#I guess we all needed time to process the thing | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tyrantisterror · 14 hours ago

Text

You're welcome! Thank you for being such a willing participant in the interactive side of this story!

And yeah I'll gladly answer some more questions.

So, as I said above, I realized in the process of writing the story that, from a narrative and thematic perspective, this story could not give Sailor a clear and definitive answer to what they are. Even in the ending where they chose to go back to the normal world, we get an answer that convinces Sailor, but still clearly has some holes to the audience. I think there are ways we could have skewed certain conversations to learn more about the hypothetical answers in-story, but it would have come at the cost of key moments of character development for Sailor and Calibani. And I also think it's possible we could have skewed the story in such a direction where giving a definitive answer to the question wouldn't have necessarily hurt the theme of the story, by dint of turning the story into a different theme entirely - a South-heavy story might have focused on Sailor confronting their own inherent selfishness and short-sightedness rather than questions of their identity, for example, while a West-heavy story might have been a more dense and wacky adventure full of foolhardiness where learning who/what Sailor is could happen quickly and definitively without fanfare in order to be pushed aside for more shenanigans. 58 choices - there's a lot of potential what-ifs here.

There would be no way to contact Earth in the story as told, no, just as there wouldn't be a map till the very end. But, like, Sailor is canonically living longer than just the nine or so days the story covers, the Sea of Monsters is big, and Sailor knows a mad scientist. It's possible Sailor finds a way to get a message back to earth at some point - but I guess we'll have to save that for a hypothetical At Sea Without a Map 2: Now With Map!

I generally tried to vote either for the answer I thought would get the most votes, or the one that would get the least, in hopes of not actually affecting the result too much (unfortunately tumblr doesn't let you see the results before the poll ends unless you vote, and for the sake of keeping to a more-or-less daily schedule, I kinda needed to keep an eye on it to know what I'd need to draw during my downtime moments). I think the TT-only version of At Sea Without a Map would have been pretty similar to what we got. We might have spent a bit less time with Calibani and bit more time getting into monster hijinks and drawing exposition about the setting from characters like Dr. Neptune, but otherwise it would have been pretty similar. I had more fun with the player-choices that contradicted my own instincts, though - it was fun being given free reign to just shoot the shit with love interest while ignoring the plot. Very indulgent I do wonder if Sailor might have turned out differently, though - I was very conscious of trying not to flavor things too heavily when Sailor was in my control in the narrative, i.e. when they had to make choices without a compass to set them in a direction. I didn't really start giving Sailor personality in-text until I got a feel for what we were turning them into together, and even then I always felt nervous about it - I never wanted it to feel like I was forcing you all to play a character that wasn't authentic to what you were choosing. This wouldn't be a problem if Sailor was just written by me and me alone, so they might have become something different by dint of me not having to worry about alienating voters with their actions.

At Sea Without a Map Post-Script

After two months of so, my little writing experiment At Sea Without a Map has come to an end. And because I'm vain, I not only felt compelled to share it, but to talk about it in depth after the fact, so here we are. This is going to be long, though, so I'm not only going to break it into sections, but put it all under the cut for the sake of your dashboard. So go ahead and dive into the depths of the Sea of Monsters with me one more time!

Part 1: Never Stop Blowing Up

The writing process of Wizard School Mysteries Book 3 was really strained - not because of the book itself, mind you. When I was actually able to work on it, Book 3 came together really well - I think it required the least substantial rewrites of any my novels thus far. It's just that real life was kind of beating the shit out of me while I was trying to get it done - or maybe the better metaphor was that it was just slowly but steadily draining me of energy all the time. I'm honestly surprised I got the book out in roughly the same amount of time as the first two - by the way life had been treating me, it should have taken longer.

But when I got done with it I was accutely aware of how tired I was. I still had the creative drive, but fuck I needed something simple as a palette cleanser - something easy, and more importantly, something that was allowed to be bad. I needed something creative to do that was surplus to requirements and fully within its rights to suck ass so long as I had fun making it.

Around this time, I decided to rewatch Dimension 20's Never Stop Blowing Up. Brief explanation of what that is: Dimension 20 is an actual play show, i.e. a recording of people playing D&D and other TTRPGs. I'd say its reputation is built on the contrast of its main DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, who makes these meticulously crafted campaign plans, and his chaotic band of improv comedian players who promptly derail those plans spectacularly. Like, a good deal of the show's humor comes from Emily Ashford or Ally Beardsly doing something so off-the-wall that it shatters whatever the scene was going to be and creates a far more absurd and zany spectacle in its place. Which is why Never Stop Blowing Up is pretty notable, because it's the one campaign where Brennan himself is the agent of chaos, fully unleashing his own brand of madness that the players struggle to keep up with. And fuck does he seem to have fun with it.

Of course, all of the analysis above is purely from the outside looking in - it's likely that a lot of the "chaos" is played up for the audience. But still... there is something to the idea of a person who's been working on meticulously structured stories letting loose and just doing something extremely stupid.

