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cripplecharacters · 1 month

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Where to Start Your Research When Writing a Disabled Character

[large text: Where to Start Your Research When Writing a Disabled Character]

So you have decided that you want to make a disabled character! Awesome. But what's next? What information should you decide on at the early phrase of making the character?

This post will only talk about the disability part of the character creation process. Obviously, a disabled character needs a personality, interests, and backstory as every other one. But by including their disability early in the process, you can actually get it to have a deeper effect on the character - disability shouldn't be their whole life, but it should impact it. That's what disabilities do.

If you don't know what disability you would want to give them in the first place;

[large text: If you don't know what disability you would want to give them in the first place;]

Start broad. Is it sensory, mobility related, cognitive, developmental, autoimmune, neurodegenerative; maybe multiple of these, or maybe something else completely? Pick one and see what disabilities it encompasses; see if anything works for your character. Or...

If you have a specific symptom or aid in mind, see what could cause them. Don't assume or guess; not every wheelchair user is vaguely paralyzed below the waist with no other symptoms, not everyone with extensive scarring got it via physical trauma. Or...

Consider which disabilities are common in real life. Cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, stroke, cataracts, diabetes, intellectual disability, neuropathy, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, thyroid disorders, autism, dwarfism, arthritis, cancers, brain damage, just to name a few.

Decide what specific type of condition they will have. If you're thinking about them having albinism, will it be ocular, oculocutaneous, or one of the rare syndrome-types? If you want to give them spinal muscular atrophy, which of the many possible onsets will they have? If they have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which one out of the 13 different types do they have? Is their amputation below, or above the knee (it's a major difference)? Not all conditions will have subtypes, but it's worth looking into to not be surprised later. This will help you with further research.

If you're really struggling with figuring out what exact disability would make sense for your character, you can send an ask. Just make sure that you have tried the above and put actual specifics in your ask to give us something to work with. You can also check out our "disabled character ideas" tag.

Here are some ideas for a character using crutches.

Here are some ideas for a character with a facial difference (obligatory link: what is a facial difference?).

If you already know what disability your character is going to have;

[large text: If you already know what disability your character is going to have;]

Start by reading about the onset and cause of the condition. It could be acquired, congenital, progressive, potentially multiple of these. They could be caused by an illness, trauma, or something else entirely. Is your character a congenital amputee, or is it acquired? If acquired - how recently? Has it been a week, or 10 years? What caused them to become disabled - did they have meningitis, or was it an accident? Again, check what your options are - there are going to be more diverse than you expect.

Read about the symptoms. Do not assume or guess what they are. You will almost definitely discover something new. Example: a lot of people making a character with albinism don't realize that it has other symptoms than just lack of melanin, like nystagmus, visual impairment, and photophobia. Decide what your character experiences, to what degree, how frequently, and what do they do (or don't do) to deal with it.

Don't give your character only the most "acceptable" symptoms of their disability and ignore everything else. Example: many writers will omit the topic of incontinence in their para- and tetraplegic characters, even though it's extremely common. Don't shy away from aspects of disability that aren't romanticized.

Don't just... make them abled "because magic". If they're Deaf, don't give them some ability that will make them into an essentially hearing person. Don't give your blind character some "cheat" so that they can see, give them a cane. Don't give an amputee prosthetics that work better than meat limbs. To have a disabled character you need to have a character that's actually disabled. There's no way around it.

Think about complications your character could experience within the story. If your character wears their prosthetic a lot, they might start to experience skin breakdown or pain. Someone who uses a wheelchair a lot has a risk of pressure sores. Glowing and Flickering Fantasy Item might cause problems for someone photophobic or photosensitive. What do they do when that happens, or how do they prevent that from happening?

Look out for comorbidities. It's rare for disabled people to only have one medical condition and nothing else. Disabilities like to show up in pairs. Or dozens.

If relevant, consider mobility aids, assistive devices, and disability aids. Wheelchairs, canes, rollators, braces, AAC, walkers, nasal cannulas, crutches, white canes, feeding tubes, braillers, ostomy bags, insulin pumps, service dogs, trach tubes, hearing aids, orthoses, splints... the list is basically endless, and there's a lot of everyday things that might count as a disability aid as well - even just a hat could be one for someone whose disability requires them to stay out of the sun. Make sure that it's actually based on symptoms, not just your assumptions - most blind people don't wear sunglasses, not all people with SCI use a wheelchair, upper limb prosthetics aren't nearly as useful as you think. Decide which ones your character could have, how often they would use them, and if they switch between different aids.

Basically all of the above aids will have subtypes or variants. There is a lot of options. Does your character use an active manual wheelchair, a powerchair, or a generic hospital wheelchair? Are they using high-, or low-tech AAC? What would be available to them? Does it change over the course of their story, or their life in general?

If relevant, think about what treatment your character might receive. Do they need medication? Physical therapy? Occupational therapy? Orientation and mobility training? Speech therapy? Do they have access to it, and why or why not?

What is your character's support system? Do they have a carer; if yes, then what do they help your character with and what kind of relationship do they have? Is your character happy about it or not at all?

How did their life change after becoming disabled? If your character goes from being an extreme athlete to suddenly being a full-time wheelchair user, it will have an effect - are they going to stop doing sports at all, are they going to just do extreme wheelchair sports now, or are they going to try out wheelchair table tennis instead? Do they know and respect their new limitations? Did they have to get a different job or had to make their house accessible? Do they have support in this transition, or are they on their own - do they wish they had that support?

What about *other* characters? Your character isn't going to be the only disabled person in existence. Do they know other disabled people? Do they have a community? If your character manages their disability with something that's only available to them, what about all the other people with the same disability?

What is the society that your character lives in like? Is the architecture accessible? How do they treat disabled people? Are abled characters knowledgeable about disabilities? How many people speak the local sign language(s)? Are accessible bathrooms common, or does your character have to go home every few hours? Is there access to prosthetists and ocularists, or what do they do when their prosthetic leg or eye requires the routine check-up?

Know the tropes. If a burn survivor character is an evil mask-wearer, if a powerchair user is a constantly rude and ungrateful to everyone villain, if an amputee is a genius mechanic who fixes their own prosthetics, you have A Trope. Not all tropes are made equal; some are actively harmful to real people, while others are just annoying or boring by the nature of having been done to death. During the character creation process, research what tropes might apply and just try to trace your logic. Does your blind character see the future because it's a common superpower in their world, or are you doing the ancient "Blind Seer" trope?

Remember, that not all of the above questions will come up in your writing, but to know which ones won't you need to know the answers to them first. Even if you don't decide to explicitly name your character's condition, you will be aware of what they might function like. You will be able to add more depth to your character if you decide that they have T6 spina bifida, rather than if you made them into an ambiguous wheelchair user with ambiguous symptoms and ambiguous needs. Embrace research as part of your process and your characters will be better representation, sure, but they will also make more sense and seem more like actual people; same with the world that they are a part of.

This post exists to help you establish the basics of your character's disability so that you can do research on your own and answer some of the most common ("what are symptoms of x?") questions by yourself. If you have these things already established, it will also be easier for us to answer any possible questions you might have - e.g. "what would a character with complete high-level paraplegia do in a world where the modern kind of wheelchair has not been invented yet?" is much more concise than just "how do I write a character with paralysis?" - I think it's more helpful for askers as well; a vague answer won't be much help, I think.

I hope that this post is helpful!

Mod Sasza

#mod sasza #writing reference #writing advice #writing resources #writeblr #writing disabled characters #writing resource #long post #writing tips #writing guide

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dcxdpdabbles · 5 months

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Cave boy Danny AU where he's half asleep and rambling as he mentions some people back home like his exes (especially Valerie), his English teacher, this stalker of his who he likes messing with, and the annoying fruitloop who's the bane of his existence! They're concerned. Only once he's fully awake when they ask for names.

Lancer is Alfred, Talia is Val, maybe Paulina is Julie Madison but idk, Wes is Edward/The riddler (I'm pretty sure there was a time he had a reddish orange hair. Either way, he was the same model as Danny so maybe Wes dyed his hair to not be confused with the Fentons in this AU), and Vlad is Ra's!

Hello! This actually falls out of my planned plotline for Cave Boy, but I will write something for you that is close to the prompt to make up for it! Hope that's okay and that you like it

Flash sends them a message sometime in the early afternoon before any of the Bats are ready to go out. In fact, Damian, Duke, Steph, and Jason are in class when his message arrives.

Bruce, Dick, Tim, Cass, and Barbara are at work. As the Flash is one of the few who knows what the Batfamily is doing during these hours, it is rare for him to bother at this hour. He would have usually waited until after five as that was when a majority of them became available.

They all quickly check their phones when they vibrate to ensure it's not a world-ending threat, just in case.

Since the messages would be sent to their civilian phones- anyone in the know of the Bat's real identity chooses to text in a very specific code. This way, no one would know what they were saying, and the Bats would realize they were speaking to who they thought they were.

Barry Allen chose Disney theme GIFs as his code.

A gif of Mulan singing Reflections lets them all know that somehow, the speedster has again opened a portal into a different dimension and/or mess with time.

"Why is my reflection someone I don't know?" meant "A double of one of you has crossed over from a different dimension and/or timeline"

This causes a brief ripple of anxiety. The last time someone had a double, it was Tim, and his future version of himself was crazy, evil, and surprisingly capable. It took Tim almost ending his life to beat the guy.

Thankfully, the second GIF comes through seconds later. This one is Mulan's Honor To Us All.

"Please bring honor to us all" meant "The double is friendly."

The last Gif was from Lion King, Timon cheerfully singing Hakuna Matata. "It means no worries for the rest of your days" meant "Sorry for the trouble."

Those in class return to their various lessons, but Tim quickly responds, "I love that movie! We should watch Mulan again the next time I see you, Uncle Barry!"

This means, "We will meet the double tonight."

The rest of the day drags on as they all slowly start to make bets on who the double would be for. They all agree that Cass is long overdue to face herself again. Still, Dick makes the complying argument that Duke needed to have his first "My counterpart from another dimensional/ Timal plane" moment.

They all actively hope Duke can clear another block on his Bat-bingo card. He gets two more and a complimentary tray of any of his favorite Alfred's desserts.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

That night, they all meet up in the watch tower, each clutching their bingo card just in case. (The game resets every month, and so far, Jason has written down the most accurate predictions. He needed two more squares for a cooking lesson of his favorite meal, and he was out for blood)

They all silently go to the conference room, where Barry entertains the guests. Apparently, they were trying to find discrepancies in their world's history and the double's life to help find which world they came from and send them back.

They were being shown the main rouges to test the timeframe.

"Is that Wes!?" A young male teenager yells. Sadly, Steph swears, staring at her "A new Batgirl from a different world" box.

"We call him Edward when he's not in his costume. Otherwise, his name is the Riddler." Barry answers, amusement clear in his voice.

