#COCOON Protagonist

[octahedral-chaos]

OCTAfan's Odd/ Obscure Characters Tournament: Round 1 Part 2

COCOON Protagonist (COCOON) VS HoB Protagonist (HoB)

Quick Facts

HoB Protagonist

Of course, they're the protagonist of the game HoB, which was made by Runic Games.

HoB was Runic Games' third and final game before they shut down. It was released on 26th of September, 2017.

COCOON Protagonist

Also the Protagonist of their game.

COCOON was developed by Geometric Interactive and published by Annapurna Interactive. It was released on September 29th, 2023, and received praise for its unique "world-within-worlds" mechanic and stunning environments.

[w0rlds-within-w0rlds]

Replying to @orxnge-rxt, 💀

[Like what? It seems pretty safe in the bushes.] It thought with a head tilt, [I'm pretty hard to see in here, aren't I?]

With a somewhat grumpy chirp, they stood up, looking down at the (somewhat shorter) thylacine

[Who are you, and what are you?] It chirped, slightly shuffling, [I've never seen a being like you.] They proceeded to write "Geometer" in the dirt, before pointing to themselves.

[octafans-rp-hub]

◇Finally decided to start RPing again! Since the only thing that's really holding me back was... not being able to trim my posts using Xkit due to lack of time, so I decided to just use Tumblr's reblog trimmer in the meantime.◇

◇Also I'll might make the COCOON Protagonist RP blog soon, so be on the lookout, because there might actually be two COCOON muses...

[eyepatchdate]

>why is all my longfic rated t

>tones down violence on purpose while writing

[shomatoriashi]

01/14/25; 09:20pm

sylus x fem.reader

obligatory tags: @voidsylus | @milkandstarlight | @madam8

a horror film was playing on sylus’s t.v., and the atmosphere of it was making your heart pound with anxious beats. as the protagonist explored the dimly lit mansion, you became aware of all the shifting shadows and strange whispers surrounding you.

you remain stiff while settled on the couch next to sylus, making the onychinus leader smirk with delight at your every reaction. with his arm loosely wrapped around your shoulder, he could feel your body tense up at every loud bang and crash that played throughout the movie.

practically relishing in your adorable reactions, sylus leans closer to whisper in your ear, “anxious, are we?”

he lets out a low chuckle when you jump in response to his murmured question, with you shooting him a weak glare, “i-i’m fine.” with a cute pout painting your expression, you let out a huff while folding your arms across your chest, earning a sigh from him.

“you don’t have to pretend to be brave when i’m around.” wrapping an arm around your abdomen, sylus purposely settles you on his lap, cocooning you within his gentle embrace while settling his chin against the top of your head, “i don’t mind protecting you from all the scary things that go bump in the night.”

you shiver while basking in his warmth, using his thick arms to hide behind as the movie continued. while the protagonist stood in the middle of a hallway, he saw a door slowly creep open. sylus keeps his gaze glued to the screen while whispering in your ear, “close your eyes.”

letting out a tiny whimper, you turn slightly and hid the entirety of your face within his chest, keeping your eyes clenched shut. as the protagonist opens the door, sylus tightens his embrace around you as a bloodied ghost of the murdered bride appears before the hero, trying to claw at his skin. the confrontation goes on for a few more minutes, with the hero managing to escape from the ghost by jumping into the balcony.

throughout the entire scene, sylus keeps you pressed against him, and only when it was finished did he softly call out your name. “little dove, the coast is clear. you can open your eyes now.” he waits several seconds for your response, only to frown when he was met with silence.

“sweetie?” he slowly unfurls his arms around you, looking down to see your cheek pressed against his chest, your breathing soft and even as evidence at how you had fallen asleep. rich chuckles of amusement escapes from his parted lips, with sylus’s heart filling with the utmost adoration for you at the sight.

“how cute, you fell asleep on me.” wrapping his arms tightly around your body once more, sylus continues to envelope you with the warmth of his embrace, ignoring the movie as he found the sight of your sleeping face to be far more entertaining.

end notes: a short, fluffy drabble with sylus since i’ve been watching lots of horror lately, and would love to have sylus comfort me during all the scary parts 🥹 ♡

all stories are written by rei; please do not repost, plagiarize, or translate my works!!

[cthene]

Is Fox Mulder the most comically-brutalized protagonist in television history? Not only is he shot and beaten up on a regular basis, but the list of extreme and exotic injuries he accrues over the course of the series has got to be some kind of TV cop record. The man is mind-wiped by the military in only the second episode. For any other TV cop, that would be a career-defining event, but it’s just a day in the life of Agent Spooky.