So I decided to give myself a Never Stop Blowing Up moment - a short story that would be simple by design, with no standards to live up to or goal beyond "have fun telling a silly little story." I then came up with a few key criteria:

It can't be set in the Midgaheim/ATOM universe. I don't want the burden of figuring out where this story would fit among others.

It's gotta be a romance. People who've read my books might have picked up on the fact that I like to write about people falling in love, for the same reason I like to write about fire-breathing reptiles and friendly monsters (i.e. I use writing to indulge in things I'll never experience in real life). I've only used romance as subplots in my fiction before, and tend to feel a bit guilty if I focus on it too long - like I'm being self indulgent. Well, this is all about self indulgence, so the romance should be front and center.

It's gotta be SIMPLE, episodic even. Not complex plotting required.

I almost chose my xenomorph romance for this, but I had developed its outline to the point where it would be too complex to fit. I then considered a sort of superhero story that could be pitched as "what if Bringing Up Baby but Katherine Hepburn's character is a Harley Quinn-esque supervillain and Cary Grant's character gets turned into some sort of horrifying genetic mutant in the first ten minutes." That one hit a weird roadblock when I got to the character brainstorming phase (the first phase of any writing project I do) - I was trying to figure out what the mad scientist who turns out Cary Grant-figure into a mutant would be named, came up with the name "Dr. Skullfuck," immediately realized that having a character named "Dr. Skullfuck" is a Mark Millar-ass writing move that I could not allow myself to do, but then couldn't stop thinking of the name "Dr. Skullfuck" and giggling, which just brought all thinking to a grinding halt on that project.

(I'll still probably do it someday, though - just, you know, without Dr. Skullfuck)

Inspiration struck again, though. I'd been getting into Epic: The Musical, a musical retelling of The Odyssey, and it put me in the mood for a sea monster story. But, more than that, it got me thinking about one particular archetype from sea monster stories - but that brings us to the next part of this Post Script...

Part 2: It Was Always About Calibani

Ok, so, one of the big changes Epic: The Musical made involved Odysseus's encounter with the sirens, and before you read more of my rambling, I'd like you to watch two animatics for the two songs in question here:

youtube

A summary: one of the sirens takes the form of Odysseus's wife to try and tempt him into getting in the water, Odysseus tricks her into giving him directions, captures her and the rest of her kind, and proceeds to have his men slaughter them horribly. In the OG story the sirens don't die - nor does their song involve imitating a man's wife, for that matter, it's just a really pretty song.

This is done for an important narrative purpose - Epic: The Musical is focused on analyzing the moral ambiguity of Odysseus, and how it is constantly challenged by the impossible choices he is forced to make in his attempt to get home. At this point in the musical, Odysseus has decided to stop trying to be a compassionate man, shirking all mercy in favor of utter ruthless pursuit of his goals. These two songs are meant to be unsettling as hell - this is the beginning of a series of heartless choices by both Odysseus and his men that will culminate in the mutiny and complete annihilation of Odysseus's crew, as well as Odysseus himself being so hopelessly stranded that nothing short of divine intervention will save him.

I bring this up because when I first heard these two songs - specifically while watching these two animatics - it, like... it devastated me. I was so horrified and sad, so shaken by it. And part of it was for the reasons outlined above, but admittedly that wasn't the gut reaction I had. No, my immediate reaction was, and I quoute my own broken brain verbatim here: "You can't kill the sirens! They're not for killing, they're for loving!"

...now, those of you who know me are probably not surprised by this very stupid sentiment coming from me. One of my more popular posts is just me talking about how down bad I would be for various folkloric monsters whose whole shtick is "looks like a pretty lady but Watch Out." But as a person filled with immense self loathing and doubt, my brain immediately looked at that very stupid sentiment I expressed and said, "Wait, no, that's fucking dumb, I'm fucking dumb. The sirens are remorseless murderers. These sirens in particular preyed upon a man's love for his wife, who he has not seen in twelve years, to convince him to let them kill him. They are, by all standards of morality, Very Fucking Evil, and if they were not women you would not feel bad about them getting killed."

And as my brain argued with itself over this topic, I got to thinking about the various monstrous/othered sea women of The Odyssey - not just the sirens, but the witch Circe, the nymph Calypso, the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. And I thought about the others of their kind in other myths and folktales - selkies, mermaids, etc.

There's an archetype of sea monster that focuses entirely on one specific anxiety sailors are prone to, namely the fact that (for a good deal of human history) being on a boat meant spending a lot of time away from women. The horror of this monster is how it uses that desire for female company to tempt people into danger - like a mirage, it leads you to expose yourself to danger in pursuit of an illusory comfort.

But, unlike real world mirages, these monstrous sea women DO exist in their stories. More than that, they're often, like, sad and lonely. Their narrative purpose is just to be a temptation, but that doesn't change the fact that they do have lives of their own in these worlds. And, softie that I am, I can't help feeling sad for them, especially the ones who actually seem to want the same companionship the sailors they tempt want. Sailors don't stay with their Circes, they don't marry their Calypsos. The sirens live on a barren rock, alone, Scylla is left to wallow in misery at her monstrous form, and the selkie always has to leave for fear of being trapped by a person who won't love her on her terms.

