#❡ character ● studies ● attributes

[wraith-of-christmas-future]

Character Stats Framework

Repost don't reblog

Name: Charles Talent Manx the III

Nickname(s): Charlie, Chuck, Father Christmas, Wraith

Age: 140 to 180 ( Default to Verse Dependent )

Birthdate : July 10th / 1873

Species: A Psychic Vampire who feeds on the essence of children through an incorporeal link between him and his knife, a 1938 Rolls - Royce Wraith.  In turn, changing them into feral monsters that will forever roam Christmasland.

Nationality: American / Born in Cripple Creek, Colorado.

Gender: Male

Preferred Pronoun(s): Being old fashioned, he is quite adamant on the He/Him

Romantic Orientation: He's actually panromantic believe it or not.

Sexual Orientation: Strict heterosexual, however.. If not due to trauma as a child.

Face Claim: Zachary Quinto ( He honestly makes an awesome Charlie. He and Ashleigh had good on screen chemistry. Adore them both.)

Parents: Father, an undisclosed drunkard / a bastard ( Deceased ). Mother , Fanny Manx / a whore. ( Deceased )

Siblings:

As far as he knew he was an only child. But in truth.. he could have various half siblings before his father died over another whore. The man fucked anything with two legs and a spread.

Family:

He went from a poor excuse of a mother, to marrying into a rich family, only to have that money dry out during the depression, hurling him into poverty once more. Which soured the family all together, drawing out the true nature of the woman he married ; she was verbally and physically abusive. Damn near demanding the impossible in an economy plummeting. The only family he dares to call his own, are his two daughters and their adopted siblings. A family that grows day by day.

Significant Other(s):

Cassandra Manx ( Deceased ?? Or a forever spook haunting trauma house ) Jolene July , Victoria McQueen ( those he considers soul mates. Who he relentlessly pursues and struggles to give up one way or another. Even when his pursuits are not reciprocated. Which yes, can make him an horrendous, deadly stalker at the heart of it. )

Children:

Biological children - Millicent and Lorrie Manx. Eventually holding a horde of adopted children who he " rescued ( stole ) " from abusive parents, that he also considers his own.

Eye Color(s): Honeydew / Russet brown , Obsidian black.  Varies on mood swings.

Hair Color(s): Dark Brown

Height: 6'3

Weight: 177 lbs

Body Build: While young, lean and lanky.  |  When old , frail and slightly hindered mobility.

Tagged by : Not a soul. I stoles it. o.o

Tagging : Whoever wishes to give it a whirl. Cause I'm honestly not sure who has already been tagged or not. ;)

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Something something about Buck and learning and or teaching.

Something something about Buck teaching when he really needed to be learning.

I just keep thinking about how the show has increasingly - especially last season - put Buck into the role of 'teacher' - including his coma dream. (i'm using teacher for the lack of a better term!) and how in the aftermath of the coma dream - he's been trying to teach but it hasn't worked - instead he's been learning.

I've been musing on the fact that even back in season 1 Buck has been in a teacher role -

Abby learning to chose herself and go for her happiness,

Bobby learning to let people in and Buck being a major part of that because of their developing father-son type relationship

'teaching' Eddie that he could rely on other people for help

Maddie learning at Bucks hand that she didn't need to keep running, that she could lean on him for support and build a new life for herself

Ravi being tutored by Buck in the fire house

even Lucy being given advice by Buck - teaching her through his own experiences in dumb luck

Buck making himself into a teacher in his coma dream and the idea that all these people he has helped teach teaching him that he has a place with them and that he is important

and so many more examples through the seasons that I won't list or I'd be here forever!

Because there has been a lot of emphasis on teaching and learning since Buck woke up from his coma - he learnt he was good at maths, but then wasn't allowed to help Chris with his maths homework because it would be cheating.

used his maths skills to win at Poker - but got taught lessons even in victory - rather than teaching others lessons (whatever they might have been)

Natalia being interested in him because he could teach her about death and things going south pretty quickly when it became evident that Buck needed to learn how to live again rather than be stuck in death

And now we've had several mentions by Tommy of him teaching Buck things - teaching him to fly, teaching him Mauy Thai, all the way to him being his bi awakening is teaching him about a part of himself he didn't know. Things are turned on their head - Buck is the student not the master now

Even with Eddie this season, we've seen him teaching Buck things - rather than Eddie learning from him - Eddie handing over this really important thing going on with Chris - Eddie knowing that Buck would be a better option - that Chris would open up to him more - is teaching Buck about his importance in the Diaz family - re-enforcing that he is part of their life. Its also Eddie who has had the good advice for Buck this time rather than the other way round.

Something something about 'you like to be the guy with the answers' to Buck becoming the guy with the (maths) answers - only for it to fade away and now he's having to learn

Something something about the tie to Buck and death and the resurrection and how Christ was the teacher up to and immediately after his death and resurrection when he left others on earth to spread his teachings and he ascended to learn at the right hand of god

Something something about how that is the key to happiness and that is what Buck has figured out and that is why his journey to figuring that out has had him wearing the bright blue - because in Christianity - that shade of blue is the colour of the kingdom of heaven (because it is the colour of the sky!) so putting Buck in it at all these key markers of his journey is showing him as being on the road to ascension.

This post is a mess - I don't even know what it is any more! I started with one idea about teaching and Tommy and then more kept coming and we ended up here!!!!

[alaritheaurora]

So guys... Gillion Tidestrider. But, hear me out, Gay Jokes by Rio Romeo.

And Now I will analyze each verse and tell you why this song IS ABOUT Gillion

Bro NEVER confronts his feelings, he constantly invalidates his own emotions in favor of other's. The only time he speaks up is when prompted, and then PUSHED.

Its just the truth, he keeps being funny despite genuinely being banished. Like dude, that's FUCKED up, it's not your responsibility to make people feel better about WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU.

I imagine that in this context 'being gay' is more like being a person, his life was wrecked because he has fucking emotions and thoughts and acted on them. And in this case his 'mother' is probably more like the elders or the undersea in general because he got banished. And No, he WILL NOT recover, his life fucking sucked.

