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sinofthesloth · 5 months

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so how do you think Epel, Vil, Malleus, Azul and Jack Howl would deal with a crush who actually starts running at them and hugging them as a greeting after a couple months of knowing the boys? (The hugs only seem to be reserved for the boys. Crush clearly has a favourite. Probably horrifies people when they first do this to Malleus). Like their senses tingle and they bee line for the boys and suddenly the boys are being hugged by this human with golden retriever energy from behind or somehow this person had teleported in front of them and hugged?

Hey Sin here, not sure if you want all the boys together since you wrote, "Crush clearly has a favourite." but I am going to separate so each boy has his own part. Sorry if this is not how you wanted them. Also this is my first time doing an ask, so thank you for sending one in!

Content/Warnings: Jack's part is more of a general day of school, Epel's part is centered around the Song and Dance Competition (Epel's part has slight angst and talks about Vil's overblot) Azul's part talks about his overblot, Vil's part talks about his fangirls, and Malleus part talks about Sebek a good bit. (I love him) Requested: Yes by @nesting-dreams Word Count: At least 400 per boy. Written: December 1st. Characters: Jack, Epel, Azul, Vil, and Malleus

Jack

At first the hugs didn't confuse Jack. He took in stride and squeezed back. He had younger siblings and knows that sometimes a hug is just what a person needs to get by. He had known you for quite some time.

He was there for Leona's as well as Azul's overblots. He knows the kind of stress that has been put on you, and he wants you to know he will always be there for you.

Jack started to notice his crush on you when he would make eye contact with you across the courtyard and you started to make a dash to him. At first he thought it was cute, but day after day, he started waiting for you. It was a slow realization, but after Deuce called his tail wagging out at the track field, man was embarrassed.

He also noticed you didn't hug the others like you'd hug him. If he was looking away, you'd softly wrap your arms around him. If he was in a group, you'd make sure he saw you coming first. But every time you'd hug any of the other boys it was always a side hug. You would also press him into yourself as much as you could when you hugged him.

He just hoped you wouldn't notice his tail wagging each time you held him close.

Epel

You've seen each other in classes before, but you didn't speak more than a few short sentences with each other. Just enough to know his name and a few facts about him. You two finally got much closer during the Song and Dance competition.

During the first night they all stayed at the Ramshackle dorm, you made your rounds making sure everyone was comfortable. You didn't need Kalim's family to come after you nor did you need Vil's fangirls finding out you didn't bend to the man's every whim. Epel was the last one you checked on before heading into your own dorm room. It was clear he was upset.

That night you sat with Epel into the late hours. He talked about how worried he was. How he felt that he was always underestimated thanks to his feminine looks, and how he knew he would never live up to Vil's standards of him. Of the standards he put upon himself. He talked about how he always put his best foot forward in fear others will never give him a chance if he didn't. He works this hard only to prove he is capable.

That was the first time you hugged him. Since then, every morning you gave him a quick squeeze before serving everyone breakfast within Vil's restrictions. You'd hug him before practice, after practice, during breaks, during lunch, after classes. Anytime you could spare to hug him, you did. You wanted to show him you cared.

At first he'd give you a light tap on the back, but as time passed he fell in love with holding you against him. He was enjoying these hugs these past two weeks. He enjoyed the encouragement and praise you'd give him and it was clear to Rook and Vil how Epel was changing. He was trying harder, he was more attentive, he was doing anything to prove himself to both you and his dorm leaders.

After Vil's overblot, you beelined it for Epel. Grabbing him with one hand in his hair and the other pressing his chest into yours. He wasn't letting you go anytime soon. He could take the whispering comments of the first years and the mumbles of his dorm leaders later.

Azul

Azul wasn't nice to you before his overblot. He used you, used your friends, used his friends and did many other horrendous actions. No matter what he said during his moment of weakness was an excuse to do what he did, but that didn't stop you from taking his words to heart. He was a scared, hurt child. Still was in some sense. He was coming down from his overblot when you hugged him. He held onto you as he cried. All you could do was help him hide his face in your chest as whisper sweet nothing as he latched onto you sobbing.

As time passed, you grew closer to him. He wouldn't talk about the overblot and you wouldn't bring it up. No one knew why you started to randomly walk up to him and hug him. Half the time you wouldn't even give Ace or Deuce a front hug like you did him. Azul refused to drop the boss-man attitude but if anyone looked as close as the twins did, they'd see the way he would twist the back of your shirt with how tight his grip on you was.

Sometimes, when you were behind him, you'd run up and squeeze him from behind, taking him by surprise. That was the only time his face would be covered in apple-red blush. He'd clear his throat and scold you, before opening his arms for you to give him a proper hug.

He couldn't hide his crush from the twins. They'd talk about how you wouldn't give anyone a front hug, much less one from behind. Just recalling it made his face explode.

He grew addicted to see you. Especially from afar. If you thought he'd make it out of a room before you could reach him, you'd run up and tackle him into a hug.

Vil

Vil was never a hard man to find. Just follow the trail of glitter or the clicking of phone cameras. You don't really remember how the two of you got close. It definitely might have been when you were running from Rook and leeched onto Vil to hide behind. From there, the three of you bloomed an odd friendship.

Vil catches on immediately, and in the beginning of it, he does try to get you to stop. Not just for his image, but yours as well. There have been videos of you running up and jumping on him for a hug. A few of you hold him for just a moment to long and pictures upon pictures of the two of you.

There are multiple theories about the two of you online. Rook loves reading these out loud to Vil while he is getting ready for the day. Seeing his face tint with a cherry red color always puts a smile on Rook's face.

It gets to the point that you'll stop hugging him and instead wave or jokingly bow toward him instead. Which just ignites a fire on the internet. His fangirls want to know if y'all broke up? If y'all were ever together? What happened? Why aren't you hugging anymore? Vil didn't know what to do. He seemingly was going through a mode. Rook called them withdrawals. Epel was just annoyed both for you and because of you.

By the end of a week and the swarm of questions on all his posts, he talks to you about it. Asks what you believed would be best. "No matter what you do, you are in the public's eye. Do what makes you happy." You wouldn't hug him until he made a decision himself. You didn't want to push him one way or another. Another week passed, and he noticed how you didn't hug others the way you hugged him. Ace would get side hugs, and Deuce would get hugs where you wouldn't fully wrap your arms around him. He seemed to be the only one you'd throw your arms around the neck of.

He was glad he was the only one you'd hold like this. His decision wasn't any easier, but he knew he missed your hugs. "Maybe behind close doors."

"You can always just start dating them." Epel commented.

Malleus

(- He is extremely ooc and I hate it, so I'll be fixing it soon. Hopefully after class)

As soon as you attempted to sneak up on Malleus, Sebek is there to call you out. He would be snatching you off the ground before you made it twelve feet in range of Malleus.

The hugs started the night of Vil's overblot. He visited to check up on you, and you didn't know how to thank him. He talked about it for days afterward. Lilia was the one to bring up sneaking up on him for a hug. You've hugged him at least once a day since. Sebek is distraught any, and every time he sees you hugging. Marching over to promptly remove you from Malleus.

If you can make it to him when running up to him, he will laugh before lifting you up as you jump into his arms. It also takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize that you don't hug others like you hug him. He doesn't fully understand the deeply rooted pride his has over this. He also doesn't notice how much he looks forward to your hugs until you're sick one day.

Lilia has to drag this man out of your dorm because he was trying to cuddle up into your bed with you. He just wanted a hug. You promised to give him two tomorrow and with that he left. Leave you some soup and medicine after Silver explains that since you're magicless, there is no way of telling how your body would handle it.

Sebek was mortified. The prince of fae was crawling into the bed of a human. Lilia was dying of laughter as the prince sulkingly walked back to the hall of mirrors. It was clear to those who were close to him that he had fallen in love with a human, those that weren't feared the upset dragon-fae.

No worries. As soon as you hugged him the next day, everyone was wiping out their phones to capture photos. It was spreading like wildfire, and when he returned to his grandmother for the holidays, she asked where you were.

Hope you enjoy trying new foods and being surrounded by multiple suits of armor.

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myerssimp21 · 6 months

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Knife's Canvas (Pt. 1)

Yandere Poly!Ghostface x Reader

warnings: mention of torture (not reader), planned stalking.

prompt inspired by @jadedstarlight03 's prompt to @creepyyanderegirl on yandere stu with artistic reader. I liked it and took my own spin with it since I simp for Billy too.

"I admired your sketch!"

The cursive note, adorned with a smiley face, stared back at you, earning an A+ grade on your inaugural in-class creative writing assignment at Woodsboro High. As a newcomer, you had hoped your depictions of characters like Garfield and Scooby Doo would endear you to the teachers, and it appeared they did. Sketched in red pen and colored with pastel pink highlighter, your drawings grinned up at you, surrounded by tiny glitter hearts.

"Oh, those are wicked!"

The cute blonde girl seated behind you leaned over your shoulder, her minty breath fanning into your face as she praised, "Do you draw a lot? Did you do those in class? It's pretty fast if you did."

"Yeah! I started doing art last year, but you get better and faster with practice," you replied with a warm smile, eager to make your first friend. "I think these took about 3-4 minutes each."

Your face warmed as she leaned closer, her chest lightly pressing against your back as she inspected your paper. She pointed to the little hearts, "Those are so cute!" Her approving face turned toward you as she introduced herself, "I'm Tatum."

"I'm ____," you replied, pleased to make introductions effortlessly. The teacher's allowance for 5 minutes of free time before class's end was a welcome opportunity for socializing.

"You should join my friends and me after our next class for lunch; maybe some of us will be in your classes!"

"That would be so nice," you said, relief evident in your voice. "I'm honestly pretty shy, so making friends can be intimidating."

Her dazzling smile accompanied her words, "Perfect! If you have Chemistry next with Mr. Scott, I'll show you where it is if you don't already know."

"Um," you leaned down to your backpack, sifting through your new student documents to find your schedule. "Oh, it's actually history with Ms. Johnson."

"Hmm," Tatum leaned back, crossing her legs as she thought. "I think Billy has that class. Maybe if you leave a little early, you can catch him. He's the guy with the, uh," she seemed to struggle for words, "grunge hairstyle? I think he's wearing a dark red t-shirt today if that helps. He's a little grumpy sometimes, though, so if you're too nervous or he's mean, we'll look for you at lunch."

The bell rang, and students not already congregating by the door got up to leave. You neatly tucked your graded paper into its designated folder and stood, slinging your backpack over your shoulder as Tatum rose in tandem.

"I'll try!" you said with a giggle, even though meeting Billy made you nervous. "It was nice to meet you."

"You too," Tatum said, pulling a pack of gum from her bag and offering you a piece before you left. "I think your next class should be in that building, right? I’m not sure if you had it yesterday or if it’s a Tuesday-Thursday class."

Thanking her again, you made sure your Discman had the CD you liked the most before connecting your headphones and heading off in that direction. You'd only have a few minutes of music, but it was worth it!

After finding your next class, you lingered around the door since you were early, hoping to at least place who Billy was from Tatum's description. After a moment of trying to not look awkward as you stood around, you spotted him.

He did have a grungier hair style, reminding you of a movie star you'd seen on TV recently. It threatened to fall in his eyes as he stalked towards the door, a bored look on his face. Now that you noticed him more, it was hard to ignore that he had a pretty face. Trying to not overthink it now that you realized you thought he was kind of cute, you pulled your headphones down from your ears until they hung around your neck as he came closer to the class.

When he noticed you looking at him as he drew closer, his eyes narrowed suspiciously, the scowl on his face deepening and making you feel even more nervous.

"Hi," you said somewhat sheepishly, "I'm ___. I'm new and met Tatum in my last class. You must be Billy."

His eyebrow raises and his eyes soften, but the scowl remains, “Oh?”