I realized I had my hook for this simple, easy, silly little sea monster romance story: I was going to give a sea woman the happy ending she'd never get from anyone else.

Sailor may be the protagonist, but make no mistake: At Sea Without a Map was always, always, ALWAYS about Calibani.

The goal with Calibani was simple: I was going to set up a fairly standard Monstrous Sea Woman, but where other stories would let her be in one episode of the travel narrative and move on, this one would stick around. She'd be an unambiguous predator of human beings - an open and admitted maneater - but she would have no true malice to her. She, like all predators, eats what she can get to survive, and it just so happens that she's adapted to eat humans. And the story would pose the same question to the reader that my brain posed to me during Different Beast: is there any way you could make a siren-style sea monster sympathetic? Can you make a normal person who doesn't have my particular brain rot look at a maneating siren and think, "You're not supposed to kill her, you're supposed to love her!"

One of the few unavoidable plot points of At Sea Without a Map was that Calibani and Sailor's relationship would become romantic. What kind of romance it was could have varied substantially - it could have been one-sided, it could have been toxic, it could have been far more tragic OR far more comedic. But it was always, always going to be a romance of some sort - the goal of this experiment was to make you, the reader, love Calibani. All else was icing on the cake.

I decided to base Calibani's personality on Miranda from The Tempest - i.e. a sweet girl who is both wordly and naive, who understands the strange setting of our "lost at sea" story far better than the audience viewpoint character does, but views the mundane world of the audience viewpoint character with wonder and naiveté. In fact I almost named her Miranda outright... except I already had a character in the setting I chose for this story who had that name, and as an allusion to the same Shakespearean character no less. So I settled on naming her after Miranda's adoptive sibling (of sorts), Caliban - more fitting in some ways, as Caliban is a fish-human hybrid who is arguable more native to the magic island in The Tempest than Miranda herself.

(Calibani isn't the only Tempest name homage, either - her mother, Sycorax, takes her name directly from Caliban's unseen but oft-spoken of witch mother. Dr. Antonia Warefore takes her first name from Antonio, one of the human villains in The Tempest who hopes to use being lost at sea as a way to perform a coup. And the mothman Iriel takes her name from Ariel, the wind spirit in The Tempest who aids the wizard Prospero in controlling the magic island. If Sailor has a "real" name, it's probably either Ferdinand or Miranda, the two lovers who manage to blend civilization and the wilderness together with their romance.)

Visually, I wanted Calibani to not be any common archetype of sea monster woman, but rather something that evokes the popular images while still being her own thing. She's not a mermaid or a siren or a selkie - she's basically "what if a sea serpent was also a girl." In-universe, she's chubby because she, like all marine megafauna, needs blubber to survive. Out-of-universe, she's chubby because I've found that routinely drawing cute chubby girls is good for my mental health.

Part 3: CYOA

Now, while we live in a post-Muncher society where shame and cringe are emotions only the cowardly should experience, I am nonetheless Very Catholic about expressing my own feelings of, like, liking girls and shit. I cannot help feeling guilty when publicly expressing adoration of women without, like, an excuse - it's gotta be a joke or something, you know? I can't be genuine about it, or else Jesus will beat me with a cane for disrespecting women with my lecherous gaze.

But luckily I've cultivated a loyal audience of fellow monsterfuckers, which meant I had an excuse lined up: if I made this a choose your own adventure type deal, a story with audience participation, then you all would be my accomplices. And Jesus can't cane all of us! He doesn't have enough hands! I found a loophole bigger than his stigmata!

Plus I love collaborative story-telling - there's a thrill in not having total control of where the narrative is going. As Brennan Lee Mulligan must know, there's a joy in having to deal with the chaos thrown your way by letting others grab the figurative ball, even if just for a moment.

Part 4: Offbeat Melody

Since I did not want to set this story in Midgaheim, I decided to steer myself away from a vaguely medieval setting altogether. But I also didn't want to limit myself with the need for "realism" that putting it in a normal sea would require, and making a new setting whole cloth would start pushing this project into "not easy" territory.

Luckily, I had a setting lying around that I hadn't played with in a while, which just so happened to have a location that was PERFECT for the sort of Never Stop Blowing Up style madness I was aiming for. For a few years I ran a Monster of the Week TTRPG campaign called Offbeat Melody, and one of its core setting elements was taking the goblin universe hypothesis in paranormal science (yeah it's a real hypothesis) to an illogical extreme. We had specifically seen glimpses of the Sea of Monsters in Offbeat Melody, i.e. the parallel universe where monsters like Nessie, Ogopogo, Champ, and the like all hail from. Well, why not have a whole story set there? It's literally a universe devoted solely to creating sea monsters - what better place to strand our modern Odysseus?