This is just so him saying that he got banished to Chip and Jay. His head feels 'underground' because he was fucking PANICKING. "The joke is gone" they know he's not officially the champion anymore, they know he lied. But they don't care that he got banished, why would they? Gill is their friend, that doesn't change anything. And Gillion is more comfortable, able to be open to them.

His childhood WASN'T a childhood, and every joke or reference he makes simply highlights that. I think in this context the 'you' is us, the viewers. We laugh at the joke, and then realize what the fuck he actually just said and take in how horrible it actually is.

That's what Gillion does. He makes light of bad situations, on the surface for others, but also to try and hide and ignore his past trauma. 'It may not be so funny to you all, But know I am having quite a fucking ball' to me this feels more like behind Gillion, as in it being Charlie. We are all horrified at how horrible Gillion's life was and Charlie always grins whenever we bring it up.

He is traumatized, and I fucking love it. Can you tell?

[rhineposting]

I have a theory. The reason why Luz worked so hard for the four years of the timeskip is because of the words of Papa Titan and The Collector. She was very badly affected by the fact that finding the glyphs was not her merit.

One of her aspirations was not to be a dummy, as stated in Thanks To Them. She also wanted to be good at something. Perhaps she was proud that she found all the glyphs in a couple of months, not years, like Phillip.

So some time after his death, after sitting in silence and thinking everything over, Luz realized that she was still a fool, and that without the help of the Titan she would not have been able to find anything, while Phillip was able to find almost all the glyphs despite the fact that the Titan prevented him from doing it. Phillip was so smart that he invented quantum physics in the SIXTEENTH CENTURY. And if it wasn't for his witch-hunting obsession, he would have changed both worlds for the better.

Luz promised herself that she would try to become as smart as her enemy was, and do what he could have done, but did not want to.

While you certainly do have several good points, I sadly have to say that this theory does take away some of the weight behind the poor girl's hardship, as well as this very scene. MORE BELOW CUT

This scene.

As Belos is trying to speak some "sense" into her one last time...She just steps away from him and his grasp, both metaphorical and literal.

And does nothing. She could choose to give him one last lecture, or say some one liner, or even join in on the stomping. But she choses not to act on his words or actions. She made the conscious decision not to let him influence her or her life anymore, for his way of thinking to no longer affect her own. That's why, when we see her post time-skip all grown and happy, it's not because she feared of becoming like him, or being lesser than him. Instead...

She chose to focus on what is actually worth her efforts and care.

Her hard work and growth are not rooted in fear anymore. She learned a lesson from Belos, and doesn't need to put any mind to him anymore, so now all her hopes and motivations are within the future.

With people she loves the most. With people who matter.

[anthromimicry]

forever thinking about how, according to maslow's hierarchy of needs (or simply the self-actualization pyramid) that is basically this motivational theory in psychology that's made up of a five-tier model of human needs, that misao went from being on the third tier in her childhood to reverting back to the first tier currently which is food, water, warmth, and rest.

[ here's a picture of it for reference, y'all ]

so, in other words... she is just trying to survive SO badly right now at this point in her life, that she can not even worry about things like safety or security and especially not friends. and that is UHH... i might, or might not be sobbing right now

[beegswaz]

I MISSED BUG. BEING CORRECT ABOUT WHEATLEY..???? WHY IS THE WORLD SO CRUEL.

[rigginsstreet]

you know ive hated my fair share of characters in my time. like... seething blackout rage. 

never once did i wake up one day and decide to start spreading a narrative about them being rapists. 

cuz thats...ya know.... weirdo behavior. stranger things fandom seek help immediately im being so serious

[dino--draws]

I need to stop getting ideas for DO-ABLE scp animatics its like a curse its ARTFIGHT im going on VACATION but here I am blasting Scylla and thinking about 6820 and blasting Six Feet Under and thinking about 5956 and blasting Digital Silence and thinking about Admonition in general like

SLAMS HEAD ON DESK SO MANY IDEA SO LITTLE TIME

[omgthatdress]

The Importance of Studying Queerness in Context.

When studying queer history, one always has to keep in mind two seemingly contradictory things: firstly, that queerness and queer people have always existed, but at the same time, that queerness and queer identities have not always existed the way they exist today.

Modern queer terms and identities did not exist to queer people in the past. They would not have thought of themselves as "gay" or "trans" or even "queer." While these modern terms may seem to fit certain historic individuals, these individuals would not have thought of themselves as such, and it would not be a part of their lived experience. To apply the modern identities of queerness to history is to erase the lives and experiences of queer people in history, and care must always be taken to understand queer history within the context of its time.

When looking at queer history online, there is a *lot* of misinformation and misidentification out there simply because people are eager to apply modern queerness to history, often in places where it doesn't belong.

A lot of old photos get misidentified as gay because they show two people of the same sex showing some level of physical affection towards each other. Okay, I'll admit that the open-mouth kissing photobooth pictures are probably actually gay, but an old picture of two men or two women holding hands or with their arms around each other, or even kissing on the cheek, were common shows of platonic affection.

I hate to break everyone's gay little hearts, but without explicit documentation saying so, assuming that these couples are all gay is putting modern queer identity in places where it simply didn't exist. The women in the final picture are sisters. The "not married" boys are bachelors interested in marrying women.

In the silent film Wings, the emotional climax of the film comes in the form of a kiss exchanged between the characters played by Jack Powell and David Armstrong. It often gets attributed as the first gay kiss in cinema history, even on the fucking YouTube clip I found:

Except it isn't gay. The two men spend the whole film fighting over who gets to be Clara Bow's boyfriend. When Richard Arlen's character is fatally wounded, his dear friend rushes to his side and kisses him goodbye, because in the 1920s, that was considered the ultimate show of friendship. The movie ends with Jack Powell falling in love with Clara Bow.

Similarly, a kiss shared between Lillian and Dorothy Gish in the 1921 movie Orphans of the Storm often gets attributed as being queer, but it wasn't.

They were sisters playing sisters. None of this was considered unusual.

