#but no the whole reason she mixes them up is because zen is a dead ringer for Izana at 15 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vegetalass · 4 years

Note

hcs of the gang being quarantined in one big house together maybe?? 🥺 lub ur writing

i lub u, anon!!🥺 sorry this took forever!

General

Oh my godddddddddd

They had to stop doing movie nights because there was too much fighting

They tried to set it up such that everyone got a turn to pick a movie but there were still complaints

Now, movies are viewed at random and the policy is that

1. The TV is first come first serve

2. You have to announce when you’re using it

3. Anyone is allowed to join you

This has stemmed into multiple people shouting “IM WATCHING _____” at random times

And yes, people will try to hide the remote (mostly Sean)

If they can find it, that is

The lines between public and private property have been blurred. Everything must be labeled or there is a chance someone will take it

You can risk it, but it’s not recommended since they’re all dudes and will most likely eat anything

And even with your name on a box of graham crackers, there’s still a chance someone will stick their hand it in and steal a few

All the dudes walk around in their Long Johns like it’s not awkward

They have to do their own laundry so everyone is missing socks

Or they have extras

And wet laundry is constantly being left on the ground if it’s unattended and someone needs the washer

Arthur

This dude double dips

He licks the spoon and puts it back in, too

Gets yelled at a lot for this, but never remembers to stop

Everybody is afraid to touch all of the dips now because of this

And Hosea has to start buying separate ones just for Arthur

He’s the one who takes 3 hour baths

I imagine that there’s multiple bathrooms in the house but not enough for everyone so there are definitely times when people are like “WTF, Arthur you’re still in there?” or “Where’s Arthur?”

Usually it’s Charles or John because they don’t mind sharing a bathroom with each other

Cue Arthur having accidentally fallen asleep in the tub

But yea he’s just chilling in there, otherwise

Started the quarantine off by trying to fix up the house… But immediately got lazy

There’s probably a number of things he keeps saying that he’ll “get to, eventually”

The only reason Dutch hasn’t called someone is because it’s a PANDEMIC

Technologically challenged

Barely knows how to turn on the TV and still uses an iPhone 5 that has pretty much stopped working

John has given up trying to explain how to make things fullscreen on YouTube

Because of this, probably spends most of his time wandering around the yard and reading or journaling

Tilly even bought him some scrapbooking supplies, which he’s been trying to use

Little washi tapes and highlighters because she knows it can’t get too complicated too fast

She also makes him an Instagram account so he can take photos or post art

But figuring out how it works is a losing battle, and he never remembers to use it, anyway

“I think we should get a pet”

Everyone: “Arthur... Do we look like we take care of ourselves?

If anyone tries to talk about how annoying the quarantine is, starts ranting about people who refuse to take it seriously

And the conversation ends up spiraling into him blaming capitalism for everything

John

Every other meal he eats is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or Doritos

He does that thing where he wraps a bowl or plate in plastic wrap so he doesn’t have to wash it

Doesn’t clean up after himself

Leaves used tissues, slimy butter knives with PB on them, and crusty socks laying around

Unluckiest of them all

His snacks get taken the most, the bathroom is always occupied when he needs it, never gets to use the TV, his laundry is always moved, etc.

Always ends up using the bathroom when there’s no toilet paper

Texts Arthur for help and then makes an announcement in the group chat about “common courtesy”

Nobody replies

His texts are full of messages to Abigail that all say the same thing

“Help.” + “Please come get me” + “I hate it here”

They’re all left on read except for the occasional response asking if he needs anything from Target

The list he sends back is like four paragraphs long and it’s all dumb stuff

He’s like “FaceTime me when you get there, I wanna go shopping too”

Doesn’t even really want to leave the house for necessities, so he has to do stuff like water down his soaps or steal other people’s toiletries just to prolong how often he needs to go shopping for himself

He’s the one using Irish Spring from the dollar store mixed with water or a block of orange Dial soap that hasn’t been touched in five years

Charles tries to throw away an empty hand soap and John is like “THERE’S STILL SOAP IN THERE LOOK” *mixes water with it*

Steals razors and Shampoo

Thinks conditioner is “unnecessary” and “doesn’t do anything”

Complains about being bored but doesn’t bother to do the things people that people offer

Charles

Voluntarily becomes a recluse

Not because he wants to but because everyone else is too annoying to deal with

He’s forced to start using the internet and when he’s not on the computer he’s trying to block out the noise of the 8 other men he lives with just living

Going on walks is his other hobby

Also probably buys one of those adult coloring books to color

Like Athur, Charles hogs the bathroom

It’s not as bad as Arthur since he’s not in the tub for the whole time but he really will spend an hour getting ready in the morning for absolutely no reason

If anyone asks about it he just tells them that since they’re in quarantine there’s no reason to rush

But he does get yelled at if there’s no other bathrooms available

Becomes a self-care connoisseur

Walks around in a bathrobe and face mask just to try and achieve some sort of zen

Literally the only one who doesn’t walk around half naked

Besides Hosea, the one of the only guys who tries to wake up on time and eat three healthy meals a day

The house is entirely dark and he’s eating toast while Hosea makes coffee

It’s awkward, not because they’re weird about each other but because no one else is awake and it’s quiet for once

Dutch is the third person up and Charles leaves the kitchen by the time he’s around

Gave up trying to do the dishes and only cleans what he uses

Sometimes if he feels like being nice he’ll do Arthur’s dishes, too

But only if he gets something back in return, like Arthur doing his laundry or something

The only one who changes his bedsheets on the regular

Him and Kieran are the only ones trusted by Hosea to leave the house safely

Micah

Everyone is surprised Micah isn’t dead yet

Everyone is constantly fed up with him for something or for just being irritating

And try to ignore him for the most part, which is hard

Tries to defends himself with “Well, you don’t have to bother me if you don’t want to”

Doesn’t clean up after himself, either

John leaves more mess, but Micah does worse stuff

While John just leaves his dirty peanut butter knives around, Micah does stuff like forget to put the mayo back in the fridge, leave the bread bag out and open, forgets to bring his used dishes to the dishwasher, throws his trash in other people’s trash cans, leaves his wet laundry in the dryer, etc.

If it’s annoying and gross, he does it

And tries to eat food that other people have made for themselves or don’t want to share with him

Dutch is the only one who shares with him willingly

Does not pick up his hair from the bottom of the shower

And doesn’t clean the sink after he shaves

Honestly, I doubt any of the drains in the house work properly because so much shaving goes on

It’s honestly surprising to everyone that he takes the quarantine seriously

Accuses people of being sick even though all of them have barely left the house…

Wears a mask inside when he’s feeling salty

He doesn’t even care about the mask, it’s just to make people feel gross and bad about themselves

Besides Sean, he’s always trying to hog the TV

And everything he watches is annoying, pretentious, or both

Complains about there being “nothing to watch” despite always having something on and refusing to stop

Tries to smoke inside and literally always get busted for it

Even if other people are doing it too, he’s the one who doesn’t even bother to be by a window when he does it

His room is always off limits

If you need something from him you need to knock and wait in the doorway

Also does the “You’re too close… Step back, please” thing

And if anyone gets mad, says it’s a pandemic and he’s just trying to be SAFE

Mostly does this to feel powerful

Turns in to Uncle Jr. with all the complaining and berating he does

Uncle is honestly offended

Hosea

The only person allowed to do the shopping

He gave up trying to give people lists because the groceries they came back with were never right

Either too few, too many, not the right stuff... You name it

See here for more

That’s why, despite being the oldest, he’s the one who goes grocery shopping for meals twice a week

Refuses to buy alcohol because of incidents that they’ve had

Can’t stop people from sneaking it, though

Similar to Dutch in that he gets annoyed when people oversleep, but because its quarantine, he tries to not mention it, and at the worst, gets passive aggressive

Tries to make a chore chart for people to follow but it gets ignored

He ends up having to force people to do things by reminding them constantly

He’s the one who starts opening people’s doors in the morning and turning on the lights

Makes everybody start eating on paper plates with plastic silverware because he’s tired of trying to make people use the dishwasher

Arthur doesn’t know how, John doesn’t put his plates in the right place, Charles refuses to since no one else contributes to keeping it neat, Micah doesn’t even know they have one, Kieran also can’t fill it correctly...

Basically, it’s too much for Hosea to handle

His dinners are all Costco pre-made meals that can be made quickly

Frozen lasagna and prepackaged salad type stuff

He’s the guy who falls asleep on the couch sitting up while watching TV and if you try to talk to him he says “I’m awake” without opening his eyes

And if he’s using it, don’t even think about suggesting to change the channel

The answer is and always will be no

Even when he’s not really paying attention

And it’s either on the History Channel or Discovery Channel

Always complaining about how cold his feet are

Doesn’t let anyone touch the thermostat

He’s an in real life Elf on the Shelf

Dutch

If anyone, and I mean anyone starts sleeping in, he gets in a really pissy mood

“While I’m up, doing work for you, you’re sitting in bed being lazy!!!” and “What do you mean you don’t understand why! Why should I have to tell you why wasting the day is annoying to all those who are working!”

Even despite this, he can’t actually change the fact that no one wakes up on time

And it’s not like the work he’s doing for them is very important

He’s the one who thinks that a pandemic is the perfect time to be or do something useful

Eat healthy, write a book, pump iron… Anything

And when people complain about being useless he’s like “You have all this free time!!!1! Stop complaining!!! You can do anything!!!”

And if he’s doing something he considers useful, yells at people who try to bother him

Arthur: “Hosea wanted to know-”

Dutch: *doing sit ups* “CAN’T YOU SEE I’M BUSY?”

When it’s his turn to cook dinner, he’s making 8 boxes of Trader Joe’s mac and cheese in a huge pot and calling a meal

Literally the only meal no one complains about

He won’t clean the pot when it’s finished, though

Literally just cooks and leaves it out for someone else to deal with

Another self-care aficionado

Also walks around in a bathrobe and face mask

He’s worse than Charles though, because while Charles wears pants... Dutch will be booty ass naked under his

Also keeps trying to make homemade masks and scrubs and walks around in those, too

He’s like “This is a good one, I can tell already”

Everyone: “Dutch... is that... mayo... in your hair?”

Annoyingly good at monopoly

Does not invite Molly over and gets yelled at over FaceTime

Cue everyone eavesdropping on their arguments

Goes on power walks

Yells at people when they listen to loud music with swear words

Honestly, always yelling at people

“Can somebody get me my slippers? Arthur? John? Hosea? AnYoNe!!!”

Kieran

Spends the least time in the bathroom because he’s afraid of getting yelled at

Does everything in five minute increments

Except for showers, when he allows himself ten minutes

Barely

Most of what he eats is just microwave popcorn and shredded cheese

He’s the one asking people if they want to go on “family walks” with him

Literally no one joins him

Also tries to play board games with everyone

This goes a little better at least because Hosea will sometimes play and if he’s there, a few people will definitely join

Very bad at monopoly

The most conscious about wearing a mask

The others wear them but Kieran is the one who wears double masks, gloves, and carries around Febreeze

Also will get mad if anyone forgets their “safety equipment”

Or if they’re within six feet of him in public

Props to him though for staying healthy

I’ve mentioned this before, but... Spends most of his time playing games on a big tablet wearing headphones

Candy Crush and FarmVille and Words with Friends and stuff like that

Though all of his internet friends are weird old ladies he doesn’t know

Everyone is mad at him for sending non-stop game notifications, too

Hosea is the only one who responds to any of them

He’ll never admit this, though

Also tries to start doing arts and crafts

Mary-Beth started telling him about the various crafts she’s been doing, so he’s started trying to follow along, too

Things like crocheting or popsicle stick art

His stuff all looks bad, but he’s just happy to be doing it

And to be FaceTiming Mary-Beth

When he gets to choose a movie, he’s picking a “family-friendly” movie like Inside Out or Lilo and Stitch

Everyone starts out being mad but they all end up watching the whole thing without complaining

Heated debates ensue, too

For example, like about whether Flynn should’ve cut Repunzel’s hair in Tangled

“YOU’RE GONNA LOOK AT ME AND TELL ME THAT I’M WRONG?”

