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#i just think theyre neat and should get married
burglarbagginsbag · 3 years
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originlist · 3 years
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INCOHERENT THOUGHTS ABOUT SALIERIS VALENTINES SCENE
the music was really neat, the background music changed A Lot, which hasn’t happened much in the other scenes ive gotten. it was nice that they put a lot of variation in it! and the fact that calm salieri has strings, while the portion that mozart narrates is piano. i like that for them. it fits.
(also yes its Mozart narrating the end, he’s the only one who uses ‘Maria’ for Marie like FGO U CAN JUST OUTRIGHT SAY THEYRE MARRIED,)
heres some screenshots i had that gave me THOUGHTS!
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the fact that salieri assumes that any time he’s spoken to, it must be because Master needs someone dead, that there is no other reason he will ever be approached, makes me highkey emo
he does this, in his mind, to protect Master though, keep them safe from his influence that he assumes must be toxic, so surely the safest is to only be approached for murder
also i do appreciate a good confirmation of my thought that Salieri wanders Chaldea in his human body, and switches to Grey Man to discuss battle. the power of how he’s divided his personality, and his maybe subconscious maybe intentional wish to keep the ‘human appearance’ of Salieri separate from the events of the battlefield.
:^)
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this is just here because i think it’s cute how he pings between languages :”) polyglot moods salieri ur so endearing
but also, his preferred language Italian for things he likes (cioccolata) and his nemesis German for things he’s trying to alienate (Gottlieb). hoo hoo. its about the Symbolism.
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more of “oh god someones being nice to me A HUMANS BEING NICE TO ME NO YOU CANT!!! YOU CANT BE NICE!!!! I LIKE CHOCOLATE!!! I CANT LIKE IT! SALIERI LIKED CHOCOLATE AND IM NOT SALIERI SO I CANT BUT I DO BUT MAYBE IM A LITTLE BIT HIM BUT AAAAAAAAAAAAAA”
also the music switches here again! local man has such an identity crisis he jars himself out of the violin music
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in notes of interest, Salieri pings between “ware” and “watashi” around this part because hes VERY confused and can’t keep track of who he is. because he cant take chocolate because hes not a person and if hes not a person than hes death but when hes not on the field hes supposed to be a person but not around master and hes not salieri but hes a little bit of his ego but he cant be salieri but sometimes hes a smidge salieri but salieri likes candy and he currently likes candy also but he shouldnt because hes not allowed to but why not but its----
anyways, per some shoving around google, “watashi” when used by men has a connotation of being ‘closed off’ which imo fits well in connection to the fact that salieri does not invite ritsuka in to his emotional confidence: he narrates a lot of his thoughts out loud and hes bad at keeping himself secrets, but the things he says arent to give ritsuka a sense that theyre his confidant, its to try and keep them the fuck away from him because hes dangerous to them and his reality (to him) should prove that. watashi is also decently polite, fits.
grey man uses “ware” which is not common, archaic, and highkey formal, used for higher class which imo is because grey man is death and death is generally depicted as old and with respect
also at one point in between salieri trying to settle down he ends up going “waretashi” once which is. kinda funny. do your best, my guy.......
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im going to actually cry irl in my house
he is so worried for ritsuka, that his presence is going to hurt them, that he cannot be treated like a person because he doesn’t deserve to be, because he has to be inhuman, its the only way he can keep living like this if he rationalizes and compartmentalizes and screams when his Master tries to tell him it’s alright to be a person or whatever he is. he has to keep them safe and he has to keep himself sane, or whatever approximation of coherent that keeps him able to exist on a battlefield and able to say he has a purpose for existing
a “person” could never be like this, would never do the things he has
right?
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[me crying] and in the concluding note, amasali rights 2k21, the one thing that eases how depressed i am over salieri is how EVERY SINGLE TIME he appears in story or event there’s another point in the text about how fucking much mozart gets him and even though he’s gonna give salieri shit hes also not gonna push him beyond his limits because mozart understands im s
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symptoms-syndrome · 3 years
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Tone policing confuses the hell out of me. Cause like... i was literally taught in school not to use "you" statements cause theyre accusatory and aggressive. I was taught that was good persuasive form. So I just dont know how to marry that with tone policing when it comes to advocacy
I'm going to try to answer this but also I'm sleepy so maybe I'll get things wrong and fix them in the morning, but what it all basically comes down to is listening to what folks say instead of how they say it.
People in their natural states aren't going to always think about "persuasive form." That's great for, say, an essay, but if someone is simply having a conversation with you or talking about their experience, their words aren't likely to be polished and made to be easy to swallow.
A big part of advocacy work is listening to everybody you can. This includes folks who may not be as educated as you, have as many emotional regulation skills as you, people who have a more personal connection to the topic than you, or people who do not like or respect you. Any of these things can make someone less likely to use the neat, neutral statements your English teacher would like.
Especially when talking about their own oppression and/or traumatic experiences, people may yell, they may be accusatory, they might cry or scream or interuppt. Even more so if it's something they've been told to hush up about! These are often emotionally charged conversations, and it can be hard to try and remain neutral when it's something that's directly hurtful to you.
Tone policing is shutting these conversations down when they're no longer "civil."
Imagine you break your arm, and you call an ambulance to come and help. They ask you what's wrong, and you try to tell them but you're crying and maybe even shouting because it hurts. Imagine if the doctors refused to treat you because you're not telling them things logically and calmly!
I would say the first step would be to remember and keep in mind that not everyone will talk like in academia 100% of the time. Advocacy can absolutely involve reading papers, books, etc, but it's also about listening to personal experiences and having conversations, neither of which usually get peer reviewed, edited, and cut down to be "socially acceptable."
This isn't to say that persuasive form like you use in school is useless, because it's very helpful when you're trying to do something for an institution like academia, but it's definitely not always relevant IRL. People don't usually talk like they might write when given the time to reread, edit, etc. If I meant for my posts to be widely seen, or if I was presenting them, maybe I'd make them nicer etc. But I, nor anyone else, should have to be level headed and nice and palatable to deserve to be listened to, and they certainly shouldn't have to write things out like a college essay.
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🎵everything’s coming up ivar🎆🎇 what a morning of fortunate revelations for him! i know i must say this after like every chapter, but you have truly done such an exceptional job building up these characters and this relationship. there were so many neat little tie ins to other things i noticed in the story! and every other line, i was just struck by how well theyd come to know each other. i remember after the first time he broke a bone (and smth similar in ch36??), she thought something to the extent of “if i try to push him on this, ill just hurt him. if i don’t, then he’ll just accept this situation as immutable, so im at a loss.” but she absolutely could not miss in this chapter. after all this time together, she knew exactly what to say—and he finally felt like he could completely sincerely trust her! “Of course you wouldn’t leave, he knows you wouldn’t leave him” 😣🥺😭 he’s got a new certainty!! also cracked me up to read half the lines and think “you’re gonna give him a heart attack!!!” only to move to the ivar pov to find that he was in fact having a heart attack. i Love that for them💕 sub ivar is like inspired choice #17266 for this fic but damn!! does it go hard you do just an excellent job!
it’s been such a convincing and satisfying journey for them. theyre really doing it!! i feel like my child has learned to ride a bike. you have been cranking out bangers only since the hiatus so thank you very very much for another fantastic chapter!!!❤️(bit of a tangent but i briefly looked up some baseline historical symbolism for lavender bc i was so struck by freydis and the mint smell and i wanted to get ahead of the game and like the first meaning that comes up is silence lmao—somehow i don’t think that’s it so ill have to keep looking!)
OMFG ILY  ❤️
I’m so happy you liked the newest update! That morning was A Lot™ for Ivar lol, all positives but still, his mind tapped out halfway through Gǫfga and none of us can blame him, poor guy was a tad overwhelmed lol. And yeah, her not really knowing if she should push or not is a thing that happens a lot (that will happen a lot more in a certain AU lol) because there really is no way to navigate around that until there’s the established trust and vulnerability that they have by now.
I’m so glad the fact that he now holds on to the certainty of her promising to stay by his side was noticeable!
Omfg yeah, the inside of Ivar’s head anytime she started talking was probably just a loop of a very loud alarm going off lol
I’m so happy you like sub!Ivar, it is a blast to write him actually surrendering to his lover like that. I cannot see him any other way to be honest, especially with my priestess. She’s been thinking about making him hers for a long time: “Even after he has imprisoned you, it would be a lie if you said you didn’t wonder what it would take to have the Viking underneath you, or the different ways you could make his proud façade crumble."
Thank you so so much for your kind words, they mean so much!! I am so happy you have been liking this so far, and that you enjoyed the latest updates. Thank you so much, you wonderful person!
I answer your intrigue about Lavender under the cut by the way, if you’re interested. It is not as interesting as with Mint and Freydis I’m afraid, but if you were curious as to why Ivar lingers on it, and why specifically Lavender, under the cut is the (very rambly, but that’s expected of me by now lol) answer 😉
As for the lavender, I commend your resolve to get ahead of any plot twists, but surprisingly this isn’t one. Lavender is actually the scent she uses in her baths, and thus her skin smells slightly of lavender. In a deleted scene of one of Ivar’s PoV’s it goes into how he has started to relate this slight lavender scent with her so much that walking into their room already makes him feel like she’s there even if she isn’t; and in his newest PoV he just lingers on it because it’s just one more way she clouds his senses.
As for why lavender? Ah, that’s where my irrational need to research everything comes into play. Lavender is a flower that symbolizes Persephone first of all, and it was (according to some of the sources I handled) one of the flowers used in the temples in Ancient Greece, so for the Priestess it has a strong meaning regarding her faith (and her retracing Persephone’s myth in the Goddess’ role, but she doesn’t know that lol). Also, Lavender was fairly common, and it has a lot of medicinal uses, including relaxation and the such, but most importantly for this story, it is one of the many herbs used to heal burn wounds. Lavender was one of the flowers used on the Reader (and that once she was better she used on herself) after the Eleusis thing, and either consciously or not she uses it still, it is a source of comfort in a way.
Cause here’s a thing/headcanon of the Reader/Priestess that really means nothing but I always snuck into my work: she is a healer first and foremost (is the one thing across all AUs and all the places she has been that remains consistent, from the Roads to Greece to Kattegat and beyond, in Nostalgia, and Hope and Alatheia and all others), and her insistence on keeping plants close to her is mostly because she wants life to be around her in a land like Kattegat, yes, but it is also because she trusts/relies on the herbs and what she can do with them. Her own sword and shield, her own way of fighting, like Sieghild told her in the flashback of Ch 33.
At the beginning of her time in Kattegat, stretched to her marriage to Ivar even, she mostly just kept plants like Lavender, Poppy, Summer savory, Field scabious and the such, which are all used medicinally to treat burns and as antibiotics. She is more scarred by what the Byzantines did to her in ELeusis than she would like to admit, or that she ever would in her PoV, that’s why I like sneaking in comments by Ivar and Freydis in their PoVs about how she flinches when someone breathes too much life to a fire, or how when she feels unsafe (even when she is freezing her ass off, bc she is not used to Scandinavia’s cold) she sits far away from any fire. Keeping plants like this is her way of irrationaly wanting to keep herself safe if they ever do the same thing to her again, even if it is incredibly unlikely. Slowly, she starts to be able to let go of that, and really all that remains by now (~Ch 42) of those plants is the Lavender.
When she marries Ivar (and more importantly when she starts truly caring about him) she starts keeping plants like Comfrey, Chickweed, Buckeye, which are used for broken bones or for rheumatic/arthritic pain, or for pain general, like Willow or Elderberry. Freydis makes a point of it in “Until spring comes.”, of how she has been relentless on keeping both the common/accesible ones like Comfrey and Willow around, but has also secured plants from the East, like Ganglong (which was traditionally used for bone fractures). Again, the plants and her ability to heal is her own way of fighting, her own way of keeping the people she loves safe and protected, limited as it may be. Which, around Ch 31 she uses (in a different way) to try to keep the man she loves safe, which is by making the wreath of flowers and praying to her Gods.
And once she really starts settling into her life in Kattegat, even if she doesn’t realize it, she no longer keeps plants only for the use they may have, and brings things like that Marsh Violet (that as far as my limited reseach told me has no real medicinal uses). Her own way of making the world around her a little more hers is by putting plants around her and caring for them (she did this in the Roads a lot too), and with time the stubborn little shit accepts letting this world make her a little theirs too by caring for plants like that one.
You are on point that I use plants and symbols a lot, most of them you know about by know. Ivar/Hades and snakes, Melinöe/Freydis (especially once the revelations of Ch33-34 happen, which is when the Minthe parallel comes to an end and she embraces the role of Melinöe in the Priestess’ eyes now that the lies are discovered) and howling dogs, Hermes/Galla and hawks/falcons. I used Snowdrops a few times I think, towards the beginning, which was a little nod to Freyja’s myth and the Priestess’ threading the line of it, because I like the parallels between some of Freyja and Persephone/Hecate (which by some sources could sometimes be intertwined, or one and the same, much like Melinöe and Persephone).
Anyhow, sorry for the long-ass answer, I hope it doesn’t dissapoint. I really cannot put into words how happy it makes me that you’d care enough about this story to search the meaning of lavender, thank you so much for your support, and for the undeserved love you keep showering me and Nostalgia with! Thank you so much sweetheart!