"Riddler? How is Riddler menacing? What does he tell you, riddles of death or something?"

"You be surprised......."

Bruce gets to the door, pushing it open with a quick flick of the wrist, and inside is Barry sitting at the conference table next to a boy with dark hair and blue eyes. In front of them is a hologram showcasing the Gotham Rouge files.

There are papers and pencils scattered on the table. Likely, they have been writing down notes of the differences they have spotted.

Barry's eyes flicker to them, but the boy is too distracted to count on his fingers.

"Okay, so Wes is Riddler, Val is Talia, Fruitloop is Ra's, Sckuller is Bane, and ugh....for some reason, Spectra is Harley Quinn." The boy finishes checking his notes.

"For some reason? I thought you said Spectra studied psychology too."

"yeah, but Harley Quinn actually got a Ph.D. What did Spectra do? Land a school counselor position? Please." The boy rolls his eyes dismissively, and Barry frowns.

He's never taken kindly to people disregarding another person's profession, especially if it was connected to the educational system in some way.

"Hey now, that's an important job, and you need years of study before you can be a school counselor-"

"I bet Spectra peaked in high school. That's why she's like that." The boy cut him off, nodding as though he had found the universe's answer.

Well.....this was either a version of Jason, Tim, or maybe early Dick, that was a little too sassy but not angry? It's not sad either; it's more like, fed up? Or teenage tired.

"Oh, who are they?" The boy asks, and Barry zips right next to Batman.

"Danny, meet Batman...the you of this world. And his kids."

Danny squints. "Who is your mom, and how easy am I? Because there is a lot of you that I fathered for me to not be easy."

Jason burst out laughing, checking a box. "Yes, someone calling Bruce easy in costume. That's on bingo for me!"

#dcxdpdabbles #dc x dp crossover #Double Vision #Basically Danny is not impressed #All his villains are villains here too #That Batkids play Batman bingo #It's bonding so Bruce lets them

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rpgchoices · 9 months

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Misdirection (Astarion romance route)

BG3 spoilers

I am obsessed with the misdirection in Astarion's romance. I said it before, I was absolutely tricked too. When you read a text or consume media every line is put there for a reason, it is a waste otherwise. By the party scene you kind of have a certain idea of what Astarion is. You know that he dislikes helping others, you know that he lies, he flirts a lot, he is vain, he is a killer, and he wants power (from the conversations about the tadpoles and Raphael).

At this point, if you chose him as a romance, it could also be that you enjoyed the idea of him being a vampire and all the tropes that come with it.

So when, after the first night together, you can ask him "It felt like you weren't fully there" there had to be a reason. From a writing pov, why was that line added?

As a player, you have to wonder. And by this point in the story it seems like a warning there is little that might convince you that what he answers with is not the truth, mainly because it falls right into the classic stereotypes of this kind of romance. Of course he is a danger, he did not want to lose control, be careful in the future - this is how it would sound to me if I romanced him without spoilers. I know because when I got his sex scene, I reloaded and romanced someone else because this kind of aggressive seduction vampire fantasy was not my thing.

If I had read this line, I would have been sure it was a small hint that romancing Astarion could end up very badly. Another small misdirection that could easily end up as a clue is in their second pre-sex scene together. Astarion is making sure the MC will stay with him, and he is very seductive. The funny thing is that if you choose the "yes" (1st option in the pictures just below) you don't get any other information or clue, but just flirting. You actually get even more of the fantasy, he talks about how he cannot stop thinking about you, he even presses on the word "dangerous", and his mannerism is all business

If instead you ask him to be better he goes on and on about his lines, he directly tells the player that these are all fake, basically. You can even ask him if these lines work on Cazador's targets, and he says "well, they worked on YOU".

So at this point as players we know that the player is being manipulated and teased up till a point. I definitely fell for it by immediately cutting the romance short, and never thinking about it again until I got the strenght potion scene. I got that scene as a friendship one, which has different options.

It is a bit different than the romance, he is much more direct in my opinion. He talks about his body as one of the few assets he has, and he is much more confused about why he was being "too precious" about the potion, he is actually surprised by himself.

And as I said, it is much more direct when he says that he never had a choice before (and he is specifically talking about sex). In the friendship version you can also convince him that he needs to use all of this that he has because he might, to protect himself and get advantage, which at least gives credit to our MC if we do romance him.

(TW!! for SA) In the romance scene instead you never get these options, you CANNOT convince him to keep using his body, and if you try to do so he will break up with you, as he should, he is much more confident.

And regarding the whole misdirection if you have not maximized his approval, you won't get his confession but you will find out the whole of his story after the drow potion scene. That is the scene where he thanks you for respecting his consent. I feel like it is such a monumental and surprising one, definitely not one I expected.

And the options are SO SO TELLING. The one sex option you get in this dialogue is the WRONG one. The game directly tells you that by choosing it you assaulted him and disregarded his consent.

There are instead 5 good options. I checked and they all seem to have the same amount of approval.

They are:

1. Showing him that your feelings are real so he can trust them. 2. Showing him intimacy without sex (hug). 3. Confirming that you want to be with him even with his burdens (he often mentions them in other dialogues, especially when you choose between him and Gale). 4. Saying you can be together without sex. And my favourite: 5. ASKING him what he wants, CARING about what he wants.

So yeah, I admit I absolutely fell for it, I was convinced this would take such a wildly different road. Glad to see it did not.

#baldur's gate 3 #astarion #meta #astarion romance #baldur''s gate 3 spoilers

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thankskenpenders · 10 months

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As I'm sure many of you are already aware, Did You Know Gaming (who have been doing some really great investigative work lately) recently put out a video on canceled Sonic games. The whole thing's worth a watch, but I have to bring it up here specifically because they talk about the plans for Sonic Chronicles 2 with a LOT of new info directly from the lead designer.

youtube

The section on how the story of Sonic Chronicles 2 would have went starts at 9:45. It's very interesting! He outlines the whole plot, including the fact that they were going to end with ANOTHER obvious plot hook for a sequel in the hopes that they or some other studio could keep the Sonic Chronicles series going indefinitely. Sonic Team even claimed they were interested in using Chronicles characters like Shade in other games. It's crazy to imagine a timeline where this might have become a pillar of the franchise.

I refuse to mourn the loss of the sequel, though, because y'all saw me stream the original. It was miserable. And with the original game selling and reviewing decently well, they would have had little reason to go back to the drawing board and overhaul that game's bizarrely hateful design.

Of course, DYKG also had to talk about the reason why the game was canceled. I was dreading this because of how often people tend to get the basic facts of the Penders cases wrong or downplay the obvious Archie Knuckles inspiration in Chronicles. But no, they did their homework! And they got the details right in part because, well... they asked Penders for comment directly. And he sent them back a MASSIVE wall of text about the whole ordeal, including some fascinating details that I don't believe I've heard before!

You can go to 15:19 in the video and scrub through to read the many, MANY screencaps of their emails from Ken, but here are the most interesting and/or hilarious tidbits to me:

#1: Perjury!

As we already knew, Ken claimed that the incomplete, photocopied contract Archie presented in court was a forgery, and that he had never signed a work for hire contract.

The judge obviously knew that one side had to be lying here, and thus was more than willing to present the case to a jury to let them decide the truth... and send whoever was deemed the liar to jail for perjury. (The judge apparently looked Ken directly in the eye when he said this, which... well, make of that what you will.)

Archie's lawyers knew that they didn't have a completely airtight case and obviously did not want to go to jail. So they decided to settle instead of going to trial in front of a jury.

(I will reiterate that Archie's arguments not working out is overall a GOOD thing, because we really do not want to set a legal precedent where corporations can "lose" a contract for a creator, make up a story about what was on the contract, and then have that hold up in court. They gotta get that shit in writing. And they didn't. They fucked up!)

#2: Sega was threatening to revoke the Sonic license!

As we knew, Sega wanted nothing to do with the comic copyright lawsuit. To them, it was Archie's job as licensee to deal with their freelancers. (Y'all watch Succession? You know how Logan loves lackeys who will eat shit for him without him having to even hear about the problem? Yeah.) And, in fact, according to Ken, Sega gave Archie an ultimatum: if they wanted their license to make Sonic comics renewed, they were gonna have to deal with Ken on their own, and cover all the costs.

Yeah, uh, this kinda makes me think that Sega being pissed about the ongoing Scott Fulop copyright case in 2016 may have been a bigger factor in Archie Sonic's cancellation than I previously thought. There was a lot going on at the time that could have contributed, but, y'know.

Anyway, Archie sued Ken for "damaging their business" largely because Sega was threatening to take away the Sonic IP. But because Archie couldn't ask Sega for help and they couldn't produce an original contract, they had to settle.

There's another detail I find funny here, though. Ken WANTED Sega to get involved in the comic copyright case, thinking that Sega would strongarm Archie into paying him the millions of dollars he wanted for "using his work without permission" so that they could be done with it. I mean, sure. I guess Sega wouldn't have cared about Archie's finances, but still. I'm not so sure that would've worked out for him.

#3: Shade!

Yes, Penders still claims he legally owns Shade, and under advice from his lawyer still intends to put out an NFT of her to put his claim to the test. Yes, it's incredible that he still hasn't put out the damn NFT. It only needs to be one image, which he already drew! The market has collapsed!

Anyway, building an argument off the legal concept of estoppel, he says that if Sega continues to not do anything about his claims that he owns Shade then, in the eyes of the court, they'll be forfeiting their claims to Shade altogether. But they aren't going to do anything because they never wanted any part in the copyright battles in the first place, and to them Chronicles is a long dead asset not worth fighting over. Why bother trying to use Shade again and giving Ken a reason to take them back to court when they can just move on? It's not like this franchise is short on characters. And so Ken can say that Shade and Julie-Su are literally the same character, and if he owns Julie-Su then therefore he also owns Shade.

Our copyright system is, indeed, a nightmare. Chronicles should have been halfway to the public domain by now.

#4: Sega's oversight on the Archie comics!

Ken says that in his first year on the series Sega only requested some dialogue changes here and there through the editor. They never requested huge script changes, and also never spoke to Ken directly. After that first year, they stopped asking for dialogue changes altogether, and Ken "had a free hand to do pretty much whatever he wanted." Yeah, no surprise there.

He does, however, say that Archie's original deal with Sega stated that they weren't allowed to create ANY new Sonic characters without informing Sega. They would've needed to make a contract every single time to get Sega's approval and make it absolutely crystal clear that Sega owned the whole cast. And then Archie just... didn't do that! And didn't tell any of the freelance creatives not to come up with new characters! Had Archie followed this rule, the trajectory of the comics would have been completely different, but there also never would've been a copyright battle in the first place.

What a shitshow. Truly.

#tkp post

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prettieinpink · 2 months

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Hi !

Could u give me some tips on how to stop procrastinating and be more productive (in school and after school) ?

