#I don't play so idk if that would be exploitable or something

[runimanio]

They should make a Wendigomon card in the TCG that deletes a tamer on the board when it's played by evolution as a reference to Survive

[lullabyes22-blog]

Real talk because you are THE resident Silco expert and all your headcanons are 100% correct: why does fandom think Silco would be good in bed? (Or good at sex at all?)

I've seen headcanons about him being a giver, and about his dick game being fire, and while he's a sexy, charismatic man, I feel like he's too... selfish, insecure, and just not a romantic guy. He's also a very bitter, lonely, and angry dude. Idk, it makes sense he would have some kinks but I feel like he'd be too much of a bitch to care for anyone else in bed. I guess he'd want it rough, and I've read some fics where he's a sadist, but I feel like it'd just be a quick fuck to satisfy himself, not a slow, passionate, sensual thing.

idk, do with this what you will.

I agree - with nuance 💗

Silco - at least as I write him in FNF - is principally a headfuck. If he's demonstrating an interest in you, then he wants something from you. If he's nice to you, there's a bottom line. No act of generosity comes without strings attached, and every small kindness comes at a terrible price. That aspect of cold-blooded calculus is never far away from his base nature, which splits the world into assets and liabilities, and his own actions into a transaction of cost versus reward.

With that in mind, he excels, not at sex, but at getting his partners to do what he wants them to do. For him, it's one of the many fluid ways of expressing power, and demonstrating his mastery over the subtleties of the human body and mind.

A few readers have noticed that he comes across as very detached and controlled during FnF's sex scenes - and that they read as weirdly voyeuristic. That always delights me, because it's an intentional choice. He doesn't really see his partner as anything beyond a medium to his goals, so his focus is entirely on their physical responses and his own actions. His narration is distant, observational and impersonal, because he doesn't experience sex as something that involves an emotional or empathetic connection. Rather, he's gauging how his target's responses play out on a physical plane, and he's calibrating his own actions to maximise their impact.

To give credit where credit is due, he's very intelligent, patient and observant. There is also some realistic backing to the running gag that Good D is invariably attached to Bad Men. More specifically, Bad Broke Men. Silco has not grown up in a position of privilege or wealth. He has been forced to make use of every available resource. He has survived by the skin of his teeth on a constant knife edge of deprivation, hunger and fear.

He's a scrapper. He's a survivor. He's an opportunist.

And to be any of those things, you need to know your way around people: their wants and weaknesses. That's the foundation for the idea that he's good in bed - that he can anticipate his partner's desires, and respond accordingly. The difference is, his actions have no romantic underpinning. It's a matter of pure pragmatism and self-interest.

In terms of technical skill, he's likely very good at finding his partner's pressure points, both literal and figurative, and exploiting them. But if it were up to him, he'd find a way to turn the thumbscrews with nothing more than a well-chosen word and a cold look. The sex is just a generality, and his enjoyment a function of their compliance.

When it comes to actual intimacy?

My friends, he'd be spectacularly bad.

Not just bad, but skittish, hostile and hopelessly inept. He'd feel like an accomplished stage actor who has to step out onto the boards for an improv class. He hasn't got the right lines, he isn't dressed for the part, and he isn't even sure what role he's supposed to be playing. He'd be so awkward, he'd actually have trouble looking his partner in the eyes. The sum total of his sexual ouvre would devolve into the following comedy of errors:

"What the fuck is this?"

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Don't touch me there."

"This is going well, right?"

"Why can't I get it up?"

"I can't do this."

"Leave me alone."

"Where are you going?"

"Don't leave me."

"They always leave me."

"Why does everyone leave me?"

And he'd only spiral deeper into self-loathing and isolation. To submit to intimacy is to open oneself up to the mortifying ordeal of being known, and the constant risk of rejection. To Silco, it is anathema. Actual emotional vulnerability during sex would be not unlike attending his own public execution.

But.

Silco is not a one-note villain, much less a one-trick pony. He has a human history riven in deprivation, bloodshed and betrayal. He's remade himself from a 'weak' man into the premier kingpin of Zaun, but that predatory bracing still hides remnants of the soft-natured idealist he once was. In fact, he's the product of a deeply embedded internal conflict between two distinct versions of himself. The one who seeks to burn his enemies, and the one who seeks to save his city. He's also, as demonstrated by his love for Jinx, capable of profound devotion, loyalty, and a deep-seated longing for companionship.

That means the potential for romance exists. It's just buried deep, deep, deep down beneath years of abuse, neglect, trauma, and self-imposed barriers. If he meets someone who can dismantle those barriers, or bypass them altogether and earn his trust, there is a ray of hope.

Sex would still be frightening and uncomfortable, and it'd involve a lot of trial and error. But it'd also have the potential to be deeply healing. Not because Silco would become a better man, but because his partner would make him want to try. He'd also bring the same intense focus, intelligence, and determination to the task that he applies to his criminal empire - which means that, once he does have his sea legs, Silco would have the potential to become a truly giving lover.

It's all about context.

And the context is always: will he take the gamble when he has nothing to lose, and everything to gain?

[withlove-xixi]

— LAIOS NSFW THOUGHTS: laios x reader

ᥫ cw: nsfw, petplay, dom/sub, praise ★ laios appeals to me w the many possible sexual exploits he could be into #tbh — MINORS DNI! —

im sorry, i cant get it off my head .. he'd ... be really into petplay i think. he wouldn't be too ashamed of it too, in fact he's be pretty eager about it. he'd be on all fours and you could already see the imaginary tail eagerly wagging from behind him, and its endearing really. laios would love it if you pet his head or scratched his belly or even just combing through his hair. he wouldn't be against wearing a collar or some ears and a tail to complete the look (though i don't think he'd like being caged or leashed so much. something about feeling constricted too much freaks him out)

he's got that dog in him, what can he say?

oh he would absolutely melt too with praise. anything to let him know he's doing a good job, that you're feeling as good as he is. he loves it, before anything, it's reassurance, a sign to keep going or to change his pace/angle. he knows he's not the best at reading people, so something as simple as telling him how good it feels is enough to keep him going and going. though, immediately after reassurance, it's the unexplainable twist in his gut when you tell him these things. he just loves being called a good boy. argue what you want about if he'd growl or if he's whimper because the correct answer is he'd do both. i dont think he's particularly noisy in bed, but definitely he will make noise and when he does it's so obvious because he's just so loud. it's a bit jarring sometimes because he could be almost silent, save for deep breaths and pants, and suddenly a canine-like growl or whimper would escape his lips.

i like to think he's more or less quiet because he's just too focused on the act. any noise that slips out is simply primal response, written in laios' dna to respond so instinctively.

he's like petnames too! he finds a certain intimacy in the act. he loves calling you by them too, though they're quite unorthodox, things like "my wildflower" or "cheesecake" (since it's his favorite food!) he's definitely tried to call you by a monster's name ... and as sweet as the sentiment was, it wasn't something that lasted too long.

ohhh and back to petplay, laios loves being called "puppy". it's cute and honestly, he kind of is one, is he not?

i think laios can be a bit too excited sometimes too. it's easy for him to get carried away with things he wants to try or do, so you'd have to repeatedly ground him back to what's happening or what's reasonable. though it's not always a verbal cue. you could kiss him gently or pat his arm and he'd get the message, he'd slow down and give you time to breathe and stuff.

idk i think laios is a really sweet guy. similar to my falin nsfw thoughts, as much as he wants to try these new things, it's more out of curiosity and comes from a certain air of innocence. a lot of those things are new therefore something he must try lol. its endearing, it really is. but like his sister, i think he can be a bit timid about it. if he mulls it over too much, he'd end up shyly asking you about it, if it were something you were comfortable with or something you wanted to try. otherwise, he'd be asking you pretty directly, something straight to the point and along the lines of "i want to do this". that being said, i think laios could easily be coerced into trying things. you dont even need to bat your lashes or plead, if you play your cards right, you could instantly spark his curiosity and get him ready to take of his clothes.

oh but laios .. wouldnt be the best at aftercare. dont get me wrong, he tries his best, but somehow he feels a bit lost on what to do. on instinct he goes on autopilot, picking up clothes from the ground, handing you yours, getting dressed and preparing to sleep. but something sweet he does is talk to you though he'd do that regardless of sex. just something short and sweet before you go to bed, in a way, its his way of showing his love and care for you. he listens to what you have to say, he tells you something in return and then its off to bed with you both. it's nice especially if you two have finished doing something nasty, it's a slice of domesticity after something that feels so carnal and it's truly heartwarming.

[old-fandom]

HELLO! I HAVE AN ESTABLISHED TEEN STANCEST IDEA!

Idk what I would call this but basically, it's "Ford is part of a DD&MD group with a bunch of other asshole losers who basically use Ford for his basement and Stan is the stupid but hot twin brother that the guys all talk made shit about both sexually and bullying wise. Ford is pissed about it."

Basically, Ford is invited into a group at high school with a bunch of other outcast losers who decide to let Ford join because he has a basement they can use to play. They used the play at another guys house but their mom kicked them out after they broke one of her coffee tables wrestling over a dice roll. Ford, for the first time, finally has a group of guys that he could call his friends. These "friends" are assholes. They're comic book snobs and misogynistic white knights and anti-deodorant wearing teenager boys. Think incel but less "I want to kill women" and more "I am smarter than everyone here due to my impressive and ultra rare card binder and everyone else is a poser if you don't know this trivia fact!" But none the less, Ford is accepted into the fold. He's able to actually play the game, or at least, be DM, which he doesn't mind! In fact, he likes being in charge. He's still a little shy but he's slowly cracking out of his shell, being less cagey and more open with jabbing back at the others taunts and even being able to continue the flow of conversation effortlessly. He's able to be nerdly aggressive where his threats, his taunts, his nerdy accomplishments that aren't academic are recognized and envied over. It kind of works for the group and Ford is happy.

Except for one thing.

They all have a thing for Stanley.

And Ford hates that they have a thing for Stanley.

Stanley is perfectly happy with Ford having a friend group, especially one that lets him nerd out to the max. He usually doesn't bother them when they're over, either because he doesn't want to be around that much nerdiness or because the smell shuns him away. But this doesn't mean he hasn't gone down there before.

The first time he went down there, it was to tell Ford that Ma wanted him to take a look at the telephone before he went to bed. She thinks one of the wires is loose again and he might need to fix it. Ford says he will and Stan leaves. That's when the comments start up.

They start jaunting about his wit, asking Ford what it's like to have a dumb jock for a brother. Ford defends Stan, saying he's more than just a dumb jock. In fact, he's not really a jock at all, he just likes boxing. But it doesn't stop the conversation. They start sharing stories about Stans exploits around school, whether it be one of his infamous fights with the Cramplter gang or him being so atrociously stupid in class that the teacher walked out. It finally breaks off once someone rolls a Nat 20 and the campaign continues.

But it doesn't stop completely.

Every time Stanly comes down for something, either to tell Ford something, bring the group snacks that their Ma made for them (swiping one for himself), grabbing something for his Pa to sell, or really anything, the group always starts talking about Stanley. And it makes Ford blood boil. He'll defend him alright, and he'll make their campaign a fucking nightmare for everything they've said, but he's scared to really do something. This is the first friend group he's ever had and he doesn't wanna lose it, even though something in him tells him that he'd be better off without them talking shit about Stanley every time he comes down.

Then the faithful day happens when Stan comes down after a shower, no shirt on, hair wet, wearing a part of dolphin shorts as it's the middle of summer. He's down there grabbing a drink from Ford's DD&MD group snack tray. They took the last of the Pit Cola and he'd be damned if he didn't get one. So he does and leaves without really saying anything, unaware of the eyes staring at him all the way.

Ford braces himself for the onslaught of his brother but nothing. The group continues the game like nothing happened. And Ford is excited because maybe they've finally gotten it together, seen that Stan really isn't just those things, he is so much more. He's kind hearted and compassionate, he's artistic and business smart, he's hands on and crafty, he's strong and hunky and good looking and so so sexy and - Ford has to shake his head. Now is not the time to get a boner.

Ford's Ma calls him in the middle of the game for something and he has to leave them for a second. When he comes back and over hears the group talking about Stan but it's not about how stupid he looks - it's about how slutty he is. He stops on the stairs and listens in.

