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liyuesbian · 3 years

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✧ pygmalion!au [ningguang]

notes: btw idk how commissions from museums work i just made the process up LMAO and this one's kinda angsty? i mean, it is the pygmalion greek myth so iykyk. also, i describe this figurine of ningguang here but w/o the colour... i've linked it in case any1 needs the reference. (btw, this is not set in ancient greece specifically)

only yesterday had you been commissioned by an art gallery in the capital to create a piece for their up-and-coming collection titled desire, love and identity. yet here you are, slaving away to make the perfect image you had in your head come into fruition. your vision is exquisite once sketched on paper—you can't find any faults in it so you take the risk.

as soon as your chisel meets the marble, a feeling so invigorating dominates your body. no further references are necessary as you place your trust entirely on your hands, coarse from the labour. you find such mindless toil addicting and you work day and night, only stopping for a half-baked meal and the odd collapse into bed.

for months, love streams out of the tips of your fingers and through your sculpting tools to arrive at the stone figure. you sincerely hope the intimate emotion has been reached.

when you finish, you wipe the bead of sweat running down your forehead, rest the other palm on your hip and take slow steps backwards all while maintaining eye contact with the statue. a wave of sweet relief hits you and you fall to the floor, uncontrollably sobbing into tired hands that still grip the hammer and chisel.

it's beautiful.

you stagger, struggling to get up with your bruised knees while clumsily wiping the tears off your stained cheeks. setting the instruments aside, you lift your head to admire your handiwork up close. a woman made of stone sits elegantly atop an oriental chair, crossing her smooth, white legs over each other. her left elbow is propped on the arm of the chair while on the other side, a long smoking pipe is balanced between gloved fingers. around her lies an assortment of objects: a vase containing scrolls, a floor lamp, and a charmingly decorated folding screen.

you see, you had already thought it all out. you'd imagined ningguang's preferences for a life of luxury, her affinity for constructing and sprucing up interiors. she would be a master of the trades and a woman who likes to keep an air of mystery around her. and like how you increasingly project her to be more of a person than she ever will be, there is a creeping concern in the corner of your mind that you will lose your rationality just as quickly.

the sculpture's body is clad in a qipao with a slit that reveals alabaster skin below the waist. the dress—embellished with patterns and neat linings—hugs her figure and shows off a lean build. the extensive train and sleeves of the fabric are shaped curvaceously to mirror the flow of a waterfall. and her face. the section you strived so hard to refine. she stares at you with an imperious expression and a hint of a smirk. her gaze, so piercing, makes you avert your eyes in shyness but you find yourself gravitating back to her profile.

you muster up the courage to draw closer to your creation and unconsciously stroke her cheek with your thumb, captivated. if she were an empress, you'd be a common peasant—undeserving of setting your sights on such a goddess. you can feel your soul being sucked into eyes devoid of emotion—of anything, actually. after all, the woman sitting before you is not a person but an inanimate object.

the weeks following the completion of ningguang—which is the name you've picked up the habit of calling her—are spent in said lady's company. every minute of every day, you surround yourself with her presence as if she is your closest friend. you eat with her, tell her your troubles, even going so far as to decorate her with various types of jewellery and bringing her gifts you think she'd like.

"thank you," you whisper. "for always listening to me." in truth, you're always so immersed in your work that you forgot what conversations could feel like. though, you fear your art would never be on par with something so transcendent ever again.

you become curious, wondering what she would be like if the nymph in front of you were not just a figment of your imagination.

you perch yourself on top of ningguang's stone-cold lap and trace the contours of her visage. you inspect each crease on her lips and the minuscule crinkles in her eyes, applauding yourself for the well-crafted details. you don't know what possesses you but you close your eyes and press your lips against hers, hoping that once you open them, a living being would erupt from underneath the marble. but, of course, as soon as the light hits your retinas, ningguang is as unmoving as ever.

realising what you've just done, you drop off of her thighs and laugh anxiously. however, you could've sworn that you had felt warmth in the lips of your beloved muse.

"i've finally gone mad!" you cry aloud.

hell, you say to yourself, is it even possible to fall in love with such an... an artefact? you dismiss your glaringly obvious infatuation.

"nonsense," you mutter under your breath, sensing your heart breaking slightly. how can something so painfully humanlike also not be human at the same time? you must've caused a tremendous atrocity in your past life to have made the gods harbour a grudge against you. of all things, you'd never have guessed that a lifeless piece of art would be the object of your desire.

you can't bear to look at the handcrafted lady any longer and with an anguished face, cover her with a large cotton cloth. the plan was to wait until you could hand the statue over to the curators and try to ignore its existence until then.

for a few days, you act according to the plan, going about your daily routine but eventually, your stoic demeanour crumbles. you lock yourself in your room refusing to eat or believe that your affection would never be returned.

during the hours of sunlight, you weep under your sheets, drowning in self-inflicted sorrow. and at night, you do the same, lamenting over the loss of what could've been your true love. she would've been so perfect in your eyes, your other half, and the only one who could calm this growing turmoil!

the reality pains you. hence, you do the only thing you can do: you pray. you pray to the gods for a miracle, that the light of your life would stride into your room and pull you from the depths of despair... but she never does.

your last day "cohabitating" with the sculpture has arrived and for the first time in—what felt like—an eternity, you open the doors to your workshop. taking a deep breath, you unveil the stationary maiden.

it's still as beautiful as you remember.

you give it a sad smile, wanting to get its departure over and done with. you manoeuvre about the room to prepare the things for the movers who're due to come in a couple of hours. while you go down your little list of errands to be done, you cough and bat away the smoke—wait, the smoke? frantic, you spin around, eyes darting everywhere in search of its origin until they land on the smoking pipe you so intricately moulded for the commissioned piece.

it's strange, you don't recall colouring the statue. and how on earth is smoke coming out of the pipe? suspicious, you approach the motionless entity and almost stumble when you spot its chest rising.

oh lord! — i really must be descending into madness! you clutch your head, clawing at your hair in hysteria.

"stop, please don't hurt yourself." the sound of a low, worried voice penetrates your ears. you shut your eyes tight.

"no, the gods have cursed me! i mustn't listen to your poisonous words!" you exclaim. your state of agitation is alleviated when the woman caresses your tensed arm.

"what has happened to you? i haven't seen you lately either." the tone is more soft and more tender than you had imagined. you release your grip.

"is it really you, ningguang?" your voice cracks at the end, and the woman you sought after witnesses your features twist into an expression of longing and hope.

"yes, my darling. i dare not go anywhere else."

helplessly, you rush to cup her face to check for heat, for the blood traversing under her skin—anything that would prove that your sweetheart is truly alive and breathing. and when you do get the confirmation, you beam, trying to withhold tears born from elation.

you bend down to kiss ningguang, who is still seated on the chair, once, twice, and three times to rid your scepticism. oh, deities! she's real.

"i love you," you declare.

"i know." you watch as the same creases you'd etched on the corners of her eyes spread into a loving half-moon shape and you kiss her again.

you reach a conclusion: you couldn't give away your lover—let alone a live person—to be displayed as part of a museum exhibition so when the workers arrive, you hide your muse away in another room. you apologise profusely and spin a lie, rambling on about how you had nothing to relinquish for the piece you had prepared had been oh-so-viciously stolen by a mob of trespassers!

the movers share with you their sympathies and ask what the work of art looks like and maybe they could sort something out with the authorities. nodding, you recount—so ardently—the details of your divine maiden. you feel heat rush to your face, chuckling when you realise that you'd run your mouth for too long.

in response to this, the two labourers exchange dubious looks as they peer at the static sculpture standing in the middle of the studio—its appearance unmistakably matching your elaborate description.

#ningguang #ningguang au #ningguang angst #ningguang x reader #ningguang headcanons #genshin #genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin angst #genshin headcanons #genshin au #pygmalion au #ningguang imagines #genshin imagines

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felassan · 4 years

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Mass Effect development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

This is the Mass Effect version of this post.

[In case you can’t read it the subtitle in the bottom left logo above is “Guardians of the Citadel”]

Note: Drug use is mentioned.

Cut for length.

Mass Effect 1

ME began its life in a vision document in fall 2003

Codenamed “SFX”

Conceived of by Casey Hudson and a core team from KotOR. Its genesis was the intention to create an epic sci-fi RPG in an original setting that BioWare owned (so they could have full creative control), and in a setting that was conceived of first and foremost as a video game

Initially players could control any squadmate, but they wanted it to be about Shep and for players to be focused on Shep being a battlefield commander, rather than on switching bodies

By the start of 2004 its story was shaping up. Initially humans landed on Mars in 2250 and discovered evidence of an ancient alien race and a powerful substance, Black Sand, which rapidly advanced tech to the point that FTL travel was possible. (My note: obviously now the Prothean artifacts on Mars & associated mass effect force tech enabled this in the final canon, but I wonder if aspects of the ‘Black Sand’ naming-type & powerful substance stuff was rolled into red sand from final canon) Humans were suddenly capable of travel to multiple star systems and made contact with a multitude of other species. At the start of the first game, these species together with humans had a fragile peace, with focus placed on the political center of the galaxy, a hub known as Star City, later renamed the Citadel

Multiplayer was a vision for the series as far back as 2003. The plan was for ME1, an Xbox exclusive at launch, to take advantage of the platform’s online components. Early designs saw players meeting in one of the central hubs to interact and trade items in their otherwise SP adventures

By 2006 it had the name ME and the story was more specific, with the theme of conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms. The story’s scope now stretched across 3 games and included scope for full co-op MP

They tried to do MP in every game, discussing it from the get-go, but it always just fell by the wayside. “When you’re trying to build something that is a new IP, on a new platform, with a new engine, you’ve got to really focus on the core elements of the game.”

The conversation system prototype was made in Jade Empire, and some of ME’s earliest writing was done in an old JE build. At first there was no conversation wheel. Paragon was “Friendly” and Renegade “Hostile”. In the prototype Shep was a silent unnamed Spectre. Many conversations in the prototype about the player’s choice in smuggling a weapon through Noveria made it into the game

In said prototype a merchant referred to themselves as “this one”, though the word hanar never appeared. The PC in it also had the option to end a conversation with “I should go”. In the prototype also, Harkin was voiced by Mark Meer

An early version of the Mako got used as the krogan truck in ME2

Early concepts of the Citadel were drawn in pencil by CH. A piece of concept art of its final design was painted based on a photo of a sculpture near Aswan, Egypt

As with any new IP naming it was a struggle. They put out a call to all staff for ideas, did polls, made a name generator that combined words that they liked in random ways and made pretend logos of ones they liked in Photoshop to see if they could make themselves love the name or find visual potential in it. (Some of these names are in the pic at the top of this post.) CH liked “Unearthed” as it was a reference to Prothean ruins dug up on Mars and humanity’s ascendance going away from Earth. They knew the game would have a central space station featuring prominently so some of the ideas were based on that - “The Citadel”, “The Optigon”, “The Oculon”. “Element” was another one they had in mind due to the rare substance in the game

CH: “I was a big fan of John Harris’ book Mass, which had epic-scaled sci-fi ideas, so that was a word that came up often. Many of the names came from the idea that the IP featured a fifth fundamental physical force (in addition to the known four of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) so the word ‘effect’ came up pretty often.” Ultimately none of the ideas really felt right. One Monday morning they were going over the names and Greg Zeschuk said he had an idea on the weekend: “Mass Effect!” CH: “I said, ‘I don’t hate it’, which in the naming process is a high compliment. And it stuck!”

CH on Shep’s Prothean vision from the beacon: “It was hard to imagine how we would do this. CG was - and is - really expensive. Instead I wanted to try doing it through photography and video editing. So I went to a local grocery store and bought a few packages of the weirdest looking meat that I could find. Then I set up a little photoshoot in my basement, complete with some electronics parts and some red wine for juicyness.” He used these props to create a video sequence where the photos were rapidly cycled and blurred, along with production paintings, to create the scary vision an organic/machine experiment on the Protheans. These mashups were also used as inspiration for concept artists and level designers who were working on these themes

Tali used to be called Talsi

On the licensing side they often joke that they’re licensing N7 not “Mass Effect” due to N7′s popularity

There was a confidential internal guide to the IP in 2007 to help devs along and summarize/synthesize the vision etc. Some excerpts from it are shown in the book and this is the first time the public have ever seen them

Early versions of Asari had hair

Asari were designed as a nod to classic TV sci-fi (with human actors wearing obvious makeup and prosthetics to play aliens)

The turian design guideline was “we want them to be birds of prey”. They also wanted a range of alien types, some close to human like Asari, while others were to be a lot further away, like turians

BioWare patented the conversation wheel, which was a first for them. CH had been frustrated with reviews of Jade Empire that said that the actioncentric game was too wordy [with its list dialogue]. “I’m like, story is words. [...] What is it about our games that is making people feel like they’re wordy?” Then he thought “In a game you kind of need to feel like you’re continuing to play it. Maybe you should continue feeling like you’re playing it actively into the dialogue.” “[The wheel] kind of gave a new experience with dialogue when you did start to react based on emotion, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to bring out in our games”

The original krogan concept was based on a bat “with a really wide squidgy face. We just used its face on top of this weird body and it kinda worked”

Geth musculature was based on fiber-optic cables, with flexible plates of armor attached

The vision for the IP was 80s sci-fi inspired space opera

The concept art of Saren lifting Shep by the throat inspired a similar scene in-game. The staging wasn’t planned til designers saw that art

A squadmate with Shepard on the way to meet Ash in an old storyboard was called Carter. Early name of Kaidan or Jenkins?

Bono from U2 was kinda instrumental in bringing us ME lol

Finding the right cover art for ME1 was notably tricky

Matt Rhodes got his start drawing helmets for ME1, including one which would become Shep’s “second face”. He estimates he drew between 250-270 different ones

Some of the sounds in-game were people smashing watermelons with sledgehammers and sticking fists into various goos

The audio team had fun trying to slip the iconic main theme into unexpected places throughout the MET. “We were very aware of how powerful that track was for the fans and it was tempting to overuse it for any moment we wanted to make really emotional”.