Charles + Arthur vs. Dutch + Bill

Makes meatloaf or Hamburger Helper like once a week

They’re basically the only thing he knows how to make

Sides with Arthur when he suggests getting a pet

Wears a Snuggie

Doesn’t change his socks

Javier

Plays his own music very loudly and won’t turn it off or down if you ask

Either that or he’s practicing guitar

It’s not really that bad but when you can’t escape it.... People get mad

The only saving grace is that the singing is usually in Spanish so it’s not as bothersome

The door to his room is always closed

Refuses to open it

To talk to him, you have to knock and then he’ll exit

Dutch is the only one allowed in and he thinks Javier’s rules about entering are creepy so never does it

Javier cooks his own food and won’t share

Only makes enough for exactly one person so even if he wanted to, there’s not enough

Eats dinner in his room to prevent people from bothering him or asking for some

However, he has the biggest stash of quarantine snacks…

No one knows where he gets them

And getting him to share is like trying to do a drug deal, but he’s not against it as long as he gets something in return

He didn’t personally cook all these snacks so the rules are different

His room is full of scented candles to make it smell better since the whole house kinda smells like Boy

Buys a gamer chair at the start of quarantine

Claims it’s more comfortable than the office chair that Dutch and Hosea chose for everyone

Everyone is jealous

Wears fuzzy pajama pants only

Sean

Sean is the one sleeping in

Never sleeps in his bed and just falls asleep wherever, basically

Usually the couch

Because he’s always snoozing, he’s the one who watches the most TV

Micah claims this isn’t “fair,” despite doing the same thing

And even if he’s not watching TV, he’s just using the couch to watch Tik Toks full volume

Tries to make his own Tik Toks, but they either stink or no one wants to participate

Constantly having people get mad at him for recording them

Stopped wearing clothes the moment quarantine started

Always in a tank top and his underpants

It’s kinda weird

People cared at first but by now they can’t be bothered to complain since they’re

1. Used to it

2. Probably start doing the same thing

Leaves his laundry laying around

Also won’t share anything he’s eating

Gets mad when people steal food

Doesn’t address anyone in particular though, just walks around yelling about how “nobody has the common decency not to steal”

Has food delivered almost every other day

No one knows where he’s getting the money from, either

Everyone think it’s a waste

Mostly because he doesn’t share, but also because all hell broke loose when Hosea found out about an expense called “delivery fees”

Also has a stick up his ass about wasting food

Started yelling about this randomly, too

If he can’t force someone else to finish leftovers, he forces himself to finish them

Probably gets caught watching a certain type of nasty video a lot

Lowkey it probably happens to everybody at least once

Yells at anti-maskers

Tries to wrestle the other boys and gets his ass handed to him

Bill

Possessive of everything

Usually he’s not this bad but being cooped up with a bunch of thieves and liars doesn’t make him confident that his Circus Animal cookies will last very long

Doesn’t share anything and very adamant about making sure there’s labels on things so nothing gets mixed up

Also makes his own space in the fridge with tape

BILL’S SPACE DO NOT TOUCH

And will start yelling in anything is moved

Not as bad as Sean though because he only cares about his own stuff

The whole thing is super hypocritical though, because he definitely steals other people’s stuff

If he gets caught, claims “it’s only fair”

Hosea has to buy him soap because he won’t buy it himself

Definitely the one who learns how to make prison hooch with cranberry juice and yeast

And the one who eats all of the ice cream

Even the nasty flavors

Wears the same clothes everyday because since he’s not working, “they’re not dirty”

They start getting holes in them, though

If anyone tries to suggest something for him to do, he gets mad and claims he “knows how to entertain himself”

Also constantly accusing people of being in his space or business

Ends up starting a ton of fights over this and then complaining about how mean everyone is to him

He’s not doing it on purpose, though

Ends up buying some kind of gaming console to pass the time

If he buys an Xbox, he shares with the rest of the boys

If he buys a nintendo switch, he starts playing Animal Crossing and doesn’t put it down for weeks

Out of everyone… He’s the one who takes the pandemic the least serious

He follows the rules because he doesn’t want to be eaten alive by any of the boys, but he probably thought the virus was a hoax at first

He learned his lesson the first time he tried to go out without a mask and got locked in the car, though

Forgets to flush the toilet

His room is dirty

#red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption 2 headcanons #rdr2 headcanons #rdr2 #arthur morgan #HOPE U ENJOY ANON SORRY IM SLOW #and will probs continue to be slow #my car broke down at mcdonalds today LOL and by the time it got fixed mcdonalds WAS FUCKING CLOSED #i was so sad my mom actually ended up taking me to a different one #but they didnt have what i wanted LOL #but it was fine bc i was happy with just fries #also y'all.... my sink is fixed and let me tell u #I AM NEVER PAYING FOR A PLUMBER AGAIN #i took that bitch apart and snaked it myself #and enough hair to make a wig came out of it but she was fixed #and i saved so much money my mom bought me lunch as a reward #LOL #anyways i love u all thanks for reading hope this shows up in the tags and u like it #i hope i put enough!!#and lmk if i should republish in a new format #i keep getting scared to make a new post and not answer anon directly #oH WELL JUST CATO PROBLEMS #also went back to work and it was... fine i guess #idk #Anonymous

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buzzdixonwriter · 4 years

Text

My Five Most Influential

Someone asked: Who are the most influential writers in your life?

Good question.

The broad answer is that one gets influenced many different ways by many different sources. I enjoy poetry and song lyrics because they find ways of conveying the strongest emotional content in the most concise manner, music brings a sense of dramatic rhythm and fulfillment, the visual arts suggest ways of subtly adding many insights to a single strong idea, etc., etc., and of course, etc. (and that is also an example of a creative influence in my work).

But…to boil it down to those whom I most consciously made an effort to emulate, we find ourselves facing five creators that primed the pump.

This is not to say others whom I began following after them didn’t wield a lot of influence (thanx, Ernie, Bert, Jack, Bob, and Hank!) but these are the foundation of everything I’ve done in my career.

(And to those who notice a lack of diversity, I know, I know…but to be honest I have to acknowledge the truth, and the truth is for whatever reason, by chance or by choice, by fate or by fortune, these five dominated my sensibilities. I trust that I’ve grown and expanded my horizons since then, but they’re the hand I got dealt.)

. . .

Carl Barks

I loved ducks as a kid and my grandmother and aunt would always bring me a passel of duck-related comics when they came to visit.

There were some Daffy Duck comics mixed in there but while I know I looked at and enjoyed them, none of them stick in my mind like the Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories of Carl Barks.

Typically my grandmother would read these comics to me and I’d imprint the dialog and captions in my brain, replaying them as I looked at the pictures over and over again.

Barks never wrote down to his audience, and his stories covered a vast array of genres, everything from straight domestic comedy to oddball adventures to screwy crime stories.

Donald and his nephews encountered dinosaurs more than once (another big favorite of mine), and Uncle Scrooge setting out to explore the asteroid belt in order to find a new home for his fabulous money bin was another tale I loved literally to pieces, but A Christmas For Shacktown remains my all time favorite graphic novel.

I’ll concede there are better graphic novels, but none of them warm my heart the way that Christmas story does.

Barks showed it’s possible to combine heart (not to be confused with sentimentality or =yuch!= schmaltz), vivid characters, and strong, intricate narrative. His plots where typically filled with unexpected twists and turns but his characters were always deeply involved in them, not just along for the ride.

He’s one of the greatest storytellers in the 20th century, and his work remains timeless enough to last for several centuries to come.

. . .

Ray Bradbury

The first Ray Bradbury story I remember encountering was “Switch On The Night” in its 1955 edition, read to my kindergarten class towards the end of the school year.

This would place the event sometime in the spring of 1959.

“Switch On The Night” captivated me because it was the first story I’d ever heard that showed what could be seen in the dark that couldn’t be seen in the day.

Even as a child, it made me realize the night wasn’t scary, but contained wonders and insights we miss in the harsh glare of day.

I don’t recall if the kindergarten teacher told us the name of the author, and if she did it didn’t stick, but boy howdy, the story sure did! Did it open the doors of the night for me, or was I already inclined to be a night person and it simply confirmed that as a valid identity?

I dunno, but I’m typing this right now at 12:24am.

And the thoughts Bradbury planted in little Buzzy boy’s brain stayed and grew and flowered, as you can read in my poem, “The Magic Hours Of The Night”.

The next time I encountered Ray Bradbury’s writing was in grammar school, certainly no later than junior high. I was already interested in science fiction by that point, and had read “The Pedestrian” in one of my school English books (we weren’t taught the story in class; the teacher skipped over it for whatever reason but I read it anyway then re-read it and read it again and again).

Anthony Boucher’s ubiquitous 2-volume A Treasury Of Great Science Fiction was in my grammar school library and in it was Bradbury’s “Pillar Of Fire” (which I would later learn was one of his alternate Martian Chronicles and a crossover with Fahrenheit 451) and in that story he offered up a veritable laundry list of outré and outlandish fiction to be tracked down and read, authors to dig up and devour.

Oh, man, I was hooked.

So of course I began looking for all the stories and writers Bradbury listed in his short story but I also began looking for Bradbury’s own work and before you could say, “Mom, can I get a subscription to the Science Fiction Book Club?” I’d read The Golden Apples Of The Sun and A Medicine For Melancholy and R is For Rocket never once dreaming that at some point in the future the roadmap Ray plopped down in my lap would eventually lead to us being co-workers (separate projects, but the same studio at the same time) and friends.

There is a beautiful yet deceptive simplicity to Ray’s work, and even though he wrote his own book on writing (The Zen Of Writing) that has lots of good insights and professional tricks & tips, he himself wasn’t able to explain how he did it.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good Ray Bradbury parody.

I’ve seen parodies that clearly are intended to evoke Ray Bradbury, but only in the same way a clumsy older relative might evoke Michael Jackson with a spasmodic movement one vaguely recognizes as a failed attempt at a moonwalk.

But, lordie, don’t think we didn’t try to emulate him, and while none of us fanboys ever came close, I think a lot of us did learn that less is more, that the right word carries more impact than a dozen paragraphs, and that there’s magic in even the most ordinary of things.

And of course I discovered the film and TV adaptations of his work, and in discovering them I also discovered that there are some things that just can’t be translated from one media to another, and that the light, effortless appeal of Ray’s work on the page (paper or pixel) can at best be recaptured with a good audio book reader but even the best dramatic adaptions -- even those by Ray himself -- are cold dead iron butterflies compared to the light and lively creatures flying about.

So eventually I stopped trying to write like him, and instead picked up the valuable lessons of mood and emotion making an impact on a story even if the plot didn’t make much logical sense.

Decades later I would become a fan of opera, and would learn the philosophy of all opera lovers: Opera doesn’t have to make logical sense, it just has to make emotional sense.

Ray Bradbury, opera meister.

. . .

H.P. Lovecraft

As noted above, Bradbury’s “Pillar Of Fire” tipped me to numerous other writers, first and foremost of which turned out to be Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

Okay, before we get any further into this, let’s acknowledge the woolly mammoth in the room: H.P. Lovecraft was a colossal asshat racist.

He was a lot of other terrible things, too, but racist is far and ahead of the rest of the pack.

It’s a disillusioning thing to find people one admired as a youngster or a teen later prove to have not just quirks and eccentricities and personal flaws, but genuinely destructive, harmful, and offensive characters.

I’ve posted on that before, too.

How I wish it were possible to retroactively scale back that hurtfulness, to make them more empathetic, less egregiously offensive (in the military sense of the word), but that ain’t so.

We have to acknowledge evil when we see it, and we have to call it out, and we have to shun it.

Which is hard when one of its practitioners provides a major influence in our creative lives.

Here’s what I liked about Lovecraft as a kid: He was the complete opposite of Ray Bradbury.

Bradbury’s instinctive genius was in finding the right word, the simple word that conveyed great impact on the story, drawing the reader into the most fantastic situations by making them seem more familiar on a visceral level.

Lovecraft achieved the exact opposite effect by finding the most arcane, bedizened, baroque, florid, grandiloquent, overwrought, rococo verbiage possible and slapping the reader repeatedly in the face with it.

If Bradbury made the unreal real, Lovecraft made the weird even more weirder.

And let’s give this devil his due: The Strange Case Of Charles Dexter Ward and The Dunwich Horror are two masterpieces of horror and serve as the bridge between Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King, not to mention his creation of Cthulhu and other ancient entities existing beyond the ken of human knowledge…

…oh, wait, that’s where the story simultaneously gets messy yet provides a convenient escape hatch for fans.

While Lovecraft created Cthulhu, he did not create the Cthulhu Mythos.

That was primarily the invention August Derleth, a writer / editor / agent and H.P. Lovecraft’s #1 fanboy.

Lovecraft had some loosely related ideas in his stories and several themes he revisited repeatedly (in addition to racism).

He also had a circle of fellow writers -- including such heavy hitters as Robert “Psycho” Bloch and Robert E. “Conan” Howard -- who picked up on his ideas and, as way of a tribute, incorporated them in some of their stories.

Derleth took all this and Lovecraft’s unfinished manuscripts and short ideas he jotted down and turned it into a whole post-mortem industry, linking all of Lovecraft and other writers’ tales.

And he did a damn fine job of it, too.

So much so that the Cthulhu Mythos has taken on a life of its own, and pretty much anybody can play in that cosmic sandbox now (including Big Steve King and a ton of Japanese anime) and so Lovecraft’s works have an enormous influence on pop culture…

,,,but Howard hizzowndamsef can be -- and is -- cancelled.

Derleth and various biographers downplayed Lovecraft’s virulent racism for decades, and I don’t think Ray Bradbury was ever aware of the scope and tenor of Lovecraft’s bigotry when he name checked him in “Pillar Of Fire” and other stories.

In a similar vein Bradbury didn’t know -- because thanks again to overly protective literary executors, nobody knew -- just how big a racist asshat Walt Whitman was, either. It is one thing to call shenanigans on a Bill Cosby or a Harvey Weinstein or a Donald Trump because their egregious behaviors were noted long before they were held accountable, but quite another to do so on a creator who died while hiding their most awful behavior from thousands if not millions of fans who felt inspired and uplifted by their work.

It’s one thing to call out a contemporary bigot and not support them by not buying their work, it’s quite another when their bigotry has been shielded from view and fair minded, decent people have used their work to draw inspiration into their own creativity.

Of course, I had no way of knowing all this when I was in junior high and seriously began tracking down Lovecraft’s work.

He possessed a flair of the horrific and unearthly that to this day is hard to match (but easier to parody). He was a tremendous influence on my early writing (truth be told, I zigzagged between Bradbury’s stark simplicity and Lovecraft’s overarching verbosity, giving my early oeuvre a rather schizophrenic style) and the ideas he sparked still reverberate to this day.

If only he hadn’t been such a giant %#@&ing asshat racist …

. . .

Harlan Ellison

In a way, I’m glad neither Harlan nor his widow Susan are alive to read this.

I cherished Harlan as a friend and greatly admired his qualities as a writer.

But damn, by his own admission he should have been thrown in prison for aggravated assault on numerous occasions (he was courts martialed three times while in the Army).

We’re not talking about arguments that spiraled out of control until a few wild punches were thrown, we’re talking about Harlan by his own admission stalking and ambushing people, knocking them unconscious or causing grievous bodily harm.

We’re talking about sexual abuse and humiliation.

We’re talking about incidents he admitted to which if true put people in life threatening situations.

And yet ironically, in a certain sense Harlan (a bona fide Army Ranger, BTW) was like the U.S. Marine Corps: You’d never have a greater friend or a worse enemy.

I became dimly aware of Harlan in the late 1960s as I started diving deeper into literary sci-fi, transitioning from monster kid fandom to digests and paperbacks. Harlan first caught my attention with his macho prose (years later a similar style also drew me to Charles Bukowski) in stories like “Along the Scenic Route” (a.k.a. “Dogfight on 101”) in which Los Angelinos engaged in Mad Max motor mayhem but soon it became apparent the macho posturing was just a patina, that the heart and soul of much of the work reflected great sensitivity and often profound melancholy (ditto Bukowski).

Harlan was a fighter, and again by his own admission, he acknowledged in his later years that he was not a fighter because his cause was just, but rather sought out just causes because he knew he would be fighting regardless of his position, yet possessed a strong enough moral compass to point himself in the direction of a worthy enemy…

…most of the time.

