     Vergil had moved back to the closet and slid on one of his vests.

     “Allow me?”

     The blue devil turned to you, “I can button my own clothing.”

     “I thought you weren’t in a rush?” you teased gently.

     You handed Vergil his coat to hold and slowly began to button the slate-blue apparel. Out of the top of your vision, you could see that Vergil was staring down at you with a ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. 

     “So what did Dante want?” you reached over to the closet behind him and grabbed one of his ties.

     “He wanted to know if you wished to trade places with him for today.”

     “What’s that supposed to mean?” you made sure the tie was semi-loose--as he prefers--and tucked it beneath his vest.

     “That he would accompany me on the job and you would work with the women--taking Dante’s place."

     “Well,” you rested your hands on his shoulders and sighed quietly, “I guess that makes the most sense since we are so late today…”

     “Are you sure you are alright with it?” his eyes flicked to your hands then back to you, “I know you prefer to work with me,” he tossed his coat over on the bed and placed his hands on your waist.

     You laughed as you felt him pull you closer, “It’ll be fine, dear,” you leaned your head on his chest, “just promise me you’ll stay safe and keep in touch?”

     “Of course,” his voice was barely over a whisper as he kissed the top of your head, “Same goes for you.”

     “I will,” a grin spread across your face as you leaned back to look at him. Lovingly, Vergil pressed further into you and moved one of his hands to the side of your face, rubbing his thumb on your cheek. The two of you kissed gently. His other hand kneaded into your hips as you moved your hands down the front of his chest, grabbing his vest. 

     Gradually, you two split from the kiss. The blue devil stayed touching your forehead. You shivered slightly feeling his hot breath against your lips, wanting to taste more of him.

     “Perhaps we should save this for later?”

     “Just a little more… please?” you pouted slightly.

     The blue devil chuckled softly, “With a face like that,” he brushed his lips against yours, “how could I say no?”

     The two of you intertwined yourselves once more. He moved both his hands to your sides, slowly and strongly kneading down them. With kisses as sweet as molasses, he made sure to show you how much he relishes in your affections. One of your hands moved to his hair and slowly ran your fingers through slicked back pomaded locks. A small distant purring could be heard as he pulled you even tighter to his body. Vergil’s lips left yours and ran down your jawline and neck.

     “I love you,” you murmured, “so very much…”

     He removed his lips from your skin and looked you in the eyes; his way of expressing the same affection. Despite his silence, you knew he felt the same. 

     A ghost of a smile hinted at Vergil's face as he reluctantly let go of your body, returning to his regular volume, “We should get going; otherwise I may change my mind about saving things for later.”

     Your face turned a slight red at the flat-out way Vergil said that he wanted you. The blue devil had walked over to the bed and slid on his coat. He then grabbed Yamato from its resting place next to the bed and your phone.

     With your phone outstretched in his hand, he raised a brow at your expression, “Ready?”

     You shook the ever-encroaching ideas from your head as you meekly grabbed your phone, “Yeah.”

     “Good,” his hand was still outstretched, “Shall we?”

     A large smile decorated your face as you grabbed his hand, “Lead the way, dear.”

==

     The instant you left Nico’s van after work, you went inside to bathe. It had been another rainy day and you were not only coated in demon blood but also mud--lots of mud. You pulled off Beowulf before entering your shared home and set them on the rubber mat near the door; leaving them to clean later. 

     Slowly, you undressed as you made your way to the bathroom when you heard something odd.

     “--to do,” it was Vergil. You peered through the door of the bedroom. He was sitting on the edge of the bed facing away from you and was talking to himself, “Perhaps it would be best--” he stopped and turned his head slightly to the right. 

     You bit your lip and knocked gently, “Hey, sorry to intrude… Didn’t know you were home.”

     Vergil pushed up on his knees, standing to turn and face you, “Do not apologize, I wasn’t doing anything important…” he looked worn out.

     The door creaked as you fully opened it and stepped into the room, halfway undressed, “You look tired, babe.”

     The blue devil shook his head, “Dealing with my brother is exhausting.”

     “Well, then after I shower,” you set Revenant down on the dresser, “maybe we should take a nap together?” 

     “I-” Vergil’s expression hardened, “I don’t know if that is a good idea.”

     Your lips parted slightly as you looked with a soft crease of your brow, “I know it’s been rough but… you need some sleep, Vergil…”

     He looked as if he were going to say something, but moved his gaze to the floor and nodded in agreement. 

     “You don’t have to wait for me,” you moved back towards the door, “I’ll join you when I get back, okay?”

     The eldest twin nodded as he watched you leave the room.

     He had already removed most of his clothing, only having his pants and his, untucked, dress shirt on. Slowly, Vergil stood and went to get a more casual shirt; removing the rest of his work clothes. 

     Now dressed in a loose-fitting black tank top and navy boxer briefs, he moved back to the bed. Apprehensive didn’t even describe how he felt right now; no, the eldest son of Sparda was petrified over the thought of sleep. However, you were right, he was beyond beat and wanted nothing more than to rest. With a heavy sigh, he climbed into the bed and closed his eyes, praying for just a moment of pleasant sleep.

     You came back into the room about an hour later. With a warm smirk, you tip-toed around the room to avoid waking the sleeping devil. Once you re-dressed yourself, you turned back to look at Vergil when you noticed something was wrong. 

     His face was contorted into a rather violent grimace and, as per the night before, was partially triggered. Vergil was also breathing heavily and growling in his sleep. In his arms, he had taken one of the pillows--and some of the duvet--into a death grip, ripping them.

     Biting your lip in thought you sighed, “Shit…” although you knew that this could only end badly, you decided to wake him up from his nightmare.

     Cautiously, you moved to the edge of the bed and placed a hand on his shoulder, “Vergil..?”

     Nothing.

     Your gut twisted with fear as you shook him harder, “Vergil?”

     Still nothing.

     With a heavy sigh, you shook him harder, “Wake up…”

     Instantly, you were pinned to the floor by a set of charcoal-black scaled hands around your throat. You had never been scared of Vergil before but tonight? You were terrified. His face was somewhere between emotionless and furious. A loud rumbling growl emanated from the back of his throat as he continued to squeeze ever-tighter.

     “Verg-” your voice sputtered as you grabbed his arms, gasping for air. 

     Blood had begun to trickle down your palms as you accidentally sliced them on his forearm blades in your panic. Becoming steadily aware of your need for air, you grabbed at his face and neck; anything to get him off of you. 

     Tears sprung from your eyes as you felt his claws pierce the sides of your neck as his grip tightened even further. You knew that if he pressed down his thumbs, Vergil would stab right into your windpipe and kill you. 

     Lightheadedness began to sink in as you croaked out another beseeching plea to your lover, “Vergil--!”

     With nothing left to do, you clawed harder against him and roughly cut into his cheek with your nails. This seemingly pulled him from his delusion as his grip loosened.

     A new look replaced the hardened glare from before, a look of complete and utter horror. 

     Vergil’s voice trembled as he realized what was going on, “What--?”

     You took a loud deep breath and pulled his arms away from you and spoke as best you could with the growing pain in your throat, “Move,” you pushed against his body and did your best to speak normally, “please.”

     Without hesitation, Vergil removed himself completely and stood staring down at you. He looked at his, still-triggered, hands and saw your blood dripping from his claws. The blue devil’s blood ran cold. 

     “Vergil-” you groaned as you sat upwards, watching him bolt out of the room, “Wait-” with a strained grunt, you gradually stood upright and did your best to stabilize your wobbly legs.

     The blue devil slammed the bathroom door close, quickly locking it behind him. His hands had de-triggered and shook violently as he tried to wash the blood from his skin. He had turned the faucet as hot as possible and had begun to inadvertently scorch his skin. While he was brutalizing his own hands, he felt something drip down his jawline and to the tip of his chin. Vergil looked at himself in the fogged-up glass in front of him.

     Upon each side of his face and neck were dark smears of your blood from you pushing him away. Three large scratches decorated one of his cheeks and were slowly bleeding; now dripping off of his chin and to the sink below. Vergil took one of his hands and slowly ghosted over the markings on his face. A deep all-encompassing pit formed in his gut as he replayed the nightmare from just the night prior. The feeling of you desperately tearing at Nelo’s face, trying to escape him.  