The theme was creatively repurposed in ME3: slowed down and reworked as the ambient sound for the SR-2. “If you listen to it for a really long time, just stand in the Normandy and listen, you’ll actually hear the notes change slowly. It doesn’t sound like music, it sounds like a background ambiance, but it’s there.” (My note: Well no wonder the Normandy feels so much like home?? 😭 sneaky..)

Bug report: “Mako Tornado”. There wasn’t enough friction between the tires and the ground, causing testers to lose control of the vehicle and send it spinning into the air like a tornado. “As it turns, the front end comes up, and then it starts spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning faster and faster and faster until it just flies up in the sky” (My note: Sounds like a regular day in the Mako to me)

Cerberus originally had a bigger role in this game. It was cut but they had a whole explorable outpost. “I called it Misery,” says Mac Walters, “It was this planet with a little outpost that said ‘Welcome to Misery’”. Everything on the outpost was shit - dirty worn stuff, no windows, no kitchen, the vehicle bay was open to the elements etc

The Reaper sound is literal garbage. Some audio designers went on a recording trip to a national park. One of them got fixated on a garbage can, “a metal bear-proof receptacle with a heavy lid that creaked horribly when opened”. “It was like, ominous, spooky, tonal and almost musical. I decided to throw a mic into the garbage and record it moving. I didn’t know what it was going to be until later”

They were making lots of noises to record like throwing logs and rocks around. An old couple peered at them through the window of their camper van in the woods and must have called the cops because then the cops showed up, pulled them over and told them to stop. The cops towed their car (the driver’s plates were Cali plates and expired), drove them to Edmonton outskirts and then the audio producer Shauna got a call and had to go pick them up “like three little boys”. “We got a stern talking to”. Once back they were playing around with the garbage sound, editing it etc. Casey heard it and proclaimed “That’s the sound of the Reapers”

Preston Watamaniuk: “There are things I could have done to Mass 1 to make it an infinitely better game with better UIs” and some simple cuts and changes. “But when you’re living with it, it’s very hard to see those things”

BioWare Labs

As social media and smartphone games exploded, BioWare dedicated a small team dedicated to exploring opportunities here - BioWare Labs

Mass Effect: Galaxy used a unique graphic art style and static visual presentation common in visual novels. It has the distinction of being the only iOS game BW have made during their first 25 years

Scrapped ideas were a 3rd person space shooter called Mass Effect: Corsair and 2 DA titles - a strategy game and a top-down dungeon crawler starring young Wynne. (My note: Maybe the corsairs stuff was rolled into Jacob’s backstory in 2, the Alliance Corsairs)

Corsair was a very short-lived project that never got its feet under it. It was a spin-off on Nintendo DS featuring a behind-the-ship perspective and branching dialogue. At one point it had MP. The idea behind it was basically “ME: Freelancer” - fly your ship around, do missions, get credits. It had a limited branching story but was a gameplay-centered experience intended to fill the gap between ME1 and 2. That gap ended up being filled by Galaxy

Galaxy and Corsair’s smaller screen allowed concept artists to use bold colors and a simplistic character design style to help those games stand out from Shep’s story

Nick Thornborrow did some art for Corsair but was worried his art style didn’t fit ME. He moved to DA where he feels his art style fits better

Lots of BioWare VAs and even a lead writer and the VO director are drawn from Edmonton’s local community theater scene, which is vibrant. Think this is how Mark Meer got involved

Mass Effect 2

Player choices carrying over was a first for BW

Dirty Dozen-inspired plot

Its plot is a web of conditionals (see Suicide Mission)

Was more of a shooter than anything BW had made since Shattered Steel

There was 2 camps on the team, those who wanted to push combat and systems forward and redefine the ME experience and those who wanted to make a true sequel, with the same gameplay and systems but a new story. Karin Weekes: “I think it ended up being a good push-pull. It felt like a pretty healthy creative conflict”

“ME2 was a game you could hold up to someone who argues that games aren’t a serious medium and go ‘Oh yeah, then why is Martin Sheen in this?’” Sheen was their first pick for TIM

The idea for TIM came from a mash-up of concepts CH had collected over the years. The name “Illusive” originally came from his pitch for naming DAO’s Eclipse engine, a word inspired by Obi-Wan’s line “It’s not about the mission, Master. It’s something... elsewhere. Elusive”. “I thought, what if we called our next engine 'Elusive', but used an ‘I’, and then it’s like ‘Illusion’. [...] I still really like the word with an ‘I’ and what it conjures”

When ME1 DLC was in production, CH had been watching a lot of CNN, specifically Anderson Cooper. “How is one guy travelling to all these places and never looking tired and always being able to speak with clarity?” CH says it seemed almost superhuman. “What if there was someone who is the absolute maximum of the things you would aspire to be, but also the worst of humanity?” Cooper, though not evil, became an inspiration for TIM down to the gray hair and piercing blue eyes

Inspiration for TIM’s behind-the-scenes role pulling political strings came from Jack Bauer’s brother Graem in 24. Graem “can call up the president and tell him what to do and hang up, because he’s so connected and so influential”. Sheen had played a president and his performance brought gravitas and wisdom to the role. He had quit smoking, but the character smokes. He didn’t want to fake it, but he also didn’t want to smoke, “so he actually asked for a cigarette” to hold so he could stop his words to take drags with natural cadence

Writing was still pushing to write and revise lines hours before VO started. A series of problems like injury and some writers leaving for other opportunities left it so that Karin, Lukas Kristjanson and editor Cookie Everman hand to land the story safely, with PW helping where they could. Lukas: “We took over the writing bug and task list, and I can’t stress enough how much [Karin and Cookie] did to get ME2 out the door. There’s no part of that thing we didn’t touch”. Karin: “That was the most dramatic 2 weeks of my life”

Initial fan reaction when they started promo-ing ME2 was very negative because people didn’t want to know about new chars like Jack and Mordin. “[fans were like] ‘Get them out of here. We want our characters from the first game’. But then when they played them, those became some of the most popular chars [of the series]”

Concept art of Thane has an idea annotation saying “Face can shapeshift?”

At one point when designing Thane concept artists sent multiple variations of him to the team asking them to vote on which was the most attractive

Most of the Normandy crew was written by lead level designer Dusty Everman. Lukas gave him advice in the evenings between bugs

BioWare Montreal made ME2 and 3 cinematics

CC for Shep was based on tools used by char designers to create in-game chars. Under the hood similar tools existed to create aliens

Aliens were much easier to animate than humans. When something is human it’s very difficult to make it look realistic and you can see all the mistakes and everything

Over the holiday period in 2007 CH worked out a diagram on a single piece of paper that would define the entire scope and structure of the game. The diagram is included in the book

Bug report: “I shot a krogan so hard that his textures fell off”. At one point shotgun blast damage was applied to each of the pellets fired, and shot enemies ended up with just the default checkerboard Unreal texture on them after their textures got blown off

Blasto was meant to be 1 step above an Easter egg but his fan popularity prompted them to bring him back in ME3

They rewrote chunks of Jack 2 days before she went to VO. She was the only one they could change because all the other NPCs were recorded. They redesigned her mission by juggling locked NPC lines and changing Shep’s reactions by rewriting text paraphrases to change the context of the already-recorded VO

Lukas snuck obscure nods ito ME2′s distress calls. In the general distress call for the Hugo Gernsback, there’s BW’s initial’s and Edmonton’s phone number backwards. In a fault in a beacon protocol there’s the initials and backward phone number from Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny”. In 2 other general distress calls there’s initials and numbers from Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000″ and initials and numbers from Geddy Lee and Rush’s “2112″ respectively

Mass Effect 3

“The end of an era marks the beginning of another”

ME3 “marked the end of Shep’s story”

Saying bye to Shep was as difficult for devs as it was for players

JHale’s final VO session included Anderson’s death and romanced Garrus’ goodbye. “We were in the session and we both just started crying”, Caroline says. “I couldn’t come on the line to give her notes because I was crying, and she was crying. And so there was just this minute-long pause of like, nothing, nothing, nothing - just silence through the airwaves. And then I came on and just told her that I was crying and she said ‘I’m crying!’” They talked about these anecdotes also here on the N7 Day reunion panel

The Microsoft Kinect voice support required devs to teach Kinect hundreds of commands in a variety of accents across multiple languages. The result was useful but made for some awkward moments. Numerous players accidentally said “geth” or “quarian” while making a particular decision and accidentally killed Tali

MP chars were voiced by cops and military people

The helmet on one of the MP chars was originally designed for cancelled project Revolver

The payload device at the end needed to attach to the Citadel while essentially serving as a giant trigger. “It ended up becoming quite the engineering feet just to visualize how this thing would move and connect to the Citadel”

Concept artists explored creating an anti-team, where Kai Leng was almost an anti-Shepard essentially, with an elite squad to counteract your team. This idea never went beyond concept phase

ME3 Special Edition was released on Nintendo Wii U exclusively. This exclusive version of the game includes Genesis 2 (a sequel to the original Genesis comic) and unique gameplay features that took advantage of the touchscreen GamePad. For years Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood had had the honor of being BW’s only game made for a Nintendo console

FemShep regrettably didn’t feature in major ME marketing til ME3. Later releases like DAI, MEA and Anthem have taken increasing care not to gender their protagonists in cover art

To capture combat sounds they took a trip to CFB Wainwright, a military base southeast of Edmonton. They got a big tour of it and were allowed to record anything they could find. The tour ended with them getting to drive and shoot tanks (real shells). The force of doing that sent waves through Joel Green, he felt his whole chest compress when it went off; the perfect sound for the Black Widow! After the trip the soldiers let him keep the shell he fired and it’s been passed on like a torch to various devs since

Kakliosaurs began life as a joke in the writers’ room after John Dombrow placed a Grunt figure on a t-rex toy he had on his desk. Lore was brainstormed to justify the mash-up before someone asked, “Why don’t we put this in the game?” They loved it so much Karin had custom coffee mugs made

Bug report: For a while Tali’s final romance scene would fire when she was supposed to be dead

“Balancing combat: how designers in ME3 entered an ‘arms race’” - the solution to players feeling OP vs players feeling frustrated by really strong enemies is to find a good middle ground, but for designers Corey Gaspur and Brenon Holmes, it was war. Brenon designed enemies, Corey designed guns. Corey “was obsessed with bigger, heavier guns. We had this sort of informal competition where he’d make this crazy overturned gun that would just murder all the enemies, and then I tuned some stuff up to compensate”

Brenon had to invent new ways to “stop Corey” and this led to the Phantoms. Corey had in turn designed consumable rockets that could wipe out entire waves of enemies. He must’ve figured this would make short work of Brenon’s space ninjas, but Brenon had other plans: “I had just added the ability for her to cut rockets [when Corey was playing MP and he was watching]. She cut the rocket in half... Corey just turns and looks at me and is like: ‘Really dude? I just shot a rocket at this Phantom and she’s fine? Not even damaged? Zero damage?’”

This friendly rivalry helped elevate ME3′s gameplay. Corey had a knack for making a gun feel so good to fire it had his fellow designers scrambling to keep up. It was his version of balancing. Before Corey sadly passed away he mentored Boldwin Li in all things weapon design and the arms race continued

Corey designed the Arc Pistol. It was causing problems for enemies because it was too powerful. It seemed hell bent on staying that way, Boldwin would tune down all its stats and it was still doing 3x the damage it should have been doing. “I was like ‘What the hell?’, and then I looked closer. It secretly fired 3 bullets for every pull of the trigger! Corey, you sneaky jerk”

The day it launched there were midnight launch parties across North America including one near the BW building. Numerous devs sat at long tables greeting fans and signing autographs as the fans picked up preorders. When midnight struck the line was long enough that it took several hours for some fans to get their game. One particular fan is remembered: “It was 3am. Some guy drove up from Calgary with his friends. He was like one of the last people in line. I think he was sort of tired-drunk. He threw himself across the tables, pulled up his shirt and shouted ‘Guys, sign my abs!’ And like I did, because he waited so long. It felt impolite not to. So I hope he enjoyed his copy of ME3″

For designing Protheans concept artists had free reign to design something that read as ancient

Before the concept art team had the story of the game to work toward, they explored wild ideas of their own including an image of the crew stealing back the Normandy to go after the Reapers

Jen Cheverie was testing scenes and was initially excited to be testing Mordin scenes, til she saw she was testing the Renegade version of his death. “This is even before like all of the audio and everything was in, so you didn’t even have the sad music. I remember sitting at my desk and my hands just went to my face when I saw that the gun Shep pulls on Mordin is the gun he gives Shep in ME2. I burst into tears and was crying for the rest of the day. People are waving to me as they walk by and I’m like, ‘It’s ok, I’m just killing my best friend’”

There’s a segment called “Shepard’s story ends”. Casey on the ending: “There’s a whole bunch of things that come together to make it incredibly tense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment... was it.”

Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way all of ME3 is an ending. Its final moments were the players’ last with a char they’d been with all the way from Eden Prime

“And while the critical reception of the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.” CH: “We were, on one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as devs we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people”. He envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what that particular galaxy’s future could hold. “Frankly, there’s a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of reward and closure”

AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow they come together but even the best-planned projects don’t turn out quite like devs hope. From start to end video game production is a series of compromises. It’s rare if not impossible for devs to ship a game they’re entirely happy with. “I think that people imagine that when you finish a game, it’s exactly the way you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there’s a lot we would have wanted to do better. I think that’s true of any creative work”

As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shep’s final choice, “players emerged mostly asking for one thing”. CH: “Now, most of what we hear, after both ME3 and MEA, is ‘Hey, just go make more Mass Effect’. And that to me is the most important thing. Knowing that players want to return to the ME universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next”

Mass Effect: Andromeda

By creating a new ME in a new galaxy the team was challenged to put their own visual stamp on the game while keeping it true to the franchise

Being the first ME game on a new gen of consoles meant for more detail

“Massive transport ships called arks populated with salarians, turians, humans, asari and quarians” made the risky jump to the Cluster

MEA was the first time BW had truly codeveloped across 3 studios: Edmonton, Montreal and Austin. The bulk of the work especially early on was done in Montreal, which was composed of a handful of Edmonton expats and heaps of experienced devs who joined from elsewhere specifically to bring a new ME experience to life. Series vets in Edmonton then came on to contribute writing, cinematics, design and QA, along with leadership from creative director Mac Walters and the core Production team. Austin writers and level designers also joined the fray

“It took a new team to take ME beyond the Milky Way”

Mac: “A lot of people in Montreal joined BW as fans of the franchise, so they just had this passion, and it felt like it was more like the days of Jade Empire, where a smaller younger team gets to do something for the first time. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a new IP for me, it felt fresh and new because of that. The team was just super excited to be working on it”

Early plans had the player exploring hundreds of worlds, procedurally generated, allowing for a nearly infinite variety of experiences. But as development wore on, it became clear that the game narrative required more specific, hand-touched level design on each world to keep the story focused and the experience engaging. “The plan was to give players numerous uncharted worlds to explore. Designers worked hard to come up with procedural elements that would make such planets special. Eventually the team made the difficult decision to abandon procedural planets in favor of more memorable hand-touched alien worlds, each with a specific story to tell”

One challenge was defining what ME meant without Shep. Care was given to include many of the MET’s key species. “Ryder recruited turian, asari, krogan and salarian followers”. Like Shep Ryder represents humanity’s hope for a peaceful coexistence among aliens who had long operated without human contact

Beginning with MEA the team decided that with few exceptions vehicles in ME have 6 wheels. Early Nomad concepts were bulkier. Later ones focused on its ability to move over its ability to protect itself from hostile fire, underlining the themes of exploration

German concept designer and auto-motive futurist Daniel Simon was contracted to create the Nomad and Tempest. The Tempest’s final design took inspo from the Concorde

Concepts for angaran fighter ships have the following notes: “Two doors swing open, wings rotate down to function as landing struts, the landing struts split open. It has a spinning turbine engine

Despite being set a galaxy away and some 600 years after Mordin’s death, there was a time when he had a cameo. It wasn’t cut due to running out of time however, it was cut due to drug references. John Dombrow explains: “One day I had to write a small quest for Kadara. I thought it’d be amusing if these 2 guys living way out on the fringes in a shack were growing plants for uh, medicinal purposes, and needed Ryder’s help with it. It occurred to me, wouldn’t it be amusing if Ryder had the option of actually trying ‘the medicine’ to see what would happen? And I thought, what if it turned into some hallucination that somehow involved SAM - like maybe SAM would sing? But why? How could I motivate that? Then it hit me. Who else in the ME game sings unexpectedly? MORDIN. As a nod to him I wrote SAM singing Modern Major-General. It got even better when our cine designer John Ebenger wanted to take it even further. Bless him, he came in on a Saturday to do a special hallucination showing Mordin himself. It was great. Til the fateful day we were told MEA had already been submitted to the ratings board. That’s when you declare things like drug references in your game. Mordin fell under that category which meant it was a no-go. We were too late”

Ryder’s white AI armor contrasts Shep’s iconic dark armor (intentional design)

Concept art for Ryder involved experiments with cloth (cloaks, ponchos, capes - “Pull here to release cloak”) and asymmetrical design elements

For alien design, there’s a few exceptions but humanoid figures are the ME standard and this persisted into MEA

Kett and angara concepts explored striking lines and textures

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

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deltas-writing-corner · 3 years

Text

Courtship (4): The Gargoyle Graveyard

Fandom: Twisted Wonderland (Malleus x GN!reader)

Author note: Again, thank you all for being patient with me and I apologize for having a very inconsistent writing schedule. I'm going to make it my goal to update on a bi weekly basis instead of leaving you all in silent limbo. Also a reminder I suck at figuring out which warnings to put so if there's something that needs to be forewarned that I failed to disclose please lmk!

Warnings: Mentions of heavy bodily injuries | childhood trauma/neglect | discussions/mentions of discrimination | mentions of virginity/sexual history

Previous chapter | Next Chapter

AO3 version

Clay. Stone. Porcelain. Plaster. Metal. There are even gargoyles carved entirely of wood! Some statues are stand-alone works of art while others are part of a clear collection or series of similar inspiration. They even come in all sorts of shapes and sizes; as small as an apple or a towering height to rival Malleus himself. No matter what, each grotesque has been crafted with the utmost consideration, by well seasoned and knowing hands. Even the ones that have clear defects and cannot serve their intended purpose are free of overabundant ivy, weeds, or dust. There’s a clear degree of love and care the family who makes these statues has for their craft that makes him feel less alone in his interest in an uncherished form of art.

“It should be around here somewhere,” you muse aloud. Ever since he expressed interest in seeing more sculptures made with non-traditional materials, you’ve been keeping your eye out for a particular one that would fulfill his yearning. You eventually find it and eagerly point to it. “There it is!”

Malleus watches as you approach a massive-sized statue covered with a thick and half-wet tarp. He helps you remove the cover, revealing a winged and slightly humanoid canine. There are many more grotesques with a similar design, but what makes this one stand out the most is the material it’s made out of.

“Amazing!” Malleus awes. “I’ve never seen a grotesque of this size made entirely of glass! They’ve even managed to maintain their attention to detail despite such an abnormal material choice.”

“You can even see the inner channel where the water would flow in and redirect out of its mouth,” you notice.

“They even went out of their way to make it functional despite it being unfit for actual installation?” Malleus inquires with disbelief. “Such a shame.”

“If you’re looking to buy anything here, I’m afraid it's a lost cause. One of the first warnings the grandfather gave me is that none of these are for sale.”

“What was his second warning?”

“If we damage anything, even as small as a scratch, he’ll kill us.”

“How charming,” he chuckles. “I cannot blame him. These statues must take weeks to complete. Time is a human’s greatest enemy.”

“For some, sure. But when I went to visit the family and talked to the old man, he was lunging around all this heavy equipment like he was still in his prime,” you recall. “He lives for his craft. If there’s anything humans are at risk of their entire lives, it’s a lack of motivation and reason to live.”

“I suppose that’s true, but the lifespan of humans and the inevitable effects of aging is difficult to live with, especially once it begins to hinder one’s ability to do what one could previously do without issue. ”

“You’re not wrong,” you acknowledge. “But I think I’d rather live a short life with fulfillment than a dull, long-as-shit life.”

To show that he’s entirely on your side, Gunter lets out a guttural bark while his tail rapidly wags and thumps the damp ground, coating the ends of his bushy tail in specs of dirt and dirtied, remnant snow of the north that has managed to stay frozen on the isles warmer south end.

“You’re only agreeing with them because you’ve been promised food,” Malleus chastises. “Don’t think I didn’t pick up on your grumbling stomach.”

“And don't think I didn't pick up on your stomach rumbling either your highness," you quip back at him. "The family has a small cottage nearby we can use. We'll settle down for a bit and eat before sightseeing some more."

Before you turn and walk in the direction towards the aforementioned lodgings, you reach your hand out for Malleus to take and he latches onto you with restrained enthusiasm. He's taller than you, but he takes care not to take his normal strides as to not leave you struggling to keep up with him. Gunter doesn't know the way, so he trots beside you every step of the way up until the destination is in plain view. The cottage is small but well-attended. There’s a rustic flair to its construction that makes it feel familiar and safe despite never stepping foot in it before.

"Those gargoyles were something, huh?" you remark to him while you tap and shake off the gunk wedged into the soles of your heavy boots against the frame of the door.

"Indeed," he nods, taking your cloak off for you and hanging it on the wooden rack nearby. "I don't think I've ever seen that many gargoyles in one day. Just when my eyes land upon an intriguing one, there's several more that catch my attention."

The way he gets all wide-eyed is outright adorable. It makes you grin just as enthusiastically too. "I bet your club is going to have a field day once you tell them about this!"

His child-like smile turns into one of disappointment. "I'm certain they would, if I wasn't the sole member that is."

Your hands halt from pulling out and setting down all the premade food out of your pack. "Seriously? You're the only one?"

When he nods his head, you feel a twinge of hurt in your heart. Poor guy. You can only imagine how disappointing it must be to go through all those lengths to start a club (you would know since you're technically a staff member of the school and have been given a rundown on some of the school's functions and regulations) only for no one to show interest. Of course, you completely understand that gargoyles aren't exactly all the rage within the minds of teenage boys. Still! He goes through so much effort to build relationships with his peers but they always cower away, either due to his status or even because of the way he looks. You won’t deny that he does come off as rather intimidating at first glance, but he's a sweet guy once you give him the chance to speak.

But to expect teenagers going through social pressures and demanding academics to be as understanding and willing to understand someone like Malleus is an impossible demand. Given that everyone in the school can be a bunch of self-centered and easily agitated bunch of pricks, it's understandable that most of the student body isn't keen on trying to take into consideration the proper etiquette one needs to consider in the presence of a young and noble fae. Deuce has met and talked briefly with Malleus on one occasion, but even he visibly shakes whenever his name is mentioned, even in casual passing.

Wait until they found out who you've gone and gotten buddy-buddy with behind their back. They probably think they're slick or that their intentions are well swept under the rug, but it's clear they feel some semblance of responsibility for your well-being, as both a magicless individual as well as a close, albeit older, friend. You dread the day people begin to make the connections between Malleus and you, but you still can’t help but wonder what their reactions might be. You also dread the high probability those two idiots are going to find out and embarrass the living hell out of you, which you know you do not have the patience or tolerance for.

Gunter jumps up and sits himself down in one of the wooden dining chairs, pushing the small ceramic plate towards you with his nose, as if telling you "Alright, I’ve done what I said I'd do, now feed me what I'm owed." You tell him that you'll give him what he's well earned after you get a small fire started in the brick fireplace. Just because it's warmer near the southern half of the island and not as heavily blanketed with snow, doesn't mean the cold has completely vanished, Winter is still winter after all.

"Where did these scars come from?"

Malleus' unexpected question and closeness nearly make you drop the iron rod you've been using to stoke the growing fire. You've since taken off your boots and rolled up the bottoms of your pants just above your knee as the room starts to warm up enough for a thin layer of perspiration to accumulate and roll down your skin. The scars he's referring to are the ones on your right leg, both side by side at an awkward angle and discolored. You have a lot more scars than these, some much more gruesome in appearance than these two. Malleus has never asked about your scars, but sometimes you catch him looking in the general area of some that peak through your clothes. He likely keeps quiet about their existence out of courtesy.

Yet out of all the markings on your body, why did these two stand out enough that he'd finally ask about them?

"It's a long story," you say in an effort to stall the topic. "Sit. I'll feed you two once the fire is stable."

He doesn’t push you for an answer, instead simply doing as you say and lets you poke at the burning logs until they're properly aflame on their own. You made mostly some of your morning favorites; Creamy and thick potato stew with diced carrots and peas and some eggs, ham, and crispy hash browns sandwich between homemade halved croissants. You teased him about having picky taste buds earlier, but Malleus is content to eat anything you serve him so long as it is not comparable to the likes of Lilia's atrocious cooking.

(Seriously, how does a man as old as Lilia not know the basic fundamentals of cooking? And why does everything he makes end up burnt and tasting like something rotten? You will never understand.)

"Don't eat too quickly," you warn Gunter as you pour a bit of light-colored soup onto his designated plate. Your words are ignored, as the equally marred wolf sloppily slurps and munches on the few bits of potatoes and vegetables you generously scraped out of the thermos. His food is gone as quickly as it’s put in front of him and he looks at you expecting more.

"No. The rest is mine," you scold. "And don't beg Malleus for some either! I know you do it behind my back, you little shit!"

He turns to look at Malleus with an accusatory glare, thinking that he ratted him out to you. Malleus’s response towards the silent imputation is to turn and look out the window as if something caught his interest all of a sudden, cup raised to his lips as he politely sips away at his meal without an air of calmness. You have to slap a hand over your mouth to hide the amusement that overtakes your senses.

"Malleus, stop that!"

"Stop what?" he innocently asks.

"Stop making me want to laugh!"

He sets his cup down onto its matching serving dish. "It's not my fault you have an easily satiable sense of humor."

"Wow!" you say incredulously and put your arms up in offense. "And here I was thinking we were friends!"

His distant demeanor breaks and you both devolve into a fit of laughter together. Gunter unfortunately takes advantage of your joint distraction and slips away with a warm sandwich between his jaw, your sandwich in particular.

"That damn wolf!" you curse. "I knew I should have trusted my gut and pack extras.”

Malleus pities your distress before moving over to sit closer. "Worry not. I'll split mine in half with you,” he reassures.

"No, it's fine," you immediately dismiss his offer. "Have it for yourself."

"I'm not taking no for an answer," he firmly states. “Don’t be stubborn. It’s far too early for that.”

"I thought you liked it when I was stubborn?” you pout.

He shakes his head with a smile. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t”

"At least someone likes my attitude,” you say after chewing and swallowing a mouthful of soup. “Sebek certainly doesn’t."

"The boy is stubborn as well. When two equally stubborn individuals cross paths, you will witness nothing but discord between the two."

"Add the fact I'm human into the mix, and we'll be exchanging fists instead of words sooner or later," you scoff. "I get that some faes don't like humans, but what's his deal with acting like he’s got a vendetta against me?"

"Sebek doesn't hate humans for the reasons you might think," Malleus admits. "It’s more like he finds them difficult to think that highly of. Did you know that he is half-human?"

You nearly choke on your own breath over the sudden revelation. "Really?"

"Indeed," Malleus finds amusement at your disbelief. "Have you ever wondered why his ears aren't pointed like Silver, but his eyes are like mine and Lilia’s?"

"Damn,” you scratch the back of your head with embarrassment. “Now I feel stupid.”

"You aren't. Given the way he speaks, not many would assume he had human blood in his veins. His mother was highly regarded within her social circle, but her marriage to a human man tarnished her reputation a great deal. She's happy and does not seem to care what others think of her these days. However, when Sebek set out to be a knight, his mother's marriage and his lineage were often brought up as a way to scrutinize his character and capabilities rather than any of his actual shortcomings as an individual."

"Poor kid," you sigh. "Lilia told me those sorts of things still happen in The Valley, but it sounds so outlandish that I couldn’t take it that seriously."