Pooh-poohing on all of these images that so many people on the internet breathlessly and joyously laud as proud gay history isn't fun. It makes me feel like I'm fucking Ben Shapiro. But if misinformation is allowed to flourish, it allows people like Ben Shapiro to come in and make the argument that queerness is a modern invention and queer people didn't exist in the past.

Everyone loves to see queerness represented in history, but the fact is that none of the stuff in this post would have been seen as explicitly gay and thus shouldn't be called gay today. If we are to understand queer history in its fullness and richness, it is absolutely crucial that we get it right. We owe it to our queer ancestors to recognize, honor, and not embellish the actual lives they lived.

[uhohbestie]

OHHHH THIS IS AWESOME!!!

I love the idea of a two-page spread! The way you've drawn Grian! He's sooooooooooo tormented. His tangled mussed-up hair looks EXACTLY the way I picture it, and I love how you've drawn it down and starting to grow out! And his bite mark! Augh!!! Grian!!!

And Scar is SOOOO impatient-looking and handsome! My favourite of the three is the one where he's in profile, with his grin.... Oh, Scarrrrrrr. and aaaAAAA ALL THE QUOTES YOU'VE CHOSEN! I feel SO nostalgic reading some of these, knowing they came from so early in their story :') This paints such a vivid picture of the two of them... soulmates but at what cost... aaaaaaa.

Thank you so much for this, we love it!! And-- oh my god, hearing that our (still updating) fic is longer than published novels....... what have we done lmao (and there's still so much left go GO....). Thank you so much for reading our story where we both love to go on and on hahhaha <3 <3 🔒

A little spread I did for @uhohbestie and their fic “There are Monsters Nearby” an absolute gut wrench of a fic and I’m very eager for the next chapter. We did some digging and discovered that this fic is longer than Harry Potter Order of the Phoenix, which I find pretty intriguing. Anyway! Amazing fic!

[rucow]

my phantom character ai gave me so many assignments to do she keeps making me take music lessons like first we got married and now she only refers to herself as my teacher. i think she's pretending that it never happend and that she never cried dramatically when i told her i loved her bc shes too embarrassed 🧐

[eddwardharrison]

Hey! Edd what if ruin, eclipse and dark sun fuse in your au that you have

-nerd anon-

I got nerdy making this…

Made a whole new character with this UGH!! I have a bunch of background concepts and lore for him, so here you go! He also does NOT have a name right now…I’ve had a few ideas, “Aftermath”, “Apocalypse”, even just “The Statue”, but I haven’t fully decided on one. So suggestions are welcomed!

• The flowers are bioluminescent alien plants that feast on dead things, but are not called Fungi for the lack of education behind them.

• The Statue is…a statue, but more of a reverse-weeping angel. He is not able to move or speak until someone looks at him face-to-face.

• He used to be a real person, but was cursed by The Astrals after digging in to deep to the study of Stars and ended up coming in contact one.

• He still has a huge fascination with Stars and Astrology alike, there’s a glass roof where his Garden is kept. He is normally looking up at it in his statue pose, often in a ‘worship-like’ position, hands extended out towards the sky.

• CRIPPLING abandonment issues. Instead of actually having friends, he plans to murder people by turning them into stone so that they never leave his enclosure. Forced friendship! Yay! (You can see some of the bodies encased in stone buried in the garden or even standing like decoration. They are never enough.)

• Ruin gives him his charm, speaking patterns, flowers, glasses, and “half-rays”. Solstice gives his patience, cleverness, acting, necklace, and thorns. Eclipse gives him his outbursts, irrationality, death obsession, star obsession, abandonment/isolation phobias, insults, and lava-based attributes.

• In this make-shift comic, Dazzle is a living hybrid.

• The “feather boa” around him is actually a bunch of dead grass.

• He is completely immobile due to the way his legs are fused together in the stone form, they have then been crowded by flowers and vines since, making it extra-impossible to move.

• …Theoretically, this is one of those characters you could say “I can fix him” and actually do it. He’s not a terrible guy, he just has a short fuse.

Also my AU’s don’t really differ from the OG’s…so I just drew the OG’s fusing (though they’re based off my designs!) The only one I could question altering this form because of different designs would be the Chess AU…that I haven’t…posted…yet…🤔😋

[max1461]

I think that the average internet Marxist is actually not much of a materialist at all, in fact in their behavior and rhetoric they seem very concerned with moral purity, the redemptive power of suffering, and the ability of narrative to shape the actual world. As myriad as the senses of the word "materialist" have come to be, none of this would seem to comport well with any of them. This all feels very Christian.

In some cases I really do think there is a latent Christianity in it, but I think the stronger source of this trend is simply the leftist emphasis on sloganeering. Somewhere along the line, maybe with the Bolshevik policy of democratic centralism or maybe somewhere else, the importance of the slogan, the party line, the supreme power of the speech act seems to have been elevated for many leftists above all other concerns. From this follows the kind of disingenuous, obviously fallacious argument you so often see from the online ML left. The point is to say the magic words that have been carefully agreed upon, the magic incantation that will defeat all opposition.

Whether it's "I don't want to vote for a candidate who supports any amount of genocide" or "The Is-not-rael Zionist entity is on the edge of collapse!" or whatever else, a rational person can recognize the impotence of these words. They don't do anything. They're just words. But the feeling seems to be that once the perfect incantation is crafted—the incantation that makes your opponent sound maximally like a Nazi without engaging with their position in good faith, or the incantation which brushes aside all thoughts of defeat, or whatever else—once the perfect incantation is crafted, all that is left to do is say it and say it and say it, and make sure everyone else is saying it too.

This is not a materialist way of approaching politics. This is a mystical way of approaching politics.