“Yeah…” you trail off a little, unsure of what to say since his response was sort of dry, “I’m from the more southern part of the state and we moved up here for my dad’s new job. I hear you guys experience the seasons up here so I’m excited to see them! The leaves never change in the fall where I’m from.”

His dark brown eyes have been boring into yours as you speak, making your face feel warm for the second time today. They dart down to the folder in your hands and he smirks as he says, “That’s cool.”

For your history folder, you’d tried to paint torsos and busts like the ancient historic statues from Greece and Rome you’d seen in a National Geographic magazine on the cover. They were naked torsos, but you had tried to make the nipples on the women look less prominent to avoid getting into trouble. If you had any sense, you’d have depicted something else to entirely avoid the possibility of getting into trouble, but you’d gotten irritated at the idea of censoring art.

“Oh, thank you! I hope I don’t get shit for the nudity, but I guess I could probably give them all clothes if I need to.”

He nods towards the classroom and you notice the hallways are getting quieter, “We should head in. There’s a couple empty seats near me.”

Ms. Johnson's strategy to get the kids interested in history was to start with the brutality of the medieval age, it seemed; with diagrams of the torture methods they created being the highlight of her second class after syllabus day.

The history class, guided by Ms. Johnson's unwavering enthusiasm, delved into the unsettling corners of medieval history. As the lesson progressed, she took a moment to present an image of a haunting artifact, projecting it onto the screen for the entire class to see.

"Now, can anyone tell me what this is?" Ms. Johnson asked, gesturing to the screen. It was a grotesque device, an iron contraption with a cold, heartless design. Sharp spikes protruded inward, forming a cage around the wearer's head. The unsettling silence lingered as the class peered at the image, growing discomfort palpable.

To everyone's surprise, ____ confidently raised her hand, her eyes betraying an unexpected depth of knowledge.

"It's called the Scold's Bridle," she answered, her voice steady. "An oppressive device designed to silence women who dared to speak their minds. The spikes prevented any speaking, ensuring their voices remained stifled."

Billy arched an eyebrow, intrigued. "How do you know about that?"

____ shrugged, a nonchalant smile playing on her lips. "I read a lot. History isn't just about dates and battles; it's about the struggles people faced, especially women, and respecting the challenges they went through."

Billy's skepticism softened as he nodded slightly. "Guess history is more twisted than we think."

____ leaned towards him slightly, a smile on her face that didn't quite reach her eyes and made his spine tingle slightly, "Oh, you have no idea."

"Ah, ____," Ms. Johnson said with genuine admiration and ____'s attention snapped back to her, "Impressive knowledge there. I'm eager to see your thoughts on this in more detail, perhaps in an essay. It's always refreshing when students connect with the material on a deeper level."

"Now, let's delve further into the complexities of medieval society. How these devices were not only instruments of physical torment but also symbolic of the societal norms of the time."

The lesson continued, and ____ slowly flipped through her sketchbook to find a fresh page, seemingly reviewing her previous art briefly as she did so. Billy faced the board, but his eyes were turned downward, toward ____'s hands. He caught a glimpse of previous drawings – a mix of cartoon characters and a few creepier depictions.

Angry faces splattered with red marks resembling blood and figures wearing intimidating masks (or just freaks with the scariest faces ever) caught his eye. Intrigued, he discreetly watched as she began absentmindedly sketching the torture devices described in class as she listened, switching out her pens to smear red ink on them. He caught his scoff before he uttered it when he realized she was drawing the devices in glitter pens, her eyes flickering from the images on the screen to back down at her paper.

He must have been too obvious, leaning in too closely or being too pointed with his staring now because she had flipped to a fresh page and locked eyes, an unreadable expression across her face. There was a pause before she tucked her sketchbook into her bag and turned her attention back towards the board.

Billy felt a mischievous idea forming in his head as he let his eyes linger on her, knowing she could probably see him staring in her peripheral. If she wasn't thrilled about him seeing her portfolio, perhaps there was more hiding in that sketchbook than just cutesy cartoons. It could be amusing for him and Stu to explore her place once they found out where she lived, hunting for more art she wasn't ready to showcase while they scoped out their new potential victim. If the glimpses of what he saw when she had flipped through it implied there was anything more beneath her vanilla exterior, Billy was confident that he and Stu could uncover it.

As the bell rang, she turned to him with what he'd call friendly eyes, the strange demeanor now gone, "Are you hungry or what? Is the cafeteria food at Woodsboro High edible or would I be better off hunting a bird?"

He huffed, "You'd be better off starving." Nodding towards the door, he started towards it, hardly waiting for ____ to collect her bag, "Maybe Randy will be enough of a simp to offer you whatever his mommy made for him."

Noticing the disdain Billy seemed to have for Randy's mother but feeling too tentative about the potential for conflict to ask more about it, ____ decided to leave it alone and hurry after him into the now bustling hallway.

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melrodrigo · 2 months

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Tardy, part 11

Tara Carpenter x Fem Reader

Summary: It’s time for you to face Ghostface head on.

Word Count: 3.5k

Warnings: Pretty gnarly violence, Tara being protective and kinda batshit crazy, betrayals left and right

A/N: lol

Shit.

When you open your eyes and see nothing but a hot blinding light, you think you might've died and gone to heaven.

"God?" You whisper, blinking slowly.

It was in fact, not god, you find out once your eyes properly adjust.

You're stuck in a tiny compartment; so small you think you might suffocate. The walls are painted a shade of obsidian black that makes you feel like you're stuck in a black hole. Only one single flickering lightbulb grants you sight.

Your arms are sore; so sore, and it only intensifies when you try and pull them up from the weird position they're in.

Huh, I can't move my arms.

You tug at the rope-like fabric of material that's holding your hands together. It doesn't budge in the slightest. Panic rises like wildfire in you.

You breathe deep. Try to gather your wits and make sense of anything that is possibly going on.

"Get it together." You remind yourself.

You blink once.

Feeling a little more clear, you realize that you're strapped tight to a chair, back pressed uncomfortably close to the ridges.

Where am I?

There's no time to find the answer to that question since the wall is moving- oh it's a door-, and Ghostface appears right in front of you, smiling.

Well, you don't really know if he's smiling. But the way he's moving, all confident and cocky, makes you think you're not too far off.

It hits you all at once. Now that you're fully conscious, you can feel everything.

One inhale and your lungs feel like they're on fire. Breathing is hard.

You groan, the pain all too overwhelming for your brain to work properly. It would be embarrassing how loud you were if you cared in the least.

You can only seem to think of one thing.

"Where is she?" You ask, with all the confidence of someone in the position of interrogating Ghostface.

Tara. God, what did they do to Tara?

“Of course, your first words are about her." Ghostface spits, still using that goddamned voice modulator.

“Where is she?” You spit, trying your very best to look intimidating.

It's not very convincing when you're heaving and gasping like a fish out of water.

"Would you believe me if I said she was already dead?" Ghostface drawls, tracing their knife along your jawline, pressing just enough for you to feel it.

You scoff.

"Right...you'd kill one of your beloved 'main characters' before the finale." You say, sure you've read him to filth.

"But, this is the ending. Don't you see?" He continues to tease, unbothered by your last comment.

You huff, but you feel your heart picking up speed slightly.

What if...he was telling the truth?

A shrill scream sounds throughout the theater, and you feel your blood run cold as you recognize exactly who it is.

"Tara." You breathe, half terrified and half relieved she's still alive.

"Tara!" You yell, as loud as your lungs are willing to let you.

Tara doesn't reply. What you do get is a smack to the head and an elbow to the jaw.

"Be quiet." Ghostface hisses, and you can almost swear he sounds sort of scared.

"Be quiet or I'm going to get my ass whooped." He mumbles, and you pull back as far as you can, eyebrows raised.

You bite back the need to tell him you definitely don't care if he gets in trouble or not, not wanting to get slapped in the face a billion more times.

"Come on." He grumbles, gripping the back of the chair and lifting it up swiftly.

The feeling of your feet dangling off the chair reminds you of one of your favorite memories.

"Mint ice cream sucks," Tara tells you definitively.

You squint your eyebrows at her and bring up a hand to your heart like she's just stabbed you.

She's sitting with her ice cream in hand, a good distance away from you. You guys peer down at all the university students walking around, now the size of ants; trying to point out people you guys recognize.

It was your own little secret spot. Tara could never really go study outside uni, since her sister was always up her ass about traveling unknown spaces. You never asked her why, pure sister protectiveness, you guessed.

A couple of weeks into knowing Tara, she'd brought you up to this mini garden haven of hers, all shy and smiley.

She's sitting now and she's looking so pretty with her big brown eyes and freckles out for display. They shine bright today, sunshine illuminating her face and making everything just pop the slightest bit more.

You get a wicked idea, and before you can stop yourself, scoot yourself closer and place your arm around her.

Tara cocks an eyebrow at you, but before she can speak a word, you start tickling her sides.

"Stop!" Tara squeals. Her face turning a bright pink comically fast.

You're careful not to tickle her too hard, or else you think she might just slide off the ledge and fall right here.

You're close now, closer than you should be. Tension swims in the air. You lean down to whisper into her ear.

"That's what you get for saying mint sucks." You huff, smirking a little as she shudders from the feeling of your breath fanning her ear.

When you pull back and look into her eyes, you're surprised to see them wide and dilated. She has a weird expression her face, like she's fighting something in herself.

You lean in slowly, stuck in a trace with the way she's looking at you.

She grips your shirt and pulls you in further, your noses brushing. And then suddenly, like she's just snapped out of her daze, she sits up abruptly.

She laughs nervously, letting go of your shirt.

"I think Sam's calling me. I'll see you tomorrow. Same time?" She's saying, but she's not even giving you a second to answer before she's sprinting away.

Despite the sort of failed kiss, you chuckle a little. You feel the blush creep up to the tips of your ears.

The day your crush on Tara Carpenter officially started.

It's a bad time to start daydreaming, but you figure if you're going to die right now, it wouldn't be so bad to think of the love of your life while you go.

The sound of Tara's voice brings you back to life.

"YN!" She gasps, from somewhere behind you. You're still getting dragged, hair stuck to your forehead, eyes blurred.

You try your best to blink everything back to focus.

She's standing on the platform slightly below you, beside Sam, looking relieved. There's a brick in her hand.

You try and say her name but all that comes out is a painful groan. Everything feels heavy. Your shirt is painted red where your stomach wound is, and you figure you must've ripped the stitches.

There's another Ghostface beside you, the two of them bracketing you on either side.

Not that you would have the energy to up and escape anyway.

"Tara..." Sam warns, eyeing her sister like she knows what she's about to do.

Tara rushes forward, ignoring Sam's protest, trying to get to you. To hold you in her arms, to press her hands against your wound, to kiss it better; to do anything.

The Ghostface to your right swings their knife as soon as she comes into the vicinity, and slices the skin above Tara's collarbone easily. She gasps from the jab. Red liquid seeps out immediately.

You feel the Ghostface to your left tense, a mixture of a gasp and a yell stuck together.

"Anika wait-!" The Ghostface is saying, the name slipping out as easy as second nature.

Everybody stills.

It's so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

The other Ghostface whirls around, shoulders tight.

Sam tugs Tara back quietly, looking between the two Ghostfaces. Your head is swimming.

"What did you say?" Ghostface- supposedly Anika, says.

"What the fuck." You manage to spit out, but it goes unheard, everyone being laser-focused on the scene unfolding right in front of them.

"I'm sorry- I'm sorry I didn't mean to say that. It's just, I thought you were going to kill Tara. I couldn't let you do that." The other Ghostface reasons, albeit unconvincingly. He stumbles over his words, in a tone that's all too familiar to you.

"Ethan?" You hesitate, tears brimming in your eyes.