Bro was cocooned by carnivorous insects, thrown out of a nuclear submarine into the Alaskan tundra by an alien bounty hunter, beaten up by an invisible gorilla. He was experimented on in a Siberian gulag, drowned in the Bermuda Triangle, tortured by Neo-Nazis. I wonder what getting Freaky Friday-ed by a malfunctioning UFO cloaking device does to your gonads. How much radiation has he been exposed to? Someone test this man’s hair follicles. How many mysterious bodily fluids has he dipped his finger in and tasted at crime scenes? Dear God, someone test him for HIV. Imagine being the FBI doctor who administers his physicals.

Remember when the Shadow Government was putting LSD in Mulder’s water tank? Our boy got blown up in an underground train car and resurrected in a Navajo healing ceremony, and that’s not even the last train car he would get blown up in. One time, his lungs were filled with mutated tobacco beetles. Hoss let a quack doctor give him ketamine and drill a hole in his goddamn skull. In an unrelated incident, he had a chunk of his brain stolen. He was locked in a padded cell, trapped inside of a video game, and— of course —abducted by aliens. Fox Mulder was fully dead, and then came back to life after being exhumed, and nobody even seemed that surprised when he rolled up at the J. Edgar Hoover building like nothing had happened.

Am I missing anything? How is this man still alive? His body must be like a pillowcase full of broken lightbulbs. Every time he moves, you just hear crunching.

[w0rlds-within-w0rlds]

Geometer just stares at Pokey, not even moving to even help him get out.

After a very, VERY long time of just staring, they chirped and thought to themselves, [I hope they can breathe underwater.] They then proceeded to ruffle their wings a bit, before giving an almost condensing huff of a chirp.

Rude.

@masterporky

♒, (from this RP meme: X)

~ @octafans-rp-hub, specifically for @w0rlds-within-w0rlds (Long time since I last RP'd with you!)

Pokey screams as he's pushed into the large body of water.

He doesn't swim to the surface, he just sinks.

[tikosblogg]

Scream..18+ (Winner)

*Pic from Pinterest*

Summary: Noah has been obsessed you with you from the minute he met you. So he decided to do something about it.

Warning: B&E, chasing, slight dubcon at first(DO NOT READ IF THAT TRIGGERS YOU), turns to full consent, smut, piv, unprotected sex, oral (F&M receiving), choking, dirty talk.

A/N: 13 cameras will be posted next because I already have half of it written!! Anyways plz enjoy 😉

The wind howled outside, rattling the old shutters of my home like a ghostly chorus. It was Halloween night, and while the neighborhood was alive with laughter and the sounds of trick-or-treaters, I found myself alone, comfortable in my solitude. As I settled onto the couch, the flickering light from my favorite horror movie cast eerie shadows on the walls. The protagonist's scream echoed in the back of my mind, but tonight, I felt safe, cocooned by the familiarity of my home.

Then, the phone rang.

I hesitated. Who is calling me this late?, glancing at the caller ID. No one. Just an unknown number. Curiosity pulled me in. "Hello?" I answered tentatively.

A low, distorted voice crackled through the line. "What’s your favorite scary movie?"

I huffed a quiet laugh, at the obvious prank call “Um, it’s probably ‘The Shining,’” I chuckled, deciding to entertain the mysterious caller. “What’s yours?” He chuckles darkly before answering.

“Nice choice. I bet you'd look pretty in the shower, just like Lia Beldam…I guess I’d say Halloween " he replies, the raspy tone sending a chill down my spine. I felt a strange mix of excitement and unease. "Who is this? This is getting a little creepy." After a few moments of silence, he finally spoke.

"Just Someone who's been watching you. And tonight, I couldn't resist calling to hear your voice." A sense of dread settled in my stomach. My heart raced as I tried to picture who this mysterious caller could be.

“I’m hanging up, you’re starting to freak me out.” I breathed, my hands started to shake uncontrollably. "Don't hang up." I froze as his voice turned hard, almost threatening. "I want to play a game. I'll be watching you, and you'll never know when I might show up. It's like your own personal horror movie."

I hung up instantly, my heart pounding as I set the phone aside. My mind raced with thoughts of that distorted voice, each word wrapping around me like a cold shroud. I tried to shake it off, pushing myself to focus on the movie, but it lost its charm amidst my rising anxiety. Why am I getting so worked up over this?

Time passed, and I decided I needed a hot shower to wash off the unsettling feelings. I stepped under the spray, the warmth enveloping me like a protective barrier. The familiar sound of droplets against the tub was comforting, and I closed my eyes, letting the water tumble me into a sense of relaxation.

Suddenly, a noise echoed through the house, ripping me from my peaceful thoughts. I froze, my heart racing as I strained to listen over the sound of the running water. There it was again—a loud thump. My breath quickened as I shut off the water and stepped out, grabbing a towel to wrap around me.