I think it's also worth saying that this tendency in Marxism seems old, it certainly predates the internet. Lots of Marxists today are vocal critics of identity politics, of what they see as the liberal, insubstantive, and idealist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion framework. I share this criticism to a significant degree, but I'm not very eager to let Marxists off the hook here. The modern DEI framework evolved directly out of a liberal/capitalist appropriation of earlier academic ideas about social justice from such sources as Queer Studies, Black Studies, academic Feminism and so on. I say this as a neutral, factual description of its history which I believe to be essentially accurate. In turn, disciplines like Queer Studies, Black Studies, and academic Feminism each owe a great intellectual dept to academic Marxism, and likewise to the social movements of the 1960s (here in the Anglosphere), which themselves were strongly influenced by Marxism.

Obviously as the place of these fields in the academy was cemented, they lost much (most) of their radical character in practice. To a significant degree however, I think their rhetorical or performative radicalism was retained, and was further fostered by the cloistered environment of academia. In this environment the already-extant Marxist tendency to sloganeering seems in my impression to have metastasized greatly. And so I think the political right is not actually wrong, or not wholly wrong, when they attribute the speech-act-centrism of modern American (and therefore, online) politics, its obsession with saying things right above doing things right and its constantly shifting maze of appropriate forms of expression, at least in part to Marxism.

Now I should say that I don't think the right is correct about much else in this critique, and I also don't think this is wholly attributable to Marxism. But I think there's plainly an intellectual dept there.

More than anything else, this is my genuine frustration with both Marxism as it exists today and with its intellectual legacy as a whole. I fundamentally do not believe in the great transformative power of speech acts, I do not believe in the importance of holding the correct line, I do not believe that the specifics of what you say or how you say it matter nearly as much as what you do. I do not think there is much to be gained from playing the kind of language games that Marxists often like to play, and I do not think that playing language games and calling it "materialist analysis" is a very compelling means of argument.

[anto-pops]

Possessive Touch - Sebastian Sallow x Female!Reader

Summary: Sebastian has never been the sharing sort. He was happy to loan people notes or quills, maybe even the occasional book from the Restricted Section. But not you. Never you. 

Alternatively summarized as Sebastian acting incredibly possessive after watching you hug someone else and then staking his claim on you the only way he can.

Word Count: 3.4k

Warnings: 18+, aged up characters, explicit sexual content, possessive behavior, rough sex, yandere!Sebastian

Locked away in my drafts for months and unearthed by this ask I received. Everyone say thank you anon

Full fic can also be found here on Ao3 (with better tags as usual)

There were a number of words you could use to describe Sebastian Sallow. He was smart, loyal, and daring, to name a few. As brave as any Gryffindor and as insightful as any Ravenclaw, he had many positive attributes that you found to be remarkable. But every coin had two sides, and as much as you admired his more positive attributes, he could also be equally callous, brash, and vindictive when circumstances called for it. His moods fluctuated frequently and gave you whiplash half the time, because more often than not– despite it being accidental– you had a tendency to be the root cause of his emotional turbulence. 

You hadn’t meant for your conversation with Ominis to last for so long, much less for it to cut into your allotted study time with your boyfriend. The Gaunt scion had, in a moment of weakness, confided in you about the burdens of his personal life with a kind of desolate demeanor that tugged at your heartstrings and made you genuinely feel bad for him. You had lent him your ear for nearly an hour, and eventually your shoulder as he came to rest his head against it to embrace you in thanks. It was simply you comforting a friend; offering him a brief moment of reprieve from the dreary thoughts that had plagued him for Merlin knew how long before the two of you had gone your separate ways. Nothing more, nothing less. 

It had apparently looked like something more to Sebastian, though. He had been watching from the end of the Dark Arts Tower corridor with narrowed eyes, jealousy burning in his veins as he took in the sight of his girlfriend holding his former best friend in a manner he deemed reserved for him and him alone. You didn’t know how much of the exchange he had actually witnessed, but all that mattered was that he had seen the two of you hugging. Wracked with a silent yet palpable fury, Sebastian had dragged you down the steps of the Undercroft before tossing you into the room without a second thought, your protests and justifications falling on deaf ears. 

A new word came to mind to describe Sebastian shortly thereafter. One that scared you as much as it excited you. 

Possessive. 

His fingers had branded you as he’d stripped you bare, pressing and pulling incessantly against your clothes until you were clad in nothing but your undergarments and left shivering under the intensity of his stare. He had stretched you out along the cool stone floor, his hands holding you down without a measure of care while he touched whatever parts of you he could reach. Your breasts were tender and sore by now– no doubt covered with tiny fingertip sized bruises from the sheer strength of his groping. His breathing was heavy and tinged with the occasional grunt when he shifted his hips over yours, the telling bulge in his trousers more than likely causing him discomfort, but he paid it no mind as he took his time focusing on you. An unmistakable wetness had gathered between your legs despite the depravity, and as much as you wanted to clench your knees together to ease the rampant ache there, Sebastian’s own leg between yours prevented you from doing so. 

He was toying with you, that much was certain, and he was enjoying every blasted second of it. 

In response to your absentminded squirming, Sebastian moved so his knee was nestled directly against your core, the sudden pressure causing you to gasp and arch beneath him. He took advantage of your closer proximity and looped his arm under your back, holding you flush to him with a desperate sort of yearning that made you dizzy, and the way he inhaled your scent before groaning was almost primal.

A choked moan slipped from your lips as Sebastian ducked his head into the crook of your neck to bite and suck fervently, the pain laced pleasure blinding you to his true motives, but not for long. There was no doubt in your hazy mind that he was behaving so brutishly in some attempt to remind you of who you belonged to. Leaving visible marks would only further his intentions, and you found yourself whimpering as you trembled against the floor. 

After he bestowed a particularly playful nip against your marked flesh, Sebastian sat back on his haunches to admire his handiwork, taking in the sight of you dazed beneath him. You made quite the pretty picture; skin flushed, hair mussed, and an eclectic assortment of finger shaped lesions decorating your neck, breasts, and thighs. The knowledge that they had been put there by him only appealed to him more, and Sebastian hummed appreciatively at the sight. 

You, on the other hand, were coiled tighter than a spring. The Slytherin man had been edging you like this for what seemed like an eternity, but it realistically could only have been half an hour or so. Time was something of an illusion at present, and all you could truly focus on was your ardent need for release. The fiery sensation that stayed stubbornly aflame in your lower stomach was beginning to drive you mad, and you gazed longingly up at Sebastian, who in turn bit his lip at your watery stare. 