He hears them make incredibly inappropriate remarks about his brother, about what he must look like on his knees, wishing that they put the drinks on the ground so he would have to bend all the way over in those shorts to get it, that if it weren't for his body, he'd be a waste of air. They joke about having sex with them, calling him slurs, doing things to him that Ford knows first hand Stan does not like to do. They talk about his chub, how they mock him for being fat, but hey, at least he has nice tits. They go on and on about it, unaware of the simmering Ford up the stairs. After hearing enough, Ford finally comes down, making them all unaware that he had been listening in on them for 10 minutes.

That session becomes the hardest, most brutal session, where Ford successfully kills all of their characters off. The guys get pissed at Ford, saying he did that shit on purpose, and Ford answers back that they're lucky it was only their characters he killed off and not the real people behind them, especially after those comments. They get into a fight, the guys saying that Ford shouldn't be wasting his time defending a stupid whore like Stanley, he'd only leave and hold back Ford. Ford finally snaps when one the guys mentions how easy it would be to get with Stanley, no matter what.

Ford ends up fist fighting the guys, beating the shit out of each other, breaking and ruining their game, destroying their papers and character sheets and models. His Pa ends up coming down stairs after hearing the commotion and kicks the guys out, telling them they aren't welcome back until they can pay for the broken table. They scramble and Ford is given a talking to about picking better people to hangout with and to clean up the mess.

Ford goes down stairs to find Stan already down there, going over the mess, still in his shorts and no shirt. Ford, still high on adrenaline, runs smack dab into Stanley, pushing him up against the wall and making out with him. Stan has no idea what spurred him on though he does have an inkling. He pushes Ford back just enough to ask him about the fight, seeing how Ford does have bruises on his knuckles.

Ford tells him it wasn't important, that they weren't all that much fun anyway, he'd rather spend his time with Stanley anyway. Stanley doesn't protest too much, and they end up having sex in the basement before cleaning up the mess.

Later that night, Ford does properly take Stan to bed, making love to him and showering him in praise and acceptance. Stan lets him.

He knew going down their in those shorts would cause a stir, he just didn't know it would go so far into his favor.

[eatingfireflies]

2.2 is coming and if I don't write this now, how can I get jossed later?

This is the moment when I started to wonder if their 2.0 conversation was a role play.

Like, we know this issue is a sore point for Ratio. The fact that this guy he called a loud peacock in 2.0 made a joke about his failure to get into the Genius Society and all he said was 'I was being sarcastic'?? Babe, is something wrong? You barely touched your sharp and witty comeback.

(Btw I checked both Cn and Jp, he says 'It was just a joke.')

And I don't want to bring up the voice acting because the way voices sound is subjective and what I hear might not be what you hear, but the Double Indemnity scenes with Ratio are probably the most relaxed we ever see Aventurine ever. (I'm talking about the Cn version, but I played in Jp audio and I could hear it there too.) He's playful and his voice is higher pitched, so different from what we've seen of him so far.

It sounds like Ratio and Aventurine have known each other longer than they want us to believe in their 2.0 convo.

I mean, the implication here is Ratio did some research on Aventurine's background recently and that's how he found out about Aventurine's past. So we make the assumption that they haven't been working together for long.

Look, they even did a Penacony remix of their Final Victor conversation

But honestly, you'd think Ratio would have figured out if he trusted Aventurine or not at this point, considering he came back for more after Final Victor (lmao??)

Also, we know Aventurine had been planning for Penacony since his call to Topaz, where he asked for her help. It's hard to believe that he went through all the trouble of asking two different Stonehearts to lend him their cornerstones and then went to Penacony and the Dreamscape with Ratio, whom he barely knows. That's too much gambling, Aventurine!

We know the Family won't let anyone from the IPC to enter the Dreamscape and Aventurine only gets a pass because of the Watchmaker's invite

But Himeko is wrong here: Aventurine didn't go inside the Dreamscape alone and he does have someone backing him up. It just happened that almost no one else saw Ratio in Penacony and the one scene where we did see him talking to Aventurine was 2.0, where he got angry and left Aventurine babbling to himself.

But now that we're here, what did Ratio do in Penacony aside from bicker and betray?

His initial job is to gather intel, afaik. Aventurine tells him to go look into things in 2.0 before he left. And he does give Aventurine updates in 2.1 (Aventurine finds out about Firefly from Ratio) so good for you, professor!

Ratio is Aventurine's connection to his colleagues outside. Once Aventurine's plans enter the Dead phase, Ratio is the only one left to tell Topaz and Jade if the plan had been a success or not. (Aventurine also makes a joke about the Genius from the Council of the Mundanites offering to be his undertaker. In the Jp version, he says 'So the Genius from the Council of the Mundanites wants to claim my corpse? What an honour.' So there's also that... Uh. Idk how dead dead Aventurine really is, but at least we know someone's looking after his body while he's gone lmao??)

But also he's Aventurine's bait to Sunday, the (fake) weak link in Aventurine's plans that Sunday thought he could exploit.

And the 3rd one is a bit complicated, because it is a gamble. Remember Aventurine's E1? Prisoner's Dilemma? Yeah, it's kinda like that. I talked about it before, but let's copy paste it here for easier reading (and because this post totally needs to be a wall of text)

Let's zoom out a bit again and remember that Aventurine was sent to Penacony because Diamond thinks this whole affair could still have a peaceful resolution. Meaning: Aventurine is the kind option. The IPC could have sent Opal instead, but it sounds like that means there would be a body count.

And I think that's why Ratio is here and why he agreed to cooperate. Because if Aventurine's plan works out, only Aventurine's life will ever be in real danger. (And we know from Ratio's note that he also took steps to increase the chances of Aventurine coming back.)

Ratio being there is important to the plan because

Him being from the Intelligentsia Guild removes some of the heat from the Family. If Ratio is coming in as a plus one, the IPC (in this case, I'm assuming it's Aventurine because he's the guy in charge of the operation) chose the best person for the job. It makes the Family happier knowing there are not two IPC envoys walking around the Dreamscape and Aventurine has a buddy who can move around more freely than another IPC employee could

But because Ratio is an outsider, he's also the weak link in Aventurine's plans. Another IPC employee will probably not betray Aventurine, but the Guild has no particular horse in this race. We were also led to believe from their 2.0 conversation that Ratio doesn't like Aventurine very much. This is what I meant when I said Ratio is a bait: Aventurine was pretty much dangling him in front of Sunday, making Sunday think he could use Ratio to ruin Aventurine's plans. The important thing of course is the trust the two of them have for each other (yay, Prisoner's Dilemma). Ratio could ruin Aventurine's plan if he wants to (very bad for all involved because I'm guessing Opal is the next step) and Aventurine could fail (not as bad for everyone involved after 2.1 because the IPC has already won regardless. There's still a Phase 2 in Aventurine's plan and Ratio seems to want him back after that, so I guess he'd consider it a failure if Aventurine doesn't return?), but trusting each other means they win.

Tl;dr Ratio's presence in Penacony is a bit of a gamble on Aventurine's part but it worked well for him so far. Ratio is here to make sure everyone stays alive. (And maybe the Phase Flame? I honestly don't know if the Annihilation Gang will ever come back again, but for now I'm going with the obvious and assuming Ratio is here because he thinks Aventurine's plan will work and work with the least amount of pain for everyone.)

Thank you for getting this far. Why do we think they deserve Oscars?

Aside from the movie references (we'll get to that), we have 3 different instances where Aventurine mentions acting / the 'script'.

The most direct is the conversation with future!Aventurine in the garden maze: future!Aventurine praises Ratio's acting while Aventurine says 'Or he might not be acting at all' (the inability of these two to admit they are friends, but more importantly they don't think the other person thinks highly of them, is2g).

The next one is hidden in the mission description

And the other one got lost in translation. This was translated to 'You catch on quickly' in En. In Jp he says something like 'You have a good sense for drama, professor' (Sorry Idk what this is in the og Cn)

Finally, Double Indemnity. I haven't seen the movie, but it seems to be about an insurance salesman who gets seduced by a hot wife femme fatale into helping her get rid of her husband so she could claim his insurance. Double Indemnity refers to this clause where the insurance gets doubled if the person suddenly dies of an accident.

I've thought about this so hard, let me tell you. What could this possibly have to do with Aventurine and the mission? (For example, 'Hot wife Sunday seduces Ratio the insurance salesman into helping him get rid of Aventurine' etc.) And I honestly still don't know but one detail does help my theory so I'm pulling it out:

The relationship between the insurance salesman and the hot wife femme fatale was known only to the two of them. To the insurance claims adjuster, who was investigating the case and trying to prove the husband's death wasn't an accident, those two are unrelated people who might have seen each other once or twice. The claims adjuster suspected the wife, but had no idea of the insurance salesman's involvement. The truth is, they actually knew each other a full year before the plan was set in motion. Hey, doesn't it actually fit nicely now?

(Spellbound otoh, I still don't know. I have a Sunday and Gallagher reading of it, but Hvy keeps telling me no and making it gay instead so Idk.)

[bibibbon]

I made a huge mistake in going to the MHA subreddit. The braindead takes on 427 have me convinced I'm stuck in a parallel universe where we're reading a completely different story:

"It's great seeing Deku play therapist with the LOV, but all it seems to have done is make things worse!" A) Izuku shouldn't be having to play therapist to begin with, considering he's a 16 year old kid. B) most of the LOV don't see anything they did as wrong, so idk what the fuck Izuku can do about that. Also, WHY AREN'T PEOPLE HELPING IZUKU WITH HIS OWN GODDAMN FEELINGS?!

Apparently Bakugou killed Kurogiri, and there's absolutely ZERO reaction to it both in and out of universe. So of fucking course Izuku is a murderer, but not their precious Bakugou 🥱.

"I feel like Hori's really underrated as a writer!" Horikoshi doesn't know Show Don't Tell, how to actually develop characters, and how to craft actual stakes in the narrative from a hole in the ground. Also, MHA is one of the most popular mangas worldwide, so you're not even using underrated right.

"I feel like Horikoshi sees our discussions and then implements them in the story!" This I can kind of agree with, considering how much y'all hate Izuku and worship Bakugou. But on the other hand, I really doubt Horikoshi thinks the MHA subreddit is as important as you think it is.

"Bakugou's totally going to ask Izuku to start their own hero agency together at the end!" Jesus fucking Christ, just say you hate Izuku. How would that be a great ending for him? He not only has to see the source of his low self esteem and borderline suicidal feelings achieving the dream he'll now never have, but you want them to WORK together?!

@nutzgunray-lvt 👋

Well a lot of the time looking into Reddit is always a mistake unless you're asking a very niche question and you get an answer from 9 years ago or something.

I feel like a lot of people whether that be in universe or in fandom forget that izuku is a 16 year old child soldier. Izuku is more than a decade younger than a lot of the villains in the leauge. He is a child who has been exploited by the system and abused. We have seen in 425 izuku try and talk to someone but simply get brushed aside and while I don't blame shoto or ochako for doing that as they probably didn't mean it and are traumatised themselves it kinda of shows how much this has effected izuku. Also this doesn't help BECAUSE HORI GAVE US NO FLIPPING INTROPSECTION ON IZUKU'S BIT AGAIN!! Also Iam not sure if it's just me but Izuku's eye bags are heavily prominent in this chapter especially when he is talking to spinner.

The fandom especially the lov stans side of it love babayifying the actions of the leauge and hyper fixating on the humane soft side they may have while completely ignoring the horrible actions they commited. I talk about this better in one of @palesweetscherryblossom asks

I still can't believe that bk may of killed kurogiri. I don't even know when that happend and I checked the wiki but it says that kurogiris status is unconfirmed so I will be waiting until the last chapter to fully acknowledge if kurogiri is dead or not. However this brings up the point that the fandoms is being quite hypocritical if they're calling izuku a murder but not bakugo. They both killed people but for some reason it's izuku thats put into public light and bashing instead of all the other characters that have killed in the series including villains.

Yeah sometimes it feels like hori is looking at discussions of his series and implementing ideas but I think that goes more for his Japanese fans than us to be honest because after all they're his target demographic. I remember when I first joined Tumblr one of my earliest posts talked about how horikoshi's writing decisions were heavily influenced by his fans which may or may not be true.

At this point IAM convinced that izuku isn't getting a proper happy ending. Every time I think it can't get worse it does. Just by your comment of them starting an agency together haunts me just like the possibility that bk may become the number one hero

[virginiaisforvampires]

Hello, so I just rewatched both seasons, and I am absolutely flabbergasted that there are people who don't believe the trial's version of the fight. But I understand it, too, because the show purposefully makes it hard to believe one character over the other, and I need to vent.