The Ghostface that's hovering above you drops down to your ear level, whispering softly.

"Well, aren't you just a smart little thing?" And promptly slides off that wretched Ghostface mask, and even though you knew, you have to gasp at who you see.

Anika.

Sweet sweet Anika.

"Just take it off. It's not like they don't already know." Anika tells Ethan, an order more than anything.

You tilt your head just enough to see Ethan take off his mask, grinning nervously.

"What the fuck?" You hear Tara say, but it sounds so far away.

"But, but how-" Sam starts, pointing at Ethan, her face as pale as a ghost.

He looks good, healthy. More alive than you've ever seen him. There's a glint in his eye you've never seen before.

"I'm alive. Surprise!" He grins, flashing the four of you a pearly white smile.

I must be dreaming.

You squeeze your eyes shut. He's still standing there when you open them again. Shit.

"But I watched you die, I felt the blood. You-you died in my arms. I saw the ambulance pick you up." You splutter, voice cracking unevenly.

"You know...some fake blood and a couple of acting classes can do wonders. You guys really are not good at picking up on hints." Anika sing songs, waving her dagger in the air.

"Seriously...we even had to send you a note." She continues, scrunching her nose in disgust.

"Why are you doing this? Why are you so hell-bent on destroying us?" Sam asks, fire in her eyes. She looks scary. Messing with Sam was one thing, but messing with her sister? You have a feeling they'll be dead in minutes.

Anika sighs dramatically, putting a hand up to her chin and feigning thought.

"Gosh. Where do I even start? Let's set the scene: it's 1996. There's been two mysterious murders in the small town of Woodsboro, leaving everyone in fright." She recounts, words slipping out of her mouth with ease like she's rehearsed them a million times.

Sam rolls her eyes, fed up with this godforsaken story that seems to follow her anywhere.

"Akio Kayoko however, lives happily, because finally his two bullies Billy and Stu aren't on his ass anymore. They have more important things to worry about."

Sam cuts in before Anika goes any further.

"Are you fucking kidding me? This is all because what, your dad couldn't handle a couple wedgies? Are you a little daddy's girl?" She says, fed up.

Anika shoots her an icy glare, but continues.

"You don't even know what you're talking about." Anika tells her, voice lowering to soft and almost sorrowful.

"Poor dad, he just had to go to that party. Do you know what happens to a person when they go through something traumatic? It changes them. He came out the only bystander that survived, but not without a scarred face and a scarred soul to show for it." She murmurs. She turns suddenly, a new pep in her mannerisms.

"Your father," she points at Sam accusingly, "and your father," she points her knife at you, "fucked my dad up royally. He got diagnosed with severe depression and bipolar disorder from it. And for what?" She seethes.

"Your guys' fathers are just racist assholes. You deserve everything that's coming to you, don't you even doubt it for a second!" She sneers, with so much venom and power that you can't help but agree.

You open your mouth to say something, anything, try to explain that you aren't your dad, but Anika beats you to it.

"Did you know he left me? I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was 6." She tells you, voice getting softer. Your heart tugs for her.

She straightens up, as if just realizing where she was, and her icy facade once again builds up.

"Anywho, motive enough for you Sam?" She tilts her head up, eyes bright.

Sam stands scarily still, but you can see the concern swimming in her eyes.

Ethan's standing wide-eyed like this is all new information to him.

"It really wasn't that hard getting you two to meet. All I had to do was invite Tara to that party and just give YN a little bump so you two would talk." Anika continues, and you furrow your eyebrows. Party? You met Tara at a party?

Your eyes dart to Tara and she's looking at you a little solemnly, and suddenly it hits you like a truck. Memories that have never been unlocked before replay in your mind now. The angel from that party.

That was Tara.

"After that, everything just fell into place. You guys are one pathetic predictable group of people." Ethan pipes up.

"The friendship, the night you got stabbed, it was all planned. I mean, why do you think I took you back to the apartment? For Anika to "stitch you up?" He asks excitedly, looking at Anika for approval to speak further. She gives him an annoyed nod.

"And guess what the best part is," He giggled midway, but gains his composure again. "Every time she came to fix you up, she actually poisoned the wound. Never too much that you would notice- but enough to guarantee your death today. It's infected." He cheers, like he hasn't just told you you're going to die.

"Jesus, you never told me how bad it was," Tara says, making your eyes dart back to hers, trying to catch her gaze to inadvertently say your sorry, but she doesn't meet your eyes.

"I didn't want you to worry." You sigh.

Ethan makes a noise of disgust. He looks at you with scrunched eyebrows, a little crinkle of his nose betraying his chill facade. His gaze shifts to Tara, and you can't help but notice his voice move just a pitch higher.

"Poor Tara. Caught in this sick twisted web between your sister and your girlfriend. You didn't even do anything wrong right, baby? Don't worry...nothing's going to happen to you. I've made sure of that." He tells her, and it hits you all at once.

"Baby? What are you talking about? " Tara asks, cocking her head to the side.

"I love you, Tara. I did all of this just for you. When the both of them are dead, you and I can get together. Finally." He says, between deep breaths.

You don't know how you never saw it before. Memories of the prior weeks flash in front of your eyes.

His heart eyes for your girlfriend every time the group would have a movie night and you two would cuddle, the weird lingering around the both of you whenever you'd go out.

You just figured he really liked your company.

"You're out of your mind you sick fuck. Tara would never date you, even if you were the last person on earth." Is what Sam says, and despite the consequences of what's sure to come, your heart sings.

Last person on earth.

Ethan stutters, like he never thought of the possibility that she would reject him. You see tears forming immediately, frown apparent. He's trying to keep it together- you can tell.

He leans back slightly, dejected. His eyes cloud with something you can only describe as hatred, and for a scary moment, you think he seriously might jump at Tara.

However, he doesn't get the time to act on his thoughts, because in less than a blink of an eye Anika's moving over and stabbing him in the neck.

"Agh!" He grunts. A trickle of blood runs down the side of his mouth, then it bursts. So, so much thick crimson liquid gurgles out.

Anika stands behind him, sliding her knife out his back, wiping the blood clean.

"Gosh, what a bore he was, right? True love this true love that. I couldn't listen to that shit any longer." She gags, leaning over to stick her tongue out at Ethan's lifeless face. She stabs him again in the jaw for good measure.

She looks back at the three of you, who are clearly aghast.

"Gotta make sure he's dead right?" She smiles, and it finally gets through to you that she's lost it. Whoever you thought you knew, that person never existed.

No one answers her as she stands up.

You turn stoney-faced as you look up at her. "So what's the plan Anika? How are you gonna get away with this?"

She turns around, rolling her eyes. Before you know it, she's advancing towards you, knife raised. She jabs lightly at your wound. Teases her knife against your skin. You really wish people would stop picking that specific part to hurt you.

"Do we really need to go over this again? Kill you guys blah blah blah, find Mindy and kill her, say that you and Sam went crazy like their fathers. Really, it's not hard to understand." Anika continues, shuffling her feet as she speaks like she's bored.

Time is ticking before she snaps and just decides to kill you, you know it. Not to mention the fact that you were actively dying.

"What do you really want from us? Just name your price now, and we'll- we'll get it. Just let her go." Tara splutters, almost begging.

Anika stomps her feet with the energy of a three year olds tantrum, "I want revenge! Have I not made that clear enough?" she basically yells.

Sam moves forward slowly, like a wildlife expert moving towards a wild beast.

"Look I'm sure we can come to an agreement about something-" She's saying, but Anika rolls her eyes once again and advances lazily towards you.

Nothing happens in slo-mo like the movies, you can barely register her face before she's plunging the dagger deep into the other side of your lower stomach. You can feel it pierce it's way through your whole body.

You hear a scream but it sounds a million miles away. You gag, moving your head to the side to try and puke, but nothing comes out. You try to groan in frustration but it makes your skin sting everywhere that you stop. You just stop for a moment.

Tara's fully sobbing now, you think. You can't really tell.

All hell breaks loose. Sam breaks out into a sprint at Anika, effectively knocking her down till both of them are tumbling on the floor.

You see flashes of black and gray and blood spurting from someone.

"Stay with me." You hear someone say, and try with everything in you to blink back everything into focus. It's Tara.

Her mascara is everywhere. Black stripes of tears and makeup streak down her pretty face, and you feel the urge even now to bring your hand up and wipe the tears away.

You try and tell her to stop crying but the words die in your mouth. What feels like fire engulfs your lungs.

"Stay with me. I'll be right back." She whispers, pressing a kiss to your chapped lips.

You search your mind desperately for a way out of this mess, a solution, but everything goes blank. Your ears ring, eyes rolling to the back of your head in pain.

With everything you have in you, you squeeze Tara's hand one last time, and tell her to take the knife currently lodged in you out.

Tara's eyes darken, the most cloudy you've ever seen them.

"No, no. I couldn't do that." She says, another round of tears falling down her cheeks. She shakes her head adamantly, but you shush her.

"Please. For me." You manage to get out, then with the utmost acceptance, you let yourself go.

Tara doesn't remember much of what happened after that. She remembers sobbing, she remembers someone screaming, but she can't be too sure if it's her or someone else. She remembers the feeling of your fingers loosening their grip on her hand, and she remembers seeing red.

With no where else to channel her emotions, and with your words engraved in her mind, she turns on Anika.

She hurries over to where she's still wrestling with Sam, expression tight, and grabs the first thing she can find in this shithole of a theater.

Your father's wooden box.

She remembers faintly telling Sam to fuck off, and smashing the box over Anika's head. Then picking it up and doing the same thing again. And again, and again. She remembers taking the heel of her shoes and smashing it to Anika's nose, breaking it in one clean hit.

She remembers going back to you, your white as paper skin, and yanking the knife out of you.

And the final thing she remembers is screaming at Anika while she buries the knife in and out of the girl’s body, everywhere, again and again.

#tardy #tara carpenter #tara carpenter x reader #jenna ortega x reader #wednesday addams x reader #melrodrigo #jenna ortega #mine

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parvulous-writings · 2 months

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Could I request headcanons for Astarion, Gale, and Halsin realising his feelings for his gn crush?

Warnings: mentions of Astarion's trauma. I added a scene that doesn't technically exist in-game to flesh things out a bit with Halsin.

Notes: Please, Tumblr... More Halsin and Gale gifs pls My requests are currently open! My pinned post (found here) contains both a list of characters I write for, and a masterlist! Original character list - please request for these too!

Astarion

As we all know, it takes a long time for Astarion to be able to fall in love properly. His two centuries of having to seduce prey for Cazador have made it very hard to tell where the sultry facade ends, and the true him begins. He was meant to have seduced you for protection, to get you to fall for him and defend him should he ever need it. That was the plan, in any case. To him, it was fool-proof - he had never fallen in love with an object of his 'affection' before, so this should have been easy.

He was very wrong - though your do-good nature really irked him at first, it eventually made him want to be the same. Or, at least, similar. Part of him wished that he could have had someone like you earlier, to save him from the horrors he had seen under Cazador. Your patience with him, and your unwavering kindness got through to him, and he craved more - even if he thought he didn't deserve it.

He realised he loved you - truly, deeply loved you - when you and some of your group had infiltrated Moonrise Towers. You'd encountered a drow who was hell-bent on exploring the Sanguine arts, and had even started to press Astarion to bite her, despite his protests. You had stood up for him, told her to back off, and it was that moment that he had realised that his feelings for you were more than an infatuation, more than seeing you as something to use for protection, that it was love.

Gale

Gale had been fond of you since day 1 - though, being pulled out of a collapsing portal may do that to someone's view of another. Your views often aligned - though sometimes the means to achieve them did not - and that endeared you all the more to him. Even when he told you of the orb lodged deep within his chest, demanding he consume strands of weave, you stuck by him; and he hadn't entirely thought you would.