Sending you my love!! ❤️
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tillman · 4 years
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Hi, it's Valentine, back with another essay on Lancelot again. I’m deranged and you all have to accept this. Anyways this ones been a long time coming mostly because i'm lazy and only now had some free time to sit down and delve into so many sources to find quotes and proof for the main claim of this post: Mr Lancelot du Lac is an autistic man. Hes also trans and gay and i have proof for both of those (one is literally not even subtext) but those are for different essays. 
Anyways to start off with some smaller bits I wanna at least mention the history connecting autistic people with changelings or fae. The idea of a normal seeming child being “replaced” by something not entirely human to explain neurological differences has been around for a while and can tie in with a lot of autistic people's feelings of being different or completely disconnected from those around them. Thematically all of this ties in with Lancelot’s narrative of being “stolen away” by a fae as a child and coming back different. He grew up in a realm of fairies, and Chrétien de Troyes in Knight of the Cart, which may be the first story about Lancelot, simply calls his mother who in later texts grows to be the Lady of the Lake, “a fairy.” Another smaller point is Lancelot tends to go nonverbal when he gets extremely upset which is neat! One bit i can’t get a quote for (vulgate pdf when) is after Galehaut’s death, he locks up completely and his mother, the Lady, who is wonderful and perfect, explains the situation for him. You could also look at all the times Lancelot runs off into the woods and refuses to speak for a while for more proof of that. He does this a lot. It's just a thing people expect from him.
Anyways, I wanna talk about Lancelot’s inability to comprehend emotions or communication in general. Please, I've been dying to talk about Lancelot’s issues with communication for days. God he has them and I can relate so hard. Covering the dutch prose first just look at the story of the hart with the white foot. A lady comes to court talking about how whatever knight will get the foot of his hart will get her hand in marriage. Lancelot actually ends up missing the lady speak about what will happen, and after hearing Kay fail to do it, declares hell go after this hart instead. "When he heard this account / he spoke impetuously: / "By my faith, I fully intend / to follow this little dog.” He doesn’t think it though, he doesn't really know what he's getting into, Lancelot is just a yes man who likes doing knightly deeds. He has to in the end be rescued twice by Gawain, one from his fucking up while hunting the hart, and the other by accidently leading a lady on thinking that he’ll marry her, something Gawain negotiates Lancelot out of. Moving onto not the dutch prose since i just spent 3 hours reading up on it, let's move onto le morte.
Malory pulls a lot from the french sources, and i'll talk about what he left out in a sec cus . god. But I mostly want to touch on his relationship with two of the people he’s closest to, those being Guenevere and Gawain. Guenevere is a very weird case considering her literal emotional manipulation of him in moments he is very vulnerable and just how not great she is to him in general but his take on their relationship is honestly pretty easy to pin down. Lancelot honestly idolizes Guenevere, as his queen, as his lady, as a person who showed him basic respect when he first came to court. He has the mindset that a knight should love and do anything for his lady, and after Guenevere knights him really without any thought to what she was doing, he decided he would do anything for her. The vulgate does a better job dealing with their relationship through the mediator figure of Galehaut who is a whole other bag of worms, but Guenevere mostly indulges him for the fun of it. She sees that he’s a young knight who’s willing to die for her and uses this to her advantage politically and for other reasons. This constantly goes over Lancelot's head, until towards the end of le morte where he finally realizes how much he suffers for this relationship while she doesn't even care, “This is not the first time, said Sir Launcelot, that ye had been displeased with me causeless, but, madam, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I endure I take no force.” He resigns himself to put up with a relationship he admits is actively hurting him because he believes it’s love, and as a good knight, he should love his lady. His relationship with Gawain is less dicey, and more him constantly not getting Gawain’s implications. He admits to his love of Gawain only during their war saying in the vulgate, “But he will never be able to hate me so much that I stop loving him." Like. bold of him to just ignore all of Gawains previous advances until theyre in a life or death war. Bro accept your homoerotic rivals and move on already. 
Another casualty from Lancelot not realizing emotional connotations until too late is Galehaut, who literally dies of longing over the knight. Like Elaine of Astolat but worse because Galehauts just genuinely one of the best people in Arthurian literature. He doesn’t realize until too late that the person who actually loves him is the one willing to do anything for him, and ends up almost killing himself over Galehauts death. I have too much to say on that and it's not relevant to anything in this essay but god know i yearn over them all the time. 
Other thing is Lancelot has a lot of struggle with mental health anyways,  he really just truly is traumatized and that’s kinda fucked. He has a lot of problems with depression and poor coping mechanisms. I mean his main coping mechanism is falling asleep instead of dealing with the issues. That's not completely on topic but it's a big mood and ties in vaguely and also i don't have any other way to end this. There are way more bits to add but i am falling asleep at my desk and need to get lunch before it gets too late. Anyways this is probably not great i wrote this in 4 hours directly after waking up at 12 and spent 2 of those hours reading literary essays on the dutch romances. GOOD NIGHT . 
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actual-cat-human · 4 years
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Communication is Key (Ch 4)
(For those of you who haven’t seen the cartoon, Lydia is able to travel to the Netherworld all of he time with BJ, so that’s what’s happening here to be clear. Also, very angry/self loathy bug man ahead)
You kept waiting for a text from Lydia, something signaling it was ok to come home. Nothing. Finally as it was starting to get dark, you’d been gone for several hours at this point, you decided to just go back to the house.
It was empty and quiet, save for some quiet music from the attic where the Maitlands were. There was no note, no sign of Lydia at all. You were getting a little worried now.
You checked her room, nothing there either. You figured you should ask the Maitlands.
“Excuse me?” You said knocking on the attic door. It opened quickly revealing Barbara’s smiling face
“Hi y/n! What’s wrong?” She said quickly noticing your worried expression.
“Well, weirdness with Beetle-“ you stopped yourself before finishing and Barbara nodded, “and I think Lydia was gonna deal with it but she’s MIA?”
“Netherworld!” Adam chirped from his place further in the attic.
“But I thought that’s the land of the dead?” You said looking perplexedly at Barbara.
“It’s BJ” she shrugged “he has a house/hideout there that he brings Lydia to sometimes. I imagine that’s where they’ve disappeared to.”
“Oh ok.” You said. “That’s why she hasn’t text me.”
“Yep” She agreed. “I’m sure Lydia will be back soon enough.” You nodded.
“Thanks for clearing that up for me.”
“No problem! Need anything else?” She asked cheerfully?
“I’m ok, thank you Mrs. Maitland”
“Oh, please call me Barbara”
“Or Babs!” Adam chimed in again.
You smiled at that.
“Thanks Babs” you have her a little wink “Thank you too, Adam” you called out loud enough for him to hear.
“You’re welcome!” They both said, more or less in unison.
You gave a small wave and headed back downstairs to wait... and wait. And wait. 
Eventually you gave up and decided to go to bed. Hopefully Lydia would be back in the morning, but at this point you weren’t sure.
-In the Netherworld, earlier that morning-
Lydia sighed as soon as y/n left. Beetlejuice was stupid at the best of times, but this has to be the one time he used his brain? And what made it worse was he used it incorrectly. She’d figured out what his issue was, because clearly he was into you so it wasn’t like him to be so weird. He was into anything that moved- pulse or otherwise frankly- but it didn’t seem like his usual lust. Not to mention even his usual attraction didn’t cause this much anger and bitterness on his part.
No, Lydia had cracked the case: he thought your little decorative ring (that you’d bought for yourself for no reason) was a wedding ring. More specifically a wedding ring that bound you to someone deceased. It wasn’t uncommon for widows or widowers to wear their ring on their right hand- and the Netherworld had adopted that as a way to show a living person was engaged or married to the dead, or vice versa. The stupid demon thought that you- who’d never even met a ghost before- were married. That was why he acted so weird. He was a lot of things- vile, gross and lecherous to name a few- but he would not be the ‘other guy’ (unless the couple was cool with it of course). That was apparently where he drew the line. He was clearly angry because he liked you- in some way at least- and he thought you were taken. It would explain all of his comments and outbursts.
So now Lydia was tasked with trying to convince him, the most stubborn being she’d ever met, that he was wrong. She was prepared for almost anything, but she knew it was going to be a goddamn battle. She began speaking the moment she materialized in the netherworld
“Beetlejuice! Do you seriously think-“
“NOT NOW LYDS” he snapped, not looking up from the massive pile of papers and folders on the table in front of him. Not only was the table buried in papers, but there were several piles strewn about the room of crumpled and ripped pages,
“Seriously Beej? You know they’re not-“ Lydia took a few steps towards him but he burst up out of his chair before she could finish, spilling more files onto the ground
“EITHER HELP ME FIND OUT WHAT FUCKING CORPSE SHE BELONGS TO OR GET OUT” He yelled, finally looking at her. His hair was so crimson it looked like it was on fire- actually part of it was so it was fitting. He looked even more disheveled than usual, his eyes were red- possibly from crying- but he also looked even more homicidal than usual.
He picked up a file and flipped through it violently before shredding it and lighting it on fire. Lydia sighed, and started sifting through the papers with him quietly. The files were all cases of a deceased person being married to a living person. In the past, it wasn’t uncommon to go through with a marriage if one party died close enough to the date of the wedding. There were other cases of course, but this was the most common. Regardless of the why of the marriages there were still thousands- maybe hundreds of thousands to go through.
Beetlejuice would explode with rage every few minutes, yelling and tearing up whatever file he was holding at the moment. Lydia knew better than to try and talk to him when he was like this. Each outburst seemed to wear him out slightly at least.
“WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT” lightening struck the file he was holding
“ITS LIKE THEYRE PURPOSELY HIDING IT FROM ME” shredded the paper, with each little piece bursting into flames
“NOT THEM- AGAIN” this file was thrown on the ground and stomped on for several seconds.
After a few hours- yes hours of consistent rage on his part and quiet observation on Lydia’s part, his outbursts grew less and less frequent. They had barely made a dent in the stack of papers, but Lydia could tell he was running out of anger to fuel him. She quietly spoke,
“Not all people who wear rings like theirs are married to someone who’s deceased Beej” there was a tense moment of silence as the gears turned in his head. His lapsed rage seemed to return ten-fold.
“FUCK.” He shouted eyes shining angrily. “That’s why I can’t find ‘Y/n’ in these files!! They’re obviously married to a demon like me!!!” He dramatically cleared the table with a snap of his fingers. And by cleared he lit all the files on fire and they quickly disappeared into ashes.
He thought for a moment and with another snap a neat stack of files appeared on the table. There couldn’t be more than 15 total as marriages to demons were very uncommon, and each file was substantially thicker than any of the previous ones. Beetlejuice jumped on them the moment they appeared- literally. He landed hard on the table and Lydia sighed.
“If I can help prove that Y/n isn’t married to anyone- dead, alive or otherwise- will you calm down and talk about this?” Lydia said a look of mild distain on her face.
“JUST HELP. Words are hard...” he pouted a bit, flipping through a folder and Lydia had a sneaking suspicion he hadn’t even read any of the previous files, he was likely just looking for your picture in any of them. She was reaching her limits of compassion.
“Just fucking sit down and let me look.” She snapped, and BJ begrudgingly slid off the table and pushed the stack of files toward her.
“Fine, but you just want to help so you get all the credit!” He pouted, but Lydia elected to ignore him in favor of taking a breath so as to quell her desire to strangle him.
“Let’s see....” she looked at the top file “oh look it’s us.” In bold dark letters the file read:
LYDIA EMILY DEETZ
&
LAWRENCE BETELGEUSE SHOGGOTH
There was a large red stamp across the whole front of the file that clearly read “ANNULLED” She waves it in front of his face teasingly and Beetlejuice’s hair turned a bit blue at the tips.
“You don’t need to rub it in Lyds. I already feel shitty enough.”
“Ok, ok.” She slid the file across the table and away from them. Several names- none of which she recognized. Nothing even remotely close to Y/n.
“What’d I tell ya, Beej. They’d never even met a ghost before the Maitlands.” He grabbed the files from Lydia like a petulant child.
“But...” he looked through them- holding some upside down and squinting at them.
“Bee.” Lydia gently pushed the papers down and gently grabbed his hand. “Look at me- they’re not married, they’re not even seeing anyone right now.”
He looked up at her, the red in his hair fully drained. For a moment, Lydia thought his hair was turning back to green and she hoped he was excited that he had a shot with you. She mostly hoped he was ok because she really didn’t have the energy to deal with anything else. Unfortunately, it wasn’t green. She realized that, much to her chagrin, it was just a vibrant mix of blue- sadness- and yellow- shame/embarrassment. He had tears forming in is eyes.
“Oh god, they probably hate me.” He was fully crying now and he grabbed onto Lydia. She sighed and hugged him back, gently stroking his hair. This was going to take a while.
It did take a while. More than a while. It took hours. Every time Lydia thought he’d finally recovered, Beetlejuice would spiral into another episode of self loathing and embarrassment, punctuated by his sobbing fits and tragic monologues about the cruelty of life.
“Not only did I make an ass of myself I'm DEAD- why would they even want to consider being with me.” He wailed
“They seemed pretty interested- I couldn’t understand why, but you have good qualities.” Lydia tried to lighten the mood, but it once again wouldn’t work.
“Oh god slash Satan- what if they think I just want to fuck them!?” He shrieked at one point. Lydia looked at him quizzically
“Isn’t that what you always want from people, Beej?” He remained quiet for a minute, his hair going lemon yellow. “Aw Beej, you like them that much already- you don’t JUST want to fuck them?”