     A tremble found its way to Vergil’s lips and body. Pressing as hard as he could, the eldest twin began to desperately scrub his blood-stained face with the sink's boiling water; grimacing from the feeling of peeling the top layers off of his flesh. You were the only person in the world he wouldn’t dare fight, wouldn’t dare harm; yet, only mere moments ago, he had his hands around your neck. A wicked thought echoed in his mind, how it would have only taken just a few more seconds or just a little more pressure for him to have killed the only person he has ever loved. Vergil bared his teeth as he let out a muffled whimper, tears forming at the edges of his eyes.

     The knob of the door jiggled, “Vergil?” the Dark Slayer flinched at the sound of your voice, even though it was soft and calm, “Vergil, are you okay?”

     He couldn’t come up with what to say in response, only whimpering again with a sad twitch of his lip. 

     Using an even softer tone, you set your head on the door, “Vergil… Let me in, please?”

     Despite his effort to come up with something, all he could muster was a loud voice crack as gripped the countertop.

     “Vergil,” you sighed quietly, “I want to see you. Please open the door,” an overwhelming amount of fear had consumed your mind; not for yourself, but over how Vergil might punish himself over this, “Please, Vergil…”

     “I-” he took a harsh breath trying to calm himself--and failing miserably, “What if I--” a crack began to form in the laminate countertop as his raw skinned fingers gripped harder and harder in growing frustration.

     “You won't; I promise.”

     After what seemed like an eternity, Vergil shut off the faucet and unlocked the door. You opened the door slowly and felt your heart sink at seeing your blue devil. 

     At the furthest point from the door, he was sitting on the floor, trembling heavily. Scalding red marks adorned his pale skin where he had been scrubbing and his fingers were no better. 

     “Vergil…” you approached him and saw his body stiffen, “Can I sit next to you?” 

     All he gave you was a small nod. Slowly, you moved next to him and sat beside him.

     Neither of you spoke for nearly a half hour. At one point, you managed to get a hold of one of his hands and intertwined your fingers; thumbing over the fading red marks. Internally, you were fighting the urge to hold him as close and as tight to you as possible.

     Vergil’s voice was nearly silent when he finally spoke, “I’m sorry.”

     “It’s okay--”

     “No,” he pulled his hand from yours and turned to stare at you, “No, it’s not okay,” with each word he got louder and held more frustration, “I could have--” he clenched his jaw as he scrunched his face, holding back his overwhelming storm of emotions, “I could have killed you!”

     “Vergil…” you decided to follow his idea and pivoted to face him fully, “I face death every day with work so it--”

     The blue devil snarled loudly, “I am not some mindless fucking demon,” he gripped his face with his hands, “I should be able to control myself!” tears began to slide down his face as he grimaced intensely, bearing his teeth in frustration.

     You were taken aback, you have never heard Vergil swear before, let alone sound so distraught, “I--” your lips pursed as you carefully chose your words, “I didn’t mean it like that, Vergil,” you gently set a hand on his knee, “I just meant that I’m used to that kind of thing, as morbid as that sounds.”

     A tremble reappeared through his lips, “You shouldn’t have to deal with that from me; it goes against everything I…” his mouth opened as if he were going to continue but no words came out.

     You were trying your hardest to stay calm despite wanting to join his crying upon seeing him this way. Tenderly, you thumbed over his leg, “When we got married,” you made sure to keep your voice slow and soft, “I signed up for whatever hardships may happen, to or from either of us--that we would figure things out together,” you noticed that Vergil’s stare had finally reconnected to yours, “no matter what the what happens."

     Vergil pursed his lips before taking a slow deep breath through his nose. His brow furrowed as he closed his eyes, slowly stopping his weeping, and removed his hands from his face. 

     A part of Vergil wanted to argue with you; to tell you that you're insane, delusional, that you shouldn't bear the punishment of his inner demons. The feeling of you grabbing his hands and holding them pulled him from his bitter thoughts. 

     Bringing one of his hands up to your lips, you kissed his knuckles, whispering against them, “I love you,” you brought the other hand up and repeated your action, “more than anything in the world, Vergil.”

     His grip tightened on your hands, “You are a fool," Vergil did his best to sound normal but only managed to give a small whispering whimper of a response. 

     “If loving you is foolish then I will happily play the court jester, my love,” a small smile tugged at your lips, hoping to make him feel a little better.

     After a brief moment of silence, Vergil released your hands and scooched closer to you, “May I see…” he meekly gestured at your neck.

     You nodded slightly and exposed your neck to the blue devil. The skin of your neck had already begun to darken and had small red petechiae marks. It was easy to tell that Vergil had used his hands on you because of the long slender lines of bruising; which ended in much darker spots where he had been pressing the hardest (except his thumbs). At the end of each dark spot were small needle-like marks that had dried blood on and around them. 

     Although you tried your best, you flinched at the feeling of his fingers ghosting your neckline. Vergil’s expression became increasingly distressed the longer he looked at you. Seeing this, you grabbed his other hand and held it tightly; hoping to provide some solace to him. 

     “It’s alright, Vergil, it’ll heal,” you whispered as he pulled his hand back from your neck.

     A small tremble found its way to his lips as he whispered back, “I am sorry.”

     “You do not have to apologize,” you grabbed his other hand and held it, “It is not your fault.”

     He paused for a moment before speaking, “We,” his voice cracked as he avoided your eyes, “We should get you cleaned up.”

     With a comforting grin and soft voice you thumbed over his fingers, “You sure you are okay to do that?”

     Vergil nodded, “I’ll be okay,” he pulled one of your hands to his lips and kissed it very gently.

==

     It wasn’t long before morning rolled around. Reluctantly, you had agreed to let Vergil stay in the living room for the night and you sleep in the bedroom, alone. 

     You woke up freezing as you had grown accustomed to the broiling body heat of your lover. With a loud groaning yawn, you swung your legs over the edge of the bed. As you walked to the bathroom, you felt a sudden sharp headache form. 

     Upon reaching the desired location, you noticed that the laminate countertop was cracked badly by Vergil gripping it.

     “Shit,” you grumbled.

     Your thoughts were cut off as you began feeling very off balance, leaning on the broken surface for support, before suddenly lurching forward into a kneel and throwing up in the toilet. During all your years of hunting, you knew what concussions felt like and this was definitely one of the worst ones you've ever had.

     “Fu-uck,” you sighed with a scowl slowly emerging on your features.

     Finishing up what you had originally gone in there to do--and making sure to brush and rinse the fuck out of your mouth--you left the room with a few painkillers in hand.

     The house was uncharacteristically silent as you wobbly meandered your way to the kitchen. Once at the sink, you poured yourself a glass of water and took the pills. With your hands resting on the edge of the sink, you slowly drank the rest of the water; doing your best to stay upright. The lukewarm water only helped to highlight the growing pain in your throat. 

     “Are you alright?” a voice called from your right.

     “Gah--!” you jumped slightly and dropped the cup in the sink--which was thankfully plastic. Then turned to see that it was Vergil, “You scared me, Vergil--" you took a deep breath trying to calm your heart, "I am fine, just a little sore is all.”

     His face softened as he cautiously pulled you into a close hug, “I’m sorry--is there anything I can do to help?”

     “This is exactly what I needed,” you leaned further into him and heard him purring quietly, “How are you doing, dear?”

     Vergil had a small smile as he whispered, “Much better now that I am with you.”

     The two of you held each other--swaying slightly--for what seemed like only mere seconds; when, in reality, it had been nearly a half hour. 

     Vergil nuzzled his cheek into the top of your head and spoke very quietly, “I hate to ruin the moment; however,” he pulled back from the hug enough to see you, “Dante requested us to come in early today.”

     You raised a brow, “Why?”

     “Morrison brought in a big contract; Dante requested that all of us be there for the briefing…” Vergil placed a hand on your face, not wanting to let you go.

     “Mmn, suppose I need to get ready,” you leaned into his palm and closed your eyes, and sighed, leaning out of the hug, “Best not to be late again."