Being able to travel by your side and see all the good deeds you do is an honour for him - he'll often sit and think about how his life would have been had he not been snatched up by the mindflayers. He'd probably be in his tower in Waterdeep, with no one but Tara for company, and little to do besides wallow in his own self-pity. This was a much better alternative - even with the looming possibility of ceremorphosis.

His feelings first started when you said that you could stay with the group after he revealed the nature of the orb in his chest. It was only natural, after being shown such kindness. But the moment he really knew he loved you, was after Elminster had delivered Mystra's missive to Gale - about destroying the heart of the Absolute by detonating the orb in his chest. When you had gotten so uptight with the older wizard, telling him it wouldn't happen, that Gale wasn't going to die, he couldn't help but find you sweet. Though he had initially resigned himself to Mystra's demands, he couldn't deny it felt nice to have someone on his side.

Halsin

To begin with, Halsin admired you, but was not emotionally available enough to pursue any kind of romantic relationship with you - his mind was focused more on ridding Moonrise of the Shadow Curse. It was only really once that part of your journey had concluded that he could even start to think about that kind of thing.

You had proven yourself to be a person of your word, and that was something that Halsin always held a great amount of respect for. To find someone who followed through with the promises they made, let alone to be able to travel with them, was an absolute blessing - one that Halsin thanked the gods for every day. It was with your help the curse was dispelled, and the lands freed; that was no easy feat, and he couldn't have done it without you.

During the rather small celebration the party and a few others had post-curse, Halsin sat and thought to himself about all that you had done for him - all that you, hadn't quite sacrificed per se, but had given to help him. You'd taken many beatings to help him on his own quest, when it probably would have been more beneficial for you to pursue your own - which was arguably just as pressing, if not more so. Your courage endeared you to him, and it was as he sat there, amidst the celebratory drinking and serenading, that he realised he would devote himself to you as much as you had done to him; following you to Baldur's Gate, and facing whatever it was that was at the end of your journey.

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middle-name-queer · 6 months

Text

A great thing about the good place is how all four of the main crew are actually self-centered

We commonly identify forms of self-centered behavior such as selfishness that is exemplified by Elenor. (aka "a Bad Person"), but then you have Chidi and Tehani. These two are far less classical in their self-centered behavior but are still self-centered, nevertheless.

The show makes Tehani's folly pretty clear, despite all her philanthropic acts she still centers herself in every situation. How she ended up there is actually parallel to Elenor's upbringing, the only real difference is the glitz and the glamour. They both had parents that were withholding for one reason or another, neither felt seen nor wanted and so one shut down to protect herself, the other made her entire existence a performance, either way they are deeply, deeply self-centered people.

But Chidi is my favorite, for the obvious reason that his self-centered behavior is the least obvious. Now of course it's made pretty clear to us as viewers but as a character within the world, for nearly all situations most people would judge Chidi as a good (albeit, sometimes annoying) person. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would out right call him self-centered... yet he is!

Chidi acts as though the world rests squarely on his shoulders, that each little choice he makes carries the weight to change the trajectory of humanity. Putting this into words pretty clearly illustrates the ridiculousness of it. It simply isn't reality, and it shows how, even though Chidi is a "good person" (vs Elenor and Jason) he is still susceptible to the very human condition of not looking past yourself. Another way to state it (as I'm sure many have before) he basically suffers from thinking he's a main character. (lol) Now, lucky for him he actually is one but translating this to real life you can see how people fall prey to this way of thinking, convoluting their lives due to the faulty belief that they, and they alone, can make or break the world around them.

This rolls around my brain like a marble because, I did this! For an embarrassingly long time in my youth, I truly felt the grief and horror that comes with thinking you, and you alone, can fix the world's problems. And I think this sort of thing isn't talked about enough because there isn't an obvious red flag of being a "bad person". Chidi is "good" and so there is a smoke screen effect hiding how poor his behavior actually is. (Can you tell I deeply identify with his character? 🤔)

Jason is an interesting case in his own right, because he's self-centered almost in the same way as a small child. I assume Donkey Doug was simply unequipped to help Jason develop past that stage in his upbringing, in tandem with say... other lifestyle choices, Jason's overall mental development is limited. He's an interesting example of how not all self-centered behavior is motivated by innate "selfishness". Jason is very much capable of empathy, generosity, and comradery, as shown by his relationship to Janet, lifelong friendships, and his participation and organization of a 60-person dance crew. This is in opposition to Elenor, a selfishly self-centered person who could not form meaningful or lasting relationships.

Jason Mendoza's behavior is more of a big kid who acts on impulse, this can obviously be perceived as "hurtful" and when done by a grown adult it may be judged as "he's a bad person". But when looking at his overall character it's clear that he doesn't make a single move with any ill intent or malice. You can easily reason with him in nearly all situations, even when he chooses to throw a molotov at a train, all it takes is grabbing him by the arm and telling him to knock it off. He doesn't argue or get defensive, unlike versions of Elenor who would tell you to "go fork yourself". Jason is only self-centered because he struggles to see the big picture, but when it's shown to him, more often than not he accepts it with a little guidance.

I have no end point here other than watching these characters exude self-centeredness in four distinctly different ways, only to then learn and better themselves, is a delight!

#tgp #the good place #tgp spoilers #not really but whatever #damn i didn't even talk about micheal #whatever maybe later

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queerofthedagger · 3 months

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I'm really curious about the Uther things you mentioned?

Ahh hey! Yeah I can talk on that a bit (for context, I think I said that I do find his character intriguing and that my opinion on him has evolved quite a bit, influenced by mostly disagreeing with what a lot of people tend to say?)

So the thing about Uther is that I feel people tend to either go "He's evil, everything he does at any given time is evil, I hate him and there is nothing more to it," or they go "Oh but he loved his children!!!" in a kind of, redeeming-quality-kind of sense. I'm somewhat hyperbolizing, of course, but I do think fandom tends to a very black and white view.

Don't get me wrong, I hate Uther. I hate Uther with a burning passion, and I love to hate him. He's terrible. But I do think the show actually did go to quite an effort to make him complex beyond a simple "tyrannical son of a bitch" (that he was) or "Oh okay but he loved Ygraine and his kids 🥺" (which he did!).

Of course he is terrible. He murdered hundreds if not thousands of people over the guilt he could not bear to live with, that was, in the first place, the consequence of his own actions. I do believe he didn't know that the price would be Ygraine's life; he was still willing to sacrifice someone's life. Which is very Uther. Yes, at the root of that lies grief, and at the root of grief lies love, but the thing (and also imo the crux of Uther's character) is that being capable of loving people doesn't somehow, magically (ha. sorry) make you less of a bad person.

Terrible people can love other people. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find people no matter how atrocious their actions, who don't have people they love. And most people don't set out to "do something evil;" Uther, in all his atrocities, always had justifications to himself.

I think it says a lot that despite the brutal war he wrought, he was by and large not considered a bad king, per se, by his people and allies. We could dismiss all those instances where the show makes a point to reiterate this as fear of speaking up - and I'm not saying that didn't play a part - but I think that's making it too easy. There is a whole other essay on propaganda and how the war on magic worked, but I'll get to that another time. My main point is that, as uncomfortable as the thought may be considering just what horrors he wrought, he wasn't a frothing, mad bag full of cartoonish evil.

That doesn't mean that he "wasn't that bad, really." Which kind of brings me to the other side of things, the way people like to throw "Well, but he loved his kids," into the mix as a kind of. I don't know, counterpoint to the "tyrannical son of a bitch" side. And like, the thing is, he did. The thing is, that doesn't change a thing.

Yeah, Uther loved both Arthur and Morgana. We see enough proof of that through the seasons, whether it's in the Excalibur Episode where he fights in Arthur's stead at any cost, or in Le Morte d'Arthur where he openly weeps, or with Morgana in various instances to a degree where some people think he loved her more (and again, yet another essay on how his love for Arthur is tangled up so much in his guilt and the hatred that caused, but I digresss), not least in how her 'betrayal' broke him.

Ultimately, though, he also put Arthur in harm's way again and again. He certainly rarely ever told him he loved him, to the point where Arthur is shocked to hear it. He puts his children in chains and locks them away and drugs them and threatens them in all manners, he lies to them and hides the truth from them (Ygraine/Morgana's parentage in the first place) to the detriment of their well-being, and so on. His love is conditional. His love demands obedience and submission. We could argue until we're blue if that's really love in the first place, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter all that much.

People can love other people, and it can be entirely inconsequential, because frankly, most parents love/"love" their kids. That doesn't mean they're automatically good parents, or even good people. In Uther's case it really isn't a redeeming quality at all. It just makes him complex and interesting and multi-dimensional as the villain/antagonist. Because it makes us grapple with the really very unfortunate but inevitable fact that even terrible people are still people. They aren't some removed monster that no one can ever relate to. They love and they laugh and grieve, and they can still turn around and burn people in their frontyard on the daily without missing a beat. They can be willing to die for their children and threaten violence and exile in the next breath.

I think with Uther, at the end of the day, for me it's really both. His atrocities started out of love, and his love is steeped, inevitably, in the violence and twisted moral framework of his character; it's not an either/or thing at all, it depends on each other. And he is a goddamn son of a bitch, of course, even if every once in a bluemoon he still sheds honest tears for his unfortunate children.

#answered asks #mona rambles #tansyuduri #bbcm #merlin meta #uther pendragon #this got so long and I'm not even sure it's super coherent but yk. feel free to ask clarifying questions if you wanna lmao <3 #mona's rambling

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a-writer-on-elm-street · 1 year

Text

What Are We?

pairing: bo x gn!reader

summary: when bo starts to question your relationship, you're both forced to confront your feelings for one another

warnings: smut, oral sex (m receiving), angst (with a happy ending...sort of), soft bo (sort of), bo might also be slightly out of character

a/n: i apologise in advance for what you're about to read...cos this one kinda hurt

word count: 1171

"What are we?"

"What?" You rolled over to find Bo staring at you, his brows pulled together in concentration as he laid with his head propped up in his hand.

"What are we?" He asked again, a little more urgency in his tone now.

You pressed your lips together, taking a moment to think about his question.

The first time you'd met Bo, it was when you stumbled into town, having no prior knowledge to what usually went on here. Your shitty old car had broken down and Lester had been kind enough to give you a ride into town.

The second you saw him you knew you were in trouble. When he smiled, your heart skipped a beat and when he reached up to adjust the worn cap on his head, your skin seemed to come alight. You wanted him.

Bo wanted you too, except at first, it was in a different way.

It wasn't long before he was dragging you into his basement, your broken down car long forgotten at that point, and he kept you there for the next three weeks.

You should've hated him, or at the very least been scared of him. But maybe you were just fucked in the head, because you couldn't seem to find it in you to fear this man, despite everything he'd done to you. It was an odd feeling to say the least.

Now, you felt even more odd as you laid in bed with him, his fingers absent-mindedly stroking your arm like he hadn't previously been your kidnapper.

And he was asking you something you had never dreamed would ever come out of his mouth, because what were you? Lovers? Friends? Were you in a relationship?

"I don't know what we are." You finally answered, a feeling of sadness spreading in your chest as you took in his expression.

His usual scowl seemed to melt into a frown as he looked at you, something resembling disappointment in his eyes. "Well...how do you feel about me?"

You noticed him cringe slightly as he said that. Feelings weren't exactly his favourite thing to talk about.

You smiled, mostly from amusement, as you shifted closer to him in the bed. "I like you, is that what you wanna hear?"

He simply pressed his mouth into a line as he thought about it, all the while you were slowly moving closer to him, your fingers skating along his jaw as you leaned towards him.

But he was quick to stop you, his fingers curling around your wrist as he pried you off of him. "Don't."

And that single word was what sent your whole world off balance, because Bo was never like this. "Do you really care what we are to each other?"