First off, I think going with the whole 'memory is a monster' theme is genius, considering Louis is THE unreliable narrator. I know a lot of the mess about who to believe is bc of Anne Rice and the books, but I genuinely think people who haven't read the books/watched the movie/were interested in the story before the show in general didn't expect Louis that much of an unreliable narrator. It's the same reason so many people got swayed into believing Loumand is a healthy/ier dynamic.

This show saved Louis, that's a fact. Book Louis' whining gets obnoxious quick and movie Louis is just... blank. A beige pillow. This Louis is a character I genuinely root for. idk how they managed to make him my fav character, and a big part of that is Jacob's incredible charisma and acting, but they did it. Changing the race was a genius move, not only bc the original sources are very tone deaf, but it unerlined the power imbalances, their different backrgounds with Lestat, their approach to life and values, and made the vampire world more open for bipoc. It also made a lot of people forget that Louis is canonically a bit of a liar.

I understand siding with Louis, bc the show wants you to do that. But even before being turned, Louis a pimp. Yes, he is forced by the times he lives in, but he exploits people still. Louis is much more clever than Lestat. I know that show Lestat is much more suave than book Lestat, but Louis is really the cunning, manipulative one of the two. Yes, Lestat is controlling, but Louis knows exactly to play him. That's not to take away from the imbalanced dynamics in s1, but it's the truth. We see how much power Louis has over Lestat when he makes him turn Claudia (something was off about the scene in s1 and everyone knew it).

Imo, Louis being wicked, cunning, capable of evil, is what makes him such great character. Bipoc characters in media, same as lgbtq characters in general, tend to be placed into careful boxes of good and evil and they can seldom branch out. Now Louis is everything; he's the protagonist we root for, he's someone who can be terribly selfish, he clings onto his humanity and yet he can lose himself so much. Pretending Louis is always a victim diminishes him and completely ignores his unreliable narrator trait.

ABOUT THE FIGHT Though. I remember when s1, everyone found that scene odd. Why do we see so much out of Claudia's POV and not Louis'. EVERYONE thought there was something more going on.

Now the trial itself, majority of it was bs of course. Just a caricature of Louis, a racist one at that, made to make him look like the ultimate villain and Lestat the innocent one. It's a script the coven worked on, and they definitely counted on the audience siding with the white man. BUT There are TWO scenes we see actually acted out, not just animated. First, Claudia's turning. It's shown that Louis is recollecting his memories, he admits he underplayed his role to make himself feel better. Then, the only other acted scene is the fight, during which we collect all the moments we did not see in s1 and it shows us Louis went after Lestat and beat him to pulp for threatening Claudia, something Louis would ABsoluetly do after Claudia came back to him.

We are not the audience in the trial, we've been with Louis and seen things with him. I don't believe it just based on Lestat's word, but bc a) Lestat says to the audience in the trial 'First we were just trhowing each other around the house', not that Louis went after him and talked about killing him. That's what's in the coven's script. Louis doesn't see haunting Lestat and we only see it animated bc it's bs and we all know it. Louis doesn't see Lestat staying faitful until he can't help it but go to Antoinette bc it's bs. What does he see tho? The fight. Right after he told us he underplayed his role in another significant event we were shown the same way. He even has the same 'recollecting my memories' face on. The show shows us this scene acted out for a reason. To support it, someone else pointed out that in s1 there is a dent from the head slam in the coffin and we even hear some of their convo from Claudia's pov. Why else would they show us this scene and keep everything else animated and frame it in a way that's the same as Louis recollecting his memories if it weren't the truth? We all knew something was wrong about it in s1!

Dous that make Louis a bad person, warping it? No, it was clearly traumatic for him. Louis is not just a liar who lies to make himself look better, he's genuinely traumatised, and that can fuck up your memory. Does that mean Louis deserved to be dropped from air and Lestat is the victim? Absolutely not. Lestat knew what he was doing. He knew if he couldn't have Louis he wanted him to hurt as bad. Is that something I would support irl? Absolutely the fuck not. But this is two vampires that are the most fucked up, toxic version of soulmates. Please if you experience emotional/physical abuse irl, do not try to romanticise it and seek help. But this is not real life, not even humans.

Imo opinion, everything shown at the trial is done to make Claudia and Louis the bad people obvi, but these two scenes are the truths and that's why we see them. Saiyng ppl ware quick to believe Lestat bc he's white is a valid concern, there should be something said about ppl who immediately believed Lestat and always thought Louis a villain (which he is not) before thinking, and it's good that ppl use their critical skills to think about this show, but the show supports Lestat's theory. Not to mention the inevitable revisiting of the trial from Lestat's pov in s3. we know Louis oftentimes lied to make Lestat seem worse that's literally canon. Their power imbalance is still there. It's still wrong, what Lestat does to louis, and what they do to each other, but you can't really apply human morals to them. Saiyng Louis was just a victim and nothing else is taking away his autonomy and diminishing him as a character. Louis was often at Lestat's mercy and Lestat did them dirty, but that's the fucked up tragedy of this whole story. Nobody is good and everybody lies and no morals apply and if you try to do moral police to this story, you're lost.

Jacob Anderson admits Louis is a bad guy and fucks up just as everyone else, and loves him to bits. Why can't you people be the same? This is THE story about fucked up people, you won't find any simple 'good or bad' moral answers here. You're still supposed to root for the characters despite how fucked up they are. If it's not for you, that's absolutely okay

Hey! Vent away! 😅

I do understand your points. I think, for me, the most mind-blowing thing from S2 is the fact many are outright dismissing Armand’s role in everything. Louis’ unreliability is a direct result of Armand literally editing Louis’ memories, erasing the core of who Louis is, and tailoring Louis into the robotic shell we see in Dubai.

Another thing that floors me is the fact no one seems to understand the entire tale was manipulated by Armand to make Lestat the bad guy and drive a wedge between Louis and Lestat. That’s why nothing can be 100% trusted at this point. It’s been edited and filtered via Armand to frame the story in such a way as to remove Louis’ role in everything and shift all the blame to Lestat.

And even knowing Louis’ true role in everything, that still doesn’t make him bad or evil. That’s the thing. They are all victims. They are all grey characters. They are all brilliant with their own motivations and roles (sometimes bad, sometimes good) in the story.

So yeah, it’s kinda insane that the fandom only wishes to see everything in either black or white, strictly one thing or strictly another thing, when the story is about these intersecting lines of questionable actions but with valid trauma and the intellectual ability to *understand* why each character behaves the way they do.

As for the “memory is a monster” aspect, that’s always been the show’s way of covering the fact book Louis was a canon liar. Anne completely rewrote Lestat between IWTV and TVL. She explained it away as Louis merely lying about him. That HAD to be addressed in some way, and Rolin has already talked about the fact the show is leaving that tagline behind once it shifts into Lestat’s POV. I mean, it is what it is, and it was rather genius at first. However, I think many fans are tired of not knowing what’s true and what’s not, and that element — doubting the tale — is what even split the fandom in the first place. It could’ve all been handled much better than what it was, imo.

[coffeegnomee]

Im curious, if you had to make a required reading list or VODs to watch before anyone was added to Lifesteal, what would you put on there? My starting point would be barrier blocks and then I think I’d lose my sense of ideas

oh like for new players? hmmmm. barrier blocks for sure because it breaks down how the server works from the meta. and then some explanation of the cycles by someone, i'm partial to my post but that's pure bias.

but maybe a hot take, but i don't think new members need to watch the past, esp vods. i think it skews their perception of the server.

this is something that i thought about a lot last season looking at minutetech, bc he's been watching lifesteal for a long long time.

but it hit me one day during the joker arc just how insane it is to go from being a viewer to being a player on the server. because you can watch two players interact all day every day and see how lifesteal works,

but that's not YOU there in that conversation. You yourself are going to be different and will affect the story completely differently than anyone else.

you can watch mapicc and zam talk, but take out one of them and they're going to act differently towards you than they act towards each other. it doesn't really matter how they are between each other or any other member, you have to survive for yourself.

and it hit me in the joker arc bc minute had this perception of zam, knowing that he cares about the server and isn't this destructive, but none of that mattered because 1) zam had been changed by s4 and all of s5 up to that point and 2) minute was being a menace Specifically to zam, not dying all season, and now wanting to end the server in peace, which zam was absolutely against.

minute's actions changed how zam approached their relationship, so it didn't matter how much minute knew about the server and about its players, he was going to have to figure it out for himself what to do.

and i think a little (or a lot) of the tension this season is because kab and derap were longtime viewers before joining. they both have a perception on how zam is and acts and it affects how they interact with him, but zam doesn't have any of that same kind of backstory for them so he acts differently than they might expect. this was huge in how derap was pushing zam do things for himself so he wouldn't burnout and go evil like he always does. and kab thinking he was spineless bc all she remembers is eclipse (though her memory for the past is so terrible)

mane was also a long time viewer, but it doesn't feel like he's particularly taking the relational knowledge and putting it to use (at least not yet), but he did have a perception that lifesteal is all about the pvp and he had to learn otherwise. idk who he definitely watched, but it was for sure zam since s2 (when he also took mapicc and zam in a 2v1 and thought he would win but then got obliterated by them which made him realize the lifestealers were better at pvp than he expected) and obviously probably clownpierce and between that you would think it's only fighting. and probably write off zam being zam for why he would take loosing fights, but conclude that that was not being the point of the server.

basically your best teacher for how lifesteal works is logging on and doing things.

but i also might change my mind on this. there's a good number of youtube videos i think would be good for new members to watch, the cleansing and s3 finale, s4 TA prison (and bacon's second channel video on how he got in), leo's s3 finale and the dupe war, honestly spoke's wormhole truth video, subz's repairing s4 spawn after duper war, clown's funhouse. kind of a broad strokes on the exploits used and how, different types of video ideas, and a bit on how teaming and betrayal plays out.

but the lore just lores, you can't understand how it works until you live it.

but as an audience member i got lists and lists of required vods because i think for us it is always good to understand how people interact with each other in the past to understand why they are the way they are now. and we're not actually involved in anything.

[aihoshiino]

chapter 152 thoughts

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 9

Aqua Hoshigan Status: White??!???!?!?

WELL DAMN. OKAY. LET'S FUCKING GO I GUESS.

With the End Of The Play… miniarc? interlude? wrapping up, Oshi no Ko officially confirms we're in endgame territory and slams down on the gas to barrel full speed towards its conclusion. This chapter was definitely a mixed bag, but I didn't dislike it and I SURE CAN'T SAY IT WAS BORING AT LEAST………….. It reframes a lot of things that lead up to it - I suppose that makes 'recontextualization' the keywork for this chapter, then.

The return to the volume 1 interviews in this chapter were kind of a surprise LOL. Given that the anime trimmed all but Ai's, I kind of took that as an implicit confirmaton that they weren't really that important so it's a bit of a jumpscare to see Gotanda (& Aqua's) revisited here. That said, revisiting them here is more about clueing the viewer that we're caught up chronologically with those flashforwards and thus that everything from this point on is officially uncharted territory, so I still do think cutting them from episode 1 was the right call to make. I don't think it causes any plotholes or incongruities since these interviews are really kind of incidental in the grand scheme of things… also let's be real I don't think any of us are expecting the anime to get that far into the story, even if I would give my left leg to see the anime team work their magic on chapter 137………………………….

That said, it's pretty fucking rich for Gotanda to try and talk big about the movie not being fictional when we heard from the horse's mouth that Abiko and Yoriko just fucking made up the dynamics of one of the most central and pivotal relationships in it out of thin air lol. Not only that, but like…

15 Year Lie is a movie with a pretty clear narrative. This by itself is natrual and expected. Narrative is the shape in which the human brain most readily accepts information but to create a narrative about something is to fictionalise it. Even when it's a narrative about real events - because narratives are, themselves, fiction. They have cleanly defined beginnings and ends, arcs and the promise of neatly packaged payoff and catharsis that is impossible to achieve in reality. To create a narrative about Ai's life in any form, let alone in a movie made for mass general audience consumption, unavoidably necessitates reducing her to a fictional character to observe rather than a fellow human to understand.

Which is… you know, horrifying! Fucked up and ghoulish! It's exploition of Ai in death just as she was exploited in life and I really wish the Movie Arc had actually focused on that uncomfortable undercurrent. This was, after all, supposed to be a movie about Ai.