Beetlejuice hid his face in his hands
“Shut up Lydia” he choked out
Not fifteen minutes later he was back to crying
“They barely even know me!” He said brokenly
“Well yeah, you’ve acted like more of a weirdo than normal around them. Just fucking TALK to y/n. Be yourself for two minutes. They seem to like you even with all your weirdness.” Lydia said- at this point she’d dealt with every one of his self loathing arguments at that point. He was still crying like a distraught Disney princess however.
“You couldn’t love me- so they definitely won’t.” He said softly. He was quietly crying in the corner. Lydia frowned,
“Beej, I do love you- you’re family. You know perfectly well the whole green card marriage thing was a messy mistake from the beginning.” Lydia said. “And just because I don’t love you romantically doesn’t mean y/n won’t.” He sniffled a bit but said nothing.
Much later, she had had enough. Beetlejuice hadn’t spoken in ages and she was over it.
“This wouldn’t have happened if you just talked to y/n in the first place.” Lydia said looking at the curled up lump of blankets on the floor that was her best friend.
He had cocooned himself under several layers of striped blankets at some point and was munching mournfully on a bag of chocolate covered crickets. At least he wasn’t wailing and cursing God/Satan anymore. From her position on the couch, she couldn’t see much of his face or hair to judge what he was feeling or thinking.
“Beej. They’re clearly into you, once again you’re overreacting and making an assumption.” Lydia sighed. She was completely exhausted. Time passed differently in the Netherworld, sure, but she hadn’t eaten or slept in... she didn’t know how long. She waited a moment for a response. When she got none she decided it was time to do something,
“Ok, enough pouting. I need to go home and be a human, sleep and food and all of that, and YOU” she had stood up and yanked the blankets off of him with a flourish, “are going to stop being a Beetlebaby and talk to them like the 500 plus year old adult that you are.”
“Babes...” he whined pitifully and moved to grab the blankets back from her like a pathetic child “c’mon....” he looked up at her, puppy dog eyes fully trained on her. His hair was a yellow and blue swirl still, but some dark green was starting to come back. He was just reluctant to face you again.
“No.” She said firmly, tossing the blankets over the couch and out of his reach “Sort this shit out. You’re not the ‘Ghost with the Most’ you’re the ghost with the most fucking drama.” She glared down at him.
“Now get your undead ass up and take me home.”
🖤💚🖤💚 had to make it just a bit more angsty lol  be prepared though bc SERIOUS FLUFF is coming- message me if you want/need anything!
Love and bugs,
H
Other chapters:
https://actual-cat-human.tumblr.com/post/189136179658/beetlejuice-fics
@aethersghoulette
@artistxalex
@imtherain
@tete-a-tay
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mmmmalo · 5 years
Text
This is a (meandering, non-exhaustive) overview of Homestuck’s use of
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by which I do not mean examples of psychological realism in a character’s words and deeds, but rather the various means by which characters’ psyches are expressed outside of themselves. I wish to elaborate on how thoughts, feelings, and desires may find expression in the environment, in the medium of the story itself, and in the form of other characters.
That’s perhaps a little vague, so here’s a ready example of what I mean: brainghost!Dirk. He talks with Jake, but since he is a construct of Jake’s mind, Jake is essentially talking to himself. Brainghost!Dirk is an alienated medium for voicing Jake’s own thoughts, irretrievably distorted through its intermingling with what Jake thinks/wishes Dirk would say (not unlike a puppet). I am claiming that this mode of characterization is not a unique to Jake; the blurring of inner and outer voices is omnipresent throughout the story.
Or, rephrased: what I hope to show is that a great deal of Homestuck is haunted with brain-ghosts, of one kind or other.
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An early example of this kind of storytelling in science fiction would be the film Forbidden Planet (1956). The film contains a pair of conflicts which eventually reveal themselves to be one: the scientist Morbius wants some space explorers to get off his planet, and an immense monster (pictured above) appears during the night to attack the explorers. Morbius, it turns out, has been experimenting with a machine capable of turning thought into reality. So when Morbius sleeps, his dream of driving off the trespassers materializes in the form of beast that forcefully enacts the wish.
The beast is declared a “monster from the id”, the “id” being a concept borrowed from Freudian psychology, indicating the part of the mind responsible for the unfiltered generation of impulses, of urges. In the film, this passing mention of psychoanalysis precedes the revelation of Morbius’s link to the beast.
Homestuck hints towards its own mixing of thought and reality with a device similar to Morbius’s dream machine: Sburb.
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A snapshot of Dave’s Sburb client (1519) shows that the final subprograms launched during the games installation make reference to terminology associated with Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. The terms suggest that Sburb interacts with the ideas in the kids’ subconscious minds (archetypes) and brings symbolic representations of these ideas into conscious reality (manifests the ideas). The game alters the means by which reality is constructed. As with Forbidden Planet, a major result of this is id monsters.
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When John slips on a staircase, he flips out (left, 560). And when he nearly launches himself into the abyss with the Pogo Hammer, he has to take a nap before he has calmed down enough to continue (center, 637). Immediately following both moments of vertigo, massive ogres appear. The eventual fight with the ogres begins after John looks over the edge of the platform above his house, into the abyss (right, 662).
All of this suggests that Sburb is reacting to John’s emotional state (fear) to produce in-game content. The game functions as a waking dream.
It should also be noted that Sburb provokes the reactions it elicits. Karkat once mentioned a nagging feeling that the game was mocking him by giving him a planet covered in the candy red blood he had spent a lifetime attempting to hide (2301). Karkat’s paranoia seems to be correct here, and moreover applicable to the cast in general -- John’s house was likely placed atop an immense spire /in order to/ bring John’s dread of falling into sharp relief. The suspicion can be substantiated with a few related motifs.
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The story provides two likely origins for John’s fear of heights: his own fall from the slime pogo as a child (2626) and the death of Nanna, which John believed resulted from her falling from a ladder and being crushed by a book (52). What’s more, Sburb’s invocation of the Fall of Man (Adam and Eve being cast from the Garden of Eden) via biting into an apple hints that there is an allegorical significance to John’s more literal fear of heights. 
We can apply these patterns to other characters in an attempt to learn more about them. LOLAR being covered in ocean suggests that Rose is afraid of water, with the likely cause of Rose finding Jaspers dead and washed up on a riverbank (presumed drowned). Dave speaks openly about how his sword fights with Bro left him anxious of metal sounds (7749), meaning the grinding gears of LOHAC were a personalized hell for Dave. Jade’s first imp manifests in response to the sight of a yellow aurora (2998), inviting the reader to investigate why that image invokes a fear response.
But we won’t get to into all of that, not for now at least. Let’s take a step back.
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For my reading of the imps as manifestations I’ve been leaning heavily on a piece of film theory devoted to the effects of sequential images. The sequence above constitutes two observations. One, that by this arrangement the viewer will infer the old man sees and reacts to the middle figure. Two, that the viewer’s impression of the old man will change based on the content of the central image, even if his expression is the same. Is he smiling at Nepeta or warm embrace Marvus’s armpit? The answer may influence your interpretation of the little smile.
The neat thing about montage is that the interrupting frame need not bear any obvious relation to what precedes or follows in order to be subject to a causal reading. Moments that occur sequentially can be read as triggering one another, even if what follows any particular moment appears to be a break rather than a continuation.
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Example: There’s a moment where Aranea walks into Jake’s dream, and brainghost!Dirk immediately starts razzing Jake about his attraction to the alien girl and threatening to give him a boner. The scene is interrupted by Jack committing a series of gratuitous murders. We then cut back to Jake, and bg!Dirk is now teasing him about his dirty thoughts.
DIRK: You have got to be kidding. Did you seriously just think something THAT dirty? DIRK: You must be doing this on purpose to spite me now. I mean, just wow dude. That was x-rated as fuck. 
JAKE: (No no stop. See youre talking about it and now i cant help it!) JAKE: (You are psyching me into having dirty thoughts get fucking lost you interloping brain douche!!!) 
DIRK: Don't worry, I'm gone. It's like a goddamn peep show in here and I feel like a sleazy piece of shit watching this from a dark corner of your mind. DIRK: You have a graphic imagination, English. I'm kind of impressed. 
JAKE: (Shut up theyre just thoughts its not even like im trying to have them THEY DONT MEAN ANYTHING!)
The ostensible joke is that bg!Dirk is exaggerating or outright fabricating his account of Jake’s thoughts in order to hassle him. But by way of montage, one can infer that we /have/ seen Jake’s dirty thoughts, in the form of Jack’s display of overwhelming bloodlust. Violence is superimposed over the sexually explicit. 
Whether the scene literally takes place in Jake’s mind is secondary (though such a reading would explain why Jake’s brain ghost is even aware of Jack) -- the use of montage allows Jack’s actions to function as a /metaphor/ for Jake’s thought.
Another example of Jack functioning as a murderous/libidinous avatar would be the death of Mom and Dad. At their little tea party, Dad spills some wine on Mom’s clothes and declares that she must disrobe immediately (so that Dad might launder the garment). Mom calls the aromas wafting from his pipe sensuous. The two clasp hands and declare that all they need is eachother. Then they die! The joke is that while Bec Noir is ostensibly an interruption to date night, he also functions as its culmination, with murder acting as substitute for the sex act.
The link between violence and sexuality is perhaps a hard sell, but I hope to convince you that the reading holds merit. Let me emphasize that the very act of Mom and Dad holding hands was itself sexually loaded.
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I owe to HS liveblogger elfstuck the insight that John’s linear 3 card sylladex is a reflection of his short attention span. Consider how John’s role as a game character means he is thrown all around his room, back and forth, as the player figures out what to make of the situation. If you ignore the fourth wall, you’re left with an extremely distracted person, who attention flows easily from one object to another. Accepting the object-in, object-out nature of John’s sylladex and the resulting shenanigans as a metaphor for this, it would follow that the sylladex in general can offer an abstract representation of thought.
In passing, I can mention how the enormity of Jake’s sylladex (it cannot even fit on the page, and contains an object that exceed most players’ size limits) would imply that despite evidence to the contrary, the boy likely has a big brain (and perhaps its being offscreen suggests Jakes own unawareness of much of his own thought). Dirk’s comment about avoiding items that are difficult to shoehorn into his mnemonic schema (4535) could be read as a difficulty maintaining information that doesn’t fit into his personal mental models. The sylladex becomes a metaphor for the mind that requires interpretation.
Under this mode of thought, the moments when Jade’s pictionary modus fails to correctly interpret her drawing become akin to a mental slip-of-the-tongue. For the Tanglebuddies to be misread as enmeshed hands implies an association, in Jade’s mind, of horny Squiddles and clasped hands. John affirms the association much later by miming Tanglebuddies as he attempts to grapple with the question of whether Jade and Davesprite are sexually compatible (5294):
JOHN: how do things even work if you marry a sprite?
JADE: what do you mean 
JOHN: i mean... JOHN: ok, he has a ghost butt, for one thing. 
JADE: uh JADE: so 
JOHN: a GHOST BUTT, jade! 
JADE: SO WHAT IF HE HAS A GHOST BUTT!!!!! 
JOHN: i'm just saying... 
JADE: WHATEVER YOURE JUST SAYING, JUST STOP SAYING IT! JADE: and whatever youre trying to gesture with your hands there, stop doing that too!
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It should also be noted that before launching into her “daring dream”, waxing poetic on the miraculous union of the human and the animal with her hands clasped in wonder, Jade successfully captchalogued the Tanglebuddies (796). And more to the point, Jade’s pose in reproduced during discussions of cherub (5961) and leprechaun (6007) reproduction. Hand-holding becomes representative of an (oft-sexualized) union, underlining the euphemistic nature of Mom and Dad’s post-contact demise.
The next example of using montage to communicate thought requires a little more buildup.
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There’s a gag in Rose’s introduction where the reader tells Rose to play with her writing journals, and scoots the journals under the bed and retorts that she would only do that if no one were watching (220). At first glance, the moment scans as a minor meta joke in a story filled with meta jokes -- but the trick is that Rose does not /know/ herself to be a video game character, her every movement controlled and observed. Rather, she /believes/ this to be true -- the joke about being watched establishes that Rose is paranoid, as will become apparent in the hostility she assigns to Mom’s every action.
The command prompt and narration are themselves brain ghosts of a sort: the voice deployed in them is always linked to the present point-of-view character. The insults that precede character introductions ( “Zoosmell Pooplord”, etc) become marks of anxiety, an intrusive proclamation of what the kids at times think of themselves (and/or what they think others think of them). “Nice time management skills, sweetheart!” becomes a bit of self-deprecation Rose as she procrastinates, which Rose experiences as having been voiced by some objective observer who judges her deficiencies.
A blurred line divides characters from the voice at the back of their head, belonging to the (presumed) omniscient, omnipotent author-god. This is why avatar!Hussie is dressed as Calliope when he is killed by Lord English. Both Calliope and Hussie are a voice in Caliborn’s head, and thus both present apparent obstacles to an unmediated self.
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The left panel (3219) foreshadows the right (3358). Gamzee is not being declared the objectively most important character in Homestuck. Rather, Gamzee is declaring himself /to have been declared/ the most important character in the story. The line establishes that Gamzee believes himself to be in a story (with an author!) and that this author has declared him paramount. Furthermore, “fondly regarding creation” is an modus operandi of Problem Sleuth’s Godhead Pickle Inspector. Applying that turn of phrase to Gamzee’s actions further establishes that Gamzee believes himself to /be/ the god-author declaring his own importance. So it should come as no surprise that 137 pages later, Gamzee outright proclaims himself to be the god(s) he worships.
