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#i've been doing a lot of experimenting at the moment so maybe i'll post more stuff
tripleyeeet · 7 months
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THE ROGUE TAX (2)
SUMMARY: Fed up with paying Astarion to pick all the locks, you force yourself to learn the hard way.
PAIRING: Astarion & Female Reader (reads as Gender Neutral but future chapters will be femme focused, just a heads up!)
WORD COUNT: 2,635
WARNINGS: Short nightmare sequence, too much sexual tension, slight mentions of a handkink, inappropriate lock pick teaching.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I know I'm posting these super early but day two of the Haunted Hoedown! This time the prompt is "finders keepers!" I honestly had so much fun with this one, so hopefully all the new Astarion fans that've followed me in the last day enjoy? Love you guys. :))))
Also I was originally going to make all of these challenge fics separate but I've since decided to make it more of a connected fic so... that's a thing now? I'll link the last chapter below!
CHAPTER LIST / MASTERLIST / NEXT CHAPTER
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“I wasn’t aware you were so proficient at lock picking.” 
You smirk at Astarion’s false praise, busying your hands against the lock’s mechanism. You’ve only been at it for five or six, maybe seven tops but you can already tell it’ll be a while. The lock itself is tough; covered in a layer of thick rust. Plus, being that it’s a chest and not a door, it’s a bit more advanced than you’re used to.
“Yes, well, not all of us are vampires that can woo their way through a padlock.” 
In response, Astarion laughs, throwing his head back so dramatically that from the corner of your eye, it looks as if he’s lost his head for a moment. “You do realize who you’re talking to, correct?”
You hum out a response and push the short hook further in, feeling the pressure of a loose pin hit the end. When that happens, you grin to yourself and slide closer to the chest, biting your bottom lip in excitement. 
Over the last few weeks, you and the rest of the group had come upon some interesting findings. A cave inside a well, a few hidden cellars around the surrounding the goblin camp, a hidden chest or two. At first, it was exciting, getting to experience the joys of a good treasure hunt but quickly such feelings fell once you discovered how difficult it was to break into said things without the help of Astarion and his seemingly magic hands.
“I know you’re excited to prove yourself, darling, but why don’t you let me finish things off, hm? It’ll go a lot quicker.” 
You shake your head and continue your ministrations, carefully pushing the hook further in, feeling that alleviated pressure of another pin. “I’m tired of relying on you and your bloody rogue tax.” 
After agreeing that Astarion would just pick every lock your party found for a price, it was evident he was more than willing to take more than he was owed. Saying things like I did all the work or you wouldn’t be here if not for me, it was obvious he was exploiting you. Using his roguish charms to earn himself a bigger cut despite doing next to nothing else. 
It was frustrating, to say the least. Another minor annoyance to add to his long list of negative personality traits, and lately you were determined to combat it. To learn the trade for yourself so that every piece of treasure found could remain solely yours. 
“I’m sure everyone is but that’s the price you pay for a professional.” 
You roll your eyes and continue to fiddle, feeling his gaze glued to the positioning of your hands —how your fingers tighten and twist around the metal instrument. 
You’d be lying if you said it didn’t make you at least a little bit nervous —having his eyes on you. Across your palms, you can feel the slick of sweat collecting with each new movement, while behind you, you can practically feel Astarion’s judgement throughout, silently picking apart all of your mistakes. 
“You’re doing—“
You shush him angrily before he can continue, knowing he’s trying to break your concentration. Knowing that he thinks that if he can prove to be enough of a distraction you’ll end up slipping up and giving in. 
“I was just going to tell you about the wonderful job you’re doing.” His tone is laced with sarcasm. Drenched in a thick layer of impatience that has you groaning under your breath. 
“Isn’t there someone else you can bother?”
“No.”
You know there is. In the other room of the abandoned building you currently find yourselves in, at least four other people are rooting through the rubble. Most likely they’re stationed in their usual areas. Gale’s probably next to the stack of bookshelves with Karlach, telling her all about his collection back at the camp while Wyll and Shadowheart are searching through the cellar in hopes of more wine. 
“You sure?”
For a moment you debate telling him to go keep watch with Lae’zel just so that he’ll shut up but the thought dissipates once you feel him flop onto the floor beside you with a groan. 
“Everyone else is so dull,” he complains. His line of slight flickers between your face and hands, watching the way they remain almost too still as he speaks. “They’re all do this do that, and for what?”
You shrug your shoulders ever so slightly, unsure of what he means.
“They’re all living for other people, darling. Other causes. Everything they do serves a higher purpose and for that reason alone, they’re boring.”
Despite your previous determination your hands release themselves from the padlock before you find yourself readjusting —moving to plop down next to him. “You think everyone’s boring because they’re selfless?”
“Predictable,” he corrects, pointing a loose finger in your direction. “All of them talk too much about a future that may not even come considering we’re infected and have little idea on how to remedy the situation.” 
You’re not sure where this rant is coming from but you welcome it considering it’s been weeks since you’ve had a normal conversation that didn’t revolve around mapping or looting or combat. Weeks since you’ve taken a moment to learn about the people you find yourself in constant contact with. 
“Some people just don’t like looking back.” 
There’s a hint of surprise in his eyes when you respond as if he wasn’t expecting such an answer. Or really, maybe an answer at all. All at once his face seems to rise in thought, taking a moment to absorb the words before he hums in response, pursing his lips. “Yes, well, I suppose some people don’t have a past worth running from.”
What’s that supposed to mean?
The tadpole behind your eye wriggles for his attention before you can even think to suppress it. Working to pull him in as you stare at one another, narrowing your eyes at the sudden cerebral contact. At first, he’s reluctant. You can feel the pushing sensation suggesting that you stop. That you should stick to the confines of your own mind rather than pestering him, but quicker than you can move away to agree, it’s as if you’re sucked back in again. Pulled by the very thread of your own brain matter to see flashes of a life you assume to be his.
The first thing you see is candlelight. A flickering of warm hues that dance across wooden interiors. It’s almost dizzying the way the light shifts across your vision, forcing you to close your eyes. Next to you, you can hear Astarion breathing heavily. Deep inhales followed by even deeper exhales that you swiftly use as a metronome to carry your focus. To aid your tadpole’s connection. 
Swallowing hard, you listen to the beats of his breath, feeling them take over your chest as the vision in front of you grows to reveal bits of cobblestone. In the background, you can hear the faint sounds of scuttling feet. The dripping of water. A hungry growl followed by an even hungrier gnaw of flesh that squelches on your tongue. 
You can taste the iron —feel the fur and bones of an unknown animal brush against your lips and gums. All of it swirls around your mouth like a tornado of overstimulating sensations, forcing the vision to pass as you reach for your throat, coughing up nothing but your own spit despite how real it feels. 
It’s apparent then what Astarion means. That some people aren’t always blessed with the privilege of running away. That people like him don’t have the means of calling upon allies to aid them through the awful shit that is reality. 
Even with such little context, you can sense through his tadpole that he’s alone in this life. Alone before the Illithid —alone now. And more than likely, he’ll be alone after it’s all over, in death or otherwise. 
Rubbing your throat —trying your best to get rid of the tainted feeling of skin and bone from your mouth, you feel empathy rather than sympathy. An understanding of his words as you look toward him, noticing the far-off look in his eye before he blinks and travels back.
“I only showed you that to save the explanation,” he says, and whether or not it’s true you merely just nod, welcoming the silence. The tranquil hush of two people attempting to navigate the other. 
It doesn’t last long. In between, there are a few moments of background noise. The sound of echoing footsteps and muffled voices. You know it’s the others looting just as you should be, but neither of you moves to join until Astarion eventually clears his throat, signalling change. 
“Anyway, they’re all in their own worlds, coasting on the wings of optimism.” He flicks his hand around the air while rolling his eyes. “It’s disgusting and partly why I choose your company above theirs.” 
Letting yourself fall back into your usual, somewhat antagonistic rhythm, you give him a curious look. “Partly, huh?”
“Don’t get too excited,” he quips, the edge of his lip twitching into that usual grin of his. “The other part is the potential of your blood, darling.”
“Ah yes. And here I was assuming you were just following me around so that you could steal my treasure.”
Both of your eyes move back to the unbroken padlock. It’s the only thing in this room that seems to be worth either of your time and Astarion knows it. It’s why he’s been so keen on your failure. 
“You know, I could help you if you like. Show you a thing or two so that the next time this happens you don’t have to rely on me.”
It’s tempting, even if you know that you’ll be taxed to all hell. Whatever spoils you find will ultimately be cut in half and, more than likely, he’ll sweeten the deal for himself by claiming first pick. 
“What’s the price?”
He shoots you a look of offence, clutching his chest. “My dear, I’d never dare put a price on the education of thievery.”