BUT ANYWAY, CAST SCREENING OF THE MOVIE… we get some detail about reactions to the content but even as characters are literally talking about the movie and Ruby's extremely important role in it they just conveniently avoid discussing the content of it. But surely with all those important scenes that were set up and with the public release of the movie and Kamiki's side of the story to tell, we'll get some more details, right??? [audible copium huff]

Akane's tearful reaction is interesting, though. They're specifically singled out as not being to do with the content of the movie and her expression is a bit ambiguous - you could read is as resigned or relieved just as easily. I think she has clearly recognized something about Aqua's revenge in the movie which prompts that reaction but who even knows what's going on with akane at this point lol. sure not akasaka.

The girls all ragging on Ruby's acting was also kind of… like, yeah, remember when Ruby not being a good enough actress to carry a whole movie was kind of a huge issue??? The fact that this is resolved by everyone saying "yeah it was bad but idk aqua made it good somehow" was kind of silly lol.

I do really like Melt stepping in to stick up for Ruby, though - because yeah, of course hearing that would probably bring up some bad memories for Melt…! I also like that he doesn't try to shallowly flatter her or butter her up - he's frank about where she still needs to improve but hones in on the part that really matters. He really is a good kid.

That said, him sticking up for Ruby and her glomming onto him and calling him 'Master' (ししょ/師匠, shishou, as in the master of a craft addressed by their disciple, in Japanese) does kind of highlight that the MLRB mentorship that got set up in 144… went nowhere??? We can assume by Ruby's response to him here that it happened offscreen but it really does feel like a total waste of time to have spent what was effectively an entire chapter on setting up a new character dynamic that just didn't happen. Like… really, in hindsight, what was even the point of that chapter other than to establish that Melt… was also here??? I guess we still have the final arc for that to resolve into something but.

It just kind of sucks because I think a MLRB friendship could be really fun! I think they have the potential for a good dynamic and there's some really interesting parallels between them both that are ripe for farming. At this point, it's probably way too late for us to expect anything to come of it, so I can only daydream……..

tho it is really funny to me that at this point, since 143, ruby has had more meaningful on panel interactions with melt than she has aqua. What Did They Mean By This.

Gotanda and Kaburagi's talk that followed also left me with pretty mixed feelings. As expansion on/closure for Kaburagi (and Gotanda to an extent), I think this was fine… there's just a few little details that bother me, I guess.

On the one hand, I really like Gotanda's frank admission that there's no way to know whether the movie really captured the 'real' Ai. This is another thing I've talked about over and over during the Movie Arc but nobody making this movie is really in a position to be making that call - the only person who really could is Ai and… well, she's not here anymore to advocate for herself. Seeing Gotanda acknowledge that does scratch some of what was left unitched by this thread but…

Eugh. I don't know. Something about this movie, which is about Ai's life, Ai's tragedy, Ai's final push to be shown to the world as she was and to potentially be accepted being made to be about Gotanda's regrets just feels kind of icky to me. Maybe it just feels especially bad because it feels like 15 Year Lie has become more about every other character involved than her. I'm sure people are sick of me complaining about it, but it really does feel like Ai as a figure of emotional importance to this story is getting increasingly downplayed and dismissed and…… just feels bad, I guess!!!!

Kaburagi's side of this conversation is a lot more engaging, at least. This does tragically represent the end of my Secret Villain Kaburagi Theory and I feel decidedly mixed on the story choosing to frame him so sympathetically… but on the other hand, I do like how this implication of guilt and sense of responsibility reframes basically all his prior actions in the manga. It seems to confirm that he clocked Aqua (and thus by extension, Ruby) as being Ai's child right from the start and explains why he was willing to go so far in pushing their careers along at little benefit to himself - it was out of atonement to Ai.

that panel of young kaburagi and baby ai having lunch together. fuck, man. the fact that she took the burger out of the wrapper like she does in viewpoint b………….. babygirl i loev u so muuuuchchchchchchhchchchchsjsjsskasklsndkdkd

and……………………….. now it's time for aqua's interview. Jesus Christ.

I like the recontextualization of Aqua's interview here and the way we see This Mysterious Interviewer gradually pick apart his responses. I especially got SUCH a thrill out of his 'I won't love anyone' schtick being called out as the bullshit it is - one of my first really meaty OnK metas was of Aqua's interview segment specifically and I zeroed in on this sentiment specifically as being a lie that Aqua was trying to project and seeing the text back that up makes me a very happy Claire

But more importantly though… what Aqua has to say after that makes me particularly excited.

First of all, let's get it out of the way: KAMIKI JUMPSCARE!!!!!!!!! It seems implicit that he was the one doing all the interviews which is very fucking funny considering his presence in the movie itself, but I'm not entirely sure it changes or adds much other than giving Aqua the opportunity to death note speech his ass.

What is fascinating to me about this talk is what it implies about Aqua. Every time we've seen his revenge play come up before this, the very strong implication is that Aqua intends to die at the end of it, either by Kamiki's hand or his own. But here, face to face with the man he's dedicated his entire life to ruining, Aqua doesn't just state his intent to get revenge but his intention to reclaim his future by doing so. We've gotten some pushes towards this since 150 but this is the clearest declaration of his intent to finally seize hold of this second chance and fucking live it that we've gotten out of Aqua… honestly, ever!

And accordingly, we see Aqua return to his white hoshigans here. I don't necessarily know if I want to call this slam dunk confirmed but this WAS really exciting to see given how it falls in line with my interpretation of "white hoshigan = hope = future" and "black hoshigan = despair = futurelessness". Everybody has been spending the last few chapters basically begging Aqua not to throw away his future and hurt the people he loves just to chase his revenge and it does seem like they're starting to get through to him.

Is this development kind of rushed? Honestly, yeah! I would've loved to see this explored more from properly inside Aqua's POV and it feels especially abrupt given how hard he got ignored all during the post-123 section of the Movie Arc. But at this point, it just feels so fucking good to see Aqua say out loud that he wants to have a future, that he wants to finally move forward and live that I can't bring myself to care. I just want him to finally be happy!!!

that said how fucking funny is it that the closest thing aqua has gotten to therapy in years is from his estranged father, a serial killer

break next week…!

[queserasora]

DOFLAMINGO X FEM READER, NSFW WORD COUNT: 6.2k CONTENT WARNING: Mean ass Doflamingo strikes again. He is so mean, we already know this but I have to say it because I don't need people crying about him being mean. THAT'S JUST HOW HE IS. Dom!Doffy, consider this a dark romance~~ if you may, it's a bit toxic guys so like I don't recommend but that's just how the cookie crumbles, actually it's pretty damn toxic, like maybe this is on the verge of yandere doffy, idk you tell me, unprotected sex (please wear ur party hats in rl), biting and lots of degradation because Doffy loves talking shit, like it's so much shit talking it's half the fic, biting a lot of it, like everywhere, anal play, so much teasing, pussy slapping, he likes to tie people up because he finds it hilarious so bondage lite, blindfold???, yeah that too, lots of cum, it's everywhere A SUMMARY: Y/N (aka Butterfly aka Six) knows she doesn't have many weapons to use against Doffy so she tries depriving him of her undivided attention. Doffy lasts two whole days before he snaps.

PART ONE | PART TWO

He thinks two hours of hanging from his canopy bed by the wrists should be sufficient. If you hadn’t learned something by then, Doflamingo simply could not help you. There was only so much he could do, in his unending benevolence, to assist you in learning the skills needed for survival. Had he not taught you enough throughout the years you had known each other? Had he not been an attentive, and detailed instructor?

Had you, really, learned nothing?

He wanted to blame himself for this. Perhaps you had inadvertently exploited a weakness, he himself didn’t know he had. Doffy thought, if he should find it, he would cut it out of his body with his own capable hands. Too irate to face you, he sends two officers to cut you down from his canopy bed.

Your arms had started to grow numb. The uncomfortable tingling soon becomes painful. You kept shifting your weight on the bench bed, as if that would help alleviate the ache in your arms, or the throbbing of the small nicks and cuts of your wrists. At the sound of the door creaking open, your heart jumps. You turn your head quickly, but it is not he who walks through the door but two officers you know well. 

Shame heats your body before it grows deathly cold. 

It is apparent they’re fighting off embarrassed smiles as their mouths twitch. Their fingers move about carefully, as if they feared the repercussions of touching your skin for too long. What belonged to Doflamingo, belonged to him for the extent of its life. Although your body collapses as soon as you're free, a weight coming from it you didn’t know you possessed–you’re not dead yet.

You hold onto this realization as strong arms help you down from the bed bench, and half carry you out of his bedroom. You grip it tightly, like the air between your hands, until your nails bite into your skin. If there was any pride left in your war torn body you’d use it, despite the possible repercussions.

Your acts of rebellion are limited in range, so you do the only thing you can do–you deny him of the tiny bits of intimacy he craves from you. When he peers over his shoulder at you, you do not make eye contact. You look past his broad shoulders and to the intricate paisley pattern of the wallpaper in front of him. When he tries to make small talk, something you know he detests, you keep your answers short, clipped, monosyllabic if possible.

It is childish, you know this, but it is all you have. A blunt weapon was still a weapon. With enough force behind it, sometimes it could kill.

Six was being childish. He had put up with it for two days. This was as far as his immeasurable patience went. Doffy had half the mind to grab her by the hair and make her submit, no matter how many men were currently present in his office. Her usual soft, and pliable mouth was spread thin into a harsh line that made him frown. Her shoulders pushed back stiffly, as if she was busily carrying the weight of something.

That something, whatever it was, he would smash it to pieces.

Baby 5 is talking, and Doflamingo brings a hand up in the air. He curls his fingers in a quick snap of his wrist, grabbing onto thin air. She silences immediately. Her gaze follows Doffy’s to find it behind him, on the girl he affectionately called Six. Baby 5 had asked him once, defying common sense, what he meant by that.

He had laughed, and laughed and laughed.

Six, for the amount of steps she was to stay within him. Six, because he sometimes forgot her name.

Whether that was a lie or not, Baby 5 had no intentions of finding out. Just like she had no intentions of staying behind to see whatever sick twisted games Doffy was about to begin. She knew that smile well enough to know her time was up. She begins to make her exit wordlessly as the rest of the men in the room are already departing from the room.

“Lock the door,” Doffy says as she reaches the threshold of it. Her hand hovers on the doorknob and she gives one last look over her  shoulder. You make eye contact with her, and she notices the tension in your jaw, the way you suddenly bore holes through her forehead. A sensation close to pity settles in her chest, so she leaves quickly and locks the door as she was commanded before a conscience can begin to grow where one had already died before.

You stand silently, hands clasped in front of your stomach. His presence growing closer to your body was almost enough to melt away all your resolve; brick by brick, you had laid them one after the other these past two days. It all threatens to come toppling down when his fingers graze your chin. He clasps it with a clammy hand.

“Don’t make that face,” he says calmly, tilting your chin upwards. You follow his hand’s command with a small frown. “You know how much I hate it. You have been ignoring me. I can’t forgive you for that.”

You say nothing. What was there to say? You had been ignoring him in hopes of hurting him on some kind of level. You turn your face away from him, freeing your chin from his grasp. Doffy tuts, and steps closer, breaching whatever miniscule space was left between your chests.

“I’ve been thinking about it all day,” he says calmly. Doffy’s hand reaches for your face again, and you turn to face the other way. His fingers tangle in your hair, a curling lip is the representative of the last vestiges of his patience. His free arm wraps around your waist and he pulls you towards him until you are flush against his hardened body. Your breathing quickens. You despise the way your body warms up against his. It was such an easy, predictable thing. A flimsy paper that couldn’t even hold the weight of your convictions. “Your punishment,” he concludes when you still give him no reply.

You can’t help the way your eyes narrow. It is foolish, you know, to feel anything akin to injustice. You think to blame it on your still fading bruises; the ones on your skin and on your ego. You continue to think this when you utter your next words: “Punishment for what?”

“Six,” he says, tone growing impatient. The tangled fingers in your hair give a tug–an unspoken reminder to keep your eyes on him. His voice is short. His fingers dig into the skin of the small of your back. “Do I need to spell everything out for you? You’ve committed a grave sin.” Doffy brings his face close to yours. He presses his nose against your cheek and inhales noisily. The heat of his breath on the apples of your cheek is enough to have shivers coursing through your spine. You grab onto his mostly open shirt, tug on it as if it would bring you to your senses. His tongue runs flat up against your cheek, leaving a trail of hot saliva in its wake. 