"Many faes hold old traditions above all else, to a degree that the purity of one's blood stands above all other merits." His eyebrows pressed together in annoyance. "Even my grandmother thinks it's archaic, but as the reigning queen she has to embody a persona of neutrality between the social divide."

"It sounds like you have your work cut out for you in the future," you say, almost apologetically. "What do you plan to do about it once you're the king?"

There's a brief flash of surprise over your question, but Malleus easily answers it as usual. "I think my first course of action as king would be to properly knight Sebek and Silver."

"Bet my rifle that Sebek is going to cry the entire ceremony!" you remark with certainty. "That's all he ever goes on about, being a knight and all."

"He's devoted countless hours and efforts since he was a child. If there's anyone who deserves to join the knighthood, it's him."

"Definitely," you nod to further cement your agreement with him. "He could stand to lower his voice a bit. He'll give you tinnitus before long.”

"At least we won't have to worry about losing him in a crowd," Malleus jests.

"That's to say we'll lose sight of him to begin with," you remark. "He'll gladly lose me in a crowd. You? You'd be lucky to get out of arm's length."

"You underestimate me, dearest," Malleus smirks. "Ever since I've met you, I've perfected the art of avoiding Sebek's insistent searches."

"Have you now?" you razz back. "Don't let him catch onto the fact. He'll have my head."

He reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. Each second his skin touches yours makes you tingle. Time slows down ever so briefly if only to savor the small instance of physical connection for as long as possible. "What of your aunts?" he inquires. "Are they as overprotective of you as Sebek is of myself?"

"They’re a trio of mama bears," you proudly admit. "I'm old enough to drink and well equipped to fend for myself, but in their minds, I'll always be the little tyke that couldn't even eat their meals without looking at them for approval. Especially my aunt Gia."

You have three aunts. There's your aunt Marisol, the mother of most of your cousins and the main caretaker of the household. Your second aunt Lucia was well into her studies at university when you came to live with them, but her stress and long hours of mulling over her course materials paid off in the long run. Your gardening skills wouldn't be what they are now without her expertise in agricultural botany.

Then there's your aunt Gia. Oldest of the three. An absolute tank of a woman. No spouse. No kids of her own. She lived off the land like an absolute titan. The woman raised you as if she was the one that carried you for nine months and not your actual birth mother.

How would you describe your parents? If your parents were told to list out their priorities in life, their careers would be at the top of the list and you would be put at the very bottom. Why they carried you to term is beyond your understanding. You later learned that Gia had even offered to take you under her care well before your birth, knowing that your parents might not be well-suited to take care of you in the way she thinks would be beneficial for you. It was a convenient offer that would have saved everyone the trouble years down the line when you had your accident. They worked in a cutthroat industry and were constantly moving up the executive echelons. They had no time for you, yet their pride as a pair of young, successful business magnates made them incapable of seeing past the reality of the situation. That left you mostly in the care of last-minute caretakers and your aunts, but only if they had time from their own busy and preoccupied lives to come out into the city and visit.

You were eight years old when things started to get better, but it was upstarted in the worst possible way. Your parents had to go away for the upcoming weekend for work and left you in the care of a babysitter as per the norm. The babysitter never showed up however and your parents apparently couldn’t be bothered to check up on you even once the entire trip. Their silence wasn’t surprising. You just went on about your business for the next three days on your own like nothing was wrong. Your aunt Gia had even called at one point to check up on you, but you didn’t bother to tell her that your parents had left you to fend for yourself. She would have exploded if you did, but not as much as she did when you woke up in the hospital after falling down the stairs and lying helplessly on the ground for several hours with a dislocated shoulder and a compound-fractured leg. You were lulling in and out of consciousness due to all the medication pumped into you, but what little you do remember seeing and hearing when you regained consciousness will forever stick with you for the rest of your life.

If people think your level of swearing is bad, they should have heard your aunt that day. She swore so viciously that it could set an innocent bystander's eardrums on fire. What will forever stand out the most to you was the fact that your parents didn’t even look the least bit apologetic or regretful. They didn’t even approach you once your aunt was done giving them a piece of her mind to check up on you. They simply talked with the awaiting social worker and doctors and then left. It was for the better, but the small part of you that continued to hold onto the desperate belief that your parents would come around one day sent you into a thrashing frenzy and you had to be sedated before you could hurt yourself anymore.

The next year was spent recovering from your injuries, meeting regularly with your caseworker, and going through therapists like a pack of cigarettes. By the time you were back on your feet and the legal proceedings of your custody case were concluded, all you wanted was to move on with it all. Nearly a decade of neglect left you this unattentive, uncertain husk of a person who couldn’t take a single step forward without looking for some sort of guidance or assurance. Your family was exhausted by the entire ordeal and over speaking with third parties. Your aunts took it upon themselves to help you regain your sense of self in the comfort of your new home, no matter how difficult or demanding it was going to be.

“It took some time, but eventually it clicked in my mind that I was in a better place and I started to get better. As for my parents, I have no clue what they’re up to these days.” You lean back into your chair and let out a shaking yawn. “I like to think they’re getting on well like I am.”

“I don’t understand.” Malleus looks at you with unbelievable confusion. “Your parents treated you poorly, yet you don’t sound the least bit resentful. Why is that?”

You shrug your shoulders. “What’s the point? I'm in a better place now, so I've let bygones be bygones. 'Doesn't mean I don't harbor any anger against them anymore. I do, but getting upset won't change what's happened to me."

Gunter, having sensed your discomfort over the matter, trots over and rests his head on your lap. You gratefully rub the top of his head, carding your hands through his thick, coarse hair. "I'm just glad they let me go without a fuss. Family court was hell for my family.” Your eyebrows knit together. “Expensive too.”

Crackling wood fills the momentary silence that befalls the small cottage. What you've recollected to Malleus is a lot to take in, and if you're being quite honest you'd prefer if he just dropped the subject and talked about literally anything else right now. You hope he doesn't say he's sorry or any other type of apologetic comment. That's all you were ever told that entire year it all happened, during court proceedings, your rehabilitation, by both strangers and distant family members alike.

"I'm so sorry. What happened to you was unfortunate. You didn't deserve it."

No shit you didn't deserve any of that. You were a kid. You don’t need one pity party after another to realize that what took place then had fucked you forever. But as you said earlier, you're in a better place now, with a loving and supportive family that's moved on alongside you. A family you need to get back to as soon as possible.

"I love you."

Well, if he was hoping to take your mind off the past. that certainly did it. How can it not? It came out of nowhere and as good as you are at holding your composure when need be, you're sure you look no less like a gaping fish when warm and plush softness presses right against the corner of your lips. A kiss. His kiss.

"What's wrong?" Your voice sounds shaky. You’re nervous.

"Nothing," he smiles reassuringly. "I simply said what I felt needed to be said."

"Fair enough" you concede easily. He was going to say it sooner or later. He already has actually, now that you think about it. Yet here you are trying to process his words like it’s rocket science.

"Am I going about this too fast perhaps?" he genuinely asks. His hands that have been busy massaging your calves that have settled across his lap somewhere during your long retelling gradually slow down, but his hands never go completely still. "This is my first time experiencing something like this."

"What?" You sit up a bit straighter. "A relationship?"

"Yes."

Your head tilts to the side. "Really?"

He nods hesitantly "Yes?"

For a moment, you go completely quiet. "I don't believe you,” you doubtfully say, head shaking to further showcase your refusal to believe him.

He must not have liked your remark, frowning with clear offense in his eyes. When he dislikes something, the vertical slits in his eyes contract into a thin line. "I cannot lie, yet you still doubt me?"

"I know you can't lie, but I find it hard to believe you haven't been with anyone else before," you explain. Before you can consider the appropriateness that was your newfound curiosity about Malleus's apparently non-existent love life, you blurt out, "Are you still a virgin?"

You slap your hand over your mouth the moment those words come out of it. He's equally caught off guard and nearly drops his warm cup of coffee. Even Gunter is surprised by your question, olive-colored eyes looking at you as if you've lost your mind. It's an invasive question, inappropriate even. You and Malleus have been dating for a little over two days. A question like that is way too early to bring up just yet.

"You don't have to answer that," you tell him behind your palm. "I shouldn't have even asked it. Forget I ever brought it up-”

"I'm not," he interrupts you, leaving you even more shocked than you already are. You’re practically gaping like a fish by now. "I'm not a virgin,” he further insinuates.

A deafening silence, but it’s eventually broken by yourself. “I still don’t believe you.”

Malleus gets further annoyed at your refusal to accept his truth. "I'm not lying!" he insists.

"Bullshit!"

"Do you want me to recount my history to you?" he asks, exasperated as you are at the shift the conversation is taking. "Will that satisfy your doubts?"

"You know what? It will!" you loudly declare. "Who'd you sleep with?"

"He was a young page at the time,” he reminisced. “It happened before I was a century old.”

Your eyebrows raise with intrigue. "Was he cute?"

"Yes," he hushedly agrees. The disconcerting admittance paints his face a pinkish-red glow. "But that's not why I bedded him."

"But surely his looks are what made you interested in the first place?” you make blatant regard of the fact.

“You’re not wrong,” he acknowledges, expertly avoiding agreeing with you outright. “But his looks aren't the sole reason I was drawn to him. He was bright-eyed and ambitious, to the point you’d think him insane given his position in the court. It was also the first time I ever truly met with a group of humans, and my young mind was eager to get a more accurate perspective of humans that wasn’t through the lens of my tutors.”

“An ‘accurate perspective’?” You make playful air quotes, eyebrows wiggling because you know the fact that he knows what you’re implying. The playful comment is met with a sharp pinch on your leg that makes you jump and shriek out in pain. Did he have to dig his nails into you? Apparently so, and now you have small crescent indents on your skin. “I bet Lilia had a good laugh when he found out.”

“He doesn’t know, actually,” he admits to you with what is obviously a proud smile.

“Now I know you’re lying to me,” you scoff. “Nothing escapes the old man’s radar.”

His hands begin to rub out the marks he’s left on you as a form of apology. “Lilia is sharp, but he had lost most of his vigor by the time I was born.”

You go wide-eyed again. “You mean his hearing and eyesight was better than it is now?”

He nods affirmatively. “From what I’ve been told, terrifyingly so.”

Lilia is already frightening as is. His short stature and boyish looks make him perfectly unassuming to those who don’t know any better. You once watched him beat up a couple of bulky, twice-his-height students from Savanaclaw without breaking a sweat, yet moments before he was jokingly scolding himself for dozing off so easily. You never once thought he was ever out of his elements. A cold chill runs down your spine thinking how much more perceptive the older fae may have been back during his prime years.

“Wonder what Lilia’s gonna think,” you ponder out loud in a quick effort to banish out the skin-prickling mental imagery your mind was invoking. “About us, I mean.”

Malleus seems surprised that you would change the topic to that of all things, but his initial shock goes away as quickly as it came. “As you may have guessed, he’s an open-minded individual, but he’s also very realistic and unafraid to say what’s on his mind.”

“So what does that mean for you and me?” you question with a bit of hesitation.

“Well,” he trails off and ponders for a moment. “He’ll surely like the scandal our relationship would invoke. However, as my caretaker and mentor, he won’t hesitate to put an end to it if he feels it necessary.”

Had it been anyone else sitting beside you, you’d have found that comment way too extreme and outright ridiculous. However, you are not speaking to anyone ordinary. You are not sitting before someone normal. It doesn't matter how well you get along with him. It sure as hell doesn't matter how deeply in love you are with him, and him of you. The moment you have been deemed a shortcoming, the outings, the closeness, it all stops. All of it will come crashing down and both you and him will be left wondering what could have been done differently.

Malleus is truly your best friend, because already he can tell that your mind is beginning to spiral even when you go quiet. He calls for your attention by gripping his hand around your bare ankle and carefully tugging the end of your limb. “Don’t fret over it too much,” he soothes, yet also sounding like he’s scolding you for letting your mind wander off so negatively. “Lilia is an exceptional judge of character. From what I’ve gathered, you’ve well exceeded all his marks. He trusts you, and to gain such a thing from someone as old and wise as him is an extraordinary feat.”

You brew over the attempted compliment he tried to pay to you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t snub out all these festering thoughts in your head. It doesn’t even give you temporary relief. Perhaps it would have brought you a sense of peace a few months ago, but with everything that has happened thus far, you doubt even Malleus can alleviate the storm that rattles inside you, even if what he speaks is without a doubt nothing but the truth.

Surely he can see that you are still having some hangups. When you lift his hand and plant a chaste kiss on the back of his hand, you hope he can decipher the gesture as a pitiful request for his forgiveness for dampening the once energetic mood. He is not at fault for your loss and inability to think optimistically at the moment and you need to make sure he knows it.

Today is about him, not you. Even if it’s just for today, you’ll put on a pleasant facade and worry about the rest at a later date. It’s just you and him, and for now, that’s enough.

You do a mental countdown starting from three, before finally giving him a late response to the three words he uttered in confidence to you earlier. “I love you too, by the way.”

You love him. You love him. You love him. That’s all his mind can think of for the rest of the day. He replays your reciprocation over and over like it’s sacred and all-powerful.

He had planned to return to his dorm before the sun began to set, but he found the mere idea of detaching from you deeply unwanted and made the last-minute decision to spend the evening at the Ramshackle dorm. He already has a few articles of clothing and personal essentials set up in one of the many empty rooms, so neither Lilia nor you had any objections at his sudden request.

“Don’t worry!” You shout across the room so that Lilia can hear you over his phone. “I’ll make sure he gets to bed on time!”

“You have my gratitude!” Lilia’s muffled voice responds gratefully. “Don’t cause too much trouble now, you two.”

“No promises~” you sing in jest before Malleus hangs up. Once the call ends Johnny, Benji, Franky, and you turn their attention back to their ongoing game of poker. Malleus watches and occasionally laughs to himself over the friendly banter shared between the quartet. At the end of every round, the winner is assaulted with colorful profanities whilst they take their newly won gambling chips with ebullience. Yet with each new dealing of cards, the animosity goes away and they’re all back to being friendly. He finds your interactions with your incorporeal roommates more entertaining than the book he’s been reading to pass the time.

“Hey, fairy boy,” Franky informally calls out toward him. “Don’t be a stranger now. Play a few rounds with us.”