==

      Both of you stood at the front door, debating on how you were getting to the DMC. Since you had a concussion, traveling with the Yamato was out of the question--last time you had traveled under the same circumstances, you almost threw up inside the portal and then proceeded to pass out once on the other side.

     “You sure you’re alright with this? I can just call an Uber or something,” you folded your arms and raised a brow.

      Vergil nodded, “I am fine with it; however if you aren’t then--”

     “No- no, it's fine just,” you tried not to laugh, “never thought 'flying via devil' would be something I’d do.”

     He grinned, “Perhaps we should travel this way more then.”

     “And here I thought you only used your trigger for emergencies,” you playfully teased.

     “This is an acceptable outlier,” Vergil laughed quietly. 

     With a bright flash of cornflower blue light, Vergil stood before you in his devil trigger.

     A warm smile adorned your face as you approached the black and blue devil, "I never knew the devil was so handsome,” your voice was laced with sarcasm as you placed a hand on his cheek.

     “Chivalry will get you nowhere, human, ” Vergil gently jested back, holding back a small laugh, “I will devour you whole.”

     “Oh no, whatever shall I do?” you dramatized your words; placing the back of your hand on your forehead and leaning back slightly, “Someone save me,” you did your best to stifle your laughter.

     He wrapped his wings around you and looked downwards at your expression, “No one will take you from me, pet. ”

     “I-” your lips were slightly agape as you tried to formulate a response--Vergil had never called you that before.

     However, he spoke before you could come up with anything, “What? Devil got your tongue?” he leaned in close, breath washing over your lips.

     “Mmn, no,” you moved your lips even closer to his, “I wish he did though.”

     Vergil cautiously connected with your lips. You moved your hands to the dark reddish-brown underside of the leathery appendages and slowly ran your fingers along the grooves. This elicited a moan from your blue devil and made him push himself against you harder. His fingers were trembling as he ghosted them along your sides, catching your attention.

     Breaking off the kiss but not moving away, you whispered against his lips, “You can touch me, Vergil. You won’t hurt me,” you used your hands to push his palms to your sides.

     His pupils dilated slightly, “Are you--”

     You cut him off with an aggressive kiss, placing your hand on his chest and kneading into him. Not wasting any more time, Vergil came back at you with an even more intense fervor. He pushed his tongue within the confines of your mouth. A muffled moan came from your lips as Vergil used his oral mastery inside your cavern; touching everything he could and playing with your tongue.

     After a minute or two, you both broke apart from the kiss. You smiled widely at him and placed a long sweet smooch on the tip of his nose; making him scrunch a bit in confusion. The two of you stood holding one another for a few minutes before you broke the serene silence. 

     “We should probably get going,” you sighed, “otherwise we won’t be making it to work…”

     The eldest son of Sparda sighed as well, “I suppose you are right…” he picked you up bridal style as you wrapped your arm around his shoulders, “Shall we?”

     You nodded as he opened the door. A sudden cold wind shot right through you as you leaned in closer to the hot-blooded devil. It was raining quite heavily so Vergil shifted you to face him completely; sheltering you the best he could from the elements, holding you underneath your thighs. With a small grunt from the devil, you two were off into the air.

==

     The flight wasn’t very long, you were at the DMC within a half hour; however, the rain had steadily gotten worse and made it a less-than-optimal flight. Vergil decided to land on the roof rather than risk being seen on the street and quickly ushered you indoors; fearing you would fall ill. 

     You took off your sopping wet coat and shook your head a bit, trying to dry off. Vergil had de-triggered and, because of how hot his devil trigger is, he was bone dry as he raised a brow at your “dog-like” actions.

     “What?” you looked up at him, giving him a curious smile.

     “Nothing,” he gave you a smirk in return.

     The two of you came downstairs, Vergil went first as you followed. Upon entering the foyer, you noticed that Vergil wasn’t kidding when Dante said “everyone”. Said red devil, Nero, Trish, Lady, and even Nico were inside the Devil May Cry; all chatting amongst themselves. 

     The younger twin noticed you both on the stairs and flashed a wide grin, “Glad you both could make it! Thought maybe you were going to sleep in-- Ah,” a small dagger from Vergil jabbed Dante in the arm.

     You pursed your lips and stifled your laughter, quietly speaking to Vergil, “Give me your coat? I’ll go hang it.”

     He stared at you from the corner of his eye for a moment before doing as you asked; delicately handing you the dark navy clothing. Vergil moved towards the bar counter to converse with Nero as everyone else resumed their conversations. With a small spring to your step, you waltzed over to the hooks near the front door and hung both your jackets. Pivoting on your heels, you went to move back into the room when you were stopped by Dante. 

     The red devil stood in front of you and used his forefinger and thumb to turn your head upwards; revealing the bruising on your neck. An aggressive furrow appeared on his brow as he frowned intensely.

     “Dante,” you whispered so that only he could hear you, “It’s not what you think--” his turquoise eyes locked with yours before he let go of your chin. It was too late.

     He turned around, “Alright,” Dante’s voice was between serious and pissed-off, a tone that was highly unlike the high-spirited brother, “What the fuck.”

     Vergil tilted his head ever-so-slightly and parted his lips in confusion, squinting at his twin.

     Dante made his way across the room, you followed him and tried to get him to stop, but were unable as he spoke even louder than before, “What is wrong with you?!”

     The blue devil’s face only became more confused as his eyes flicked between his brother and you.

     The red devil shoved Vergil, “Answer me, Vergil!”

     Fearing that the two would escalate into a larger fight, you grabbed one of Dante’s arms and tugged him away, straining your sore voice, “Dante you don’t understand-”

     Dante turned to you, “I think I know strangle marks when I see them,” his eyes went back to Vergil, “I'm tired of not saying anything.”

     With a slight sharpness, Vergil closed his eyes and scrunched his face, “What are you talking about?”

     “Don't play stupid,” Dante raised his voice even louder with a slight growl, “You think that I didn’t notice? Everyone here has noticed--fuck,” he flung his arm out, gesturing at nothing in particular, “even Morrison asked me about it!”

     “What does--”

     Dante's voice was unbearably loud as he yelled at his older brother, "You're fucking beating your husband, Vergil!” 

     The shop went silent. At this point, Nero had moved toward the couch the three ladies were sitting on, awaiting Vergil’s response.

     Your eyes widened at Dante and the absurd notion he had brought forth. Knowing Dante as you do, you had figured he was going to jab at Vergil for "being too rough in bed" or something stupid--not domestic abuse. With a slightly furrowed brow, you turned to the group next to you, then back to the brothers, and noticed Vergil’s pale stare. 

     Vergil huffed quietly through his nose as he looked downwards, pursing his lips in thought. After a moment, he looked back up at Dante with a cold glare, "Do you really think that lowly of me, Dante?"

     Dante cocked his head to the side, his voice still laced with a growl, "You know, after what you've done? Sorry, but I wouldn't put it past you."

     Vergil’s face was barren of any emotion--to everyone else besides you, that is. You’ve been in a relationship long enough with the stone-faced slayer that it was painfully obvious how much Dante’s accusation hurt him. Unable to think of what to say, he just stood there and glared at his twin. 

     "I ain't letting this go, Vergil. I'll stand here all fuckin--" a loud crack of thunder cut Dante off as the power went out in the shop.

     You weren't sure what happened, but the next thing you knew, you were on the floor and a sin-triggered Vergil was encompassing your surroundings. It was overwhelmingly hot as you felt his wings and arms tighten around you, pushing you further into his chest. The blue-grey devil shook wildly as a continuous thunderous growl emanated from deep within his chest. At any other point, it would have been a nice feeling; however, the loud sounds, sweltering heat, and the bright blue light from his chest made your headache turn from bad to agonizing. 

     Through the loud rumbling, you could vaguely make out Dante speaking; something about Vergil overreacting. Then you felt Vergil shift slightly and heard a loud yelp from the younger twin. There was a loud shuffling of hasty movement from the couch beside the two of you which made Vergil snarl even louder. 

     Lady could be heard telling Dante to “back off” of (presumably) Vergil. You then a loud creak of the garage door being opened and more shuffling feet. The last thing you heard from the rest of the crew was Nero saying something unintelligible and shutting the door. Leaving Vergil and you alone in the foyer. 