You hold back a grin, pressing your lips together, watching the way he quickly springs into action, motioning for you to hand him your tools. When you do he begins to explain the process, showcasing all the tips and tricks against the air with careful precision. Which would be helpful if you weren’t so focused on his hands rather than his words. On the way they curl around the handles of your tools, tightening with every gesture performed. 
Astarion’s got nicer hands than most. Long and thin and surprisingly well-manicured for someone who spends most of his time in the forest or drinking the blood of unsuspecting animals. And guiltily enough staring at them so intently just reminds you of that night he drained your neck. 
You can still feel the pressure of his fingers against your head. The way they roughly cupped you like a goblet of wine. Despite the fear in that moment, you’re now able to look back at that memory almost fondly. A moment of potential weakness for you somehow became a moment of trust for him and as a result, here you were now, acting almost friendly amid a terrible situation. 
It makes you grin, prompting Astarion to stop his explanation and narrow his eyes. 
“Are you even listening?”
“Hm?”
There’s a knowing glance that befalls his face then. A transition of clarity that has his mouth opening and closing before he hands you your tools. “Might be best if we take a more hands on approach.” 
You look at him confused, letting the hooks in your hand lazily rest in your palm as you watch him hop to his knees and begin to guide you. 
“I want you to do exactly what you were doing before, alright? Use the hook to push the pins.” 
Despite your continued confusion, you follow his position by kneeling in front of the chest and popping the hook into the hole, digging around the darkened space until you feel the shift of that first pin. 
“Got it?” You spare him a glance and a nod, watching him crawl towards you, positioning his chest firmly against your back before reaching out to hold your wrists. “Now, take that other hook of yours and situate it at the base of the barrel.”
Doing exactly that, you feel his fingers slowly slip over yours, navigating you through the trials of getting that second pin to shift as the barrel turns in your grasp. At first, it’s difficult. Mostly because all you can focus on is the breath that hits the side of your face. The heat of the air that travels down your spine in nervous waves you’re almost certain he can feel. But then you’re reminded that you’ve been here before; stuck within his heated grasp. 
“That’s it. Just like that.” 
You’re practically holding your breath as you find that third pin, feeling Astarion’s hand shift you in the right direction before you lose it at the last second. Ever so gently, his chest shifts upwards against your back so that he can rest his chin on your shoulder to get a better look. A newfound weight that makes you close your eyes and release a bit of air from your nose, realizing how intimate this is. 
Somehow it feels even more personal than letting him feed off of you. Perhaps because the bloodsucking was for his own benefit, knowing Astarion, moments like that where he’s able to take rather than give mean next to nothing to him. They’re just moments of manipulation. A series of tactical steps he takes to get whatever he wants whereas this is different. This is for you. 
You’re not sure how to describe it other than an offering of trust. Maybe it’s a token of appreciation for letting him consume. Maybe it’s nothing more than a game to make you squirm beneath his grasp. Either or, it’s an experience you know you’ll be thinking of for days to come, attempting to decipher its intent.
“Once you feel that final pin I want you to ease it in gently, alright? Be delicate.” 
You offer him no response as you listen to his words. If you did, you’re certain he’d make some offhand comment that would only further the lewdness of it all, grinning like the mischievous prick he is. 
“After that, you should feel a little shift and —voilà!” 
The chest clicks open. Your breath releases in a long, much-needed stream but Astarion makes no effort to move from your frame. Instead, he continues to cling to your hands, angling his chin so that when you eventually look at him you’re practically touching noses. 
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“It’s that easy?”
Slowly but surely he slips from your frame with a nod, his hands sliding across the expanse of your sleeves, coating your skin in a wave of goosebumps as he moves to stand. “Yes, but keep it hush, hush. Wouldn’t want the others to find out, would we?”
You shake your head, a small smile creeping across your lips as you then turn towards your reward, gripping both edges of the lid before pushing it up. Inside there are only a few items. A few spell scrolls and some fabric but it’s enough to get you excited regardless, realizing that it’s yours.
“Not bad for your first go.” Peeking over your shoulder, Astarion watches as you sift through everything carefully, unrolling each scroll to read the details before looking back up and raising a brow. 
“You sure there’s no tax?” you ask, but all he does is laugh and shake his head. 
“Finders keepers, darling. As I promised.” 
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a-bit-of-a-queer-one · 4 months
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I loved Wild Blue Yonder, I thought it was a great episode. But if I see one more person proclaiming that the Doctor saying Isaac Newton was "hot" made the character "finally queer", I'm gonna set fire to sth.
For one thing, since they changed into a woman, the Doctor has, depending on one's definition, been canonically genderfluid/trans/nonbinary/genderqueer. That was made even more explicit last week in Star Beast. So saying that the Doctor as played by a man and using he/him pronouns calling a man "hot" somehow made the character queer is stupid in and of itself.
And secondly, the Doctor has long been regarded as aro and ace-coded by people of those communities and guess what? Aro and ace people really do exist and we are queer. And it would be lovely if other queer people could stop excluding us by saying that characters who provide what little, mostly accidental and incidental representation we get "become queer" by expressing same-sex attraction. It happened with Good Omens and it seems to be happening again with Doctor Who and I am so fucking tired of it
Edit (6th Dec 2023): Several people have pointed out in the notes that there have been quite a few instances of the Doctor ambiguously or indeed unambiguously expressing 'same-sex' attraction and exploring their gender identity/identities in the past, both in the show and in extended media. I just wanted to be absolutely clear on the fact that I was in way trying to diminish the importance of those moments by emphasing the aspect of asexuality and aromanticism in my post. That is not to say that I think anyone was implying that I was doing that, in fact everyone's been lovely (which is why I also wanted to thank everyone for their input, I learnt a lot, especially about the novels!!)
Of course, as an asexual, aromantic and agender/nonbinary person, that is the lens through which I watch the show and relate to the character of the Doctor. This does not make my reading of them any more or less valid than anyone else's. In fact, I absolutely love the fact that the Doctor is a character who speaks to people of so many different queer identities and I am so happy that RTD is exploring their queerness more explicitly, building on what he and so many other writers and also the actors have already established. I just hope that the fandom will respect the aro and ace aspects of the Doctor's queerness the same way they do their gender identities and other sexual and romantic orientations. Part of the reason I was initially quite worried about this was because of my experiences in the Good Omens fandom, particularly post series 2, as indicated in my original post. The other is that I doubt the show will explore the aro and ace aspects of the character as much as they may other queer identities - unfortunately aspecs have a history of being left behind in this regard...
But we will see, maybe I'll be proved wrong! For the time being, I just hope the queer community can celebrate all the different facets of the Doctor's undeniable queerness, including the aspec ones. And as the reactions to this post have been overwhelmingly supportive (I don't think I've seen a single outright negative response), I think this hope is far from unfounded.
(Sorry, this edit turned out to be longer than the original post...)
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AITA for "unknowingly" cheating on my girlfriend?
🤍🍇 so i recognize post
preface: yes i am, theres no excuse, i just want to hear more ppl's thought because different ppl in my life have very different opinions on this??? even though i think cheating is cut and dry?
earlier this year, i (20nb, tho i was 19 at the time) was in a purely monogamous relationship with my ex (19f). there were ups and downs, i had some issues that i really shouldve talked to her about, but overall it was the best experience. id never dated anybody before. she's the only person who ive ever loved in that way. i think shes the best person, funny, smart. i was really lucky to have her.
i have another friend, who i'll call H (21f), who has been my friend for years. we're really close, and we've shared a lot with each other. i also love her deeply, though in a different, entirely platonic way. she has told me that she loves me, and has loved me in romantic ways, even though i've never reciprocated (im fine with that, everyone in my main friend group is a little bit polyamorous).
there were two main incidents that happened between me and H. the first, i didnt really understand what was going on or that it was entirely wrong. we were cuddling, which i do with all of my friends, and she started getting really into it and getting on top of me. she asked if she could kiss me (on the lips) and i said no, partly because, well, i had a monogamous partner, and partly because i hate kissing on the lips. i probably shouldve entirely cut it off at that moment. my only excuse (which is pretty flimsy) is that, im kinda aroace so physical affection and the difference between platonic and romantic have always left me a little confused. i kinda thought this was normal, especially because H is polyamorous and in several relationships that heavily blur the lines between platonic and romantic.
then, about two weeks after that, H and i hung out again, but this time we were smoking marijuana. weed makes me highly suggestible and also incapable of remembering anything past about five seconds. not that im blaming the drugs, just describing the situation. basically, H and i were cuddling again when she decided to move on top of me and got flirty, with a lot of touching sensitive places for the purpose of getting a reaction (all above the belt). i went along with this because i respect H, ive known her for a long time, and i didnt want to say no to her. again, not an excuse, because she didnt force me to do it.