Going back to montage, it becomes interesting that this snapshot of Gamzee’s megalomania is inter-cut with the creation of Jadesprite -- the moment that dead!dream!Jade merges with Bec, forming a unity with a deity not unlike the unity Gamzee claims with his mirthful messiahs. The interweaving would suggest that Jade and/or Jadesprite experienced analogous thoughts of megalomania upon the moment of ascension.
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This would be a good point to mention that not only imps and ogres, but trolls also function as manifestations for the people they impose upon. Karkat is not only an interruption here, but also a continuation. He points out that Jade’s self-loathing, that she cannot safely distance herself from the qualities of Jadesprite she finds distasteful. This is precisely why Karkat ends the conversation by telling Jade to turn off the fourth wall (which divides the self!), as well as the reason he imagines Jade making out with herself: Karkat is on every front presenting the prospect of union with oneself.
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The notion of trolls as manifestations first emerges clearly when Rose and Dave receive their packages from John. As they finish reading John’s letter, each is suddenly contacted by a troll and greeted with the command “Answer.” Critically, by word alone it is ambiguous as to whether the command refers to answering the troll or the letter. And as it turns out, these answer occur simultaneously: Rose and Dave’s responses to the letters are embedded in the subsequent conversations. 
Rose receives a letter poking fun at her pretensions, claiming that her attempts to hide her affections for people are futile. In response we get Kanaya, who imperiously proclaims her disdain for Rose, only to suddenly change tact and explicitly seek Rose’s friendship, an entreaty which the oft paranoid Rose accepts. Dave receives a letter imploring him to let go of his insecurities and express himself. In response we get Tavros, the very picture of insecurity, who is fixated on the idea of making Dave shit himself (as part of an ‘emotional constipation’ motif that follows Dave). And Dave complies, in a sense, by way of the quasi-ironic gay treatise that compels Tavros to block him. Each conversation addresses the issues laid out in John’s letter.
Examples can be found throughout the comic. Equius remarking that he talks to Gamzee every day (2220) establishes that Gamzee is regularly haunted by the thoughts of domination that Equius voices -- both in the literal and metaphorical sense. Erisolsprite referring to Dirk as a rock 2oliid piiece of a22 and then calling himself 2ociiopathiic for even thinking something so callous (5516) expresses a conflict already present in Jake’s own mind, echoing the frustration with his own dirty thoughts expressed by the argument with brainghost!Dirk. Feferi’s pronounced enthusiasm for the imminent apocalypse should cause you to question Kanaya’s seemingly neutral resignation towards the end of the world, since Feferi manifests for Kanaya (2328). And so on.
The person being trolled is always being confronted with thoughts or feelings or memories already present within themself. Alien contact always doubles as a brain ghost haunting.
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Another example, with some buildup: Karkat invokes the phrase “PERFORATE MY BONE BULGE WITH A CULLING FORK” to express his contempt for Vriska, and on subsequent pages we see Feferi pointing her culling fork at a cuttlefish (2181), as if to suggest that the creature symbolizes the bone bulge. Fast forward to Kanaya, who has just gotten through a conversation with Vriska and finds herself haunted by Eridan, who keeps going on about his romantic desperations and insisting (correctly) that Kanaya’s crush on Vriska is itself romantic. That his notification erupts from an image of cuttlefish held at Kanaya’s waist adds to the air of yearning, as though her own bulge is rumbling. The scene is capped off with a double entendre: “its hard and nobody understands” is playfully poignant jab at an inability to understand one’s own desires (among other things). 
And Homestuck devotes a lot of attention to desire.
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It’s long been acknowledged by the fandom at large that Kanaya’s attraction to Light players functions as a joke on the proverbial moth-to-the-flame. As reconciliation with the fire destroys the moth, there’s a morbid tinge to the attraction, as though it doubles as a death wish. And the wish is granted -- when Kanaya dies in Homestuck, she dies to light, either from Eridan’s wand or the laser blasts unleashed by HIC. Even the death of Kanaya’s lusus pertains to light -- the matriorb ripped from her innards is shaped like a miniature sun, as if to establish some loose link between the notion of motherhood and the incandescence Kanaya eventually achieves.
This can be generalized into a principle wherein lusii (and the circumstances of their deaths!) can functions as analogies for the desire of the wards.
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Vriska, for example, desires execution. When offering Terezi a flimsy apology for crippling Tavros and proxy-murdering Aradia, Vriska offers to slam her head against her desk in penitence. This moment should be read against Vriska’s addiction to breaking 8 balls, and leaving the broken shards lying around as though she’s inviting the “bad luck” of stepping on them. It /is/ an invitation. Vriska seeks love via violent retribution against herself. This is why in the right panel, Vriska’s blood-spattered head is juxtaposed with a broken 8 ball: the blood came from Spidermom’s execution (which characterizes Vriska’s desire), and motif of 8R8K H34DS connects the moment to Vriska’s idea of apology.
Like Kanaya, Vriska (to a degree) seems to structure her love life along these lines. In the words of @azdoine:
like ppl are actually out here writing Vriska as the top as if her entire Act 5 character arc isn’t about bratting out until Terezi has no choice but to punish her
“oh noo, I, the thief of light, stole all of your luck, and made the coin land on the scratched side! now you have to kill me! but I’m probably going to get away with everything, because you don’t have the guts to stab me with that sword of yours!!!!!!!! if only there was somebody, like you, who could prove me wrong!”
EXTREMELY SUBTLE THERE, VRISKA
Vriska’s approach to wooing Tavros also revolves around baiting execution:
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The scene: Tavros leads a horde of imps and ogres into a mystery cave, the top of which is adorned with kissing lizards and an alchemical symbol. Tavros is putting a puzzle of a frog together, but Vriska has already pieced together the puzzle: making a frog universe is, in part, a cipher for personal reproduction. The Ultimate Alchemy is making a baby! And as Vriska says, “real gamers cut to the chase. They power through all the nonsense and go for the gold.” So she brings Tavros to LOMAT and makes the moves on him.
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Tavros is equated to a treasure chest by the repeated use of framing and Vriska is GOING FOR THE GOLD, like a WINNER. Tavros later reaches into the same chest for his lance before heading off to attempt to kill Vriska -- affirming that the treasure Vriska seeks here is Tavros’s “lance”.
This setup was suggested by the conversation accompanying the kissing salamanders: Vriska gives Tavros a map with a big red X, saying he should take his legion of imps through the gate and go defeat his denizen. The gate actually leads to Vriska, but she isn’t lying. She is positioning herself to be Tavros’s final boss. The imps are manifestations of Tavros’s pent up rage (much of which was generated by Vriska’s harassment), and Vriska wants Tavros to take that anger out on her. Hence the later panel which uses Vriska’s boots to place a big red X directly over her groin, making explicit the implicit goal of Tavros’s trip to the windmill X-gate.
This pursuit of love through violent comeuppance may have something to do with Vriska’s bitter disappointment that ghost!Aradia did not seem to hate her.
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An intermission/introduction of sorts, as we bridge from one discussion of desire to another: did you know that Michael Bay’s Armageddon (1998) structures itself in part around Freud’s Oedipus complex? I say this in total sincerity.
The plot: a meteor the size of Texas bears down upon the Earth, threatening armageddon. Luckily, a crew of rough-and-tumble oil drillers are ready to fly into space and split that mother in two. Oh HELL yeah.
Except, wait, the movie’s actually about family drama: Bruce Willis finds Ben Affleck sleeping with his daughter Liv Tyler; Willis proceeds to chase Affleck around the oil rig with a shotgun, bang bang bang. Not Allowed. The Protective-Father-Hates-Your-Boyfriend dynamic is presented as an Oedipal triad of sorts: although Tyler is not literally Affleck’s mother, she performs the mom-function of “forbidden object of desire” -- and Willis opening fire is equivalent to the castration said to await trespassers onto maternal soil.
The above reading is buttressed by jokes: Armageddon appears to function within an implicit dream machine, such that the characters’ thoughts and fears can become manifest in their environment. So when it comes to pass that whenever  Affleck climbs into a hole (heehee), a pipe breaks (hoohoo), and suddenly everything goes boom, I read that as Affleck reliving the consequences of boning Tyler, packaged in such a way that the Freudian fear of castration is more explicit. (The relevance of Oedipus to the proceedings adds some humor to Steve Buscemi declaring the entire disastrous situation a “Greek tragedy”)
At any rate, after some shenanigans, Willis comes to accept Affleck’s claim to his daughter and confers the deed, as it were. Willis gives the young couple his blessing and they get married. Hooray!
Except, wait, the movie’s actually about the perpetuation of the oil industry: the dream machine was declared at the beginning of the movie when a petty street-side argument triggered the first barrage of meteors. The meteor the size of Texas (aka Dotty) is triggered by conflicts that haunt the central cast -- namely Willis, who enters the film hitting golf balls at a Green Peace boat. On a metaphorical level, Dotty is a golf ball the size of Texas, striking directly at the Earth instead its self-declared representatives. There’s a certain irony here: the film lampshades that the men who are destroying the world have been tasked with saving it.
The family drama folds into the environmentalist angle: Liv Tyler is a symbol of the earth (which gets drilled). This is the joke when Affleck is bouncing animal crackers around on her belly like she’s host to the Savannah: she kind of is! It’s no coincidence that Willis confers ownership of the oil rig at the same moment that he offers his daughter’s hand in marriage: the motifs are being discussed simultaneously.
But enough of all of that: back to Homestuck.
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Armageddon’s simultaneous casting of Liv Tyler into the roles of earth and mother offers a glimpse at the interpretive possibilities made available by Hussie’s statement that Homestuck is in a way a synonym for Earthbound (an RPG in which “homesickness” is a status ailment which can be cured by calling your mom). Stuckness or boundness can be deployed to communicate a sense of longing for “home”.
A good chunk of Homestuck is built upon feelings of nostalgia, taken to mean a sort of intense separation anxiety with the past. John speaks about this when he watches Con Air with Jade – John wants the movie to feel like it did when he watched it with his Dad long ago, but the feeling from when he was a kid is gone. This upsets him. Moreover, John’s freakout starts at the moment Cyrus puts a gun to the bunny’s head (5286): Con Air itself is partly about Nic Cage trying to return to the life he lost when he went to jail, and ‘putting the bunny back in the box’ is a metaphor for the attempt. Cyrus, in threatening the bunny, is highlighting his role as a force preventing things from going back to how they were. Thus, if we are to believe that John is responding to the movie thematically, Cyrus confronts John with his own inability to go back to a happier past – his inability to go home -- and this recognition is met with anger.
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In making the leap to the psychoanalytic motifs, it helps to recall the part where baby!Dirk responds to being born by cracking open his ectotube and crawling back inside. Dirk, who aspires towards his “ultimate self”, illustrates here that he envisions his ascension as a return to the ‘essence’ of Dirk from which he (and all other iterations of himself) arose, as represented by the ectoslime. Baby!Dirk gestures at unity with his ectoslime/essence by crawling back into the place from which he was born, which I’m basically claiming is a “return to the womb” on a symbolic level, or at least that this is a useful parallel to draw. (A related motif to think about: Dirk decapitates himself by sticking his head inside a box, which as per Con Air symbolizes the place you wish to return to)
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[Hella Jeff sez: “i took (my pants) off because i was banging your mom for a minute there..... AND NOW YOU ARE BANGING HER”]
Castration becomes unavoidable as you try to relate all of this to Dave, whose occasional references to banging hot moms are part of an ongoing reference to the Oedipus Complex. Critically, the complex is not /just/ about wanting to bone your mom, but also fear that your dad will chop your junk off if you do. The breaking of Dave’s sword on the rooftop is a realization of this fear (yes, we’re doing the “swords are phallic” thing). But Dave has no mom that he knows of, so what gives? 
The answer is in the way Bro inexplicably breaks the record emblem on Dave’s t-shirt, as though he has introduced a fissure into Dave’s very identity. Life with Bro has made it very difficult for Dave to be honest with himself, which is to say, Dave pictures Bro’s abuse as having divided him from an ideal “true self”, which can feel emotions without all the anxious ironic detachment. I mentioned before that seeking unity with that from which you came is a “return to the womb”. This is the sense in which the Oedipal mom attraction becomes relevant: the return to the past is sexualized. The ‘home’ Dave wishes to return to is /himself/, and in this sense Dave is his own hot mom (which is related to how often Dave compliments his own looks, as well as the above gif suggesting Dave’s boner – he is literally/metaphorically “attracted” to himself).
(Incidentally: this model of desire, in which a broken subject attempt to become whole again by seeking out its lost half, is basically the concept of the soulmate, as laid out by Plato. Cherub reproduction turns the metaphysical pursuit of one’s lost half into a plot-level objective)
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John’s entry item (apple) was linked to fear embodied in a childhood trauma (the Fall), and the same can be said of Dave. Hatching from the shell that contained your primordial goop (Dirk) is analogous to being violently separated from yourself (Dave), which is why Dave’s entry item (an egg) hatching coincided with Bro slicing the meteor in half: the abuse that divided Dave from himself, his “castration” by Bro, is simultaneously the “birth” that separated Dave from his “mother” (which is also Dave).
The general idea is that birth = self-alienation = castration, insofar as all are depicted as modes of being separated from oneself.