     This was the first time Vergil had done something like this and you were unsure how to calm him down; so you just slowly wriggled your hand free and kneaded into the bright blue lines of your lover’s chest, “Hey,” you whispered in hopes of catching his attention, “It’s alright, Vergil.”

     His growling quieted a bit, however, his grip tightened into an almost painfully tight vice.

     A small grunting groan left your lips as you spoke again, “Vergil, we are okay. I’m okay,” you heard his growling subside further, “It’s okay, darling. We are safe, inside the Devil May Cry,” you leaned your head into his chest and kneaded harder against him, “It was just thunder. It’s okay--we are okay.”

     You continued to intermittently tell the blue devil various forms of grounding statements as he slowly calmed down; loosening his grip and quieting his thundering growl. Although he doesn’t have to breathe when in this form, you heard soft whistling as he took small short breaths in through his sharpened teeth. His shaking had subsided as well; only moving with the reverberations of his small breaths. 

     A grin tugged at your lips as you heard a small distant start of a purr from your kneading, “It’s alright, my love. Nothing is going to harm us…”

     Finally, he pulled back from your body. He placed his palms flat on the floor next to you and kept his wings around you, just much looser now. His pupil-less luminescent eyes just stared at you, leaving you to assume he was looking over your body for any sign of injury. 

     Very carefully, you moved your hands to the sides of his face and gently thumbed over the leathery denim-colored skin, “Hey…”

     He leaned forward placing his forehead against yours and closed his eyes, showing you that he was coming back around. You placed a long tender kiss against his fangs and heard him purr louder. 

     As quiet as he could manage with his distorted voice, Vergil whispered to you, “Are you okay?”

     “I’m fine,” you smiled and gently jested, “head’s killin’ me though and the floors kinda cold” you laughed and moved your hands to the gap of skin between his shoulder pauldrons and neck, kneading with your fingers, “Are you alright, Vergil?”

     Vergil nodded slightly, “Yes,” feeling the soft touch of your fingers against him, he allowed himself to de-trigger; slowly switching to his regular trigger and then his human form. All the while, you continued to massage his shoulders and tried your best to ignore the throbbing in your skull; wanting nothing more than to rip your head off. 

     The blue devil’s breath was ragged and he avoided looking you in the eyes. When he went to sit upwards, you grabbed his forearms, gaining his attention, “Vergil,” your voice was barely audible.

     After waiting a moment, Vergil cocked his head slightly, “What is it?”

     “Could,” you pursed your lips with embarrassment, “Could you help me up?”

     Vergil nodded, “Of course.”

     The eldest twin stood up and then leaned forwards to help you upright. You stumbled into him as you felt nauseously lightheaded.

     Noticing this, Vergil held one of your arms, “Steady…”

     You used your other hand to grab his shoulder and did your best to adjust to standing. He looked over to the couch and then back to you; before slowly picking you up and setting you on the pleather surface. Not wanting him to leave you, you grabbed his tie and tugged it slightly. 

     “I will be right back,” he grabbed the hand from the tan fabric and kissed it gently; which surprised you because of his distaste for out-of-house affections. 

     It was then that you noticed how quiet the shop was and how dark it was; the power had gone out completely. A loud creak from the garage door made you scrunch your face in slight pain. Vergil stood in the doorway and said nothing before moving back to stand near Dante’s desk. 

     You noticed a large cut through Dante’s shirt and realized that Vergil had used his tail to defend you from the red twin. Thankfully, Dante could heal quickly otherwise it might have been a trip to the ER from how large the incision seemed to be.

     “So care to explain what the fuck that was?” Dante’s voice was loud, as normal; however, it felt like he was shouting right beside you.

     Vergil noticed your discomfort and addressed his brother, “Quiet, you are being much too loud,” he flicked his gaze to you, “and no; I don’t.”

     The younger twin’s face scrunched in irritation. Before he could speak, Lady cut him off by roughly slamming her hand atop his shoulder, “Maybe the two of you should go home for the day? Dante can text you the information later on.”

     “Are you sure?” Vergil raised a brow at the sudden personable suggestion, “Or would Dante rather yell more absurd accusations at me?”

     The red devil growled, forgetting to keep quiet, “You son of--”

     “Watch your tongue. Mother is right here,” he flicked his eyes to the photo on Dante’s desk.

     “I fuckin--”

     You scrunched your face harshly and hoarsely snapped, “Oh my g-god,” you groaned, “Vergil isn’t beating me and I have a fuckin major headache. I thank you for your concern Dante, but it is misplaced… so can you please just drop it?”

     The younger twin shook his head, “You expect me to--”

     “It is a result of my night terrors and we are dealing with it ourselves,” Vergil said curtly, despite not wanting to talk about it. Then turned to address Lady, “I think we will take you up on that suggestion and leave,” the blue devil moved to grab your coats from the wall “Keep us informed..?"

     No one responded as Vergil handed you your coat and you put it on as best you could while sitting. You wobbled a bit as you went to stand, but, a set of strong arms picked you up. A small blush found its way to your face as you realized Vergil was carrying you from underneath your thighs in front of everyone else.

     Nero was the only one to address either of you as you headed up to the stairs, “Fly safe; winds pretty bad out there.”

     Vergil nodded in thanks to his son as the two of you disappeared from view, heading to the roof. You nestled your face into the crook of Vergil’s neck, taking a deep calming breath. It didn’t take long for you to sleep--or rather pass out--in the blue devil’s arms and it stayed that way till you got home. 

==

     When you opened your eyes next, you were laying underneath the duvet of your shared bed. Slowly blinking awake, you mumbled, “Vergil?” and felt around to see if he was nearby. Nothing.

     A hissing groan left your lips as you sat up and looked at the alarm clock. It had been several hours since you left the shop. You stretched upwards and immediately regretted it.

     “Fuck,” you groaned as you grabbed your head with one hand, the headache from earlier surged back into existence. 

     In hopes to remedy this, you decided to try taking a hot bath. The moment you stood up, however, you fell forwards and just barely caught yourself with your forearms. A small laugh of disbelief escaped through your painful groan, it was really just not your day. 

     The sound of a familiar sharp voice calling your name pulled you from your thoughts. You slowly moved your head upwards and saw Vergil standing above you with a wide-eyed confused stare. He was wearing a space-blue sleeveless turtleneck with black yoga pants.

     Admittedly, you weren’t exactly in a normal headspace when you cooed at the blue devil, “Ooh! You’re even prettier at this angle, Vergil.”

     The blue devil crouched in front of you and rested his forearms on his legs, “I leave you for five minutes and you end up on the floor?”

     With parted lips and raised brows, you eyed him up and down, “Was my plan all along since, from here, I get a really good view of your--”

     Vergil put up a hand telling you to stop, pinching the bridge of his nose with a sigh, “Would you like help up?”

     “Nah,” you jested and rolled over to face the ceiling, “I like being stuck on the floor,” a sly smirk tugged at your lips as you tilted your head back, “especially when we’re--”

     “Enough,” Vergil sighed and moved to help you upright into a soft embrace. 

     You sighed and leaned into him, “You know I love you, right Vergil?”

     “Perhaps I should take you to the hospital, you are acting in a very concerning manner…” 

     “No way in hell am I going to the doctor,” you pulled back and had a small pout on your lips, “I just need you beside me and I feel much better…”

     “That seems rather counter-intuitive, don’t you think?” his voice had an outlying tinge of sadness as he looked down at you. 

     “Not in the slightest. In fact,” you moved your hands to his chest, “I already am starting to feel better in your arms.”

     He avoided your eyes and had a small sad frown. A deep sharp pang of sadness stabbed at your heart at seeing him look so dejected. 

     You used a hand to cup the cheek facing away from you and gently turned him back to face you, “Vergil, care to join me for a bath?” you knew that he was still beating himself up over things and wanted to distract him for a while.

     A soft huffed laugh came from his nose as he closed his eyes in slight confusion, “What..?”

     “Come on, you need a break… to relax,” you cocked your head to the side, “Please?” you gave him the best puppy dog eyes you could muster.

     Which seemed to do the trick as he sighed with a smirk “If that is what you want then I will accompany you.”

     You pulled his face down to yours and gave him a small peck on the cheek, “Thank you, Vergil.”