And do you also have any study tips to help me to study much better ?

Thx very much and luv ur blog !

♡♡ Keep up the good work ♡♡

STUDYING EFFECTIVELY IN AND OUT OF SCHOOL

thank you so much for the support and for your patience!! I hope this post helps you well. I also think this post on procrastination would help as well.

Studying effectively looks different for a lot of people. You will have to try out different methods to see what works best for you specifically. This post will discuss ways to maximize your time in the classroom and reinforce that knowledge outside of school hours.

AT SCHOOL

ASK FOR HELP OR FURTHER UNDERSTANDING. Try your best to engage as much as possible with your teacher or mentor regardless of your understanding. If you need help, ask for it. If you want to advance in your learning, ask more questions.

LISTEN TO MUSIC. A lot of people fall victim to talking to their friends instead of working. Bring earphones to school and listen to your playlist instead of talking to your friends. If you have your earphones on, you won’t feel obligated to join in the conversation and others most likely won’t bother you.

TAKE EFFECTIVE NOTES. You don’t have to do an overly specific way of writing notes, but make sure your notes are clear, concise, and understandable for you. A thing I try to do is leave a little room at the bottom of the page in which I can summarise everything without looking at prior notes.

CARRY A WATER BOTTLE. Water helps boost your brain productivity, so carry it to all of your classrooms.

UTILISE LUNCH & RECESS. Giving up your lunch and recess for more studying is not ideal, but it’s better to set in fresh knowledge than go home and completely forget everything. Or, you can use this time for assignments or studying for assessments.

AFTER SCHOOL

REMEMBER TO REFUEL AND TAKE A BREAK. Studying can be hard after you come back from 6-8 hours of already doing that. Eat something, exercise, do something fun, watch a show. Give your brain a break before studying.

HAVE AN EVERYDAY STUDY ROUTINE. Maybe you wanna dedicate some time to your flashcards or revise back on your notes, or you can have your focus change for each day of the week.

(FAVE) STUDY METHODS

FLASHCARDS. Flashcards are so easy to do everywhere, which is what I like about them. I could do it while waiting for something, while bored, on a car/bus ride, or even just a few before going to bed. Requires zero energy while still getting a lot out.

WHITEBOARD METHOD. Though, you can use a mirror. It’s just writing everything on a whiteboard. From ideas, diagrams, and questions. The reason why I feel like this method is so effective is because it’s so engaging, unlike a laptop or pen and paper.

BLURTING. You most likely did this in primary school, but it’s just writing down everything you know and then checking for gaps in knowledge. I love this method because it’s also a really simple way to study yet it’s so effective.

SQ3R. Survey, question, read, recite, and review. This one requires a bit more focus, but it does help to retain more information than just skimming through the text.

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toxicpineapple · 5 months

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writing tips masterpost

hello to my loyal tumblr followers... i am often asked to give writing advice but usually when people ask me this i'm nooooot completely sure what to say despite having a ton of advice to give. it's such a broad question when there are so many different things i can advise on, right? so i thought i'd make a sort of writing advice masterpost where i can compile the tips that i think people specifically in fandoms could benefit the most from hearing, OR that i wish someone had told me when i was still finding my footing as a writer.

hopefully this will be helpful to you. i am putting all of the advice under a read more since this is going to be a long one. let's roll!

✬ paragraph breaks are your friend

the fastest way to get me to stop reading a fic is if i click in and see that there are NO paragraphs made and the entire piece is in a huge block of text. no matter how good your work is, i just can't read it at that point. the giant paragraph makes me get lost, i can't focus on anything... it's a huge no.

the trick is you want your paragraphs to sort of act as a guide for your reader, taking them through the story, keeping them engaged. do not be afraid to do short paragraphs! i can understand wanting to shy away from one or two sentence paragraphs for fear of not having "enough substance" in your work, but the truth is, a thousand short paragraphs is ten times easier to read than a huge block of text.

realistically, you want to have a good amount of variety in your paragraph length. variety is key. readers will notice when your work gets formulaic, and some people will like that, but for others that can turn people away from your work. but don't force it! a paragraph should end at the end of a statement, or if the paragraph is getting too long then cut off the thought and continue in the next paragraph with a transitional phrase.

as a general rule of thumb, you want lines of dialogue by different speakers to be put in separate paragraphs. you also want to avoid doing huge chunks of narration or exposition in the same paragraph as you introduce a new speaker. just make a new paragraph! no big deal. i guarantee you your reader will be way more engaged and nobody is going to come at you for doing more rather than less.

✬ make sure the reader knows who is speaking and when

you don't have to end off every line of dialogue with "she said" and in fact i would really recommend you don't. but you ALWAYS need to have some kind of indication in the text as to who is speaking, otherwise the reader can get lost.

this doesn't necessarily mean that you always have to explicitly say who is saying what, though. if it is obvious in a scene who is saying something -- so for example, a scene where there are only two characters talking OR the dialogue has some kind of phrase, statement, etc that makes it obvious who the speaker is -- then in that case you can just let the dialogue speak for itself. sometimes in writing less can be more. you disrupt the flow of a scene if you start to exposit unnecessarily when the reader could reasonably work something out for themself.

✬ "said" is your friend too

related to the last piece of advice, here's another note: don't shy away from using the word "said".

don't overuse it, either. obviously, you don't want every single line to be "he says" "she says" back and forth, especially when they might be asking questions or shouting, in which case the word "said" probably isn't all that applicable at all. but it's a nice default. if you catch yourself busting out the thesaurus, my recommendation? quit it. just use said. it's not going to hurt you and the reader isn't going to mind.

but yeah, in the event that a character is raising their voice, whispering, inquiring -- there are tons of other words you can use in lieu of said and then an adverb. it's just context-dependent, and also, you don't really want to lean too far one way or another. like i said, variety is key. too much of the same breaks immersion.

✬ if you wouldn't say it yourself, probably don't use it in writing

another related tip. look, i get it. you want to spruce up your writing with synonyms. but the fact of the matter is that a lot of these words that "mean the same thing" on paper actually have wildly differing connotations and if you don't understand what those are you're going to look kind of silly whipping out a word you just found off the internet. we can usually tell, too.

your vocabulary will naturally grow and expand as you continue to read and learn. you don't have to try and force it to seem smarter in your writing. people who can write compelling prose and dialogue without throwing in fancy words they barely understand look a lot more intelligent than people who have a thesaurus at the ready 24/7.

✬ if there's a simpler way to say it, take it

this one can be sort of style-dependent, so if it's not your cup of tea then feel free to take or leave this tip, but in my opinion, taking a whole seven-line paragraph to describe a simple action wastes both your and the readers' time.

how many times have you read a fic where the main characters are having a conversation with these long rambling paragraphs between lines of dialogue? sometimes this makes sense! if you were writing a death note fic it would absolutely make sense for light or L to be pausing every few seconds to carefully analyse their opponent's move... but that's not always the case. sometimes characters are just making small talk.

i'm not saying you can't show off. you should show off where applicable. but there's a time and place. sometimes a scene benefits more from you taking the easy way to describe something and moving on. flowery language is great, but if you're meandering too much the reader will lose interest and attention.

✬ a metaphor is useless if nobody knows what it means

writing is subjective and highly personal. write for yourself first and foremost, and use the metaphors that feel right to you -- but the best metaphorical pieces, to me, are the ones that people can understand and identify with.

you've read a story like that, haven't you? with a reoccurring theme or motif that comes back into play at the end in a way that makes you feel so satisfied and complete? THAT'S what you aim for with literary devices like that. if you write a story that nobody can understand, with metaphors that just don't make any sense -- then you haven't really successfully told a good story, have you?

i understand wanting to have a magnum opus. i think it's easy to fall into the "misunderstood writer" mindset where you want your pieces to be so magnificent that only the likeminded will get it -- but writing is a form of communication. metaphor is just another means with which we can illustrate how we feel. you WANT your readers to understand what you're doing with the metaphors, you WANT the people who step away from your story to know what you were trying to say. you don't have to be obvious, just make it good. make it something that can be reasonably drawn from the text.

at the end of the day flowery language is just flowery language. that doesn't actually make your story good.

✬ grammar intermission

(.) period/full stop: used at the end of sentences. oftentimes not used at the end of sentences in dialogue, because lines of dialogue are considered a fragment of a larger sentence. use a period/full stop at the end of a line of dialogue if the dialogue is followed up by another complete sentence. example:

"i just went to the store," he said, scratching his head.

"i just went to the store." he scratched his head.

(,) comma: used in the middle or to separate different clauses (parts/sections) of sentences. used for incomplete clauses, AKA sections of the sentence that could not function as individual sentences. also used to indicate a slight pause. example:

she reached for the ripest banana, plucking it from the bunch.

a comma can also be replaced by a conjunction like "and" or "but". example:

she reached for the ripest banana and plucked it from the bunch.

(;) semi colon: used to separate different complete clauses in sentences, AKA sections of the sentence that are related but COULD function individually as their own sentences. example:

he sighed as he looked out the window; it had been so long since he stepped outside.

not to be confused with

(:) colon: used at the end of a line that leads into or introduces another line. example:

his fingers drummed restlessly against the window sill. it was finally happening: he was finally leaving this place.

(-) hyphen: used to connect compound words like three-years-old or hyphenated surnames like jones-smith.

(–) en dash: used to indicate ranges of time or distance, like 3–4 hours.

(—) em dash: a girl's best friend. slash j. but an em dash is used to indicate a few different things: an abrupt end to a thought or sentence, a "cut-in" where you interject something tangentially or unrelated before returning to the original thought, or a diversion in the sentence/thought. examples:

"no, listen, you don't understand—"

he scowled—an ugly look on his usually handsome features—and told her to be quiet.

it's not like she had wanted it to go that way—but when had it ever mattered what she wanted?

(()) parentheses: used to add additional context, information, or a semi-unrelated thought that would break the flow of an ongoing sentence without completely taking the reader out. example:

"no, i'm sorry. i just forgot to call you this morning," he said, looking away. (in truth, he'd sat by the phone for fifteen minutes trying to psyche himself into it, but hadn't been able to muster the courage.)

✬ show don't tell, and tell don't show

show don't tell is one of the classic pieces of writing advice that i do, often, think is correct -- but it's a little more nuanced than just never telling your readers what a character is thinking. you want the work to speak for itself without you implanting messages or themes into the reader's brain. at the same time though you don't want them to be doing too much work because it breaks immersion.

this ties into what i was saying above about simpler being better sometimes. you want to be concise especially in scenes that might call for it. a fight scene should be quick and snappy. no need to dig into the physical sensation of being enraged -- just say the character is pissed! but if a character is having a meltdown or panicking, you can get SO much more out of describing how that feels than just outright saying it.