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The broad motif of ‘being separated from oneself’ can be very useful for identifying brain ghosts in unexpected places. Take for example, Roxy’s fenestrated planes: when they are introduced the narrative is quick to tell us that if someone were caught half in/out of one of the windows when the power cuts out, they would be sliced in half. By the rule of Chekhov’s gun, this introduction should mean we should eventually see someone get gorily bisected by the window, but alas we never do. 
Instead, when Gcat warped the panel away, trapping Roxy between the windows, we were shown the image of a bisected horse puppet in Dirk’s apartment, This signals that Chekhov’s gun has indeed gone off. But rather than splitting a body, it split a soul: Meenah’s introduction follows the sequence because Roxy has generated a shadow of herself, a doppelganger. This is not without precedent: an earlier portion of this post was devoted to exploring the fourth wall as a mode of self-alienation. Roxy’s panel mishap can be considered part of that pattern.
If Meenah functions as an extension of Roxy, all of her actions can be read as bearing some relations to Roxy’s own latent thoughts and desires. Prior to the epilogues, for example, Meenah imploring John not to give her the ring seemed to be yet another Fuck You to the late Chekov: the issue never comes up again. But a psychic link between Meenah and Roxy would suggest that John broke his promise to Meenah by giving the ring to Roxy, and that whatever motivations compelled Meenah to make her request in the first place would also apply to Roxy.
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Decapitation is yet another mode of self-alienation, and thus can be construed as a mode of birth. Hence the image of Lil Sebastian hatching from his shell of taxidermied man meat. That’s a motif unto itself, but what I wish to call attention to is the match-cut from John’s broke body to Jake’s broken tower. The juxtaposition collapses the images into metaphor, such that Jake’s loose dome in the woods becomes a decapitated head -- an appropriate addition to the pumpkin patch it rests in, given all the Headless Horseman jokes. We can look to Dirk for for another example of a headless horse-man of the house echoing the head: for a guy who idealizes decapitation to such a degree, it is striking that Sburb aims to provoke him by reattaching his beheaded apartment to its underlying units.
Houses act as metaphors for heads, then “Homestuck” could also interpreted as “head trapped” -- like the title emphasizes confinement within one’s own mind. Such a reading offers up Failure to Launch and Arrested Development (posters on John and Jane’s walls) as alternate synonyms for Homestuck, as each satirizes (or outright mocks) potential failure states in the process of inter-personal and mental development (ie “growing up”). Like Earthbound, both lean on a sense of homesickness in characterizing despondency, as though characters are haunted by the needs that defined their childhood -- or else find themselves needing that childhood itself.
But collapsing nostalgia into infantile regression is far from the only way to approach the house/heads equation. One might read the transformation and growth of houses with Sburb as metaphors for expanding the mind. One might infer that the choreography of events within houses can map out thoughts like dancing bees. One might take the metaphor as a foothold for interpreting the significance of the Sburb logo being at once a house and a window. \I have my own thoughts about Homestuck’s brain-ghost haunted house-minds, but for now, I only hope that this document has raised some interesting questions -- and ideally, that the interpretive approaches I’ve described might be useful in seeking answers.
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starsreign · 4 years
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☆ /  @irnmaidn​ :  🌠 give me all of them !!! 💖            SEND 🌠 && I'LL RECOMMEND A PLOT FOR US TO TRY OUT !!  || accepting !!
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i added a few recently too so like...this gonna be long sry....
☆ AHRI.   i mean...would cass like to meet a sexy fox spirit ?? because she could if she wants !! she’s curious && fairly cordial but she’s very deadly && mysterious && just kind of comes off with an air of uncertainty whether u should trust her or not && i think that’d be fun with cass cause we kno she loves dangerous mysterious women with a taste for biting wit. but in my tangled verse it’s similar to her canon -- she’s a fox spirit && has been alive for so long, ever searching for where her people like her are && where she came from. so perhaps cass could run into her && help ahri post series ?? or she could simply be along for the ride with mysterious && selfish reasons she won’t say but either way it’s always interesting to think about when her cloak finally drops && cass gets to find out about the fox ears && nine tails ;’) also she’d probably flirt with cass sry not sry
☆ NEEKO.   iiim admittedly still working on her tangled verse cause she’s a chameleon but pls love my lesbian chameleon girl she deserves the world tbh ?? she’s extremely sweet despite her entire tribe being destroyed && killed && she FELT every single bit of it && felt her people fade away. she’s pure sunshine but she WILL fight when she has to, when there’s no other option or when people with good sho’ma are endangered. she’s looking to make a new tribe for herself now -- made up of everyone, not just oovi-kat, so she really takes in everyone who she can && who is willing. she can shapeshift by extending her sho’ma to other’s sho’ma which is a sort of spiritual essence && she can borrow their appearance, gain current emotional state && recent memories to better camouflage as them && immediately kno friend from foe so i think it’d be rly neat tbh for cass to encounter that ?? plus with neeko she wouldn’t have to open up too much or have to fight to express her emotions or voice them since neeko can feel && sense && taste emotion -- they have colours && tastes to her. she can also split herself into two, sending out a clone of herself while she becomes invisible && has a lot of floral / plant based magic as well so i think she’d rly vibe with ur cass portrayal !! but tbh she’s very chipper upbeat && kinda rapunzely personality wise -- she’s just very curious about the world && wants to learn everything since she was from a magical tribe that isolated themselves from the world, so for hundreds of years she’s literally ONLY known her tribe && their home && it’s EXTREMELY different from the world ?? she’s so used to not physically speaking && just extending sho’ma && reading emotions from each other, so she struggles with communication && that can frustrate her sometimes, but she’s knows emotions && she can see past like faking things or past all those walls she’s got up !! it’d be neat...theyd be....cute tbh... i rambled too much but i just rly love neeko sm n if u wanna kno more about her or any of these u can ask too !! also...not for nothing but neeko rly rly loves n swoons for strong badass ladies !!
☆ KINDRED.    kindred is literally just...y’kno...death, the grim reaper whatever u wanna call them !! they’re as old as the concept of death && started as one man who cleaved himself in two so he’d have a friend -- they understand the deep pain of loneliness despite having each other now because they were born from loneliness. they’d sense that from her && i think there’s plenty of times she could have met them, when death was near to her or around her && theyre certainly not entirely happy about her resurrection. they’re easily translatable into any verse but they are very ethereal && magical && love to play with people. so anything considering death. near death or perhaps just running into them if cass happens near a particularly brutal bandit robbery about to take place on the road that ultimately she wont be able to stop even if they tell her about it :’)
☆ HANA.   hjdksmd u kno i love these already n all we’ve talked about aa !! but also i’d literally be up for anything i love them sm already !! but like ?? soft moments ?? cass getting to come to her kingdom ?? getting to pilot the mechs n getting to just uuhhhh live her life be free n be happy ??
but also :eyes: hehe what if we also have a plotline where hana finds out about the moonstone thing n meets her while she has the moonstone n tries to talk her down :’) possibly mushy stuff they don’t wanna say could come out too mayhaps :thinking:
☆ AMITY.   she’s a little witch !! in her tangled verse she’s still a witch but she && her family are more in hiding about their powers && school so they’re all hidden away but amity’s family is a very, very noble family with a lot of money && power -- which extends to magic too lol. but it’d be Neat to meet cass n like amity looking up to her ?? she’s a lot like cass tbh, pretentious mean girl type who is rly rly icy n mean n sassy on the outside but she’s soft inside she just CANNOT show weakness n she oof is rly oppressed by her family n standards set for her n she ALSO has a crush on a sunshine girl who happens to be human. n she reads to younger kids n helps them out she’s softe secretly...just has a lot of pressure on her -- her parents wont let her hang around witches with lesser talent either. they’d get along i think after like tension but she’s just a lil teen witch n needs a good strong role model but she could also help cass out with the whole magic thing ykno ?? 
☆ PERFUMA.   ooooh they’d be cute !! perfuma is just...so sweet n positive n !! i’d love to interact with her in any of ur she.ra verses or i could absolutely try to fit her into a tangled verse but i’d absolutely want to keep her plant powers but that’d be neat with ur cass n her powers too !!
oh !! or aaalso, concept: we could have perfuma interacting with chrys !! n like when her n cass start working with the princess alliance n her helping them out n giving them insider info even if shes nervous n its dangerous n just perfuma helping her with that n giving her pep talks about her being brave ?? helping her with fashion stuff, helping her adjust to life where her sister can’t help as much ?? that’d be so cute bhadjksbh
☆ AKALI.   hehehee akali n cass would be hilarious at first i swear it -- they’re both headstrong, stubborn && sassy tbh. she’s from an order of acolytes that try to keep the balance of the spiritual / magical realm && the outside realms; she was raised in it && her mother && father were higher ups && very powerful in the order -- her father died in an attack led by her master’s friend on the order && they had to flee && try to remake with smaller ranks when she was very young. she succeeded her mother as the fist of the shadow but could not vibe with the way her master wasn’t taking action like she wanted to -- she wanted to restore balance in her way && she wanted to spill blood to do it because that’d be the only way to do it, so as an adult she just peaced off to do it her own way. && tbh that could fit in with a tangled verse -- just in the shadows, keeping the balance of magic unseen to most. she’s a trained assassin && she can literally throw three kunai && pierce three different hearts while in the midst of a smoke bomb like she’s insanely good -- she is also tiny n has some amazing muscles on her arms back && has very visible abs n she sexy n she kills me daily !! but they could get along ?? she does some magic but she was never the best at it tbh but depending on where in the timeline they meet it could be interesting ?? like s1 would be neat for her to meet someone like akali ?? another strong woman fighter but she also comes from a place that praised women’s strength instead of putting it down -- buuuuut she was hiiiighly ignored by her own mother in favour of another neophyte growing up so....ykno...Mood right ?? it stings a lot -- she saved everyone from a corrupted tree spirit n had the girl she looked up to spit in her face because she lost her leg n blamed it on akali && then her mother praised the girl instead of akali despite the other kids telling her what akali had done n singlehandedly dragged them to safety n she was like around nine or ten or so at the time... but it’d be cool if they met s1 n got to kno each other n maaaybe akali joins them on their journey since it has a lot to do with restoring the magical balance of the world n they could use a master assassin but also...the angst with cass taking the moonstone n the conflict akali would face about having to oust her cause ykno...shes fucking up the balance n thats her ykno....entire purpose riiiip
☆ WIDOWMAKER.   IDK BUT OOF i love widow. i haven’t thought about a tangled verse or a fantasy verse but like uuhhh something about being a french noblewoman married to a freedomfighter but ending up being brainwashed by some magical sect or talon but they’re part of zhan tiris crew or whatever ?? might be neat. she killed her husband && she’s just a little bit possessed now && a ruthless killer. so maaaaaybe....her trying to stop them on their journey to the dark kingdom ?? but her brainwashing starts wearing off the more she’s away from the source tbh -- but also, she’d be on cass’ side when she has the moonstone n honestly that’s very powerful, she’d have a very powerful ally to keep her on track && help like tell her she’s doing great because in the end she’s on zhan tiris side && she can probably see her the whole time && would be working to help get her back to power. also up in the air whether she ends up regaining herself later on && helping cass escape or whatever but she’d feel intensely guilty yikes but anyway i think it’d be honestly rly rly interesting n i’d love to do something with this if u’d be up for it bhdajkmd n like i said we can talk about any of these if u want too !! 
☆ BENSON.   i have zero ideas for this right now because his series is just so far removed from tangled....it’s a post apocalyptic universe where there’s extremely large animals some of which can talk n want to destroy humans who all live under the surface mostly except the ones who try to survive on the surface. TBH u’d love it...i think u’d love wolf specifically too ?? i dont wanna spoil anything but yeah it might be something u might enjoy ??
but also like mlm wlw solidarity pls ?? he’s a pretty carefree but smart gay teen, he’d get along pretty well with her n play off her iciness cause he’s just like that ?? he started off just caring only for himself n his bug buddy n just thieving a lot but like got a lot of character development -- but i guess he could be a thief in tangled verse ?? n like grow out of it or she could show him there’s better ways n stuff ?? idk...
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larksinging · 4 years
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AND. any ideas you wanna talk about for either your ke oc OR that other oc you mentioned developing the other day?
i still really like your idea of making this character the buster to villanelle’s tramp, with the whole “you were the BEST and then you got SOFT”. we’ve seen a lot of other twelve members and assassins be kind of >_> at villanelle, but where are the assassins who thought she was Pretty Cool? 
anyway ive debated back and forth, but i was thinking of someone who... maybe doesn’t exactly enjoy the kill the way like, s1/s2 villanelle does, but who is able to disconnect and take pride in her work enough to be pretty comfortable. maybe someone who really distinctly separates work-life from personal-life and doesnt date the people INVESTIGATING her, excuse me. i was gonna say i didnt have as much motivation for this character but typing this up now i do
she is loosely based on a wof character i have named veil, but i’m also developing veil and. debating how much that actually should influence this character? hmnn
also gotta pick a fun nationality. not sure if she should be another russian, or
and then on the other day i’ve been mulling over a selkie oc because i Just Thinking They’re neat. my basic idea is just a riff on the classic story -- she fell for a boy who promised to marry her so she came to land, but when it finally came time he bailed and stole her pelt and ran. so she’d be arriving to denny as a literal scorned bride, because sometimes you gotta. i figure that’d be a fun little miniplot too, finding her coat. the kind of thing to help build dynamics once she clicks with someone
ive been thinking of making her someone who like... tries really really hard to be nice and pleasant but its mostly fake to get people to like her, since deep down shes a very bitter and misanthropic person. probably with at LEAST a wariness of humans, given the givens. of course that might be a little similar to the ke oc, and you know since i play a lot of characters with similar tropes i try to make sure theyre differentiated a least a BIT so we’ll see
ive also considered picking some kind of at least slightly historical setting for her. old west selkie? 40s? 90s? i dunno. something fun. 