He scoffed at you then, his signature scowl returning to his face. "No. I was just thinking about it, that's all. Don't mean I care."

He rolled over then, letting you stare at his back whilst you mulled over his question in your head. You'd always thought your relationship with him was strictly sexual, never involving anything more than casual feelings, but it seemed that that might not have been the case.

As much as you'd like to tell him that you two were merely just friends who had sex sometimes, you knew for a fact that wasn't true. For a few months now, you'd noticed your feelings becoming a little deeper than simply casual. You just couldn't figure out exactly what he meant to you.

You reached towards him then, gently running your fingers down his back.

He didn't react, he simply remained where he was, his back still to you as he kept silent.

"I love you, Bo." You finally said, your heart clenching in your chest at the words. "I have for a while."

He turned around then, the hard look on his face softening. "Yeah?"

You smiled. "Yeah."

Although you weren't entirely sure if that was the truth, you hoped it was.

Before anything else could be said between you, you reached a hand towards his face, pulling him towards you so you could press a tender kiss to his lips.

"Say it again." He mumbled as you began trailing your lips down his throat.

"I love you." You sighed into his skin, heat already beginning to pool between your thighs. "I love you."

You were practically chanting the words as you continued to make your way down his body, eventually pausing when you reached the hem of his shirt.

You cast a quick glance to him before pushing the dark material up his body, letting him remove the clothing completely as he lifted it over his head, discarding it somewhere on the floor.

"Fuck, I love you." You muttered again, your fingers already hooking underneath the waistband of his boxers, eagerly tugging them down his legs.

"I love you so much." You said again, your voice dripping with desperation as you wrapped a hand around his length, making his hips jerk off the bed slightly.

Bo let out a guttural moan when you finally closed your mouth over his tip, wasting no time in taking him further.

You loved when he let you take control like this, when he let you show him just how much you cared for him. And from the sounds spilling from his mouth right now, it seemed he loved it too.

You felt him slide his hand over the back of your head, his fingers tightly gripping onto your hair as you started to bob your head up and down on his cock.

And whilst you were enjoying the fact that it was you who was coaxing the desperate moans out of him, you also found it relieving that you didn't have to speak anymore, because you still didn't know if you actually loved him. But you wanted to.

You continued your movements over him, causing quiet moans to keep slipping from his mouth as he gripped the back of your head, and after a while you could tell he was close.

Tears were starting to burn your eyes and saliva was running down your chin, and you had never felt more alive than you did in this moment. So what if you didn't love him yet, he still managed to light your whole body on fire whenever you were together like this. That was what mattered to you.

"Oh fuck." You heard him groan, his grip on your hair becoming painful now as he started to thrust into your mouth. "That's it. Come on."

After a few more hard thrusts into your mouth, you finally felt him go rigid beneath you, his warm release spilling over your tongue. And once he was spent, you pulled off of him, swallowing hard as you crawled back up the bed.

You both laid side by side, not touching, the sound of heavy breathing filling the room. And then he said "I love you."

And you had never felt more broken.

[Main Masterlist] [Bo Masterlist]

#bo sinclair #bo sinclair smut #bo sinclair angst #bo sinclair x reader #bo sinclair x gn reader #bo sinclair oneshot #bo sinclair imagine #bo sinclair fanfic #bo sinclair x you #house of wax #house of wax 2005 #house of wax fanfic #house of wax fanfiction #house of wax smut #brian van holt

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overleftdown · 4 months

Text

angsty farleigh start blurb

hello hi fanfiction! mostly character study with a lot of sad hehehah. what else would one expect from me!

There are things that Farliegh took for granted. 3 months after leaving Saltburn, he realizes that money isn't really one of them.

Instead, he finds himself folded over a mug of lukewarm coffee at 2am, staring down a collection of postcards mounted on the far wall of his local diner. He had just finished working a double, unwilling to decline an offer that would bump both his pay and reputation. Farleigh has 8 hours until his next shift. He's staring at a postcard from Greece, a name hastily penned onto the front; the edges are worn, and the corners bent. He's wondering what's written on the side pressed to the yellowing popcorn walls. Almost absentmindedly, he lifts the rim of his mug to his lips and thinks, I wish I told them how much I wanted to see Mykonos. The coffee is bitter.

It becomes a constant, after that. Walking through the American snack isle and passing his favorite cereal brand, thinking I wish I had told them how good Reece's Puffs were. Catching the eye of a boy around his age with a piercing through his left nostril, thinking I wish I told Felix to get that one. Going, alone, to a movie theater and thinking I wish I told Venetia that I loved Rocky Horror Picture Show. On and on it went.

I wish I told them I saw the Grand Canyon, and that it was so gorgeous I lost my breath. I wish I told them that I always preferred white wine over red. I wish I told them that my silk bedding was so my hair wouldn't dry out, tangle, or tear. I wish I told them about the friendship bracelets I once made for us; that I kept all three in a box under my bed. I wish I told them I was scared of being insignificant. I wish I told them that I missed my mom and dad, that I'm farther from myself every day, that I might hate myself despite my arrogance.

Farleigh has spent his life hiding. There were dinner party invites that didn't extend to his father, yet somehow included him. Farleigh remembers sitting secluded, for once wishing he kept his hair short. Older women who wanted so badly to be young, gravitating towards him with greetings like "You're Frederica's son! I always wondered what you'd look like. I never expected a handsome young man like yourself." And the men; rough yet unworn hands that sometimes gripped the nape of his neck. "You're unique, Farleigh. It's hard to find someone who looks quite like you. You're maturing quickly." On and on it went. Despite the itching, Farleigh never cut his hair short. The Cattons would ask him why he insisted on such messiness, contrary his otherwise sharp fashion. Silk pillowcases. Five shampoo bottles, an array of hair creams--all kept out of eyesight. Better to let them believe his hair was a casual affair, and intentionally so.

The cocaine had been the least of his hidings (and look where that landed him). People are always sequestering the sunburnt, raw-rubbed, defective pieces of themselves. The things they so desperately clung to, bad habits like a bright red blemish on a ledger, or a lifeline. The first time Farleigh saw the inside of a teacher's lounge had been 30 minutes past the final bell, with a head of tangled hair that he had styled perfectly just 7 hours ago. He remembers accepting the offered cup of tea and thinking Felix won't notice I'm gone. He had told Felix what he did that evening, anyways. This, Farleigh had never thought to hide. Better not to. Better to tell Felix, who was so prone to flippancy, that he would do anything for a good grade.

"What, you're that shit at school, mate? Jesus. You better not tell anyone; you'd get ousted in days." Felix had said, a painful looking blush to his face. They had only been 16, after all. "I mean, seriously! I never took you for a pillock." At that, Farleigh had raised his eyebrows skeptically. There are some things that were abundantly clear. Uncle James had insisted that Farleigh required a higher education than whatever American dumpster he would be learning his times tables in, and the rest of the Cattons had quickly glued themselves to the idea. They liked to think that they were saving him from stupidity.

In the end, it had been Felix who told someone Farleigh's secret. Namely, his new friend that had been sitting in Farleigh's seat for the last 2 weeks. After countless meetings and scoldings, and significant attempts to publicly humiliate him, Farleigh was sent back to Saltburn before his transfer. When Elspeth and James asked, frantically, what Farleigh had been thinking, he had told them that he needed a better grade. They'd just have to try harder to save him. In truth, there were some things that never really went away, like a teachers lounge and a fresh cup of tea. Something secret, something just for him.

The things that Farleigh insisted on hiding were good things, already half-stained by the bad. A family photo album inside of a shoebox inside of a pillowcase inside of a duffel bag under his bed, next to the ornate little chest where he obviously kept his drugs. Photo strips, polaroids from New York City, his mom's peach scented powder blush, his dad's discarded tie clip. If you keep what really matters just far enough to the side of what people consider a secret, they'll never look any harder. Farleigh has always believed that your worst mistakes only marginally define your humanity. Really, it's what someone loves, isn't it? It's who they would change for. It's who they would make bracelets for.

Back to the diner, back to the present, back to a time and place where nobody really cared to distinguish a secret from a statement. Back to the postcard from Greece that Farleigh wants to rip off the wall, just to read what is obscured. Saltburn was so large of a life that it was impossibly surreal, too many millions of dollars past tangibility. Whatever was written on that postcard was touchable. A small piece of an even smaller existence. Farleigh was terrified of what it meant to be alive. To stash pieces of himself in dark places like stowaways on the Titanic. To carry what was left after the rest capsized.

I wish I'd given them those bracelets. I made them so they'd think of me, even when I wasn't there.

#farleigh start #character study #saltburn #op is losing it #farleigh omonomnomnomnom

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giorno-plays-piano · 11 months

Text

Thorns In His Mouth

Part IV

Pairing: fae!Steve Rogers x reader

Warnings: obsession, dubious consent, minor character death, drugs (neither reader nor Steve are involved), slight eating disorder, mentions of tumor, high tech elves.

Words: 1k

Summary: Maybe it was a good idea to chat with a waitress a bit more once she brought you your order. Perhaps she could at least tell you with whom you should speak because you simply couldn’t force yourself to look at others, most of them already high, shouting something loudly or laughing or weeping. You could constantly hear the flapping of someone’s wings, weird whispers and noises, and the sound of boots and hooves that made your hair stand on end.

Part I

Part II

Part III

________

When Steve opened the door, you expected this place to reek so bad you clamped a hand against your nose and mouth, but all you smelled were the damp leaves and salt air. It felt weird, and you raised your eyes to the elf's face, staring at him with suspicion. What was that? How come this place emitted such a strange, almost charming scent that reminded you of a forest by the sea? Perhaps you could blame it on the fact the owner of this place was an elf, too, but the café full of fairy addicts was just as bad as you expected it to be, and no heavenly aroma lingered there. What's the difference now?

Judging by the expression on Steve's face, he hadn't been here for a long time as well: he's clearly surprised, and the very next second you could see him going down the stairs so fast like somebody was chasing him.

"Hey!" You yelled behind his back, running after the elf before he could disappear into thin air. "What is it?"

He didn't answer, but you couldn't back down now when you had a chance to finally see someone meeting your elven friend's criteria. Angry at Steve for rushing in, you followed him to the dark corridors with barely a couple of bulbs lighting your way, completely forgetting your fear. At that moment, your own safety mattered so little that you didn't even consider what would happen if Julius decided to hurt you, a stranger who broke in his home.

But he couldn't. He couldn't because he was laying on an old stained sofa, unmoving, and his skin was so ashy it was clear as day he was dead.

For a couple of seconds, it seemed like you grew deaf. Staring at the lifeless body of a young, maybe even handsome elf if not for his wrinkles and ugly little scars down his mouth to the chin, you heard nothing but the sound of your heart beating in your ears. When you directed your gaze to his hand dropped to the floor, you saw the horribly scarred skin and veins that looked so black as if someone traced them with a pen. The veins in his toes were just as bad, and you spotted scars on his dirty feet, too.

He was dead.

You started crying before you could even process the thought.

Pressing your palms against your eyes so hard you nearly made yourself blind, your back bumped against the wall, you let out a loud cry like a wounded animal. He was dead. Whether he was an elf or a man or whatever creature he could be, he died like any drug addict who didn't get help before it was too late. He just laid there, on the disgusting damp yellow sofa that barely held his weight, as if he was resting, and his expression was so serene like he finally found something he had been searching for so long.

He was dead hewasdeadhewasdead-

You wailed and wept and shook your head frantically as if it somehow would make you feel better about a corpse of a fallen elf in front of your eyes. Tugging at the roots of your hair, you finally turned away, your forehead pressing into the cool wall as you shuddered, soaked with sweat. What did you expect to find here? After all Steve told you and everything you saw with your own eyes, did you think you would find a man who'd be willing to go with you? Did you seriously consider you'd be able to make anyone go meet that princely elf under the pretense of coming back to magic lands? Did it not occur to you all these people elves and fairies had been way beyond salvation ages before you showed up? Did you think they would want to come back even if they could?