“Hello?” I called into the silence, but my voice shook with fear. I tiptoed towards the hallway, peering into the dark corners of my home. It was empty.

As I rounded the corner, my breath caught in my throat. There, standing in the dim light of the living room, was a figure cloaked in a black robe, their face hidden behind a white mask. My pulse thundered in my ears, and for a moment, time stood still.

“What the fuck!?” I screamed, my voice sharp with terror.

With a sudden movement, he lunged towards me. I spun around, adrenaline coursing through my veins as I sprinted toward my bedroom, heart pounding against my ribcage like a caged animal. I could hear his footsteps behind me—heavy and relentless, echoing like a death knell.

I barely reached my room, slamming the door shut just in time. As I fumbled for the lock, I could hear him banging against the door with a terrifying ferocity. Panic blurred my vision, and I felt a lump in my throat as I sprinted across the room.

I stumbled backward in horror as the door splintered under his assault. With one final push, it broke free, and he charged into the room, tackling me onto the bed.

The room spun as I landed, the weight of him pinning me down. I screamed, fighting against his grip, but it was futile—his strength overpowered me.

“Why are you doing this?” I cried, tears streaming down my cheeks. “Because I wanna hear you scream,” his familiar voice made me freeze. He reached forward, his gloved fingers wrapping around my throat.

My heart stopped at the tattoos that ran up his arms. The tattoos I’ve admired many times in the past. "Noah?” I whimpered. fear, confusion, and excitement running through my veins at once. “What the hell are you doing?" I gasped reaching up to tear off his mask.

His brown eyes darkened with intensity as he smiled, revealing a row of perfect white teeth. He was breath taking, but all I could focus on was why he was doing this. I met Noah a couple months ago, at a bar in town. We had exchanged numbers, and even hung out multiple times.

I had just started a new job, and became extremely overwhelmed. I eventually stopped texting him, and seeing him, not having time for a relationship. "I couldn't stay away any longer, Y/N," he said, his voice low and rough. "I've been watching you for months, fantasizing about this moment.”

I was shocked by my body's reaction to his words. I should have been terrified, kicked him out, even called the police, but my skin tingled with desire. Noah's eyes burned with a feral hunger as he traced a finger down my neck, sending shivers through me.

"I want you Y/N," he whispered, his hot breath caressing my face. “Let me have you.” He groaned, rutting his hips against mine softly. Before I could respond, his lips crashed down on mine, hungry and demanding. I moaned into his mouth, my body betraying my fear. His tongue danced with mine, and I tasted the sweet desperation for me on his lips.

His hands roamed over my body, his touch sending sparks through my veins. He yanked my towel open, exposing my naked flesh to his hungry gaze. His fingers traced my curves, making me arch into his touch. I could feel his dick pressing against my thigh, a reminder of the danger and excitement of the moment.

Before I could respond, his lips crashed down on mine, hungry and demanding. I moaned into his mouth, my body betraying my fear. His tongue danced with mine, and I tasted the sweetness of desire mixed with a hint of darkness.

Noah's hands roamed over my body, his touch sending sparks through my veins. He untied my towel, exposing my naked flesh to his hungry gaze. His fingers traced my curves, making me arch into his touch. I could feel his erection pressing against my thigh, a reminder of the danger and excitement of the moment.

"You want me Y/N?" he growled, his voice hoarse. "Tell me you want me, beg for it"

I nodded, unable to form words as his hand slid between my thighs, his fingers finding my wet slit. He stroked it slowly, building the tension until I was squirming beneath him.

"Please, Noah," I begged, my voice hoarse. "I need you." He chuckled, a dark, wicked sound, and slid himself down between my thighs. He pressed his tongue against the inside of knee, dragging up towards my throbbing core.

He ghosted his lips over my sensitive clit. His hot breath making me shiver. I ran my fingers through the top of his hair, gently tugging his head closer. He let out another low chuckle before finally licking up my soaked slit. “Oh fuck..”‘I whined breathless.

“You like that baby?” He grinned up at me, gently circling my clit with his finger, before pushing it inside of me. “Uh huh..” I whined, unable to form a coherent sentence. He leaned back in, sucking my clit into his mouth softly. He added a second finger, pumping them faster.

“Cum for me y/n, cum all over my fingers baby.” He groaned, flicking his tongue faster. “Fuck Noah…I’m gonna cum.” I moaned, my back arching from the mattress. “That’s right baby.” He mumbled, nipping at the insides of my thighs.

My whole body tensed as I finished, my walls clenching hard around his fingers. He groaned, fucking me through it. Once I came to, I sat up grabbing his face and pulling up towards me in a heated messy kiss. I flipped us around, straddling his thighs as he looked up at me in shock.

“My turn.” I smiled, kissing his lips softly. The white mask laying beside us caught my eye. He watched carefully as I reached over to retrieve it. “You wanna wear it?” He laughed gripping my hips, dragging my cunt over his hardened bulge.