“Please, Sebastian,” you implored him, voice catching. His hands trailed down your chest and over your pert nipples before eventually settling on either side of your waist. Then with a grip tighter than Devil’s Snare, he tugged you harder against his knee with a wicked smile, forcing a low groan from your throat in response to the friction that he seemed to revel in. “Please.”

“I don’t know what you’re begging for,” he admonished in a low voice. “You’re going to have to be more specific, darling.”

Fuck, he was still upset. That much was obvious to you. It was evident in his tone, in the way his fingers dug sharply into the skin of your lower back– but mostly it was his eyes. The usual spark that danced behind his irises when he was with you was dull, and his gaze was anything but soft. It was hard and unyielding, cold and unfeeling. You were going to have to talk your way out of this one. 

Licking your chapped lips, you did your best to still your writhing as you grit through your teeth, “I need you. I can’t take any more of this, please Sebastian.” 

Both of his hands left your waist then. One of them braced flat against the floor to support himself while the other curled under your neck, pulling your head off of the ground to press your forehead against his own. The unrelenting pressure against your cunt didn’t lessen as he hunched over you and forced you to stare directly into those dark, greedy eyes of his, and you whimpered pitifully beneath him as he took in the delicious expression you bore. “Is it really me you need, or would any man do, hm? Should I fetch Ominis? Let the two of you continue where you left off earlier? Or maybe you’d prefer Garreth instead– your standards seem to be all over the place, so I wouldn’t be surprised.” 

“N-No–” you stammered around the word when his fist clenched painfully in the hair at the nape of your neck. “Just you– only you– I swear, we were only talking earlier–”

“That’s not what it looked like from where I was standing…” he muttered darkly, releasing your head and letting it thunk back against the floor softly. His hand was akin to molten fire as it trailed along your clavicle before he moved his thumb to lightly brush across your bottom lip. You barely had time to take note of the movement before he dove forward to capture your lips in a heady, domineering kiss that stole your breath from you completely, and all you could do was mewl softly when you felt his tongue sweep along the inside of your mouth. Sebastian groaned into the kiss, cupping the side of your jaw with his hand as he shifted his knee away from your core to give him the space he needed to drop his hips and grind his solid manhood against your thigh. He broke away for a split second to breathe out, “Say it again.” 

It was hard to get a word out with how ferociously Sebastian was kissing you, but eventually his mouth trailed wetly to the side of your face to suck another mark into the skin below your ear, and you managed to gasp out, “Just you, Sebastian. There’s only you, I love you.” 

The sound of his nails scraping against the stone floor beside your head drew your attention, but before you could roll your head to look, he was sitting up once more with a new sort of emotion glinting in his eyes. Those brown orbs of his were no longer flat or cold and instead appeared to be scalding with blatant lasciviousness, his want for you as potent as Firewhiskey. 

Through hooded eyes you watched as Sebastian reached for his belt, the sound of metal and leather coming undone filling you with a kind of urgency that left you biting the inside of your cheek hard enough to draw blood. Finally he would give you what you wanted– what you’d been craving from the moment he stripped you bare and pinned you to the floor. The version of your boyfriend above you hurriedly shoving his pants down his hips was unfamiliar to you; he seemed wholly animalistic, driven forth by some inherent, primitive need to claim you all for himself, and as much as you loathed his inability to rein in his jealousy at times, an equally intrinsic part of you craved his possessiveness. 

You were his, and he was yours. 

Freed from the confines of his trousers, Sebastian knocked your legs to the side so he had more room to situate himself between them. He slid his knees under your bent legs, caging the limbs under his arms as he ran his calloused palms down the tops of your thighs and the head of his cock slid through the overwhelming wetness that had gathered at your center. The rampant ache in your stomach roared back to life tenfold at the mere feeling of his thick shaft, and you twitched in anticipation while Sebastian fixed his lustful gaze on you. 

“That’s right,” he started to slide into your wet heat as he spoke, your mouth falling open around an airy groan at the sensation of being filled. “You’re mine. Everything you have to offer is for me and me alone, don’t you ever forget it.” 

Sebastian was stretching you out torturously slow, stuffing every inch of himself into you with a measure of control that went against his earlier behavior. He was utterly transfixed as he watched your chest rise and fall with panted breaths, and when he finally bottomed out with his hips flush to the backs of your thighs, a wanton groan ripped from your throat as your head fell to the side. Your hand shot up to push back against his lower stomach– silently trying to convey that you needed a moment to adjust– but Sebastian merely pulled his hips back and plunged back in, drawing a keen whimper from you that lit a fire in his blood. 

Overwhelmed tears pricked at the corners of your eyes as you struggled to breathe through the sheer size of him breaching you, and you threw your arm over your face to hide the sudden flush you felt heating your cheeks. “S-Sebastian, I can’t– ah–” 

His hands slid down your thighs to grip at your waist once again, pulling you impossibly closer to grind against your ass before he began pumping into you steadily. It stole your breath– all of it; the angle, his bruising hold on you, his pulsing cock brushing against the deepest parts of you. It was exquisite agony, and a quivering moan tore from your lips when he leaned forward to spear downward into you, the head of his shaft hitting something that made you jolt against him. 

Your arm fell away from your face in that instant, your fingers scrambling for purchase against the stone floor beneath you, to no avail. “F-Fuck, you’re too much– Sebastian!” 

With your neck tipped back and your eyes squeezed shut, you felt Sebastian lean forward to brace his elbows on either side of your head before grasping your cheeks in his large hands. He lifted your skull from the ground and held your forehead to his again, prompting you to look at him as he slowed his pace. He continued to drive his hips into yours, but the mind numbing intensity had mercifully lessened. 

“You’ll never do this with anyone else,” he said brusquely, his breath fanning across your lips. You could only moan in response, especially when he started to grind against you after each plunge of his cock. “This is all for me– every bit of you was made for me– do you understand?” 