Offbeat Melody was always sort of a Never Stop Blowing Up project, or at least NSBU adjacent. Some of my most unhinged story-telling moments are in that campaign - you could make a supercut of just the "commercial breaks" in the various sessions and it'd basically be an I Think You Should Leave episode. Taking one obscure corner of its multiversal world and exploring it in detail was perfect for this project.

Part 5: Monster by Monster

With our main romance as sorted out as could be for a CYOA story, it was time to figure out the "episodes" of this sea voyage. I settled on there being ten to roughly align with The Odyssey - just in terms of number, mind you, not in a one-to-one comparison. The first was, obviously, Calibani herself, which left nine more slots for me to fill with monsters. Let's go through them together in brief:

Tree Storks - any lost at sea story eventually has to get its protagonist into an island at some point, but this immediately begs the question, "Why don't they just stay on the island where it's safe?" The answer to that question has to be, "it's not safe there, actually." The Odyssey does this quickly and cleverly with a one two punch: the first island seems safe until you realize the food on it brainwashes you into forgetting everything except your desire to eat it, and the second island is full of delicious sheep but also giants who will eat you just as easily as they eat the sheep. When other islands show up in the story later, you immediately regard them with suspicion, because you don't know HOW they're going to be fucked up, but they definitely will be. My goal with the second episode was to establish the same sort of danger - that land is NOT safe, that islands WILL be fucked up and dangerous in ways you might not expect.

I also wanted to establish that this is not just a sea of monsters, but a very WEIRD sea of WEIRD monsters. It couldn't be any old monster on this island - it had to be one that was unique, unexpected, and maybe just a bit silly while still being menacing.

I've always felt that there's a lot of un-mined horror potential in storks, cranes, and herons - any bird with a long neck and spear-like beak it uses to stab smaller creatures from above. Just imagine yourself in a frog's place in the world - tiny, going about your business, when suddenly something shoots down at you from above and impales you before you even feel the shadow fall over your face. Or perhaps you did see the shadow - some of these birds spread their wings to create shade specifically to attract fish, and then spear the poor little bastards.

Well, what do people often look to islands for when out at sea? Shade - the shade of a palm tree. And palm fronds kinda resemble feathers, don't they? Wouldn't it be both ludicrous and terrifying is there was a stork big enough to mimic a palm tree - and wouldn't that be a DEVIOUS trap for a sun-drenched sailor to fall for? So the Tree Storks were born.

The Globster - I made a list of sea monster archetypes in the early planning for this project, and one I wanted to include was a kraken, i.e. some sort of tentacled sea beast. But I didn't want to do JUST a big squid or octopus, or even a riff on them. I wanted to take the idea of "big sea monster with lots of tentacles" into a stranger direction.

Since the Sea of Monsters is explicitly the home universe of lake and sea monster cryptids, I thought it might be fun if ASWaM's kraken equivalent was a globster - just a big ball of rotten meat. I love drawing monstrous faces, so I decided it'd just be, like, MADE of hideous rotten faces, all melting and congealing together, with its tentacles doubling as the tongues of its many mouths. A perfectly wretched image that, like the Tree Storks, would do well to establish how Fucked things could get in this setting. Plus similar monsters had appeared in Offbeat Melody, which would make for a fun sense of familiarity for the, like, five or so readers of mine who had listened to that campaign before.

Captain Peter & the Dolphin - Another thing I did in the early planning stages of this project was make a list of the different sea voyage stories I know and love, the most contentious of which is The Life of Pi. That's a story that I love on a literal level but kind of hate on a figurative level - its whole theme/message is that doubt is the worst thing you can have, that if you don't commit to believing something with zealous conviction you are a coward. As a person who thinks doubt is valid, that "I don't know" is sometimes the ONLY truly valid answer to a question, I have issues with that message.

But I can't help loving the beautifully ludicrous idea of a non-anthropomorphic tiger sailing the ocean on a big Odyssey of its own. Like, if that story didn't actively hate me for being agnostic, it would be one of my favorites.

So I decided to, you know, just steal the idea of a tiger Odysseus. The tiger in The Life of Pi is named Richard Parker. Richard Parker also happens to be the name of Peter Parker's dad. Hence we get Captain Peter - the figurative son of Richard Parker, if you will. And to ratchet up the absurdity of a tiger Odysseus, I made him a pirate and the sole sailor of his voyage. Somehow, this tiger has manned a boat on his own.

Captain Peter was intended to be the hero of another story - a sign for the readers that it IS possible for a stranded person (or, in this case, tiger) to survive out here. To that end, he had to rescue our heroes from another threat, but not one that would be interesting enough to take the focus off of the tiger pirate. Originally I planned for that threat to just be a big shark, but I ended up liking my shark design too much to put it in a role that small, so I quickly designed a nasty dolphin for the role instead. I think that worked out well, honestly.