✬ remember your perspective

another huge thing with show don't tell is that you don't want your character to be able to objectively say what everyone else is thinking and feeling -- unless that makes sense for them within the context of the story. really dig into it. DOES the character have a reason to know what their opponents, friends, etc are thinking? how well do they know the other characters? how attentive are they to the emotions of those around them?

it's better to focus on descriptions than labels in that case. say what face a character is making, describe their body language or tone. your character can have impressions, just make it clear that those ARE their impressions. and let your character be wrong! they do not have to be a completely objective source of information.

✬ when it comes to representation, if you aren't confident you can do it well, don't do it at all

i'm one of those people who's kind of of the opinion that white or cishet or otherwise systemically advantaged people have no place being the loudest voices in conversations about representation, least of all AS the representatives. if you are someone with systemic privilege and you choose to portray someone who is oppressed -- that's not necessarily a bad thing. but you need to be willing to do your research and have a sensitivity reader, and you have to be ready for people to say you did it wrong.

not much else to be said about that. your voice on the matter isn't actually all that important. there are people from the demographics involved who DO have stories to tell about themselves that will be MUCH more valuable than your perception of them, so it's honestly better to just let them tell it. that's how i feel.

✬ don't break the rules unless you know how to follow them. in other words, your rebellion should be obvious

a lot of times i see people breaking grammar or other rules and citing "stylistic" choices as their reasons why. which is all good and well, to an extent -- but you want it to be very clear that you ARE breaking the rules on purpose in a way that adds to the artistic merit of your piece.

if you don't know the rules, then it really just comes across like messy work. you both have to know how to apply the rules, and also how to break them in a stylistically significant way. if it doesn't make sense for the rules to be broken, if it says nothing... it's honestly better to just follow them. that's my take.

✬ don't be scared of names and pronouns

i said before that you want variety in your work, and that is very very true -- but it's also true that certain words like names, pronouns, etc will sort of blend into the background in writing. people don't notice them. that means if you're using a name or pronoun a lot in a scene to make it clear who exactly is being referred to...

hey. look into my eyes. breathe. it's okay. you do not have to resort to highlighting arbitrary characteristics of the characters. i know. just breathe. it's okay. use their names. they have them for a reason. it's all good.

this isn't to say that you SHOULDN'T do that, just do it when it makes sense to. if height is something the characters are noticing then use "the shorter boy". if age is relevant, eye colour, hair colour, whatever -- go ahead and use them. but don't be excessive with it. i should not be having to read the bluenette more than i'm reading shuichi's actual goddamn name.

✬ read

this is the huge one. reading other works informs your writing. it teaches you skills and tricks you can use. it helps expand your dialogue and your world view. it might even highlight to you things you do too much of in your own writing. read, all the time, whenever you can. it doesn't have to be books. it can be fanfic, articles, whatever -- just keep reading, because you will be passively absorbing knowledge during that time and it'll help you grow as a writer.

✬ practice

BOOOOOO TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO! SHE SAID THE THING SHE SAID IT!

but listen, it's literally just true. i write almost every day for at least a couple of hours and i have been on a trend of consistent growth for the past five years. go read my fics from 2019 if you don't believe me. i've grown fast and i've grown constantly. you just DO grow through constant practice, even if it doesn't always seem that way.

not only that, but you start to build confidence too. writing a lot helps develop those muscles to a point where you start to realise that you ARE that good and you DO have that dawg in you. or whatever. you just have to keep at it. you're not going to magically improve thinking for six months about how you want to be a better writer without practicing anything about it.

✬ yeah, betas are good

you want to have a good editor. i know that that can feel like having someone ELSE be the reason your piece is good, but that's genuinely not it. a beta reader is a second pair of eyes on your work, someone who can tell you about the issues and mistakes you're missing. they'll tell you when something doesn't make sense. they'll point out your punctuation errors. you don't NEED to have a good editor for every crummy little oneshot... but it's good to have one.

✬ numbers are fine and all but don't compare yourself to other people

i think almost everyone in some kind of creative pursuit wants to get some kind of acknowledgement for it. we want to be the best we can be, and it can be discouraging to receive utterly no validation along the way! i get it!!

just don't get caught up in crunching the numbers. you are not as good as your fanbase is. you alone know your skillset and you absolutely should not say "well this other writer got THIS much attention" because that'll just wear you down. it really will. external validation will only keep you going for so long, and you'll always end up needing more. you HAVE to build your own personal confidence first or you'll crash and burn.

✬ read your writing out loud

there is no quicker way to see if something is wonky in your prose than reading it out loud and seeing if it makes sense verbally. i highly recommend this to anybody who struggles with sentence flow. it's a good one.

✬ yippee hooray!

🥰 and that's what i've got for now. thank you if you made it this far, please take all these tips as you will, it is all subjective of course, these are just the tips that help Me the most when i sit down to write something.

please feel free to ask me for additional advice (on specific topics if you could!) at any time, i love encouraging new writers and i am passionate about writing so i will gladly offer support in any way i can, including beta reading works for anybody who might need that.

take care now 💖

#writing #writing advice #writing tips #fanfiction tips

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m4nj1r0s · 4 months

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Hanma relationship headcannons

- He definitely pulls, so he’s been with a ton of girls. None of them lasted more than 2 months, and he just used them. You were supposed to just be another girl he used then tossed away, but he ended up staying. You were fun, and he needed more people apart from Kisaki to annoy.

- This mf is definitely annoying. Can and WILL ask you if you’re on your period whenever your mad (he knows you aren’t, he’s probably being creepy and tracking your cycle too.).

- The boys in Valhalla probably ask him for advice with girls. His advice is bad.

- “Girls hate it when they call you and you don’t pick up straight away. So if you can’t answer your woman, just switch your phone off. She can’t question you if you do that.”

- “When you guys go out, don’t pay. Let the girl pay, or you’re executing toxic masculinity, and she won’t like that. You guys need to be more woke.”

- He KNOWS his advice is bad, which is why he doesn’t use any of those tips with you. If you guys go out, none of you are paying. He’ll dine and dash. Want something from a shop? Distract the guy at the counter and he’ll grab it and run.

- At this point in your relationship, he’ll probably catch feelings and he won’t just randomly dump you over text.

- When Halloween rolls around, you two prank call Kisaki and literally everyone in Valhalla.

- Despite how annoying he is, he never forgets a special occasion. He’ll act like he did only to surprise you later. Probably got you a pet chicken for your birthday but then you made him take it back because he stole it.

- Would rather DIE than admit he gets jealous whenever you interact with boys. Not just any boys, but specifically those nice guys who are sensitive and are genuinely sweet to girls.

- He can’t be like that, he’ll forever have a reputation of playing around with girls and being a womanizer. Even if he’s in a dedicated relationship with you, he still gets paranoid you might realize that you deserve better and leave him.

- Definitely high maintenance when he catches feelings. Texts you 20 times a day and expects you to reply and have a conversation with him.

- Has a bad habit of sneaking into your room whilst you’re asleep and standing over you until you wake up to scare you.

- Refuses to stop until you move in with him, and one day you do!

- Leaves empty noodle cups, dirty socks and drinking glasses all around your shared room. He won’t even help to clean, he’ll just give you a big ass grin and promise not to do it again.

- Likes to catch you off-guard, like twice a year he writes you a very meaningful poem and leaves it in the pocket of a piece of clothing you wear a lot. He expects you to give him tons of kisses whenever he does.

- Doesn’t stop talking about you to Kisaki. It’s always “Oh yeah, Y/N likes that.” “I wonder what she’s doing right now..” “Y/N says she doesn’t like you.”

- Yes, he does tell people you are pretending to like but don’t actually that you dislike them. So you probably shouldn’t tell him if you don’t like someone..

- Accuses Kisaki of being jealous whenever he tells Hanma to shut up. “Jeez, Kisaki! If you want a girlfriend, I’ll be your trusted wingman. First off, make sure to disappear randomly to make yourself mysterious, girls love that…”

#tokyo revengers #hanma shuji #relationship #headcannons #m4nj1r0s #kisaki tetta #hanma x reader #hanma x y/n #hanma shuji x reader #tr #valhalla #Hanma

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mixelation · 7 months

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reborn au, deidara POV. start of the chunin exams

Deidara sat across the desk from the Hokage, wedged between Itachi and Tori. Oonoki, and any commanding officer below him, would have made him stand, even if he was bleeding out.

Minato, meanwhile, tended to make meetings feel more like a conversation. Brief communications were done standing, but for their longer meetings he’d gesture for them to pull up chairs and then lean back casually in his own seat. He usually didn’t even complain if someone interrupted him with questions.

(Which Team 4 did. A lot. Because Itachi and Tori were both assholes who thought they were smarter than they were. Deidara, meanwhile, only had the most salient of interruptions.)

MInato did this even with super serious missions, like his insane plot to have them enter the Iwa Chunin Exam as cover to extract a Konoha prisoner.

Deidara wasn’t sure if Minato was so casual for all his shinobi, or if being on his wife’s team got them special privileges. Kushina-sensei had, in fact, chosen to sit on the desk rather than a chair, the backs of her sandals clunking against the wood. But even if it was just a perk of being on Kushina-sensei’s team, Deidara would take this lax style over anything Iwa ever put him through.

“Iwa sent their finalized list of contraband,” Minato said, voice cheerful. He held up a stack of papers. “I’ll read them to you. It’s pretty intense.”

The list was… lengthy. And sort of insane. They banned them from bringing in their own weapons, promising to provide adequate replacements upon arrival. They also banned all fuinjutsu related material, including any type of paper or writing utensil, and then an increasingly unhinged list of items which seem to pose no real danger to Deidara.

Minato’s voice cracked at reading the phrase “nectars and other viscous juices,” and then he turned and coughed a couple times to cover up laughter.

Kushina-sensei was also covering a smile with one hand.

“Did they put an insane person in charge of communications?” Deidara asked.

“No, they…” Minato had to pause a moment to get ahold of himself again. “They really, really don’t want you sneaking in a Hiraishin marker. Or making a new one.”

“Sorry,” Kushina-sensei told them, not looking the least bit sorry. “They’re probably only this paranoid because I’m your sensei.”

This did make sense to Deidara. The Iwa he’d grown up in, in the other timeline, had been one in which the Yellow Flash was dead and gone, and the man was still haunting old people’s nightmares. Some of Deidara’s older Academy texts had been from before his death, and they’d included insane protocols for what to do if he showed up on the field. Not a Konoha ninja, not a ninja with a specific technique– just him. No other Kage had such an honor.

He could only imagine the sort of cultural anxiety Minato was inflicting on Iwa just by existing.

The idea was sort of exiting, actually. All that fear and anxiety building up for years, just waiting for someone to come along and end it all in one glorious moment–

Tori elbowed him. To Minato, she asked, “Will they give us fuinjutsu supplies too, or do we have to get creative?”

Minato’s lips quirked upwards.