Six was a nickname he used when he felt particularly mean. You flinch when he licks your other cheek, expecting the worst. 

“You’ve been ignoring me,” he says against your ear, fingers still knotted in your hair. The hand on the small of your back travels slowly over the curve of your ass. His fingers are devious, and unapologetic. They are used to always getting what they want, so they settle for digging into the supple muscle of your derriere. For their affront, they pull a small gasp from your lips. Doffy smiles besides himself. “You know I loathe being ignored, don’t you?” His teeth bite down on an earlobe. A whimper lays to rest in the back of your throat as you crush it down. “You of all people should know better.”

There’s a fluttering in your heart you want to squash. The pained sound in his voice, feigned or not, tugs at your heartstrings. You consider giving in, letting him have his way, and getting it over with. There was no use living at odds with Doflamingo. It wouldn’t benefit you in any way. 

“You’ve injured me,” his words are breathy, strained, as he brushes his lips against the line of your jaw. Your eyes close at the feel of his breathing scorching your skin. He kisses down the side of your neck. Kisses so wet and hot, it clouds your reason. There’s a slickness slowly seeping into your underwear. You become more acutely aware of this as the fingers on your ass move to slip between the waistband of your pants and your waist. “Now you have to pay the price.”

You nod, blindly agreeing to anything he could possibly propose. If it was your soul he wanted, he could have it. The method was up to his diabolical whims.

Doflamingo bites down on his lip. Not because the erection in his trousers is beginning to get uncomfortable–although it was. Not because when he sucks on the hollow space of your neck you moan so deliciously it makes him want to rip your clothes off—although he did want to do that. He bites down on his lip to keep the laughter at bay. You were so predictable, so pliable, so easily swayed. All he had to do was touch you, and you unraveled around his fingers, just like string. 

He releases you. You sway where you stand, suddenly breathless and dizzy. Doflamingo moves around the desk, and reaches for the inside of a small drawer. He pulls out two pieces of pearly white silk. It drags on the floor as he moves towards you.

“You’ve been a bad girl, Six,” he says, and gestures at your hands with one of his. “Now give me your wrists. I’m taking away some of your privileges.” You blink, unsure if you had any privileges to begin with but you concede, holding up your hands together, inside of wrists touching each other. He binds your wrists with one of the pieces of silk. “And because you dared to avoid my gaze,” he says, giving the knot on your wrists a good pull. You jolt towards him, and shout as he catches you by the forearms. Doflamingo leans forward, enough for his breath to tickle your nose when he speaks: “I’ll take yours away.” A sense of fear ices your veins. Your mouth moves, words refusing to form. You think to ask for him to reconsider but his hands are quicker than your mind. He is tying the silk over your eyes, like a blindfold.

The last thing you see is his grinning mouth, and a pair of shades reflecting your own face back at you.

Darkness consumes you. Your breathing sounds inexplicably loud to your ears. You focus on steadying your breaths, making them shallower and shallower. The sound of rustling startles you. You turn your head in the direction you think it’s coming from, but his hands are on your shoulders pushing you back. You stumble backwards until the back of your thighs hit the edge of the desk.

“Don’t,” he hisses against your ear. “Move.” You hold your breath before a shudder forces you to inhale loudly. He is tugging at your waistband. You feel thick fingers press against the skin of your hip as he grips the fabric. He had instructed you not to move but your body jerks as he pulls the fabric. The sound of cloth ripping, strings being torn and undone fill the still air of the office. A cool breeze touches your hip, your thigh, and even lower as he continues to tear the right pant leg all the way down.

Your breathing quickens. White teeth dig into your bottom lip as you struggle to keep quiet. He hadn’t asked you to not make a sound but you didn’t want to try his patience. Not when his fingers were on the other side of your waist, destroying whatever was left of the other pant leg. Another forceful tug, and you’re free of your pants. Cold air kisses the back of your knees.

“I hate these pants,” he complains, kicking the remains of the clothing item out of his way. He advances towards you, grasps your hips with heated hands and flips you around. You shout, as he bends you over the desk, ass up. “Why do you insist on this stupid suit? They are ugly. I thought I told you, I loathe ugly things. I’m throwing them all out,” he insists, his large palms running over the width of your ass cheeks. “Every single one, and I’m filling your closet with dresses. And skirts,” he pauses, hands still on your ass. Dresses and skirts so he wouldn’t have to tear into them with brute force. Doflamingo brings one hand up and slaps a cheek. You cry out as the sting blooms into a burning ache.

Doflamingo goes into his haunches. You feel him panting against the back of one thigh. You breath hitches. His mouth moves lower, to an ankle. He flicks his long tongue out, and grazes the inside of your ankle with the tip of his tongue. It’s hot, and wet, enough to make you twitch. You curl your fingers tightly, trying to fight the urge to rub your thighs together. It shouldn’t have aroused you so much, but you feel the growing wetness becoming worse in your underwear

The scratchy feel of your stockings over your skin is enticing. He hates it but he can’t stop. His tongue drags up from the back of one calf, all the way to the back of a knee. He stops there, contemplatively for one nanosecond, before he decidedly sucks on the sensitive area. You whimper, and he chuckles up against your thigh. His detailed attention is on the lovely crease of your ass cheek. Open mouthed kisses, and licks leave a slippery trail that mimics the dripping wetness from your pussy.

By the time he’s done with your other leg, you feel soaked. You rub your thighs together, the stockings scratching and creating a pleasant friction. You increase your pace. Doflamingo stands up in time to watch your salacious movements. He laughs before slipping a leg in between them to stop you.

“Enough,” he says, trying to hide his humor. “You’re always trying to do something like this. Can’t you stop being a slut long enough to quietly take your punishment for once? You’re always  making me work twice as hard. Be a damn good girl,” he finishes with a snarl. “And stay fucking still.” His thick fingers seize the stocking over your ass and he rips them open. You gasp and barely have time to process that when he is seizing the band of your panties. You know what he’s about to do but you cry out all the same when the fabric rips as well, leaving you completely exposed.

He would never admit it. Doflamingo would rather be strung up, beaten, burned and humiliated than to admit it. He’d choose imprisonment or death before he admits how the sight of you bent over his desk, pussy glistening already with your arousal, has him thinking stupid, feverish, foolish thoughts.

He should fuck them out of his mind while he still could.

His teeth find their mark on the swell of one ass cheek. You cry out when he digs in, leaving bruises that bloom into pink-purple flowers in the shape of teeth. He leaves mark, after mark, until he has counted eight total. His mouth presses at the top of your crack, a soft kiss that you know could only lead to debauchery. You wiggle your hips, trying to shake him off. Doffy tightens his hold on your hips, and slams you down on the desk. There will be more bruises on top of the old fading ones but you don’t care. The only thing you care about is the way his tongue is following the path of your crack.

“D-Doffy!” you stutter, slamming your tied hands down on the desk repeatedly to try to get his attention. His hold on your hips is unshakeable. You close your eyes tightly, when they move to your cheeks. “You don’t have to do this.”

He pulls your ass cheeks apart. “Don’t be stupid,” he tells you without looking away. He frowns down at your puckered hole, two shades darker than the rest of your skin. “I do as I please and you…” he pauses to tilt his head. He is aware you can’t see him but he shoots an incredulous look at the  back of your head. “Did you forget you are the one being punished? You have no right to say anything.”

With his case spoken for, he turns his attention to your hole once more. With your ass cheeks spread, he dives in, his tongue flush against your crack. His tongue circles your hole in a way that deeply shames you. The tickling pleasure makes your toes curl, and you try to keep quiet, try to still the small twitches of your belly as pleasure builds inside you. His circles become tighter and tighter, faster. Your neck pulls your head back. You cry out, a long soft moan hanging in the air.

Doflamingo pulls away to look at your sweating forehead. He grins. “Heh,” he chuckles, pulling your ass cheeks apart once more. “Look at you. You keep forgetting your place.”

He takes a rattling breath, nose wrinkled. Doflamingo hacks and spits into your hole. A glob of foamy white saliva hangs on your hole before it slowly drips down to your bright and puffy pussy. He leans back, fingers still digging into the supple flesh of your ass. You feel him let go of one cheek, and his thumb moves towards the middle. There's a protest forming in your mouth. It tumbles clumsily out of your lips, but he’s pressing his thumb against your hole regardless. He presses it further in, tip sliding in even when you try to speak again.

You cry out as he makes it past the first knuckle. He moves it inside you, soft wide circles. Your hips buck as you try to get away from him, a building pressure around your asshole. You whimper, and moan, the sensation so intense and so strange it scares you. He laughs when you ask him to wait. He laughs again when you sigh in relief when he pulls out his thumb. He laughs, lastly, when he inserts index and middle finger instead and you cry out. You’re banging your hands on the desk again, words almost unintelligible flying out of your mouth. You hate the way your folds are slick with your arousal, how your moans don’t stop no matter how many times you command them to go away in your mind.

“Oh?” you hear Doffy say, your fingers gripping the edge of the desk as he thrusts his fingers into your hole, time and time again. He is rough enough to shake you, to keep your hips pushing and bruising against the hardwood of the desk. “All of a sudden you can speak? How interesting. Should have done that two days ago.”

He reminds himself he is merciful, sometimes, and pulls his fingers away when you give a painful cry. Doflamingo looks down at his fingers, a frown heavy on his brows. He reaches for the back of you, and wipes them clean on your crisp white shirt, careful to go under the fingernails.  “You know,” he says, looking down at your dripping pussy. You’re so wet you’re soaking down the inside of your thighs. Shiny folds greet him, beckoning him for a lick or two, a good suck, a good fuck.  “You kept saying it was dirty while I was fingering you but you’re the dirty one. You’re fucking soaked.”

Doflamingo isn’t a man who kneels. He grabs your hips and pulls you up, helps you fold your legs so that your knees are on the desk. You lean forward on your elbows. Your breathing is loud, and erratic. The heat circling around you feels suffocating. Sweat covers your neck, and you feel it slipping down between your breasts. You can’t see him, but you feel him moving behind you again. His mouth hovering over your pussy. You take a deep breath, as the high of expectation seizes you. You’re desperate. You want to feel his mouth on your pussy. You want him to lick you and suck on you until you cum but Doflamingo has other plans.

He touches your entrance lightly with the tip of his tongue. Just as lightly, he traces your entrance. You flinch, and whimper. You move your hips, trying to follow his mouth. Doflamingo tuts and grabs your hips. “Six,” he says testily. “If you don’t stay still I will stop being so kind.”

He licks lightly over each lip. “You need to come to terms with this already,” he says breathing against your clit. He puffs hot air against your sensitive nub. Your toes curl in pleasure. Doflamingo brushes his closed mouth against your swollen clit. “I know what you want, and you’re not getting it. That’s my justice.” He kisses the opening of your pussy before kissing your clit. “Now just take it.” He parts his lips and bites down on your clit.

The heat of his mouth disappears. You whine, feeling cheated and petulant. Doflamingo slaps your pussy for your brattiness. “Apologize,” he says sharply. “You haven’t uttered a single apology. Did I not say you’ve injured me?” He slaps your pussy again. The sting is shocking, humiliating. You grip the edge of the desk so hard you fear your fingernails will split. “Apologize, Six,” he growls and slaps you one more time. You cry out, feeling pleasure jolt down the inside of your thighs. You’re dripping wetter and wetter. Your body is trembling as you struggle to keep yourself up in this position. Your biceps are burning, your thighs quivering. 

“I’m sorry!” you mutter quickly. It is the best you can manage at the moment but it appears dissatisfactory. Doflamingo slaps your aching cunt again. “I said I’m sorry! I'm so sorry!”

“Good,” he says, rubbing his hand roughly over your pussy. You moan, almost purr, as he slathers your slick all over. “Now thank me.”

You gasp, and turn your face around. You don’t understand what he says at first, so he repeats himself. Still you splutter: “What?”

Another slap to your sensitive puffy pussy has you arching your back with a cry.

“I said, say thank you,” Doflamingo mutters over your ear. You feel his body leaning over your back. “Don’t forget your manners. It should be considered a blessing that I'm even touching you.” He slaps your pussy one last time. “And you say?”

You mumble it at first. He can’t hear you so he grabs your cunt tightly. “What did you say? Enunciate, Six. Do you know how to speak?”

