Was feeling really, really depressed, so I made this. Short thing, but more to come, hopefully. I just needed to get something down. Word vomit. O hai, second person present(ish) tense. Now we know why I never use you ever. Blub. ~~~~~ The pain. The hurt was deep. So overwhelming. So permeable. It seeped through every aspect of your being. Your very skin hurt. Fingers trembling, breath quickening, body wracked with it. It hurt to move. You couldn’t. Absolute stillness. There were tears in your eyes as the sobs finally came, the sounds of your tumulus life crashing about your ears. You begged for help. Silently. For anyone to save you from hell you had created for yourself. What was wrong with you? Nobody else ever felt like this – everyone got sad and got over it and everything was fine, but not you. You were a freak. You knew it, and everyone else knew it too. A bubbling sickness formed in your stomach. You curled up in a fetal position on your tiny cot, and prayed again and again for someone to save you. I don’t want to be like this, you think. Why can’t I be someone different? Someone normal? It’s quickly getting out of control now. Idly, you rake your fingernails down your arm, forming dark read welts. You do it again. And again, and again, scrubbing at it with a mad ferocity until the underside of your fingernails come back, caked with dead skin and blood. It’s oddly relieving for you. For all of ten seconds. Then the horror of it all – what you’d done to yourself – AGAIN – started to sink in. Cursing, you went to go clean the wounds, splashing cold water on the angry red marks, dripping with blood, and pray for forgiveness now. You were crazy. Only crazy people hurt themselves. You deserved to be institutionalized. Or worse. Frantic panic. You lean against the countertop, gasping for air as your heart races. The dark, dankness of your room s suffocating you. You don’t want to go outside, but you’ll die if you stay in here. You’ll DIE. Just some fresh air, you tell yourself, stumbling towards the door. Just some fresh air, and I’ll go back, and everything will be fine. With a sick, rotting stomach churning with anxiety, you open the door.
more emo blathering nonsense, hmmm. Even shorter than last time. ~~~~ It was easier to smile when there were people around, you noticed. This wasn’t supposed to happen – maybe a quick patrol around the base to clear your mind, but somehow you’d gotten roped into dinner with the guys. They remark idly that you hadn’t been around as much and it was true. Usually you were just too tired to do anything but drag yourself on the battlefield and put up some pathetic excuse for a fight then drag yourself back to bed. But you’d never tell them that. For a while you try so hard to pretend to be happy with the guys that it actually happens you actually start to forget about that toxic sadness within you, eating you alive, and everything is fine, like a smooth, rounded finish around your life. Made of glass. It gets late and everyone says their goodbyes and you’re left again with that sadness and there’s nothing you can do. The emptiness comes back, and suddenly you feel tired again. Like it’s time to go back to bed even though that’s what you’d basically been trying to do all day. You don’t want to be alone with yourself again, but you had to do it. No one could see you like this. You go back to your dark, musty room that smelled like dark and sadness. It suited you. It became you.
Pretty good, I enjoyed it for the most part, but what does this have to do with TF2?
I think you need hug. I hope you feel better soon! I can't wait to find out which character this is.
TF2chan is not Sparkledog Central. Take your emo blathering nonsense back there. Why you would even think to post it here escapes me. Even if this does relate to TF2 in your head somehow, that's not how this works, and this should be deleted.
After the battle again. The feeling of tired seeped in your bones still, even as you kept your head up. There wouldn’t be any time for a shower. Again. what was the point if you were just going to get dirty again tomorrow. You were making a beeline for the private quarters, when a hand clapped itself on your back, startling you out of your dark thoughts. What was that? Oh. It was Pyro. Commenting about a job well done today or… or something. It’s not that you don’t like the little firebug, you just have no time for this. Your bedroom – your prison – it calls to you like an addiction. You wave off his requests to watch Star Trek together in the rec room. You’ve got business, you say – something very important. You can’t see the expression on Pyro’s face, but you doubt you’d like it. “What kind of things?†he asks in that usual, muffled way of his. “Shut the hell up, Private – it’s confidential,†you mutter, distracted as you push your way past him. When you get back to your room, the darkness feels like an old friend. And an even older enemy. She’s like a horrible mistress, lulling you into her sway and crooning in your ear to do dangerous, despicable things. Instead, you undress back into your T shirt and boxers and get back into bed. It’s a victory for her, sure, but a smaller one, you decide as you place your helmet on the night stand. Feeling a little numb, you roll over onto your stomach and pull a pillow over your head, as if to drown out the terrible voices in your head. ~~~~~ Wanted to post this last night, but it was missing something. Wrote the last half this morning. Weirdly, this is very therapeutic.
>>5 Please calm down. >>6 I honestly like where this is going. I know some people don't like things that touch on subjects like self-mutilation, but it makes it a bit more real to me. (I'll be quiet now.)