Dr. Neptune - Episodes 5 and 6 were the mid-point of this journey, so I wanted the two monsters of those to escalate things significantly. I figured episode 5 was probably a good place to FINALLY give some meaningful exposition on what was going on, and there are a lot of stories about mad scientists doing weird shit on islands in my big list of sea voyage stories I love. So we get Dr. Neptune, a classical brain-in-a-jar mad scientist who's affable enough to give more-or-less accurate exposition but loony enough to be a problem. This also felt like a good spot to remind the reader that Calibani is not just a girl with a tail but rather a Sea Monster herself, and one that we'd been making stronger by allying with.

With his human-but-not-quite nature and cyclops eye, Dr. Neptune could sort of be seen as the Polyphemus of this story, couldn't he?

The Crocodisle - One of the sea monster archetypes on my list was "the island that's actually a sleeping monster," of which there are many in mythology and folklore. My favorite is the Jasconius from the voyage of St. Brendan, mainly because it's more or less benign and actually comes back to help St. Brendan and his crew at the end of the story. I always love when I can find an old story with a friendly monster in it.

When thinking of my own spin on the island monster concept, I remembered the only Magic the Gathering card I had as a kid, which I still have and love to this day: The Sandbar Crocodile. This card already inspired Crocogon's color scheme in The Atomic time of Monsters, but I felt I could go to that well again one more time, and so made a crocodile that wasn't just a sandbar, but a whole damn island to itself. And, like Jasconius, it turns out he's pretty chill.

I did not think of the pun name "Crocodisle" until I was actually writing the chapter in question.

The Femdom Mermaids - These three were a late addition to the roster. When I had Calibani bring up mermaids early in the story, I realized as soon as I wrote her rant about them that we'd HAVE to meet some later on in the story.

The readers had significantly shaped Calibani and Sailor's romance by this point, and I decided that it could be useful to have a chapter that was devoted to showing definitively how these two were good for each other. I thought the mermaids could provide a good contrast: have them act out a seemingly more benign take on the monstrous sea women trope (they abduct our hero to protect and care for them!) only for it to quickly feel MORE deranged than Calibani's comparatively simple desire just to eat him.

The spirit of Calibani's rant about mermaids was taken from weird* girls I knew in high school complaining about cheerleaders, so I wanted the mermaids to look like the sea monster equivalent of popular kids to Calibani's chubby weird girl. Two of them got the names of famous beauties - Helyne = Helen of Troy, Clio = Cleopatra.

(*when I say "weird" I mean it in a complimentary and affectionate sense)

Bob, meanwhile, kinda... rebelled, I guess? Before I had names for them, I listed "bob" by her as just, like, a descriptor for her hair cut, but then I liked it as her name, and once she was named Bob she became more than just a mean popular girl. She was a weirdo too, the little punching bag of the two mean popular girls who did their dirty work and smiled through their abuse because hey, at least they included her. It gave the trio an easily defined dynamic, helped make two of the three more visibly nasty, and gave us comic relief in an arc that could very well have gotten too uncomfortable otherwise.

And I guess it worked - readers REALLY loved Bob, and were very vocal about it, and I realized mid-arc that I had accidentally made her too likable to just leave in this arc. So Bob got to be rescued from her awful friend group thanks to readers like YOU.

Lord Ironteeth - yeah, this was the shark that was too cool to be a minor threat. When I drew his noggin, I realized he would need a chapter of his own, one with gravitas. I decided he'd specifically be the threshold guardian -once we beat him, we'd know for sure how to get home, even if there were a few more threats in store.

Spindle Inc and Sycorax - when I was a kid I used to have this recurring nightmare about being on some sort of underwater sea station that had this huge sea serpent trapped inside it. I'd look at the sea serpent from a window within the station and see it coiling in its tank, only for it to look at me with fury. In that glance I would suddenly realize two things with absolute clarity: first, it was going to break free and kill everyone, and second, we deserved that destruction for what we had done to it. The terror of the dream was less that the sea serpent was going to break free, and more the guilt of knowing that all the mayhem that was about to unfold was our fault to begin with.

I thought that would be fun to homage with the penultimate chapter of this story. OBVIOUSLY the sea serpent was Calibani's mom, obviously the trauma of its capture was why Calibani grew into a predator that specializes in hunting humans, obviously we would have to free the sea serpent despite that running counter to Sailor's goal of getting home. Easy, easy, easy plot point to include.

Spindle, Inc. is the primary antagonistic force in Offbeat Melody, so they easily slotted into the role of the arrogant humans who captured this monster for nefarious and selfish motives. They could tie a lot of other plot threads together too - Dr. Neptune was a scientist who worked for them as a contractor only to get screwed over (i.e. they stranded him in the Sea of Monsters, expecting him to die, and then used his research to make their own base of operations in it), we'd learn of him through a spindle briefcase left behind by some unfortunate rogue agent who got eaten by the Globster while he was trying to escape, hell they could even be one of the possible origins of Sailor themself (more on that later). Very useful villains, Spindle.