in the moment, i didnt think this was cheating. we werent doing anything explicitly sexual, we weren't making out, but we were definitely frisky and i know H was horny at the time. a couple hours later, when i sobered up, i suddenly realized what we had done and asked H if i had just cheated on my girlfriend. she also seemed to realize what had just happened and we agreed that i had cheated, that it was entirely wrong, and we should never do it again.
i decided to tell my ex about this immediately, because i thought she should know. i asked if she was in a position to hear bad news, and when she was, i was completely honest. she obviously didnt take it well, mentioning how she felt like she could never trust me again despite being the person she trusted most in the world. she loved me but this was unacceptable and a huge violation. i agreed, and after a bit of thinking, i told her that i thought we should break up. i had terrible guilt about what i'd done and assumed that we'd never recover, and it didnt seem like she could pull the plug, so i did.
she proceeded to get even more mad at me because of this, which in hindsight is completely understandable. from her perspective, i had just dropped two emotional bombs on her, and maybe i was implying that i liked H more than her. i wasnt, and i dont, but i know why it came across that way.
my other friends agreed with me that i shouldve broken up with her after that. in hindsight, i dont know if it was the right choice. i miss her dearly and wish i had worked more on the relationship.
we've since talked about it. i told her that i still loved her (bc i do, very deeply, and i dont know if i'll ever get over her) but said that i dont expect anything, dont expect a relationship, etc. she was okay with this because, in her words, she trusts me to not make it a big deal or awkward. we hang out frequently now, we watch anime together, and we get along well as friends. i feel so lucky that she is willing to spend time with me, that she still enjoys my company even a little bit.
the confusing part is that i told my dad about this and he basically said, "you were 19yo in a long distance, online-only relationship. this was inevitable and you shouldnt feel too bad about it. it was wrong but not the worst thing ever." i dont really agree with that, because it was a pretty serious relationship despite being online. we even met up at a convention and spent several nights together in a hotel. it was the happiest weekend of my life. i thought i could marry her maybe someday. and i dont think being 19yo justifies it. 13yo maybe, but i was old enough to know right from wrong, even if my knowledge about romantic and sexual relationships was underdeveloped.
basically, im looking for nuanced opinions. i fully expect the results to be YTA. im hoping ppl can give me any sort of insight in the comments.
PS: H is partially to blame bc she knew i was in a monogamous relationship but please dont hate on her too much in the comments, we've had a lot of talks about this and what happened drastically changed the way the both of us see relationships and each other. basically, she learned her lesson and she was never trying to be a bitch or a homewrecker. i know her well enough to know shes a good person at heart. she's also not on tumblr to see any of your comments. direct all of you criticism towards me, please.
What are these acronyms?
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gotham-daydreams · 5 months
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Hey there! I love your work so so much! I check your blog every day and get excited for every new post, I think your ideas and your writing is just spectacular!! I have a quick question to ask if that's alright. I was wondering what the first aid kit in this part of Not Here was implying?
"Like an airsoft gun, some glass beakers, various ties, a pair of shades, a glasses frame, and a sewing kit next to a first-aid kit? Bruce didn't want to think about how the first-aid kit both looked used, and was empty."
Is Bruce upset in a "he wasn't there when the reader was hurt" way, a "how often did they get hurt" way, or is it something else?
Also, if I recall there are some hints/notes about the reader being hurt in fights before but the family never came to help or aid them, which would make sense if that was why it would be empty. Though it does make me wonder if that means they were handling it entirely on their own, did Alfred know/help or did the reader hide it?
I think my first thought about it was a bit darker (iykwim), but I didn't want to jump the gun and assume like that so that's why I've decided to ask (just thinking out of my own experiences with depression) I don't mean to be so dark on purpose though! And I think the other possibilities are more likely anyway.
All in all I'm just a bit curious since the physical hurt the reader has endured hasn't been too expanded upon yet (at least not as much as emotional hurt) and I want to know more about it, what's happened and such :)
That's all! I hope you have an amazing day! Please take care of yourself, you're the most important thing you have!! Peace!!
Hello!
As with a few other things, I really just left it up to interpretation! Since the med kit being empty can honestly mean all of those things- even Alfred persuading the reader to hide it in some way (but that most likely didn't happen, I'll say that much). Though some injuries will be mentioned later :]
After all, the reader did a lot of activities, and participated in various sports during their time in the manor, and basically crammed in everything they could into their schedule. One way or another, they're bound to get hurt. Since even if the sports and activities they've done don't hurt them, then just the sheer amount of stuff they do in a week most likely will.
Accidents are bound to happen, mistakes will be made, and that can lead to injuries one way or another. Maybe from the action of the mistake/accident itself, or from how the reader takes it, along with their own experiences away from all of those things. Like their situation at home, or things that happen to their friends.
I will say that Alfred has helped the reader with some of their injuries at this point, especially ones that were more serious and severe. Though he isn't aware of every single injury that the reader has had. Especially if they were smaller, or just easier to hide, but there have been moments where someone else outside of the manor would notice that the reader is injured instead. Which may or may not lead to a hospital visit, and such records may or may not be mentioned later.
As for Bruce and how he thinks/feels when he first sees the kit? I'll be honest, it's a mix of what you said and some other stuff.
I mean, you come into your kid's room, and not only are they gone, but you're basically shown that they lived their whole life without you through the achievements they've earned. So when you look for them and find that used, empty med-kit? You start to think about what the walls don't show. To think about the journey your kid went through to get to those points, where they were earning awards for the things they did. Bruce was anyway, and I suppose that, just something as small as the med-kit, was already causing him to think about that a little too much.
After seeing the med-kit, the fact that awards only show the end of one's journey to get that particular achievement, won't stop nagging at Bruce. He thinks of the possible hardships you've had to face, and what on God's green Earth has caused you to not only have a med-kit in your room, and hidden away, but also have it be used and empty.
It makes him wonder if it was the only kit you've used, or one of many. And as much as he doesn't want to think about it, the ladder makes sense seeing everything you've participated in, and just how messy you're schedule must've been from running around, and trying to do everything to the point where you got an award for it.
He knows accidents can happen, and where mistakes can lead someone. So just as he's about to think about it- he pulls away. Deciding that now isn't the best time to wonder about something like that, so he refocuses himself.
Though for that brief moment, he does wonder about how often the reader has gotten hurt, along with that fact that he was never there- but also never even knew about it. The possibility never crossed his mind until now, and like the awards and medals on the walls, he's only seeing the end result. The med-kit being used, empty, and possibility one of many you've gone through.
And he saw none of it. Wasn't even aware of any injuries you've had in the past or present, until he started searching for you.
Instead, he finds out through a small little kit, that was tucked away to the far end of a closet, as if trying to hide itself. It tries to pull him in with it's implications, but he pulls away before much can be done, before he can think of it anymore. Before he can realize that Alfred hasn't told him much about injuries the reader has gotten. How that could imply that the reader hid them, and took care of their injuries instead. Which would then bring on a whole new kind of worry, regret, and panic to Bruce.
The thought would eat him alive if he hadn't pulled away. He knows that much.
So generally, it's a mixed bag! The med-kit alone makes Bruce wonder about what you mentioned, along with how he wasn't told that the reader got hurt, and what that could mean.
How the reader has gotten hurt is left up to interpretation, but certain injuries they've gotten in the past from certain things will be mentioned- however! If anything happened inbetween such events, or beyond what is mentioned, is up to you! :]
Alfred has helped the reader with their injuries before, but isn't aware of every injury they've gotten. Though, that sometimes did lead to other people outside of the Manor noticing instead, which may or may not have landed the reader in the hospital sometimes. Which also may or may not mean that the reader has a record of some injuries they've had in the past.
Though, yeah! The med-kit was implying that the reader has indeed gotten hurt before and such. :]
I hope this answered your question!
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infizero · 3 months
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i talked about this in the tags of another post but yknow what it deserves its own - can we talk about the parallels between nine and eggman??? i'm dying to talk about the parallels between nine and eggman.
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i am personally obsessed with the dynamic between tails and eggman and how they parallel each other in a lot of ways. i've recently been thinking about other possible similarities they could have, and then prime literally just came and proved my point.
it was this line that made me start realizing this:
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SONIC: "Is this what you want, to spend the rest of your life alone with robots for friends?" NINE: "At least I can trust them."
i don't think i need to explain how Eggman that is.
tails and eggman obviously share the surface level traits of being extremely smart and gifted with technology. we know almost nothing about eggman's past, but it's likely he was very smart for his age the same way tails is.
but something that i've been thinking about ever since frontiers came out is a possible similarity between why these two are so drawn to technology. frontiers gave us arguably one of the biggest insights into eggman's character in the form of egg memo 17:
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"I never really knew my cousin, Maria. Everyone spoke of her like she was very special. All that love for someone who was gone when I was! Right! There! But I have to wonder. Back then, was she anything like Sage is now?"
the implication that eggman felt ignored by his family/the people around him and that they paid more attention to his dead cousin than him has haunted me ever since the game dropped... the fact that so much of eggman's schemes have to do with having control, remaking the world the way he wants it to be, and always heavily center around his enormous ego, plastering his name and likeness everywhere........