“They will give you fuinjutsu supplies,” he said. “A village only makes money off an exam if they can show off promising genin, and I convinced them it would be necessary for you to give a good show.”

“But I don’t get any?” Kushina-sensei clarified.

Any Iwa-nin who’d done two seconds of research on Uzumaki Kushina would want to ban her from even touching a brush forever. Even if she hadn’t gotten famous off of murder like he had, she and Minato came as a set: half his techniques were from her, and if anyone was going to be making Hiraishin markers and spreading them around, it would be her.

“I don’t know how they’ll enforce Tori having access but not you,” Minato admitted. “Supervision, maybe.”

Itachi cleared his throat. “You're sure this isn’t an ambush?” he asked.

This seemed like a good point to Deidara. They were basically just agreeing to waltz into Iwa completely weaponless and submit to whatever asshole demands Iwa might make. And like, someone like Deidara could do it, but it would be super annoying.

Minato took a moment to answer, gathering his thoughts.

“It might be,” he said, tone suddenly deadly serious. “But their doors will be open to plenty of foreign powers, and they’ve already advertised a team from Konoha. A move against us would be very, very stupid of them.” He let a humorless smile cross his lips. “Besides, I intentionally picked a team that could still function even with every disadvantage they might give you.”

Next to him, Tori shifted uneasily. Deidara didn’t think she was nervous for herself, because Tori had wandered into worse with no ninja skills whatsoever and came out on top. It was that there was no way Minato knew that, because Tori liked to downplay her talents at every turn. She had worked her way into the mission plan as a competent fuinjutsu user, but he probably wasn’t including her in his super special hand-picked team.

(And also, if you evaluated Tori the way you would in a classroom– throw this knife here, use this type of kick, demonstrate this particular move– she was pretty mediocre, even for a twelve year old. Tori only seemed intimidating after she’d tricked into doing something deeply stupid and then was waving some insane seal in your face.)

Deidara wasn’t even sure Minato was including him, even though he ranked right up there with Kushina-sensei and Itachi in terms of “has an absurd bloodline limit, good luck taking THAT away.” It seemed more likely he and Tori got signed up to be semi-expendable benchwarmers, and any talents they ended up displaying were just a nice perk.

The thought made him angry. Minato might seem way cooler than Oonoki, but they were all the same, weren’t they? Minato would definitely abandon him and Tori to save his precious Konoha-born shinobi.

Tori must be putting thought into what she would do without weapons, because she remarked, “It’s such overkill to ban all paper, though. If I already wasn’t using sealing paper, I wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh, no regular paper either? Guess I’ll just give up.’”

Deidara attempted to reel in his temper. This was Tori probing the waters of what she could get away with. She was infuriatingly cautious about it, in Deidara’s opinion, but her paranoid little brain would be better attuned to when they might have to jump ship. He should let her take lead on this and not upset himself.

Kushina-sensei flashed her teeth at Tori. “No, obviously if you’re good enough, you can make any flat surface work. I assume that’s why they banned…. hand mirrors.”

There was a long pause while Kushina-sensei and Tori stared at each other, presumably contemplating what chaos they could cause with a hand mirror.

Minato’s swivel chair groaned as he leaned back, dropping his papers on his desk.

“It’s a moot point,” he said. “Tori, we don’t use untested seals in the field, and you can’t count on any seal that works on paper to work anywhere else. There’s a reason we use sealing paper. No hand mirror seals, okay?”

Hand mirrors were only the tip of the iceberg of insane shit Tori might try, but she plastered a meek smile on her face and agreed anyway.

Disgusting, Deidara thought. He trusted this version of Tori to save his ass if they suddenly had to abandon ship, but she was also the worst possible version of herself. Unartistic.

Itachi changed the subject again. “The overall mission is getting convoluted. How will Kushina get to Morino with fuinjutsu supplies if we may be supervised so closely? What are we going to do about Deidara’s explosion release?”

Tori opened her mouth, perhaps to suggest her own plan, only to close it and glance at Kushina-sensei. Ugh.

“We’ll just wing it,” Kushina-sensei said with full confidence.

Deidara turned to confirm that yes, Itachi did look like his brain had just exploded. Also seeing this, Tori said to him, “It’s okay. You can’t actually keep a fuinjutsu master from smuggling things wherever they want.”

Now Minato looked like he wanted to say something, but wasn’t quite sure where to start.

“I have an idea on how to distract them from Deidara,” Kushina-sensei said, twisting her torso to face Minato. “But they’ll eventually, uh… notice some things.”

Deidara clenched his fists, his nails digging into the bottom lips of his hand-mouths. Minato drummed his fingers on the desk.

“It’s tricky, but they don’t have a verifiable claim on him,” Minato replied. He eyed Deidara. “Do you have a preferred cover-up story?”

“...no,” Deidara admitted.

He didn’t like that Iwa thought they owned him, but he’d never had strong feelings about his family origins. They were assholes that treated him like shit, and he’d left. That was it.

They kicked around a few ideas, ranging from gaslighting everyone that Deidara’s explosions had nothing to do with Iwa’s only bloodline limit, to claiming he was an old experiment of Orochimaru. They didn’t come to any sort of real conclusion, and eventually Minato said he’d sleep on it and dismissed them.

“Deidara, can I talk to you for a moment?” Minato asked. Deidara narrowed his eyes at him, and from his peripheral vision he saw Tori flash a hand sign which was almost definitely Behave.

He crossed his arm and remained sitting while everyone else filed out. Kushina-sensei twirled in her seat so she could duck down and give Minato a peck on the cheek first. Gross.

When they were alone, Minato asked, “How do you feel about this mission?”

“It’s a mission, yeah,” Deidara replied slowly, trying to parse what he was actually being asked. Loyalty, maybe. His father was an Iwa-nin, even if he’d never met him. He added, “I don’t really like undercover missions, but it’s fine if I get to do some art. If I get a promotion and a nice paycheck out of it, all the better.”

Deidara still wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in Konoha, but the prospect of a steady income after being a child wandering-nin no one wanted to hire was incredibly alluring. Income meant he could have a bed, maybe even rent an art studio if Konoha Jounin got paid well. These fantasies weren’t enough to make him even consider going back to a hellhole that was Iwa, but if all Konoha had to torture him was a pushy sensei who got him in good with the Hokage, he’d take it.

“I know you intentionally fled Iwa,” Minato said, his voice… soft for some reason. Weird. “I understand going back might be uncomfortable.”

“I’ve never been to Iwa,” Deidara defended immediately. He’d made damn sure to leave Earth Country as soon as he could, and they hadn’t even been able to put him through any of their stupid ninja aptitude tests in this timeline.

Minato put up both hands as a calming gesture.

“I know, I know,” he replied. “But you have their bloodline limit. You grew up outside of a village, so this might not be obvious to you yet, but your art is going to link you Iwa permanently. I don’t want to send you into Iwa unprepared.”

Deidara had to spend a few moments grinding his teeth to hold back rude words. Of course he knew. Iwa had bred him to be their perfect little killing machine.

“It’s not Iwa’s bloodline limit,” Deidara replied eventually. “It’s mine, yeah. I decide what it’s for and what I do with it. That’s the whole point of my art, yeah.”

Minato raised both eyebrows. “Alright,” he said. “Good. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

He dismissed him, leaving him with a strange promise that his door was always open if Deidara wanted to “talk.” Whatever.

As he hopped down the stairs of Hokage tower two at a time, Deidara found himself surprised Minato had agreed that his bloodline limit was his own, separate from a village’s control. Probably a manipulation to keep Deidara away from any temptations to join Iwa. There was no way Minato would say Itachi’s eyeballs were for himself only and not Konoha, or that Kushina should use her chakra chains for anything but Konoha’s wellbeing. Villages just didn’t work like that.

Not that Deidara would complain about special treatment…

Tori was waiting for him outside, leaning against an outside wall. They started the walk back to the genin dorms.

“What’d he want?” she asked.

Deidara rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “He wanted to know how I felt, yeah. Stupid.”

Tori frowned. “And how do you feel?” she asked.

“Like you and him are both annoying, yeah,” Deidara replied. “Also, what the hell is with you twiddling your thumbs and acting stupid whenever anyone asks about fuinjutsu–”

Tori rolled her eyes right back at him. This was an ongoing argument. Deidara understood her reasoning for downplaying her talents; he just thought it was stupid. Just because Orochimaru was a manipulative scumbag didn’t mean every ninja wanted to push and push until she had a screaming breakdown. Most villages did this very slowly and steadily in a very predictable, soul-crushing kind of way.

Somehow, Tori looped his rant at her back around. “I mean, if you have feelings about me and Oto, you definitely have some feelings about you and Iwa,” she said. “Are you going to be able to keep it together, seeing it?”

Deidara scowled at her. She’d worded it ambiguously because they were in public, but there was a definite seeing it AGAIN implied in there. And obviously Deidara didn’t want to go to Iwa, but that was the mission she and Itachi had signed him up for. He was an adult, if not physically. He could handle being annoyed by Iwa-nin for a month.

“Obviously,” he told Tori. Then he grabbed her arm and yanked her down a side street, changing the subject entirely. “There’s a new take-out place down here. We should get dinner, yeah.”

#reborn au #my writing

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drvnkd4zed · 2 years

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When fans ship you with another member

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ Heeseung

(fans ship you with Sunoo)

"Y/n, what's this?". Heeseung approaches you holding his phone, with a confused gaze. He shows you a fanart portraying a pink haired Sunoo giving you a back hug. You just laugh at it, convinced that it's just a fanart with no harmful intentions. "It's pretty" you say laughing, but Heeseung doesn't smile back. "What's wrong?" you ask him as you see him being upset. "I don't like the fact that you're being shipped with someone else" he speaks. You roll your eyes back and take his hand. "You literally avoid me when the cameras are on" you say laughing.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ Jay

(fans ship you with Sunghoon)

Jay spends way too much time reading fics about him on Wattpad but then a specific one catches his attentions. It's a fanfiction about you and Sunghoon, which drives him crazy. He will eventually tell you about that and you would just laugh. "Me and Sunghoon, that's crazy..." you say laughing, but Jay isn't. "Can I write a comment saying that I'm your actual boyfriend and ask them to stop dreaming?" he says. He doesn't like the idea of the fans seeing you being romantically with someone who is not him.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ Jake

(fans ship you with Niki)

I think Jake is used to the "y/n x niki" edits on pinterest, YouTube, tiktoks and so on, so at first, he wouldn't really mind them. "Let them dream" he would say, but it bothers him. He wants you to be shipped with him so much that your ship would be the most famous and obvious. I can clearly see him pushing niki away whenever you make eye contact with him so that there won't be edits.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ Sunghoon

(fans ship you with Jungwon)

Sunghoon will tell you things like "I don't care", "that's edited" and so on, but then he's putting a dislike on every YouTube video with the compilations of you and Jungwon interacting. He would eventually write VERY long texts to the fan pages on instagram asking them to kindly stop making edits and videos about you and Jungwon. When you eventually find out about this, you'd ask him if that's true. "that was not me, that was a y/n x Jake shipper" he would say (and ofc you won't believe him).