     Although the blue devil was hesitant to let you go, you eventually wander off with a very wobbly saunter. Slowly, you moved to the dresser and began to grab some clothing when you heard Vergil murmur, “I’ll go draw it up and I’ll be back for you; please try and stay upright,” then he left the room.

     Your headache had subsided for the most part and was just a dull throbbing now. However, you still wanted to lay with him for a while, knowing that he needed it as much as you did. A warm smile crept its way to your face as you moved toward the edge of the bed to sit until he came back. You decided to lean over to the side table and grab your phone, checking it for any messages. Surprisingly, Dante and Nero had texted you.

     The younger twin had sent a rather all-over-the-place paragraph explaining that he was sorry for the outburst in the shop and that he was just worried that something was going on. You sent Dante a text explaining that it was nice of him to worry but that, before he goes off, he needs to listen better.

     Nero was making sure that both of you were alright and that if either of you needed anything to let him know. 

     Before you were able to respond, Vergil walked back into the room, “Are you ready?” his voice was very quiet and meek; catching you off guard.

     “Yeah just gimme one second, just gotta send this…” Vergil looked at you with a slightly curious head tilt, you smiled at him, “Nero was just making sure everything was okay.”

     “I see,” Vergil gave a weak grin.

     “Nero’s worried about you,” you set the phone back down on the table and grabbed one of Vergil’s hands, “He’s a good kid, ya know? You’re one lucky dad.”

      With a small shake of his head, Vergil pulled you off the bed, “Need I remind you that he is technically your son, too?”

     You laughed and pursed your lips, “Sometimes I forget that part if I’m honest,” the two of you slowly made your way to the bathroom, “Especially since we are like the same age--you cougar,” with a playful wink you let go of Vergil’s hand to get undressed.

     Vergil’s face scrunched, “You make it sound as if I am too old for you.”

     Playfully, you shoved his shoulder, “Bah- you don’t look a day over 30; besides,” you paused a moment as you watched Vergil remove his shirt, “I like older men~”

     “Those two statements contradict each other,” he noticed your gaze as he slid his pants off, “However, I appreciate the sentiment.”

     Once you both were fully stripped, Vergil helped you into the tub; fearing you would fall, “Hey, Vergil..?” he looked at you, “Can you sit in, like,” with pursed lips, you tried to figure out how to explain what you wanted, “in my lap? Like with your back to me?”

     “I-” he raised a brow and turned his lips to a thin line, “May I ask why?”

     A smile ghosted your face as you cooed, “I want to be able to play with your hair.”

     The blue devil was a little apprehensive at allowing such an action, but he did as you requested; positioning himself in front of you. His shoulders tensed up at the sudden feeling of vulnerability and being so exposed to you--even if the two of you have been together for a long time now. Noticing this, you gently wrapped your arms around his middle and leaned him back into you while you leaned back yourself; ending up in a semi-lying position. 

     Tenderly, you ran your fingers through his neatly slicked back locks, “You alright, Vergil?”

     With a small stuttering inhale, Vergil rested further against you, “Yes…”

     A faint purring came from the blue devil as he relaxed against your touch. The two of you just sat in the warm soapy water for nearly fifteen minutes, laying against each other. 

     Vergil shifted a bit to lay the side of his head on your chest before meekly whispering, “I love you,” typically, this would have made you ecstatic hearing him say such a thing; but there was an underlying sullen tone to the phrase. 

     You moved one of your hands to grab his while keeping up your ministrations through his hair, “I love you too, Vergil--more than anything.”

     “May I ask you something? And I want you to answer me honestly,” his eyes were glued to your fingers that were intertwined with his own.

     “Sure,” you removed your fingers from his hair and set that hand on his shoulder.

     “Are,” with each word his voice became quieter, “Are you afraid of me?”

     “No,” you answered without skipping a beat, “I will never be afraid of you, no matter what...”

     Another bout of silence fell as you felt him lean harder into you while taking slow deep breaths.

     “May--,” the Dark Slayer closed his eyes and spoke in a hushed voice, “May I confide in you for a moment?”

     “Of course, my love,” you leaned and kissed the top of his head attempting to reassure the man. 

     He sighed and turned further into your chest, hiding his face, “N-Nothing scares me more than causing you pain,” you felt his brow furrow, “These past few months, have been spurred on by a combination of that fear and,” he had a lump begin to form in his throat, “and my time spent under Mundus’s…” he swallowed audibly in an attempt to deter his emotions.

     You squeezed his hand tightly and you moved your other hand back to his hair, hoping to console him a bit. 

     Which worked, he took a shuddering breath and continued, “In my dreams--” he pursed his lips and unintentionally pushed himself as hard as he could into you, “I’m always back as- and I can’t,” he paused once more, realizing that this is much harder than he had anticipated, “control myself and I-I don’t know that it’s-- until it’s too late,” his voice cracked into silence as he gripped your hand in a vice hold. 

     That was enough for you to put together what he meant as your eyes widened. You whispered and moved your hand from his hair to his shoulder, holding him close, “Vergil…” you didn’t know what to do--how to help him.

     All you could think to do was to hold him close and comfort him as he cried into your chest. You knew that he had nightmares about his time of being enslaved to Mundus and the other atrocities that have happened to the poor blue devil. Throughout your time together, Vergil had told you about that time and has even sought comfort in you when he was upset. 

     A meek whisper pulled you from your thoughts, “I’m sorry,” he sighed heavily, “I know this is substandard behavior.”

     “Vergil,” you kneaded his bicep, “This is normal behavior, you don’t have to be strong all the time,” placing a soft kiss on the top of his head, you murmured, “You’re human--you have emotions; both good and bad.”

     “I feel as if I have disappointed you,” despite his sad tone, a light purring could be heard from him--indicating he was at least comfortable.

     “You could never disappoint me, Vergil--especially over something like this. Things take time to heal and even then they still leave scars; you aren’t to blame for what has happened, my love.”

     “I do not understand how after what I have done in my lifetime,” his voice cracked with a tinge of frustration as he sat upright. His front side was facing out of the tub toward the innards of the room,  leaving you to see his side profile, “Why you still believe me to be a good person…”

     “Vergil,” you moved to sit up as well, no longer resting your back on the tub, “I don’t believe that you are a good person; I know you are a good person,” you watched his adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed his emotions again, “I wouldn’t have married you if I didn’t.”

     A thin pained grin adorned his features as he turned his face from you; hiding the fact he had begun to cry once more.

     “People do bad things,” you shrugged your shoulders a bit in thought, “that doesn’t make them a bad person. Traumatic experiences make people do things that otherwise might not have.” you paused and thought for a moment, “Vergil, you have been punished ten-fold by everyone your entire life, even for things that you had no control over. Which is total shit. You deserve to be treated well and like a living breathing person. I know you are a good person because you have shown me that many times over; you are worthy of love, Vergil.”

     Vergil let out a loud shuttering exhale and turned his head to look at you with pursed lips. He wanted to say something, anything, but all he could muster was a small whimper of acknowledgment. 

     Moving to your knees, you spoke softly, “Is there anything that I can do to help you with these nightmares?”

     “I,” after a small pause in thought, he turned to come face to face with you and grabbed your hands in his, “Could you promise me something?”

     “Anything.”

     “If we get into any altercations with,” he avoided your eyes with an increasing embarrassment eating the edges of his mind, “Angelo-type demons, please, leave them to me; please..?”

     Your brow twitched in confusion as you cocked your head to the side; that’s when things clicked and you remembered what happened shortly before these terrors began, “Sure, if that is what brings you solace then I will,” you smiled, trying to make him feel a little better.

     “Thank you,” his eyes re-connected with yours and he gave a small smirk.

     The two of you sat for a brief moment before you pursed your lips and smiled semi-awkwardly, “I hate to ruin the moment, but could we get out of the water? I’m kinda cold…”

     Vergil straightened his posture and nodded, “Of course, wanderer,” he moved to get out of the water and held his hands out for yours.

     You grabbed them and wobbly got up, “Oh? I haven’t heard you use that in a long time.”