“I’m afraid I’m not well versed in card games,” he admits, yet he still finds himself setting his literature aside and moving over to join them.

“Don’t worry,” you give him a reassuring smile. “They’ll go easy on you.”

“For how long?” he knowingly asks.

You give him an impressed smirk at his quick uptake. “I give it three rounds before they start to pull back their sleeves.”

Malleus is well-adjusted to the need to quickly learn a new topic and the expectation for him to fully comprehend it in full. None of them are harsh on him for his minor mistakes like some of the tutors he’s had in the past. Answers that he believes may be obvious or not as complicated as he thinks they are being answered with enthusiastic patience. The smallest achievements he makes are met with a proud response. When he makes a surprise turnabout and wins his first game, he’s rewarded with an encouraging round of applause by everyone.

“Not bad,” Benji praises as he shuffles the deck of cards. “You’re a fast learner.”

“So I’ve been told,” he humbly replies. “Is this the part where you all stop going easy on me now?”

“Don’t provoke them,” you half-heartedly warn. “Otherwise we’ll be up all night duking it out otherwise.”

Franky sets his glass of iced liquor down on the edge of the table. “Don’t you little lovebirds worry. We won’t take up too much of your well-needed time together.”

Annoyed at the clear jab at his relationship with you, you throw one of your chips towards his head. It passes through his body and clatters on the floor behind him. Your fawn Blossom jumps down from their spot on the couch and goes to sniff it, thinking it to be food, but walks away with a disappointed strut when he realizes it isn’t anything edible.

“I didn’t tell them a damn thing,” you defensively clarify. “It was so obvious what was going on between us that they figured it all out before we made it official.”

He lets out a deep breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “That’s...I can’t say I’m too pleased to hear about that.”

“We won’t say anything,” Franky reassures. “Just make sure to put a sock on the door whenever you guys want some alone time.”

“Franky!” you hiss at him. “What the hell?!”

“What?” he looks at you, unbothered by your clear embarrassment. “Do you honestly expect us to think you guys went out just to look at a bunch of statues?”

“Oh, I’m sure they were looking at something,” Johnny smirks. “It wasn’t made of stone though.”

“I hate you guys,” you growl out, arms crossing and leaning back into your seat with an angry huff. You don’t mean it. He can see the tremble of your lips as you try to contain the urge to grin. “Even if we did end up rolling around in the sheets, I wouldn’t be yapping about it for all to hear, much less you guys!”

“What happens in the gargoyle graveyard stays in the gargoyle graveyard, eh?” Franky winks at both Malleus and you, nudging you with his elbow.

“Exactly!” you affirm, batting the large ghost away from you for some much-needed distance. “Now stop being so damn nosy.”

They cackle one last time and everyone seamlessly goes back to their ongoing game. Conversations like the one that just concluded are commonplace in your dormitory. Even if he contributed next to nothing to the discussion, he enjoys watching them interact. You come from a world where ghosts are hardly as overt as the ones in this world. Ghosts are said to entertain themselves by picking on the living, to the point that it can be fatal. Your ability to come up with witticisms at a moment's notice is something he enjoys seeing in action. He feels great satisfaction not only knowing that he has secured your love but to also see you in a state of tranquility and within your elements.

As Benji and you have a hushed conversation on the sidelines, he reaches over and places his hand on your knee beneath the table. You quietly reach over and put your hand over his, stroking the back of his hand with your thumb like it’s instinctual. Unfortunately, the heart-fluttering moment is ruined by the sudden buzzing of his phone. He has half a mind to ignore it, but when he gives the screen a glance he realizes ignoring the caller is not an option.

“I’ll be out for a moment,” he excuses himself once he sets his hand down and stands himself upright. “This shouldn’t take that long, hopefully.”

They all stop to look up at him inquisitively for half a second. In unison, they ask, “Sebek?”

“Sebek,” he affirms.

There are simultaneous displays of annoyance, pity, and silent wishes of good luck directed at him. He’s tempted to ask where all this contempt for the boy comes from, but then he remembers the many times Sebek barges his way into their dorm at the worst possible moments. It is either when everyone is beginning to settle down after a long day or in the middle of an important house project, the former more so than the latter now that the dorm is much more stable and in need of less restoration. Malleus learned the hard way how ill you and the ghosts will react when your peace is unwantedly interrupted and your space invaded by an unwanted guest.

Sebek is also quick to scrutinize whatever he sees out loud without a filter. You never seem to mind half of the time, merely rolling your eyes and moving past Sebek’s ill-meaning remarks as if you never heard them. As you are someone Malleus highly regards and holds close to his bosom, he hopes Sebek can one day set aside his strife with humankind and give you the due diligence you deserve.

...Though, he completely understands that reaching that point will take time. While you can endure Sebek to a certain degree, there are times where he, unfortunately, pushes you past that threshold and, without flinching, you will tell him to “Shut the fuck up”. Your words, not his.

“Young master!” Sebek's transmitted voice peaks and he has to half pull it away to give his pained eardrums some relief. “I was informed by Lord Lilia that you will be spending the night over at the Human’s dorm. Have you all your accommodations at their estate? If not, I will swiftly-”

“That won’t be necessary,” he half laughs at his enthusiasm over such a small task. “I have enough to keep me comfortable and well for a few days. Your offer is still very much appreciated.”

“Y-Yes, of course,” he stutters. “If there’s anything you should ever find a need for, please inform me at once! I will fulfill your every wishes no matter the hour!”

He’s enthusiastic and ready to act at a moment’s notice, even during the middle of a cold and dark hour. Malleus doesn’t necessarily dislike this part of Sebek, but he’s starting to understand why someone like you would find such subservience difficult to deal with. At any moment, Malleus could ask Sebek to grab some insignificant item of his and tread through the thick snow to deliver it to him, and the boy would do so with jubilation and utmost timeliness. You on the other hand wouldn’t be caught dead ordering someone to do something on your behalf when you believe you are well and capable of doing it yourself.

You don’t put expectations onto the backs of others, choosing to trust yourself first before anyone else. He knows now that it’s a result of the one instance where you expected something from someone, only to be thoroughly let down and left wondering if it was you who did something wrong.

Malleus cannot make up for the pain you’ve been subjected to, but he hopes that he can become the outlier in your life that surpasses any preconceived notions you may hold onto others. He hopes...No, he absolutely will be the one who brings you your well-earned and deserved joy and repose, just as you have done for him and continue to do so.

You love him, and he will ensure he is worthy of every last drop of your fidelity.

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland imagines #malleus draconia #twst malleus #malleus x reader #malleus draconia x reader #twst writing #twst fanfic #fanfic: courtship #reader insert #reader insert fanfic #reader insert fanfiction #gender neutral reader #gender neutral pronouns #x reader

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thedandelion-writer · 3 years

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Can I request slow dancing or ballroom dancing with Diluc? Thank you🥺

❝you're in my arms (and all the world is calm)❞

Word count: 694

A/N: Oh god I'm weak for slow dancing (screams internally) !! Honestly I could never, in a 100 years, dance with Diluc 'cause I'd be blushing too much to concentrate and step all over his feet orz. Also I was listening to 'So Close' by John McLaughlin whilst writing this!

Unimportant side note: the 'manor' and 'ballroom' mentioned here are referring to the Diluc manor (it's mentioned in the webtoon).

First light spilled onto the floor through the tall windows that start halfway up the walls. Other than that, the spacious room was dim and smelled a little musty.

Being alone, it was so quiet you could hear every footstep despite being barefoot. The vast ballroom had not been used properly for a long time, and you thought, what a shame.

You were well aware that Diluc never cared for balls and the like, but it was only because he had to deal with the political side of things. If he was the uncrowned king of Mondstatdt, you were his clueless companion, opting to dance shamelessly to the music that threaded its way through the crowds.

As your husband, he knew of your hobby, and used to indulge you from time to time in being your partner during the free time that he had, away from prying eyes of course.

Though now, you weren't so sure if he would find it frivolous since he seemed to grow busier by the day. You sighed, twirling with your arms outstretched as if he was filling the empty space in front of you.

This is silly, you thought, almost laughing to yourself. But it's been ages and you were itching to get lighter on your toes. Your duties as mistress of the manor and co-owner of the winery sometimes left you suffocated. Not that you'd ever tell Diluc this of course, he's working hard as it is. Not wanting to fill his mind with petty concerns, you went on, waltzing across the room with the air as your dance partner.

You were just about to relax, to give into the motion and the comfort of having your feet take you all over the empty space, when a voice bounced off the walls, scaring you out of your wits.

"What are you doing in the dark?"

"Uhh- good morning?" you stopped completely, hiding your arms behind your back like a kid who stole a piece of candy. "I didn't expect you to be up-"

Diluc looked unamused, his mouth in a thin line. He gave the slightest shake of his head and descended down the stairs to meet you.

"You could have at least told someone to light the candles."

You noticed how he was already dressed for work, and yet here you were, dancing in a nightdress.

"I like the natural light," was your excuse, even though you were aware how the light of dawn did not exactly illuminate the space enough to even see the details on the ceiling.

The red haired man sighed, and to your surprise, took your hand in his, placing the other on his shoulder before gently cupping your waist. His lead was gentle, as if he were holding a glass sculpture, and you couldn't say you disliked it, not one bit.

"The next time you wish to do this, or anything at all, please do tell me Y/N," Diluc said, eyes blazing red every time you two passed by a window pane. How mesmerising.

"I'll keep that in mind," you looked up at him with a shy smile. Even after being married for years now, you were still as smitten as a day old lover. "I just love being so close to you like this."

"As do I," he replied, spinning you around before guiding you back into a near embrace.

You rested your head on his chest, enabling yourself to hear his heartbeat this way. It was so gratifying to be able to do the thing you loved most with the person you loved most. Over time, the dancing slowed and at this point, his chin was atop your head. You could've almost fallen asleep at how comforting it felt.

Time passed by all too quickly, and now the sun was now fully up into the sky. All good things must end, but at least this good thing ended on a sweet note. Diluc closed the routine with a charming kiss on your hand, and you pressed your lips to his in return.

Stretching happily, satisfied, you watched his retreating back, promising to meet later on in the winery.

#genshin impact #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact x reader #diluc x reader #diluc ragnvindr #diluc imagines #diluc genshin impact x reader #diluc oneshot

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mst3kproject · 3 years

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The Neanderthal Man

Since I'm taking a break from fishmen, I might as well let Bigfoot catch up a bit. The Neanderthal Man isn't exactly a Bigfoot movie, but it’s along the same lines and its entire starring cast has MST3K pedigrees. Robert Shayne was in Indestructible Man and Teenage Caveman. Richard Crane was Rocky Jones, Space Ranger! Beverly Garland was in Swamp Diamonds and Gunslinger. Even the composer, Albert Glasser, wrote music for Invasion USA, Last of the Wild Horses, and almost all of MST3K’s Bert I. Gordon movies.

Some little mountain town in the middle of the Sierras (which the Portentous 50's Narrator takes some trouble to tell us is a primeval place where 'the defacing hand of civilization has fallen but lightly') is having a rash of saber-toothed tiger sightings! At first these are laughed off, but when the game warden himself sees one cross the road in the middle of the night, it's time to do something about it. The warden shows a cast pawprint to Dr. Ross Harkness in Los Angeles, who is interested enough to come up and see for himself. Local Mad Scientist Dr. Groves pooh-poohs the whole thing, which is enough to tell me that we're not dealing with a local cryptid here. Somebody is making prehistoric monsters.

So... I may not have actually run out of movies, but I seem to be running out of plots, because this is a remarkably similar movie to Monster on the Campus. The major difference between the two films is that Dr. Blake turned himself into a caveman by accident, while Dr. Groves here is doing it on purpose.

Another difference is that Monster on the Campus' story, while silly, was linear – events escalated in a way that felt logical, and there were reasons why things happened when and where they did. By contrast, The Neanderthal Man feels like a first draft. At the beginning of the film, we're dealing with the saber-toothed tigers that Groves has been creating by injecting cats with his de-evolution serum. We hear about these slaughtering game and livestock, and it seems like only a matter of time before they move on to human beings. The beginning of the film is quite upfront about the fact that Groves is responsible, too, as it is only mildly mysterious in its depiction of one of the creatures escaping his lab.

Sometimes the saber-tooths are represented by an actual tiger, usually filmed from behind or at a great distance so nobody has to put the prosthetic teeth on it. They do have prosthetic teeth, but they're only visible in a couple of shots. Imagine being at a bar and some guy tells you his job is sticking fake fangs on real tigers for a caveman movie! For close-ups, there's a hilarious puppet head that looks like the sort of thing you'd see mounted on a frat house wall as a joke. The director had the sense not to linger on this in motion shots, but later we see still photographs Groves has supposedly taken of his experimental subjects and they're even stupider-looking than we imagined.

Anyway, this goes on for a while with rising action, as the game warden goes to get Harkness and they manage to shoot one of the animals, only to have it vanish from the kill site when they try to show it to Groves (the movie never bothers to explain how that happened, incidentally. The ending suggests that the creatures change back when they die, but there's definitely no dead kitty cat at the scene, either). The whole movie could easily have just had the cats and their creator as the antagonists, perhaps even ending the same way as Dr. Groves proves his work to the other characters by injecting himself. That's not what happens, though. Instead, the story mostly forgets about the cats one we find out Groves has also been carrying on human experiments.

(Before himself, Groves' first experimental subject was his disabled Latina housekeeper. Another series of photos show her half-transformed into a cavewoman who for some reason is wearing drag queen false eyelashes. And as long as I'm talking about the movie being gross and bigoted, there's a bit where a woman is violently raped. This happens off camera, but the audience is not allowed to entertain any illusions about it.)

The problem is that before we see him give himself an injection in the arm, we have had absolutely no indication that Groves has been giving his serum to anything besides the cats! Cats are stealthy, cryptic creatures and if one of those has been seen wandering around killing things, then surely a full-on caveman beating people to death would not be able to stay out of sight! If what we were seeing were the first time Groves had tried the formula on himself then that would be an explanation, but his notes reveal that he's been doing it for so long that he's on the verge of losing control of the transformation and permanently reverting to a pre-human status, as indeed he does for the climax. Much like the stupid dinosaur in The Beast of Hollow Mountain, the movie's main monster is given no build-up whatsoever!