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dbssh · 4 years
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🖊!
hutch and aja and casey and victor are all trans and all have very different views on gender and identity both in regards to themselves and their world as a whole and its! neat.
hutch is very much in the nonbinary lesbianism of it all with the "my tie to womanhood is that i love women" and the "my gender is most aptly described as lesbian" and all that good shit, as well as feeling like.... idk the only way i can say it is "for so much of my life i was forced into a very narrow idea of womanhood and while i now recognize that gender is more complex than what i was made to be, i feel alienated from the idea of womanhood because of it, yet i still feel as though i can never not be a woman because of how deeply ingrained the idea of womanhood is inside of me." and theyre one of the easiest for me to navigate bc they align the most with my own personal ~gender experience~. they also have a cool dissociation trick where they just refer to their younger self as a completely different person and just cut themselves away from it entirely because they did not like her very much and they do not want to be her anymore or ever.
aja is much more of the whole "whats a gender" thing primarily because shes just. kinda built like that. she was never really fond of being reffered to as a man and the only reason she uses she/her pronouns and calls herself a woman is because of the two options presented to her, it was the more palatable one. She doesnt really align with any gender identity and just kind of assumes womanhood because its the easiest thing to explain herself as. She also just. doesnt really think about it.
caseys feelings are a lil complicated because her parents raised her without the expectation that she should be anything? they never really referred to her as a boy in the first place and pretty much from day one gave her the freedom to pick and choose who she wanted to be. She did a lot of exploration when she was younger and when she was around seven or eight she landed on "girl" because it felt the best to her. unlike her parents though her gender identity is really important to her and her perception of herself. for most of her life she was never questioned and never had any reason to see herself as "unusual", but when shes a teenager and shes going through the double whammy of Puberty and Having Peers at the same time its. not fun for her. she has friends and family who support her unconditionally, but its still rough dealing with awful classmates and the general Terribleness of society at large.
victor is kind of in the same boat as hutch wherein he was raised in an environment where nonconformity was unnacceptable and he had to struggle pretty hard to be able to be himself. the only person in his life who knew and was okay with it was henry, and they had a whole plan where they get married to please their families and then run off to london or some other place and completely change victors identity so he can do as he likes. that like, didnt happen because uhh henry died but yeah. hes gotten to a point where hes pretty okay with himself though, and of these four characters hes the only one whos ""fully"" medically transitioned. hes also caseys go-to for Gender Advice because she feels like he understands her stuff a little bit more than her parents do and also shes more comfortable talking to him about things that are embarrasing or just. hard.
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reesewestonarchive · 5 years
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chapter nine / rem belongs to @forlornraven / masterpost / mature content
Nakoa wakes to darkness. He finds out easily that he’s in a vehicle; the rumble of tires beneath him, the loud, high-pitched squeal of rubber on asphalt.
The hard, unforgiving feel of metal against his shoulder. He opens his eyes, but it makes no difference. He sees slivers of light, but nothing really. Nakoa blinks, once, twice, and, when he turns over, finds himself grateful for the lack of light, because just the slivers of daylight peeking through are enough to send spikes through his brain.
“You awake?” He jolts at the sound of a voice, relaxes when Rem adds, “Hey, it’s just me.” His words are near slurring, though. Nakoa spins his head to look for him, nervous, worried, but it’s impossible to see in the darkness. “I—” Rem huffs a frustrated breath. “Can’t see a fucking thing—where are you?”
One of Rem’s boots finds Nakoa’s ribs. He mutters an apology, then says, “Hang on—” before he reaches down, his hand skirting along Nakoa’s back until he reaches Nakoa’s hands, clasped behind him. “Hold still.”
The ties release after just a second, and when Nakoa pulls them up, he asks, “How the fuck did you get out of them?” The plastic rubbed his wrists raw, even as short as they were on.
He can hear Rem’s grin in his voice when he speaks, though, and his presence makes the dark, unforgiving trcuk a little less foreboding. “You think I leave the motel without a knife?”
Nakoa would laugh, if he could. Instead, he reaches a hand out, trying to find Rem in the dark. “Where—” he says, before he makes contact with Rem’s knee. Relief settles in his stomach, and he reaches out for Rem’s hand, squeezes it. Feels better already when Rem squeezes back.
“You okay?” Nakoa asks. “That looked.” Bad. Terrible. Nakoa sees it no matter where he looks, Rem lying on the asphalt like that.
“Mm.” But his voice sounds far away. “Nakoa.”
“Yeah.”
“What the fuck?”
Nakoa should have known, knows he should have. That he should have said something to Rem, but… “My father’s—” The word tastes bitter on his tongue. “…in imports.”
“Drugs,” Rem says, immediately. “Fucking hell, Nakoa.”
It’s how Nakoa got started. It’s why he kept going with them. Michael’s into more than just weed, though, and therein lies the problem. That Nakoa knows. Michael had beat him, when Nakoa found out, and has since used his strength to his advantage. Try as he might, Nakoa can only throw a punch if he’s catching someone off guard, if they can fight worse than he can.
Michael doesn’t fit the bill, and he’s always carrying.
“I didn’t have a choice!” Nakoa says. “And I thought. Maybe, if I wasn’t there… why would he waste a bunch of bullshit on me? Men, resources.” Why would he follow Nakoa across the country? Nakoa, of all people?
“You stole from him,” Rem says. His voice comes out flat. “Nakoa.”
“You don’t get to play like you wouldn’t have done the same fucking thing,” he says, tone sharp. He pulls back from Rem, smells blood on his hands as he wipes them down his face. “How often have you stolen whiskey?”
“It’s legal! You wanna compare that to coke?”
Exhausted, suddenly, Nakoa says, “I really need you to not fucking judge me. I stopped, okay? He didn’t notice, and even if he had, what was he gonna do?” Michael hates Nakoa; always has. A disappointment, and that isn’t even considering Rem. That’s not considering the fact that Michael knows, and always has, that Nakoa beds men as often as he does women. It’s been like this since Nakoa was born, his father distant for work, and Nakoa eager for his approval and stumbling on his work at thirteen.
“He couldn’t do anything about it then,” Nakoa says. “But now what’s stopping him? His kid went missing. No one’s gonna care if I end up in a ditch.”
“Don’t fucking joke about that.”
Nakoa shuts his mouth, though. Taps his fingers on the metal on the floor. He says, “I should have told you.” He wants to apologize; can’t.
Wishes that he could just… touch Rem. No expectation. Find comfort in his touch.
He holds his hands to himself, and neither of them speak.
Eventually, the van slows to a stop, and doesn’t start again. Rem gets to his feet, says, “I got this.” Nakoa hears the knife unlatching in his hand. “Stay back.”
“Don’t being a knife to a gun fight, you—” Nakoa sighs. “Just—get behind me.”
“I’m not going to let you—”
“He’s my father,” Nakoa says, his voice cracking. “Let me deal with him.” He thinks about clocking Rem on the head again, but if he got knocked out that bad, he might already have a concussion.
Nakoa doesn’t say, “I want you safe.” He doesn’t say that it means more to him that Rem is okay, that Rem can go home. Maybe Rem thinks he’s worthless, but he’s Nakoa’s entire world.
The door slides up, and Nakoa blinks against the blinding light. Rem stands behind him, body heat warming Nakoa’s back. Michael’s behind his men, chatting on the phone, but Nakoa doesn’t move, not until Michael says, his voice almost bored, like he’s not still devising a plan. “Come join me for dinner.”
Nakoa blinks. “Pretty fucking dramatic entrance for dinner.”
Michael rolls his eyes. “You could show a little respect.”
Already disappointing his father, and they’ve been reunited for a matter of minutes. Nakoa holds his gaze and says, “You wanna kill me, go ahead.”
Behind him, he hears Rem make a small, distressed noise. “Nakoa—”
But Nakoa’s tired of living in this hole, in his father’s shadow, too afraid to move beyond Michael and his wants. Too afraid Michael might follow through on his threats.
“Just come. We’ll discuss what I plan to do with you at dinner.” Michael sighs, rubbing his forehead. “I keep forgetting about the carry on.” Nakoa catches his attention shifting to Rem, wishes it wouldn’t. “Hm. Looks like he’s the reason they’re free. Someone remind me we need handcuffs.”
When Nakoa doesn’t go forward, Michael sighs, says, “Someone grab him, please. Leave the other.” He sighs. “And tie him up this time?”
One of the men hauls Nakoa from the truck, by the hair, the shoulder. Nakoa swears, grips at the guy’s wrist and tries to walk with him, can’t. Holds tight and tries to lessen the pressure on his hair, anyway.
He watches as Rem crawls from the truck, eyes wide with fear, brandishing his knife. In comparison to giant men with handguns, he looks like a small, terrified child. Nakoa knows better than to call out his name, so he doesn’t.
His chest aches, and a half-strangled, “Rem—” escapes from his throat, just as the man dragging him pulls him into a building. Before the door shuts, Nakoa catches sight of Rem lashing out, the sound of a gunshot, then… Nothing.
Nakoa finds himself dropped at Michael’s feet, scalp burning, Michael staring down at him with something akin to disinterest. “I wish things could have gone differently for you, Nakoa.”
This is nothing like the Michael Nakoa remembers. This man is… different. Distressingly calm, quiet.
Nakoa prefers him screaming. Calm breeds terror in Nakoa’s chest, and he doesn’t care for the way it burrows in and refuses to leave.
“Up.” It’s not a request. “Dinner.”
Tossing a scowl back at the man who’d dragged him, Nakoa rubs his wrists, follows Michael through the warehouse.. He needs to stay around until he can get back to Rem, anyway. After that… who cares? Michael can do whatever he wants with Nakoa, as long as Rem gets out of this safely.
Michael leads him into another room to a table sitting alone, like one in the movies, covered with a tablecloth, a single lightbulb illuminating the table and nothing more.
With a swallow, Nakoa takes his seat, still rubbing his wrists. Michael sits in the other chair, and, neat as can fucking be, he undoes his napkin and lays it across his lap.
“Nakoa,” Michael says, and now he sounds more like himself, like the Michael Nakoa remembers. “You are a pain in my ass, you know that?”
“So the pleasant, calm druglord, that’s just for your employees. But your son, all bets are off.”
Michael’s gaze is sharp, piercing, and Nakoa wishes he’d kept his mouth shut. “Ungrateful. You know,” he says, already lifting the lid from his dinner, “you really don’t understand the sacrifices I’ve made for you. The resources I’ve wasted finding you.”
As if Nakoa asked for it. As if he gives a shit about whether Michael goes broke. As if he cares, for half a second, what Michael loses. He sits back, crosses his arms. Waits.
“I can see you’re going to be difficult, so let me lay this out for you.” He pops a bite of dinner—steak, because of course it is—into his mouth, and chews. Slow. Nakoa knows the tactic well, terrify them with their own imagination. “You’ll come home with me.”
“Over my—”
“—and we can leave your friend here to fend for himself.”
“Next.”
Eyebrow raised, Michael cuts back into his steak. “I could just as easily kill your friend, you know. He hardly seems like a man someone will miss.” At Nakoa’s expression, Michael laughs. “Don’t tell me you think—” He shakes his head. “You’re a fool, Nakoa.”
Better a fool than a prick, Nakoa thinks, but he doesn’t say so. Michael married a gentle woman, one he can scare into submission, and he thinks Nakoa’s life choices are worth judging. “Next option,” he says, through gritted teeth, staring hard at the table, at the knife marks in the wood. Imagines what it might be like to see those on his skin, instead. If he’d even life through it.
“I could kill the both of you. You’ve already been missing for how long? None of the authorities would think twice about a couple of stupid, runaway queer boys ending up dead. Two of them…” He clicks his tongue. “Well. Is that even a tragedy worth the news cycle?”
And Michael wonders why he ran away. Nakoa lifts his gaze, reluctant, up towards Michael’s face, hates the giddy expression on his father’s face. He’s a bastard, and Nakoa knows he’s always enjoyed his work a little too much, but he’d hoped maybe, underneath it all, there was something that made him human. Now he’s not so sure.
“Easiest way to tie up loose ends, don’t you agree?”
Nakoa wants to tell him to fuck off, but Michael won't hesitate to cut him with the knife on his plate. Never has before. Never hesitates, once he makes his mind up. “Why the holdup?” Nakoa asks, but his voice shakes. “Sounds like you got it all figured out. Why not just kill me now?”
He’s losing his patience, Michael. The joy drains from his expression and he returns to his dinner, almost bored. “Unfortunately, I still think there might be some use in you. I could use you to make an example. I think using you as a living example carries more weight, don’t you?”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
Pointing a fork to Nakoa’s plate, Michael says, “Eat. It’s the last time you’ll get the opportunity in a while.”
“What about Rem?” Nakoa does his best to hold his voice steady, to keep Michael from making any more shitty comments, but it still comes out wrong.
“I think I’ll be doing the world a favor, taking him out.” He reaches for his drink, then sighs. “Nakoa, please. If you don’t eat, I’ll be forced to take other measures.” Like what, Nakoa wonders, but doesn’t ask. Sighing, Michael sets his fork down and says, “Nakoa. It’s in your best interest to work with me.”