He hurt and offended a large number of innocent and some not-so-innocent-but-certainly-not-evil people.

He also helped and encouraged a large number of others, people who had no idea who he was, people who had no way of adequately reciprocating his kindness and generosity.

He defended a lot of defenseless people.

He also mistakenly defended a lot of terrible people.

If someone tells me Harlan was a monster, I’ll agree: Monstre sacré.

What made his writing sacred was that no matter how outlandish the situation, Harlan dredged up from the depths emotions so strong as to be frightening in their depiction.

Skilled enough not to lose sight of humanity, outlandish enough to conjure up ideas and emotions most people would shy away from, Harlan hit adolescent Buzzy boy like an incendiary grenade.

Unlike my first three literary influences, Harlan was and remained active in the fannish circles where I was circulating at the time. He regularly wrote letters and columns for various fanzines, including a few I subscribed to.

In a literary sense he stood, naked and unashamed, in full view of the world, and that willingness to go beyond mundane sensibilities is what made his work so compelling.

He certainly fired me up as an adolescent writer, and proved an amalgam of Bradbury and Lovecraft that got my creative juices flowing in a coherent direction.

I don’t think I ever consciously tried to imitate him in my writing, but I sure learned from him, both in how to charge a story with emotion and how to fight for what’s right regardless of the blow back.

I loved him as a friend.

But, damn, Harlan…you could act so ugly...

. . .

H. Allen Smith

Who?

Most of you have never heard of H. Allen Smith, and that’s a damn shame.

I’d never heard of him either until I stumbled across a coverless remaindered copy of Poor H. Allen Smith’s Almanac in a Dollar General Store bin in Tennessee in the late 1960s (it was a memorable shopping expedition: I also purchased Thomas Heggen’s Mister Roberts and Let’s Kill Uncle by Rohan O'Grady [pen name of June Margaret O'Grady Skinner]).

Reading Smith’s editorial comments (in addition to his own essays and fiction he edited numerous humor anthologies) I realized I’d found a kindred soul.

Smith had a very conversational tone as a writer; his prose seemed off the cuff and unstructured, but he slyly used that style to hide the very peculiar (and often perverse) path he led readers down.

He sounded / read like a garrulous guy at the bar, one with a huge number of charming, witty (and delightfully inebriated) friends in addition to his own bottomless well of tall tales, pointed observations, and rude jokes.

Of all the writers mentioned above, that style is the one I most consciously tried to emulate, and one I seem to have been able to find my own voice in (several people have told me I write the same way I talk, a rarity among writers).

Smith was hilarious whether wearing an editor’s visor or a freelancer’s fool’s cap. If you know who H. L. Mencken was, think of Smith as a benign, better tempered version of that infamous curmudgeon (and if you don’t know, hie thee hence to Google and find out).

Compared to my other four influences, Smith didn’t need to add the fantastic to his fiction: The real world was weird and wacky and whimsical enough.

A newspaper man turned best selling author, Smith became among the most popular humorists of the 1940s-50s-60s…

…and then he died and everybody forgot him.

Part of the reason they forgot is that he wrote about things that no longer seem relevant (TV cowboys of the early television era, f’r instance, in Mr. Zip) or are today looked upon askance (and with justifiable reason; the ethnic humor in many of his anthologies may not have been intended as mean spirited, but it sure doesn’t read as a celebration of other cultures, viz his succinct account of an argument following a traffic accident between two native Honolulu cabbies rendered in pidgin: “Wassamatta you?” “’Wassmatta me’?!?!? Wassamatta you ‘Wassamatta me’? You wassamatta!”).

I’m sure I picked up a great many faults from Smith, but Smith also had the virtue of being willing and able to learn and to make an effort to be a better person today than he was yesterday, and better still tomorrow.

I’ve certainly tried applying that to my life.

Smith’s style was also invoked -- consciously or not -- by other writers and editors, notably Richard E. Geis, the editor of the legendary sci-fi semi-prozone, Science Fiction Review (among other titles). Smith died before I could meet him, but while I never met Dick Geis face to face we were pen pals for over 40 years.

Geis certainly sharpened specific aspects of my writing style, but the real underlying structure came from H. Allen Smith.

Smith’s work is hard to find today (in no small part because whenever I encounter one in the wild I snap it up) but I urge you to give him a try.

Just brace yourself for things we might consider incorrect today.

. . .

So there’s my top five.

With the exception of Carl Barks and Ray Bradbury, none of them are without serious flaw or blemish (though Smith seems like a decent enough sort despite his fondness for X-rated and ethnic humor).

In my defense as an impressionable child / teen, I was not aware of these flaws and blemishes when I first encountered their writing (primarily because in many cases efforts were made to hide or downplay those aspects).

The positive things I gleaned from them are not negated by the negative personal information that came out later.

I can, for the most part re the more problematic of them, appreciate their work while not endorsing their behavior.

Ellison can only be described in extremes, but his fire and passion -- when directed in a positive direction -- served as a torch to light new paths (his two original anthologies, Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, pretty much blew the doors off old school sci-fi and belatedly dragged the genre kicking and screaming into the 20th century).

Lovecraft I can effectively ignore while finding entertainment value in the Cthulhu Mythos.

But I must acknowledge this isn’t the same for everyone.

For example, as innocuous as I find H. Allen Smith, if a woman or a member of a minority group said, “I found this in particular to be offensive” I’d probably have to say, yeah, you’re right.

But I can still admire the way he did it, even if I can no longer fully support what he did.

. . .

By the time I reached high school, I’d acquired enough savvy to regard to literary finds a bit more dispassionately, appreciating what they did without trying to literally absorb it into my own writing.

I discovered for myself the Beat generation of writers and poets, the underground cartoonists of the late 60s and 70s, Ken Kesey, Joseph Heller, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. LeGuin, and a host of others, some already alluded to.

Some, such as the Beats and Bukowski, I could enjoy for their warts and all honest self-reflection.

Yes, they were terrible people, but they knew they were terrible people, and they also knew there had to be something better, and while they may never have found the nirvana they sought, they at least sent back accurate reports of where they were in their journeys of exploration.

By my late teens, I’d become aware enough of human foibles and weaknesses -- every human’s foibles and weaknesses, including my own -- to be very, very cautious in regarding an individual as admirable.

While I will never accept creativity as an excuse for bad behavior, if a creator is honest enough and self-introspective enough to recognize and acknowledge their own failings, it goes a long way towards my being willing to enjoy their work without feeling I’m endorsing them as individuals.

It’s not my place to pass judgment or exoneration on others bad behavior.

It is my place to see that I don’t emulate others’ bad behavior.

Every creator is connected to their art, even if it’s by-the-numbers for-hire hack work.

Every creator puts something of themselves into the final product.

And every member of the audience must decide for themselves if that renders the final product too toxic to be enjoyed.

#how this writer's mind works #writing #Carl Barks #Ray Bradbury #HP Lovecraft #Harlan Ellison #H Allen Smith #influences

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operativesurprise · 4 years

Text

Dreams I’ve had recently enough to find with a quick scroll on my fb wall

was dreaming about a cave last night. With lots of shallow pools of water along the floor. I feel like if I'd seen the layout from above it would have looked like paisleys. There was a creature there tending the pools. Sweeping detritus away, skimming the surfaces of the water. It took moss that was growing too thick in some places and put it into bare areas, and it was very gentle with the little frogs and salamanders living on the walls.

There was the sound of bats and the dripping and echo of water, and a low hum in the background, but the creature itself made no sound. You heard the bristles of it's broom, and the soft shift of stones it touched, but no footsteps, no breathing, no nothing but a soft chiming noise as it looked in each pool.

The waters all glowed, some white, some pale blue, others pulsed through light pink to deep magenta. The whole dream had this aura of calmness, of being content. It was like being in a giant zen garden but dial the peace up even more. I'm not really sure where -I- was in the dream. My POV was kinda hovering over the figure as it tended to the pools, but I'm fairly certain I wasn't the figure itself. I was like, 6 inches up and to the left.

_____

I've been trying to sketch an image I had in a dream last night and it's just not setting up right. It was like. Honestly it was like the first few seconds of the Adventure Time intro animation - that super fast 'drone camera' POV that swoops down through trees and stuff and focuses in on a character with their back to the camera and then they turn and look?

I was swooping through this orchard of blooming apple trees - and I took note bc for some reason I was surprised they weren't pear and peach trees like 'they were supposed to be'.

But as the camera/I got closer to this feminine figure standing under the branches and the flowers and these really almost black-green leaves in this rich green velvet textured dress (it's totally the dress that's on the original golden book cover of Ella Enchanted), with big free fall bouncy waves of BLOND hair, they turn and instead of it being that kinda anime "turn and wink/smile" and the camera goes to the next, she turned around and it was a dead eyed marionette.

My camera POV just slammed to a halt with the freeze frame of this... entity (which I 'knew' in my dream was The Druid) (Even though this wasn't really an MJ dream) looking up and over their shoulder at me, like they'd become aware of the camera and were looking straight at ME. The branches with the flowers and the leaves above it framed it really close and I couldn't see much other than the scribbly ovals of it's eyes. Then the colors all got desaturated except for the apple blossoms.

And then that dream was over.

___

Vivid dreams last night about being on house hunters. With Lithrick as the realtor.

Also had a very ominous dream about standing in a misty open field, feeling the sawgrass scrape my bare arms and shins, staring up into the grey sky while sharp winged birds with broken bodies 'flew' through the air. It looked like how a washcloth you are swirling in a tub of water looked. There was no sound for that one but I could feel the rain on my face as I looked up.

Then I was dreaming about being on the beach in Belize with the chitons and baby hermit crabs and the breeze and I was watching the sunrise.

___

I've been having zombie nightmares since Sunday. Sunday and Monday were taking place in the shopping mall (which is a relatively new venue for my dreams), Sunday being the Beginning of the outbreak (and star trek themed) and Monday mostly about life starting up in the 'colony' of this gigantic shopping mall.

But last night I dreamed about the collapse of the colony and then survival in the forest.

There was a man in a wheelchair who had arrived at the shopping mall with his mother - both of whom were injured but not infected. We let them in and the mother succumbed to her injuries shortly after.

This left the man in the wheelchair distraught and he would wheel around the open plaza in the center of the mall mumbling. It was not concerning - until other weird things began to happen.

Like how one of the dorm areas had mysteriously become locked, how some people were going missing (presumably they left to try and find their families), and how some older people were getting injuries in the night - explained away by "well, old people have delicate skin and maybe they bumped themselves".

But then the man in the wheelchair wheeled up to the mezzanine and shouted for attention. And then he collapsed, and clouds of mosquitos erupted from his wounds and began to attack people.

Flash forward to a weird mix of irl and larp characters living in the woods behind my house in an abandoned homestead - I had gone from dying by mosquito to being Sano and a group of us avoiding Velociraptors in the long grass as we made our way back to the relative safety of this bombed out building husk.

But then The Rattler Gang came - horribly tattooed and violent and they ransacked through the homestead and were almost into our barricaded room when not-quite-Malaki and sorta-Allison with an ancestor spirit wig on saved us.

The dream ended with us all in a cave explaining to a horrified Morgrym that "see what happens when you're late?"

It was so weird bc as the dreams progressed and became more MJ and less Real World but with Zombies the zombies became less of an issue (I mean, repel undead is a thing)

___

Last night I dreamed about Ridge Road being a swamp instead of a road. The fields on either side were the same, but the road itself was a Louisiana/Florida/Bayou/Swamp thing with hot, moist air, dragon flies, grasses, alligators, everything you could want (though the water was clear as day).

And I was walking along the broken up boards that served as this sorta river trail following the path of the road. Slats were missing in places and it was a distinctive walnut color, and it was rickety and I could smell the heat of it like being on a dock in the summer time.

And as I was walking along I knew I was heading toward Harris Hill farm but instead of the farm it was the Pirate Tavern bar that I dream about fairly often.

(as I'm thinking about it, it kinda has the air of a setting in a Curse of Monkey Island game crossed against Diablo II)

But before I can get into the tavern there was a crowd of tourists wading through the water nearby. Like, the most stereotypical hawaiian shirt white-sunscreen-on-nose and flyfishing capped tourists you could imagine. And they were lost looking for their fan boat but I didn't know where it was - but I also didn't want them to find the Pirate Tavern bc it's a secret and my co-owner Matt Sch would be mad if we had to relocate AGAIN bc non-pirates had found us.

And in my dream I am DISTINCTLY aware that LAST TIME there were also VAMPIRES there, but Skye Collins had bought out their half of that Pirate-Vampire Tavern to own it outright as JUST a Vampire Tavern so this time I went into business with Matt. Not Lithrick, Matt.

And I was -upset- in my dream until I 'remembered' that I hadn't skipped out on Skye and the Vampirate Tavern, I'd just opened another location with a different partner after reaching an amicable business deal. We still traded aligator blood grog for peat moss from the other location to serve a certain cocktail with at THIS one.

___

Had a dream last night that I was diving on a whale fall. But either I was minuscule or the whale was super gigantic bc the rib bones were these looming spires like I was watching a stroll under redwood trees through a low fisheye lense.

Thinking about it I can totally piece out the different dives that meshed to make this dream up.

The stalactites from the Blue Hole, The gelatinous muck on the bottom in the St. Lawrence The cold from the Brownstone Quarry

___

If we want to talk about a fever dream... last night I had a dream about being trapped on a volcanic island while the whole chain of volcanoes were erupting.

The evacuation was happening but I went back to the house for the animals and got stuck there. And other neighbors who couldn't get out in time were coming over with their pets and supplies.

I was watching the lightning and the ash fall outside when I saw three red colored golden retrievers but I could only get two of them to come inside and I spent the rest of the dream upset and trying to find the third one. I found other animals trying to hide from the ash and storm, but I woke up before finding that 3rd golden.

The lava flows were coming down the mountain too.

___

Dream time. So. A classical vampire and an actual bat demon are out on the town looking for something to do when they come across a nail parlor.

What a great idea, they think! We'll get manipedis and then do brunch over at IKEA.