...well, that need for control and personal recognition definitely has been recontextualized by this moment, to say the least.
recently i was thinking about this again and wondered if perhaps the reason eggman has such an affinity for machines and robots, and a dislike for living things, could stem from negative experiences with other people. and that perhaps the case could be the same for tails. "people treat me badly" -> "i don't like people" -> "machines are better"
the difference is that tails met sonic and gained friends fairly early on, while eggman assumedly didn't (whether by choice or not)
and now in prime, we have nine, a tails who never had friends. and what do you know! he's become an antagonist who is screwing over people and putting entire other worlds at risk in order to reshape the world into how he wishes it to be, and making robots to keep himself company. sound familiar?
a tails without friends results in essentially... eggman. so maybe there's little more to my ideas about eggman's villainous origins than just speculation.
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NINE: "With the Paradox Prism, I'll be able to turn this world into a paradise... my paradise!"
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[A picture of Eggmanland from Sonic Unleashed.]
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veilantares · 3 months
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LOST LOST really is 2023's theme for me. I spent most of this past year on my PhD project, so my output has been quite scarce overall - certainly so compared to the industriousness of years past. When I had chances to draw this year it was often like a gasp of air amidst a sea of my other efforts. "What's the next step forward?" I think at times. Consider the center drawing my face of course, because in real life I look like if cannonbolt was a sad refridgerator.
I started a new physical sketchbook and made some breakthroughs in my personal illustrations, but nothing I'm happy to share - in previous years I didn't have as much nervousness to experiment in public. Anyway this feels like a good opportunity to do a bit of a retrospective on the last ones of these I did.
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In many ways 2022 was the best year of my work, I both did my most challenging (and correspondingly complex) pieces this year, and had the confidence to make several things a week. Past the initial few months I had really started to hone my mix of solid shapes, lineart and linelessness thats ubiquitous in my pieces now, though I wonder if I have grown too comfortable with the stability of a partial formula.
One disadvantage about only choosing nine pieces was that in wanting them to look good together I had to exclude a series of the coloured background pieces that interspersed the dark background ones. In those, I felt like a lot more of my effort went into the shape language, so there was a synergy with both approaches letting me understand things.
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In 2021 I started using colours instead of grayscale, that years inktober could almost be said to be my best work, there was both a variety and scale to it..I drew something virtually every day for almost three or four months straight and crucially, I also shared it all after I was done. It really felt worth it planning art ahead, but also spontaneously filling the blanks it in the moment. That being said maybe that productiveness was not sustainable because I'd have very little time for much else after school, work and art.
Late in that year I realised I could just draw the things I like if I wanted, instead of the things I thought people wanted - so some of the later pieces really resembled discount warframes. That game has so deeply hooked itself into my visual library that I draw it even when I'm not intending to, and so when I started deliberately trying to evoke it (with very fledgling art analysis skills), I think I got more and more familiar with what I wanted.
In 2020 I was just starting out so I did not yet recognise there was something specific to aspire to - I dont have a retrospective montage like these other years for 2020. You can see virtually every piece I've ever uploaded on my instagram page, so I think I might not narrate as much about those in this post. Maybe in the future I'll review all these years through a completely different lens.
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ghostoffuturespast · 3 months
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Works In Progress 2023: A Cyberpunk 2077 Year In Review
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I thought for a hot minute about doing one of those snazzy templates that’s been going around, but editing photos just ain’t my MO and rather than going by month I picked 12 favs that I’ve posted in 2023. Some of them were popular, some of them weren't. Overall, I think I did pretty good for just doing vanilla photomode on console.
You might be wondering why there's a picture of a sticky note. I don't remember when I started doing this, and I'm horribly inconsistent as you can see by the dates, but I'll jot down my word count for my wip chapter and then jot it down again when I remember to later.
I write slow. A lot of times I sit down to write and it feels like the wheels are spinning in place. My minutes and hours don't stretch very far, typically don't add up to much. But days, weeks, months. That's when I can at least measure the progress.
Fic: So It Goes 40/44 - 438,946 words
My V x River Ward and tinfoil hat conspiracy theory long fic. I've spent way more hours on this then I have on any of my VP.
I got tagged by @just-a-cybercroissant @therealnightcity and @wanderingaldecaldo to do some WIP Whenevers. I post my VP pretty regularly, so it’s always seemed silly to do work in progress posts for them, and I don’t know when I’ll have any new writing to share since in between work and the holidays, I haven’t had much time to sit down with anything since my last chapter update. And I've been feeling very... stingy, lately. Especially when it comes to mine and other people's writing. So take this WIP/Year In Review as my offering. Both these series, as am I, are all very much still works in progress. 
I confined my reflections for this year below the cut. If you don’t want to read my long-ass essays, you can admire the pictures, maybe check out my fic, or just move along and have yourself a lovely day.
We’ll start with the easy one.
VP
After at least a year of multiple playthroughs (I’ve played all the lifepaths, done all the endings), it only occurred to me at the beginning of this year to start taking VP. Part of the reason I never did before was because I didn’t realize it was a thing and then by the time I did, I figured I didn’t have much to offer. I play on PS5 and only have access to vanilla photomode, so seeing everyone else’s high-fidelity, ultra ray-tracing, modded, posed, full on virtual photo shoot photos, I was like there’s no way. (Not that I’m hating on PC modders, it’s just not everyone has access to mods or a PC capable of running the game, and I’m all for making art and creative endeavors accessible.) On top of that, all I’d ever heard from most other folks was how much vanilla photomode sucked. In the glamorous world of VP, I didn’t think there was any room for me.
But I started snapping pics anyway. And sure, there are a lot of limitations with vanilla photomode. But what that really translates to is opportunities to get creative. I am also a hoe for subverting people’s expectations, and very much believe when there’s a will, there’s a way.
Environmental and landscape shots were my first subjects before I started branching out into portraits and then capturing story moments. Through VP I found an entirely new way to enjoy a game that I’d already played a ridiculous number of times along with also finally being brave enough to share my V with other people too. I’d always worried about that before, if people would like her. Granted, I know Grandpa’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but whether you like her or not, I certainly think she’s made a name for herself over the past few months. Even if most people haven’t really gotten to know her the way I’d hoped. 
I’ve taken hundreds of photos this past year. Most of which I’ll never share. There’s a lot of flops, a lot of weird experiments, ones that didn’t quite turn out the way I’d hoped, but I’ve learned something from every single one of them. I know how to spot good lighting, frame shots to create optical illusions, get a very limited toolkit to work in my favor, parkoured on all of the things, and heck, I even figured out how to make Grandpa smooch other NPCs. I’ve done atmospheric, mundane, down right goofy, as well as things that most people probably thought weren’t fucking possible.
I can’t say how long I’ll keep doing this, I’m sure I’ll move on at some point, but for now I’m still enjoying myself. There's a lot to explore in this game and I just can’t stop digging Night City.
Now, for the more complicated thing.
Writing
So It Goes… My peace, my war, my greedy and most ravenous of ghosts.
I’m operating under the assumption that most people following me here probably haven't read my fic or aren’t all that interested in reading it to begin with. It’s fine. But you need to understand this fic, my writing, is the main thing that brought me here. This is also Grandpa V’s story. Most of you have met her, but unless you've been reading, most of you do not know her.
I wrote around 185,000 words and posted 10 chapters this year. 2022 was about 253,000 words and 30 chapters, along with several unrelated one shots. However, I don’t think I’ve done a single chapter this year that was less then 10k, and my longest managed to hit 27k. As of the last update I posted, the fic is currently sitting at around 439k words, 40 chapters, and still isn’t done.
I have four more chapters to write. I have written a metric shit ton of words. This is, by far, the longest and most intense creative project I’ve ever endeavored to complete.
When I started writing, I was expecting this fic to be around 100-150k. That seemed to be the average for most long fics. I did not plan on being an outlier. I'm not sure you can ever really plan for that, but I guess I enjoy subverting my own expectations too.
For those of you who are reading my fic, it is my sincerest hope that it shatters every expectation of where you think it’s going. It’s not a joke that I tagged my fic “#an ode to my tinfoil hat”. An ode it has turned out to be. I’ve been sitting on this theory for two years. I have told no one about it. I hope it sticks the landing and hits the way I want it to. I don't know if it will. But fuck, I just want to be done with it so I can move on with my life, take a break, and give myself the opportunity to make and focus on other things before I have to get back on the damn horse.