     A small huffed laugh came from the blue devil as he handed you a towel, “It was the first nickname I gave you. I thought it appropriate for the moment…”

     “It was wasn’t it?” you shook your head, “That feels like a lifetime ago…”

     “In a sense, it was quite literally,” he leaned over and drained the tub.

     With a small laugh and nod, you finished drying off. While the two of you got dressed, you couldn’t help but smile at the sight of your lover. 

     “Is something wrong?” Vergil noticed your stare.

     Pursing your lips you thought for a moment and decided to indulge in his love for Blake’s poems, “ 'Joy & Woe are woven fine,/A Clothing for the Soul divine;/Under every grief & pine,/Runs a joy with silken twine.' "

     An amused look adorned his face as he stood with parted lips thinking for a moment, “Auguries of Innocence?” the Dark Slayer cupped the side of your face, “We never did finish that poem; you’d always fall asleep.”

     “Not my fault you have such a soothing voice,” you placed your hands on his chest and leaned into his palm, “Want to try again?”

     He leaned against your forehead, “If it is alright with you, I think I’d rather sleep…”

     “Only if you stay beside me,” you looked into his icy eyes; enamored with the thousands of different blue-grey hues, “please..?”

     “Are you sure-- Mnm,” he was cut off by a sudden connection of your lips.

     It was a slow and passionate kiss as you poured all the love you could into that one moment. Once satisfied, you left the kiss and whispered against his lips, “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Vergil.”

     Without another word, he picked you up and took you into the bedroom. Carefully, he set you down and crawled into bed with you. A small lingering sense of dread crept in from the edges of his mind; however, those were pushed away when you laid atop his chest. You curled into him and he tangled his limbs with yours.

     As the two of you drifted off to sleep, Vergil had a very small content grin as he allowed himself to sleep; knowing that, at least for tonight, his terrors will be kept at bay. 

==

Ending Notes: Sorry that was lowkey all over the place, I just went with the flow of my brain. It kind of just ended up being a long fluff fic.  Also to add some explanation to Vergil’s bit where he swore and freaked out: I figure that when Vergil lost his autonomy for so long as Nelo Angelo, he ended up becoming hyper-aware of what he is doing at all times. So when he does something that he either can’t remember doing or didn’t want to do that it would send him into a panic; fearing that he is going to lose his freedom again. 🛡️⚔️🛡️ Poem quoted:      Auguries of Innocence: William Blake

==

Want to see more like this? Want to read my work quicker and several stories that are not on Tumblr? Check this out on my AO3 (Linked here)

MASTER LIST FOR TUMBLR

#Devil may cry 5 #devil may cry 3 #dmc #vergil devil may cry #vergil #dante #dante devil may cry #vergil x reader #vergil x male reader #male reader #fan fiction #reposted from AO3 #angst #comfort #fluff #I swear Vergil is my comfort character #I just like making him sad #idk why #sad vergil #Nelo angelo #vergil has nightmares #reader is married to vergil

[kxowledge]

Hi, I have a question on your PhD interviews. I've applied to 2 PhDs in Norway and should hear back this month, so I was wondering how the interviews were structured and how long they were? Also how many people were present for each? Thanks and congrats again on getting the position!!

ooh where did you apply? if you don't mind sharing, feel free to send me a private message - I know some people at a couple of other unis and perhaps I can give you more specific info. thank you so much my dear!! I’ll describe below how it was for me, but it might change uni from uni.

The whole process happens at the department level. The first interview was online with the PhD program coordinator (who does the recruiting for all of the department) and my potential supervisor. My proposal was very much tailored towards this one professor and her expertise, but if there is more than one person who would be interested in supervising you, you’d have both participating in the interviews. Fit with the current professors’ expertise is one of the things they explicitly state as extremely important. I found the interview very relaxed – after a brief introduction from them, I talked about myself (the usual storyline of why you’re applying to a PhD). The rest of the questions were about previous experiences doing research, specifically about my bachelor thesis and my ongoing master thesis (but no questions on previous work experience, even though I have been a RA twice and a TA once; though I had rec letters from the people I worked with in those occasions and they may have spoken to them beforehand). Then, the rest of the questions were related to my research proposal (why is this important, more on the research setting I suggested) and which methodologies I’m familiar with. I was expecting way harder questions - I didn’t even get asked why this university specifically and I wish I had shoehorned that in my first answer tbh. Overall, it felt very chill. However! Getting the interview is the most important step! They only interviewed 15 out of around 300 applicants.

It’s actually possible that they will extend an offer already, without a second interview. The latter is more of a step for those that they need to be more sure about for whatever reason, but usually because they want to see that you understand well your intended methodology. The second interview for me consisted of two parts. For the first part, you’re asked to present a paper that they sent two to three days beforehand. This is (likely) something you haven’t seen before but that is (1) relevant to your proposal and (2) in your intended methodology. These are the two points that they really want to see in the interview, based on the feedback they’ve given me and what I know of my friends’ interviews. You’re given 20 minutes to present i.e. walk through how research was conducted, what the findings are, etc. You’re allowed (and expected) to have a PPT. I put a lot of emphasis on those two points during the presentation and I had two extra slides covering how it was relevant to my proposal, which I pulled up when I got asked about it. After your presentation there are 40 minutes of questions, which are on the paper, the methodology, your research, anything really (I got asked about supervising master students’ thesis). It can, however, last longer than 40 minutes. There are going to be 3 to 4 people in the room: your potential supervisor(s), someone expert in the specific methodology, and someone from admin/HR. They care about making the process fair and having different people involved to avoid favoritism, so there will always be at least 3 people in the room (even if, like in my case, my potential supervisor and the expert in the methodology coincide). The questions are very in-depth, so how difficult the interview will feel depends on how comfortable you are with the paper and the methodology. After this, you’re not done yet! For part two, you have three hours to answer to three questions in written form. These are written by your potential supervisor so they really can be anything, but they will be usually related to the paper and your research. There was some overlap with the questions after the presentation for me.

After all of this ordeal, it is not yet done. If they like you, you’ll get “nominated” (i.e. the email I’ve gotten), but this is not yet an offer! There is yet another committee who will decide who will get in and how many positions to fund. Specifically, the candidates are ranked beforehand and you can either have a “secure” spot or more of a “backup” spot. All of this is not transparent I know this from a friend-of-a-friend, but basically it can still happen that even if you got nominated, you don’t get the position. In some cases, the supervisor might help you find other sources of funding (e.g. an “industry” PhD), but that depends on the supervisor’s connections.

I will also say this: as I am not Norwegian, I found several things about the interview process fairly rude. I know the department and the people I’ll be working with and they’re all brilliant & everyone involved in the process has been very friendly when we actually met, but: they were in my opinion rude when it came to “scheduling” the interviews (i.e. you get told: the interview is at this time, hope it suits you); they’ve gotten my name wrong twice (… not my supervisor thankfully); they told me I would hear by the end of the week or at most by Wed the week after and then didn’t write me for a whole other week (whyyyy); they have also ghosted me once again after the email about the nomination when I asked a question. I would be a bit put off by this if I didn’t know the atmosphere that’s there already.

#replies #hope this helps though i don't know how much of it will apply to you

[copperbadge]

hey sam! i was just ruminating that it's a fantastic time for authors to do dvd commentaries, and other 'ask the author' memes. it's additional material and feedback all in one package! (after we explain what a dvd extra is)

I suppose I'm of two minds about it. My immediate thought was that authors have always done Q&As, but it's true that they used to be less accessible both to readers and to the authors if they weren't big names, because they required travel (and in the reader's case, knowing the author would be traveling, plus having to go out to wherever they were doing the reading). Authors still do book tours and signings for that kind of purpose, but being able to do that kind of thing online as well now makes it easier and cheaper. Although I wonder whether there's less sense of connection because it's not face-to-face. But yeah, I would imagine it's pretty great for gauging what the overall readership is interested in. Certainly in dialogue with readers when I put my books up for review, I always learn a lot.

The idea of a DVD commentary is kind of interesting because I was like "How would that work with a book, though?" and I guess you could annotate an ebook -- like, offer a version with little widgets where if you clicked them you'd get the author adding notes about the book. I've never been a fan of actual DVD commentaries -- I don't like filmed interviews because they take so fucking long to actually say anything, and with a DVD commentary you've now got the addition of "talking over the story". But I could see how if you loved a book you might like having a version where you've got extra notes.