I smiled running my hand through the side of his hair. “I want you to.” I whispered, my lips brushing his. His eyes shot up in surprise, a small smirk covering his lips. Without another word, I slipped the mask back over his head.

I kissed his lips over the mask, before pushing him down onto the mattress. I slid down his thighs, making myself comfy between them. I heard him groan as I kissed his dick through his pants. His hips bucked up as I continued teasing him.

“Please baby…I wanna feel your mouth.” I instantly gave in, not being able to wait any longer. I unbuttoned his jeans and freed his length, feeling it throb in my hand.

I stroked him slowly, enjoying the way his breath hitched beneath the mask. His dick was hot and hard, veins popping as I pumped my fist up and down. Pre-cum glistened at the tip, and I leaned down, to lick it off teasingly. The salty taste of him on my tongue made me moan, and I knew I had to take him into my mouth right then.

Lowering myself, I took the head of his cock between my lips, swirling my tongue around the smooth crown. His hips bucked off the bed, trying to fuck my mouth, but I held him firm, setting the pace. I wanted to drive him crazy, push him to the edge of sanity. My lips slid down his shaft, taking him deep, until I felt his pubic hair tickling my nose.

The sound of his muffled moans filled the room as I sucked and teased, using my tongue and the warmth of my mouth to drive him crazy. I could feel his thighs trembling, his control slipping away. His hands gripped my hair, as he slowly thrusted up into my mouth.

I softly squeezed the base before pulling off his dick with a pop, I teased the head with my tongue, swirling and flicking, before taking him back into the wet heat of my mouth. I looked up at him through the slits of the mask, as his hands fisted my hair tightly.

Before I could do anything else, he quickly jerked me up and flipped us over and slid himself down between my thighs. With one swift thrust, he filled me up. I cried out, my nails digging into his back as I felt every inch of his throbbing dick.

Noah pounded into me relentlessly, his tattoos a blur as he moved with primal urgency. His hands gripped my hips, leaving marks on my skin, a reminder of his possession. I matched his rhythm, meeting his savage thrusts with my own, our bodies becoming a tangle of sweat and pure animalistic need.

"You're so fucking tight, baby," he grunted, his hand coming up around my throat. "Whose pussy is this?” He grunted, not letting up. I whined, at the feeling of his dick stretching me out deliciously. “Yours…” He stared down at me through the mask, squeezing my throat tighter. “And don’t fucking forget it.”

His words ignited a fire within me, and I clawed at his back, urging him on. Each thrust pushing me closer to the edge. His fingers found my clit, and he rubbed it in perfect rhythm with his thrusts, sending me spiraling towards another release.

"You gonna cum baby?," he commanded, his voice a growl. "I can feel your pussy squeezing me." He groaned, laying his forehead against mine. I reached up, tearing the mask off for the second time tonight, desperate to feel his lips again. I felt my orgasm coming, as his tongue explored my mouth. He groaned fucking me harder. “Good fucking girl.”

His words sent me over the edge. I cried out his name as my orgasm ripped through me, my body shaking uncontrollably. He grunted above me, his body tensing as he filled me up with his hot cum.

As our breathing slowed, Noah collapsed onto the bed beside me. I turned to face him, my body still humming with pleasure. “Stay..” I whispered, lightly running my finger down the tattoo on his throat. He smiled, wrapping his arm around my waist, pulling me into him. “Of course…I’m not finished with you yet.”

[cherrrydragon]

➤ reading between the lines

← back to main masterlist

read it on ao3

SUMMARY ↳ Jason Todd loves nothing more than the sight of you with a book. The book's tension builds, your fingers gripping the pages a little tighter as the protagonist faces a crucial moment. You barely register the sound of the water shutting off or Jason stepping out of the bathroom. He stands in the doorway, towel slung low around his waist, shaking his head with an amused smirk. He slowly takes steps toward you, right up until his knees hit the mattress. He leans down, his arms coming to cage you. Finally, you really take notice of him. “Hi, Jay.” pairing: jason todd x fem!reader warnings: smut tags/notes: oral sex (fem receiving), domestic fluff, jason might be ooc sorry, lets just pretend its a less traumatized version of him wc: 2k

You think Jason has a thing for you and books.

You mean together, of course. Jason Todd’s affinity for literature is well known, and so is his affection for you. But you can see the way his lips curl up when he sees you curled up on the couch reading, wrapped in his favorite blanket.

The soft glow of the lamp casts a warm light over the room, highlighting the way Jason leans against the doorframe, his arms crossed, a smirk playing on his lips. He’s always been drawn to those quiet moments, watching you lose yourself in a world of words.