I wrote less this past year then I did in 2022. I had a lot of life changes, most of which were good, but with times of change come times of adjustment. Along with some realizations that maybe you don’t understand as much as you thought you did. Looking back, I’ve been in a state of unsettled, kuzushi, for a really long time. Which is not a good place to be. It’s how your ass ends up on the ground with a knee knocking out all your teeth. I thought I knew better. Thought I had enough practice to get away from it. But bad habits have good memories.
I think given the circumstances, I accomplished a lot with my writing this year. I don’t know if my writing is exactly where I want it to be. I doubt it every will be, but it’s evolved, grown, and I wrote a pretty hefty stack of words considering I started working full-time again, bought a house with my partner, moved, and have been dealing with the millions of other beans that life tends to throw one’s way. That being said, and for full disclosure, I’ve also been dealing with some of the worst cases of jealousy and envy I’ve had since I was a teenager. 
Frankly, it sucks. They walk with me every fucking where I go, hold my hands to whisper back all my doubts. Try to persuade me to my baser instincts, to be cruel and lash out. But that's not aikido. Luckily, I’m not 16 anymore so it’s at least been easier for me to identify the problem. Though I’m still coming up short in terms of actually being able to do anything about it, and will be for at least a few months more. 
Yeah, I keep talking about it because I don’t know how many people know that I've been feeling this way. And I’m tired of not talking about it in a room full of creatives, because yeah, I know I’m not the only one that feels this way. And not talking about it just makes all that pent up resentment worse for everyone.
Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. But with the way I work and think, it’s a slow, tedious, and incredibly time-consuming art. With how much my fic has snowballed over the course of writing, it’s left very little room for the other hobbies in my life. And as my fellow writers probably already know, writing is an incredibly insular craft. And unlike a picture or an image, which only requires a glance, reading a bunch of words requires time and commitment.
So, when you put yourself out there and share what you wrote, it’s a lonely feeling not knowing whether or not anyone connected with what you put on the page. Especially, when the people who do read aren’t compelled to voice anything and when the people you’d hope would read don’t. And then you're stuck in the dark, not knowing, because neither of us says a goddamn thing.
I started writing this fic prior to actually joining the CP2077 fandom. And I joined the fandom because I felt alone. I’ve been here a while now, albeit in a few different places, and that feeling still hasn’t gone away. I’m still trying to find camaraderie with my fellow writers and carve out something that kinda sort of resembles a home or a sense of community. I watch my peers around me as they seem to build that with each other, except me.
I’m envious of the things that people make and jealous of the relationships those have created and fostered between said people, because for the life of me, it’s been a struggle to cultivate that since I got here. I know it’s selfish, but I also don’t know what about me makes people so hesitant. There have been a handful of strangers that have shown up for me regularly, but as far as people I call friends in this fandom that have shown up and actually stuck around, I can only name one right now. (I know we're all busy. And I acknowledge my writing's not for everyone. I know maybe some of you are quiet, or shy, or probably a thousand other things. I get it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt any less. People will never know unless you say. Never know unless you take the time to interact or engage. Be brave. And that's true for a lot of things.)
The propensity is for the negative to outweigh the positive. I've got a lot of numbers on my fic, so you would think things would be fine, but at this point they just feel empty. They don't bring me any comfort or real satisfaction. And I hate feeling like the people I know don’t care and that most of you are just talking around me. That I’m some kind of annoyance not fit to interact with. Which may or may not be the case. I don’t know. Again, most of you have never said anything. And maybe I need to accept the fact that most of you never will.
But this is me trying to start conversation.
It’s really shitty, knowing that the thing I want the most is also the thing holding me back. I know how to work on it too, not that it’s any guarantee. The problem is I’m still writing and in a needy state of greed. And because I’m slow, I don’t have the time or the energy to be generous. I can only take right now. I can’t give. 
Relationships require both.
I can’t bring myself to read other people’s writing. I can’t comment, or like, or share if I haven’t read anything. I'm desperate for conversation, but I also don't have the time or assurance to facilitate it with other people right now. And for some reason people never seem to want to talk to me, especially when it comes to writing. I want to be part of conversations, talk deeply with other people. But I can’t speak right now, I'm not in a place to offer generosity without someone first giving it to me.
And generosity and grace is what we all need.
Four more chapters and I hope my ghosts will finally let me read in peace.
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l0st-identity · 6 months
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I've talked about these things a lot on this blog, so a lot of this might be repeated things I've talked about before, but I've always said that I've described my experiences as "identity hyperfixations", where I latch onto things, even just Words that I find myself really liking, and an "identity" is "created" based around that Thing.
For some examples from my personal experiences!:
A lot of the time, these "identity hyperfixations" involve me latching onto media, particularly whatever current media we may or may not be interested in in the moment.
There's a game called Stray Gods: the Roleplaying Musical (pls play it omg pls-nJFNDSK). We were very attached to that game for a while when it came out and we found out about it. We particularly grew attached to the character Calliope and for about maybe 2 weeks or so? I thought about using the name Calliope at times, and I painted my nails yellow to match the color of her nails in the game. I wanted to dress like her and overall you can see where this is all going lmfao
Or recently where we were very attached to Splatoon (it's our main special interest, but the way we feel, play, and interact with the game and fandom and such online differs per parts!!) and 'I' identified as an octoling and just thought of myself with the name Octo, mostly as a placeholder because I couldn't think of anything better, but I grew to like it lmfao. Ofc I am always interested in Splatoon, but recently I was just much more interested in it and particularly interested in specific aspects and such, even ended up creating another blog, a Splatoon-centered blog that also functions as a sort of vent/DID-related blog (it's @annaki-octo if anyone wants to check it out lol)
You can, again, see where this is going. Incoming long post. Because I can never make a short post lmfao
I should also mention that, in the past, I often wouldn't actually ever use a different name, and I still don't, but I've more recently been doing that for a bit now because we're starting to get used to it and be okay with it and honestly it's been beneficial. But yeah, most of my life, I usually didn't outright actually use any separate names outwardly with people, and didn't even really realize that I was choosing different names for myself in the first place because I thought that I was just creating characters. And if I DID end up outwardly using a different name, it was excused as me choosing a different name because I'm trans or making up a "fake online pseudonym" for "privacy" reasons. It has never been any different to me than creating a character. It's still not.
This is basically EXACTLY what my experience is like, day-to-day/week-to-week/month-to-month.
They never really last long, and a new "identity hyperfixation" quickly follows, while the other one dies out.
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And it usually goes like this, in the image above (it might be hard to read, sorry lol, but I'm describing it anyways so dw):
--- Concepts/ideas/etc. Pop Up Into My Brain:
May be thinking about the idea of using a different name
May be really invested in a new, or "re-new'd" interest (as in: something I liked in the past and I am now interested in it again after a long period of disinterest)
May prefer certain gendered terminology (or no, or different 'gendered' terminology), for example, boyfriend/girlfriend/partner (or something/anything else)
May prefer certain pronouns over others, and/or may struggle to know what kind of pronouns I like
May be thinking about changing our icon to something different than before (on Discord, Tumblr, etc.)
May be thinking about creating a new Tumblr side blog (with or without a ""fake name attached to it, definitely not an alter :)"" spoiler alert: it's usually an alter lmfao)
May or may not think about what it would be like the have a particular physical attribute(?), not sure how to word this lol, like I'll think about how I wished my hair looked a certain way, or sometimes if it's possible, I might actually do something to change my physical appearance somehow, even if it's just wearing a specific clothing piece, but sometimes it can be like with my Calliope example where I paint my nails a particular color, or I actually dye or cut my hair, etc... The possibilities can be endless and can even be much bigger changes, such as alters making the decision to go on HRT.
--- An 'Identity' Begins to 'Solidify'
May have found a name, or a 'placeholder name' to use
May like using a specific icon (on Tumblr, on Discord, etc.) or icons, or may like using icons with a common theme/visual appearance/etc. (such as using icons that feature the color blue a lot, or using icons of a specific character, etc.)
May become much more self-aware and confident in their existence
May or may not have created a new side blog, with or without a particular name attached to that blog
--- An 'Identity' Diminishes; start from the beginning
May no longer care for, or like, the previous name(s) or placeholder(s) names that we may have chosen
May no longer care for, or like, the previous icon(s) we used, the Tumblr blog(s) we may or may not have made, etc.
For as long as I can remember, this has been my experience with DID - or at least, NOW I understand that it's been DID all along.
And the cycle continues.
Nothing really ever "comes back." It's just "new" "identity" after "new" "identity" after "new" "identity" for me, day in and day out, week-to-week, month-to-month.