But when they go into the nail parlor there is far too much religious imagery to be comfortable and the demon doesn't want to stay anymore so they go back outside all sad.

Vampire suggests they just kill and eat the occupants of the nail parlor and find something else to do with their day off.

Demon agrees to the plan but they have this 'thing' where when the two of them murder a bunch of people they leave a haiku written in the blood on the wall.

They begin to argue because they both have different accents and can't decide on the syllable count for a certain word.

___

So there's a string of tall, skinny houses in Litchfield after 'The Church' that usually feature in any nightmares I tend to have. Last night did not disappoint.

The lineup was this:

🏚🏠🏡🏠 An empty house, My house, the neighbor's house, and then for some reason my grandmother's house.

And we had gone next door to the neighbor's house for dinner, even though we knew it was dangerous to be outside of our house after dark. But as we gathered in their entryway the spotlights on the rest of the neighborhood started turning on and we knew we had stayed too late.

"They" were out there. You were safe in the daylight, you were safe at night as long as you didn't open your doors. BUT now it was night. And we had to get home.

So we slip out the door and we can hear the neighborhood using birdcalls to communicate the 'all clear'. As we are going down this overgrown embankment toward our house we see it.

One of them.

And then we hear someone sound the alarm, a series of owl hoots. It distracts the thing for a moment and we think we could slip away but it turns and starts trying to get into our house so we run to the empty one next door and JUST barely make it.

Dream me's mother and little sister make it into the screened in porch just ahead of me and I fall in and turn and only just get the door closed in time when It attacks.

It was a zombie. Or a ghoul. Or something. a woman with a bloody face and terrible teeth and honestly it looked like Reagan from the Exorcist and she launched herself against the screen door which I'm trying to keep closed.

I know she can't get in the door but then she makes this horrible noise and says,

"You won't be safe for long. We're getting stronger,"

And the door is almost coming off its hinges but I -know- as long as I keep the door closed at night we are safe and then she laughs and presses her face to the screen and says,

"I'll just get in tomorrow morning. Before you're awake. Because, really, what difference does the sun or stars make? I'll get in tomorrow,"

And then I woke up.

____

My dream last night was so complicated I can barely keep it straight.

I was some grizzled, older ex-con dude pulled out of my soft retirement as a school bus driver because a child genius was being used as the catalyst for the robot war apocalypse by his wealthy mother's greedy board of directors.

And somehow I had a time machine that I was gonna use to bring the kid back to the beginning of all the issues and he was gonna start sabotaging the dangerous inventions so he could just be a regular child genius instead of responsible for global-scale mass murder.

At one point I had thrown the kid's manifesto at him but he hadn't actually read it bc it was too big and there were no pictures but also bad language and he asked me what "twat" meant and the kid was horrified that they would use that kind of language. Like he was ambivalent about the murders but bad language was crossing a line.

And as part of my "wait. He's just a kid I can help him instead of kill him" epiphany for some reason I looked out the time machine window and saw my old motorcycle which was painted in blue tiedye pattern and that memory moved me enough to offer to help the kid.

So the kid grabbed his froggy backpack and offered to give me all of his science fair winnings (which was like. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and two telephoto camera lenses for some reason. And a green and purple feather boa) but I just took enough to buy a new motorcycle and told him to hide it from his past mother so they're not suspicious.

___

Okay subconscious, doing laundry with the elves of mirkwood is NOT becoming a reoccurring dream. Three times is enough. Stop now. ____

I was an undercover secret agent posing as the nanny to a royal family's children. The children had a pool party for the oldest's birthday, and I was in charge of the yacht rides in the aquarium tank. Halfway through the dream, Pirates attacked with large assault rifles, trolls, and fire elementals. I managed to save some of the children, but then Katina was healing the ones that had been injured when a Shadow quick deathbed them and I had to resort to Improv comedy to keep the remaining kids from screaming as their friends turned to ghosts around us. None of the adults would listen to me that the attack had been planned, they were convinced that it was random, and despite the fact that I had a way to turn back time and catch the one woman who had started the fight they refused to do anything but complain that dinner had been delayed.

#me #personal #dreams #why do I have such weird dreams #why do i remember ALL OF MY DREAMS #I very rarely forget dreams when I wake up

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fandomplethora · 5 years

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Jihyun’s AE & Rika’s Behind Story

and the theme of forgiveness and letting go.

so, this is strictly my opinion, not meant to upset anyone or start arguments - just where i stand on everything at this moment. this game always has a way of making you reevaluate things and reflect more. also, they have a way of throwing major facts in to really turn the story to a somewhat new direction. so, again, this is my opinion - and...i’m writing this so i can get my thoughts organized after staying up all night completing everything. just a warning - this is going to be a very, v e r y long post.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

i saw many people complaining about Jihyun not being in his own AE that much. and, i understand that, because they hyped it up by releasing it on Valentine’s Day making it seem like the AE was going to take place, perhaps, after him and MC reunite at the party. but...i think that the way they did it actually answered a lot more of our questions.

because the main complaint of Another Story was that it seemed like for whoever you saved, the other would be sacrificed. (Jihyun’s Route - they left us thinking Saeran was dead and on Saeran’s Route, Jihyun disappears with Rika & Saeyoung and Vanderwood are kidnapped by the Prime Minister.) to show everything all romantic and “lovey dovey” (as Zen and Yoosung would say) - with just showing the fate of the other characters as a passing thought, would have really made audiences/players upset too. at least, it would have for me. this route and AE, and just Another Story as a whole, was not just about romance. (just like in the other routes too.) it is about support and healing and recovery and self acceptance. and then romance.

Saeyoung, Jihyun and Saeran (a n d Rika/Mina) are three/four of the characters most wrapped up in this main storyline. with Jumin and Yoosung right behind them and Hyun and Jaehee and Vanderwood behind them. (this is not me rating the characters or saying how important they are - at the end of the day, they are all equally involved in this story and have equal bearing on it. i’m just saying that Jihyun and Mina were at the center of the RFA as an organization and they are the ones who “adopted” Saeyoung and Saeran. Jumin is Jihyun’s best friend/family and, by proxy, Rika’s friend, and Yoosung is Rika’s adoptive cousin. Zen and Jaehee had no previous connection to the situation before the RFA. Vanderwood kind of did by being Saeyoung’s colleague and, later, good friend but...again, he had no awareness or connection to the situation as a whole. the last three became involved later after becoming friends with everyone and involved in the RFA.) but, by the time we d o reach present day with the RFA and the timeline of their routes and AE’s...everyone, e v e r y o n e, is involved and has equal weight in the situation.

okay, but back to what i was saying, the reason why, i believe, Cheritz created “episodes” for Jihyun’s route is the same reason Saeyoung had secret endings attached to his route. there was so much more to uncover, discover and solve. it’s the same reason we have Rika’s Behind Story. there was a lot more to add to the situation. and, why, i believe (and hope), they will do the same thing for Saeran’s AE too. these four characters are so deeply wrapped up in each other’s past, present and future - it is needed to delve deeper. and, depending on which route’s AE or SE you are doing - it IS going to be from t h e i r perspective and what leads to the best outcome and understanding for t h e m.

Cheritz gave us the option to “Forgive” or “Judge” because of the controversy surrounding Rika. but, also, because of Jihyun. and what was needed for him and his fate. the “forgiveness” ending seems to be the better of the two because it is what truly lead to closure for him (and everyone else). Jihyun took j u s t as much blame onto himself with how everything went down. it’s why he needed time away. to find himself again but, also, do what he could to make up for his mistakes. and he could only do that, and truly heal himself, by helping Saeran. and, in the end, i think being together with Jihyun helped Saeran heal as well. they were both victims of Rika but also carried so much guilt onto themselves for their actions though it was the product of manipulation and/or brainwashing. they helped each other heal. t h a t is what Jihyun was doing what he was for those two years. (contrary to the previous belief that he was just traveling by himself.)

(let the record show that i have not completed the Judge AE, only the Forgive AE, and don’t plan to, this is going off of what other people have said about it.)

so, forgiveness. i think Hyun said it best. he basically said that forgiveness is something you do for yourself and your happiness. i have always believed that. everyone had mixed feelings about everything because Rika is the one who still brought them all together and did do a lot of good. but then...she also had this other side of her that she hid away that hurt so many.

i think what is getting lost in translation is that...forgiveness is not excusing. forgiveness is something that helps you let go of the past. they never excused what she did. there is even a line MC says about this. “it doesn’t excuse what she did but...” (something like that.) they are not being selfless by forgiving Rika. it was the only way to move on. because by forgiving Rika...they also all forgave each other. Jihyun, Saeyoung, Saeran and the rest of the RFA.

i believe in all of this. but i am also a person that believes that people can still be held accountable even though we forgive them. while i never endured the level of abuse that these characters did - i have lived in an emotionally/mentally/verbally abusive and manipulative home with someone at the center of (most of) it. and they a r e a toxic person who has suffered from past trauma and current mental illness who refuses to see the affect of their actions and get help. their actions hurt others. when being around them consistently, it is hard to forgive them. but i believe in forgiveness, at a distance, is necessary at times. just because you forgive, it doesn’t mean you need to let them back in or repeat history. it does not mean you excuse them. you acknowledge it and make them accountable. they need to know what they did. but you forgive them too, for you. because how i chose to handle it is that...i don’t wish them ill will. that anger inside of me i felt for so long actually hurt me more. made me change who i was. i recognize that we are not people we need to have in each others lives. for the sake of our mental health and happiness and future. ...and i’m still, even today, working on the forgiveness part. (i would probably need a couple years away to do so too...and i didn’t go through nearly as much as the MM characters did.) but i do think it is something i need to do...for me. just like they needed to do what they did for them.

so, i do wish Rika had been held more accountable. b u t, in a sense, she was. e v e r y t h i n g came out. what she did and said. what happened within the RFA. who the Prime Minister really was and who Saeyoung and Saeran really were. and, i thought, at first...all of her guilt was just a lapse and/or manipulation. but she was actually feeling guilty - but, more than that, she turned herself in. she admitted she was wrong. she helped reveal who the Prime Minister was. while she did not serve time or spend time in treatment...she achieved self love as well. self revelation, in a sense. but...i know the question - at what cost? and that’s the part that gets me.

but i don’t think that things would have turned out the same if other things had not gone the same way. as in, if Saeyoung and Saeran had not been brought back together, if the Prime Minister was still after them, if Jihyun hadn’t done what he was able to...she would not have been able to move on either as she did. i, personally, think that it would have shown even more true growth if she had served time (and been held accountable by the law more) in a mental health facility and then came back the other side still with her new perspective and continued going to therapy even when she was out. (but i have read that she was still held accountable by the public.) (and, side note, w o w - the public really came through for the other situations as well.)

in reality - i just don’t know if this is because of the lack of awareness of mental health in Korea that i have heard other people mention, but another thing that left me with mixed feelings is that...Rika is not just magically better. (while her actions a r e her choices) she has severe past trauma, abuse and mental illness that is n o t her fault that she needs professional help for. this has not changed. so, i did not like how she just went off on her own, to live her own life, without this being further addressed. going along with the previous paragraph, i think a way to properly approach these facts is to show her accepting treatment as well. not just show a conversation with God and then, bam, that’s it. that is not how it works. if religion or some kind of revelation helps you, that’s great. but it can’t be the only step. Rika...Mina is sure to have relapses, is sure to have moments when those dark thoughts come back. she needs professional help and continued treatment to help her learn how to deal with these facts and separate who she really is from them. that is what having anxiety, depression, PTSD, BPD, personality disorders...whatever you feel she has, is about. her symptoms are not her fault, her actions and reactions to them are what she is to be held accountable for. to show her receiving treatment again, as she even does go live her own life, would have been a healthy message. also, again, to show her having consequences for her actions but then still coming out better on the other side would have been okay too. the discussion with God was very deep but even She said that there are things Rika had to do for the sake of the future still. i just hope that maybe ongoing treatment is mentioned for her in the future.

also, in terms of legal action, if we are thinking about this in reality - what about all the other hundreds of believers she had with her at Mint Eye. where is their closure as well? i don’t know. i also don’t know if maybe there are other things just left out of the AE or Behind Story that have not been mentioned yet.

but, as a whole, Mystic Messenger’s (and Cheritz’s) theme of forgiveness is a positive one. because while we can talk all day about “what about justice?”, “what about consequences?”, “what message does this send?”, “what about people being held accountable?” - this all comes down to opinion and interpretation. what Rika did was wrong. it was. that has not changed. i have made previous points and posts about her and those still stand. mental illness and past trauma are not an excuse for abuse. but one thing that has changed is that she did try to truly make up for it, even at the cost of turning herself in. she did. is that enough after everything? well, again, that comes down to your opinion.

because there are many who don’t like Mina. and there are people who don’t like Hyun. there are people who don’t like Yoosung. Jaehee. Jumin, Saeyoung, Jihyun, Saeran. Vanderwood. even people who don’t like MC! don’t like their actions, their personalities and whatever else.