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ Sunoo

(fans ship you with Jay)

Sunoo is running a fan page for himself and when he casually posts a pic of you and him together, he's receiving a dm from another fan page which annoyed him. "how can you ship y/n and sunoo when y/n and Jay are so obvious". Sunoo read the message and started to type aggressively without saying a word. "What's happening?" you'd ask him. "im arguing with a stranger because they dont understand that our ship is superior"

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ Jungwon

(fans ship you with Jake)

Just like Sunghoon, I think Jungwon would only say "It's okay, I don't care" in front of you, he's looking at the edits and at the y/n x Jake moments with a disgusted and judging face. So if he can't defeat the ship, he'll open an y/n x Jungwon fan page to defeat the shippers. He'll eventually post pics of you two that weren't released, so when people ask him where did he find the pics, he'd just say "if you had bought the enhypen membership you'd know".

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ Niki

(fans ship you with Heeseung)

Since when Niki saw that "Your body language speaks to me" edit with you and Heeseung making an heart in a group photo, he lost his shit. He's gatekeeping you during all the recordings and if he sees a member approaching you, he's placing himself between the two of you. He's making sure that the "y/n x niki" ship is the most famous one among enhypen's, releasing vlogs, photos and even covers with you.

#kpop #enhypen #heeseung #jay #jake #sunghoon #sunoo #jungwon #niki #enhypen reactions #enhypen imagines #kpop imagines

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ao3cassandraic · 8 months

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I’m wondering about your thoughts on something I’ve been musing on after S2. How good is Aziraphale’s reading comprehension? How much does he understand subtext and metaphor? Because his behavior this season struck me with the impression that he didn’t really understand the books he collects. He’s clever at puzzle solving, and contains vast knowledge; but he always seems to take things at face value (when he’s not willfully misunderstanding), and refuses to give up black-and-white thinking, which would make it very difficult to analyze texts.

Angels, demons, language, and culture: part 1

You sure ask the difficult ones. (Which is great, I'm totally jazzed about it!)

I delayed answering this ask because it sent me off in a lot of directions:

What is an angel's starting knowledge base?

In contrast, how and what do we humans learn about our world and one another?

Which of these learning methods is not really available to an angel?

What do humans learn from books, fiction especially?

What kinds of information get left implicit in books because authors are humans writing for other humans?

How would an angel fill in those blanks? How would those blanks distort an angel's notion of How Humans and Human Things Work?

What would angels generally and either Aziraphale or Muriel (because yeah, it's hard to have this discussion without thinking about Muriel too) specifically read human-authored fiction for?

I don't have all the answers to the above questions. Not even CLOSE. I happily invite my fellow meta-ists to weigh in on any or all of them!

But let's see what I can tease out. We'll start with factory settings, so to speak.

Angelic vs. human factory settings

(questions 1 through 3)

Angels have (one) language. They have music -- or, at least, they can sing Her praises (likely by rote). At least some, like our Starmaker, have the knowledge to do specific jobs. Note that Aziraphale not only doesn't know how to make stars and nebulas, he's not even clear on what a nebula is. We can safely assume from that that angels don't all possess the same set of knowledge and skills purely by virtue (heh) of being angels.

We don't see, however, how much of what they know is simply an angel's birthright versus how much of it is somehow educated into them. We also don't know how She divvies up necessary knowledge, though I'd think it safe (given most takes on angelology) to guess that angelic rank and intended function are part of Her calculus, perhaps even the whole of it.

What strikes me hardest is that angels seem to be created either as adults or children (which is what I believe the scareable "cherubs" are), and they may well never change that state. The Starmaker is childlike in some ways, but not a child. Likely never was a child! Aziraphale, Before the Beginning, isn't childlike at all; his personality seems pretty close to fully-formed.

And children learn so very, very much. Babies learn so much as babies, while their neuroplasticity is super super plastic! Especially they learn about relating to other beings! (Which the Starmaker is conspicuously Not Real Great at, honestly -- absorbed in the work of creation, the Starmaker does not pick up the feelings Aziraphale is laying down at all.)

Children also learn one OR MORE languages, and that "more" is rather important, because language shapes how we think to some extent (the extent of that extent, and its nature, are objects of fierce debate among linguists and neuroscientists), and different languages shape us differently. Just as Crowley (as plenty of theologians argue) did humanity a favor with the whole knowledge-of-good-and-evil thing, the Tower of Babel (assuming that was a thing that happened in the GOverse; no reason it wouldn't have, I suppose) added a whole lot of nuance and complexity and competing understandings to humanity's sense of itself and its universe.

Exactly how angels and demons manage to speak all human languages (which Crowley indicates they can) isn't clear. If we accept that the Tower of Babel happened, both Heaven and Hell must have had to figure out a way to deal with it.

We do see, however, that angels and demons can be fluent in human languages without being fluent in human thought or human cultures. Gabriel and Sandalphon speak perfect English yet barely know which end of a book is up. Hastur and Ligur can't disentangle ciao/chow. And, I mean, actual food? Fuhgeddaboudit. So I see their linguistic facility as a sort of Douglas Adams Babel fish: it can translate an angel's or demon's thought into the target language, but it can't help an angel or demon think like an actual speaker of that language.

As an example, Gabriel can tell Job and Sitis about their new children, perfectly fluently. His purely-linguistic fluency does not help him understand that they loved their old children, much less why.

This may explain why Aziraphale studied French under M. Rossignol. He perhaps didn't feel he understood how French speakers think, and was interested enough in that to learn the language (as other meta-ists have noted, the language of love!) the human way.

So yeah, if I have a conclusion here it's that angels and demons can seem as off-center as they often do from a human perspective because they wholly missed out on a key period of human brain development.

What they have in its place appears to be... rules. Which is, I think, where I'll take this next.

#good omens #good omens meta #heaven and hell #the starmaker #aziraphale #hastur #ligur #babel fish #language and culture #tower of babel

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codywanfirstkissbingo · 7 months

Text

Codywan First Kiss Bingo

Can't get enough of Cody and Obi-Wan's first kiss in any universe and situation? Well then we'd love to have you play our bingo!

How to Play

Fill out this form and we'll email you your shiny bingo card. Every card is a shuffled assortment of prompts that will look something like this:

Below are all the rules you should know about before you join.

General Rules

We're sure you are familiar with the rules of bingo, but just to be certain everyone is on the same page, to get a bingo you must fill five prompts in a row. That row can be vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. Fill all the prompts on your card and that's a blackout!

Get as creative with your kisses as you want but they MUST BE A FIRST KISS between Obi-Wan and Cody in some capacity.

Prompt fills should be new works, meaning that they should not be part of an ongoing work-in-progress. Sequels and prequels to already-finished works are welcome!

Posting Dates

Participants have the entire month of December to post bingo fills! Sign up around the time of this announcement and you will have a two month creation window before December 1st rolls around.

You can either post to our collection on ao3 and/or on tumblr but we do ask that you please tag us @codywanfirstkissbingo AND tag your post with #CWFKB2023 as we don’t want to miss anyone if tumblr drops the ball.

If you’re posting on AO3 but want us to reblog your fill, please make a Tumblr post with the link and make sure to @ us and tag your post with #CWFKB2023. We’ll be checking the collection when tracking fills and making round-up posts with bingos and blackouts, but we will not be cross-posting every individual fill on AO3 ourselves if the creator has not made a tumblr post.

Please include a screenshot of your bingo tag with the prompt fill indicated so we know which square you’ve filled!

Specific Rules

Fic: 100 words minimum per prompt fill. To be clear, the kiss itself does not have to last 100 words, though we'd be delighted to see that.

Art: One drawing per fill (digital or traditional). Different drawings can be on the same canvas/page if you so wish. Go wild with your compositions.

Podfic: Same requirements as fic. You can collaborate with someone writing a fic specifically for the event or find an existing fic that fills your prompt.

Fanmix: One song per fill- we'd love to see what songs give you codywan first kiss vibes. Try to match lyrics to your prompt but instrumental songs are cool too.

Other: Send an ask with your inquiry! We're more than happy to discuss expanding the fanwork pool to maximize creativity.

Ratings

You can post any work with any rating, but please abide by the appropriate rating/archive warning/tags on AO3 when posting there. When posting on tumblr, please warn for potentially triggering content in the tags and the header to the post, so readers can filter as needed. Anything spicy or explicit should go under a read-more tag, and please use a read-more tag if you’re posting a fic that is longer than a drabble (100 words) to be considerate of people’s dashboard feeds.

To help make this event a safe one for Codywan fans with any kind of photosensitivity, we do specifically request that you tag any and all flashing imagery with #flashing. If you're unsure what constitutes flashing, please see this article, or err on the side of caution for any image with: moving stripes or checkered patterns; strobe light, lightning, or explosion effects in any image or video; images of flickering light/sunlight on leaves/water; very fast cuts between images in a gif or video; rapidly moving images in an animation or gif set that stop and start or “stutter;” sparkle text or similar moving text effects; and images in an animation, gifset, or video that are in high color contrast to each other (for example, a gif set that cuts pink Barbie gifs with black & white Oppenheimer gifs to create a fast-moving contrast between the two styles.)

The CWFKB mods' decision is final on whether your post/entry requires a flashing warning; they will contact you to ask you to update your tags if you haven’t already noted in your tumblr or AO3 post that your fill contains #flashing content. If you are not willing to use the flashing tag, even after being contacted by the mods, the mods have the right to decide that under-tagged flashing fills will be disqualified from the event.

Finally– with exceptions for the NSFW or #spicy and #flashing tags on tumblr– you have the right to choose not to warn readers in accordance with AO3’s “choose not to warn” option, but posters whose tags or ratings are deceptive or misleading versus the actual content may have their fills disqualified.

When in doubt, please contact the mods! The mods will contact you about any fill where the tags and ratings raise this concern, with a request that you revise and update your tags and warnings.

Combining Prompts

This is a low stakes event and we just want people to have fun! If you want to combine prompts that's totally fine, but we ask that you give each fill its own scene within the larger work. This means there should be a separate kiss for each prompt, even if the 'scene' is a series of types of kisses all in a row.

Swapping Prompts

Nearly have a bingo but there's that one pesky prompt in your way you don't vibe with? Go ahead and swap it with another prompt on your card. As all the prompts are randomly selected and not handpicked for participants; we understand there's a chance some of the prompts may not inspire you so we allow ONE and only ONE SWAP PER CARD. Use it carefully if you need it!

Behind the Scenes

This bingo is modded by tumblr users @dontbelasagnax @lttrsfrmlnrrgby and @notthestarwar. Since we're big fans of the previous codywan bingos, we felt the drive to bring the fun back for anyone else that has missed the event as much as us!