The Abyssal Mother - I knew the last sea monster would need a lot of punch to it. I briefly considered just a big whale - the Moby Dick to Spindle's corporate Ahab - but it felt underwhelming after all that came before. So I went for arguably the most dramatic possible sea monster, a full on Cthulhu-style elder god. If you're a frequent follower of this blog, you might know I have particularly high standards for Eldritch Abominations, so I realized this was going to be a pretty big challenge for me to live up to, and decided to keep the cthulhu in question reserved to the last few entries as a result - the less it appears, the less it has to live up to.

I realized I had a good angle when my experiments with the Cthulhu "squid for a head" concept ended up having a face framed in shadow - you know, the same visual that our protagonist has in most appearances. That provided some very juicy parallels between the two that made this final monster feel particularly noteworthy to me, ones that I'll leave you to ponder, since they tie into...

Part 6: Themes

I did not set out to have a theme in this story. I just wanted to make a sailor and a sea monster kiss. That was my only goal.

But I really don't begin with theme in ANY of my writing. I figure out topics I want to address, but for all my novels I feel like the themes didn't start coming together until about halfway through the first draft, when enough of the elements of the story had been set down and interacted with each other enough for me to realize what I was saying with them. A huge part of my second and third drafts for my novels have focused on making the themes of my stories more concrete and unified.

Well, ASWaM is very much a first draft of a story, but it's a simple enough story that I think the theme found itself pretty well despite lacking subsequent drafts to refine it.

ASWaM is about doubt and direction. It's about being adrift in a world that is in many ways hostile by nature, about not feeling like you're where you're supposed to be or even WHO you're supposed to be, and about setting off aimlessly in the hope that maybe you'll find your way to that mythical land of "what my life is supposed to be."

When I began the story, Sailor had amnesia and wore clothes that obscured their identity as a way to make it easier for anyone to step into Sailor's role. Sailor had to feel like You, the Reader, and so we don't know their name, their gender, their eye color, their hair color, even their skin color (note that their hands are always wearing gloves, and their face is always in shadow).

But it also meant Sailor is, well, undefined, at least at the start of the story. Sailor doesn't know who they are, what they are, how they came to be. Sailor feels distinctly that they should be Something Else, should be Somewhere Else, should be Someone Else, should not be who/what/where they are. Sailor is plagued by doubt, by a need to go in a different direction, by a need to be other than they are.

This initially contrasts with Calibani, who begins the story very confident that she is doing exactly what she was designed to be doing and acting exactly like she should be. As they interact, they begin to shift each other in opposite directions - Calibani questions her existence and nature, sometimes to a self destructive degree, and Sailor begins to find something about who and where they are that they like. They find a healthy middle ground together - doubtful enough to want to be better people, but with love for themselves that allows them to not feel the need to up-heave their lives entirely.

I knew at the start that I would build an expectation for there to be some answer to the question of who Sailor is and where they came from, because those are the questions that begin the whole narrative. I brainstormed a number of answers to those questions, but once I got a few chapters into writing the story and saw this theme of doubt developing, I realized I couldn't answer them. From a thematic standpoint, the doubt HAD to remain. So I gave hints to possible answers, bits of evidence to support the possibility of them being true, but never planted a smoking gun that answered it for sure.

Sailor can't know the answer because NONE of us know the answer. Outside of blind Life of Pi style faith, you cannot know for sure that you are living the life you're supposed to live. All you can do is figure out whether you're happy with the life you've got, or if you need a change. Sailor will never know who they are supposed to be, but they did learn who they are, and they love that person now.

For those curious, the possible Sailor origins are:

Occam's Razor: they're exactly what Dr. Neptune theorized, i.e. a human who got stranded in the Bermuda Triangle (or the Devil's Triangle or any other number of paranormal triangles) and fell into the Sea of Monsters. The trauma of that experience gave them amnesia. It's just brain damage and bad luck.

A Spindle Experiment: Dr. Warefore mentions that Spindle has been trying to find a way to make a human who can evolve like the denizens of the Sea of Monsters. Sailor may well be an attempt to do just that, perhaps one they wrote off as a failure and abandoned (they do that a lot)

A Deep One: Sailor is the offspring of one of the denizens of the Sea of Monsters (most likely the Abyssal Mother herself) who has somehow been tricked into believing they are human, to the point where they seem to be human to everyone else, even other monsters. Maybe a human summoned a sea monster to breed with on earth, and Sailor ended up being subconsciously drawn back to the Sea by their blood. Maybe Sailor never actually lived on earth at all, but was only made to THINK they had as part of the transformation into a human.

The Platonic Ideal of a Sailor: the Sea of Monsters is full of archetypal concepts, and arguably a sailor trying to find their way home is just as archetypal as any sea serpent, mermaid, or kraken. Our only proof that humans aren't native to the Sea of Monsters is Dr. Neptune, and he's not as reliable an expert as he claims to be.