No use in saging on a recnetly bumped thread.... I feel neutral about this fic. There are SOME ties to the TF2 universe, but I feel that the build-up is maybe a bit too chopped up. The first part barely had anything to do with TF2, the second one had vague references, and the third one has an actual Team member. I really am curious as to who is speaking in this fic, and what their problem is. I would like to see this continued.
And the man in pain is identified. Oddly enough, between his constant, loud, public facade and the conveniently concealing wraps around his wrists, my first thought had been Scout.
It feels like you wrote this for you, and are slowly trying to MAKE it TF2 related in order for it to remain in this board, which it isn't. And I feel somewhat awful even criticizing it, since you've made it clear it was an emotional venting on your part. While I do sympathize with you, those are my thoughts on it.
Haha, I wanted to say something, but didn't have the guts. You guys ended up saying it for me. Good to see that Drillbot's being an asshole as always. Honestly I'm happy for submissions of any kind, so long as the chan lives on.
Hey, guys, just wanted to clear some things up since this is a story that needs clearing up like jeebus. This story was always meant to be a TF2 story. I know the pacing is all kinds of wrong - choppy and fractured because I wrote it in a similar state of mind. The first two chapters were a little ambiguous at first because I wasn't sure who the person was going to be, and I thought it'd be different for it to be a surprise (of some sort), anyway. It seemed like a good idea in my head. The goal for this is to write a totally comprehensible, involving story with minimum, almost no going back over things and editing them them like I am with my other stories because it get to be overwhelming and... just put me in a total bind. That's the reason I update these short snippets like this. When it gets too long, I just can;t help but go back and start fixing things, when that's the problem in the first place. If I upload it to the chan, it feels me "permanent". I guess I could have done that with DA, but I hardly go there anymore, and I didn't think the story was THAT terrible to begin with. (But, as you can see, there are disagreements.) I'm in a much better mood than I was when I started this story (even considering a mildly traumatic experience from earlier today), so it should smooth out considerably, but I'm going to continue it in hopes that it'll finally help me get over my writer's block. Stay beautiful.
I hope you're still working on Breaking Point...
Here's another question: how is this adult fanfiction?
>>14 herp what is build-up I'm sure TwoRefined is familiar with writing adult fanfiction. It will come when it comes.
> How is it not? I mean, this is pretty heavy subject matter, and I don't expect it to magically get prettier. On the contrary, this is the kind of thing that could hit a very not-for-general-audiences rock bottom. Anyway... I'm enjoying this. And this month I haven't have a lot of time for reading, nor do I expect to get a lot of time for reading, so I like bite-sized bits of angst.
A note for TwoRefined: I moved the thread you asked me to move for ya. It's a page back on /fanfic/. I thought I had deleted it by accident at first. I had a mini panic attack, haha. Carry on.
>>13 Dohoho. >>14 Drillbot, I don't know you as a person, and I hate to sound belligerent, but please try to calm your tits calm down a little. I understand you want to keep a good quality of stories on the chan, but a lot of the time, you tend to sound overly aggressive about things. Maybe I'm just looking into it too much since this was a new experiment type thing, and the first two chapters were pretty subpar, but still. Just don't be a douche about things. Please. Wanting high quality works =/= having to be a dick. >>15 Yes, there will be delayed... kinda racy stuff later. Well, not that this isn't already, but... sexual racy. Kinda. Things get confusing in my brain, especially since I haven't thought everything through yet. I'm just kind of winging a lot of things. It's a nice feeling as opposed to, say, Breaking Point, where I've pretty much laid out everything that I'm planning to do and have to follow it to the point or else I will miss something and/or rage at myself. >>16 Thanks. It's just nice to try something different. >>17 Thank you, Kilo. You really are quite awesome. Love and tolerance to the extreme, brah. This is why I don't do things at nearly 4 in the morning. I always sound like a babbling, random idiot. And, in my response to Drillbot, a babbling, random douchetit. Herp.
Hah. We should have emo parties together, TwoRefined. I admit, I tried ragequitting writing yesterday and the day before but I can't even. There is nothing else for me right now. Writing has become the bad medicine that gets me through the day, when I'm not feeling so down that I can't write. Anything else I do has somehow become for the sole purpose of cheering myself up enough to write. Fucking addiction. I wish Drillbot paid attention to me... Also, not sure how I feel about this story. Don't get me wrong, it's written realistically and well. I personally would have preferred if it started off clearly as Soldier but I suppose leaving the beginning open-ended shows how depression can latch onto anyone. Or maybe a loss of the sense of self? Personally, I can easily see Soldier breaking down into depression and fear about that depression (and mutilating himself, though there are easier ways to do that... like tearing at healing wounds.) He's lived half his life already; I'd readily bet there's plenty of things he could be depressed about. On the other hand, Soldier is usually so loud and hard to ignore, I somehow think his other team mates would say more. Not necessarily because they even like him. Who knows, some of them might be glad he's leaving them alone? But unless he's just really good at hiding it (which isn't impossible; it's easy to hide feelings unless you're having a melt-down right in front of people) I'd expect them to do something more, I guess? They're all crazy. It doesn't even have to be a sensible way to reach out to him. Then again, that might be after a very long time. Or they might assume if he's feeling upset that he'd rather be alone. Or they might not be any good at discussing problems with people, especially when they don't know if they have an answer. Or they're just not close enough and they don't feel it's their business. All sorts of reasons. Who knows? Who knows?