I struggle with the idea of "additional material" somewhat. I suppose that's ironic given how much I discuss outside-of-book on this blog, but that's just....I don't know, it's answering questions, it's not like "building the canon outside of the canon", and if I think something is good enough, it always goes into the books. The whole "They speak English with a Welsh accent" thing was amusing, but then I was like "Yeah let's actually put that in the text, why should it live on Tumblr alone?"

There's so much media now where it feels like if you aren't spending every waking moment interacting with every aspect of it, you just don't get to...be a fan, in an active sense. There are podcasts I follow where if you want to do anything other than listen to the episodes, even if you just want to attend a live show or buy merchandise, you have to dedicate significant time weekly to following them on all the social media and actively read their Patreon. And I just can't. I really like that creators can put that kind of thing out there, I think overall that's to the good, but it feels like something I'm blocked from participating in.

So, I keep all my shit here. I've had it suggested that I'd benefit as a writer from having a newsletter, which I actually agree with, and it seems like it could be entertaining to do. But I get caught up in this dichotomy of "Well, won't people be mad that they have to go subscribe to this thing instead of just reading my tumblr?" and/or "Won't subscribers be aware they can just find all this on my tumblr?" and I get real in my head about it. Because I'd struggle with having to go two separate places for stuff like that.

Uh, to circle back to your actual ask, however, because all that was just like...IDK, weird anxiety digression, I do think it's a great era for extra-canonical material, and while it does mean creators have to be much better at boundary-setting than they used to be, I like that they can adjust their level of interaction as they see fit.

Oh and uh. It's felt awkward to actually talk about it, but if you guys do want more material I do have a sideblog, @shivadh, which is where I stash everything I want to make note of for the books -- research, imagery, stuff I've talked about here that hasn't got a place to go in googledocs yet, that kind of thing. It's not extra material per se, it's just me shoving shit into a filing cabinet, and I don't do image IDs like I do here because it's more for me, plus I do delete posts once I've made use of them. But folks are welcome to follow if they want to.

#writing #books #selfpublishing #indy publishing #rpfreiwaphase

[aguineapigcouldntdothis]

a general guide on how to research things online beyond just looking at a few tweets (this doesn't apply for every single thing you search but i hope it's helpful for anyone researching current events, history, science, or anything that's complex enough to warrant something more than a quick google search):

have inspiration for what you wanna research. doesnt matter where it came from it could be that random tweet you just saw! now, find a source that relates to what that inspiration said

find at least two more sources that are directly related to your first source. i like to use the "two is a coincidence, three is a pattern" rule.

examine the people who created your sources! who wrote them? are there any other prominent figures included? what are their credentials? what is their expertise? do they have enough experience in this topic to be discussing it? you can use these questions as a guideline but please please feel free to diverge. the main thing you wanna see is: is there anyone involved in this source who knows enough about this topic to be talking about it.

examine the places in which your sources are published! what are their biases? are those biases present in these sources? what type of information do they usually release? one question i like to ask is "how badly would they be fucked if they got a major fact wrong" this can range from a blogger who may get a few angry comments, to a writer of a huge news source who could be fired and not hired again for a similar position ever. this can help judge how important fact-accuracy is to that specific source.

☆ 3-4 are good steps to use google a lot, which you can honestly do in any of these steps but these particular ones lend themselves nicely to googling the fuck out of things.

5. analysis time! this is my favorite i love it but it can be a fucking pain especially when you're still figuring it out. basically what you want to know is what are these sources trying to do, what are they actually doing, and how do they tie together. sometimes this is really easy! sometimes all of your sources have the same overarching story, the same fact included, etc. however that's not always the case and sometimes you've gotta dig a little deeper to find those strong connections. and other times you'll have a source you thought was good but it just doesnt fit in, so it's time to scrap it and find a new one. this is your time to be super fucking nitpicky about details in the spirit of high school english classes.

6. now put all that together! you have your sources, you have overarching information you learnt, and possibly some specific information too! now you can share that if you wish or not share it.

"my guinea pig loving friend", you may be asking, "doesn't that mean I'll have less information to share"

abso-fucking-lutely it does, yet the information you do share will be a lot more carefully thought out and most likely better. every piece of information you share has the capacity to affect someone and being mindful about sharing proper info can reduce negative impacts. you will fuck up sometimes and that's super normal however you can avoid fuck ups by being careful about the information you believe and share.

i hope this helped someone! idk if it will this is just shit ive used and i think it works well. i might include an example in a reblog if i can find a topic to base it on sadly i am tired and that's not my problem rn

#information #information literacy

[author-a-holmes]

Obviously ignore this if you want but I saw you mention that you recently got published (congrats!!!) and I had a question. I'm still far out from that, but I know how to write and can research how to publish but I don't know how to market. Not only am I autistic and not charismatic, I want to solely use my pen name and distance my writing from my face because of my professional life. Do you know how to actually get people who might like your book to notice that it exists as an indie author with no previous following? Thank you if you have any advice!

Hello Moshke!

Thank you so much for the congratulations! It's taken longer than I expected but the realisation that I'm published is finally beginning to sink in! It's very surreal ^_^

I honestly don't know if I'm the right person to give advice on marketing as, at the moment, my book's been out just over a month and I feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark, but I wanted to give your ask due consideration and, despite my hesitation, I think I still have some tips that could hopefully help.

The reason I think I might have at least some relevant tidbits is that I'm also writing under a penname and most people don't seem to realise that.

Now, in my case, it's not about privacy it's just that don't like my given name enough to see it on book covers :D So I don't mind talking about it, but marketing your book under a penname isn't that much different to how you would market the book under your legal name.

Tip No. 1

Establish your pen name as a functional pseudonym now. Don't wait until you're ready to publish.

So, this stage was a little backwards for me. I come from the age of internet use where you did not give your real name online, under any circumstances, so I've always used various "online names".

By the time I decided that I was going to use "Arista Holmes" to publish under, anyone who knew me online already knew me as Ari. Even my best friend offline will sometimes call me Ari when we're chatting, so it had become as much an actual nickname as an online pseudonym.

But that's exactly what I'm getting at. I'm not pretending to be "Arista Holmes", I am Ari. A writer in her 30's based in the south east of England. The same way I'm Josie to my mum, or Jo-jo to my Godmother.

Tip No. 2

Don't think about it as marketing your book, but as creating an author "brand".

I'm using "Brand" here in the absence of a better term, because I absolutely hate thinking about this as a "brand", but what I mean is think of your Penname as something people will google search.

In fact, Google search your pen name.

As I mentioned, I'd been using "Arista Holmes" online for a while, and I had accounts all over the place that I didn't necessarily want coming up when people looked up my books.

(I will deny spending my youth on Neopets, it's just TOO embarrassing!) 

But jokes aside; Google your pen name. See what comes up. Scroll through all 20, 30, 50 pages of google. Some asshole looking for some embarrassing post from your teen years won't stop at page five, and neither should you.

Shut down any accounts you find, or if you want to keep them, change the username to something else. The only non-publishing related account linked to Arista Holmes now is my AO3. I figure it's still writing, so no harm in leaving that one up.

Tip No. 3

Set up social media accounts now; Be as consistent as possible across all platforms.

Now, and I want to put this in big bold letters:

Having accounts on all the socials does not mean you will be active on all of them.

Or use them at all, in fact.

Having accounts on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, Youtube, etc etc etc, just means that if, by some miracle, you make it big and draw in fans you'll also inevitably draw trolls and by making the account with your pen name; it stops them claiming that username and pretending to be you.

It's a form of pre-emptive protection.

On that note; Be consistent across your accounts. Use the same profile picture, use the same header or banner, use the same colour scheme, use the same "About Me/About Author" description, and (as much as possible) use the same username format.

That last one won't be possible on all platforms. Some of them don't like periods/full stops. Some don't like underscores, but try to be as consistent as possible.

For example my account on here is author.a.holmes, most other places I'm aristaholmes. I'd change it, but at this point, I don't want to break all my links.

Tip No. 4

Author Pictures Are Not Required.

I'm adding this point here because I mentioned profile pictures in the previous tip. Author Pictures Are Not Required.