This theme of doubt and direction also made the compass more important to the narrative than a simply mechanic for audience participation - a compass, after all, gives direction, and the feeling that Sailor is not where they're supposed to be, that they need to head in a different direction, is ultimately the catalyst of the plot. The compass is, in many ways, the antagonist of the story - the force that keeps Sailor from accepting themself. I realized this a little after I started making the different directions have personalities - initially they just represented broad concepts (North = follow conventional wisdom ala the North Star, South = preserve your short-term self interest at all costs, East = act with curiosity and be willing to take calculated risks, and West = throw caution to the wind and do anything that seems novel and exciting), but over time they became little characters themselves.

Since it was our thematic antagonist, I decided to pepper in some ideas about what the compass might be in-universe - and, in a move that would no doubt frustrate the compass, we also don't know for sure which of those is "correct." Is the compass a poltergeist, some amalgamation of dead sailors who try to steer other lost souls home? Is it a malign entity that leeches off of those desperate enough to seek its aid, living through them while pretending to aid them? Is it a device Spindle made to lure sailors to their clutches, OR to guide their experiments in human/monster hybrids? Was it a cursed item that forced a sea monster to assume a human shape? Who can say - the compass sure can't, it can only tell you a direction to go in.

Part 7: Q&A

Since this was an interactive story, I felt it was only fitting to add one last interactive element to this post-script write up, and some of your happily obliged me by sending in questions.

When I noticed how fast readers were falling for Calibani, I figured there was a good chance we'd end up staying in the Sea of Monsters. By chapter 7, I figured it was more or less a given, and by the end of the Lord Ironteeth encounter I was almost 100% sure Sailor would remain at sea. There was always a chance, though - while a look at the polls shows that the audience got more and more on the same page towards the end, there were always dissenting voices, and the desire to get an answer to the question of Who Sailor Was remained strong, as a number of people kept trying to find angles where they could get that AND stay with Calibani.

I was surprised early on by how easily the audience fell in love with Calibani, to the point where I made a few posts commenting on it. I mean, I shouldn't have been - as I said earlier, I have cultivated an audience of fellow monsterfuckers on here, and I know at least a few of them saw my bait and knew they could get me to be freaky in a way we found mutually agreeable (thank you all again for helping me escape being caned by Jesus for being horny).

Like, we REPEATEDLY ignored developing the plot in the Tree Storks chapter for several days just to spend more time with Calibani - something that I enjoyed immensely (this whole thing was an excuse for me to write and draw a cute chubby sea monster girl as much as possible aftter all) but also knew as a storyteller was not what most would consider a good story call. I like how it turned out, but it defied conventional narrative wisdom, you know? I was surprised.

On the other side of the coin, I was also surprised by how the audience NEVER chose an option that was humorously disastrous. I gave plenty of them, and, like, generally in collaborative storytelling there will be at least one moment where your collaborators decide to do the really, REALLY stupid thing that makes everything spiral out of control really quickly. I figured at least once the audience would choose the troll response, but no, you guys worked hard to keep Sailor and Calibani alive. You refused to let them hurt each other, refused to let them throw themselves into danger, refused to imperil them for your own chuckles. It was very sweet and unexpected.

I say "you refused" but to be fair it's not like NO ONE voted for the troll options - they generally got a handful of votes, just one that was beaten by a landslide of more reasonable options. Hopefully those of you who voted for the troll options enjoyed Bob throwing you a bone by disintegrating Dr. Warefore - that was my consolation prize to you.

Yes. I knew at the beginning that there would be two endings for this story: either Sailor leaves the Sea and goes home, or Sailor stays there forever. Or, you know, Sailor dies as a result of you guys choosing several stupid options in a row, but as stated above you guys avoided those scenarios pretty decisively.

Had Sailor gone home, the following would have occurred: first, they would forget everything that happened in the Sea of Monsters. Second, they would wake up in a hospital, having been found in the Atlantic Ocean by a human-recovery charity run by... oh, isn't that funny, some tech company named Spindle Inc! Spindle would foot the medical bills and even offer Sailor a job, but Sailor would decline because even now they're still not sure what Spindle even does. Sailor would go back to their life and find it familiar and utterly mundane, but not particularly happy. Their father died when they were 18, their mother was never in the picture, they have no siblings. They worked an office job and were sort of a nonentity - that position has long since been filled, but Sailor gets a new job and lives out much the same life: simple, mundane, dreary. Every now and then they get a pang of desire to leave, to go to sea, but they push it out of mind. They never even see the ocean again as long as they live.

Sailor would have gotten the normal life they thought they were supposed to have, the normal memories and name and identity, the mundane life of a normal person. And they just had to trade everything they found in the Sea of Monsters to get it. A question is answered, a direction is followed, but is it the right answer, the right direction?

Well, I think doubt would have remained.

I had a very vague idea for there to be some sort of man-eating giant in, like, a crystal castle. He got cut to make way for the mermaids.

I wanted to fit in a big whale and a giant crustacean, but there wasn't room or an interesting angle for me to want to make room for them. Saved for a possible sequel, I suppose.