“Y-yes, sir. I said thank you. Thank you so much,” you breathed out, lungs burning from the effort. He chuckles lightly against your ear.

“Better. Much better,” he says before kissing your ear and pulling away. 

Doflamingo seizes your hips, and swiftly flips you around. The sudden movement causes your stomach to dip, and you cry out, arms flying out to grasp anything. You feel his shoulders, and grip tightly. Doflamingo shakes you off without finesse. He pushes your back on the desk, and pulls you towards the edge of the desk by the hips. He pulls your legs up, until your thighs are flushed against his front. Your knees bend, and your lower legs drape over his shoulders.

“These,” you hear him hiss around your ankles. Doflamingo’s nose brushes against the top of one foot–exposed by a kitten heel. “Are also atrocious. We’re throwing these out too. Every single one.”

He takes them off your feet quickly. You wiggle your toes, taking advantage of the only freedom you have currently. Your silent moment of victory is short lived. Doflamingo is tearing at your stockings against, revealing your feet. Your breath catches in your chest as you feel a hot wetness on the inside of one foot. It tickles pleasantly. Still, you wiggle your toes.

“Stop,” he growls against your foot, moving his mouth to your toes. He sucks on them noisily, one at a time. Drool slides down in between your toes, and you crinkle your nose. It is an odd sensation, but you refuse to pull your feet away. This temporary moment of discomfort was not enough to make you risk his wrath. 

He tires of your feet and at your lack of reaction. He tires of the way his breathing is ragged, how heat has forced him to sweat right through his shirt. He tires of the way his erection is throbbing in his pants. 

Doflamingo fights against it by seizing the front of your shirt. He pulls in one go, buttons ripping from their seams. They fly out in different directions, zooming past your face and his. You feel one hit your forehead. Another bounces off one of the lenses of Doflamingo’s shades. He cackles, amused by his own little stunt. He is laughing still as he leans forward, your legs bending with his actions. You feel his hardened cock press against your heated pussy. You’re maddened at the thought. You want the fabric separating you to disappear and curse your lack of strength. You are so consumed with your desire to have him inside you, deep and hard, that his bites barely register. He is nipping over the swell of your breasts.

There is no delicacy or tenderness to his actions. He has pointedly reminded you, time and time again, that this was not done in pleasure. This was your punishment. So he clamps down hard on your tender flesh, and covers your tits in dark pink bruises. You cry out each time, body trembling from a mixture of pain and ecstasy. Doflamingo loses interest when there’s no more room to mark so he shifts to your belly. He bites and sucks where he can. He leaves his imprint on your skin, for you to see later in solitude and think of him; only of him.

Your ribcage calls his name and he drags his tongue up and over it. He counts each ribcage in his mind, and leaves a bite for each one.

The assault is endless. The desk becomes an altar with you as a sacrifice. Doflamingo lights a fire, tall and full of rage, with every drag of his sharp teeth, with every desperate suck against your skin.

His mind is a mess. He can only think of tearing you open. He can only think of digging inside you, to rifle through your insides to see what was crawling in there that did not belong. He wanted to see himself in every part of you, slowly consuming you until there was nothing left but the spirit of him.

You; his carnal legacy. 

His tongue drags at a painfully slow pace over your nipples when he pulls your bra down with a wild tug. Doflamingo draws shapes that he has no names for over the swell of your breasts. His fingers pinch your erect nipples, and he lets your cries guide him. You moan when he flicks them with his thumbs, and he knows this is punishment. But what good was a punishment that punished him? He couldn’t hold out any longer.

He dives against your breasts, his mouth sucking in a nipple with viciousness. Your back arches as he bites town and tugs. Pain makes your nipple throb, and you aim at his shoulder with your tied hands. He deflects you and pushes you back down on the desk.

There is no apology, no words to soothe you or pacify you. You didn’t expect any anyway. Instead, he lifts your breasts to lick the underside of them. His hands knead your breasts as he pushes against your heated core. His erection is enticing, and you move your hips against him. You hear his breathing against your ear picking up speed before it disappears.

You breathe through your mouth, quick little pants that make your chest burn. You hear a buckle, and a zipper coming undone. You swallow thickly, fingers twitching where you’re holding them against your chest.

Doflamingo looks down at you as he pulls his cock out of his underwear. It bounces against the flat of his belly. A hand moves to  grasp it, and it pumps it lazily. His eyes are too busy devouring your body instead. You are a mess on his desk. There is your arousal leaking out of you, pooling under your ass. Your skin is bruised and battered. Your chest rises and falls in rapid succession. He smiles.

You are pathetic. You are a mess, and you are all his.

He presses the angry tip of his cock against your entrance. You clamp down on your lip, and before you can fully ready yourself, he snaps his hips and bottoms out inside you in one move.

A cry gets stuck in your throat, and your mouth is open but no sound comes out. Your back is arched, even as he pummels into you relentlessly. His cock feels divine. It is thick, pushing against your walls, a stretch so satisfying you wish you could feel it time and time again. Everytime he snaps his hips you can hear the loud slapping of his balls against your pussy.

You’re whining, and moaning, thrashing in place. The sounds almost overpower the sound of wetness. The squelching sound of your pussy makes him smile. He holds on tightly to your knees as they’re folded over his shoulders, busily watching his glistening cock slide in and out of you. 

“Oh, now you really have a lot to say, huh?” he grunts as he increases his pace, his hips slamming against your ass time and time again. You whimper, feeling your pussy starting to get sore but the fire inside you continues to build. The pain is not enough to make you want to stop. “Now you want to give me your goddamn attention.”

Not that he’d stop for you. Not when he’s like this.

You’re being far too loud for his liking. It is driving him mad with lust. He reaches out to the desk, his hand pawing blindly as he continues to snap his hips. You’re so tight around him it makes him clench his teeth. His fingers touch moist fabric, and he grabs the sad remains of your panties. 

“Be quiet for a second,” he tells you and shoves the panties in your mouth. You gag, and cough. He hears your mumbling against the fabric, but it is muffled. He chuckles in delight. “Better. Much better.”

Now that your moaning is not ringing in his ears, leading him away from reason, he can focus on his work. He watches your tits bounce on your chest. They jerk every time he slams against you so he goes even harder, delighted at the sight of them. He closes his eyes, focuses on the lewd sounds of your wet pussy, the way air slips in and makes inappropriate sounds. He chuckles, admiring the way your walls start clamping around him.

“You’re gonna cum already?” he asks you. “Oh. That’s right. You can’t talk right now.” He laughs at your muffled cries. Sweat is coating his chest. He feels his shirt sticking to his lower back. The heat is all consuming, and so is the heat of your pussy. It is greedily sucking him back in every time he pulls out.

He groans loudly, when he feels you cumming. Your toes curl, and spit soaks your panties. You taste the saltiness of your arousal on the fabric and breathe out through your nose, trying your best to catch your breath. Your orgasm is violent. Your body jerks as it continues to course through you. Doflamingo doesn’t let up, and he edges you closer and closer to an ecstasy that is almost unbearable. You scream against your panties, legs shaking. You’re so overstimulated you feel tears wetting the silk of your blindfold.

Your drool is slipping down your chin, and down your neck. It collects on the hollow of your neck. You catch a ragged breath, and pray–pray for release. At this rate Doflamingo will  be the end of you–or at the very least, the end of your pussy.

Doflamingo chases your high down. Demands it comes back. He isn’t done yet, despite the bruises already starting on the bones of his hips. He feels that cushiony spot inside you and he rams his tip into it, time and time again. Your legs twitch and you give another shrill cry.

Just when you think you could die, heat forms once more. A coil so tight, binds itself at the pit of your belly. You feel a strange urge, as if you desperately need to go. You try to warn Doflamingo but he’s not listening and you are too weak to fight anymore. Your back snaps, and your vision goes from black to white. You feel liquid gush out of you.

Doflamingo gives a startled gasp, he watches you soak his pants with mild irritation.

“Goddammit,” he mutters, still thrusting inside you. “There’s just no end to your nastiness. You just had to ruin my pants? I am almost done dealing with your punishment and now I have to think of another one. You are nothing but trouble, my Butterfly.”

You mumble something he can’t interpret and doesn’t care to do so. His laughter rumbles in his chest as he continues to snap his hips, on and on and on. 

“You’re mine, you know that?” he tells you and turns his face to kiss one knee. “You’re my slut.” His voice is a hoarse growl. Teeth flashing white. “You are my butterfly. My captive poor pathetic little thing. You’ll never leave me, do you hear me? I’ll never let you go. You’ll always be tangled up with me.” You whimper, and thrash in place. “You’ll never be able to leave. Not that you want to. You like this too much. The way I fuck you.”

He is right, of course. The thoughts of leaving his side were fleeting. You couldn’t picture a life without him. If it meant living in his shadow until he turned to look at you then so be it. You didn’t care about the pitiful glances people gave you or the thinly veiled words of advice. You had decided a long time ago that this is where you would be happy to die, underneath his forceful hand.

“You belong to me. You have no right to deny me anything,” he reminds you, as he leans forward to nip at your bottom lip. He kisses you, and you think you might die. It had been so long, you thought the day would never come. You moan when he presses his mouth against yours. You dare to part your lips, to seek out his tongue but he is gone as quickly as he came. “You can only adore me. You can only look at me and think of me.”

He rips the panties out of your mouth and you gasp for air, gulping and gulping. Doflamingo wraps his fingers around your throat as he continues to fuck you.

“Say it,” he hisses, his voice breaking. “Say it’s only me you want.”

You swallow and nod slightly. “It’s you. I only want you.” You say his name, over and over. Doflamingo smiles widely, feeling at the moment, victorious. 

And with this sense of euphoria, he feels himself close. He pulls out quickly, leaving you aching and pulsing around nothing. Doflamingo pumps his cock desperately, roughly, a few times before he spills all over your battered pussy. His cum is hot and you flinch as it touches your sensitive skin. There’s drops on your belly, and on each side of your inner thighs. The cum on your pussy drips slowly and eases towards your ass.

Your mind is fuzzy. Your body is still hot, and everything is aching and throbbing. He’s moving again, you feel him ahead of you grabbing things from the ground. Doflamingo wipes his hands on the ripped clothing before he drops them on your belly.

“Clean up,” he commands in a congenial tone, shoving his half hardened cock into his soiled pants. He adjusts as best as he can and zips up. “I got you a new dress for tonight. It is imperative that you wear it for dinner. Are you listening, Butterfly?

You don’t have the strength to speak. Your throat feels raw from all the crying and moaning. So you nod, once, twice.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” he says. His voice sounds distant. You hear his footsteps, farther away. There’s a click at the door, before it closes. Then silence.

He leaves you on the desk, blindfolded, naked and worn out to the sound of your heart beating in your ears.

[autisticandroids]

I was thinking about tma and I have a thought about it but idk if maybe ppl would think it's kind of??? A cop out??? Idk but like my thought on this is like tma hinges on Smirkes 14 which- I strongly agree with you- is a patently stupid system of organizing the fears but tbh I feel like that stupidity strengthens tmas themes of cosmic horror and its critique of the philosophical ripples of 1. Enlightenment era ideas of empiricism and the resurgence of those sorts of attitudes in Victorian times (aka slotting all data into taxonomies regardless of their actual accuracy- for example in the real world Race Science comes to mind an inaccurate, arbitrary, stupid, harmful taxonomy developed out of whole cloth to harm and exploit the vulnerable. I consider smirkes 14 to be analogous to that sort of thing- the human impulse towards pattern seeking taken to the logical extreme of applying arbitrary and harmful taxonomies as though they have any internal accuracy when they just dont) 2. Entrenched English systems of power that assert themselves thru institutions- in this case aristocracy and academia (Jonah magnus, the magnus archives itself, the fairchildes, and the Lukas family explicitly. In terms of metaphor I consider those that serve the fears to sort of be metaphorically resonant w those irl who uphold unfair hierarchies such as monarchy or aristocracy. It even kind of plays out in the granular interpersonal workplace dynamics of the archive wherein martin - working class bg- had to fake his cv to get a job and is subsequently mistreated by his boss for not being competent or how Sasha was passed over for a promotion a she was clearly better suited for by a man who was not as qualified)

I don't think this is just a watsonian reading of something poorly written btw (tho tma definitely has its flaws and this interpretation still doesn't necessarily have to retroactively justify this writing choice.) I think it was intended to be understood this way since there are allusions in-text to the Christian parable of the blind men and the elephant and at another point someone (I think it was peter Lukas?) describes Robert smirkes 14 fears as analogous to an ants perception of a human hand descending upon it (paraphrasing here but like something like "would an ant perceive these massive separate appendages descending upon it as a single entity- fingers on a hand- or would the shear massiveness and incomprehensibility render each finger a unique tormentor, separate and independent, all torturing the ant.")