Not sure how to close off this post, but yeah lmfao
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aimwigs · 17 days
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hey I've been listening to the yard for about a year and a half and I want to get more into it ifywim do I just start watching old vods to catch up or is there any content u can recommend as a baseline must-watch
this is by no means a comprehensive list because i've only really been watching the yard since dec 2022 and my 2021 stint in lud viewing was brief and casual (didn't know what i had) but it is a fucking long list so i'll keep it under the cut. included stuff that maybe i wouldn't classify as a must watch but i wanted to include it so you can pick and choose what interests you
PODCASTS - I know for a fact there are other podcast appearances out there that I don't know of but here are a few:
the yard x wine about it - it's just the four of them and qt which means good times! this is an essential imo
there are a few eps of fear& that they appear on! specifically rec the ep with nick and aiden and the ep with ludwig and aiden. there are also a few eps with ludwig and slime (not at the same time) if you're interested in those
i've watched aiden on three different interview podcasts all are worth a watch to me: karat interview, across the bar, and good griefed (audio a little scuffed on this one but it's cute)
fucking loved nick's ep of across the bar because his outlook on creativity is super relatable to me. he also did something with safety third that i've been meaning to watch but haven't yet!
VIDEOS AND STREAMS - there's a lot here but i'll try to describe what's what
mogul money ft the yard - this is the full vod, there's also a cut down video. extremely fun watch
nick was also on mogul money live (first game specifically) and he and aiden appear in the bts video a little bit
qt posted vlogs from italy! they're all fun watches and there's some good moments. one, two, three, four
qt and aiden halloween gingerbread house video. ludwig and aiden kiss in this one. i think the full vod is in god's hands unfortunately
qt and aiden make shit in an ezbake oven and make the guys eat it. fun little video. idk if the vod is out there somewhere or not
there's a cut down version of this too but the full stream of qt having all the guys do a gingerbread house competition is very peak
lud did a shit load of taste test videos with the guys for a slim jim sponsor. this might not be all of them but here are the ones i cold find off rip (fruit, cheese, chocolate, water, steak)
ludwig has done a shitload of ylyl streams with slime that you can find and honestly i have a horrible mediashare allergy so i haven't watched a lot of them but i have watched the one they did with aiden and the one with everyone but idk where the full vod is for the latter
from ludwig's fortnite mondays, there was a week where slime and nick played with jerma and sapnap. idk if any of the others posted the vod but here's sapnap's
the subathon has a shitload of stuff that i can't even begin to link but if you want the experience of the dcom series without subbing to tier 2 they watched the truman show starting about an hour thirty into this vod, tho it takes a hot minute to get everything lined up with the time stamps
halloween po unboxing where them + qt dress up as characters from scooby doo. nick looks frankly obscene as velma this is a great vod
how many flashlights does it take to cook an egg is exactly what it sounds like. it's lud slime and nick ft a little bit of yingo
they play the family feud game together in these two vods: just them and against miz/otk (can't stand miz but it was still good)
RECENT STUFF - aka stuff you probably know about or have seen because you've been around a year and a half but i figured i'd include them anyway since they happened off the pod
two months ago they all played fortnite on lud's stream and it was awesome
both the show matches of the ludwig tarik invitationals are worth watching if you're into valo! the first one is team mogul v otv and they're split up in the second. if the timestamps are broken it's 2h30 in both vods
the rivals 2 tournament is fun! i don't understand shit about fighting games but i love to see the boys play
cdawgva ski vod with lud and aiden from the japan trip! there's also a cut down version of youtube but i found it a fun watch
recency bias alert: they all played in creator dodgeball
the qt and aiden winter cocktail tierlist stream was so good like genuinely a stream of all time to me. ludwig hangs around for parts of it
the yard doing the dougdoug fast food challenge is a MUST WATCH! they celebrate and they suffer what could be more beautiful
otv's fear pong video with them is so fucking good. SO GOOD!
and finally i guess i should mention beerio because it just happened LOL
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gay-otlc · 2 years
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I've already mentioned this in the general I Kissed Shara Wheeler screaming post but I'm going to talk more about how much I love the execution of Smith's gender identity because everything about it was so well done?
First of all, I was very happy to see some more diverse nonbinary representation! More nonbinary rep is always good to have, and I love Ash's character a lot, but they're a bit of a stereotype. I'd like to reiterate no hate to Ash, I love them, but they are assigned female, short hair, weird earrings, they/them pronouns, on TikTok. Which is fairly standard, though in no way bad.
Smith, though. A genderqueer character who's assigned male at birth, a definite rarity even in queer fiction. Football player, typically masculine build, doesn't use they/them pronouns.
I like how he and Ash coexist in the same book, and they're both nonbinary (or some sort of non-cis), and the book is really just telling us there's no one way to be nonbinary. Fantastic. Shoutout to Casey McQuiston for giving us this.
The scene where we found out Smith maybe wasn't cisgender after all was also fantastic, potentially my favorite scene in the book. The whole experience of "well I feel like that and I'm not queer" and then later realizing your queer is so relatable and an experience I think a lot of queer people share. As someone who has absolutely done that multiple times, Smith experiencing that Oblivious Queer moment made me laugh.
Ash's explanation of how traditionally feminine interests =/= being a girl, and short hair =/= being a boy, was a good and also fairly realistic way of separating gender identity and expression. I don't think most people in real life will use the unicorn thing, but people do talk about hair. It didn't feel forced.
The way Smith described dysphoria was also great. Sometimes it is looking at your body and hating, loathing, it should be the other binary sex, but sometimes it's not- sometimes it's "I wish it was different but I guess I can deal with it." And wearing baggy clothes to try to imagine your body is different? Very relatable.
"You know... if being a guy feels like something you have to do, like it's an obligation or something..." Ash says carefully. "Maybe think about that." This line is probably getting so many readers to question their genders. Honestly, reading something like this would have been my genderqueer awakening if I hadn't been awakened already.
In the burn pile, Smith's multiple attempts at answering the prompt "what is a moment in your life that you felt truly yourself," and the way he struggled with finding a time he felt truly himself, was a painfully common queer experience.
The football response to that prompt was good, but I adored the one about feeling endless, like the Holy Spirit. Queering religion and using it to feel closer with your gender. Very glad McQuiston didn't take the "I'm queer so fuck being religious I guess" route, because that is fairly common, the "I'm queer and religious and they enhance one another" mindset is nowhere near explored enough.
Smith also wears his letterman jacket all the time, even in eighty degree heat, which Chloe puts down to "jock flexing," but reading that scene after finding out Smith wears that jacket to cope with dysphoria makes the reader see this fashion choice of his in a very different way. I see what McQuistion did there.
I didn't expect Smith to end up being genderqueer (though I definitely called the thing with Rory), but I'm so glad he is, because that whole subplot was beautiful and I clearly have a lot of thoughts on that, but I'll shut up now.
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kenzan-kiwami · 4 months
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i ought to get better at writing down my thoughts so i actually remember them. anyway, it's kashiwagi time again. strap yourselves in cause this is going to be very long & punctuated with discord screenshots
i've discovered recently that people seem to like it when i lay my thoughts out on him, which is honestly wild to me but here we are. like i say, i'd like to put my ideas somewhere i can actually access them somewhat easily instead of peppered randomly through two or three discord threads and my own tumblr tags, so this post will probably function as my own personal meta archive for him, because i'm allergic to tables and spreadsheets and i don't really want to rely on google drive any more than i am already.
(speaking of google drive, i have a repository here of most of kashiwagi's audio files. refer to the readme document for the reasons it's not all of them for now)
>the basics?
i'll start with his age because that's at the forefront of my mind at the moment. i like to think he's in the ballpark of 10 years older than kiryu and nishiki, which would put him around six years older than majima, two years older than adachi, and 13 years younger than kazama. thusly, with a calculated birth date of around 1958, discounting birth month, he is (approximately):
30 in yakuza 0 (1988)
37 at the start of yakuza 1 (1995)
47 through the rest of yakuza 1, after kiryu gets out on parole (2005)
48 in yakuza 2 (2006)
51 in yakuza 3/when he "dies" (2009) (also goes grey around this time, maybe the year before)
61 in yakuza: like a dragon & gaiden (2019)
66-ish in rgg8 (2024).
(this list has been incredibly helpful to me actually because my original thought was that he was eight years older than the boys... that would put him at the same age as adachi, which i'm not a huge fan of)
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next up, sexuality - i think he's (almost) exclusively attracted to other men, with yayoi being an exception that proves the rule.
however, my idealised "ship" "timeline" for him is that he's with kazama until kazama gets naded, then does some FWB shit with majima until he himself "dies", then somewhere down the line after opening the bar ends up in a slow-burning "friend"ship with adachi, because who better to take out for dinner than the strapping old geezer in the glasses who serves you drinks and keeps a watchful eye on your extensive tab?