(me, well, if you follow me or look at my blog...i love all eight characters with all of my heart and i have always had mixed feelings about Rika too. i also really like MC as a character too. (but i also have the opinion of, as long as you are not being abusive about it or taking an unhealthy stance on it, you can have whatever opinion you want.)

i don’t think the AE and the Behind Story was to make us like Rika. it was just explanations, more answers, another perspective to truly allow us to come to our own conclusions. we can still think what we think, keep our stances and have your favorite or not-so-favorite characters. this entire update was just granting us more insight into Mystic Messenger’s storyline. and about finding closure in a way that works for the characters and how they are written.

this game and story is different because they have very serious and deep themes that truly affect players and audiences. that could, hopefully, help us.

themes of mental illness, emotional/mental/verbal/physical/sexual abuse, forgiveness, friendship, family, trust, recovery/healing, letting go and love.

so, i will say this...one thing i greatly, greatly enjoyed...was how the RFA really came together and worked together. there were no secrets, there was open communication. they were physically all together at times even, apart from the party. they were there for each other. a l l o f t h e m. the only “secret” in this was the fact that Saeran truly was alive and saved by Jihyun. but they already suspected him to be alive at least, though i wish he would have came forward sooner. but i think it worked out in the end because it showed Saeran able to come forward (more) comfortably and reunite with his brother. Jihyun helped him recover in those two years. granting Saeran the time he needed along with Jihyun, away from everything.

as Jumin or Jaehee said...“we promised no more secrets” and everyone kept their end of the bargain.

this update showed so many different sides to all of the characters. Hyun and Jaehee continually trying to be understanding while also incredibly real with the situation, Yoosung’s reevaluation of everything and confrontation of the cousin he so admired, Jumin’s conversations with Saeyoung and how much he helped him. while he cares about his company it came second to the RFA, his family and Saeyoung’s situation. Vanderwood even talking Saeyoung down and being there for him, choosing to protect Saeyoung and, in the end, the RFA as well. Jihyun and Saeran’s recovery process. and, of course, even Mina’s transformation.

could some things have been done better? yes. should they have taken a different approach to the subject of mental health? yes. should they have left trigger warnings for the AE’s and Behind Story? hell yes. (the one thing i a m genuinely upset about.)

but, this update brought new things to the table. it is good writing to write such deep and flawed and human characters. because we are all deep, flawed and imperfect. it is what makes us human. again, yes, how some things were handled could have been better. i am not in denial about that. but, overall, i was happy to see all of our characters happy.

t h a t is the point. how you may handle things in your real life is your choice. and, so, how this AE ended is what brought these characters happiness and closure after everything.

i wanted to see them all together, helping one another. i wanted them all alive and healthy and happy and i got that. and i was overjoyed to see that after everything that happened.

i know many have their opinions on why Cheritz did this how they did. i know and i get it. but...this is just where i stand. many different emotions/feelings but, overall, grateful.

my only wishes left are; that the same respect is granted for Saeran’s After Ending. some are thinking there might still be a Rika Route and are still wanting to see a Vanderwood Route. i just hope, if there is a Rika Route, it is handled well and with respect and healthily. and i am one of those hopeful for a Vanderwood Route too with how much he has become involved, especially in Another Story. and, also, that their AE’s, if they get a route, end well.

i also wish that the other characters’ routes’ After Endings could have happened without any sacrifice as well.

and, i am just saying this for kicks, but if we get nine Routes, nine After Endings, the Secret Endings, the DLC’s...i would be satisfied. i also am still a believer in releasing a finale. a “Final Story”, on top of this, where everyone is equally involved and there is no one character to be pursued and it is just trying to solve the mystery that is the RFA, helping each character and helping them reach an ending where all of them are together and happy.

but that is still just my thing. and maybe they’ll save t h a t plot for the tv show. ;-)

no matter what...say Cheritz no longer updates after the release of Saeran’s AE, i will still be forever grateful to them and this game. this game has taught me a lot and the lessons i have taken from the story have truly begun reflecting in my own life. and this update was no different.

i love Mystic Messenger.

it is truly a game so much deeper than it’s surface appearance and genre. it is a bigger story than we thought...and may not always like, depending. but that comes with, no matter what, such wonderfully written characters that have taught me so much and i love with all my heart.

so thank you, again, to Cheritz and their staff. and for the kind and inspirational words that their VA’s left us as well.

and thank you to -

Hyun

Yoosung

Jaehee

Jumin

Saeyoung

Jihyun

Saeran

Vanderwood

and even Mina

and to MC

i can’t wait to see what is released next. what new additions to the story will come. and what new updates and events there will be in store. but, first...take care of yourselves, Cheritz! you deserve it. <3

45 notes · View notes

yandereshit · 5 years

Text

werewolf!Zen x MC: human traits.

Before you read, please keep in mind that it’s 1 am and I’ve spent the whole day writing this fic from 0 after deleting two previous ideas, and then deleted half of this one after deciding that it’ll be better this way

and generally it’s for @casualpastelgay‘s [they deserve the awoo] contest and just like last year I knew about it weeks ago yet got it done in the last moment

jokes on you, the same will happen to my bachelor thesis

「How’s it going~ Any handsome doctors out there~? You should hit on sb, u lonely potato, they prolly have a lot of money loool」

「Jokes on you Chaeung, they’re all old.」

「Shame~ but have fun MC, and see u at home!」

“Turn this off” the scolding voice of a teacher echoed behind her ear and the girl obediently put the phone in her pocket, focusing on the voice of the lecturer standing in front of the group of students. She already didn’t like the guy. For various reasons. One of them was the topic he talked of right now.

“And this, dear biotechnology students, is our object WP004. It may look now like one, but don’t be mistaken, it’s not a human. It’s one of the last representatives of its species. Our Magenta Labs are incredibly proud to become the owner of it a few months ago. Feel free to look at it. It’s quite the sight, as our female workers use to say.”

The joke, said by a middle-aged man in a white coat, welcomed gales of laughter from the dozens of students gathered in the room. Some of the workers laughed as well, although they were constantly busy with their tasks – sitting by the metal desks and examining all kinds of substances under microscopes and mixing them together in vials.

The hall looked like a chemistry laboratory, except in the middle of it, in a glass case, there was a motionless living being, held by a bunch of metal cuffs burning into his ankles, rib cage and arms. From the way the cuffs were connected to the walls of the case, it was more than clear the being couldn’t move. It was naked for everyone to see, like an art exhibition. Except what they were seeing in it was not its beauty, but the scientific value.

No one saw anything weird in it. Barely twenty years ago, the world would not believe that there’s some kind of existence that manages to look like a human yet not be one. But right now it was no surprise, even to the students who probably saw it for the first time in their lives.

Magenta Labs were famous for discovering and examining species like this, and a dream workplace for any biotechnology student.

“Whether it’s a human or not, they have no right to treat him like this” a whisper echoed behind the doctor’s back. The man turned around to glance at the girl muttering quietly to herself.

“Oh my lady, it’s a safety measure to keep the object like this. If we didn’t, it’d not just run away. It’s strength is a real threat to people gathered around. If we let it run freely in the world, sooner or later it will kill someone. Unlike normal animals who attack people by occasion, this beast treats humans as a usual food source.”

The girl narrowed her eyes.

“And you’re trying to do the right thing by keeping him in this cage where he can’t even move a muscle? Even circus owners let their pets run freely, and we all know it’s one of the worst places for animals to be in. Aren’t you even worse this way? If it’s a living being, fucking treat him like one” she hissed.

Some classmate put a hand on her shoulder.

“Calm down, MC…”

The words made the girl realize what she just said and – more importantly – to whom.

But the lecturer seemed as though he lost interest in this conversation. One of the students asked a question and he felt more obliged to answer it than to continue the argument.

With another command, the students moved forward to the next point of the tour. This time, the lecturer felt inclined to talk about various kind of substances and how the labs checked their influence on their objects’ organisms.

But the girl didn’t listen any more. She stood in the front of the case even after the others already left. And stared forward, at the object WP004. But no matter how much she stared, all she saw was a human.

The man inside the box undoubtedly had human traits, even though his hair had an unnaturally white colour, and even though his skin was so incredibly pale. Whenever she tried to put some thoughts together to describe the object, unlike the lecturer she caught herself using male pronouns.

She didn’t know how long she stood there before the object moved ever so slightly and opened his eyes, finally sparing her a glance. Until now, she thought he’s sedated or too weak to move. But the glimmer of his red eyes proved otherwise. Even though tired out, the man seemed quite conscious. For some reason, the girl felt terrified with the realisation. But the way he looked at her terrified her even more.

She felt enchanted, as though the gaze of the stranger was putting a spell on her.

The man glanced down, at the control panel in front of his cage. Unwittingly, she looked in the same direction.

Do it.

A red light in her head sparkled the very moment the thought passed her mind.

She stared up. The object’s eyes were on hers again, pleading, desperate. As she thought about it, he probably looked at many people like this before. Wondering if they’d let him out or just stare as if he was a dead painting, with his emotions for sale.

The control panel, she looked at it again. A lot of buttons, and some kind of lever. Should she pull it? Or click one of the buttons? She read the labels on them, but nothing came up. The lever seemed like the only sensible option.

She glanced around. No one was looking at her, everyone was either busy or looking at the next point of the trip.

She raised her hand and touched briefly the lever. The man stirred inside of the box, his eyes widening.

Will you do it? Will you really?

“Hey, what are you doing here? Your class already went to the… Hey, what the hell are you-”

She pulled the lever.

In one smooth move, all the cuffs opened up. The white-haired man, now released, threw himself forward and the glass cracked. It made such a loud noise that everyone looked in his direction, not knowing what’s going on. But when some of the doctors finally realized that the object is breaking free, said object threw himself forward once more and the glass broke.

The girl backed away, hiding her face in panic when the shattered glass flew in her direction. But before any of the pieces managed to reach her, she was suddenly pulled away, a few meters from them.

Someone started an alarm and a loud sound rang in the hall. The students threw themselves to the main exit, some of them started screaming in panic. Almost no one really knew what’s happening, but what everyone saw was that the electrically controlled door started to close and no one wanted to stay inside of the hall once it was shut.

The girl was pushed aside. Only then did she realize that it was the man from the cage that pulled her away from the glass. But how? He was inside of the box. How could he be faster than the glass flying around?

She glanced at him when he strode forward, not even looking at her. One of the workers stepped in his direction, holding a huge syringe that undoubtedly held in some kind of sedative. But before he even managed to raise the syringe, a metal desk was raised from the floor and thrown in his direction, along with all kinds of vials and bottles standing on it until now. The strength was so incredible that the man was pushed back and the desk landed a few meters further, crumbled on the top.

Another one of the doctors streamed towards an emergency box the very moment the door was shut down.

The girl’s eyes widened when she saw a raised gun. The doctor aimed at WP004 and fired without a second thought. Standing right next to her, the object pushed her aside because it was obvious that if he just dodged, she’d be the one to get hurt. More bullets were fired, but none of them reached their aim. Because in the next moment, said aim hid itself behind the girl’s body, causing all the doctors to stop in their tracks.

Something sharp pressed lightly on her throat, a silent threat telling her not to move.

“Open the door” a growl echoed next to her ear, followed by a cough, as though it’s been a long time since he used his voice. The doctors looked at each other, unsure what to do. “I said, open the door!”

“Hey, let’s calm down first” the man, until now being the tour guide, spoke, attracting everyone’s attention.

The hall was almost empty by now.

“Open the door” repeated the man, pressing on the girl’s throat a bit harder.

She dared to look down and her eyes widened. It was no weapon that was he holding her with, but his own nails, now extended and sharp, like claws. She had no doubt that they were huge enough to rip her throat. Yet no wound was made just yet – the motion was supposed to threaten the doctors, not her.

“Let the girl out and we will talk” the doctor said calmly, raising his hands in a sign of peace.

The man gritted his teeth. When he pulled her a bit closer and her back touched his bare chest, she could briefly feel him tremble. She could sense how unnaturally cold he was.

“Open the door.”

The doctor licked over his lips with annoyance and glanced over at the man by the emergency box. He nodded, and said man raised hand to pull the lever hidden in the box.

The door started to open again.

Before it even opened fully, WP004 caught the girl’s waist and threw her over his shoulder, striding to the corridor so fast that the doctors’ eyes didn’t even manage to follow his movement.

It happened way too quickly and all MC could do was to try not to fall off. The sight around her blurred in the speed the object reached. Her head spun when he stopped suddenly in the main hall.

The big, glass entry to the building was guarded by a few men with guns, all of them wearing identical, black uniforms of Magenta’s bodyguards.

“Object WP004, you’re surrounded. Put down the hostage and…”

He jumped. Not up, but forward. With one, long stride he appeared among the bodyguards and pushed one of them aside. The other one already fired the gun and the object moved to the side. The bullet went through the glass door, shattering it to pieces.

And before any of them could react, the object was already gone. Along with the girl, the one who was brave – or stupid – enough to let him out.

“Hey, can you hear me? Wake up… Please, wake up…”

A voice filled with panic finally managed to find the way to her consciousness and the girl moved ever so slightly, as if to let know that no, she’s not dead just yet.

“Mmmh…”

It took her a while to get back to her senses and once she did, she made an attempt to open her eyes. For a very brief moment, all she saw was darkness. It took her another few seconds to get used to the dim light of the room she found herself in – one that was ridden off any kinds of light sources. Only the window was letting in very little of the sunlight – it seemed to be the time of a sunset.

Then, her eyes met a silhouette sitting in front of her, staring at her expectantly.

“…Hi?” she mumbled, quite dumbfounded.

The next moment her memories finally came back in a cascade and the face of the man became familiar. She raised herself abruptly, panicking.

“W-what…”

“A-ah, don’t move, you’re hurt!” the white-haired man said and she frowned. Following his gaze, she touched her forehead. She felt warm wetness – blood, she realized – under her fingertips, which brought nothing but confusion to the girl’s face.

“…Why am I hurt?”

The man smiled awkwardly.

“I… may or… may not… have accidentally rammed you into a wall when I ran…?”

“…Oh.”

“S-sorry for that…”

MC frowned, glancing at him. Was he really apologizing to her?

Barely moments ago she thought he’s keeping her hostage. He probably was, but what kind of kidnapper apologizes to their hostages for accidentally hurting them?

Barely a few hours ago – judging from the sunset – she thought he’s a beast who’s being kept in a cage to not hurt people around him. And even though it’s possible even doctors considered him one, she didn’t believe him to be.

He spoke. Even back then, he spoke. He used a normal language, she was more than sure he used to live as a human.

She felt him shiver from fear and cold before, she saw his pleading eyes. And now, she saw him worry about her well-being, and for whatever reason it really was, right now she considered it genuine.

What differed him from a human, then?

She sat up slowly and backed to the wall. The room was small, it may have been some sort of a cellar. The floor was awfully dirty, but he placed her on some kind of fabric that looked like an old curtain. It definitely wasn’t the cleanest and she already could feel the dust on her hands. But at the very last, it surely was softer and warmer than the ground.

She glanced at him… and then instantly looked away, pressing her lips together.

“Could you… um… put something on?”

The man blinked and then his eyes widened.

“O-oh, I’m sorry, I don’t have any…”

She took her hoodie off and threw it at him.

“At least cover yourself, please.”

Wrapping the hoodie around his waist, the man slightly curled up at her scolding tone. The motion seemed weirdly familiar, but it took MC a few moments to realize that he looked almost like a dog when its owner scolds it for doing something bad.