Sorry to be out of the blue but ur one of the few ppl I see critiquing the tma pantheon on the grounds that it's bad (which it is) and I was curious what u might think of what I had to say here

ok this is aggressive haterism so i'm not putting it in the tag and if you are super super super into the magnus archives this isn't meant as an attack or whatever this is just me doing criticism for fun.

so okay. i get wanting to view it this way because if you are trying to work with the text to come to an interpretation that is like. good. then this makes sense. so like this makes sense as an interpretation, but it doesn't really work for me because my critique is more doylist and also less willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

so part one is. in the end. i just think that the fourteen fears make the stories themselves worse. like i think that real human author jonathan sims is "writing to the fears" as in, he is writing horror stories to slot specifically into these little categories. which make his horror stories less interesting. both because he tends to invent cliches for himself and then double back to them and also for more reasons i will discuss later. so on a very basic "i want [MEDIA PRODUCT] to be good (as in fun and enjoyable to consume), and this is making it bad (as in kinda boring)" level, i think this isn't really a justification, you know? like you can say you made the thing bad on purpose but it's still bad. very occasionally a thing being bad on purpose as a self-reflexive critique makes it good, but not as often as just being good in the first place does.

and then part two is. i think you could argue that tma is a critique of the victorian urge to categorize and rationalize things but it's also just. an example of it. the fourteen fears make the individual stories hostile to analysis because they attempt to pre-chew and pre-analyze the stories, assigning them preexisting meanings so that they are already made-sense-of. this hampers them as horror (see part one) because for really good horror you need a sense of otherness a sense of uncanny and if you're like oh this one is the stranger and this one is the eye and etc. it lends a fundamental knowability that just. deflates them. but then also it means you can't analyze them and it's like.

okay. case study. so did you guys remember that tma has a mummy curse episode? i do. it's like flabbergasting to me that tma unironically has a mummy curse episode that's like. you know that's old school racist. are you serious? but like okay. analytically. the episode comes *pre-chewed*. because we know which power this is. this is terminus. this is death. so the underlying fear in this story is the fear of death. that's how we are *meant* to understand this tale. but like be serious. any idiot with half a brain can like, comprehend the underlying anxiety of The Mummy's Curse: it's a story about what if all the tomb raiding, the grave robbing, the mummy eating, in short all of the colonial violence done to things, which is only possible because of all the colonial violence done to people, came back to bite you. it's the anxiety of the colonizer, manifest guilt about what they have done to the colonized. and as much as jonny sims is essentially just copying his influences, those victorian stories he loves so much, that's still what it's about. hell, sims knows this: the reason the woman in the story is so unlikable, so greedy and grasping, so unsympathetic is that jonny sims is soothing his own anxiety: "well i want to write a mummy curse episode, but what if people think i, a white british man writing a mummy curse episode, am racist? what if they think i don't know colonialism is bad? better put a little 'colonialism is bad, mmmmmmmmkay?' opener in to make sure no one thinks i'm racist." but of course the other thing he does is he attempts to gut the story of that unpleasant little meaning. oh it's not the anxiety of the colonizer. it's not about the violence of the victorian era. it's just about death. well, phew, i'm glad i don't have to think about that.

and i'm using the mummy curse one as a case study but that's EVERYTHING. that's EVERYTHING. oh this story about being trapped in an infinite factory where you work isn't processing the horrors of work or of the violence inherent in every product under capitalism that you will never seen or of alienation or of bodies, this is just the fear of slaughterhouse animals. oh this clone of the most dangerous game isn't about colonialism or about dehumanizing people into animals it's just about the fears of literal animals. oh this fucking guy marrying a bug isn't processing any anxieties about sex or our bodies it's just fear of disease. like it flattens everything. the meaning of horror is super overdetermined, i'm not even saying that the mummy curse, which has a pretty obvious meaning as the anxiety of the colonizer, necessarily means only that! it's can certainly also be about death and about a thousand other things. stuff has multiple meanings. but the fourteen fears method rejects overdetermination, meaning bounces off these stories. and that makes them a lot more comfortable: you don't have to deal with the miserable, horrible, sick, reactionary underpinnings of horror stories, the way they (all horror stories, really) function to guard the boundaries of our sick society with slavering hateful jaws, if you just pretend they're about fear of heights or whatever.

like to be clear my argument here is that it's kind of impossible to make horror without reactionary elements so i'm not really criticizing jonny sims for Not doing that, and i'm also not arguing that jonny sims intentionally tried to build an anti-critique wall into his stories by inventing the fourteen fears, i'm just arguing that he kind of did and that makes the stories worse. and i think the way it rejects meaning is unconsciously self-protective from having to see the more unpleasant meaning of the work. and is therefore in itself kind of reactionary.

and i'm also criticizing him for writing a mummy curse episode because come on man, are you serious? but that's not as related to my larger point. though i do think his critique-proof wall shields him from noticing the implications.

part two point five: also i will not give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he was trying to kind of fix this issue with season five because season five was worse. guy who learned about progressive politics from twitter last year type understanding of systemic critique. guy who writes every character arc as a kind of Very Special Episode about Important Progressive Topic Of The Day but mostly only because he's scared of getting cancelled on twitter type critique. like horror is overdetermined. "My Horror Show Now Only Does #Issue Episodes Where I Make Systemic Critique For Babies" is a dumb way of reflecting on the way your overarching premise is kind of unintentionally an attempt to make your horror stories critique-proof. not that i necessarily think that was why season five was like that, i just think he got swept up in trying to make Progressive Media, but if it WAS it wouldn't be adequate.

part three: i think the "fingers of a hand" thing was a post-hoc justification because he sort of noticed his fears are a bit stupid. and i think, circle back to part one, that it doesn't solve the fundamentally doylist problem of the stories being written to the fears.

part four: on a very basic sort of ancient greek philosophy type level i just think the fourteen fears are not beautiful and true. quite frankly mister sims, if i was trying to divide all the world's fear into knowable categories, i would not make fucking fourteen of them! that's simultaneously too many and too few! and it's not even a nice number! i would not for some reason collapse together the fear of spiders and the fear of mind control! i would not split the fear of disease from the fear of the fact that we are all bodies with flesh! i would not make the fear of otherness mostly about clowns!

i would not different the hunt from the slaughter from the desolation you FUCKING BUFFOON.

^directed at jonny sims.

anyway thank you for the ask that was fun. i feel like i exorcised a demon out of my body.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

hi! hope you're doing okay—I've got a holocaust-history-in-media question for you. I was talking to my brother the other day, and he mentioned how his 10-year-old son tried out "Anne Frank mode" on the meta VR headset. I was kind of horrified, because that sounds deeply exploitative and disrespectful—but he went on to say it's just a VR version of the Anne Frank house, and that it let my nephew explore history in a new way. He was able to touch things and move them around in a way he wouldn't be able to IRL, not to mention the accessibility of not having to travel.

My nephew's kind of an unusual kid, and he chose this "game" while at a friend's house. All the other kids got bored and left pretty much immediately, but he stayed to learn, and my brother says that at the end his takeaway was, "It's so sad. It's so sad and awful what human beings do to each other."

Part of me is just like "No, absolutely not, that is not for VR companies to profit off of in any way, this feels inherently exploitative." But idk. If it increases accessibility and education in a meaningful way, then perhaps that disquiet is simply reactionary.

Then I remembered I have access to an actual Holocaust historian, someone who even specializes in women's narratives and the media portrayals of same.

So, no worries if you're busy/don't have time to respond to this, but I thought it might be an interesting question for you. Do you think the VR Anne Frank house is a good thing?

Ooooooh this is an interesting one. It's also a question that I think I would have answered differently a few years ago. I mean, I've posted here about my issues with central role Anne Frank has been accorded within Holocaust memory, I've posted about the politics of people playing Pokemon Go at sites of atrocities and disasters...

But. Technology changes SO quickly. I read this fantastic article probably 10+ years ago now about how the millennial generation began to express collective nostalgia SO quickly and so young, because technology and the norms it introduces change so quickly. I'm 34 and while that's hardly ancient, the technological world inhabited by children and adolescents is effectively alien to me because of this massive, rapid, ongoing change.

Moreover, I think the pandemic gave us all an...unwanted but helpful bootcamp in what works wrt education over the phone/computer, and what doesn't. In my personal and professional life, I've met and spoken with STEM companies/individuals who specialize in working with museums, historical societies, etc. And they're not just in it to make a buck--they're there to work with museums etc in increasing access and keeping up with educational trends because they know it's important and smart people value STEAM education.

So, despite my acknowledged concerns issued in the first paragraph, and the kneejerk negative reaction I think you and I share, I think my conclusion is that this is a good thing. Like, as a Holocaust historian, pubic historian, educator, and now a Hebrew School teacher of 7-11 year olds, I think whatever gets kids interested and engaged is Good; whatever draws them and gets them thinking about it is Good; even if the tech and infrastructure involved is something that I previously took (philosophical) issue with.

This doesn't mean I don't still have concerns about the centrality of Anne Frank, but let's be real: I lost that battle a long time ago. I've said my piece, and if Anne Frank is going to be kids' gateway into learning about the Holocaust, I'm glad to see that it's being done responsibly, well, and in keeping with how kids engage with education and tech in 2024.

There are, obviously, many theoretical conversations to be had about the implications of this kind of thing, and I hope a grad student applies like, Walter Benjamin to it for a first year paper, but this is my answer purely in terms of access and education.

[mayapapaya33]

Is anyone else kind of annoyed that apparently Gilmore being a Runechild isn't a secret anymore with zero explanation. Idk if Aabria just thought it was cool and didn't care about the implications or what, but I'm still a little salty about it. Gilmore told VM that Rune children were hunted in C1. That's kind of a big deal. Is he established enough and powerful enough that he feels safe being open about it now? Are we ever going to explore that?

I'm a little behind in CR, currently on C3 ep 65 at the present moment, so if this does for some reason come into play, please don't spoil it lol, I would LOVE it if Gilmore came into C3 to kick ass and take names with his boyfriend/partner, I want to meet him! I want to see Matt play Gilmore and his boyfriend together and explore the Runechildren being hunted thing! That's all I ask! Maybe in C4 Gilmore gets kidnapped by the bad guys in order to exploit his runechild status and our new heroes have to save him! Ok now I'm just writing fanfiction I'll stop.

I haven't read the campaign books yet so if there's something about that in there, feel free to let me know so I can stop being mad about it lol.

(Please no Aabria hate, EXU/ her particular style isn't to my taste but that's not an excuse to be a dick ok? Media critiques only! Thanks!)

[vashtijoy]

Do you hc akechi as a momma’s boy? I’ve always found his relationship to his mother kind of unclear, like he seems like he really cares but also it definitely doesn’t seem like his main motivator but most definitely the cause… idk

Okay, let's start with what we know. First of all, here's Ren's image of baby Akechi from the Proof of Justice OVA:

He's not very old. If he's the same age as the kid Ren was watching, he's what, six? Seven? Eight? And already, he doesn't look like a happy kid. Doesn't he look kind of nervous and worried and too old for his age?

In the OVA, he says he didn't have friends to play with even then—something separated him from his peers even before his mother died—and that pretending to play hero made his mother happy. Like he was already responsible for her that young, as she faded and died. Like he was already putting up that perfect front before she was gone.

Of course, that's present-day Akechi talking, and I'm not sure he has much investment in thinking about times when he did dream of being a hero—if they ever existed. But I think we can conclude that his relationship with his mother was difficult. In the engine room, he says she became unhappy after he was born (不幸になる fukou ni naru, to become unhappy) and eventually died—she fell into depression because of him, he believes, and died. He played not for himself, but to please her—presumably because she wanted him to play, because watching him suffer compounded her misery. He talks about putting frozen meals in the microwave for himself as a kid. He talks about wanting an apology for his mother, from the father who abandoned them.