“Is that another tragic romance?” he teases, stepping further into the room. You glance up, catching his playful gaze.

“Not as tragic as your face.”

“Ouch,” he groans dramatically, clutching his chest. He falls onto you, plopping his full body weight and nearly crushing you. He buries his face in your neck and presses a chaste kiss there.

You huff and half-heartedly shove him away. “You’ll make me lose my place!”

“That’s why you should use those bookmarks I got you, honey.” He lifts his head, eyes sparkling with mischief. “

You roll your eyes but can’t help the smile tugging at your lips. “Bookmarks are for amateurs, Jay.” You gesture to the stack of books on the coffee table, a mixture of dog-eared pages and hastily folded corners.

He grimaces at the sight. “I should break up with you.”

“Who would read to you, then?”

He narrows his eyes at you. “Touché.” He presses a quick kiss to your lips and shifts so as to pull you into leaning on him. He wraps the blanket around both of you, plucking the book out of your hands in spite of your protests. “Can’t let you ruin this anymore. Lemme read to you, hm?”

You rest your head on his shoulder. “You can’t do it justice.”

“I’ve got the voice of a poet,” he retorts, arm wrapping around you. His voice is low, intimate and for your ears only. You move to rest on his chest so you can feel the way his chest rumbles as he speaks.

As he reads, you let your eyes drift shut, the sound of his voice becoming a soothing backdrop. Jason leans his down, pressing a light kiss on your head and effectively muffling his voice. Each word he reads intertwines with his heartbeat, spinning a cocoon of intimacy that cradles the both of you.

You notice the way he plops a bookmark on the page you were on just before you fall asleep.

“You’re killing me, honey,” Jason groans over the phone.

The smell of a home-cooked meal fills your apartment as you shoulder your phone. “Come home, then,” you chuckle.

“I swear I can smell it through the phone. Why’re you always cooking something good when I’m away, huh?”

You move to grab a pan. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t be away so much.”

“Gotta do my job, honey,” he sighs. “To keep my beautiful girlfriend safe so she can continue to spoil me with her delicious cooking.”

You laugh, stirring the simmering sauce. “It’s just pasta, Jay.”

“Yeah, but it’s your pasta. That makes it gourmet.”

You can’t help but smile at his praise. “Dork. I’ll save you a plate. Just don’t take too long, or I might eat it all.”

“Don’t you dare!” His voice rises in mock horror. “I’ll be home soon, I promise. Just a couple more things to wrap up. You got dessert for me?”

You scoff playfully. “Pick it up yourself. I’ve got a book to finish.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he drawls, then his tone softens. “I’ll get you your favorite. Only the best for my girl.”

You exchange sweet goodbyes before hanging up, the warmth of Jason’s words lingers in the air, wrapping around you like the blanket he often claims. You focus on the pasta simmering on the stove, the fragrant aroma filling the kitchen. Your mind drifts to Jason, as it does a lot, and you can’t keep the stupid grin of your face as you finish cooking.

After plating the pasta, you set the table, stealing glances at the clock as you wait for him to come home. You flip through the book, and allow yourself to get lost in the words. The minutes stretch, the kitchen filled with nothing but your muttered words as you read. You’re just about to take a distracted bite of your food when there’s knocks on the door, the specific pattern Jason went over with you.

Jason steps in, Red Hood helmets already off and perched under his arm, a bag carried by his other. You perk up, unable to suppress the smile that spreads across your face. He steps in, shaking off the remnants of his day, and his eyes light up at the sight of the table set for two. “You’re making me fall in love with you all over again, you know that?”

You laugh, stepping forward to meet him in a kiss. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he greets back one you separate. He places the bag on the table, the logo of your favorite sweets brand greeting you. “As promised.”

“You spoil me,” you hum happily, parroting his earlier words. “Everything go okay?”

Jason nods, pulling out your chair for you before taking his own seat. He grabs his fork with an eager shine in his eye that makes you snort. If there’s one thing you’ve learned about Jason, it’s that he loves to eat.

“Usual stuff.” He keeps it brief, for your sake. He doesn’t like you to hear about the stuff he deals with on patrol, once said, “pretty things like you shouldn’t worry about things like that.” Flattering, but it’s whatever.

“Dickhead mentioned this new bakery that opened up, though you might like it,” he mumbles, voice obscured by his chewing.

You smile. “Sure, let's make it a date.”

Jason goes on to mention little things about his day, and you do listen… at first. You love hearing Jason talk, and you love hearing about his day but… you also really wanna finish this book. It starts as subtle glances to the open pages. Then, it goes to skim reading while nodding along to his words. Now, you’re full on reading and have tuned him out. Whoops.

Jason pauses mid-sentence, a playful glint in his eye as he watches you. “Baby.”

“Hm?”

“Are you even listening to me?” he asks, smirking.