“Too fucking bad.”
“I can make your life a living hell, you know.”
“You already did. What can you do to make it worse?”
Michael raises an eyebrow, says, “You think you’re in love with the man outside. Not sure where you got that, but fine, I’ll play along. You’re right in considering yourself worthless, so I understand I can’t use you against yourself.” With a cock of his head, Michael leans back in his seat. “I might be able to use him yet. Suppose I better put in the call to keep him in one piece after all.” He pulls a walkie talkie out of his shirt pocket and switches it on. “Hold my previous order,” Michael says, glaring at Michael. “Plans have changed. We’re going to have a little fun.”
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roaringheat · 5 years
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I wanna hear more about your OC if you dont mind???
oFC i dont mind holy shit yes
Putting it under a read more cause i got really invested and typed too much. Also, a warning: this is pretty dark and involves a lot of violence.
So like the oc i was talking about his name is Morgan! He’s in the group of ocs where the story starts in the 1920s. Morgan is kinda well known at least in his town. He’s a radio show host and since radio was big back then he was doing pretty well. He keeps himself looking neat and formal as much as possible to keep a good image. Anyway, he’s married to a guy named Barrett. Barrett is actually like…one of 2 characters who this particular story is based around instead of Morgan but Morgan is still very important. Thisll be from Morgan’s pov so I won’t get into all of Barrett’s stuff too much in this ask cause this would turn into a damn essay but like lmk if you wanna hear that too. but yea so Barrett is into photography and Morgan gets him the first ever version of the polaroid as a gift. So Barrett goes out into the woods to take pics and fucking goes missing. Morgan is obviously distraught. Barrett shows up at their shared house a whole year later with this person named Muriel. I won’t get into her too much rn either. Morgan is just overwhelmed with happiness and emotion for the first few days he doesnt realize that Barrett has come back different. Against Muriel’s advice, Barrett tells Morgan right away all the shit he went through including the whole being infested by a supernatural plant and getting all these intimidating abilities and some other fucked shit. Morgan is understandably shocked and the next couple days he gets more and more scared. He starts noticing all the ways Barrett has been acting different and he’s convinced that Muriel and this plant thing have basically killed Barrett and took his body and are now trying to trick him. He gets more and more freaked and starts getting jumpy and having trouble keeping his radio show host persona in public. He grows a bit cold towards Barrett but keeps up the weak facade with him in fear that he’ll be killed by whatever is in Barrett. Barrett is confused and a bit hurt but figures Morgan is just dealing with the shock of him coming back. Morgan then hires a hitman to kill Barrett out of extreme stress and paranoia and not being able to kill him himself cause even though he’s convinced that Barrett is gone, thats still his husbands body ya know. Barrett isnt like “possessed” like Morgan thinks btw lmao i probably should have mentioned that earlier. The hitman finds Barrett’s and Morgan’s mutual friend Virginia and threatens her to give them info on Barrett since Barrett also told her everything too. Muriel just so happens to be with Virginia at that time but like out of sight so she hears all of this before attacking the hitman to get them away. She also has some inhuman stuff about her so that spooks that the hitman off. Muriel tells Barrett and he’s kinda in disbelief. He goes to Morgan’s office in their house in hopes of finding him and when he sees he’s not there, he snoops around and ends up finding letters that basically confirms that Morgan has turned on him without his knowledge. So like he is very immediately set off by finding out the love of his life is basically doing shady shit behind his back and betraying him. So the next week or so, Barrett stays out of sight and just watches him. But like Barrett is also very stressed about the situation and the watching him thing turns more into intentionally scaring Morgan out of anger by growing the plant that hes infested with in places he knows Morgan will see. He thinks itll scare him into leaving and never seeing him again but when Morgan starts seeing those flowers and immediately knows he’s being pretty much stalked, he does kinda the opposite and his already high paranoia turns into desperation to the extreme. At this point, he’s losing it. His office is a wreck, his usually neat appearance is now choatic, he’s slept very little the past couple days, and he keeps going into these paranoid ramblings on his radio show. He convinces that same hitman to go after Barrett again and the hitman is actually able to find Barrett by using the vines and flowers that he had grown in various places to scare Morgan. The hitman gets him while Barrett’s looking for Morgan and stabs him several times making him collapse. The hitman reports back to Morgan saying thats Barrett’s dead but Morgan is so desperate that he makes the hitman go back and bring back a piece of his body for proof. The hitman goes back but doesn’t find Barrett and is just like “oh fuck” and decided that this supernatural shit is out of his range and fuckin ditches. So Barrett is still alive cause one the several things he gained from that flower plant thing was being harder to kill. Morgan starts getting nervous with how much time has passed and is like frantically looking for something to calm himself. Then he glances up at the door way and sees tons of that damn plant that Barrett can grow from himself and control just like moving across the floor and walls of the hallway outside and into Morgan’s office and he just like watches in terror until Barrett walks in looking almost as unhinged as Morgan but in a different way. I have this whole scene planned out almost word for word as a dramatic fight scene where theyre going back and forth the whole time but ill spare you the dialogue and just summarize it. but basically Morgan is so convinced that the “real” Barrett is dead and that this monster took his place and so he just goes into a frenzy and attempts to shoot him with this gun he had gotten. but like obvs Barrett just fuckin yanks it away with the branches he controls and grabs Morgan with them. He approaches him thinking that Morgan is now pretty vulnerable but as he’s talking Morgan frees an arm and stabs him in the neck which he uses as an opening and lunges forward. This whole fight takes place and it ends with them both in pretty rough shape and Barrett on top of Morgan attempting to strangle him but the adrenaline from the anger is wearing off and it just kinda processes for him that he’s killing his husband. Morgan has given up for the most part right around this time and there’s more dialogue but Barrett ends up going through with choking and killing Morgan. Barrett is in incredibly rough shape and after getting himself together, he goes off to find Muriel and they both ditch town that same night. The police just find the crime scene the next day with like every surface covered in branches of pink marigolds and Morgan left dead on the ground and it never gets solved and Barrett is pretty tormented by it, even 80 years later
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fredheads · 5 years
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fics you'd like to see for your birthday?
THIS IS SO SWEET!! I DONT NEED A BIRTHDAY FIC I HONESTLY DO NOT FROM ANYONE. BUT HERE ARE SOME THINGS I THINK SOMEONE SHOULD WRITE 
artie finding out that fps dad beats him in this whole drama and then fp moves in with the andrews family cuz artie tells him he’s never letting him go back to the trailer park as long as he’s alive might be nice… 
idk why im craving angst recently but fp with alcohol poisoning…. especially if fred finds him unconcious on his trailer floor…. especially if theyre not speaking or they just got back on speaking terms…. OR the au where freds a rockstar and hes overdosing on oxycodone and washing it down with alcohol and either mary finds him unconcious at the bottom of their stairs in their big mansion or on the bathroom floor or in the bathtub with the water running OR fp finds him only freds married so theyre not a thing yet and theres pining…. YKNOW just a mess. 
teen fred having a fat massive crush on tom keller and trying to proposition him at a house party (bonus if fp pining is involved) 
only @halcooper make this happen but back here at home needs a new chapter…. 
A GAME OF SECRETS AND SINS AT A PARTY WITH ALL THE YOUNG RIVERPARENTS AND SECRETS COME OUT AND SHIT GETS MESSY. IF PEOPLE DONT AIR FREDS DIRTY LAUNDRY AND MAKE HIM CRY YOU’RE NOT DOING YOUR JOB….. I GUESS THEY COULD BE ADULTS TOO TBH BUT THEY ALL KNOW EACH OTHERS SHIT CURRENTLY THEYRE NOT EXACTLY BEING SUBTLE WITH THE SHENANAGINS. truth or dare works for this too. 
i think a lot abt all the parents sitting in the hospital waiting room/alices living room/freds living room whilst fred was in the hospital after being shot and maybe its the first night and they got kicked out when visiting hours ended and theyre all just talking about fred and ….. cool. 
NO ONE HAS WRITTEN FRED/FP SHERIFF HANDCUFF PORN AND I THINK THATS RUDE. BONUS POINTS IF FP LOOKS KINDA FAT IN HIS UNIFORM I JUST THINK THATS NEAT OR SOMETHIN. 
gladys and fred friendship!!! :’} or a gladys/fred/fp threeway who am i to say. or fred and gladys just… feeding fp ice cream… 
i have had this thought in my head for a long time but young fremary where theyre having a brawl and then one of them yells “BECAUSE IM IN LOVE WITH YOU!!!!!” thats all the details i have i just think thats neat. 
i would sell my soul for some actual strangerdale also speaking of malls RIVERPARENTS MALL FIC 
mine and brianas fred as a preachers boy au …. if it just becomes a footloose au so much the better tbh. just make sure u get the part in about fred fucking boys left and right in his red cowboy boots
this…. or this…….. 
i will add more as i think of them basically just anything fred centric and we’re in business…… :’) 
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queencryo · 5 years
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@silly-go-round is asleep right now.
i guess i should make a journal for the past few days. as good a time as any. as AMY. heh. cuz shes super good and amazing. heh.
uh...... lessee.... for the two days after the last journal i just. hung out at the house while silly worked. i managed to not keep her in bed and make her late the second day. hung out a lot, watched more adventure time, worked on my tumblr filter script (lie. i judt ran it on my main. 200 posts / day is a bitchhhh) , played a good amount of ds3 (to pointof tetris effect at a couple points the nexg few days)
also did some like. helpful tasks. washed some dishes (undone quicklu, but. eh). not enough, mot as much as i shouldve, but... i tried i guess.
alao we've like. said the same thing at the dame time a Lot while ive been here and its like. nice. its really nice. same wavelength! i feel so close go her.
oh! alxo night before last we went grocery shoping. got food for prolly enoygh for the two weeks, but i guess we'll see. also a cheesecake! it was.... echausting. hily fuck it was exhaysting. jesus. the store was big and it took like 3 hours and $200 to get everything but. we did itttt.
we both mentionef that like. it felt nice to like. have a full fridge 2gether. cuz. it feels like were gonna have a futjre togetjer? u know. like that is. i love her a lot and it feels good for this to feel like a home for a little while. we hope that it can be so in tbe future.
so YESTERDAY she finally FINALLY taught me how to play magic the gathering. it was. a long time coming. but she brought me into the store and like. sat me down w some regulars and had me play commander. i played moooostly her snake deck, so like.that was fun!! i kept talki g about how i woulda gotten lorescale Coatl up to 39/39 and flying, had i like. gotten q more turn. but on that game D was running a mill deck that was. extremely long to play (that game took like ~>2 hours ugh), and was very bery annoying, so i didnt get to actually do that.
but it was fun! part of me wants to blog everything, but i dont think i will.
im glad to be able to use silly's decks, bc i dont think i want to make my own. im considering making a cheap angel deck or smth, but we'll see if yhat actually ends up happening.
i also met her girlfriend Iz, who is sweet. i played magic w her fkr a while, which was fun! she was runni g an annoying mono black deck (i kkow all these... these Terms and Words now, its incredible...)
shes sweet and i think i like her. dunno if enough to date yet (which makes me Partially regret flirting w her so much in the groupchat but. hey)
talked w her some, mostly about magic, hung out while silly closed the store, pet her cat, silly discovered that cyddling w TWO girlfriends is very nice (not rhat id know ;;;;;;;), was good times. i dont think im as comfy w izzy physically yet as i may have implied in messages, which hopefully wull be rectified by the message i just sent her (my initial physical comfort with people varies, it depends very much on the person)
skip forward, me and silly make a pizza at home cuz were fuckin tired, she admonishes me for not eating for uh... like 11 hours or smth (that mornings bagel was VERY good tho omg), but adderall, so like... meh.
uh... i dont think anything else on yesterday...
today! we waaamted to go to the store at like. 2. but in actuality got there at like! 330.
i went back to sleep cuz im a losenerd, and she. made this breakfast casserole thing. which hse put into a bagel abd brought to me bc i guess shes the best person on the entire earth oh my GOD. jesus
skip... apparently she knows maximum the hormone and doesnt like them very much... fair fair. (cause for xeath)
came to the store agai. tofay. it was fun and good. iz didnt come in today, do played some more with regulars. played w what is apparently called a blink deck, which revolvea arounf exiling cards then immediately bringing them back, to capitalize on "when this enters battlefield, do smth" cards. neat!
i DID actually manage to win today!!! the victory was. literally handed to me, but like. thats fine! i was playing silly's uhhh... elintor the masked? idr her name :( the mask planewalker! deck, which. i had SO much land, most of wh8ch was enchanfed. meaning it could be tapped then untapped w eljntor's thing, then tapped again for DOUBLE MANA. i mean. i had like 9/turn even b4 that but. BUT. i also had. i think i drew 3 creatures total. bit anyway. i had the white card that gave me a life whenever a creature was put on tge board (and also, w another enchantment, made all non-me creagurss and enchantments enter the board tapped, so. nya). so... rob had a card what dealt one damGe to all other players whenevr he puta. creature on the board. then he played united forces, which lets each player commit X mana to create X 1/1 soldier tokens on all players' boards. so. we made 28 white soldier tokens on everyones board. this killed perry, ans gave me, uh. 56 life (84 - 28). i then attacked ron for 28 w the soldiers, and drew sacred mesa, which lets me sacrifice 2 mana (1 any color, 1 white, but i had so many cards that said "this land can instead be tapped for 2 of any color, so like. ueah) to create a 1/1 flying pegasus token. so i. ended the game w 44 white 1/1 tokens. goblins get fucked.attack w my ssoldiers cuz his were tapped, so brought him down to 7 life. i didng catch what he did w the enchantment, but i think he said he like. put a copy of every creature on my side of the board onto his board, and then. cipying that enchantment 3 times. so. holy FUCK. wow. BUT those all came in tapped and i had 18 flying yokens, so. i still won! yay!!!! i won a game of magic!!!!!