I feel somewhat the same. Not much has happened but TwoRefined you seem to have a plan for where all this is going, so I'll sit tight and be patient. Soldier to say the least is not the most approachable man so it's going to be interested to see when and how the other characters go about it.
If people are allowed to have "omg i just jizzed my pants and came buckets onto my walls" as honest responses then I am allowed to be just as honest in my responses. I don't know why you guys always assume I say things like this to just be an asshole or something. Being direct is just what comes easiest to me. I have no personal problems with anyone. My first post might have seemed barbed because I said "emo blathering nonsense", but for some reason everyone forgot that that's what *the creator themselves* called it when they posted it. I know it might appease your senses better if I phrase things all passive-aggressive and be like "oh maaaybe I don't know this miiight not be the best thing to post here...??????" but this is not how real people speak to each other and definitely not how criticism works. When I say "why is this in adult fanfiction?", that is a different sentence from "I don't think this should be in adult fanfiction." If I'm asking a question, that means I don't know the answer and I'm asking you why. People read into words over the internet to such silly extremes and it boggles my damn mind sometimes. A question is a question. Don't shove words in my mouth and call me an asshole for asking a question. And in direct response to you, specifically, TwoRefined: I never called this bad. I never said that this was subpar. I never called this below-some-sort-of-quality-you-apparently-think-I-hold-for-fanfiction. I restated what you called it, and said that I thought it didn't belong here. Never commented on the quality whatsoever. But because I'm not flowery in my language, everyone assumes I'm whining because I think it's bad. Which. I don't. Don't tell me to calm down when you're the one putting words in my mouth. Read my words for what they are, *not* whatever weirdo subtext you think I'm putting on it.
>>21 Except you did come over as an asshole, mainly because you kinda are an asshole. In your first post you were nothing short of being a complete asshole, with flipant comments, comparing it to "sparkledog central" and labelling it "emo blathering"as opposed to just saying you don't like it in a more constructive way. Glass house, no stones aloud. If you are going to bitch and moan, prepare to get the same treatment back instead of erecting a defensive wall of shit when someone calls you on it. Also, plenty of writings have started without mention of a certain subject or topic and develop into it later, its setting up mood, location, background etc. If you buy a sci-fi book and it doesn't mention spaceships in the first few pages, do you immediately slam that sucker down and dash to a review website to claim it had no right being in the sci-fi section of your local book store. As tworefined, you need to calm yo tits son.
Actually, I do think Drillbot has a point as well...he is after all asking questions and I think we can afford to give him a little bit of leeway. I understand where all of you are coming from but maybe it's not so good to keep up this tense atmosphere, especially when half the time (or more) at least one side isn't meaning what he's saying. Just leave it as it is man, I don't think there's the need to offend one another just to justify your own perceptions. There are other ways to do that, like for TwoRef, continuing to write the story the way you think it should unfold, and as for others, providing constructive criticism. That would be enough, no need to get all fired-up.
>>21 Drillbot, you can be honest without being an asshole, and just because you choose your words more carefully doesn't make you passive-aggressive. You could have said "This doesn't really belong here because [reasons]. Why is this even on Adult Fanfics?". But instead you said "take this emo shit back to dA". I don't care if that's how the author described it, it's still rude, and you can still express distaste while being civil. Saying "I don't like this, here's why..." is just as direct as "this sucks, take it elsewhere", but the former will yield infinitely better results and not have you come across as an asshole. I've seen you do this in other threads that you don't like. You tell the author that you don't like it (which is fine), but then you go and tell them that their work doesn't belong here and that they should go to another place (usually dA). Honest critique is a beautiful thing, and I like TF2chan because it's one of the few places on the internet you can get it, but you don't seem to realize that critique is supposed to be constructive. You frequently come across as rude and mean-spirited without being very helpful, but then try to hide behind the excuse of "well, I'm just being honest!". As for the fic itself, TwoRef, I'm not so sure how I feel about it. I like the idea, certainly, but I think the pacing is weird, and it suffers from being in such short chunks. In most cases I'm a big fan of keeping things short and sweet, but here I think you should try actually making each individual part longer. I know you're trying to keep things at a slow and steady pace, but I find it hard to get engaged with the story because everything is so short. I start to get interested with the writing style and premise, but then the part ends before I can really get into it. I imagine that finding the right balance between too long and too short is difficult either way.