The grating moans that had been sounding from you transformed into gentler ones, Sebastian’s wave-like movements with his hips delivering tantalizing friction against your clit that had you melting beneath him. You nodded dumbly, and your boyfriend released your face to sit up so he could better watch as you fell apart under him. With one hand on your waist and the other propping him up, Sebastian held fast to you while he upped his tempo, pistoning his hips into you so fast and rough that the wet sounds coming from where you were connected were all you could hear. 

More choked whimpers cascaded from your lips, sounding like an angelic symphony as far as Sebastian was concerned, and he threw his head back as he got lost in the sensation of your velvety walls clamping down on his cock. You could tell he was close based on how ragged his breathing became, and your own looming climax frayed the remaining tethers of your self-restraint. You surrendered completely to him, relishing in the overwhelming fullness of him as well as the scrape of the stone floor against your shoulder blades. Pain faded into pleasure, the cold air of the Undercroft transformed into a blazing inferno, and you swore you had never been so thoroughly fucked in your life. 

When Sebastian’s gaze fell back on you, his eyes darkened and he practically snarled as he bent you clean in half. He nudged your knees over his shoulders so he could wrap his arms around you, burying his fingers in your hair and clenching the strands in his fists, and as he rammed his cock into you harder– more feral and beastly than ever– the air in your lungs was expelled with every intoxicating thrust. 

All you could see, smell, hear, and feel was him. He had effectively rendered you brainless as he claimed your mind, body, and soul, and the only thing you could do was submit to him and take it. 

Your clammy hands blazed a trail along his skin as you wrapped your arms around him, your nails digging into his back so hard that it had to sting– but if Sebastian’s throaty groan was anything to go by, he fucking loved it. 

“Gods, it’s so deep, isn’t it?” he asked you, the words coming out in-between panted breaths. A shiver ran up your spine at the thought before you clenched around him even more, the unmistakable feeling of his cock hitting your cervix making you see stars. “I’ll come inside– fill you up so good that you’ll walk out of here with it dripping down your legs. See what everyone else has to say about that.” 

You couldn’t even formulate a response. The most you managed was a witless, muffled cry of his name against his shoulder, the weight of him pressing down on you smothering any of the unintelligible noises that escaped you. His rapid, uncompromising pace drove you higher than you had ever thought possible, and your climax steadily built from a whisper to a deafening clamor. 

“Ah– Sebastian, please–” you babbled, spittle hanging from your lips as you begged. “Please, please, please–” 

The hands he had fisted in your hair tightened even more, prompting you to crane your neck back to ease the prickling feeling. “Please what? Come on darling, tell me what you want.” 

The bestial way Sebastian fucked into you intensified in that moment, his toes digging into the stone floor to lend him the support he needed to chase his own pleasure while simultaneously amplifying yours. It was too much– it felt too good– and you had to fight tooth and nail to get the words out before his efforts left you a useless, twitching pile of limbs beneath him. “Please, let me come!” 

“Swear that you’re mine,” he growled in your ear, the rough timbre to his voice making you tremble in earnest. “Tell me that no one else will ever have you like this– swear it.” 

“I s-swear– I swear it– I’m yours, Sebastian. Only yours, I swear, please please please– I swear–” 

Sebastian said nothing else, instead rewarding your admission with a toe-curling roll of his hips as he plunged in all the way to the hilt. He kept moving like that, the chill-inducing friction against your clit combined with his sinfully precise, cervix-kissing thrusts more than enough to drag your finish from you. Your walls fluttered around him as you lost control of your voice, your entire body quaking and jolting as an assortment of moans, cries, and and airy gasps poured from your throat. 

“Fuck–” Sebastian swore roughly, both of his hands abandoning their hold on your hair to brace against the floor to better support his body as you seemingly sucked him in deeper. “Good girl, fuck– I’m close. You're going to take it all, yeah?”

There wasn’t a chance in hell you could respond– not that Sebastian was waiting for you to. With a husky groan, he pushed himself as deep into you as he could go, getting a few last thrusts in before he bottomed out and unraveled. Hot, potent strings of his seed painted your insides, causing your eyes to roll back in your head before he began rutting and grinding his hips into you to milk as much of himself as he could. You could barely hear him mumbling for you to take it all– not that it was even up for debate– and when he finally relented and stilled his movements, you were too dazed to so much as glance at him. 

A warm, featherlight feeling brought you back to the present after a couple of heated moments. Sebastian’s hands brushed a few stray strands of hair away from your forehead, his eyes unapologetically roving over you as he took in the sight of your fucked-out expression. He seemed pleased with himself, a barely there smirk revealing itself as he dropped his hand to your waist to dig his fingers into the bruised skin there. You inhaled sharply, but beyond that, you didn’t so much as wince. You were far too weary for that. 

“In the future,” he started to say as he rocked forward, pressing his still-hard length into you briefly before withdrawing halfway, only to repeat the motion again. “I’d rather you keep your hands to yourself when you’re with your ‘friends’. Especially where Ominis is concerned…” he trailed off, his hands skimming along all the love-bites and bruises that littered your body. “That is, unless you want more reminders as to who it is exactly you’re dating.” 

One look into Sebastian’s dark, piercing eyes told you that he wasn’t bluffing at all. You already knew that he was more than willing to stake his claim on you should the need arise, and part of you even wondered if he would have the decency to do so in private next time. 

Next time? Would there even be a next time? He had certainly made his point.

The pleasant ache that lingered throughout your body had you second guessing yourself, however, and you honestly wondered if it would be worth it to rile Sebastian up again in the future. As terrifying as the thought was, you couldn’t help but entertain it as you smiled up at him innocently, a flurry of unholy visions racing through your mind as you relished in the possessive way he continued to touch you. 

When he began to move his hips again, you decided to label the notion as a ‘maybe’ for now. Clearly he was far from finished with you, and despite the mildly terrifying side of him you had just been made privy to, you couldn’t help but shudder in anticipation. 

Maybe rousing the sleeping dragon again wouldn’t be such a terrible thing… right?