goblin decks scare me. stop running krenko you fucks. exponential goblins goddamn
silly would come by every so often and like. look over my dhoulder and say "oh that was dumb whyd u use fabricate for thay" which is fair. but also god i love her. (i used fabricate for a mana generator insteaf of lightning greaves. whateverrrr) i love her so much dear god. i wish i coukd help w the store more, but. on the same time i also. dont enjoy working. so. maybe part time.
hm. what ekse. oh yeah i kove her so much.
by the end of the night it was just. me and her, rob and the two regulars i started out llaying w yestwrday. theyre sweet, i like them. theyre married. the dude calls me honey smtimes, which is. kinda weird? dunno how i feel about that. i guess fine. its gender-nice, but still a lil uncomfy. otherwise i like em fien, though. but they talked abouy moving into sillys apt. so thats cool!! better than her current (awful, terrible, lazy / horrifically depressed / manchild roomate, who doesnt clean ever) roomate. i was reading the monster of the week gamebook thruout, which i... bought, for some reason. idk. oh also i wanna make a fallen angel divine, because im... predictableeee. also a conspiracy thworist whos just a trans woman w way too much time and really weird hobbies (throwing knices, butterfly knife, net friends, etc). also a spooky. i speny like. 3 hours reading thr7 the monster of the week book while ppl played magic around me. i kinda wish i hadnt bought it, but hey! its neat c:
oh, also i didnt take adderall today. i dont think it went toooo bad, i think i like. was meaner and less thohghtful with what i said, but like. i guess thats better than feared. i took a caffeine pill (200mg) at ariund 10 which is. prolly why im wide awake right now. i regret doing that, sincr from what shes said tmos gonna be big)
she says we gotta be at her moms by 4, for reasons she WONT TELL ME. bit she says its part of one of her plans, i ASSUME the romantic one? im kind of afraid that ill like. no-sell it unwillingly because im abroke and soulless human being, but uh. i guess rhats thw risks we take to be alive :shrug: im excited. were also going to a shop (diff one) tmo, which im Quite excited for, as ive only been in similar shops by accident before. also doing laundry!!! which is important ^_^
oh ysah. so we got white castle on the way home. its. yeah she was r8ght. mediocre-at-best sliders. onions are bad.
we also made a pizza. whifh i ate most of. i overate. sob.
she fell asleep halfway thry an episode of nailed it. cant blame her, she seemed really tired. i hipe i dont disturb her rwst. and i feel so utterly blessed thay i can be around her.
ih!! i also fell down the last few staies ywstersay. bruised my arms, but otherwise fine. it was. idk, it is nice to knoe that others worry fir me and like me. she was very concerned. i love her.
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tumblunni · 6 years
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.
Man i was just thinking again about that idea i had for a cliche gijinka app card game where the gijinkas are all Interesting Bugs instead of weird sexy anime george washington.
I've kinda got quite attatched to my idea for a leech gijinka as a super cuddly white mage who just happens to look emo and scary. And they'd be a great opportunity for nonbinary representation cos in real life leeches don't have binary sexes anyway. But i cant decide between whether i want them to look like a full plague doctor mask thing or a more cliche cutesy nurse but theyre like super tall and look like the monster girl from the ring so they get sad that people always run away before they can help them! So then i was thinking "hey, alternate skins!" Not like in the other games ive played where there's always one canon skin and all the others require hours of grinding and/or real money to buy. But just that there's like three or so randomized versions of the base character with all the same stats but a different costume. Just to spice up the pool of options a bit! Or maybe it could even be more than just the costume and you can get entirely different reinterpretations of that job class? Like the medusa jellyfish could be either a young kid or a grandpa!
Oh and i'm not really sure how to name this or anything? Cos its not really a clear category of animals, its not all insects or all worms or whatever. More like just..all the animals that are unfairly hated but have Cool Biology Facts that i can babble at u to maybe make u like them more. So i dunno.. Pests? Creepy crawlies? Some entirely made up fantasy term for them?
Also i think the setting will definately be jrpg fantasy! Just a world where all these critters are actually funky people on a comedically bad D&D quest. I wonder who the villains could be tho? Maybe theyre gijinkas of more commonly loved cute animals? Or like.. Not gijinkas but monsterfied versions? Hilariously over the top evil fluffums! hamsters are this setting's dragons! And i dunno maybe the ultimate dark lord is a dog with a cat for a royal vizier or something, cos theyre the kings of popularity.
This could also make it actually make sense why the Clione character could be a beserker like in real life! Cos theyre the most un-hated rare sea slug for looking cute, but their actual personality is big scary predator. But in this universe being seen as cute by humans = evil, so the Clione's fighty doom personality would make perfect sense! Im not sure if i should make them like a tormented Shadow esque antihero or a paladin-looking knight who has a dark streak or maybe even a viking? Cos in videogames theyre like the epitome of 'loves fighting but is still a nice hugs guy'. And it'd be neat to have a chubby buff clione instead of the more cliche bishie gijinka. But then i mean theyre literally nicknamed 'sea angels' or 'sea fairies' depending on country so yeah? Oh or maybe that could mean i make them an elf or an angel but theyre still mega buff! Viking guy with lil chibi wings and halo!
Also randomly i think that Slug will be the other nonbinary character along with Leech. Cos well there's a lot of bugs who dont fit the human gender binary but i'd probably be a bit too obnoxious if i had like 90% enbies and noone else. I always think about like 'if this is my first game project i need to go at a small and reasonable pace with all the Big LGBT Feels', yknow? But then every idea i do is always my first game project cos ive never completed any of them yet XD
Anyway i think Slug would be a more fashionable bishie kind of androgenous character, while Leech is a relateable cuddly socially awkward one who wears a mask. But definately also looks stylish in their own way, and i'm sure Slug is always complimenting them and trying to bolster their spirits! Aside from being super fashionable i also think maybe Slug would be a wandering bard? Cos somehow slow animal -> lazy human -> free spirited instead to be less cliche -> bard. Also the whole 'bard rolls to seduce every boss' meme, lol! So Slug is a very nyeheheh tricksy flirty adventuring song person who aint take nobody's shit. Instead of being sleepy they sleep on the concept of low self confidence! Full and powerful pride at all times!!! Goal in life is to be beautiful AF and handsome AF and make everyone swoon at your feet and also recite an epic poetry so cool that your enemies straight up die from the sick burn. Tho i mean i don't think anyone could actually ACHIEVE that, lol! It might be obnoxious if i actually have a character who's basically 'enby people are literally perfect in all ways'. So i just think Slug is a big ol dork who's like the Gaston archetype of the comically overconfident flirt, but like a good and heroic version who actually respects when people say no to their advances. And is also a great BFF to Leech and tries to help them get out of their shell, because well of course Slug is out of theirs XD
Also actually i dunno whether they should all just be named after the animal or have thier own names but the animal is mentioned on their profile as a job class name or something? Cos it might get awkward once we get to more specific obscure bugs with longer names or ones who only really have a scientific genus name. I'd feel like i'd have to make them all wizards cos their names sound like spells! Oh MAYBE THEYRE SPELLS!! Like each character could chant their own scientific name when they use their ultimate attack??
Oh and maybe Slug and Leech could be just based on the species in general but have their alternate costumes themed after more specific rare subspecies? Like Slug could have nudibranch themed costumes cos the vibrant colours would fit such an elegant fashioniste~ And leech could just be an opportunity to talk about how there's subspecies of leech that dont drink blood, though this character is based on the ones that do because otherwise they wouldnt really have a unique job class, lol. Maybe their rarest alt costume is a fashionable orange ensemble that symbolizes both Slug taking them out for a night on the town in their finest to feel more comfortabke in their self confidence, and also just the fact there's an orange tropical leech. Its kinda funny cos there isnt such a huge range of different colours for leeches, its mostly just different barely visible patterns and a spectrum from greenish brown to brownish black, lol. And then suddenly a bunch of wildly different red and orange ones! And nothing in between! Really does seem like a surprise makeover from your bestie, yknow?
Oh and then when i was thinking about other potential relationships between different magic bug people, i thought of Daddy Longlegs! Cos thats a name confusingly given to multiple bugs of wildly different species who're all mistaken for spiders when they really arent. And this mythical nonexistant daddy longlegs spider also has the myth of having 'the strongest poison but its fangs are too short to bite you' which is COMPLETE nonsense based on nothibg cos how would it even survive in the wild if it cant hunt? But its a real cool myth so it could be an awesome excuse to make them have a move that gambles on either an instant kill or a self debuff. ALSO THEY ARE MARRIED
I was thinking they could be a duo of fabulous zorro-looking assassin dudes who were sent to assassinate each other but instead fell in love and quit the business for good. Like 'you made me want to live again, and the only reason i threw my life away on this job was cos i wanted to die'. And to atone for all the bad mercenary stuff theyd done in the past, now theyre robin hood esque mercenaries who take jobs with world-saving hero groups like our protagonists. And they work for free as long as the cause is just! And they wish they could settle down someday and dream about having children of their own, but they feel like they dont deserve it after all that theyve done. They'd be a rare goofy bugmans that actually have a real emotional backstory! So anyway they're fancy fencing guys who're both the same class but maybe slightly different variants with different stat builds or abilities? More specialized and all. Like maybe one is speedy but weaker and one is slower but stronger? Or one relies more on luck based attacks and one is a consistant damage dealer but has a lower max damage cap? Or even one is status effects and one is attack and really even though they have the same job name theyre wildly different interpretations of it. Fitting for the entomology mistake husbands! I want them to be balanced so that they have special bonuses together but are still viable to use separately if your party setup only requires one of them. Also randomly i think their names would be Albedo and Rubedo? I was originally gonna make Rubedo the name of the leech cos i mean alchemy words and plague masks and all. But then it doesnt really SOUND like an alchemy word, it sounds like a fancy handsome dancer name. And then i started thinking about the cute once-sad-now-happy young assassin dads fighting together so well that it looks like one big dance between them, rather than a battle. And i got REAL EMOTIONAL over goddamn bug gijinkas! Man my heart is made of paper and mush!! Oh and maybe they have combo attacks together but also with all of the party members that are younger? Like special dad instinct combo! A built in ability that they automatically shield the kids from enemy attacks. YOU HIRED A MERCENARY BUT YOU RECEIVED A NICE MARRIED COUPLE WHO PROMPTLY ADOPT YOU. Oh and maybe their alternate costumes could just be each other's costumes? Like they'd already be wearing matching red and white versions of the same thing, but then albino dad wears ginger dad's version and vice versa. Or maybe their alt costumes are different complimentary colour pairs like black and gold or blue and pink? And maybe their ultra rare special costume is Big Cute Dorky Argyle Dad Sweaters! It must be capitalized cos it is IMPORTANT!
Oh and then i was also thinking about the idea i had before of bugs with a queen hive structure being like the workers are the common unit and the breeders and queens and such are rarer variants? But the workers are the only ones actually good in a fight, the others are just for collectables sake. Rare but useless, just like how the real queen bee is so big that she cant leave the hive, and never figjts a day in her life unless the kingdom has already fallen. So maybe queen bee is still unlockable as a rare character but she's just a support that makes worker bee stronger? Like you get a lil event of worker's boss coming to honor her with a knighthood for her good service, allowing her to upgrade her job class. Tho i think she still fights with construction work equipment, now its just like a golden jewelled shovel XD
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punkbakugo · 6 years
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when deku started getting angry about kacchan not communicating with him during the all might fight and yelling about how they can never have a real conversation anymore i just, i just got hard core married for ten years couple vibes from the moment, and all might going like "there only weakness is eachother" or whatever he said just made me react like "thats how love goes" I think im using my shipping glasses to much but dont care
cool things-deku blabbing to kacchan about the secret going on with his quirk to try and get kacchan to understand that he wasnt just hiding something like this from him. like dekus not the type to brag usually and has no reason if kacchan was purely an antagonist to tell him such sensitive information like he’s some super hero love interest he upset. and kacchans reaction to the mere idea deku was hiding such a cool quirk from him, letting himself be tossed around as quirkless, its neat
kacchan is so upset by the idea that deku has a good quirk, like he’s been teasing deku about his quirkless status for years and been downright hostile about the idea of deku becoming a hero while being powerless, to kacchan you cant be a hero without being so strong you always win, its a fact of life for him, to have the idea that deku has just been letting him win any play fights or let himself be bullied by kacchan, to not give his all into a fight like a hero should, just drives him nuts
you rly get this feeling of betrayal from bakugou bc it gives credence to the thought he has that deku looks down on him and has been fucking w/ him for years. bakugou doesn’t understand why deku acts the way he does he’s such an enigma to bakugou and it frustrates him so much.
and w/ deku he didn’t even tell his mom the truth abt his quirk but it made kacchan upset so he immediately goes to spill the beans skdjfdskf;
those two are soooooo caught up in each other. despite being on bad terms for a long time, there’s this weird sense of intimacy between the two of them thats a product of having been childhood friends and always having been together even if theyre not together together yknow. bc they both never stopped noticing each other
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