There's worse yet, though. The main characters, Dr. Harkness and Groves' daughter Jan, are barely involved in the 'caveman' part of the plot. They get phone calls about the various murders that Groves is committing in caveman form, and they snoop around the lab to figure out things the audience already knows. The same story could have been told without them, perhaps with the game warden and the hunter as protagonists, and it would probably have been more interesting. The script also repeatedly has Dr. Groves wander in and bluster about how the tiger sightings are hallucinations and tall tales, which seems a little unnecessary when we already know he's responsible. The film-makers can't seem to decide whether they want us to know that or not.

Dr. Groves wears glasses. Maybe the reason his primitive alter-ego is angry and breaking shit (although it does politely open and close the window it climbs out of, which made me laugh) is because it can't see. This is also my theory about why the Hulk smashes, and what do you know? In Avengers Endgame he's got Hulk-sized spectacles and only smashes when he's told!

The direction of The Neanderthal Man can probably best be described as 'serviceable'. It shows us what's going on, but doesn't particularly add anything to the proceedings. The 'Neanderthal' mask is immobile and uninteresting, not much better than somebody's Party City Sasquatch costume. Even the eyes are just painted on, meaning the poor guy in the costume can’t do much because he can’t see where he’s going.

The dialogue is often very strange, with characters talking like they're in a Jules Verne novel. If only one person did this, it might seem like a character quirk – it works for Dr. Groves, for example – but it's everybody. Seeing the cat carcass is gone, Harkness declares, “I refuse to believe in the supernatural! There must be some logical cause and effect to this unholy adventure!” Groves' fiancee Ruth berates him for ignoring her, saying, “I want you, the man I once knew! The good companion, the cheerful friend. I want the happiness we once found in each other.” It's bizarre to listen to, and often audibly awkward for the actors.

Monster on the Campus was kind of trying to be about how humanity must choose to evolve away from our inner savage, although the finale didn't bear that out. There's a scene in The Neanderthal Man in which this movie seems to be trying to go in the opposite direction, saying that we were never savage to begin with. Dr. Groves is speaking to a panel of scientists about the size of the brain in various 'primitive' species of human. He points out that by the time we reached Homo erectus we were already working with four times the cerebral jelly of a chimpanzee, and argues that our ancestors would have been recognizably human in their behaviour and problem-solving capacity.

(Amusingly, his chart of human evolution includes Piltdown Man, which was proven to be a hoax literally a few months after this movie's release. What makes this even more tragic for the writers is that their list of primitive humans seems to be the only place where they actually did any research.)

The problem with Dr. Groves' theory is that he already knows it's wrong. We soon learn that he's been experimenting on himself with his serum for a while already, and his notes show that he knows very well he regresses into a near-mindless animal. The movie does not even try to reconcile these ideas. If Groves were continuing his experiments in the hope that perfecting his serum would give him a more accurate reconstruction of ancient man, that would be one thing, but the script never goes there.

So now that we've had two 'man turns into caveman by injecting science juice' movies, of course I have to ask which one is better. Monster on the Campus wasn't a good movie but it was definitely an improvement on The Neanderthal Man in several respects, and although I don't have any way to find out for certain, I suspect it was an intentional remake. It's definitely more entertaining and gets bonus points for including the Meganeura dragonfly, but nothing in it is nearly as funny as The Neanderthal Man's fake tiger head. I guess if you're gonna watch one or the other, stick to Monster on the Campus, but if you're gonna watch both, start with The Neanderthal Man and do them in chronological order, the better to spot the inspirations and references.

Before I go, a fun paleontology fact: current thinking is that the saber-toothed cat's eponymous fangs actually didn't show when it had its mouth closed! There are zero cave paintings or ancient sculptures of a saber-tooth cat with teeth visible, and when scientists looked at the structure of the enamel in the canines, it suggested that in life the teeth were hidden by big, fleshy, St Bernard jowls. Google 'smilodon lips' and behold how this looks fully three hundred percent more ridiculous than you're imagining. I love nature.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the neanderthal man #tw: rape #50s #curiously caucasian cavepeople

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horrorslashergirl · 3 years

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Decebal Avram Chirilă Headcanons

Authors Note: I did some Headcanons for my Romania Original Characters and used a lot of history references to depict his character. I think it turned out to be good, but I am very certain. Also, I have no grudge against other countries and such. This is strictly for my character. I mean; just because you create a character that kills that doesn’t mean you support real life murder or you kill yourself. Good, now that we made that clear. ENJOY!

Rebel with a cause; Outlaw by heart

Decebal is someone that both stands out and can blend in, which is a paradox. He stands out mostly because of his very tall form and handsome eccentric features; basically, when he enters a room he lights it up with his attitude. The blend in part is mostly after the big entrance in a room. He is multilingual and can fake accents, which confuses people. For example, he went to Italy multiple times and the local ones there thought at first he was a foreigner, until Decebal put on the Italian accent, speaking it fluently; the locals were confused. Is he Italian? Doesn't look like it.

He doesn't like uncultured people. He is a man who loves to learn about other countries' histories and culture, to broaden his horizons in this aspect. Knowledge is the second most valuable treasure along with Freedom. He is happy to explain culture and information misunderstandings about his country. 'No, dragă. Romanian isn't a Slavic language. It's a Latin language.' He had to explain this way too many times.

History has put a great impact on Decebal; he loves and hates it at the same time. He loves it because you get valuable lessons out of it; for example, in November 1942 Soviet forces launched a counteroffensive against the Germans arrayed at Stalingrad in mid-November 1942. They quickly encircled an entire German army, more than 220,000 soldiers. In February 1943, after months of fierce fighting and heavy casualties, the surviving German forces—only about 91,000 soldiers—surrendered. How did this happen? Stalingrad wasn't an important target, but Hitler wanted to destroy it mostly because of its name that comes from Stalin.... In conclusion, PRIDE destroyed them.

Decebal is anxious around Russians, although he does visit the country, mostly because of Ukraine and Belarus. Decebal is anxious around Russian's because of their history. One issue is that prior to World War I, the Romanians sent their gold reserves to Russia for safekeeping but the Russians did not return the gold after the war. Take it like this; Romania was an ally with Germany and Russia. The German's when they went to brothels, they brought flowers and chocolate, while the Russian beat and raped them. The Romanian women covered themselves with charcoal to make themselves ugly and unattractive to the Russians. Now, Decebal doesn't judge because of your nationality, but if you do prove you are like that, well.... Tough luck. Russia is a nation with power or strength as its national idea and they have repeatedly shown that they do not care about ideals like “legality” or “legitimacy” but respect force and military power only. This trait does not make you popular among your neighbors. Instead, you´re seen as an aggressive jackass who abuses and bullies others.

There are also many reasons why Decebal has anxiety towards Russians, all because of history. Romanians were forced to learn Russian. Romanians who are older still, almost universally, will tell you that they know one phrase in Russian: "Дайте часы!" ("Give me a watch!") Because that's what the Soviet liberating soldiers told every Romanian as they liberated them of their wrist watches (and anything else they fancied) when WW2 ended. Among other things that the Russians liberated from Romanians? The entire Romanian national treasure. Oh, and Moldova. Decebal has Moldovian blood running through his veins. Basically, Romania trusted Russia with its national treasure, Russia being an ally.

Decebal, if he is your ally, won't ever leave you on the battlefield, he is a 'go all the way or die' type. He's tired of how cowardice has affected his country and himself, so he is willing to fight till death. If you have strong beliefs and are passionate about something he will support them. Think of him as a shield of steel.

He hates the dictator-like attitude; he had to endure a lot of that shit and he is in no mood to listen to someone that thinks they're the big bad one just because they induce fear and brutality like an uneducated mindless jackass. Seriously, don't try to impose him with that kind of attitude because at some point his rage will come undone. There's a Romanian saying 'Mi-sa umplut paharul', which basically means that he won't take your shit anymore. Decebal is as scary as he is friendly. You don't wanna see this guy get into that mood. When he gets angry, which rarely happens, there's a cold wind that hits the nape of your neck, a dead silence that makes you wonder what will happen and a shadow casts his face, his almost white eyes illuminating under that shadow. Short story.... If you're the unlucky soul that has angered him, your body will be turned into shish kebab.... very tiny pieces and he will do that oh so slowly.

Getting over these dark vibes, Decebal is a music lover, one of the many things that keep his grin on and his eyes sparkling with life. He has an mp3 player with earphones in the pocket of his jacket and loves to listen to it during the most normal and abnormal times. He will listen to music at night while sitting on the roof of a house/building or..... He will fight with the earphones on and music blasting. He sings, and he is pretty good at it.

Decebal has so many faces that it's hard to really put a label on him. Some see him as a very cultured gentleman with a charismatic personality that brightens every room he enters. Then there are the ones that describe him as a hooligan, a punk, a very vulgar and blunt person who has no shame and mercy. He is really just a way too honest misunderstood guy with a vertebral column that cannot be bend.

He is a guy that appreciates the little things life has to offer. Life during Romanian communism really imprinted on his life. Give him a little piece of bread and he will be grateful to you. The food ration during that time was harsh; no more than half a loaf of bread, not too much meat, or sugar, and so on. Food is a luxury in Decebal's eyes.

Decebal is more used to the night than day, mostly because all his life he spend it in darkness. He spent months in underground jails without seeing the light of the day, losing track of time. Plus the communist government cut off electricity from 6:00 - 8:00 pm each night across the country to preserve energy. He sees in darkness like a cat and his ears are very sensitive.

Decebal loves his home country very much because he knows how much potential this little country has. Romania is Europe’s richest country in gold resources, Romania boasts the world’s largest administrative building, The largest population of brown bears in Europe lives in Romania, The Statue of Decebalus in Orsova is Europe’s largest rock sculpture, The only gold museum in Europe is found in Romania and also Romania has one of the happiest cemeteries on Earth, a reason for why Decebal makes jokes even in the face of death. On each grave there, is written dark humor poetry. Here's an example:

Under this heavy cross

Lies my poor mother in-law

Three more days should she have lived

I would lie, and she would read (this cross).

You, who here are passing by

Not to wake her up please try

Cause’ if she comes back home

She’ll criticise me more.

But I will surely behave

So she’ll not return from grave.

Stay here, my dear mother in-law!

#Decebal Avram Chirilă #Slasher OCs #Original characters #Romanian OC #Killer OC #Headcanons

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insomniacowl · 4 years

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Neon Genesis Evangelion analysis chapter 19: Tabris, The final angel Trigger warning: Bodily harm

Nagisa Kaworu is concurrently the 17th angel and the Fifth children and even his name is full of word plays. 渚(Nagisa) is シ者 (= Shito = Angel) placed together and カヲル(Kaworu) are each words that comes after オワリ(Owari, meaning The end/ Final). His name is already full of clues to his identity as the final angel.

While he is classified under the category of angels, he is also a ‘human’ with Adam’s soul, just like how Rei is a ‘human’ with Lilith’s soul, and yet Kaworu himself refers to humans as Lilin, cluing us into his mindset that he is not a human, this mindset is his greatest distinction from Rei. Adam’s soul was likely captured during the contact experiment that lead to the Second impact or soon after, but the identity of the body is unclear. Rei’s body was constructed with Yui’s DNA as the base, thus Kaworu’s body too should have come from another person. Some argue that it could be Misato’s father, but it will not be delved into as the lack of information will only lead us to speculate.

Shinji: AT field?!

Kaworu: Yes, that’s what you call it. A sacred territory that no one else can invade. The light of the soul

Lilins should understand as well. Everyone with a heart can put up this barrier.

While Kaworu is living as the container for the Soul of Adam and act in accordance to it, he is an Angel called Tabris. Some say that his name appears on the Dead Seas Scroll but there are no supporting evidence. Rather, considering that he is an artificially created angel, and the difference he shows from the angels we have seen, it is likely to be a lie purported by Seele. In the canon materials, Tabris is referred to as the angel of “Freewill” and concurrently the angel of “Betrayal”.

This is why Tabris was able to break his promises with Seele and designated the future of humankind to Shinji. He has the body of a human but is able to materialise his AT field like the angels. But that does not mean that he has the S2 engine like the angels, rather from his conversation with Shinji, we can understand the AT field is light of the soul that everyone has and Kaworu is able to materialise it as he is aware of his nature of existence. Humans that live as atomized individuals that survive through cooperation need to use the AT field only to the extend of stabilising their bodies, Adam’s descendants that are singular unified being utilise AT field out of necessity for survival.

Music is great! It shapes your heart in a beautiful way. It is the pinnacle of Lilin’s culture

Because Kaworu was born with the mission to destroy humanity, his interest in them was inevitable, showing great interest in their culture and psychology, just like the angels that came before him, and who are also his descendants. When he first meets Shinji, he is humming to Beethoven.

He especially praises music and this is key is understanding the adoration he and the other Adam based creatures have towards Lilins. Unlike Adam based lifeforms, humans are capable of death, and are equipped with knowledge to deal with the adversities, and it is through this knowledge that civilisation and culture is based on.

It is in similar vein as Lilin’s adoration of the angels’ capacity for life. Perhaps Kaworu was also in adoration (and Loved) Shinji. The melody that is hummed and played over and over again in this episode is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and this has to be seen as an apt choice by Anno. The forth movement of this symphony, one base on “Ode to Joy” is a poem telling the message that all humans are equal in the eyes of God. Furthermore, the lyric that plays when Kaworu is descending down to Central dogma is “und der cherub steht vor Gott!” translated to “The angel stands before God”. No more needs to be said.

Comparison of Rei, Shinji, and Kaworu’s synchronisation rate

Fuyutsuki: I take it that this data is accurate?

Maya: According to magi, there is no chance of errors in the data. It’s unbelievable that he can achieve this numbers without needing a replacement core

Misato: But it is happening right in front of us.