You look up, feigning innocence. “Of course. You just mentioned the arcade you went to with Roy.”

He raises a brow and you know he doesn’t believe you. Damn detective skills. If he feels any type of way because of it he lets it go and continues talking. This time you do better to try and pay attention, but when he leaves to go to the bathroom your eyes wander right back onto the pages.

“You’re killing me again, honey.” Shit, he came back fast. To his credit he doesn’t look annoyed, just fond. Still, you feel guilty.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” you groan, shutting the book and throwing it across the room. Miraculously, it lands on the couch.

Jason raises a brow. “Nice throw.”

“Jay,” you whine. He snorts and comes around you, laying a hand comfortingly on your shoulder. “It’s so good. You’ll love it when I finish.”

“I’m not mad, honey.” He leans down and presses a kiss against your forehead, whispering, “Besides, I think it’s hot.”

You blink, watching him sit back down as if he said nothing at all. Well, that’s probably all you’re going to get out of him about it.

You are one of the many people guilty of not knowing when to put down a good read.

In your defense, however, it’s not bedtime yet. Bedtime is whenever you and Jason are in bed, and he still has to shower. Until then, you’re content to let him take his time, as you’re completely taken by your book. The gentle hum of the water running in the background almost becomes white noise to the whirlwind of words in your head.

The book's tension builds, your fingers gripping the pages a little tighter as the protagonist faces a crucial moment. You barely register the sound of the water shutting off or Jason stepping out of the bathroom. He stands in the doorway, towel slung low around his waist, shaking his head with an amused smirk.

He slowly takes steps toward you, right up until his knees hit the mattress. He leans down, his arms coming to cage you. Finally, you really take notice of him. “Hi, Jay.”

“Hi, honey.” His eyes sparkle with amusement as he takes you in. He smooches your cheek before his hands come to grasp at your hips, pulling you to sit at the edge of the bed. You don’t break your focus from your book (if we’re being honest, you’re kind of used to it…)

He knees at your shared bed and spreads your legs. You don’t pay too much mind, even when the feeling of your underwear sliding down your legs sends a familiar shiver down your spine. It is only when a hot wet feel slides against your core that you’re snapped back into reality.

Your body reacts instinctively, squeezing your thighs around Jason’s head. “Jay!” you yelp.

He responds with a hum that sends a buzz through your body. His hands massage your skin as he kisses around your thighs. Your heartbeat picks up and your chest starts to heave. Your fingers tremble around the pages.

A hand leaves your pressure book to grip Jason’s hair. Your hips begin to rock against his face. Your breathing becomes more labored. His thumb begins to swirl your clit, stimulating you to your very core. The room around you fades away, leaving only the rising tension in your body. 

Jason's hands move up your thighs, his fingers digging gently into your skin as he holds you in place. His tongue darts in and out, teasing you with gentle licks and soft kisses. You moan, your head falling back against the bed as you give in to the pleasure.

Suddenly, the book slips from your fingers, falling to the floor with a soft thud. You don't even notice, too caught up in the sensations coursing through your body. Jason’s hands pull you impossibly closer, caught up in your pleasure.

"Jason," you moan, voice laced with desire.

It seems that your voice sets him off, because his tongue starts moving faster along with his fingers to bring you to your peak. Your body trembles, and your hips rock against his face, seeking more of the pleasure he's giving you. Your toes curl, back arching against the bed as your moans get louder and louder.

White fills your vision, mouth falling open as a final whine leaves your lips. You take deep breaths as you come down from your high, thighs twitching. Jason’s eyes meet yours, slowly rising from his knees to meet you. His lips brush against yours in a gentle manner. You feel yourself melt once again, your body aligning itself with him.

“Good?” he mumbles against your lips.

“Good,” you affirm, breathing him in.

“Good,” he nods, breaking away from the kiss, before meeting you back for more. You smile against him as the two of you exchange chaste kisses. Your legs fall open to welcome him closer. You whimper at the feel of his bulge against you.

“Jay,” you moan, grinding against him.

You feel his smirk. “Yeah?”

“Please…” He’s only wearing a towel, all you have to do is hook a finger around it and pull…

You’ve never felt such disappointment like when he pulls away from you, tightening the towel. He bends down, picking up your forgotten book, and strolling out of the room.

“Wh- Jay!”

“You said I’d like it, might as well start now. Who knows when you’ll put this thing down again,” he calls from the hallway.

“Jason!”

“This is payback!”

notes: kinda hate this but what can ya do 🔥

[octahedral-chaos]

OCTAfan's Odd/ Obscure Characters Tournament: Round 2 Part 1

Light Being (Everhood) VS COCOON Protagonist (COCOON)

Quick Facts

Light Being

One of the bosses from Everhood.