Our adorable profile picture was drawn by @anaclastic-azurite!

You can actually find the public inception of this bingo event right here!

If you have any further questions after reading our rules, our askbox is open!

@swfandomevents

(NB: edited Oct. 9 to add "vertical.")

(NB: edited Nov. 10 to add "This means there should be a separate kiss for each prompt, even if the 'scene' is a series of types of kisses all in a row.")

#codywan #cwfkb2023 #mod post #cwfkb #commander cody #obi-wan kenobi #obi wan kenobi

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kingkatsuki · 7 months

Note

i’m feeling horrendously soft for our man tonight. like boyfriend bakugo specifically. what are some of your fave hc’s of him as your boyfriend?

is he different from the beginning vs a little ways into the relationship?

I feel like it’s always the little things with him.

Like he knows you always forget your water bottle in the morning, so he makes sure he fills it and puts it in your handbag before you leave.

Puts the heating on when he knows you’re due home so the house is warm and ready for you, also puts a hot water bottle in your bed before he leaves for his night patrol because he knows you get cold without him.

I want to commission someone to write something like this for me because it’s one of my absolute fave Bakugou headcanons but I think he leaves you the cutest little post-it notes around the house, especially if he’s going to be at work all day. From reminders to drink more water, dumbass— to telling you how pretty you are or how much he loves you.

Notices when your shampoo/conditioner/lotion etc is running low in the bathroom and makes sure he puts a new one out so you’re not naked in the shower when you realise there’s none left (he’s definitely guilty of stealing it so he smells like you anyway—)

Always brings you home your favourite treats when he’s working late and knows he’s coming home to you. He’s the worst for seeing things in shop windows when he’s out on patrol that he thinks you’d like or that remind him of you and buying them for you. He spoils you so so much.

Bakugou gets so adorable whenever he’s asked about you in interviews or in public, you can quite literally see his face change as he answers the questions without hesitation— even if he was on the verge of exploding.

His favourite position in the evenings when you’re relaxing together is laying between your thighs with his head on your chest while you play with his hair. And he’ll definitely grumble and grab your wrist if you even attempt to stop.

Sometimes when he’s had a rough day he likes to come home and bend you over whatever the closest surface is just to take it out on your cunt. Either burying his face between your thighs or sliding his thick cock inside your warmth, either way it instantly heals any bad moods he’s in. Especially if he’s had an afternoon of non-stop meetings.

He has an engagement ring for you picked out during your first month of dating. Because he’s so certain that you’re the one, he doesn’t hesitate when he finds one that’s perfect for you. The only reason he doesn’t ask you straight away is because that fear of rejection is still so prevalent in him he doesn’t want to jepordise what you have already.

Bakugou always knows when new concert ticket/video game/book/toy/plushie releases are and he’s ensuring he’s logged in and prepared with his credit card the second the sale opens to get you whatever it is you want.

He’s SUCH a dry texter, but he’s always sending you texts that are just an ‘x’ which he uses as a kiss or to say he loves you. It’s something so quick and simple that shows he cares, and you usually get them more often when he’s about to go out on a mission, he’s out with the guys for the evening or into a long meeting.

He’s honestly so cute, quiet and shy when you first start dating, you actually worry that he doesn’t actually like you. And when you tell him that a little further down the line he’s blown away, because he’s never liked anyone this much in his whole entire life.

Another one of my fave headcanons is when you’re about to have sex he’s turning around all his All Might figures in his room so they don’t “watch” you having sex. So much so that you end up convincing him to have them displayed in a different room😭

You ask him to do a silly roleplay scenario early on in the relationship, and you suggest doing a hero/civilian scene but he gets way too into it because he wants to impress you and ends up doing the worst impression of All Might ever.

He learns your Starbucks order by your second date. He’s just perfect like that.

100% airport dad. Makes you get to the airport six hours early, even if it’s a domestic flight because he thinks somethings going to go wrong. Speed walks through, gets huffy when you try to stop for coffee and insists on holding all the documents in his little black folder.

Gets the worst sweaty palms when you first start dating because he’s so nervous, so he always gets worried about holding your hand. Pulls away from you to wipe his palms on his jeans first whenever you try to hold his hand, even if you convince him it’s okay.

Finds it hard to even look at you sometimes, because you’re just so pretty and he can’t comprehend how someone like you exists, nevermind is also interested in him.

I think Bakugou gets extremely overwhelmed by your love sometimes, and he finds it hard to articulate so he can seem like he’s shut down. But stick by him because all those feelings are bubbling up inside him and he doesn’t know how to deal with them properly yet🥺

#I could literally go on and on for hours #and give you page after page of Bakugou in a relationship headcanons #it’s my FAVOURITE honestly ahhhh #thank you for asking anon #I had so much fun typing these up #soft bakugou

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 2 months

Note

was i the asshole for refusing to pay a private contractor what they claimed i owed?

preface: i rent a townhouse that has both a front and a back yard, and the lawn mower broke (landlord refuses to fix it), so i was forced to find a landscaping company locally who could mow the grass in spring and summertime. i hate mowing so no real loss, plus i get to support local small businesses! score!

everyone around here sucks at communication (as in they just don't show up or respond to any texts, calls, or emails even when Maureen From The HOA is breathing down your neck) except for one company i've been using religiously ever since i found them. love these guys. quality work, excellent communication, affordable, flexible, these guys are the best and i have referred my neighbors to them as well.

at the beginning of spring 2023, money was kinda tight so i asked if they could only mow every three weeks. they told me no dice, only in two-week increments because they have a rolling scheduling of which neighborhoods get hit up on certain weeks. fair enough. i ask for a mow every four weeks. sure, the grass will get a little tall, but the HOA can shut up.

they come every two weeks instead and text AFTER they've already done the work, so i have to pay for it. i pay them promptly, but ask if they can please honor my wishes for it to be every four weeks, as we discussed. they honor that... once. and then go back to every two weeks. by this time, the grass is shooting up faster than expected and i still hate the HOA, so i sigh and let it go. every two weeks it is.

fast forward to late autumn as winter's rolling in and i'm writing the check for the last mow of the season when the guy calls and says "oh btw you owe hundreds of dollars we never told you about until just now".

somehow, they got it in their heads that they mowed my lawn every single week, and should be paid for that. not once did that happen. not only was there no communication about them having been there OR needing payment (remember how i said they were so good about communication? i have texts going back the entire season where they message me "hey we mowed your lawn today" every two weeks exactly, and what sense does it make for them to forget to say anything every other week on the nose?), but i think i would have noticed grass getting shorter for no reason. also remember how i specifically told them i wanted a mow every four weeks and never actually rescinded that request? it's in writing. it's in the text log. at no point did i ever approve this "weekly" work, even if they'd actually done it (which they didn't).

thing is, these guys are prompt and reliable. they're the best option i've got around these parts. they really don't strike me as the types to pull a fast one on me or scam me. i think it was a genuine, honest mistake and they got my house mixed up with someone else's in the ledger, and now they're out the money for work they legitimately performed... just not for me. i recommended them to my neighbors, remember? not impossible they got the house numbers for my street mixed up. a 6 can look like an 8, or a 7 like a 1 if your handwriting smudges.

i got so caught up in my kneejerk response of "hey what the fuck do you mean i owe money for work i told you i didn't want and you didn't actually do" that i didn't work with them to try to figure out what actually happened here, and now a local business got screwed over. WITAH?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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murdock-and-the-sea · 10 months

Text

nepenthe · matt murdock x reader

nepenthe (n.)

something that can make you forget grief or suffering

pairing: college!matt x reader

word count: 2k

warnings: MY BLOG IS 18+ ONLY MINORS DNI. angst, feeling sick, mentions of blood tests, fear of needles, reader struggling with weight gain and body image

a/n: Self-indulgence? What is THAT? Ahahaha. Hahaha. Haaa... ಥ_ಥ Also pls excuse my rust af writing.

Divider by @firefly-graphics.

Matt was angry at himself for not noticing it sooner. But something was definitely off with you today from the start.

First, you missed your morning classes, which you never did unless you had a good reason to. You loved Criminal Law, fighting your way to the front row and took pride in the fact that everyone turned to you when they needed notes. But even after the first break, you were a no-show, so he tried calling you several times.

When you didn’t pick up, he managed to get Foggy to send you a text, asking if everything was ok. He tried not to show it, but he was getting worried, too. Which only drove home the point that this was very uncharacteristic of you. In the middle of your next class, the phone dinged with a message, apologizing and letting the both of them know you were on your way.

Not ten minutes later, in the middle of Legal Research, you awkwardly creeped in through the door, much to the vexation of the professor, who merely huffed at you for interrupting his speech. You sneaked a shy wave towards them and took the first empty seat you could find.

Foggy leaned in close, whispering to him about how pale and tired you looked; and he could feel it, too. Anxiety was practically oozing out of you, and you were drinking an awful lot of water.

“You think they're sick?” Foggy asked, but Matt wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem like you had a fever.

But he would get to the bottom of this.

After class, you tried to play it cool and brush it off. All you were willing to say was that you had a doctor’s appointment. “Just a checkup,�� you reassured, and it wasn’t a lie, technically. But Matt could tell you were skidding around the truth, though he refrained from pushing you too hard.

It wasn’t until you were all walking across the campus that he reached the end of his patience. Foggy was animatedly telling you about what you missed that morning when you stumbled and fell over, almost dragging Matt down with you. He managed to grab your arm just in time, pulling you up and Foggy rushing over to your other side to help.

You really didn’t mean to. You specifically wanted to avoid telling them anything because you didn’t want to make them worry. But your stupid appointment left you lightheaded and dizzy, and it was hot and Foggy was talking and you tried to pay attention, barely hearing him over the ringing in your ears… Next thing you know, you were yanked up by Matt just in time to keep you from hitting the ground.

Foggy was ready to run for the nurse, but you managed to convince them there was no need for that, and that you just got dizzy. Matt was annoyed, you could tell. Curtly, he demanded you explain, but only after you had something to drink and layed down. Their dorms were closer and reluctantly, you let them take you to their shared room, guarding you from both sides despite your protests. This is exactly what you wanted to avoid, but fighting them was pointless.

Now, you were laying on your back across Matt’s bed, eyes closed as you tried to relax and even your breathing. He sat down next to you, the bed dipping under his weight.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” he asked, sounding more hurt than angry.

You opened your eyes, heaving a big sigh as you stared up at the ceiling. “Because it was just a blood test, it wasn’t supposed to be a big deal.”

“Not a big deal? They stabbed you three times, like a pin cushion!” Foggy exclaimed. He was sitting across the room on his own bed but you could feel his worried gaze - the both of their gazes - as if they were waiting for you to inevitably get sick again.

“They had to take different samples. It was for an insulin test.” you said meekly. Absent-mindedly, your hands brushed over one of the small bruises on your arm.