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next, i think he's definitely nd. which is something you can say for most characters in this series in some way, but he has an interesting relationship with food (not just limited to what he eats, but how), is shown infodumping on several occasions, hardly if ever switches up what he wears (at most, colours), flat affect/resting bitch face/autism stare, hires extra staff at his hobby bar so that he doesn't have to speak to his customers as much, and behind his intimidating mask he has this awkward kind of energy that reminds me a lot of my own experiences with being a bit not-normal. he probably has an oral fixation.
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also, sort of crack but also not, i enjoy the idea that he's light sensitive (or at least moreso than kiryu is):
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>the meat
he is very highly strung - we see this on multiple occasions. he seems visibly less so after "dying" in 2009, so i'm chalking it up to the stress of having to run things as someone who has the right mentality for leadership (the other patriarchs call him "soft" in y3 for trying to resolve conflicts rather than fostering them) but just doesn't enjoy doing it. he does exceptionally well as kazama's number two, but in yakuza 0 while kazama is in jail, and in yakuza 2 after kazama dies and he inherits the family (and clan captainship), he seems very stressed out. i absolutely think that his reputation for lashing out and his "violent" disciplinary methods are due in part to stress shortening his fuse (with the latter also being learned behaviours from kazama - an old school yakuza & assassin). age and the experience of staring death and a CIA attack helicopter in the face also definitely play a part in mellowing him out.
on kazama, i'm shamelessly stealing inoue's reasons for joining the shinsengumi and applying that to kashiwagi, because, while i don't really think of them as the same guy, there is absolutely a reason they chose him specifically as inoue's bakumatsu face claim. i don't have many ideas as to what kashiwagi did before swearing up, but he's a man of debts and undying loyalty, so i believe kazama must have saved him or turned his life around in such a way that he felt he could do nothing but pledge himself to him. i also really enjoy the idea of kazama having given him his scar, but i'm not 100% on how that might have come around either.
to extrapolate even more bullshit headcanon from insignificant canon details, i think in the 80s he was a beginner hobbyist keyboard player. mostly looking at the judgement cinematic where he's not plugged in and playing a little out of sync BUT still doing whatever fucked up fruity little dance he's doing. the presence of the piano at survive makes me think he got a hell of a lot more into it in his newfound free time, as something else to keep his hands mobile as he ages and recovers from getting shot up by a heli. also, still love the little anecdote we get from iroha when she says he's good with his hands.
(related: i think he taught himself to blend traditional medicine for residual chronic pain relief)
>weirdguy momence
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in a one-to-one phone conversation with kiryu, his younger brother figure, he calls daigo (with whom he is on a given name basis) 六代目
that moment near the start of y0 where he stares down at kiryu on the street from the family office window
i don't think any of his suits were fitted correctly until kiwami 2 because his jackets ENGLULF him on PS2 & PS3 and he's straight up rectangular in kiwami
fills an empty bottle of high-end whisky with pish to make his bar look more expensive and comes up with an elaborate cover story to stop people from buying it
the way he acts towards his direct authority figures
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>i'm ill
using up the last of my image real estate to post some moments where i kind of maybe lost it just a little bit. by my own standards, of course.
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where-i-overanalyze · 11 months
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Maka and Crona gay moment masterpost (part 2)
welcome back everyone. part 1 is here.
literally pain and nothing else
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fellas, is it gay to threaten to kill your crush's mom in exchange for information of their whereabouts???
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i feel like this definitely counts. when your friends know how much you care about one person that they immediately react to hearing bad news about that person is "oh man, they're gonna cry." kinda gay imo.
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also, Maka literally sends re-brainwashed Crona into a panic. by Black☆Star and Tsubaki just mentioning Maka to them, they literally lose it and it messes with the brainwashing, experimentation, whatever it is that Medusa did to them so that by the time they've killed Medusa they can at least pull some of Maka's significance in their life out of the depths of the madness. UGH!!!! devastating,,,,,,
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Maka trying to pinpoint Crona's soul wavelength?? her first instinct is to look for them as she remembers them, not what they've become. i'm emotional
the church
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idk man, abandoning the order you fought for your whole life to make sure that you are able to spare and knock some sense into this person, who you know has been wrongfully manipulated??? these are kinda gay.
ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow
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the head cradling, the reestablished connection, and once again, someone Maka is close to is like "yeah, Crona means a lot to Maka, so we've been making sure to keep believing in you too"
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and would it truly be gay without tragedy??? without redemption and devotion and sacrifice??? without the lingering devastation that one has to live without the other for the rest of their life??? understanding that, while people may somewhat understand how they feel, they will never be able to share this specific experience with someone else??? the mourning, the memory, staring at a reminder every night of everything that happened and a promise that couldn't be kept while everyone moves on with their lives.
literally devastating. is it that poetic because that's because it's the way it was written and planned, or is it because i've become extremely attached to these characters??? that's up to interpretation (not really, i doubt Ohkubo would do what i wish this all meant)
now, happy anime things to make this nice at the end!!!!
misc. homosexual anime behavior
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okay, yeah, each of these scenes didn't happen in this order, but it's still gay.
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youtube
i tried to upload that as a gif, but it was Too Big. fellas, is it gay to have a montage of all your memories as you avenge them, and then the montage is apparently too long to become a gif because you have all these memories with them???
thanks for joining me. haven't done a long post in a bit and this one is Long. if there are any other gay moments i missed, let me know and i'll edit this post and add more of them (or maybe just a part 3, but i hate making "parts" so we'll see)
(edit 1: found a better translation for the panels from Chapter 112, so i replaced the previous panels!)
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skaldish · 2 years
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I saw your post about male intimacy and whatnot, and it made me want to share.
I don't know if it is gendered, but I assume it is (it could just be me) but something that makes that experience so much more oppressive is how American men are raised to handle emotion. From the very beginning you are shown that the worst thing a man can be is weak, and that emotions are weakness. So, without even realizing it, you strangle your emotions relentlessly, throttling your 'weak' responses and thoughts, until one day it doesn't bother you anymore. And then, once you realize that doing that was unhealthy, you find that the reason it stopped bothering you is that the process is so subconscious now that you don't know what you are feeling anymore. Unless it is a societally approved emotion like rage or joy (how horrid that rage fits in here) you just can't tap into how you feel. You have reactions and then later you say, "Oh, I think I acted that way because I was sad."
I'm putting this in on anon because I don't have the courage to be seen, as a man, putting this forward in my own voice. It's weak. I feel ashamed even typing this, but something is pushing me forward. And worst, I consider myself well-adjusted compared to lots of my male peers. This is a tragedy that we have been conditioned to perpetrate against ourselves.
Thanks for your post. It kindled something in me that feels very important. I wish you the best on your journey.
You're welcome.
I've only just begun to experience what it's like to be perceived as male, because I hormonally transitioned during the pandemic.
But for what it's worth, maybe I can try to provide some context for what it is you guys are going through.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a psychologist.)
So, I'll start by pointing out this terrifying thing: Every last ask given to me by cis men (which are many!) describes male conditioning the same way my followers who grew up in religious cults describe their religious brainwashing.
Yes. Actually.
Take a moment to swap "being weak" with "sinning," the word "man" with the word "Christian," and "emotions" with the word "doubt," and you will have something extremely close to the same thing.
The same way cults enact undue influence on their followers, it seems like American culture enacts undue influence on men.
I'm also someone who has complex lifelong traumas and was successfully treated for them, so I can tell you that I intimately know the feeling of:
"I want to act on this authentic impulse, but I can't seem to make myself do that because I'm fucking terrified the rejection will be too much to handle."
This is what my EMDR therapist described as "programming and conditioning." This is something that's learned by a very deep part of the brain, one that controls our basic survival. This part always overrides our higher thinking because it's evolutionarily designed to do so, for our protection and survival. Even if we want to act differently, we can't because of how our brains work.
But I'm telling you this here and now, as a man who grew up as a woman—this fear of weakness you have looks more like a programmed thing than a masculinity thing. Because I actually feel WAY more comfortable expressing my softer and shyer side now that I'm on T and presenting masculine.
Also, the compulsion to shove down your emotions or do things that "fight against the weakness," is behavior that looks striking similar to the way cult-members use affirmations or certain activities to self-indoctrinate. Self-indoctrination soothes the brain and stops it from doubting or questioning the views of the cult.
(Come to think of it, shoving things down is also how the Boomer generation goes about ignoring their traumas, as if that somehow doesn't come out sideways in every interaction they have.)
I guess the point I'm trying to make is this:
It's not that this just "sucks." This is literally actually trauma.
I can't even begin to describe to people the awful, gaping, howling, wordless wound that's inflicted by lifelong, early-childhood trauma. It is a yawning and cavernous need that sits at the very bottom of your soul. It feels like you're always mourning the loss of someone you love, but you don't even know who. And nothing you do ever seems to remotely reach it, let alone give it what it's crying out for.