Misato: we have to accept the fact before probing to understand the cause of it

When Asuka has been mentally decapitated, there was no one that was left able to control Unit – 02 with the soul it contained, and it was only Kaworu with the soul of Adam that was able to do so. This sets him apart from Rei who was able to move Unit – 01 just to the functioning level. This comes from the difference of Kaworu’s awareness of his and Unit – 02’s identity as Adam, while for Rei, she was only following orders and only with slight awareness of her ‘special’ nature.

This awareness that Kaworu had of himself gave him grounds to see himself as complete and therefore able to open himself up to the emotions of others. We can imagine him becoming friends with Shinji in this vain, but his intentions at this point is unclear. All we can say for sure is that through his interaction with Shinji, he came to learn the “Value of living” that he was unaware of.

Hey, did you wait for me?

Not… exactly but…

Kaworu: What are you doing today?

Shinji: Erm, since all the tests are done, I just need to shower and then go home

I think it’s great to have a home to go back to. – Perhaps this sums up the feeling of the angels who have lost their homes.

In their first meeting, Kaworu sees in Shinji experiencing a strong feeling of the fundamental pain and loneliness of humans. And by his side, Kaworu sees Shinji overcomes this feelings, and come to be able to smile once again through interaction with others. It makes us wonder what was going through Kaworu’s mind as he lay beside Shinji talking openly about his feelings beside him all night long.

There is a man striving to attain the power of the gods

There is a man other then us trying to open the pandora’s box

That man is trying to shut the box before Hope has the chance to leave the box

Before we move onto other discussions, lets talk about the relationship between Kaworu and Seele. In Seele’s point of view, Kaworu’s purpose was to initiate the Third impact. This mindset had the premise of atonement of Lilith and that the burden of “carrying” it out was to be on Seele that saw themselves as the “Representatives of all Lilins”.

Understanding their relationship is central to understanding Kaworu as a character yet in the series, we see him communicating with Seele once, at the lake that was created when Unit – 00 self-destructed.

Hope? You mean that of Lilins?

Adding on to the conundrum is that this sequence was only added in the Complete version. But, as covered in Chapter 10, we can see that Anno believed this sequence to be important in the understanding of the series as it was added in this version. And to prove this point, in this conversation we are told of the White and Black moon, of Adam and Lilith, and other secrets that are important in the understanding of this series. But there is something that stands out in this scene. As mentioned before, here we see fifteen monoliths (thus members of Seele) instead of the normal twelve. Furthermore, when we see from Misato’s (Who was spying on Kaworu) perspective, we do not see the monoliths, we even here Misato saying that he is talking to himself.

While Misato not being able to observe the Monolith is explainable with Kaworu’s ethereal existence, it is difficult to justify why there might be fifteen monoliths here when it has been a constant twelve until this point. Some in the community simply brush it off as a mistake in the production phase, there is a chance that is represents souls of the Angels that have came before Kaworu did (If we consider Israphel as having two souls, that makes total fifteen). This theory is further supported by the manga version where Sandalphon and Matarael does not make an appearance, of Evangelion having thirteen monoliths in this scene.

We entrust you with our hope

During this scene, we see Kaworu standing on a bizarrely shaped stone that has changed in its design during this sequence. It is named “The angel stone” in the development document and it contains many foreshadowing and references. During his first encounter with Shinji, Kaworu is sitting at the area pertaining as its “Head”, and this clues us into his relationship with this sculpture. Later during his conversation with Seele, he is at the same spot standing and the sculpture has now lost its head. This foreshadows his soon to be met fate of losing his head by Unit – 01.

After the scene of his decapitation, we are shown the sculpture one last time, with red blood flowing out of it.

Foreshadows the end of Kaworu

This sculpture serves as a reference to other things that are shown later in the ‘End of Evangelion’. Namely the being that is Lilith (+ Adam). Its wings also resemble that of the mass production models, especially since it was Kaworu’s Dummy plug that was used to pilot these models.

Yet the breast of the sculpture is feminine, along with its arched back resembling that of Lilith as she drops her mask it can be considered a reference of her as well. And since she was also decapitated in the end its not a farfetched argument. If we were to postulate, this may also clue us to the possibility of a loop in the story structure.

Are you the first children Ayanami Rei?

You are just like me

Kaworu: Does all of Lilins on this planet have the similar form?

Rei: Who are you?

Kaworu’s first meeting with Rei is also important. He makes a gentle smile as he tells Rei that they are similar beings, and the note that Anno made on this scene personally was the “Smile of betrayal”. So who is he betraying? His smile is directed at Rei, but the betrayal was towards Seele. In other words, Kaworu proving Rei with the clue to her Identity (as Lilith) was him breaking the agreement that he had with Seele.

When seen from Seele’s point of view, Lilith is the object of atonement, restraining her was of absolute necessity. That is the reason why they have kept Lilith’s soul separate from her body. If Rei was to come to a realisation of her identity, it would serve as a variable in their plans, putting it in jeopardy. This betrayal reaches its climax when Kaworu makes his decent into central dogma.

Kaworu: Now kill me. If not, all of you will perish.

And you are not a being that deserves to die like this.

Kaworu looking at Shinji

Kaworu looking at Rei

And the smile

Kaworu’s decent into central dogma was followed by two people. First was Shinji piloting Unit – 01, the other was the Third Rei. Kaworu came to realise that Rei did not understand the situation she was in, albeit she was sharing her soul. If we look at his expression when his eyes met Rei’s in central dogma, it is as though he is telling her “Look, that is your real body”. As for his surprised reaction when he saw Lilith, if we were to think at how he said it, carefully stating out that it is not Adam but Lilith, he is explaining for someone. An exposition for the audience, but also, to tell Rei that this is Lilith.

Whatever the truth behind that smile may be, we can be sure of the fact that Tabris intentionally approached both Shinji and Rei to confess his feeling for both of them. Rei followed after Kaworu after emitting powerful wave of AT field and Kaworu knew that she was watching. After his final goodbye to Shinji, he looks at Rei and smiles the “Smile of betrayal” for the second and the last time. It is right after this scene, that is depicted in the starting sequence of End of Evangelion that Rei breaks Gendou’s glasses and returns to Lilith alone.

End of Kaworu

It appears that Kaworu was prepared for his fate before entering central dogma. He uses Unit – 02 to hinder Unit – 01, but unlike Shinji who aimed at Unit – 02’s neck, Kaworu aimed only for the non-vital areas and bought time. He confirmed the presence of Lilith’s body in central dogma himself and conveys his feelings towards Lilith (Third Rei), and without regrets entrusts his fate to the Lilins who he loves greatly. He entrusted the decision to Shinji.

I know. That why I am here

Seele considered Lilith and Lilins to be sinners and sought for the atonement of the original sin, yet Kaworu who was entrusted with that role only comes to curiosity and an even greater love towards Lilins.

When he sees Lilith’s empty husk in the central dogma awaiting the return of her soul, he realises the difference of meaning each Lilins attach to “Hope”.

That means that I love you

It may have been just for a day, but through his interaction with Shinji, he comes to understand the pain, suffering and anxiety a pure fourteen-year-old boy faces and live with.

Kaworu: Do you hate people?

Shinji Not really, I just don’t care what happens to them anymore. But I hate my father.

Why am I telling him all this?

Throughout this process, Kaworu as Adam have come to forgive Lilith and Lilins. The old man of Seele called this betrayal. And Shinji who has come to love him mistook his actions as betrayal as well. But it is at this moment that the original sin of Lilith and Lilin was forgiven. This lead to my claim to the central thesis of Neon Genesis Evangelion. It is that “True love comes from the effort to understand the other, thus achieving completion (Instrumentalization)”

Perhaps Tabris, the final angel knew this and acted accordingly.

I might have been born to be able to meet you.

#Neon genesis evangelion #Evangelion #Eva #End of evangelion #Nge #Nagisa Kaworu #Lilith #Sci-fi #Ikari Shinji #Soryu Asuka Langley #asuka #Ayanami Rei #rei #Anno Hideaki #Katsuragi Misato #Anime #Analysis #Review

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slashingdisneypasta · 4 years

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Horror Villain Headcanons

Topic: This is an extension of the last Jason Oneshot ^^ The rest of the horror movie villains react to their S/O telling them someone at work asked them out and she thought about saying yes.

Warnings: Seriously bad language in some reactions. Like, disgusting. Also some M rated suggestions

Notes:

I’m feeling like Jason took it extremely well for a Slasher… aha

I’m so sad that our boys Buckman, Drayton and Hoyt don't have gifs!!

~~~

Billy Loomis:

· Well, Billy’s a bit of a hot head… or a lot.

· The guy who asked you out will probably be dead. Most likely.

· And you’ll get the cold shoulder for an hour or two, because man. He’s hurt, that you would consider leaving him for some better life. You’re just like his mother, and this asshole who asked you out is just like Maureen Prescott. In his head, this just legitimises his murderous actions even more and makes him even worse.

· In this scenario, keeping it to yourself would have probably bene better.

· Eventually though, the fog will lift and he’ll remember that he needs you. He’ll come over and wrap his arm around you, nuzzling your face, and threaten you that if you ever do anything like that to him again, or even look in the direction of another man they will be cut down and he will make you watch.

· Boy’s a little bit yandere.

Bubba Sawyer:

· Bubba’s mind flies right over the part where another guy asked you out and sticks to the part here you thought about saying yes. He doesn’t care about this other guy, he doesn’t know him. He cares about his people, and you are his person. He wonders, why would you do that? Why aren’t you totally happy with him and his brothers and grandpa?

· His eyes will get watery, and he’ll just watch you and listen to you holding onto every word that comes out of your mouth until you’re done. Imagine that, for a moment. Telling Bubba, with his big, teary brown eyes (I’m assuming their brown, I can’t tell) that another man asked you on a date and you nearly said yes and left him. Imagine that, and tell me, could you do it???

· Hell no. With his little fidgeting, and his fat bottom lip sticking out, and his whines? No! No! No, no, no, no!

· So, quickly, bundle him up in a hug and tell him you were being silly, and you love him!

(Mayor) Buckman:

· Depends, was it a citizen of pleasant Valley? Or was it a passing stranger? Because if its one of their victims then there won’t be as many long-term consequences like their will be if it were one of his residents. His family.

· See, if you’re dating the mayor, everyone will know. Especially this mayor, because he has a taste for flare and he sure as hell introduces you as his consort every chance he gets. Which means passers by and residents alike are well aware who you are and who you ‘belong to’ (He wouldn’t put it that way, but its clear.).

· If it was a victim, he’ll make a show of their death- even more then usual. If it was a resident, they’ll get a warning and he’ll never entirely trust them again. He’ll always bring it up from then on, too. Embarrassing you, and them. Refers to them as an almost-thief and whatever other nasty insulting name that he feels at the time.

· But either way, he’ll be the same about your part in his heartbreak. Betrayed, but willing to forgive because you’re ‘Just so darn cute!’.

· He will guilt trip you a lot though when its mentioned, but if you’re able to sit him down and talk about it maturely with him, and explain your side of the story, then he’ll calm down and forgive you. ‘It’s forgotten, darlin’. I’m sorry for acting immaturely.’

Carrie White:

· Surprisingly, Carrie doesn’t immediately get upset and act like Bubba did. I mean, of course she feels bad. Its not a nice thing to hear from the person you’re in love with, that they nearly left you for something else! But, she thinks about your side of this as well.

· She guesses, she understands where you came from. It would be easier for you to love someone normal… not like her… It would be nicer for you. She gets it.

· She keeps the wounded look off her face, for your benefit.

· “But… “She’ll say then. And explain her side of this. That she loves you so much, and understands that it would be easier for you and just wants you happy. But she would be really happy herself, if what would make you happy is to be with her.

· It’ll be such a relief for her if you take her hands say that’s the conclusion you came to. One of those adorable, real smiles will grace her face.

Chop Top Sawyer:

· “WhhhaaaaaaaAAaAaaat???”

· “Let me at him! Let! Me! At! HIM! Show me where he’s at, I should- “

· You will need to stop him from storming your place of work with a face on a stick that’s on fire (Bubba balling behind him, because that’s his face!!), fists blazing and bouncing all over the place if you want to explain. Goddamnit, Chop Top’s gotta stand up for himself, and his woman! This will not do??!!

· “Chop Top- Chop! Stop it a second, I- Chooop! I nearly said yes!”

· That make shim halt in place. Only for a second though, before he drops his fists and turns to you in confusion. “Wat?”

· “But… then… I realise, I love you. And I was being stupid, and- well, that’s it. I love you.”

· “Awww, I love you too! That’s okay then!!”

· Prepare yourself, because otherwise the force of Chop’s lung cuddle will send you both crashing into one of Nubbins bone sculptures.

· Chop Top is pretty light hearted about the whole thing XD

Chucky/Charles Lee Ray (We’re assuming he’s human in this. Whether that be in man or woman form. And I’m sorry if I overuse this gif, I just love it XD):

· Some stupid guy asking you out is one thing, but you considering it??? That’s a direct attack on him and will be treated with prejudice.

· “I must not be hearing right these days, doll, because I swear I just heard come out of your pretty little mouth that you considered leaving me for some castrated turd- or, he will be castrated, at least. Stay here.”

· I suggest you stay where you are because if you leave and he comes back to that after killing this to find you gone, he will find you, and he’ll be even more pissed. He’ll take that as an admission that you’re not in love with him anymore, and the situation will be handled much worse.

· When he gets back, he will have the penis of the man who asked you out in a plastic zip lock bag and he’ll give it to you. Then hook a hand around the back of your neck and hold you firmly in place so that he can look down at you darkly and say: “Keep that as a reminder that I take great pleasure in sawing off any limb or body part off a person who tries to steal from me. I want you to be happy, sure, but having you is the point.”

· For the rest of the night he’ll be pretty stiff and stay off to himself instead of hanging with you because, he didn’t say it but his feelings were hurt by this betrayal, but by the time the sun rises the next day he will have gotten over it, comforted by the fact that he has you for better or for worse now.

Drayton Sawyer:

· Drayton takes all this news in one gulp and just kinda… nods, says okay then, and leaves to continue his work. Out of it. Off with the fairies.

· He doesn’t quite know what he could do about that. I mean, it’s good that you love him and you didn’t leave, but the fact that you thought about it still feels terrible. Especially since he doesn’t kill. He feels like he has no way of one upping you, or becoming even. He feels like the weaker part of the relationship, the one that has more to lose. Because clearly, you have options! He has… you.

· He’ll be pretty quiet for the rest of the night and for a while after tat day he’ll act a bit off. Normal, you know. Doing things with you, and talking with you, and just being normal. But he’ll just a be a biiiiit off, because he knows he has so much more to lose, and he hates that feeling.

· Eventually he’ll get over it, and feel better. But this has opened his eyes to that fact and its new to him! I mean, its not nice for anyone. But in his family, they all need each other They all play an equal part and even without that theirs blind loyalty involved. Here, he has to earn it and he suddenly feels very powerless, and in danger of losing you if one day you decide he isn’t enough.

Freddy Krueger:

· Similar to Chucky, he ‘wants you to be happy, but having you is the point’. He’s not above causing you an accident that puts you in a coma, so you stay with him all the time and you don’t have any other choices. Your smile is cute, but being with you trumps it all.

· But this is only the first time, and you’ve told him that you realised you didn’t want that. You want him so his little perverted heart may give out, so he’ll let it go this once. He wont hold onto it and throw it in your face later or even use it to his advantage now.

· He will kill the guy, though. There’s no way he won’t take the opportunity to kill someone.

Jennifer Check:

· “Well fuck you too then, bitch!”

· Yeah… she may need a bit of time to cool down. She is hot. She graces you with her presence. How dare you stab her in the back like this. She thinks all this, and then she thinks that she should kill you. That no fuck buddy should be able to hurt her like this, but after she looks at you and assesses you… she knows she couldn’t.

· But you don’t know that, and she’ll work with that.

· Storming out, she’ll make you think that she’s so mad that she would kill you. Just so you’ll feel the fear for a time, which she’ll prolong as much as possible, going do her nails and toes and then get a delicious, boy flavoured meal as self-care.

· Then, finally she’ll come back, and roll her eyes like she doesn’t know you took it seriously. Like it wasn’t her plan at all. “You really thought I would kill you? Don’t be dumb, come on! Let’s watch a movie- I pick, cuz you’re slutty ass hurt my feelings, k?”

(Sheriff) Hoyt/Charlie Hewitt:

· When he looks at you, slightly squinting like he does when he’s thinking, you think he’s going to kill you. That you never meant much to him and he’s going to turn you into dinner without blinking an eye for your betrayal- because what’s more important to Hewitt’s, then loyalty? Not much.

· Also, Hoyts a twisted, backstabbing traitor himself so that also worries you a bit.

· But then he just leaves the room, attitude in his eyes as he calls for Thomas to lock you away in your room and that he’s going to get dinner.

· For a few stupid hours after that, hidden away in your room without your phone or laptop, you foolishly thing he’s going to withhold dinner from you as punishment.

· But when he brings you in stew with a suspiciously familiar coloured eye as a sloppy garnish, and a tricky, twisted look on his face, you know what your punishment really is.

Michael Myers:

· Ohhh, no.

· Boy’s dead.

· That’s it.

· You get no punishment, but this boy who asked you out is so dead. You just tell him what happened, and then he turns and leaves to get his new job done.

Patrick Bateman:

· It may be smart to tell him at work, so he can’t really flip out… trap him in the confines of social standards.

· It won’t stop him from freaking out on you later, in the safety of your own home, but it will allow you a few more hours of crippling worry- or enough time to leave the country. You know, depending on how you word the whole thing to him.

· A deep breath in through his nose, teeth grit. “I’ll cancel our dinner reservations.” His eyes flicker from yours, to everyone else in the office. He steps closer to you, and whispers. “Go home, don’t you dare eat anything or turn on the TV. Tie yourself up, and wait for me. And don’t let me catch you dressed, fucking whore.”

· See, he’s had to come up with different ways to punish you when he’s mad, seeing as he cares for you. So really kinky, borderline (Sometimes not even borderline.) torturous sex will have to do. You never get to finish. And the rope is not safe, sex shop brand rope.

Pennywise (OG):

· I’m sorry, why should he care that a weak, unimportant mortal man asked you out? Its not like he would ever have succeeded, even if you hadn’t made the right decision and said no. He would have found you and gotten you back, no matter what.

· You are his adorable little human, who he is prepared to fight for -not that that is what would ever happen here. He’s not going to waste energy fighting a mortal man when he can just take you back, easy, - and you will not get away so easily.

· Basically, in this relationship, freewill is a fantasy. You are entirely and utterly owned by him. Like a pet.

Stu Macher:

· “You, what… really??”

· Well, first of all, he would fight this boy. Killing him doesn’t really occur to him, because he likes to keep his romantic life and his murder life separate but he definitely wants to throw a punch or two!

· Second of all, why would you want that!???

· “Do you not like me, anymore?? Babe, baby, come on! What’d I do to deserve that!”

· Honestly, he makes it out like it would have been better if you hadn’t told him. He thinks you’re mad at him and are trying to tell him you have options, by being honest and telling him this. No one has ever claimed he’s the sharpest knife in the drawer.

· You’ll get lots of cuddles and snuggles because he wants you to know how much he loves you. But that’s not really new.

Thomas Hewitt:

· Deep breaths. Watch his chest rise and fall like he’s trying really hard not to get mad, which he is.

· But, mostly, he reacts like Jason. Hears you out, because what else can he do? Luda taught him not to walk away from a person in the middle of a conversation.

· Once you’re done, he thinks. Still with the very deep breaths.

· He thinks how he trusts you, and what you say must be true. But then if you thought about leaving, then something has to be wrong, right?

· As you continue to explain to him, slightly more panickily, that you love him and it was a momentary lapse in judgement that didn’t even really do anything but you’re telling him anyway, because you love him and you want him to trust you, he slowly starts to clam down.

· Eventually, her brings you into a hug to stop your panicking. His breaths have returned to a normal rate, and he vows to try and forget it.

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itstittycitybaby · 4 years

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From the Ashes We are Born (Part two)

A/N: Just wanna say thank you so much for the notes and follows! I appreciate it a lot. I forget how broken tumblr is until i have to post something with 1000+ words. Anyways enjoy lmao.

The cool and crisp sheets welcomed you in its arms once you woke up. They smelt of pine trees and lemon with a tinge of muskiness to it. A dull ache coursed through your head, causing you to curse. The light did no favours for your head either. You groaned; there was a bedside table with a few candles. A hint of vanilla wafted through the air as the flame flickered and danced. “Where the fuck am I?” You rubbed your eyes to wake yourself up even more before trying to escape wherever the fuck you had been taken to. A bandage was placed on the side of your head where that cop had struck you. Slinging one leg out you raised yourself out of bed, or tried to anyway. The sheets had wrapped itself around your legs and waist. Your left leg felt tingly and weak once you put your weight on it. “Oh fuck,” you yelped as you toppled onto the floor, smacking your nose in the process. A nice thudding sound followed at the impact. Great, now my kidnapper knows I'm definitely awake. It was nice living while it lasted, I guess. As if on cue hurried footsteps caught your attention. The sound traveled throughout the mysterious place and into the room you were currently in. As you tried to untangling your legs out of the cursed sheet, you noticed the mountains and mountains of books piled in the room. Several stacks were behind the bed and there were cases of them piled on the cold floor.

Shaking your head out of your thoughts, you tried getting up again. However, your legs still refused to cooperate with you. The floor seemed to stare back at you mockingly as you caught yourself from kissing it. Huffing, you resorted to a military like crawl to get around. One arm forward, one leg forward, pull. Now, other arm… “I see you have awakened,” an amused voice said. There, stood your captor. V. You almost laughed at the pink frilly apron tied around his waist. Almost. You sent him a glare as he stood there, amused in the predicament you were in. “I didn’t notice. Where am I?” “My home. The Shadow Gallery,” V said as he extended his arm. “May I?” Sighing, you wrapped your fingers around his arm and let him pull you up. You clutched onto his arm tightly for support. Your knees started to shake and you prepared for them to buckle beneath you for the third goddamn time. “Oh great,” you huffed as you started to fall. You screwed your eyes shut, bracing for impact. It never came. Your eyes flew open and you stood there, confused. That’s when you realized what was supporting your waist. Who was supporting your waist. V’s arm had snaked around your waist and he pulled your side into him. He rested his mask atop your head, warmth radiating off of him. You could smell the musky scent of pine from the sheets as you inhaled. Cheeks singing with heat, you mumbled a “thanks.” “Of course, I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself anymore,” he chuckled. You wanted to ignore the way his voice traveled down your spine and caused your belly to flutter.

“How long was I out for? I can’t really..walk.” “Yes I can see that,” he teased. “Roughly I’d say two days.” Two days? Two fucking days?! “How is your head,” V asked as he led you through the gallery. “Hurts,” you quipped, leaning on him for support. His arm was still wrapped around your waist. Not that you noticed. Several Statues and paintings filled the hall as he led you to..somewhere. You gaped in shock; famous paintings and sculptures that had been locked up were sitting here, in the Shadow Gallery. “Holy shit, V. These are..,” you guestered towards the contraband in front of you. “From the vaults of the Ministry of Objectionable Materials,” he finished for you. “How did you manage to steal them?” V chuckled, “Stealing implies ownership, you can’t steal from the censor, I merely reclaimed them.” You laughed, clever as always.

V led you to a small kitchen. A small table sat in the middle of it with the appliances behind it. Knick knacks and books filled the barren beige tiled walls. The Shadow Gallery had a homey feeling to it. Just looking at it made your heart warm. You sank into the chair V had sat you in. A couple books were open on the table along with a few newspapers strewn about. “TERRORIST DEAD!”, was one of the headlines of the paper. A picture of V’s masked face was printed, lying on the floor. You snickered. How stupid people had to be to believe that shit. “I apologize, I was going to tidy up before you woke.” You looked away from the clipping and smiled reassuringly. “It’s alright, V. Much cleaner than my apartment; there’s paint splattered everywhere and clothes around the floor.” “You enjoy painting?” His back was turned to you holding an egg. V cracked it somehow making cracking an egg elegant. It sizzled as it fell onto the pan. “Yea I do. I’m not the best but I love it. It helps me.” You watched V as he moved about the kitchen.

His gracefulness never failed to astonish you. The spatula he was using caught the egg after he flipped it into the air. It made you smile as you watched him maneuver around the place. “Art is art. Whether or not the quality of it is excellent, it should speak what words cannot.” “Not sure you’d still say that once you looked at it,” you laughed. “I tend to make some weird things.” “I would like to see them one day, you have caught my interest,” V said, scooping the eggs on a plate. He placed a piece of toast on the plate and set it before you. That’s when you caught sight of his hands. They looked painful; they were an angry red and scars littered them. His hands looked incredibly rough and it looked like it hurt. Your heart hurt looking at them. “V,” you said softly, “are you okay?” His eyes caught the direction you were looking at. “Ah, excuse me.” He turned his back to you as he grabbed his gloves. The leather crinkled as he snapped them back on. “There, that’s better,” V said once he turned to you again, flexing his fingers as he held them in front of him. “Did you hurt your hands?” V didn’t say anything for a bit as he looked at his gloves. “Once, a long time ago. There was a fire. I’m fine now, thank you for your concern.”

The air felt tense between you two. V’s body language seemed uncomfortable at the mention of his hands, so you didn’t press any further. You dug into the egg in front of you;yolk poured out as you cut it. You hummed as you took a bite. “God, that’s good.” V chuckled, his shoulders relaxed once the topic of his skin was dropped. “Good,” he said, pouring tea into a cup. His hands were folded as he watched you munch on your toast. The taste of buttery goodness hit your tongue instantly. You looked at him shocked. “That’s...is that real butter?” “Yes, yes it is.” You stared at him, dumbfounded. “How did you..?” “A government supply train on its way to Chancellor Sutler.” Your brows shot up as you gaped at V. He said it so calmly like stealing from a dictator was a normal pastime. “You’re actually crazy. You stole..from Chancellor..Sutler..I..”

“I dare all that may become a man. Who dares more is none,” V quoted. Your brows furrowed and your lips pulled into a frown at his words. What is he talking about? “I’m pretty sure I don’t understand that reference.” “Macbeth?” Your cheeks flushed with embarrassment. He probably thinks I’m an idiot. You shook your head and looked down at your food. “Not interested in the fine art of theatre?” You scarfed down your last bite of toast and egg, setting your fork down gently. If you weren’t starving you would be embarrassed of swallowing your food. V didn’t seem to mind anyways.

“I enjoy seeing plays and things like that. I just never got the chance to read them.” You grabbed your plate and started to rise from your seat, but V stopped you. “I’ve got it Mademoiselle,” he said, grabbing your plate from your hands. “Thanks,” you replied, sitting back in your seat awkwardly. You twirled your thumbs to try and calm the butterflies in your stomach. You felt sick as you stood there. Would he be offended or embarrassed that you hadn’t studied theatre? “I have a few of his works around the gallery, you’re more than welcome to read them if you’d like.” The sink spat out water. You watched V scrub your plate vigorously. You had to stop yourself from laughing as you realized he’d change his gloves again to rubber yellow ones. “I would, but it’s hard for me to understand what's going on. I probably sound stupid,” you muttered. V shook his head; his hair bouncing along with it. “Nonsense my dear; just because something is difficult does not make you stupid.” You snorted. V turned to you after putting your plate away. The look in your eyes looked faraway, and empty. Underlying it was sadness and a flicker of anger. “My dad would say differently. He was religious and batshit insane.” “What about your mother,” V asked, folding the kitchen towel and hanging it back on the stove. “Cancer took her. I don’t remember her at all.” “I’m sorry to hear that.” You shrugged, “Life moves on. What can you do.” V didn’t say anything. In fact, he didn’t know what to say. He had many skills, but comfort was one he lacked. You looked so bitter as you sat there, sipping your tea. “If you’d like, I’d be happy to read one of Macbeth’s plays to you,” V said gently. Surely, that would help take your mind off of things right? You grinned, ignoring the fluttering in your heart. A distraction was what you needed and V gave you just that. “Sure!”

#v for vendetta #v for vendetta x reader #x reader

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