Matt furrowed his brow. This was the first time he was hearing about this, unaware of you having any medical issues. “A what?”

“A 3-point insulin resistance test. It’s like,...” you paused, groaning internally.

You really didn’t mean to burden them with this, but after your fall, you supposed they deserved an explanation. You really gave them quite a scare. “First they take a blood sample to check your blood sugar. And then you have to drink this disgusting cup filled with a lot of sugar and a little water, and then they take another blood sample after an hour, and then another after two hours have passed. To see your insulin levels.”

“Is it for…?”

“It’s to check for diabetes, and insulin resistance, yeah.”

There was a bit of silence, Matt reaching out to take your hand in his, fingertips skimming over your skin soothingly. “Is everything okay?”

“You’re not ill, are you?” Foggy asked from the other end.

Gosh, you could cry from how sweet and caring and worried they were. But it made you feel so guilty.

“I’m not. I-I think.” There were a few tears brimming in your eyes already. It was so stupid. “I just.. I’m sorry. I just struggled with my weight recently, so I went to see a doctor and-”

“Sweetheart,” Matt interrupted, in the most tender way possible. “There’s nothing wrong with your-”

“No, no, I know. I know, okay?” You pulled your hand away, instinctively wrapping your arms around your body. You could see it hurt Matt, but he didn’t force you, wanting to give you space if you needed.

It was so bloody stupid.

“I know it’s not a big deal, and that it could be worse, but I was really struggling, and I wanted to feel better about myself. And I tried paying attention to what I was eating, but it just- i-it wasn’t doing anything?”

Matt’s mind was speeding, trying to remember if you’ve ever mentioned this to him. Vaguely, he recalled how you often skipped eating together these past few weeks, claiming that you already had lunch, or politely declined the snacks they offered to share.

He didn’t think it meant anything other than you not feeling hungry, but now… if Matt was angry at himself before, now he was furious for not noticing. He was about to scold you - as gently as possible - but Foggy beat him to it.

“You didn’t start one of those crazy diets, did you?!”

At least, his exclamation brought a weak smile to your face, however fleeting. “Nah, don’t worry. I’m smarter than that, at least. I just tried to get better food, and did all the stupid things like drinking more water, and going on walks. But even after a few months, it was just-”

How could you explain it to them? It was hard to grasp, even for you. It was like your body despised you, refusing to cooperate and instead, turning against you. Like it was ignoring the rules that applied to everybody else, clinging to everything you gave it, refusing to let go.

You knew it wasn’t healthy to think about it this way, but you had so many classmates who just looked better than you. Thinner. Prettier. More natural. And it was blood-boiling how they seemingly had it all figured out, eating what they wanted and worrying about it later.

When your thoughts were getting nastier, and you felt worse about yourself than ever before, you realized that maybe you need a little help. You sought out a dietitian, who, despite your initial fears, was very understanding and patient with you. She actually listened and took notes about your family history. When you mentioned your grandmother had diabetes and thyroid gland problems, she immediately suggested taking some tests.

You didn’t want to tell Matt because you’ve only been dating for a short while, already feeling guilty for having so much baggage. Even if deep down, you knew he would support you through this. He was truly so sweet and kind, along with Foggy.

In the end, you just sighed. “I just wanted to make sure I’m doing things right, and the doctor seemed nice when she suggested the test. But I swear, I wasn’t starving myself.”

“You still got pretty dizzy today, yeah?” Matt asked, opening his palm and with a smile, you slid your hand back, entwining your fingers with his.

“Yeah, I don’t handle blood tests too well. I don’t like the needles.”

Foggy snorted. “This is why you should have taken us. We could have blindfolded you in the waiting room so you didn’t have to see.”

Matt burst out in laughter so unexpectedly that it was contagious and, despite still feeling a little sick, you couldn’t help but laugh yourself.

“I’m not sure that would be a good thing to do, but, thanks, Foggy.”

“We really don’t mind going with you next time, you know.” Matt offered, gently squeezing your hand. “If you want.”

It was silly that they wouldn’t support you, now that you thought of it.

“It would be nice, yeah. Sorry for not telling you about it. I didn’t even know it was going to last this long, and I had to go on an empty stomach, and couldn’t drink or eat anything in-between the samples… it was hard.”

There was a pause.

“But you did eat after it, right?” Matt asked, voice stern.

Shit.

You quickly averted your gaze from him, only to be met with the deadliest glare you have ever seen from Foggy.

Shit.

“I was in a hurry to make it to class!”

“That’s no excuse!”

“But—!”

“Sweetheart, what were you thinking?”

“I don’t know! I wasn’t thinking!”

“You have to eat something, right now.”

You groaned in defeat, grabbing Matt’s pillow and pulling it over your head.

“Fine, I’ll go grab something from the cafeteria.” Foggy said, climbing off his bed. “Matt, make sure they stay here.”

“I’m not a prisoner, Foggy!” You exclaimed, throwing the pillow in his general direction.

“Oh, you’re staying sweetheart, don’t worry.”

Once Foggy left, you promptly climbed over so you could lay your head in Matt’s lap, wrapping your arms around his waist. He chuckled, rubbing your back.

“You know we’re only doing this for you, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, you are both mother hens, I know.” You mumbled, pressing your face against his shirt. You took a deep breath, inhaling his scent and letting it calm you.

After a little silence, Matt brushed his fingers over your cheeks lovingly. “You really scared me today.”

“I’m sorry, Matt. I really am.”

“It’s ok, sweetheart. I’m not angry. But please,” he said, voice so low as he almost pleaded with you. “Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t, I promise.” You held him a bit tighter, and you both fell to a comfortable, peaceful silence.

It was only interrupted by a knock on the door a few minutes later.

“I hope you guys are decent,” Foggy said, carefully opening the door “cause I don’t wanna drop these sandwiches.”

“Foggy!”

You couldn’t even get angry at them. Most of your guilt has evaporated when you saw how ready they were to help, and if you wanted to be truly honest with yourself, it felt good to be doted on a little.

They were more than ready to entertain you all afternoon but after eating, you still felt a little tired, so Matt walked you back to your own dorm room. You thanked him for everything they did, and of course, being the sweet guy he is, he brushed it off as nothing to worry about.

He waited until you got comfortable in bed, leaning to press a kiss to your forehead. “I will always love you, no matter what happens, angel. And if you want to feel better, or just more comfortable about yourself, I’ll be here with you through that too, okay?”

You barely managed to squeak out a reply, eyes teary but feeling so loved by him. He gave you one last, quick kiss goodbye before he left to let you rest.

#matt murdock #matt murdock x reader #matt murdock x you #matt murdock fic #matt murdock fanfic #college!matt x reader #v's scribbles

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pakhnokh · 4 months

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I was unable to comment on your posts on patreon, but saw your question in the reading commentary:

Ok so which one is it!? I feel confused because I know ExR makes the difference between Gui and Mo. I went to the official 7seas translation and in both cases they write "demonic"! (Vol.4 Page 83) which is unbelievable cause Wei Wuxian would never say that his path is the Mo Dao. I really wonder what the original text says.

I'd like to explain this! I think this is a translation inconsistency. In the original CN, Gui is a subset of Mo. Everyone including WWX refers only to Mo Dao in terms of the cultivation path. It's the Dark Path in contrast to the mainstream, "righteous" Bright Path.

There's four types of evil beings in MDZS:

妖 yao: made from living non-human beings. The living Goddess Statue, Tortoise Xuanwu, both count in this category

魔 mo: made from living humans (living puppets). There aren't any examples I can think of in MDZS (Song Lan wasn't puppeted until after he's dead, right?) but, this is the word most commonly translated as "demon".

鬼 gui: made from dead humans. This is the classic WWX stuff like Wen corpse army etc. Translated as "ghost" usually

怪 guai: made from dead non-humans. I also don't think there's any examples in MDZS.

But importantly, WWX listed all these in Cloud Recesses under the same cultivation path, 魔道 Mo Dao. All are subcategories of Mo Dao. So he is indeed cultivating Mo Dao knowingly. It's up to interpretation, but personally I think that makes his moral character very interesting OvO

Ok thank you so much! With your permission I'll give an introduction to those who don't know what this is all about.

I'm reading Mo Dao Zu Shi again and making a commentary on my Patreon page. (It is public by the way, so everybody can see it)

The quoted part in this ask refers to my question regarding the things Wei Wuxian says to Lan Wangji when the latter visits him on Burial Mounds and they part:

A moment later, Wei WuXian spoke up, “Lan Zhan, you asked me if I intended on staying like this from now on. To be honest, I’d like to ask something as well. What can I do apart from this?”

He continued, “Give up the demonic path? Then what about the people on this mountain?

“Give them up? I won’t be able to do it. I believe that if you were I, you wouldn’t be able to do it either.”

He continued, “Nobody can give me a nice, broad road to walk on. A road where I could protect those I want to protect without having to cultivate the ghostly path.”

(This is ExR translation version. The official 7seas uses "demonic" in both cases. Reading the ExR translation, the difference between demonic and ghostly path has been made by the translators in other parts of the text. For example, Wei Wuxuan saying that he never practiced the demonic path, or Lan Wangji telling Wei Wuxian that the ghostly path harms body and soul etc. So I was confused - why would Wei Wuxian himself call the methods he used as demonic? I was sure that this is a fault in the translation or maybe me not understanding something in Chinese culture)

So back to the things you wrote, fist of all thank you so much for finding the time to answer me! I really wonder why you couldn't comment on Patreon itself? Public posts are available to comments both for paid and free members.

Now, if I understand correctly what you say, "Mo Dao" is a large umbrella term containing all types of "dark" cultivation that are not the "righteous" canon cultivation method practiced by all sects? Meaning that both what Wei Wuxian does (Gui Dao) and what Xue Yang did (Mo Dao) can be considered "Mo Dao"?

Then, in this case, how does using this term works for Wei Wuxian's benefit if he wants to stress out that he uses the ghost path and not the demon path (meaning that he specifically uses dead corpses and not living humans?) isn't it also justifies the false rumors spread about him as being the "mo dao zu shi?" I remember reading in other explanations that the whole thing of him being called this way was the misunderstanding and the spread of false info about what Wei Wuxian actually practiced.

So now I'm even more confused hahahaha if you have a further explanation I'd be so grateful!! <33

I'd really just prefer if all the translation left the terms in pinyin. (yao, mo, gui and guai) so that this confusion wouldn't exist :(

Btw, I think that what Xue Yang did to the townspeople in Yi City was considered mo dao, right? He sprinkled the corpse poisoning powder on them making them into living corpses for Xiao Xingchen to kill.

"guai: made from dead non-humans. I also don't think there's any examples in MDZS." - does it only include animals and plants, or objects as well? Does what Wei Wuxian did to the paper puppets in Yi City count in this category?

#mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #grandmaster of demonic cultivation

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