Good gods, it took me months and months of extremely difficult and specialized therapy to uncover that starving part of myself. Sure, I am never able to change the fact I had been so hurt—but I did finally get to feed that starving part of myself.
What I'm saying is, the healing is possible and the affects of the wound can be nullified.
I think the more people destigmatize treating mental health, the more awareness and availability there will be for these kinds of things.
I genuinely want everyone who's AMAB to know that struggling with this kind of thing is brutally hard, is NOT a sign of weakness, and IS something you can justify treating as trauma, rather than a moral failing.
People want to be intimate with people and that's simply just a human thing, not a gender thing.
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dropintomanga · 3 months
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Do You Revisit to Heal?
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When it comes to a new year, everyone's talking about doing new things and resolutions to become better. But what if revisiting stuff can actually help you a lot more?
I was inspired by two posts I read - Japan Powered's The Value of (Re)watching and (Re)reading and Use Your Damn Skills' "Comfort TV and trauma recovery". The first post talked about how it's okay to look at past stories you were interested in back in the day. There may be times where you might cringe, but you might get a better appreciation of what that story meant for you at the time. The second post focused on how adults who grew up feeling neglected as kids turned to and rewatch comfort TV a lot to escape whatever trauma they were going through.
On the subject of rereading and rewatching, I've been thinking a lot about revisiting Gintama and Fullmetal Alchemist. Both are considered two of the top most popular manga ever by Japanese audiences. Both series have amazing characters and stories that resonate with readers. I remember a great deal of lines and moments from FMA and Gintama. Even back then, I re-watched and/or re-read those two series to a great degree. Nothing else mattered.
Compared to now, where there's so much manga released, I sometimes wonder because of the amount of manga out there, nothing seems to stick in my head as much. Although I love current hits like Chainsaw Man, there's nothing about them (yet) that brings out a sense of emotional catharsis that I feel compared to when I read something older like Fullmetal Alchemist. Or should I say, most manga haven't hit me as hard. I nowadays get that from video games.
But when I think about it, I'm a different person back then compared to now. While I think it's a good thing, you can lose something during the process.
I want to now address "comfort TV and trauma recovery." I've used anime and manga to "escape" depression. I've also used them as outlets to process feelings that I never told people at the time. I think the beauty of revisiting your favorite series is that everything is predictable when out in the real world, not everything sadly goes your way.
I sometimes wonder if I'm doing this with playing K-Pop songs over and over again. They take me back to a place where I know for certain that I'll be feeling great. Those songs take me back to my younger years when I wanted to be a DJ and blast music at parties with no drama. People piss me off and while I'm able to resolve interpersonal situations at times, I just feel mentally fatigued and sometimes scared over how some people behave. What if my emotional wounds led me to get sucked into fandom in the first place?
There's a lot of value to revisit things you liked back then. Every work has lessons to learn. Every story reminds us of how human we are. We need other people to share stories in order to feel that we matter in the grand scale of things. You also might learn something new when you revisit a story due to your own changes in perspective.
I'm always looking back into my memories as a hardcore fan when I was a teen to young adult. It's been fun. I realized how grateful I am to be able to experience those joys even when they weren't accepted as they are now. Maybe I didn't have as many friends to share those interests with at the time, but I know being involved in fan interests helped slowly shape the way I wanted to view life and act around people.
I hope it's the same for you guys. No one should shame you for revisiting older works. What's important is they help you feel alive and make certain parts of life worth revisiting years down the road.
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galacticsand · 27 days
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Movelang #000 - Introduction to the Language and Noun Class System
Nophhurra, my friends! Today I begin a series of posts showcasing an experimental conlang that I've been working on now and tinkering with for just over a year. At the moment, this language does not have a name in-conlang, and so I'll be referring to it for the time being by the language's project name "Movelang". Originally this language came about as the result of an idea that I wanted to experiment with in a conlang, and the language has since solidified and expanded in more ways than one. In this post, I'll be introducing you all to Movelang, along with the goals that I have since codified for it. As it stands, this language currently holds no connection to my Personal Conworld Project, as it is currently only an experiment, and I don't see it being adapted in any way for it, at least for the time being, but who knows, that could change one day!
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The origins of Movelang lay in a discord server that I was and still am actively a part of. At the time, a group of us were discussing neat and nontrivial noun class systems that could potentially be used in a conlang, and one of us (I can't remember exactly who right now, but I do know it wasn't me), suggested an idea for a noun class system that is based on the mode by which nouns in question would be transported or moved around. We all loved this idea right away, and we set originally to put together a server collaborative conlang to implement this idea. After some time passed though, the project fell into obscurity, but I still found this idea to be super cool, and wanted to experiment with it further, and so I ended up stealing the idea, and building it into my own personal experimental piece!
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The resulting noun class system shown above is what I ended up with after reconsidering the original class system that we had come up with together. The system I devised consists of 8 noun classes, a slight upgrade from what had originally been 6 more broad classes, which are distinguished by a mode of moving, carrying, or transport used for associated nouns in the appropriate class. I also gave each class a cool name that reflects the mode of movement associated with it as well! The class definitions are of course broad as well, as is the case with all languages that make use of noun classes, and not all nouns that fit into one of these classes will follow the category specified for each one.
In terms of goals, my primary goal was of course to implement the cool noun class concept that the group I was in had originally devised: to set up noun classes based on mode of movement for prospective nouns. Aside from this, my intention is also to experiment with a couple of other aspects of conlanging that I had been wanting to use hitherto. One of the big ones is being able to create a lot from a little in terms of derivations, which I've been able to do for the most part already, in addition to a loose adherence to naturalism, which hasn't been as big of a goal for me with this being an experiment, as already mentioned, but has helped me to keep the language looking plausibly realistic for the most part.
As I continue sharing more bits and pieces with you all about Movelang, I hope to show you how I've been able to adhere to these goals as its development has moved forward, slowly but surely, and I can't want to show you all what I've made very soon!
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This is my first big post to the blog, and my thoughts can sometimes be all over the place, especially if I'm super excited, so do let me know if you'd like me to clarify anything mentioned here. Feel free to drop me an ask and I'll answer it whenever I find the time if it adds to the post! Who knows, maybe I'll even give a sneak peak of what I have to come later, if it's particularly relevant... Until then, hope you all are as excited as I am! :D
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bedtimegiraffe · 2 months
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My personal ranking of the the LI's reactions to the upcoming battle
I know I would be a damn mess about all the near-death experiences and want to talk about it. So I've ranked all of our love interests by how well I think they handled your character's obvious trauma!
Starting with the worst...
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Pros: Mal, I appreciate that you don't want me to die and want to protect me.
Cons: My guy. My actual primary love interest. I get that you're depressed. I appreciate the honesty. But this is just more pressure! Now I'm responsible for both of our lives!
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Pros: Aerin, it's nice that you're not also freaking out. Not about this anyway. That is reassuring. Fighting for the people we care about and each other are strong motivations I can get behind.
Cons: You do not at any point ask if I'm okay. Maybe you don't realize how bad things have been, or you feel like you have no right to ask. And I also don't love 'we might all die tomorrow' coming out mid-make out and immediately before asking if we should take things further. You can just make the offer! Don't act like you wouldn't be into it regardless!
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Pros: Valax, I appreciate that you want me to fight back against you. The fact that you wish things were different makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. There are some big obstacles here and I acknowledge that. And you apologize for causing some of the trauma!
Cons: I don't love the energy that we can't figure out a solution. I get that you're very stuck in one way of thinking, but this seems like a great moment to figure something out other than 'We'll wait and see which one of us dies.'
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Pros: Nia, I'm very glad you don't want to lose me. And I appreciate the acknowledgment that something might actually manage to kill me this time. I'm perfectly happy be scared together.
Cons: This scene is mostly about making her feel better. Which is fine, a lot of them are. And it's partially MC's fault for not having an option to say, "I'm scared too." But not my favorite.
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Pros: Tyril, this is some solid reassurance. You'll be there with me. I'll gladly take that as comfort. Just being with me is probably the best thing to do. It's very practical and in-character.
Cons: I'm slightly confused how you thought armies worked prior to this, but we can get into that another day. As always, you could stand to ask about my feelings more.
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Pros: Imtura, I love you. I am so enamored with the way you acknowledge that we could die while not being worried about it. Incredibly reassuring once we get into it.
Cons: You're not in a place to be 100% supportive because you've got your own stuff. But that's life! Overall, excellent work.
Screenshots for illustration purposes taken from Neckrone Shen's very good 4 parallel playthroughs of Blades on youtube. Because these games are so dang hard to replay when I have an idea. I hope using screenshots of someone's posted playthrough is acceptable? Tell me if it's not!
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