An awkward silence fell upon the two; the man stared down at the floor, while the girl looked at him, taking in the traits of his face.

“Uhm…”

“Yes?”

The girl pressed her lips together.

“Why did you take me here?”

The man’s eyes widened, as if he suddenly remembered something.

“A-ah, if you don’t mind…”

“Huh?”

“There’s…” He cleared his throat. “There’s a chip in my neck, if you don’t mind, could you… take it out…? I can’t reach it myself, so I need someone to do it for me…”

“Uhm… in the neck? You mean like… u-under the skin…?”

“…Y-yes.”

“You want me to… make a hole in your neck… and take it out…?”

“…Please.”

“Aren’t you afraid that I will hurt you…?”

He chuckled, tilting his head to the side.

“You’re the only person I can trust right now. You saved me back then. It’d be a blasphemy, not to trust that you mean no harm to me.”

“That’s romantic and all but I meant more like if you’re not afraid that I’ll rip your artery by accident.”

The man smiled awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck.

“As I said, I trust you. Besides, it’s not that easy to hurt me. I heal fairly fast, so it’ll be enough if you just… take that thing out. Okay?”

“No.”

“Why…?”

“We’re in some dirty basement. It’s dark and I’m a teenager who once fainted during a blood check. You have a dead wish or what?!” She threw her arms to the sides, moving them frankly.

The white-haired man caught her wrists, setting them in place and looking into her eyes.

“Don’t worry about anything. I trust you, so trust me too, okay? If I don’t get rid of it, they’ll find me.”

She didn’t want to agree oh so badly. Even more when he put a knife in one of her hands – not a scalpel, just a knife that could be used in a kitchen. Moreover, it was awfully dirty and probably found in some dirty corner of this basement.

But did she have any choice?

“Turn around.”

Her eyes travelled down the other’s spine when he sat with his back to her. His back was pretty muscular, and his skin was so perfect it looked almost unnatural, like a figurine. Except for a darkened strip on his lower back. She didn’t notice it before, but it was where the metal cuffs were holding him earlier. It seemed as though his skin was burned in that place and still healing.

She decided not to look. Instead, she gently moved his hair aside. It was soft. And his skin was just as soft, even though awfully cold.

“You really should get some clothes” she muttered.

Next to his spine, something colourless was sticking from underneath his skin. She brushed the skin with her fingers. Did he just shiver?

“Don’t move…” she said softly, gently caressing his skin. Holding the knife carefully, she made a small cut. Through the hole, she saw the small device clearly.

“It may be connected to the musclesomehow, try to just rip it out” she heard.

“It… will hurt” she announced.

“Yeah, I kno- AAAAAGH!”

“...Told ya it’ll hurt.”

He curled up, pressing hand to his bleeding neck. His whole body trembled in pain and the girl put the chip down, now having a look at the wound it made.

And then once more, she saw his claws. They dug into his own neck, as though he tried to release the tension this way. But when he turned his head to look at her, not only the glistening, sharp redness of his eyes attracted her attention. Because in his mouth, when he parted his lips to pant heavily, was a pair of long, sharp fangs.

She stood up abruptly and moved away from him, almost terrified with the sight.

It took him a while to calm down his breath and his traits to go back to normal.

“…I won’t hurt you” he mumbled.

“I… know. It’s just kinda unusual so I feel obliged to act like a fantasy novel character. Forgive me.”

He sighed, finally deciding to stand up.

“I think we should get going…” Suddenly, a loud signal rang outside the building. “...Now.”

Grasping the girl’s hand, he ran to the door of the basement and fast to the main hall of the apartment block he hid them in. Red and blue lights blinded them for a brief moment, already reaching the corridor through the glass in the main door.

They ran up the stairs, to the highest floor. Opening the window on the corridor, the man peeked out. Police cars were everywhere. As though he was some kind of a criminal, he thought.

“Do you trust me?” he asked enigmatically.

“...Do I have a choice?”

Picking her up and making her wrap arms and legs around his chest, the man only smiled.

“Not really. Hold me tightly.”

Leaving through the window, the man climbed up. She couldn’t see how, but she suspected it had something to do with his claws.

They landed on top of the building, but he didn’t let her jump off just yet. Running to the opposite wall, he glanced down. As expected, there was no one there – they probably only surrounded the building from the front, where the door and windows were.

“Hold tightly” he repeated.

“Hey, what are you going to…”

Jumping over the roof’s edge, the claws hit the wall and dug into it. A painful screech echoed, making MC wince at the realisation as to what the man is doing. They slipped down the wall at a moderate pace, till finally they landed safely on the ground.

“Now, we have to…”

“Hey, girl, what are you doing here at this hour?”

A male voice echoed nearby and she felt her heart almost stop. She was standing a bit further so the policeman probably hadn’t seen her companion yet, but once he approached…

“It’s dangerous here now, what are you doing here?” the man asked with annoyance. A torch pointed at her face blinded her for a few seconds. How come he still didn’t notice…

...a dog?

No human, but a pure white dog was standing next to her, waggling its tail in a happy motion.

She saw much enough on this day to not be shocked at what just happened. It’s not as if she didn’t hear about peculiar talents of Magenta Lab’s objects. Here and there, various theories mixed with rumours. Apparently this one was true.

However, she was quite impressed with the man’s ability to adapt to the situation, because she’d never have thought of such a creative cover-up.

“I’m… er…” Lacking of words and still in awe, the student just pointed at the dog, hoping that the man will figure out what she means.

The policeman turned the torch down, at the pet and then shrugged.

“Ah, right, it’s this time… Well, get going. It’s not a safe place to be in. Got it?”

“Y-yes, sir… E-er… Z-Zenny, let’s go!” she commanded, trying her best to make it sound natural.

“And get some leash, it’s a huge beast” he said at the last, turning around and walking away in some other policeman’s direction.

Feeling her heart hardly not jumping out of her chest, MC turned as well and moved forward. She felt the dog follow her by her side. Her hand met the thick fur and its warmth comforted her slightly.

No lights followed them any more and the signal became quieter as they left in one of the nearby alleys. The sky was almost dark by now and they just moved forward, as far from the place as possible. How long it lasted – she didn’t count. Maybe a few minutes, but she felt as though she was still in some kind of danger. Adrenaline, she concluded.

The soft sensation under her fingertips disappeared, but the girl didn’t even notice. Her heart was still beating so fast it almost hurt.

She stopped in her tracks, placing hand over her chest, trying to calm down. The blood rushing in her veins made her head spin slightly. So did the head injury she didn’t dare to even touch, fearing it’d get infected or start to hurt.

Once her heart slowed down, she realized how dark and silent around her it was.

No noise was made by the surroundings. She was alone, which felt more unwelcoming than she’d like it to.

Until something caught her elbow from behind and she jumped, turning around.

“Where you were?!” she yelled without a thought.

“Here and there.”

“What?”

“…Stealing laundry.”

She glanced down. Fairly, he had finally found some hoodie and sweatpants. He even wore some socks, but no shoes. Probably he didn’t find any, but at the very last he seemed to be warmer now.

“You could have told me. And besides, how did you turn into a dog?! I mean I figured it’s you, but… how the hell?!”

Once again, MC started throwing her arms in different directions, as though to add dynamism to her already emotional blabbering.

And once again, the man caught her wrists, smiling sheepishly at her cute indignation.

“Into a wolf, precisely. And it’s called lycanthropy. They weren’t keeping me in a cage for no reason.”

“So you admit not to be a human?”

“I never said I’m one… and neither I said that I’m not.”

MC frowned.

“Do you have a human name?”

“Hyun Ryu” he replied without a hesitation. “But you can call me Zenny, if you want” he smirked, which made her face heat up in embarrassment.

“I had to call you something. It just came up.”

“So, what’s your name?”

“MC.”

“Thank you, MC.”

“Thank you for what?”

“You’re still asking?”

“…Say it. Say what you’re thankful for” she ordered.

Hyun smiled, suddenly taking her hand and bringing it to his lips.

They were on a middle of a road, yet he didn’t seem at all bothered with the fact someone can see them. Neither did he look at anyone else, because in that moment, his eyes were focused on hers and hers only.

Placing a soft kiss on her hand, he spoke.

“Thank you for saving me. And for all other things you’ve done to me today, that deliberately also saved my life. I owe you more than I can give, but I’ll always remember what you’ve done.”

“...E-enough” she mumbled, bringing the other hand to her own face to hide it. Needless to say, it was redder than before.

And her companion seemed more than proud of this reaction, but he didn’t say a word. Instead, he pushed her hand into the pocket of his hoodie and turned around, moving forward.

“Since we’re pretty much safe now, mind if I walk you home?”

Such simple words brought the girl back to reality, making her recall all sorts of things that happened through this whole day.

Because a lot happened. First, she was on a university tour, and the very next moment she was a hostage of one of the objects.

WP004. A representative of species she couldn’t even name, one Magenta Labs examined as though he was a riddle, a question, and not a living being. A dangerous threat to the society, and the most gentle person she’s met in her life as far as she got to know him.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’m technically going missing and there’s a proof that I let you escape. I’m more than sure police is now talking with my room mate. I’m probably in trouble, don’t want you to risk getting caught” she said, sighing.

He tilted his head to the side.

“I don’t think they’ll blame you. From what I overheard, some of the doctors considered I may have some… special abilities…”

“…Special abilities?”

“They think I can put spell on some people. Mainly females, but that’s another gossip.”

“...And can you?”

“Nope. But if you testify that you didn’t control your actions, they’ll believe you” he smiled reassuringly.

“Er… how will I explain that you haven’t escaped this way before?”

He only chuckled, putting a finger on his lips.

“Hmm, and how would you know that? You’re just an innocent victim, right?” he winked.

She couldn’t help but chuckle. Even though at the thought of being interrogated she felt awfully nervous, the other’s words quite calmed her down.

“And what are you going to do now?” she asked, glancing up at him.

The man narrowed his eyes, thinking deeply.

For the next few minutes, there was a silence. The girl didn’t dare to interrupt it and the man seemed to just think, putting various options and plans together.

The answer came faster than she expected.

“I want to be an actor again. That’s who I was before they caught me. I will need to hide for some time, far from the city, but if someone eventually hired me in some small theatre… it’d be nice” he admitted.

“An actor?” She tilted her head curiously. “You were… just an actor?”

“Just?!”

She shrugged.

“I dunno. I felt like you could have been some soldier. Or an actual criminal. But you were just a normal human… just a normal person. I…” She frowned and shook her head. “I hate the people who did that to you. It shouldn’t be happening. There are people like you out there probably being kept by Magenta and other companies.”

“Are you going to now walk around all of them and let the objects free when the workers don’t look?” Hyun laughed.

She snorted.

“I’m afraid my luck would run out sooner than later.”

“Right…”

The girl stopped.

They reached a bus stop. In the distance, lazily coming closer and closer, bus lights reminded that their encounter shall be coming to an end.

“You probably don’t have any spare tickets, do you?” she asked, staring forward at the approaching lights. “I only have one.”

Hyun smiled softly.

“Is that your way to say good bye?”

She didn’t reply. Her face relaxed slightly.

This mad day is over.

What a casual the way to go back home.

“Good bye, Hyun” she said, glancing up at him.

The bus stopped and she stepped forward, entering.

The man stared at her when she left, not daring to take a step. There was some kind of sadness in his eyes. He was left alone again.

But he knew that she had a task to do – to come back home and explain everything that happened, to put some nice lies into the hands of the policemen. And so he had to go away and hide, and then try to start over as though the last months never happened.

As peculiar as it was, they met on this day and they were to end this relationship just as fast.

And even though it was meant to be this way, none of them would ever forget each other.

A few months later

「Hey heyyyyyyy, horrayyyyyyyy」

「Hello to you too lol」

「How was it? How was the speech???」

「Good god, I’m on the staircase, can’t I tell you when we meet?」

「Tell meeeeeeeeeee and I’ll tell you some nice news too ;)」

Shaking her head in disbelief, MC inserted the key in the door of the students’ shared apartment.

The flat was small, but she couldn’t complain. Her room mate was quite a thing. Hard to stand at times, but undoubtedly supportive, and that’s exactly what she lately needed.

Right now, the girl ran through the kitchen’s door, throwing herself at MC in an over-friendly motion.

“A-ah, Chaeung, groceries!”

“Sorry, sorry! Tell me, how it was!”

MC smiled proudly, putting the bags of food down. At the moment, no one was interested in them.

“The prime minister said they will seriously reconsider the Law on the Limitation of Freedom of Significantly Dangerous Human Form Species. Or… something like this… I don’t remember the name of this act, it’s long” she muttered, scratching her chin thoughtfully.

“But that’s great!” Chaeung jumped in excitement. “Oh oh, I have some good news for you too!”

“Oh?”

“You see...” In a suddenly serious manner, the girl placed both of her hands on MC’s shoulders. “We have a new neighbour. And he’s deadly handsome. So you, my lonely potato, are going to bring him the cake I made, and he will fall in love with you.”

“Chaeung?”

“Yes?”

“You’re the worst room mate ever.”

“You mentioned it yesterday. Now.” Pushing a plate wrapped with some paper into her hands, Chaeung pushed MC back towards the door. “He’s one floor above us. Go and get him, alpha-female!”

“Alpha… what…?”

“Just go!”

With that, she was pushed out the door.

What she could do, the cake could not go to waste.

A few seconds later, she knocked on the neighbour’s door.

Needless to say, when the door was opened, a pair of familiar, red eyes stared at her and just as familiar smile welcomed her happily.

“MC! Long time no see!”

“…What on the earth are you-”

“Is that an apple cake…?”

“…Yes.”

“Can I…?”

“Yes, but- What on the earth are you doing here?!” she finally said. The man already took the plate, unwrapping it and staring with excitement at the sweet thing.

“I… may or may have not broke into your uni to check your address” he admitted.

Raising her eyebrow and crossing arms on her chest, MC just stared, expecting further explanations.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?” he asked (probably willing to change the topic) and for a brief moment, his eyes were filled with such remorse that she instantly regretted her harsh tone.

“I am. I really am, but that’s- wait, isn’t it called stalking?!”