Don't get me wrong, they're often highly encouraged, and I can't deny that they give a humanising effect to the author, but that doesn't mean you actually have to show your face.

I've chosen to put my face on my "About The Author" page in the back of my book, but that's a personal choice. You don't have to add one at all! It's only more recently that I've seen fiction author photos in the back of books.

Until about... 15 years ago? Ish? I wouldn't have expected to see an author photo unless the book was non-fiction.

If you want to add a picture of you, but don't feel comfortable or can't because of real world problems, consider an artist's caricature instead. Go one step further than a pen-name and give yourself a pen-picture! Jenna Moreci uses an artist's interpretation as her profile picture/logo, and Lemony Snicket only had pictures of the back of his head for ages.

If you do decide to commission an artist though, do explain to them that it will be included in your books, that you'll be selling, as they will probably want to add a commercial licence price to the artwork; But if you explain why you're having the caricature done I imagine most artists would be very reasonable about it.

***

That's all my tips for setting up and marketing yourself, as the author, under a pen name... but I can already hear the voices in my head muttering that I've not really touched on how to get people to find you once you've set up the pen name, and the socials, and your website etc.

And it's because I personally think that if you're writing under a pen name you need to establish it as an entity in its own right before beginning to try marketing it.

So, moving on…

Tip No. 5

Find your place on the great, wide, interwebs...

I mentioned I'd been online as Arista Holmes for about 8-10 years prior to deciding to publish under this name, but once I did decide to publish I went and made all my author socials (just like I mentioned in Tip No. 3)

That was in 2020 and it was part experimentation, and part letting people find me. I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep up with multiple social media's, and I also knew I didn't WANT to, so I made the socials and I started posting on each platform and figuring out which platforms I liked. Which ones were easy to use, and which ones got me the most engagement with other people.

For me, this turned out to be Tumblr and Instagram. Twitter and Facebook are like graveyards for me, and Tiktok is only a little better, but your mileage may vary.

I cross post consistently with Tumblr, Instagram, because those are the places I get the most engagement... but I also maintain a blog on my website and any big pieces of news (such as asking for ARC readers, or publishing my book) gets posted across ALL platforms because, well, I live in hope that one day my tiktok will go viral lol.

But honestly, the multiple socials literally eat up so much of the time I could spend writing; I highly recommend picking two, three at most, and focusing on them.

But what do you post? I can almost hear you yelling <3

Tip No. 6

How to market when you're shy/introverted/not-charismatic/or any other thing you feel is holding you back.

You're going to want to throw something at me but lean on your strengths. It sounds so simple, and I know it's not, I'm sorry, but here's what I mean by that.

When I was still experimenting with all the socials to find the ones I liked, I stumbled across an image. I want to say it was here on tumblr but, honestly, I don't remember and at the time I was neck deep in every marketing and promotional blog or article I could find trying to figure this shit out.

It was called "The Periodic Table of Content Marketing".

I don't know why this helped me wrap my head around marketing, but it did.

I read over each of the types of marketing and I started getting idea's.

Ebooks... I'd heard about people doing reader magnets for newsletter lists.

Interviews... I've seen authors on podcasts. I'd seen people on tumblr interviewing their characters. I could do that.

Trends... What are popular tropes if not trends of the moment?

And I suddenly realised that this silly little graph was all the different types of marketing I could do, broken down simply, and laid out neatly, and I could pick and choose not only the bits I was comfortable doing, but the bits that I was confident with.

I'm never going to put my face on a tiktok video and lipsync to popular songs, but I could write a 12,000 words short story prequel to my series and make it exclusive to newsletter subscribers.

That was something I could do, because it leaned on my strengths; My writing.

Because I haven't said it yet, but two years ago I'd have described myself very similarly to you.

I'm not charismatic. While I'm not autistic, I am painfully introverted. I have severe social anxiety. I'm not funny, I can't talk with strangers casually or easily. Talking about my book more than once a week feels like I'm bragging or being pushy... But I can write.

So I started looking for opportunities to share my writing, and let it... not speak for itself, but let my words draw in the audience. It still took a bit of pushing on my part, I would look for tag games where the user had left an "Open Tag" and I'd hop on those and share some words.

This is part of the reason Tumblr is one of my favourite places to network with writers and readers, because the tag games let me share and tease content without having to push through my social anxiety all that hard.

It's a slower, organic, audience growth but it's definitely my preference.

The content I shared on here, produced to play tag games, I quickly realised that I could copy it onto a pretty image in canva, and share it on instagram easier than I could condense a paragraph into the twitter character limit, or make it look appealing on Facebook's janky system.

And the more writing I shared, the more people commented and followed. And the more they commented and followed, the easier it was to talk to them. And then I started getting asks. That was nerve wracking and sometimes they'll still sit there a couple of months before I can make myself answer them.

(Sorry Sleepy and Avra, if you're reading this! I'll reply soon, I promise!)

Have I gone off topic here? I kind of feel like I have but also... not really.

If you feel like your writing is your strength, lean on it. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Show your hand with your words.

By the time I set up my mailing list and offered 'Whatever Happened To Madeline Hail?' for free, I got 12 people to sign up straight away. I don't know if that's a lot, but it was at least eight more than I was expecting.

When my book launched, I received 14 reviews, and sold 20 copies the first month. Again, I don't know if this is a lot, but it was a whole hecking lot more than I'd hoped for.

I don't know if I'm good at marketing, and maybe someone will reblog and reply to this with better advice, or tear apart what I've said, and if they do great! I really hope it helps you or someone else down the reblog chain because, as I said at the start, I'm really just stumbling around in the dark and hoping I somehow get it all to work out lol

But I do just have one more piece of advice, that isn't really my advice...

Tip No. 7

Fake it until you make it.

You're a writer. The beauty of the internet is that we have time to stop, and think about the words we're writing in response to someone.

I'm a shy, introvert, who doesn't know when to shut up when she gets started talking about writing (Or at least that's what it looks like based on the length of this post...)

But 99% of people I speak to online don't know I'm an introvert. They don't know that after sending an email I have to go back to bed for a few hours to recover my energy, or that I can't answer a phone without feeling nauseous for the rest of the day and it's because when I'm online I'm Arista Holmes, and I can write my responses in the same way I write my characters.

I'm not saying I'm not being me, I am, but I'm also being given the time and space to be the confident me I want to be, rather than the nervous wreck I actually am.

Write your socials, and market your book, as the you that you’d write if you were dropped into one of your own books.

Fake it until you make it.

Handy Resource List For Marketing:

Periodic Table of Content Marketing

Jenna Moreci's Youtube - I take her writing advice with a huge chunk of salt, but her marketing advice is top notch.

Bethany Atazedah Youtube - Co-wrote a Marketing For Authors Non-fiction series, but a lot of her youtube videos contain good, free, advice too.

Self-Publishing With Dale - If you want to market effectively, keeping on top of the current trends and changes in the market is important. Self Publishing with Dale is the best way I've found to do that; He really has his fingers on the pulse of the Self Publishing Market, and even if you're not publishing yet, checking out some of his videos can teach you loads about what to do, but more importantly, what NOT to do.

Michael Anderle's 20Bookto50k system - I didn't mention it as a tip but the BEST form of marketing a book is to write the next book. Michael Anderle talks about his theory that is you have 20 books published, your backlist of royalty income should net you around $50k a year. The hour and a half talk changed my whole marketing outlook and is why I'm focussed on a slow grown, more organically sourced, audience rather thank paid advertising.

Abbie Emmons Youtube - I'm not sure I should include Abbie in a list of marketing resources as she's often more about the writing side of the craft, but her videos have been invaluable to me, so she's just worth checking out in general.

#Ari Speaks #Arista Speaks #Ari Gives Advice #Ari is unqualified to give advice #Marketing #Marketing under a penname #Penname #Pen Name #Pseudonym #Content Marketing #Publishing #Self Publishing #Building An Audience #Growing An Audience #Writeblr #Writeblr Community #Writing #Writing Community #CW: Mental Health #CW: Social Anxiety #CW: Anxiety #TW: Mental Health #TW: Anxiety #TW: Social Anxiety #Ask #Ask Answered