It was harder to breathe with every step you took, climbing the stairs. Steve, whom you had completely forgotten about, was by your side, saying something to you in desperation, his voice trembling, but he could as well talk to the walls: you were still very much deaf, barely dragging yourself up before you'd collapse from shock.

"I'm sorry," he inhaled sharply as you fell down on your knees once you got outside, coughing and barely holding yourself from vomitting all over the ground. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done it. I didn’t know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry."

If you turned your head to him, holding you tightly so you wouldn't crash your head against the concrete, you'd see he was shaking nearly as much as you did, his fingers clasping your shoulders so hard they would surely bruise tomorrow. But you didn't, too deep in your head, emotions taking over you, a dead elf in front of your eyes the moment you dared to close them again.

"It's good that you cry," Steve muttered when the two of you sat on the cemented road when some time passed, dust and dirt beneath your fingers. "Nobody would cry for him, but you do. It's good that you do."

Although then you could already recognize his words when he spoke, it mattered so little that you didn't even ask him what he meant by that. You just felt horrible and empty and sick and disgusted, staring dumbly at the road and shivering from the cold wind, cutting you to the bone.

________

You didn't remember who called a taxi and how the driver was able to find you in that godforsaken place, but you remembered well what you thought on your way back: you just couldn't do it. You couldn't fulfill your promise if you had to do this to find the man you were looking for.

Part V

Tags: @finleyjayne @alexakeyloveloki @helenaeisenhower @villanellevi @inlovewiththefictionalcharacters @navegandoaciegas @rosalynshields @sllooney @angrythingstarlight @lookiamtrying @buckysbunny @soleil-dor @stargazingfangirl18 @dillybuggg @literate-lamb @cosicas-cuquis @sarge-barnes-sir @buckybarnesplumwhore @jaysayey @megzdoodle @gotnofucks @lux-ravenwolf @biiskuitx @stupendouslovegardener @melodierin @yeolliedokai @what-is-your-wish @lou-la-lou @gachawipes133 @eralen @magnificantmermaid @lovelydarkdaydream @illyrianprincess @youngdreamer3214

#yandere #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers #dark steve rogers #mcu fanfiction #captain america #dark steve rogers x reader

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writing-with-gremworm · 6 months

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Gepard Yandere Headcanons

Gepard Landau as I understand him is a noble character. He isn't reckless and he holds rules as a baseline with room for sensible variation.

So what if this man was a Yandere?

There are a couple of ways I can see this going. Note that there are going to be elements of over-lap and that I see him having elements of an over-protective Yandere regardless of what other subcategories he falls under.

Brief Disclaimer: These notes are somewhat romanticized, a number of the behaviors listed are not healthy. This is simply for fun and fiction. I do not encourage seeking such in reality.

Soft!Yan!Gepard:

He would listen to your problems and give you meaningful advice or questions. However, if something came up regarding a transgression against you, you may notice the offender showing up around you less often.

Gepard cares deeply about his family and as such he would naturally take up the elder brother role in yours if need be. This could mean he is a filial Soft!Yan who is the overprotective older brother for you. This could also mean that once he sees you as his darling in a romantic sense your family is already his and he will protect them. (With the exception of a bad family, but I digress.)

As a romantic Soft!Yan, he would get flustered easily. His face would be mostly neutral with a slight shift in his brows and a quirk in the corners of his lips. A light red would dust his cheeks and he'd have some difficulty keeping his gaze focused.

In filial or romantic regards he would cuddle you often in private. He'd apologize for not being able to spend more time with you because of his duties.

If you were put in danger he would take one of two paths. He would either teach you to defend yourself or take measures to protect you into his own hands. The latter would most likely look like being surrounded by trustworthy family (Serval and or Lynx) when he can not be beside you. This may be a point where he offers to stand guard for you if it will make you feel safer.

Gepard's expressions aren't negligible normally, but they're certainly more pronounced when they're connected to how he feels about you.

This is the version that seems the most like Gepard normally, so it may go completely unnoticed.

Obsessive/Isolating Yan!Gepard:

When Gepard falls in love, he falls hard. It may have started slow, but once his darling doesn't leave his thoughts they're all he can think about.

He starts noticing that he's annoyed when you smile more with others than him. If this skews more filial he'll jump in immediately and be overprotective. If this skews more romantic, he'll quietly seeth and jump in as a brotherly figure until he acknowledges that it is romantic. After that acknowledgment, he'll start giving you more affection.

At first, his behavior seems cute. Smiling more widely at little gestures, treasuring gifts or moments together. But as time passes, he wants more. Just a little gift or just a little moment is enough for him to subsist on, but not sustain him.

This Gepard is clingy. He'll hold your hand for longer periods of time and hug you from behind while whispering for you to stay beside him.

He knows his strength, he knows he can protect you. So if he fails, then he's left with a choice. Does he ensure your safety for good, or does he chance a similar danger finding you? The choice is obvious, so he opts to confine you to a room. He's there whenever he's not working, but it's still a lonely situation.

If you let him he'll gladly sleep beside you. At night he takes a moment to study your features, he may kiss the tips of hair, or press his lips to your forehead affectionately.

If you try to escape when you're isolated he will bind you to the room or transfer you to a cage. He wants you to trust him unconditionally, but his desire to protect you outweighs his desire to be unconditionally adored. At least in his cage you are with him.

Essentially to avoid the worst end with this one, you'd have to avoid danger completely or manage to hide you were in danger. Though considering his station, it would be difficult to hide being in danger from him.

Submissive Yan!Gepard

Major golden retriever energy. He would do anything for you if you asked him. He'd let you use him as a staircase or get rid of your problems.

Whenever he's with you he's happy. He smiles and waits for your praise when he's done something for you. Of course, this is a side only you see. Others are only familiar with the collected and reasonable Gepard who makes decisions at critical moments.

When he cuddles you he nuzzles into you and thanks you for holding him so gently. He'd let you do anything to him if it made you happy. Naturally, he'd be flustered by anything intimate.

#tw yandere #honkai star rail #gepard landau #hsr gepard #headcanon #I'm sure others have said similar things #but I thought It would be neat to share.#I hope you find them interesting

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pochipop · 2 years

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＃BNHA !! ♡ — CONFESSING TO YOU.

#. synopsis! — they confess to you after realizing how hard they've fallen following your killer performance at the ua sports festival .

#. characters! —bakugo, kaminari, todoroki .

#. warnings! — none .

#. alt accounts! — @ddollipop (nsfw) @yyolkchi (reblog/spam) .

#. others! — navigation & masterlist .

#. part I! — you can find the prerequisite fic: here .

𖦹. ━ BAKUGO !!

Classwork has really gotten interesting lately. Not because you and your peers are reading anything special, —but because the physical aspects have been amplified in order to prepare for the future. At the start of it all, you weren't sure UA was a good fit for you, nonetheless that Class 1A was a suitable starting point. But you quickly fell into the swing of things, and you fought hard to make a name for yourself in spite of any obstacles. As you built your confidence, a certain hot-tempered someone took notice, although he's hard pressed to admit it.

Even now with this haphazard plan jumbling around in his brain, he's not so sure this is the right way to go about things. But Bakugo knows that if he doesn't do it now, he might never do it at all. And if he's being honest, that part might frazzle him more than the thought of rejection. At the very least, he thinks you should know that. . . That he feels something for you, whatever the hell you wanna call it. He's tired of keeping it inside. Katsuki, of all people, is anything but used to shying away from his opinions, —and this one has been plaguing him for way too long.

"Hey, y/n!" He calls over to you.

You follow through with the punch you're landing on the training bag before turning to him.

"Yeah?" You ask, arms dropping to your side with a distant ache.

It's so commonplace by now that your brain hardly registers anything at all.

"We need to talk," Bakugo states, leaving little room for questions.

You can't say you're devoid of nerves, but he's been quite nice to you recently, so they've tempered off quite a lot. When you think back on it, you don't really know if he was ever mean to you personally. For the most part, he's always been. . . Nice? It's a word you struggle to connect with him due to his aggressive personality, but it seems to be the one that suits this scenario the best. His kindness has never been overt, but asking to spar with you might just be the biggest compliment someone like Bakugo can give. It means he sees you as someone capable of challenging him, and considering he thinks quite highly of himself, that's saying quite a bit.

"Oh?" You tilt your head to the side in confusion, "Is everything okay?"

His cheeks puff out for a moment or two before he responds.

Ah. . . That was cute.

"I don't really know how to say it," he acknowledges, "so just. . . Just listen until I'm done."

The please he tacks on softly at the end is almost too soft for you to hear. You'd even call it desperate.

"Your performance at the Sports Festival was. . ." He pauses, searching for the right words.

"It was really good," Katsuki settles.

Now that he's thinking about it critically, it was there that he solidified his feelings, whether passively or otherwise. It was there that he felt his heart swell with pride for you, —much to his own bewilderment. He felt prouder of you than he did of himself, despite having won the entire thing. When he thinks back on that day, he feels slivers of anger, but the memories of watching you dominate in the first round from the bleachers really set him on fire. It soothes that ball of complete and utter rage inside of him, if only for a moment. It tempers him out for the first time in a long while, eases that ache inside that he tries his best to stuff down and ignore.

An ache that derives from his secret worry that he might never be enough.

"Oh, you think so?" You smile softly, and he feels himself melt a little, lips pulling upward before he can think twice about it.

"That means a lot, especially coming from the one who won the whole thing," you add.

"Winning isn't everything," he replies quickly.

Too quickly to filter his sentiments. Winning has always been important to him, —it's established him as a top contender for all areas of his life. It's been the thing he's fallen back on time and time again. No matter what anyone has ever said, Katsuki is a winner. He's the best.

But even when he wins, something inside always yearns for more. And sometimes it's more than he fears he could ever achieve. More than he could ever be.

"I didn't think you'd say something like that," you acknowledge, "—but I agree. And not just because I lost."

"It's still important to win, of course," he attempts to fix the mask that's slipped, —even now,— "but you did well, even if you lost. And that's good too."

"But not good enough?" You muse, half jokingly.

It goes over his head, to say the least.

"It's good enough," Bakugo says, tone low and firm.

It carries his characteristic bluntness, but lacks the aggression. There's something there that you can't quite place. . . Something you're not sure you're at liberty to ask about, not that you'd really know how in the first place.

"You're good enough."

His words take you aback. It's unlike him to say something so seemingly sentimental. Even so, you're left to wonder if he was saying that to you because he wanted you to say it back. Maybe he was talking to himself here as well.

Before you have the chance to say anything, he speaks again.

"I like you. I don't really know why, so don't go asking for details, —I just do. There's probably a lot of reasons, but I don't know how to say them, so just take it for what it is."

Take me for what I am. For what I'm yet to be as well.

You pause for a few seconds to process everything that's been thrown at you. You know you can't leave him hanging here, especially not after that. On the surface, you like Bakugo. He's a bit rough around the edges sometimes, but he's got his own ways of expressing gratitude and caring for those around him. He's got his own way of giving people compliments, —and he's way outside of his comfort zone right now. That much is obvious.

"Are you hungry?" You ask him, smiling gently.

He looks confused, but simply answers in spite of it.

"Kind of."

"Let's go get some dinner together, then," you suggest. "My treat."

He doesn't really get it, but if you're asking to spend time with him he figures that's not a rejection. Dinner together will give the both of you time to talk, —time to learn more about each other. After that, maybe those disjointed feelings of his will piece themselves together a little more.

Until then, you'll just enjoy his company. He's not a bad conversationalist once you get to know him.

𖦹. ━ KAMINARI !!