Everhood is a psychedelic Rhythm-RPG developed by Chris Nordgren and Jordi Roca, published by Foreign Gnomes and Surefire.Games and released on March 4th, 2021.

COCOON Protagonist

COCOON was developed by Geometric Interactive and published by Annapurna Interactive.

It was released on September 29th, 2023, and received praise for its unique "world-within-worlds" mechanic and stunning environments.

[w0rlds-within-w0rlds]

WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS

An independent RP and Ask blog for the Protagonist of the game COCOON (2023). May contain spoilers for the game, body horror and potential flashing lights/ eyestrain.

Crossover and OC friendly

Iconless friendly, even thought I may use icons

Slight Canon divergence

Follows/ Interacts from @octahedral-chaos

[Muse] [Mun] [Rules/ Dni] [Other RP blogs] [Tags]

[octafans-rp-hub]

◇Here's some potential muses that I might rp as:◇

Melodrama, my Mad Rat Dead- inspired thunder manifestation oc

My Pari oc, Thrill

Unnamed Mesuline oc and their shadow being friend (Might make a multimuse blog for them, along with Melodrama and Thrill)

COCOON protagonist

Hunter and maybe Eagle Mother from The Pathless

[shimaen]

Sy shizun au

Sy transmitting as a random rogue cultivator many years before the protagonist is even born.

He starts looking for the protagonist but in the way he finds a homeless child that just looks like him, they are not the exact same, but they could easily pass as family. He ends up helping out this child, he felt strangely attached to him, bringing him to his lil cabin near a forest, one of his many hidden safe zones.

The child, Sj, comes in a package with his older brother? Yqy. The 3 of them don't start as teacher and students, much less a parental figure, Sy is not a child, but he must be just 5 or 6 years older than them, but Sy becomes a safe space, he provides them with basic necessities and more.

They grow up respecting him, and he teaches them what he knows, and could be useful. Thing is, the system determines that his work in that era is done, and needs to send Sy to fix the next problem, so one day, 4 years later after meeting his 2 lil gremlins, he goes into the forest, just a normal fauna and flora exploration for Sy, he goes alone with almost nothing, after all he is not going far, they all know this.

But Sy doesn't come back.

They wait until midnight

They are still searching by sunrise

They are losing hope after a week

They think that he must have abandoned them, it was too good to be true, but it still doesn't makes sense, Sy left most of his stuff in their little cabin, all his money, his sword, his trinkets, his fan. If he abandoned them, why did he leave all his stuff too?

They don't want to think that he may have died. It isn't fair. They would prefer that Sy just abandoned them, but they know (they hope) that Sy isn't like that. Years pass, and the plot somehow reconnects, Sj becomes a peak lord, and Yqy the sect leader, they gave up searching a long time ago and just accepted the most probable "truth" Lbh enters the story, and in one of his night hunts, he separates from the group.

He ends up in a section of the forest that looks a bit wilder, somehow more mystical. He reaches a big tree, ancient looking, it almost looks alive, and in the middle of it, there is this crystal, ancient amber filled and pumping with energy, maybe the beating heart of the forest? And there is something in the middle, a figure seemingly sleeping, it looks like his shizun, but not quite, maybe a bit younger, even Lbh doesn't realize until he has his hand pressed against the crystal, blood from his earlier wounds accidentally smeared against the amber, and the figure opens its eyes.

Haha funny au Lbh helps a really confused and out of it Sy out of his amber cocoon and brings Sy to the were they were staying just to discover that his teammates went back to the sect without him So imagine the shock of an Sj that was going to look for his student when he Sees this child carrying a full adult that seems to be unconscious, he was going to scold lbh when he actually sees the face of the man, and it feels like time stopped

[f0urz0mbyz]

꙰ 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘭'𝘴 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘸 (Ronin 'Good' End Oneshot)

You did what had to be done, didn't you? *+:｡.｡　☆　｡.｡:+**+:｡.｡　☆　｡.｡:+**+:｡.｡　☆　｡.｡:+*

Ronin made me do it.

It was such an easy escape. Ronin made me do it. It wasn’t a lie, was it? In the moment, you could feel transparent hands guide yours to Ronin’s. The hands helped yours grip around the knife. Phantom whispers danced in your head, pushing you forward. 

‘Stab me, darling. It would be so easy, so quick. It’s not like I’m the Devil, after all.’ 

Your hands trembled as you responded to the hell-bent Angel.

Ronin made me do it.

The Butcher smiled at you through crazed laughs when you had fallen for his spell. Your first kiss as lovers was poison. It tasted of metal, love, death and decay. When you love the rot, it eventually infects you. 

‘Consider this a courtesy. I’m going to kill you.’