Hyun smiled awkwardly.

“Sorry… I just couldn’t help myself.”

MC rolled her eyes.

“And you think I can just accept that?”

“...And can you?”

“...Maybe. If you promise you won’t poop on the staircase” she announced. She didn’t know how many of dog traits he had, but it was a good chance to embarrass him. Let’s say, it was a little revenge for startling her like this.

“...I won’t.”

“And one more little thing. Please. Please.” She briefly looked down. Very briefly. “Please, start wearing clothes.”

#werewolfzenshowloween2018 #mystic messenger fanfiction #zen x mc #hyun ryu #mm zen #mystic messenger fanart #can i go to sleep please send bed

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mysticdrabbles · 6 years

Note

what's everyone in the rfa's favorite christmas songs?

Zen:

He likes the romantic ones

“All I Want for Christmas is you~♡“

He also likes anything that’s a duet he can sing with his sweetheart.

Even if you say you don’t sing

He’ll find a way to convince you.

And if not, you can always lip sync!

(He can try and sing both parts for you!)

If he has his way it will turn into a whole musical number, complete with choreography and backup dancers.

He likes “Baby It’s Cold Outside” because romantic Christmas duets????

But because of the controversy surrounding it and how it can be interpreted badly, he offers to sing the girl’s part instead if you’re a girl.

(He’ll play it up for you too, acting all delicate and innocent, fluttering his eyelashes up at you as you hold him in your arms, to make you laugh)

It always ends in you two either giggling or kissing.

Or both.

Yoosung:

Punk Goes Christmas.

Not that he doesn’t like classic Christmas carols! He does.

He loves family Christmas time listening to family Christmas classics.

He just thinks they’re kind of… boring sometimes? He likes them, but he won’t go out of his way to listen to them on his own.

But if his favourite bands have Christmas music, why wouldn’t he listen to it during Christmas?

His favourite song is “I Don’t Wanna Spend Another Christmas Without You” by The Ready Set.

He dedicates this one to his future s/o~

assuming he’s not going to be alone forever T_T

(You’re just standing there like I’m right here just ask me out already)

Jaehee:

Jaehee likes the default classic Christmas songs.

She doesn’t dance or sing along with them, but she likes having them in the background when she has time to relax.

Or putting them on in the background while she’s working late at home during the holidays (T_T)

It makes her feel like even though she’s working she’s still celebrating the holidays.

She also really likes when popular singers and actors she likes release albums of Christmas covers.

(Low-key dropping hints to Zen that he should release one)

“Haha, yeah, that’d be fun.”

No Zen you don’t understand she really wants this just do it

Jumin:

The Jingle Cats.

If you don’t know what that is, Here’s the Link.

(You’re welcome.)

He’s been a huge fan since the day he saw the first video.

He’s watched them all.

He even paid the creator to make the same kind of thing with Elizabeth the 3rd.

It’s his ringtone.

Seven:

He hates Christmas carols.

He has memories of them just like everyone else does. His memories suck.

He remembers hearing them in the background when he went out as a kid to get food for Saeran, or hearing faint Christmas carols from the windows of neighbours who didn’t notice or care what was going on in their house on this supposedly jolly day.

All his memories of Christmas are feelings of guilt and pain.

He hates Christmas.

Some years he’ll lie just lie on his bed for hours listen to the sadder Christmas songs and wallow in misery

(“Christmas Just Ain’t Christmas Without The One You Love”. “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”. Stuff like that.)

When he gets his brother back though, his Christmas angst lightens up almost immediately.

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” is his favourite now. For meme reasons.

“Santa Baby” is up there too. Also for memes.

(Saeran can’t even listen to the song anymore without remembering his brother in that dress. Way to ruin a classic for him, Saeyoung.)

Saeran:

Saeran doesn’t know very many.

His experiences with Christmas carols are all very brief and distant

And he doesn’t really know how he feels about them?

(He always wanted to have a normal, happy Christmas as a kid.

He still kind of does.

But he never got to have one. So he has mixed feelings.)

He does sort of like the classics though. Mostly the bright, cheery ones.

Not loud in-your-face ones like “All I Want for Christmas Is You”

The gentle ones like “A Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Winter Wonderland”.

And “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” of course ;)

(Secretly, his favourite Christmas song is “Grown Up Christmas List”.

Don’t tell anyone. He doesn’t want the others to know he’s an emotional cinnamon roll.)

V likes acoustic covers of Christmas songs.

Ones that have that chill indie feeling with soft guitar and vocals.

He likes looking up covers on YouTube.

He likes them because he feels like they’re more natural and genuine than Christmas songs produced by a studio.

He has a few artists that he especially likes.

He likes classic religious Christmas songs, because they remind him of going to church with Jumin and his family when they were younger.

They sang Christmas songs in the choir together, so he has a lot of good memories attached to those songs.

(Jumin likes them for the same reason, but he didn’t mention in in his section, because. You know. Jingle Cats. He has priorities.)

Vanderwood:

Fuck Christmas by Eric Idle.

…what, you’re expecting more?

Nope.

They have no positive memories of Christmas

And unlike the twins, they’ve never bothered wishing for a happy Christmas.

They know there’s no point thinking about such things, so they don’t bother. Christmas isn’t for people like them, whatever, they accept that.

They’re not in denial they swear.

When they’re with you, they’ll still complain about hearing the same six songs over and over again all the damn time, but they secretly start growing on them now that they have positive memories to associate with the songs.

Whatever your favourite is, that’ll probably end up being their favourite just because it makes you smile.

(They will not tell you this. You can pry this cheesy secret out of their cold dead hands.)

Want to see more?

Visit my Masterlist

Or request something new!

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harricislife · 7 years

Text

Okay, now that I’m done reblogging the shit out of Stark reunion posts, I want to commend the show for something.

I know I have been critical of GoT in the past, which I still am, but the show has done something right, and I can’t believe I’m typing this, but it has done something right by Bran, a character the show hasn’t cared much about or paid much attention to in the past, and as a result neither has it’s fans.

But by just a simple dialogue in the godswood, the growth of Bran’s character is shown, which again, great job by Isaac as usual, and Sophie and Maisie too in this case.

I wanted to talk just about the show, but minor spoilers from the books will be here too, and I’m probably going to be confusing and mixing up the story from the books and the show, so be warned.

So, we know from the first episode onward, Bran loves to climb the walls. He has that same spirit of adventure that Arya does, he wanted to be a knight when he grew up, and he had idolized heroes from the past and wanted to follow in their footsteps just as Sansa had. We learn later from Jon that they both wanted to go on an adventure together to the Wall, but all of it is taken away from him once he is pushed off the tower by Jaime.

That was his life, climbing, running around, adventure, and it’s very much evident in his attitude after the fall, especially when he says to Robb:

“I’d rather be dead.”

When Tyrion calls him a cripple, he denies it, because he refuses to believe it. He is ecstatic to go back to horse-riding with the specially constructed saddle, because to him, however small, it’s freedom, it’s an adventure.

The sacking of Winterfell might’ve been the reason he left home, but Jojen and Meera’s appearance and the promise, the hope, the wish to walk again, provided by the Three Eyed Crow | Raven, is why he ventured beyond the Wall.

In the books, he calls himself, Bran, the Broken, because he feels useless. It is the reason he starts relying on warging into Summer, because that way, he could walk again. The first thing he asks the Three Eyed Raven is, will he be able to walk again.

Bran is mostly unaware of the power he has, the importance he has, despite Jojen telling him otherwise. His mission, a personal, selfish one, had been to regain the ability to walk, and Bloodraven had lured him to his cave with that promise.

And despite the show not focusing on it past Season 4, and despite all the problems with his story on the show afterwards, we learn this episode, that Bran is no longer in denial about his disability. When he offers Arya the valerian steel dagger that could’ve killed him, she doesn’t want to take it, but he says:

“It’s wasted on a cripple.”

He has accepted his fate, because his inability to walk is nothing compared to the threat he knows is coming. I want to commend the show on focusing on that again, however minutely, because I think denial into acceptance is such a powerful thing to go through, especially to someone like Bran, it’s a very human feeling, and we might not have seen how he came to that acceptance, which I think was a mistake, and which I think should not be because of the White Walkers, because despite the threat, his acceptance of his disability should be personal, I hope that’s what happens in the books at any rate, but for the show to even focus on that again, however minutely, is I think remarkable, which is stupid, because I don’t think it should've been.

And once again all three young actors in that whole exchange were superb as they usually are.

Speaking of, all three of them have grown on this show, however less their screen time was, we know they’re all friends in real life. But as good of an actors as they were as kids, they have grown together as actors on the show as well.

For me personally their reunion, that whole scene in the godswood, was special for two very distinct reasons. First and foremost, Bran, Sansa and Arya together for the first time since the first episode, just brought on all the tears, because all of them have been through so much, and they deserved that. They’re not the same as before, but they’re back together, which is everything.

Secondly, as I said, Isaac, Sophie and Maisie have grown as actors, and for the three of them to not rely on anyone else, no other experienced actor to share their spotlight, to carry the scenes themselves, and deliver. It makes me proud of their ability, to have watched them grow into their talent, and that scene felt immensely satisfying and special as a viewer because of that.

And now because of that much focus on the Starks, ‘The Spoils of War’ had become my third favorite episode of the show, which I’m really surprised by, since the later seasons, post Season 3, and especially post Season 4 hadn’t really been my favorites. It now sits behind ‘Rains of Castemere’ at second, and the best episode of the show to date imo, ‘Winter is Coming’, the very first one.

I’m still not a fan of what they’re doing with Bran, and I hope that GRRM does him justice, and I have faith in him that he will, but let’s talk about the sendoff to Ellie Kendrick, which frankly sucked for such a talented actor. I get that she is no Diana Rigg or David Bradley, but c’mon, you barely used her post Season 4, like most actors involved with Bran’s story, which is just a grave injustice.

We could’ve had a Sansa and Meera scene together, talking about the journey, the struggle Meera went through after losing her brother, after killing him to protect him, in bringing Bran back home. Some Meera appreciation wouldn’t have been bad to see. And I get that they’re making Bran all zen and everything, but how hard was it to have Meera and Sansa talk in an episode where extra time to the episode wouldn’t have been a problem, because it is the shortest episode in the show’s history?

I knew this would be a problem when they decided to shorten the number of episodes from the last two seasons, because they’ve been just rushing along, with reunions, and first meetings, the pace of the show is all over the place, and it isn’t doing it any favors. There is no time for character growth, not really, the plot just needs to happen, and then we wrap it all up, which is just, ugh.

I want to end this veeery long post by adding, Meera deserved better, so did Jojen, Osha, Rickon, Summer, Shaggydog, the North, Loras, Margaery, Ellaria, Doran, and Dorne, as well as their actors, and D&D better not fuck with Jon, Arya, Sansa and Bran. Again.

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saeranlover · 7 years

Note

Do you have any hcs about the mysme characters in that vampire au?

ASDFGHJKL I LOVE THIS AU RIGHT NOW HELL YES I WILL THROW HEADCANONS AT YOU ABOUT IT

MC:

Didn’t even know that vampires existed until the day they got bitten at the RFA party

Pretty much thought they were an urban myth

BUT it did explain some things about the RFA such as:

Zen’s rapid healing speeds

Jaehee’s capability of working at night

Jumin preferring animal companions over human ones

707 living in a bunker

Yoosung also tending to be more awake at night

V wearing sunglasses (alongside him turning blind)

Saeran not exactly being a social person and preferring to be in people’s shadows

She gets confused at first because of other fictional portrayals of vampires

Takes a long time to adjust to being a vampire, relies on Jaehee, Yoosung, and Saeran a lot because they’re also humans turned to vampires

Knows that she probably will have to drink blood at some point, but is very reluctant about it

“What if… What if we hurt somebody taking the blood…?”

Gets reassured a lot by other RFA members that her life isn’t too much different to what it was before she was bitten

Yoosung:

Rika’s the reason he’s a vampire. He wanted to be close to her, and asked for her to bite him so that he could be one too.

He wears his hoodie with the hood up when outside, to avoid getting exposed to sunlight.

Likes his hands in his pockets

His lolol guild think that he’s human. He plays along with it.

He doesn’t look forward to the day where he has to reveal that though…

Parents are also completely oblivious to the fact that he’s a vampire

Was tricked once by Seven into believing that strawberry milk was an acceptable substitute to blood.

It wasn’t.

He likes the fact that he can bond with MC, with them both starting off as humans.

Also, he’s kinda close to Jaehee and Saeran for the same reasons, but out of anyone, it’s Seven who he’s closest too.

LOVES GOING TO WATCH FILMS BECAUSE THE INSIDES OF THE THEATRES ARE DARK.

His ideal romantic date would be to one of those blacked out restaurants with only candle-light, followed by going to the theatre to watch some sort of romantic film.

Tends to take morning classes because it’ll be dark on the way there, and quite shady outside on his way home after classes.

Was shocked that he got burned in the sunlight rather than turn all glittery

Jaehee:

After getting employed by Jumin, Jumin got frustrated at the smell of human blood coming from her.

She was persuaded by him to let Zen bite her just for his sake.

“I… I can be turned into a vampire… B- By Zen?!”

SHE FANGIRLED AT THE THOUGHT.

Prefers working at night for obvious reasons, but if she works during the day, she has blackout blinds set up just in case.

She doesn’t completely like the thought that she has to drink blood every so often, so when she does, she makes sure that she has a very bitter drink of coffee ready because she’d rather taste that.

She will go out in the day wearing sunglasses and lots of suncream if she intended on going to a coffee shop, or was going to a performance of Zen’s.

Wants MC to know that she will always be there for them whilst they get used to being a vampire, even offers to let them move in with her.

Doesn’t approve of the way that some of the RFA members are reckless and risk exposing to the world that they’re all vampires, when it’s meant to be a semi-secretive thing.

Zen:

Dude loves being in the spotlight, but he has to make sure that the lights in his performances are artificial ones because he does not want burns to ruin his skin.

He was born a vampire so he didn’t know the complete extent of the upset which MC was going through after being bitten, but he did offer to comfort them.

He doesn’t like when some of his fans discovered about him being a vampire and tried to literally send him some of their blood.