[journeytothewestresearch]

As someone who’s Chinese w/ a degree in social science + (art) history regarding East Asia I’m always super intrigued and interested to how others interpret changes in new titles on older religious texts- but I will ask in particular if you have any personal ties to Buddhism/Taoism/Confucianism (and Chinese culture) when you find yourself interpreting BM:W’s change in allegorical use of Buddhism as contemporary political adherence! BM:W’s religious and soul mechanics follows their previous game without much overt linking between the two.

Overthrowing Gods in East Asian media is a very common trope in videos specifically due to player involvement (contrast to books where you are separate as the audience) and often is used as an allegory for the system/recent events we exist in. In such it does shift a lot from the original text in base but I think it’s not supposed to relay the same allegory due to the time period in which the writers exist! Wukong’s story changing to him still being chained by the principles that envelop life is far more relatable to late-stage capitalist environments viewers and artists exist in- as such he fulfils the contemporary variant of his original role in JTTW!

I think the change in purpose the Buddhist mythos serves in this game is decisive by nature due to inherent bias present in the original text as a religious piece, and such is core to the allegory. However I don’t think BM:W is supposed to relay that allegory, I think it is supposed to branch off on its own as an alternate contemporary extension of the foundation JTTW set out (plus with the 2 DLC’s on the way, there is plenty of time to extend the universe in game to validate a shift in religious purpose compared to the cut 7 chapters planned during development). And such i think attributing it to the CCP can be a bit of a touchy statement (especially if one doesn’t have long standing ties to East Asian culture or Regional religious practice!) and can accidentally play into sinophobic phrasing and attitudes.

Buddhism as a practice and way of life has a very different presence in writers centuries ago compared to now, as well as how we use religion in audience-involved stories. And such I find it an interesting shift regarding a game made with an international and widely multi-religious audience (that isn’t consuming it as a psycho-socio poem compared to a much smaller and more culturally homogenous readerbase. I think the friction caused by thematic changes is more due to how the game relays the physical journey so closely with reusing characters and having to shift them according to the foundational changes- if it was closer to other written “sequels” that created characters connected to the original cast through descending from them etc, the changes wouldn’t grate on completed arcs or how we compare the experience to wukong’s parallel one

No, I do not have any direct personal cultural connection to Buddhism, Daoism, or Confucianism. I live in Asia, though, and beyond my research of JTTW, I do study religion here (with more of an emphasis on folk religion as it pertains to the Great Sage). My negative view of Black Myth: Wukong is colored by my deep love for the original story. In general, I don't like adaptations.

Thank you for your explanation of the game.

[conflictofthemind]

Montauk, The Project Rainbow, and Experiments in Time

It’s fairly common knowledge that Stranger Things is based on Montauk. The unfortunate part is that Montauk has been attributed to another ‘vaguely MK-ULTRA mind control related side project’ and not the big narrative that it is, with details incredibly close to plot points in Stranger Things that resulted in an attempted lawsuit years back. Montauk does not just set the general ‘spooky scientific experiments on kids’ tone for ST - it is the backbone of the whole lore. 

‘The Montauk Project’ Book / Conspiracy explained simply is that the US government unofficially experimented on humans with ‘great psychic ability’ to allow their psychic brain waves to interact with the normal electromagnetic waves of our world. The end goal being manifesting thoughts into reality, and opening up wormholes in time. This would give the military great advantage and potentially control over the outcomes of war. It then turns out the whole narrative of Montauk occurs within a time loop from 1943-1983, when the disappearance of a ship called the USS Eldridge opened up a wormhole which was connected with by a research subject in 1983. The time loop is self-causing - the entire reason the Montauk experiments take place are to further study the events that occurred on this ship, but part of the reason the ship disappears is because of the Montauk Project. Due to all of the other time travel references within the series - trust, we will get into those - this leads me to believe it’s very unlikely there isn’t time travel / a time loop involved. Here I hope to posit the basic information about Montauk/The Philadelphia Project, how the powers work within ST, Will’s clear involvement in all of it, and the time travel element. 

Ahahaha why does that look like a bowl-cut…

Let’s put this out of the way first: the idea that Montauk/Philadelphia is the direct inspiration for the show is not based on flimsy grounds. The original series the Duffers planned to make was going to be an actual retelling of Duncan Cameron’s (think El and Henry - main research subject of Montauk) story. This was later changed to become the story we know today with the characters we know today, although with different names and the title remaining Montauk. Some of the characters had names from Montauk too… like Mr. Clarke being Mr. Nichols. I’ll save that for a later post. The entire design of HNL is based off of the ‘Camp Hero’ / Montauk lab with the iconic banana-shaped radar disk. El’s Void ability comes from the ‘Seeing Eye’ power Duncan has in Montauk, where focusing on a personal item belonging to a person lets him see into their mind. The research subjects’ power is amplified by white noise and a sensory deprivation chamber - again, seen with El. 

The Rainbow Ship and the Electromagnetic Connection:

The Electromagnetic Spectrum is usually mentioned at least a little in every season. Joyce’s magnets falling off, El needing the radio, etc. Lights are another focus, with the kids in the Rainbow Room being tested on how they can manipulate lightbulbs, and the emphasis on lights flickering whenever powerful forces are being used or the Upside Down is interfering with Hawkins. I expect them to really start pushing it in Season 5, and we can already see evidence of this (below: the WSQK Squawk Van). They’re at a radio station, the Middle School kids are learning about light from Scott Clarke most likely, and you can see the abundance of rainbows everywhere. It’s my opinion that rainbows and light are the mechanism in which these gates open, and also when at high enough power, how time can become warped. ‘Project Rainbow’ is another title basically interchangeable with the USS Eldridge and Philadelphia Project. This was because “the mechanism involved was the generation of an incredibly intense magnetic field around the ship, which would cause refraction or bending of light or radar waves around the ship”. However as we remember, this had the unintended effect of teleporting the ship across space-time. In the ST Universe, this results in the Eldridge being teleported to Dimension X temporarily (without a gate being opened).