The harsh pink text floated in your vision as your thoughts drifted. She was going to kill you, sending you to join the rot. The distinct pop of white pulled you back to your screen. An exclamation point next to a name that could not be active; goreboy, the recently deceased. Your hands shook as you scrolled through the messages. The decay started to root as you conversed with the remnant left behind. A remnant left to torment you after you had fallen for the rot‘s allure. 

You are predictable, after all. 

As hours floated out of your mind, the thoughts of Ronin didn’t. The pressure of hands would be felt on your shoulders, the whispering voice of teasing comfort flowing into your mind. You played along perfectly, Darling. He had said it himself to you and Angel. You were to be his ‘Make-A-Murderer’. His work of art, his muse. He had given you everything you ever wanted and he would be getting his reward. With everything given, something must be taken.

Ronin gave you his time, his attention. He gave you a muse, a perfect protagonist, a lover. Now it was his turn. He had been given his perfect little serial killer, a lover, and now he was going to claim what was left. 

At least, that’s what the decay desired. In the corner of your eye, in the reflection of your mirrors, he was always there. Angel never came, and soon, you never left. Your single-home became the home of two; the decay and the rot. He was always with you cooing from the dark corners of your mind; watching and whispering from the shadows. Your bed became your safe space, curling into a safe cocoon. He wouldn’t bother you here in the warmth of safety. 

Unfortunately, no fortress lasts forever. Eventually, small cracks form that can be exploited. His false weight on the bed shifted the cocoon, destroying the safety. His hands crept up to your face, bringing your attention to the apparition in your bed. 

I gave you everything you could ever want. Now, we can have that forever. Aren’t you happy, Darling? 

Ronin leaned forward, cold lips placing themselves against your own. The final kiss of a couple should be filled with sadness of departure and nostalgia. This wasn’t the end, it would be a new beginning. In this, the rot of the first kiss had strengthened. Venom and suffocating love consumed your senses. He hadn’t lied to you. You had gotten everything you wanted. Love, a great story, and now, you’d have a fantastical ending. However, there was one thing he had lied about. 

He truly was,

The Devil.

~ a one shot by f0ur-zombyz

[thewertsearch]

Just as it's up to you to face the decision to claim immortality before you enter your creation.

A classic perk of godhood - and one I considered to be an Ultimate Reward candidate, back in Act 4.

Hopefully it's a flavor of immortality that still lets you age. If Vriska's to be believed, then Sburb wants to be played by adolescents - but they don't need to be kids forever, do they?

TT: Are you saying I will? No. […] TT: Maybe this question will suit you better. TT: Is it probable? That's a strange question to ask someone who is omniscient and therefore knows outcomes with one hundred percent certainty. […] You have exactly a fifty percent chance of ascending to the god tier.

A non-binary probability? From an omniscient being?

That doesn't... that makes no....

Alright, screw it. I'll nerd-snipe myself on this one.

First of all - is Scratch taking doomed timelines into account? Because one way to interpret this statement is that exactly 50% of all timelines will feature Rose's God Tier ascension. If so, this is a functionally useless statement, as we don't know which category the Alpha Timeline falls into.

Another, more interesting interpretation arises if we assume Scratch is only referring to the Alpha Timeline - or, more accurately, the Alpha Timelines.

The whole point of the Scratch is to create another instance of the kids' session - one which can't be doomed, because that would render the whole endeavor pointless. Therefore, there's about to be a second non-doomed timeline in play, with a second Rose Lalonde.

If there are two Alpha Roses, and if 'Alpha Rose' has a 50% chance of ascending, then it sounds like only one Rose will ascend. Either our Rose will become a god, or the next Rose will.

Because, much like the decisions you must face to complete your dual suicide missions, you have two ways of achieving godhood to choose from. […] TT: By dying on the Quest Bed on my planet, and some other way? Yes. TT: Is there another Quest Bed somewhere? Yes. Good guess, Seer.

Aradia’s Time Slab, in Derse, functioned as a backup Quest Cocoon. Her ascension raised a lot of questions, and hopefully we're about to get some answers.

Notably, the Time Slab was able to ascend Aradia's dream self, long after her original body was lost. Can it only solo-ascend dream selves, or could Jade use one to ascend without Jadesprite? Could Rose use one, even after her dream self is consumed by the Tumor?

Also, why is this mechanic hidden from the Players? Is it even an intended feature of the game? I have to assume you're not supposed to learn about it from a corrupted First Guardian. The trolls completed the entire game, and none of them seemed aware of it - so when do you learn about it? What's it for?

TT: Where? What difference does it make? You already know where the first one is. You have the choice to go there right now and take your own life.

You have the choice, but it’s obviously not that simple.

'Logically', every player 'should' God Tier as soon as they learn it's possible - but we're dealing with people here, not ratfic protagonists. It’s not easy to go through with something like this, even when you know it’s exclusively beneficial.

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.