It got to a point where he had to publicly announce that he wasn’t a vampire just to get them to stop because he didn’t want any of his human fans to accidentally kill themselves trying to do that

Doesn’t appreciate that Jumin wanted him to bite Jaehee just so that he didn’t have to put up with the scent of human blood, but eventually accepted because Jaehee herself asked

He didn’t know that Jumin had talked her into doing that though

He was definitely in a motorcycle vampire gang when he was younger (and asdfghjkl that sounds so cool)

Jumps at the chance to play any vampiric roles because it allows him to be his normal self in his acting

Likes the fact that due to his phone’s artificial flash and a few little adjustments by Seven, he can take selfies and actually appear in them.

Hates the twinkly vampire stereotype.

Still thinks Jumin Han is a jerk.

Jumin:

Loves having Elizabeth as his companion because she wasn’t human

That’s one of the reasons why V and Rika got her for him

When the media gets images of him out in public drinking red wine… it is not red wine. It is watered down blood.

Though he does drink a lot of wine still anyway.

One of the main reasons he bonded with V as a child was because of them both being vampires

For halloween, he loves to just let the blood (or wine) he drinks drip from his fangs, and to be over dramatic, he will be a cape.

Yoosung was terrified

Yet Zen would stare at him and call him a jerk for doing that.

He doesn’t like that his father has a tendency to turn his girlfriends into vampires because he believes that only those who wish to be vampires whilst being worthy enough should be allowed

He could tolerate the smell of Jaehee’s blood when she became his assistant… at first.

His vehicles have blacked out windows so that they are dark inside and can’t hurt him.

Offers to let MC live with him after they get bitten because it’s completely adapted in ways which mean that they can go about their business during the day

“Does Jumin Han is vampire” became a popular western meme which makes him sigh

Seven:

He’s the reason why Saeran ended up becoming a vampire

His mother was a vampire whilst his dad was a human, and he ended up becoming a vampire whilst Saeran was a human

He joined the agency as an escape from his mother’s abuse… And was assigned to Vanderwood - a human.

Vanderwood was basically his source of blood when he didn’t have any human contact for a while

On missions, if he had to come in contact with enemy humans, he’d find a way to knock them out and get a bit of their blood without actually turning them to vampires by biting them

Eventually he had enough and decided that he had the money which he needed, and went back to Saeran and asked to bite him so that they could be vampires together and so that Saeran didn’t have to fear their mother (who was dead by that point) hurting him and so he could forget the past

He likes pranking Yoosung, because Yoosung is a human-turned-vampire

As I mentioned before, he tricked poor little Yoosung into thinking that strawberry milk is a blood substitute

“Seven Zero Seven! Defender of Justice and Vampires! And some humans, I guess???”

He’s actually the one who started does jumin han is vampire but jumin doesn’t need to know

Lives in an underground bunker because no windows and he’s a vampire???

Offers to let MC live with him there after she’s bitten because of ‘The lovely Mary Vanderwood the 3rd’s generous blood offerings~’

Vanderwood is not amused.

Will open cans of doctor pepper by piercing it with a fang.

Saeran:

As mentioned before, he was the human of the Choi twins

but that made him subject to more abuse as well as being the weaker one of the two

He literally started crying when Seven returned for him because he was still stuck with his mother at the time but she conveniently died at about that time too.

He did still do the whole mint coloured eye contacts and dyed hair thing at first because all of the RFA members got confused between the two of them

He felt quite overwhelmed at first by the smell of human blood

Especially after being used for blood by his mother for so long

He actually felt relief when MC got bitten and turned into a vampire

He felt closer to MC than the other RFA members so it was a bit of an excuse to cling onto her, being a human in the same situation as him

He also likes to look after Elizabeth for Jumin for similar reasons which Jumin likes having her as a companion - no smell of human blood. Plus she’s a fluffy stress ball which he’s gentle with.

Literally has to have blood mixed in with food or drinks when he consumes it because he hates the taste and it doesn’t settle too well with his stomach when he has pure blood.

Likes looking at the night sky, because he can’t look at the day sky unless it’s through a photograph

Has always had special cameras so that he can take photos with other vampires in during the day

Wears sunglasses to stop daylight getting in his eyes as well as because he’s almost blind

He’s fearful that once he turns blind, he may accidentally go outside during the day and end up getting burned by the sunlight

He’s absolutely terrified when MC gets bitten, because he doesn’t know who bit her, and that it could easily enough be somebody sent by Rika to bite her and turn her into a vampire

He’s the one who bit Rika though because she wanted to be a vampire with him

Was shocked when he found out that Rika bit Yoosung and turned him into a vampire, so despite Yoosung disliking him, he does his best to act like a second father all protective over him

Vanderwood:

Was assigned to work with Seven when he joined the agency just so that he could have a human companion to get a supply of blood when necessary

And also to kill him if he ever goes out of control.

Threatens Seven with garlic and a wooden stake when they think that the taser won’t work

Decided to stick with Seven after he left the agency for some reason

Was shocked when Saeran came to live at the bunker too, but they could stand Saeran better than Seven

Doesn’t like the fact that Seven thinks their blood is unlimited and offers it out to literally anyone when they need blood

#mystic messenger #mysme #mystic messenger vampire au #long post #Anonymous

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theareya · 7 years

Note

even numbers for the gaming asks!

Okay, its been 1000 years since I posted this gaming ask. But here are the answers!!!! I put most under the read more…

2. First game you played?The first game I ever played ever, in thehistory of forever, was Super Mario Bros. at my babysitter’s house, if mymemory serves me correctly

4. Longest consecutive hours you’ve played agame?Ohkay, let’s see. Without eating or bathing,but I did get up briefly to bathroom and drink water, I finished uncharted 1,2, and 3 consecutively in 120 hrs. Needless to say, I never did that again, asthe blood vessels in my eyes popped, I ate two bigmacs after, and my parentsyelled at me. Otherwise, without moving or tending to most of my basic bodilyneeds, 10 hours max as of late.

6. An underrated game from within the last fewyears?I don’t know, I’m probably biased and neverreally look online to see how the game was rated/how it’s doing. Oh! But! Ireally liked Battleborn, which was basically a game that came out like a littlebefore Overwatch? Or near the same time, actually. You also fight in teamsagainst one another with unique character abilities to obtain certainobjectives. Honestly, it is extremely well done and detailed, but very muchfalls in Overwatch’s shadow possibly due to similarity and budget D: 8. The game with the best atmosphere/scenery?I’m biased. I love Bioshock. But I also am ahuge fan of those apocalyptic, dystopia aesthetics. So, essentially, anythingalong the lines of bioshock, Fallout, and Last of us.

10. Prefer PC or console?I’ve always played on console. And I’m so bad atPC. You would think it’s a bit easier to aim a cursor to shoot at something,but I’m particularly bad at that.

12. Most bizarre game you’ve ever played?Most games are pretty… bizarre. Most of theactual weird ones I’ve only seen online on those “top ten weirdest video games”but maybe Katamari? There are definitely weirder ones… The Nightmare Within wasalso… strange. I don’t actually know what counts as bizarre anymore in thegaming world. Shrek party…

14. Do you watch playthroughs online?Sometimes, yes! If I know I am never going toget the game. For example, an xbox exclusive (I do not have an xbox) or if Ialready played the game and want to see others suffer, lmao. Or if I like thestreamer.

16. The best year in gaming you’ve experienced?… I don’t remember. I’m going to say 2011.

18. Worst game you’ve played?There are probably worse games, but I’ll go withthe most recent one I’ve played, which was Bound by Flame. It was kind of thisunfortunate mix of—attempt at—Dark Souls, Dragon Age, and other medieval games.Some parts of the gameplay were unnecessarily hard for kicks, with no way toovercome the boss aside from chipping away at the health by throwing a rock atit, while your single dead companion lay sprawled in the middle of the fieldten seconds into the fight. And of the one and a half romance options pergender you were allowed, none of them were very enticing. Spoiler** I overcamethe end fight by purchasing 10,000 potions to fight the dragon. I made itthrough just fine, only after using 600 potions. Strategy was little help, butheyo I made it through. 20. Favorite publisher and/or developer?…Sony? I don’t know… I’m terrible at thesequestions.

22. If you could turn one game into movie, whichwould it be?You know I don’t know, since any game thatturns into a movie makes me want to cry bitter tears of hate. I’m looking atresident evil specifically. But if I could turn Bioshock into a really goodmovie with the proper actors/actresses, storyline, extras, atmosphere, then …yeah.

24. Ever cried because of a video game? Whichone(s)?…Too many. Nothing gets me more invested andemotional than a videogame. I guess the only one that has made me actually cryvisible tears is Journey. The ending overwhelmed me in an inexplicable way.

26. How often do you play online? Co-op?Relatively often now, especially withOverwatch, and the fact that a lot of my friends have Overwatch as well. So,like, every other day, if not daily. Otherwise, I love co-oping with a friend mostlybecause the AI that they give to work with you tends to … suck butts. Lookingat Resident Evil… again.

28. Who got YOU into gaming?My babysitter. Haahaa. I used to hang out ather house all the time and I’d watch her play all sorts of games. She’s alsothe one who gifted me my purple game boy color :’D30. On average, how long does it take you in thecharacter creation screen?Could be up to an hour. But at least 30minutes. It depends on if I know what I want.

32. Do you cosplay?I do! But I’ve actually only cosplayed animethings. Most of the video game stuff I would like to cosplay is too hard and/orI wouldn’t do it justice. Also I’ve been parts of group cosplays generally, sowe gotta find a good match.

34. Favorite male npc?For some unknown reason, the only personpopping into my head right now is erandur, the dark elf companion, from skyrim.Like… he’s not my favorite npc, but…my mind is drawing a complete blank. And isjust repeating that name over and over in my head. Oh boy

36. Best antagonist?Albert Wesker. …Spoiler??** Look… if you gottathrow him in a volcano to get rid of him after 200 tries of “just survive longenough” fights, he’s pretty good to me. Please let him die.

38. Have you tried a game, hated it, then triedagain, and loved it?N….no? There are some games where I getfrustrated, then invite a friend to play, who is extremely over-leveled, andthen they help me… live. Does that count?40. Favorite voice actor?Okay, I love Troy Baker. How can one person beso gosh darn versatile?? For anyone who doesn’t know (I doubt that) He voicesJoel from TLOU, Booker from Bioshock, Sam Drake from Uncharted, to name theones that pop into my head. And he does like a million other voices, and sings,and is just very excellent overall.

42. A game you will never forget (in a bad ORgood way)?Resident Evil 5 in the respect that I justplayed it during a very happy time in my life with one of my friends. And itwas also when I learned that I really love co-op, as well it was a supertreasured bonding time with that friend. We legit screamed so obnoxiouslythroughout the whole thing, apologized profusely, yelled for help. Like thatgame brought out our full range of emotion while playing.

44. Do graphics matter?Not necessarily. They add a nice kick, butthere are quite a few games I can think of where the gameplay and story aremore prominent. Storyline is generally always the main thing I look for first.Storyline and characters. 46. Always, sometimes, or never use subtitles?ALWAYS. Even for NPCs. Like the setting thatsays “ALL SUBTITLES” one of the reasons is because it alerts me to enemiessometimes too as they whisper in the distance. Which is the closest thing to awarning from jump scares that I’m going to get.

48. A game you’ve always wanted to play but havenever gotten to it?Um. I’ve actually been pretty aggressive ingetting my grubby hands on the games that I want. EXCEPT. Nearly everythingthat came out after Kingdom Hearts: Chain of memories?? Like 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 5 ½,365/3 days idk there were too many?? AndI basically had almost every console except the PSP so I just kind of gave up??

50. How many games do you own?…uh… too many?? At least 200 if you total allof them from the dawn of my first game boy color.52. A game you will always stand behind, andsupport no matter what?..Fable. OKAY So, even though the game, alongwith the game company crashed and burned, I really loved that first game??Along with The Lost Chapters. I essentially based the experiences I had withFable 2, 3, Journey on how good the first game was. If I were to make someoneplay it now, they would probably think it’s pretty dumb, but I thought it was acleverly made game…54. A sequel you really want?… lmao Fable. AND/OR The Wolf Among us, becausethat’s been sitting there for far too long.56. Do you tell people irl that you play videogames?Yeah. If it comes up in the conversation. Or if…they have merchandise that I want.

58. Ever have someone walk in on a sex scenebetween you and you LI?N…o…60. The game you are best at?I know Bioshock inside and out… I don’t knowwhy I’ve played it so much, it’s a very linear game, but wuh. Also weirdly, I’mvery good at Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. And the only reason I’m obnoxiously goodat that game is because of the Chaos. I love those ridiculous little things andwould do anything to make sure they’re happy and healthy. And in order to dothat I had to play each stage multiple times to get the right power-ups andanimals to feed the Chaos…. There was a whole garden. And god.

62. Would you want to work with video games whenyou are older?I feel like if I start working with it I’llstart disliking it very much, unless I literally work as a tester… that getspaid a decent amount. Like seriously, walk in, sit down, play for… hours uponhours. Otherwise, I do not have the creativity or skill. lmao.

64. Describe your favorite video game using onlythree words?Underwater death city.

66. Game with the yummiest looking food?Final Fantasy XV. Okay, so I haven’t finishedthe game. I’m really not even that far into it, like… at all. I just saw thefood and got hungry. It’s so realistic and pretty.

68. An older game that you’ve just recentlygotten into?I guess… Fallout New Vegas was pretty old, butthen my friend bought it for me on sale, and I tried it out and it was supergood??? And now I’m really into the Fallout series.

70. Do you play any mobile games?I.. play Fire Emblem Heroes, and a variety ofother mobile games like.. Notice me Senpai, Zen Koi, Mystic Messenger, uhhh…whatever is recommended sometimes. .

72. Have any guilty pleasure games?Not really. I’m pretty prideful in every game Iplay, including my otome games.74. Which game has the best lore?…Once…. Again, BIOSHOCK. Idk there are just somany little things in the city that you can find that point to the history ofthe residents, and what happened to them. There are those audio messages and littlesecrets that everybody has in the city, leading to its fall. I just love it somuch. Skyrim is a close second, to be fair. It’s more immersive and I canroleplay more on there.

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