The picture is really bleak—a young elementary-school age kid in a single-parent household, neglected by a depressed mother, burdened with her care and his own, determined to be so good and so perfect and not cause problems and just be whatever she needs. A kid who thinks maybe an apology from his father will put his world to rights. No friends. No family that he knows yet, or would want to know. His mother, and his obligations, are his whole world.

and then mom dies

Akechi remembers his mother being in the sex industry (waiting at the baths for her clients to leave), but he also remembers that she left it—presumably to give him a better life. Moving into headcanon, I wonder to what extent that may have isolated her—cut her off from support structures she had, and the people she knew, contributing further to her depression.

She's working longer hours. She has a kid she wanted—I think there's no question of this; there are many ways to get rid of kids you don't want—but maybe can't cope with, who watches her with huge, too-old eyes and poorly-hidden expectations she never meets, so that she breathes guilt at the sight of him.

She lets him down at every turn. She's a burden on him. She's destroying his childhood. He'd be so much better off without her, wouldn't he? And one day she just... doesn't come home. She's just not there when he gets back from school, or she never arrives back from work. He microwaves his dinner, does whatever he does alone at home, and waits, and waits; he goes over his planning for what he'll do when she doesn't come back, the kind of plans kids make when they can't rely on their parents. But he still waits for her. And when someone does arrive, in the early hours of the morning, it's not his mother; it's the police.

and then

OVA Akechi says that he "bounced around his relatives" after his mother's death, that they passed him around like a parcel. It's a popular HC that he spent time in orphanages etc, but I don't think this was the case; his situation closely parallels Futaba's, with her succession of exploitative relatives who didn't care about her and only wanted money. Akechi describes this himself: his desperation to be good enough that someone would want him around.

Remember, he's been putting up that front with his sick mother, long before she died, and now that he's with relatives who don't want him, he keeps going. Anything inconvenient, anything ugly, he buries deep. He gets better at it. He becomes polite and perfect and cheerful; he gets perfect grades; he tries to be the sort of kid you can't help but notice, the sort that makes you proud.

On the outside, at any rate. Because it never does a damn thing. We can speculate about whether and how Akechi's caregivers were outright abusive to him, but one thing seems crystal clear: none of them wanted him. Nothing he did ever made them love him. The only person who ever needed him was his sick mother, and she's gone.

And what do people who need to be needed do, when they don't have anyone? What do people do when they're desperate for love? They do anything, and find anyone they possibly can, who will need them and love them. Which is how Akechi ends up working for his estranged father, believing with every part of his being that he hates the man, while being led around for words of praise that would have meant nothing to him if he was truly as indifferent as he thinks. Like Cognitive Akechi insists, "you wanted him to love you, didn't you?"

but why does he do that and where's mom in the equation

At eighteen, Akechi still blames himself for his mother's death. He uses the wording 生まれる事を望まれなかった子供 umareru koto o nozomarenakatta kodomo, "a child whose birth was unwanted; a child who should never have been born"—rendered "cursed child" in the localisation.

But he never talks much about his mother, other than to dripfeed personal information to Joker and Futaba. She doesn't seem to feature overmuch in his thinking, like you say. I think what's going on is something like this:

Akechi's mother dies some time in his early elementary school years. Part of his thinking has been this idea that, if he could only find his father and get him to apologise, maybe that would make his mother happy; maybe that's something Akechi could do to help her. I think that "back then, Shido was on the Tokyo Assembly" line ("he was already a high-ranking official by then") is not referring to when Akechi got his powers, but to when his mother died.

And when she dies, Akechi knows, he knows whose fault it is. And it isn't his absent father's. It's Akechi's fault. He has not been good enough. He hasn't hidden his irrelevant little sadnesses well enough. He hasn't been independent enough, strong enough, supportive enough. He woke his mom while he was getting ready for school one time, I don't fucking know, okay. But all the things we tell ourselves when someone dies unexpectedly—if only, if only, if only—on the shoulders of a little kid. A kid with no support, because he's been passed to relatives who don't want him and see him as a burden.

Essentially: Akechi, at six or seven, has not done what Joker will do so effectively at sixteen. He hasn't hidden his messy reality, his messy little-boy needs and fears, behind what his mother needed him to be. And now his mother is dead.

So, first of all: he is very motivated to make that mask better, to be more perfect, more independent, less real. And second? If he doesn't find somewhere for all that guilt to go, somewhere to displace that secret knowledge to, he will break. And broken boys are not perfect. They are never wanted. Nobody ever keeps them around.

an apology just ain't going to cut it any more

This is Akechi's start of darkness. The father who used his mother as a plaything and cast her aside, never knowing her name—the father who left her with a child who destroyed her (and he'll just brush over that bit, if you don't mind)—the father who left them both alone with nothing—he murdered Akechi's mother. Her death was his fault.

This is how Akechi becomes the boy we know, consumed on the inside with hate that has eaten him up like acid. For almost as long as he's been a person at all, he's been obsessed with revenge on his father—first for the death of his mother, for Akechi's own suffering and aloneness as he's grown, and ultimately for all the indignities he's made Akechi swallow under his thumb.

Letting it go was never an option. Because if he stops thinking about what a monster his father is, if he stops thinking of all the things he wants to do to him and dreaming of a future where he can somehow bring him down, he has to face the fact that he, and he alone, caused his mother's death. It might be bullshit, but Akechi believes it. And—because the adults around him have no interest in him—he has no support in dealing with all of this in any other way. He's a little kid, who's dealt all his life with things that would tax most adults to handle.

so what does this ultimately look like

At eighteen, Akechi is still in a very real way that little kid who lost his mother. He doesn't really grow up. He's probably the one cast member whose dialogue most prominently foregrounds the divide between kids and the adults who exploit them, right from that first conversation in the TV studio. He still thinks of himself as a child, and of adults as this vast, oppressive sea of other—a sea he can navigate and control and oppress in turn.

But I don't think he remembers his mother. I've written him sometimes as remembering things like the smell of her perfume, or the sight of her hair from behind, but not her face; the rhythm of her voice, but not its sound. He remembers her as an anxiety, a burden; for this almost-grown boy who refuses to fail no matter the cost, the death of his mother is still his greatest (and possibly only acknowledged) failure.

I said further up that Akechi's motive has shifted over time. Avenging his mother made sense when he was seven or eight. Later on, as he stores up insults and rejections, the focus shifts to avenging himself. And after he's worked for Shido for a year or two? After Shido has, despite everything, never quite acknowledged Akechi or rewarded him as he deserves? Well, then the focus is going to be on getting Shido.

Because Akechi is essential to him. He made him. Shido needs him like nobody ever has. Not since his mother.

That's the core of the twisted connection Akechi has to Shido. He hates him, and he blames him, and yet Shido is his only true family, poisoned as that relationship is. He is the only one who needs Akechi for anything. And Akechi needs so desperately to be needed....

I dunno. Shido could have had a devoted assassin for life, and been lifetime dictator of Japan, if he'd been just a little smarter; I suspect that thought unsettles third semester Akechi more than almost anything. Instead, Akechi's hate somehow deepens, and deepens, and deepens until he drowns in it, in all the things he's done in its service. To be needed so deeply, and yet still to be neglected....

Well, that makes the death of his mother look like nothing at all.

[alarrytale]

So regarding this anon - https://www.tumblr.com/alarrytale/771603640042553344/what-bothers-me-the-most-is-not-the-blame-falling. I’ve got a bit of rambling in me, sorry.

The sad part is (for Louis) is that the immature, toxic part of his fandom aka solo louies grows bolder day by day which is granted by his carelessness. Their repulsive behavior scares away all potential fans who want to engage with him on a deeper level. They will tank him if he continues to drive away the staple of his fans ( but don’t try to explain it to them, they’re too far gone anyway)

And I’m trying to put myself in hid shoes, Harry and Louis’ situation is no doubt one of a kind, and I’m also trying to think of another celebrity who would be so deeply engaged in fandom politics as much as Louis but come up empty.

So neither him nor his image agency (or whoever there is) have any precedent for how to navigate and balance ALL this nonsensical mess. Juggling your personal life, speculation about your personal life, your image management, bearding, babygate, child exploitation on your hands, tremendous grief and your entire career is unimaginable to hold together.

It’s not an excuse for his actions, a 30 yo celebrity of 15 years should know better than clashing one polar opposite side onto another more vulnerable, but it’s hard to make any sense of everything that’s been going on lately.

It just feels like a massive massive stagnation point. The fandom hasn’t been a pleasant place in a long time, even non-larries have started pointing to it. You reap what you sow, he’s guilty of it.

And I saw many fans pointing out that fans shouldn’t be fans of the artist’s personal life which is YES, PLEASE. But it’s so not a fair point for Louis’ fans who he’s been playing carrot and stick for so long that it’s become a deeply mutually parasocial relationship.

I hope he figures it out? Hope he does something to lock back the toxicity that’s been on resurgence since idk how long. Hope he figures out the most painless way out of the bbg, seeing now as he lost (all? some? a little bit?) the support net that’s been here to stay with him when this was going to happen

Anyway hope my ramblings make sense, thanks for reading💓

Hi, anon!

I welcome your ramblings! You are asking some good questions. Louis is in a stalemate and has been stuck there ever since bg began. He's damned if he do, and damned if he don't. He's got little agency, and every attempt to fix things is ruined by him having to fulfill his bg contract and deny larry. So he's just hanging on at this point, wondering the same thing as all of us, how long are fans going to stick around for? His hands are tied and we know that, but as you say, this isn't a very pleasant place anymore. Louis is also so distanced to us fans and we get nothing but grief from him and fellow fans.

I don't think Louis has a plan besides riding this out and hope people stick around for the end. He does as little as possible and within the boundaries of his contract. He's tired and we're tired. His reputation, image and brand is shit. Nothing is changing as far as i see things, it's the same old tricks every year. Fans are leaving or disengaging, while the cries of the gaslighted, manipulated and controlled solos are getting louder. It sucks but it is what it is.

[themultifanshipper]

The delusion in thinking you know what Lando is like... you don't know him, you don't know what happened with the media training and still you're writing so many useless apologies for him, and for what?

Everyone is responsible for what they say, no one held a gun to his head and forced him. Mazepin raped somebody and staied in the sport. Do you really think saying something against trump, or just something blander, would actually have consequences for him?

Until the day Lewis is a counter example to all of them, as was Vettel, you can't tell me that he or any of them are just trained puppets that only do what they're told and have no real agency

I'll keep writing, and apparently you'll keep reading, so here we go

Yeah Mazepin stayed in the sport because the system (in this cas f1 but true for all systems) protects rapists mysogynists etc... look at what happened with Horner. He's had no problems and the victim has been sacked. And that's where the difference between lando and some of the others is. They either stay completely out of it, or they speak, and when they speak it's ALWAYS to the advantage of the accused (I wasn't around during the Mazepin era so idk what statements the drivers put out there, but i'll bet they were not written by them).

As for consequences of going against the status quo, of course there would be consequences. It's political, it would take a comment about trump that a sponsor doesn't like for them to withdraw.

And of course I don't know Lando personally, but I am a good judge of character, always have been, and as per my last post abt this, I don't think I would get along with him, he's not a great person, but what I don't see is someone who went out of his way to endorse trump and what he stands for. It was a throwaway comment that shouldn't have been said at all, but some of you are acting like Lando is a misogynistic homophobic racist copy of trump, Which I Am Convinced He Is Not. (Not to play the "he's not racist he's got poc friends" card but... look at his friends)

Lewis Hamilton is (as I also said) a prime example, as is vettel (although I do have some doubts about the pedestal some people put him on), of how all drivers should be. However not all the drivers have the freedom that mercedes have given Lewis. Merc pride themselves of their diversity hires and pr diversity projects, but I don't believe for a second they believe a word of any of it. Can you imagine if one of the drivers of the "poorer" teams spoke out? They definitely can't afford to lose any sponsors. Even the bigger teams that stand for equality yadda yadda yadda are sponsored by brands that are: the worst thing ever for the environment (shell, ferrari), use child and or cheap labour and exploitation of poorer countries (puma, ferrari) or support/are known right wing or support palestine, CEO's a racist,rapist, homophobic etc.. Redbulls whole brand is based on AN ENERGY DRINK and old racists! If you respect your body at all you shouldn't drink redbull OR monster but anyway i digress....

Point is, there are more pressing things to worry about (including drivers actually being cunts and saying actual problematic shit) than Lando's offhand comment about it being an honour to meet trump just to keep the american right wing happy.

Anyway keep yelling at me I love the attention, keep it coming guys!