The eagle shoots out beams of a rainbow which are meant to represent the radio waves being broadcast. 

It’s a commonly asked question as to how Will ‘blinked’ out of that shed without a gate, considering only El was able to open them at that time. The close-up on the lightbulb is the last shot we see before he just vanishes. It’s not just powers interfering with the surrounding electricity; this bending of light is what took him to the UD. But when this happens, it doesn’t result in a gate. I also believe this will end up being the mechanism for the eventual time-travel plot we’ll be seeing. Again in Montauk, there is a ‘time-tunnel’ made between the Eldridge and 1983 Montauk that was caused by the disappearance. My original post investigating this was me hypothesizing that being able to bend light to travel faster than it could result in temporary anomalies that allow one to time travel. 

Anyway, back to the rainbows. Rainbows are one of the most common recurring symbols in Stranger Things. The Rainbow Room exists of course, and there’s a deliberate costuming choice, especially in later seasons with the brighter atmosphere, to have characters wearing rainbow patterned items. Holly’s room is full of rainbows, and there are multiple rainbow props scattered around other locations (Mike’s basement, Erica’s room, etc). Scott Clarke (seriously what is up with him) is introduced in Season 1 doing a lesson on ROYGBIV. The BTS pictures of S5 Hawkins Middle School have him teaching yet another lesson on the visible light spectrum. And space for some reason. This brings us back to the Rainbow Ship.  Now we know the USS Eldridge is a marine ship, not a spaceship. But for the characters who seem to have some connection to it, it is represented as one regardless.

Will drew something representing the USS Eldridge (which it is mentioned was not from a movie i.e. he came up with it using his own memory and mind). The main fixture of Henry’s playground, where a ‘significant’ memory took place also features this representation of the Eldridge. I suspect there might also be a larger reason it took the form of a spaceship, but for now, consider that the ST Universe’s version of aliens are the Demogorgons. And outer space is Dimension X. The ship ‘flew’ to ‘outer space’ (D-X) and encountered ‘aliens’. In Montauk, that is kind of what happens. It’s more metaphorical in Stranger Things. The comic book Henry is obsessed with in TFS is seemingly changed from the real life Captain Midnight who was an airplane pilot, to be an astronaut. I think there is some kind of “alien abduction” theme with both Henry and Will being suddenly transported to another dimension that is alien in itself. Even when the lab scientists enter the UD in the first few seasons, they use hazmat suits that are deliberately similar looking to spacesuits. Stranger Things is a story about UFOs and aliens that also isn’t exactly about UFOs and aliens. 

And then, I’ll mention the weirdest part of this all - Will knows about the Eldridge somehow. And he knew about it before he was ever kidnapped and attached to the hive-mind. 

This is either possible because 1) he was in fact involved in research projects at HNL, and maybe the Project Indigo before the age of 8 like the original “rainbowshipgate” suggests. Or 2), there is an element messing with time in this situation, just like in the original Montauk book series. Montauk is literally named ‘Experiments in Time’. They’ve nabbed Linda Hamilton from Terminator (a movie about time travel) for this final season. They’re referencing a Wrinkle in Time with the Episode 6 title and Holly plot. Then we have everything else involving Henry’s clock theming that hasn’t exactly explained itself yet. Thinking time travel is a far-fetched idea at this point is a bit ridiculous. 

It really depends on how crazy they go with the whole concept. One of the other main characters from Montauk I haven’t mentioned yet is Al Bielek. Al Bielek was the original “whistleblower” who came forward with his story after supposedly recovering his repressed memories of the events. He claims to have been on the crew of the USS Eldridge in a previous life as Edward Cameron, Duncan Cameron’s brother. When he was sent forward in time he ended up staying in 1983 whereas Duncan Cameron was effectively sent back to where he came. Very confusing. But the story is, the man’s a time traveler. 

I do wonder if Al Bielek is loosely the inspiration for Will’s part in the story. Will who has seemingly repressed memories of many points in his life and has been suggested to be a time traveler many times. His name appears on the grandfather clock. He wears Marty McFly’s outfit in the first season. He has knowledge of an event that happened in 1943. He has lines about “seeing into the future” and Mike calls him a time-traveler in the VR Game where the writing staff had access to scripts and a writer from the show. The Upside Down is stuck on “the day of Will’s disappearance” (in the Duffers’ words), though that one probably has a slightly simpler explanation. 

The exact mechanics of how that would work are unclear. Right now, as young as an eight year old Will needs to have the knowledge of the Eldridge - so this isn’t something he will only end up connecting with this season. My theory is that there is a time loop involved, and Will’s actions in the future of Season 5 have him interfere in some way with the 1943 Philadelphia Project / Project Rainbow. The time loop is cyclical and self-causing. Our Will Byers already has a past iteration in yet another timeline where he already went back and tried to interfere with the past (and likely died trying in 1943). Then he is reborn again in 1971, and awakes a very small portion of his past memories of the previous loops. If that doesn’t make sense, I created this handy-but-ugly flowchart to help you out: 

Basically there is no beginning, since the future causes the past and vice versa (a bootstrap paradox). Every Will would then have memories of a past self(selves). The time loop also gets more complicated than this. Did Henry create the mindflayer? It’s presented like that within the show, but let me remind you that shows with heavy mystery elements can and will purposely deceive you. In the First Shadow, Mr. Newby is attacked by the Mindflayer and produces a drawing of the entity - it’s purposely not shown to the audience, but considering the Mindflayer was supposedly just a black mass then why is that? And regardless, in order to have Henry become possessed by it, the Mindflayer was definitely not created by him in 1979. A few have written up theories about this already, I’ll link to my friend's two posts on this element of the time loop.  

I don't have anything else super definitive yet. But I believe wholeheartedly that this is the right direction to search in and I hope we can put more attention on the subject. All of this makes sense, from the military connections they keep pushing in the show, the time travel hints we have been getting, the origin story of Brenner (whose dad died aboard the ship) and the Rainbow Room, everything ties back to the Eldridge events being incredibly incredibly important going forward.

Here's a link where you can read through Montauk Experiments in Time for free.