Kaminari is a wreck. The closer he gets to you, the more his heart pounds, and he's convinced himself that you can hear it no matter the physical distance between the two of you. These feelings are scary and they make him want to run away from it all, so far that he loses sight of them somewhere.

He asks Mina for advice, but that doesn't quite go as planned. She tries to take over, —tells him he should throw some kind of party and convince you to come so he can ask you to dance with him when a slow song plays.

"Then you'll confess, and by the time you do, y/n will have totally already fallen for you!"

Denki's not so sure about that. He's also nowhere near confident enough in his own dancing abilities to hinge his entire plan on them. Not to mention the fact that, while he can be oblivious to things, he caught on quickly enough that Mina just really wanted a reason to throw a party.

Count Kaminari out for that idea.

He turns to the internet next: a place of vast ideas. He considers buying you chocolate in one of those big, fancy, heart-shaped boxes; but Valentine's Day has already passed for the year, making those much harder to come by. Not to mention that he was far too nervous to ask about your preferences, —because what if you immediately realized what he was planning on doing? What if you rejected him right there before he really had the chance to properly confess?

Kaminari doubts you'd do anything of the sort, and even if you did, he knows it would be put gently, but his fear of humiliation wins out on that one.

No big, elaborate party to slow dance at. And no chocolate.

Flowers then? Everyone likes flowers, right? Everyone except for Bakugo, maybe, Denki notes. That might not even be true, but he has a certain hunch, —not that he plans on asking his easily agitated friend about that anytime soon.

Still, Kaminari ventures to the nearest flower shop one afternoon and asks one of the workers there for some help. They give him a variety of options: —red roses are classic, but in recent years, people have been giving their loved ones roses in their favorite colors instead. The yellow ones are bright and pretty, but the blue ones seem so elegant and refined. And that's simply one type of flower alone! There's tulips, which seem a little more playful but are still beautiful and smell so sweet, peonies, daisies that range in sunset colors, even sunflowers. . .

In the end, he leaves with nothing, feeling lost and confused. He considers other options over the following days as well.

Maybe he could have Sato bake you something? But what if he picks the wrong flavor, just like with the chocolate?

Scratch that, —maybe a teddy bear will do the trick! But what if you'd prefer something different, like a rabbit, or even a unicorn.

No teddy bear. Jewelry? Something handmade? Fancy skincare products?

By the end of the week, Denki has a trashcan full of crumpled papers, all discarded ideas that he found something wrong with. If only he put this much effort into his school assignments. . .

A comment from some random person on an anonymous message board is the one to seal the deal. When he asks what he should do, they respond by telling him "not to be a chicken, just do it lol."

Just do it?

Somehow he'd never really considered that as an option. . .

You're shocked to find a note slipped inside your desk on Monday morning. It doesn't have a name, but it asks you to meet the author of it at a park nearby after school, —in the little garden city officials planted a few springs ago, and now pay people to upkeep in the warmer months. You do as asked, but are cautious. It's daytime, there are many people around, and you have your cellphone on you just in case of an emergency. Better to be safe than sorry!

"Kaminari?" You question upon your arrival.

The poor boy nearly trips over himself spinning around toward you. He'd expected you to come from the other direction. . .

"Y/n, —hi," he manages to say without fumbling for words. "Nice day, huh?"

"Um, yeah! I heard it was supposed to rain, but I'm glad it didn't. I'd have gotten soaked on the way here, —I completely forgot my umbrella back at the dorms," you admit.

I didn't even consider the weather, he thinks. Ugh.

"Anyway, were you the one that wrote this?" You ask, holding up the note between two of your fingers.

"Yeah," he nods, nervousness practically seeping from every pore on his body. "I. . . I have something to tell you, and I didn't know where else we could go, so I thought this might be the best bet."

And I wrote the note because I was still worried about rejection, and wanted to hold onto the idea that it could work for just a while longer.

"Well, I'm all ears," you say softly.

His heart is pumping so loud he's afraid it might burst, but he forces his lips apart to speak.

"I have feelings for you," Denki says, catching you by surprise.

"Would you like to go on a date with me?"

His edges soften when you crack a bashful smile.

"Yeah," you nod, "I'd like that."

He's too elated by your response to grieve all the hours he spent contemplating it. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath until it all came spilling out in a relieved sigh.

Thank you, anonymous message board user!

"Oh! And before I forget, —what do you think about all these flowers?"

𖦹. ━ TODOROKI !!

Overall, Todoroki considers himself to be someone who has pretty good control over his emotions. Sure, that might stem from his rough childhood where he was forced to swallow down his feelings to please others, —but in the end, he's learned to regulate himself quite well, for better or worse.

Even so, you've spun him out. He's floundering, despite hiding it like a master magician. He can keep all of it locked away inside, push it down until it's almost out of sight and out of mind, but it creeps back up to the forefront every chance it gets. It's keeping him awake. And he's almost ashamed to admit it, as someone who's been fairly soured on the idea of "true love," —whatever that's supposed to feel like. He acknowledges that he's both young and inexperienced, but can't shake the thought of you.

Shoto doesn't want to let anyone down. Not even those he's come to resent. After all his hard work, he thinks it would likely be a waste to give it all up now. . . But is that really what would happen if he acknowledged his own feelings? Is the forming of bonds really something that makes you weaker?

Or is that just another residual piece of his father talking from inside him?

"Todoroki," Midoriya nudges the split-haired boy, bringing him out of his thoughts.

He blinks himself back to reality.

"Sorry, did you say something?"

"Y/n's looking for you," Izuku repeats, "not sure why though."

"Oh. . . Okay, thanks," Shoto stands, "—where should I go?"

"School gates, probably!"

Todoroki thanks his friend again before rushing off. He's not sure why he's going so fast, it's not like he won't have the opportunity to speak with you at another point if he happens to miss you this time, but. . .

The truth is that he wants to see you. He wants to test things. He wants to pull away from whatever strings his father still holds over him. Shoto would rather hand them over to you.

"Todoroki!" You call out as soon as you see him, "there you are!"

"Yeah, sorry, I'm a little out of it today," he admits. "Do you need something?"

"Nothing in particular," you shake your head, "I just wanna talk, is all. You seem a little. . . Dejected lately."

You noticed? Nobody else had, as far as he was aware. If they had, they hadn't brought it to his attention, nonetheless taken the time to speak with him about it. He's almost ashamed to have let you see him in that state, —but more than that, he's glad someone has cared enough to ask.

The Sports Festival was hard for him; not because he lost, but because he was forced to reconcile with many different aspects of himself that he wasn't sure he was ready to face so adamantly. Still, he gets the feeling that whatever he says, you won't judge him for it, and definitely won't repeat it to anyone.

"I've had a lot on my mind since the Sports Festival," he sighs. "I don't know that I'm ready to get into it, even with myself."

"You don't have to," you assure him quickly. "Even if you never tell me anything, that's okay. I just wanted to make sure everything was alright. I also. . . Just wanted to make sure you knew that I'd be here if you ever need someone to talk to."

To act on these feelings. . . Would that be wrong?

Todoroki smiles softly.

Bonds. . . Can also make you stronger, I believe.

"I appreciate that," he tells you. "Really. The way you care for people is admirable. I think it's one of the reasons I like you so much."

I am allowed to be honest with my feelings.

That takes you by surprise.

"Speaking of that, since school is over. . . Would you like to go get ice cream, or something? Just the two of us?"

This is not a sign of weakness.

"Y-Yeah!" You nod quickly, heart skipping a beat. "I know a place just a few minutes away!"

"Great," Shoto nods, relishing in the warm feeling that bubbles up from inside. "Lead the way."

This is a sign of strength.

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duckprintspress · 4 months

Note

Hi there, i'm not sure this is in your wheel house, and I hate to waste your time, but I had a question and wonder if you might be able to offer advice (no worries if you can't or don't want to). i write a lot of fan fiction, but also have lots of idea about non-fan fiction stories. when i've tried to write them, however, I find the idea of getting a whole story out to be sufficiently intimidating that i've never been able to do it (there are probably other reasons for this of course, too). i love the A03 capability of posting one chapter (which can be super short) at a time; it's a real impetus to keep going without having to complete an entire work up front, esp if the feedback along the way is encouraging. what is your take on getting an original fiction story out in a03, but then trying to get it published elsewhere afterwards (taking it down from a03 at that point if necessary)? is that something feasible to try to do?

or perhaps you have other recs? (I don't think my original stories (unlike my fan fic) is likely to be focused on LGBTQIA+ relationships or issues, and i'm straight, so i suspect it's not what your publishing house is focusing on)

thank you so much for even reading this message.

Howdy anon! So there's a few things brought up in this message, and I'll try to answer each.

First: yes, we love offering advice and getting asks! Srsly, you and everyone, don't hesitate to drop stuff like this in our inbox, I love answering them, and if I (hi, I'm @unforth, meatspace name Claire, pen name/editing name Nina, and I own the Press and run our social media accounts) don't know the answer, I can kick 'um to the DPP server and get more folks to weigh in!

Second: yeah, motivation is a constant challenge, and what works is always going to be different for everyone. Those comments each chapter can be all that keeps me going on a long fanfic sometimes (and even they're not enough sometimes, oops, shovels a bunch of unfinished wip under the carpet behind themself)

Specifically, you ask: what is your take on getting an original fiction story out in a03, but then trying to get it published elsewhere afterwards (taking it down from a03 at that point if necessary)?

So, works are absolutely converted from AO3 stories to published stories. I can think of a half-dozen examples off the top of my head (one of the most recent being Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk, which started as a Dean Winchester/Jimmy Novak fic). However, I'd point out that original fiction gets very VERY low engagement on AO3. Most of the conversions I know of are people taking fanfiction and either scrubbing the barcodes (as in, swapping character names and removing/replacing canon references) or completely rewriting it. If the feel you're struggling with is "I want to get fanfic-like engagement but on a completely original work" I think you'd struggle to get that on AO3; virtually no one I know who has posted original works on AO3 has gotten that engagement on those works.

Publishing it as original fiction that you don't substantially change for publication will also weaken your ability to get it published. It'll guarantee that you can only apply with it to places that allow/do reprints, because you've already "used" the First Worldwide Publication Rights that most publishers will want for an original thing - because you already published it. So even if you remove it, the cat is already out of the bag on "first," and that will limit your options - another reason to do it as fanfic that you then rewrite. It's relatively hard to find places that will publish works, especially long works, that the First rights are already off the table (though we're one example of a place that will, we've published things that are up on AO3, and allowed the unedited versions to remain on AO3 when we've done so. For example, several of @tryslora's stories. We've also allowed the opposite; there's at least one original work on AO3 that started as a DPP exclusive for Patreon, and when the rights reverted back to the author, they chose to post it to AO3 with our blessing).

Of course, you can bypass these issues by self-publishing. Then what you keep and what you change, whether you keep it on AO3 or remove it, etc., is up to you, because you're the boss. Self-pubbing puts a lot more of the work on your shoulders tho - editing, cover art, marketing, typesetting, etc., all of it becomes your responsibility.

But: yes, taking works from AO3 to original fic publishing is feasible and is a thing that happens all the time. Depending on how you're publishing it and/or how extensively you rewrite it, you may not even have to take it down, but it would depend. Certainly, for most trad pub/big publishing houses, they would expect you to take it down.

Re: your last point about working with us, we require exactly zero disclosures from our contributors about their sexual or gender orientation. Our only requirement is that authors have posted fanfiction on a public, accessible fanfiction website. To the best of my knowledge, the vast majority of the people we work with are LGBTQIA+, but I also know for sure we've worked with at least one person who was cis and het. There are probably more. It's honestly none of my business. We've also published plenty with no LGBTQIA+ component. The way we work, we accept authors, and once we've got the author, we publish what they want to write, we're not particularly interested in policing that. Things without LGBTQIA+ don't tend to sell as well, because of the interests of our customers, but we'll put it out anyway *shrug*. I'd guess around a quarter of our catalogue has no explicit LGBTQIA+ rep, maybe a bit less.

Anyway! Hi, I'm wordy. TL:DR is: you can absolutely try to motivate yourself to write original fic by publishing it to AO3, but engagement is likely to be low, and doing so will make it harder to publish. If you feel you need the motivation that posting chapter-by-chapter gets you, it'd be better to write it as fanfiction with the intention of rewriting it later, as this will improve engagement without doing as much damage to your ability to publish it later.

and if you wanted to write with us, you'd be welcome; we recruit authors through our anthologies, and I expect our next open call to be sometime over the late spring or summer. We only juuuust started talking potential themes a few days ago.

Hope this helps!

-unforth

#unforth replies #faq #duck prints press #publishing #writing advice

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anneapocalypse · 3 months

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for the choose violence ask game: 7, 8, 13 and 25 for dragon age

🔥 choose violence ask game 🔥

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

I'm honestly hard-pressed to think of a Dragon Age character that I truly hate. Most of my feelings range from love to indifference, probably because both the cast and the fandom are big enough that characters I'm not drawn to are easy enough to ignore.

So I do not hate Anders, I actually like him a lot as a character, but I do find a lot of the discourse around him very frustrating (and this is more complicated than whether I think he was right or wrong, for anyone about to jump to conclusions on that; if you really want to know, you can probably figure it out from various meta I've written), and thus I am very wary of engaging with it, and there's a certain flavor of Anders fandom that I just steer clear of when I see it.

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

In order for everyone to be wrong about something, everyone in the fandom would have to agree on something, and we all know that's impossible in this fandom. 😆 Okay no, I'll try to give some kind of answer to this, for very loose values of "everyone."

"The ending of DA2 both-sideses the choice between the mages and the templars." It really does not. It's very explicit about how incredibly unjust the annulment is, to the point that the game draws a strong distinction even between agreeing with Anders and defending the mages; Hawke can completely condemn what Anders did and kill him for it and still defend the mages. The game goes out of its way to point out to you that the Circle mages had nothing to do with the attack on the Chantry and that Meredith is just using it as an excuse to kill them. It's one of the least subtle portrayals of Circle atrocities in the series, even if a lot of the political details of Kirkwall and Meredith and Elthina are easier to miss. The game giving us a choice does not in itself mean it's drawing a moral equivalent between those choices. I think you can make a case for the games doing that elsewhere, but not here. DA2's ending is about as subtle as an explosion.

13. worst blorboficiation

I'm having to guess a bit what "blorbofication" means in this context, but given that the origin of "blorbo" is a meme about fans who see their fave in everything regardless of how well it actually applies, thus reducing the character to a generic blob of a person... I guess I'll go with Alistair. Part of it is just that he's been around a long time, so there's years of different fan interpretations and discourse to all sort of mush together about him, and I've definitely seen interpretations of Alistair that I felt like excised a lot of the messier aspects of his character. (He is for example more critical of the Chantry than he's often given credit for, and on the other hand he's also the guy who makes a remark about if you're going to get jumped when you walk into the alienage.)

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

"The writers were lazy/stupid for using a cipher for Elvish and not making a fully functional conlang for an RPG they didn't even know for sure would get a sequel, never mind a full series." (Strangely it's only the elven language that I see people say should have been a full conlang when you'd think if that's the argument, surely they should have done the same for Dwarven and Qunlat as well? which becomes even more of a massive, unweildy, unrealistic project for a single video game.)

And basically, anything else that's just... wildly out of touch with the reality of how video games are made.

#dragon age problems #gwaren exports #ask anne #ask meme #choose violence ask game #v arbellanaris

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sulky-valkyrie · 1 year

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It's Friiiiiday!! Could I get me some angst please: "When did the lies start?" - forrrr perhaps Anders and a character of your choice, or whoever you think will fit. Happy writing! :D

Happy Fridaaaaaaay! For @dadrunkwriting

Anders winced as a piece of a building cracked and thundered down to the street. Bethany's arm was like a vice around his arm as she dragged him and Hawke through Lowtown. Marian barely spoke and seemed almost dazed.

He glanced at her again. More than dazed really. In shock. "Bethy, we should-"

"It's 'Warden,' Anders. You don't fucking know me and you don't call the shots," she snarled.

He stopped suddenly, and Bethany jerked to a halt so hard that she swung Marian almost into a circle around her. "I don't," he agreed. "But I know her, and she's about to pass out if you don't give her a moment."

Bethany glared at him but didn't argue. She pulled Marian to an alley and sat her down, not hard, but definitely not gently. Anders gave them their space and rubbed his arms to stave off the chill in his bones. He'd done it. They'd done it. It was messy and brutal and not all the way he'd wanted it to go, but at least now the mages in the Gallows would have a chance.

"When did the lies start?"

Anders spun around, staff flaring bright, only to find Nate. He sighed and left the magic fizzle out. "Does it matter?"

Nate pointed at the Hawke sisters. "It does to them."

"Like the void it does," Anders snapped. "If you're pissed at me, just say so."

"Idiot, I'm furious," Nate hissed.

This fight already? He squared his shoulders and stood to his full height. "Mages deserve-"

"I'm furious you lied, you martyring shit!" Nate caught his shirt collar and pulled him close, nostrils flaring. "Both of you," he growled. "Justice, how could let him do this alone?"

Justice surged up through his skin. "He is never alone."

Nate leaned away, but didn't let go. He took a deep breath. "You're not the only one who cares about him, who cares about all of this." He pointed to Hawke. "Look at her. Look at what you've done to her. You lied to her, then you tried to make her kill you."

Justice shook their head. "We did what was necessary."

"No, you did it because you were a coward," he retorted. "The commander would've taken on the First Warden or the bloody Divine if you'd just come home, or even sent a blasted letter. We could've helped you, but no, you both were too busy isolating each other to remember how many of us actually cared. About you and about this."

Justice recoiled as if struck and sank back down, leaving Anders feeling like half of his body had taken a step back. His throat felt tight and his eyes burned. "Even . . . seeing what - seeing this?" He waved a hand back toward Hightown. "Nate, I don't regret it, but this, how can you say-"

He was suddenly pressed against the wall by the force of Nate's fierce kiss. Surpise mixed with confusion, desire mixed with guilt, and somehow he found himself tilting his head to kiss him back, sliding his hand up into his hair.

Time stood still. Nothing mattered but Nate, and Anders surrendered in relief. Marian might hate him, and everyone else too, but Nate didn't, and maybe that would be enough. He drank in every sensation, the warmth of the arms around him, the harsh breaths on his skin, the teeth rasping along lips, the throbbing of -

A high pitched whistle made them both jump.

"Told you," Bethany said to Hawke as they parted. "I might’ve been fucking him, and he might’ve been fucking you, but they were just waiting for each other again. You didn't mean shit, you didn't do shit, and now the city's on fucking fire. Let's go."

What? Anders pushed Nate away as he stumbled toward them. "Marian, I that’s not-"

Hawke caught his hands, keeping him from falling, and kissed his palm. "I know." She shot a venomous look at Bethany. "You said you're not my sister anymore, and that goes both ways: it’s been six years, and you don't know shit about him or me." Her fingers squeezed his as she stood up and dusted her shirt off. A wasted effort, considering the way the rubble kept falling. "Anders is a terrible liar. And anything I didn't know was because I didn't ask." She swung a baleful glare toward Nate, and the anger in it made Anders glad she wasn't a mage. A look that could kill wasn't just a euphemism, after all.

"You want to know when the lies started?" Marian asked in a low dangerous voice. "How about when you and your fucking Wardens said he'd be safe?" She pulled him close, shielding him with her body as she turned back to Bethany. "Warden this, Commander that. Anders can do whatever he wants, but it won't be because either of you guilted him into it. You didn't give enough of a shit to check on him for years, and now you're just gonna waltz in and try to take him back? Piss on that, piss on you, and piss especially on whoever thought I’d stop loving him for doing what no one else had the balls to." She sighed and shook her head. "And now, Warden Amell, we'll save my fucking city."

#da drunk writing circle #dragon age #fanfic writing #anders #hawke #hawke x anders #grey wardens #chantry boom #fuck the chantry #bethany hawke #nathaniel howe #prompt fills

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insanitysscribblings · 3 months

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I mean you'd with the least amount of pressure possible but, would you ever think about writing a book? Every once and a while I remember how it felt reading Back to Us and I just wish I could read a story that was fully yours.

HAAAAAAA.

Friend.

Let me tell you a story about what was my writing journey post 2020 for me.

As some of you might know, I finished a book at the very end of 2020, by the title of Charlatans. It's an adult novel about three voodoo-touched adult siblings who make Faustian bargains to find their long-missing father in exchange for their hearts' deepest desires.

I was super proud of it. My first full-fledged novel, something I had always known I was capable of doing. The hard part was over.

Or so I thought.

See, to be a GOOD novelist, you have to let your work marinate. So that's what I did: I sat on it for a few months, not touching it at all, not even remembering that it existed. After those few months, I set to the hard work of editing.

When I tell you it is SO hard to edit a book you know is missing SOMETHING, but you have no idea what...ugh. And asking for beta readers was tasking, 'cause the thing was over 90K words. I did still ask, of course, but didn't really manage to get a lot of feedback at that time of editing.

Nevertheless! I pressed on. Started researching literary agents, fully aware that with a single project, you only get ONE shot with each agent.

I had a spreadsheet. I had my query letter. I had detailed notes on who to ask for and why. I was ready.

And so I started querying.

...The agents that didn't straight up ignore me gave me automated rejections. The agents that didn't do that gave me personal rejections.

And the one or two agents that actually bothered to ask AND read the whole manuscript?

They loved it!

Just...not enough to publish it.

So. Here I am, with a fully finished manuscript and no one looking to publish it. What do I do?

I put it away and go back to the drawing board, because clearly, I'm missing something. But since no rejection is personalized enough, I don't know WHAT.

Frustration makes me put it down, and I let it sit for a few more months.

Until #DVPIT.

For the uninitiated, #DVPIT is a literary event in which diverse prospective writers and established agents come together to discover new working relationships. The diverse writer has three chances to pitch their project throughout the day to agents, and if agents like your pitch, you may send them your query package. Cool, right?

I take the day off work. I have my pitches queued on my phone, ready to go. Throughout the day, I strategically post them at peak hours, keeping my fingers crossed for even one single agent's attention.

The event runs for an extra week to give agents a chance to read the thousands of pitches flooding the Discord channel. I wait.

No likes. Not a single one.

Now, this part I'm less bitter about, because 150 characters to describe my book? That's just ridiculous. And the comp titles to prove that people would like it? Ugggggh. Not an opportunity to really sell Charlatans.

But this means that, still, my first novel is without an agent. No agent, no publication.

So I put it away again and decide to move on.

And before you ask, yes, I did look into self-publishing. Still lowkey looking, but it's tough, since everything seems like a scam nowadays. And don't even get me started on the AI books being published.

I know you didn't ask for this rant, @hydrogen-ann and for that, I apologize. But TL;DR: a published book is currently a pipe dream for me, though not for lack of trying.

Bitterness aside, thank you so, so much. I'm so happy you'd be interested in something original of mine. If I ever push Charlatans out the door/find the time to write an entirely NEW novel, I'll be sure to let you know 💜

#reyna replies #hydrogen-ann #charlatans #I talk a bit more about charlatans on this blog #you can look up the tag here if you want #this was a nice ask to read regardless of my feelings about my og work rn #I always feel like I do my best writing in someone else's sandbox but who knows?#still having fun with my fics at the very least 🤷🏾‍♀️

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