I also wanted to have a scene with, like, DOZENS of sea monsters, including some of the ones from Offbeat Melody, but the goal of "this should be EASY you dumbass" made me kill that idea pretty quick.

Thank you!

The primary inspirations were:

The Odyssey and Epic: the Musical

The voyage of St. Brendan

The many "weird shit happens on an island" movies in Toho's filmography, i.e. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, Son of Godzilla, Yog Monster of the Deep, Matango, etc.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Boy and the Heron

Ponyo (specifically Ponyo's parents - I wanted Sailor to have the same desperate energy as that wizard who fucks the giant sea goddess)

The Life of Pi

Slay the Princess (perhaps most obvious in the use of second person narration, multiple voices in the protagonist's head, and falling in love with a creature that has tried to kill you at least once)

I'm going to use this to springboard to a related point in a second, but first a genuine yet humorous answer: Yes, absolutely yes, I am enough of a big romantic sap that I would give everything about my life away to be with a person who loves me and explore a world of monsters in a heartbeat. Hell, I would have jumped in the water the minute Calibani asked and died with her fangs in my neck and a smile on my face. I am dumb this way. Do not follow my example.

On that related point, though... Most stories like this, I daresay ALL stories like this that I know of, end with the hero abandoning the fantasy world in favor of reality, never to return. And that seems like the proper choice and lesson on the surface - we don't want to tell audiences to give up their real life in favor of a fantasy, after all. That's encouraging escapism, and that's not healthy!

But, like... textually speaking, the fantastical world IS real to the characters in these stories. And it's often not really an escape - was Sailor's life devoid of conflict and suffering in the Sea of Monsters? Fuck no! It's just that they figured out how to deal with that conflict and suffering - they built skills and a support system, they adapted, they learned how to overcome what was there.

I think it can be argued that sometimes the return to a "normal" world is, in itself, an escape - the idea that your life can spiral into chaos but that's ok, you can just reset everything and go back to The Way It Was and Should Be is just as unrealistic and unhealthy an idea as You Should Escape to A Better World. Sometimes your plans for your life fall apart, sometimes you're thrown into a place you never intended to go, sometimes you have to learn skills you never anticipated needing and ally with people you never thought you'd befriend to deal with problems you never dreamed you'd have to overcome. And sometimes it's ok to look at your derailed life, your Not Where You Should Be life, and say, "Well, I've learned how to live here... maybe I can stay."

Especially if there's a cute chubby sea monster girl who loves you.

Bob was never supposed to appear past chapter 7, but about halfway through that chapter I realized the audience and I myself would be heartbroken if we didn't rescue her. Definitely for the best - she provided some well-needed comic relief in the final chapters.

This is gonna sound snarky, but, yeah - there were 58 choices with four options a piece, and we only chose one of the four. While some of the options would have similar results, almost none would have had identical outcomes. And some would have been VERY different.

Like, to go back to the beginning: when Calibani attacked, we could either throw a net on her, harpoon her, try to drive around her, or hide below deck. We picked the net, but for the other three options:

Harpooning would result in us hitting her in the thigh, causing her enough pain that she collapses on our deck and we, horrified at the violence we committed, just sort of push on. Calibani would be wounded for at least the next chapter, perhaps longer, and significantly weaker (and probably harboring a great deal of hidden resentment while also being genuinely scared of Sailor). She would be vulnerable during the stork attack, forcing Sailor to take a more active role in that chapter.

Trying to steer around her would result in us essentially fighting her with our boat, resulting in the boat capsizing and Calibani getting tangled up in it. We'd wake up alone on Stork Island and have to travel in search of our boat, alone and vulnerable among man-eating trees. We'd run into Calibani again, also beached and in trouble, end up recruiting her to help us get our boat out of the sand.

Hiding below deck would end in a sea storm that leaves us inside our boat as it's beached on Stork Island. We'd fend off the storks alone, and run into Calibani once we get our boat out to sea, as she got away more or less unscathed.

All of these would have majorly changed the trajectory of our relationship with Calibani and our identity as Sailor, despite seeming to have the same component parts on the surface. Now account for how similarly slight changes in the other options could have gone, and we could have had a very different story indeed.

Part 8: Our Girl

I just think she's neat!

63 notes · View notes

youchangedmedestiel · 8 months ago

Text

Funny how it didn't trend right away after what Jensen said.

It's like the calm before the storm.

#destiel #deancas #dean winchester #castiel #jensen ackles #I don't know why there is a delay #it's not the first time though #jensen said this on sunday #and today it's tuesday #(fortunately yesterday wasn't tuesday too)#anyway I'm glad we're trending #again #I guess we all needed time to process the thing #I haven't made my own post about it either #YET #I probably will #I somehow needed to step back and watch the video without everyone's thoughts interfering #my personal experience with destiel

52 notes · View notes

icewindandboringhorror · 2 months ago

Text

"We can get through this by working together, reach out to your friends, community is all we have, a social network will be your security in the world, now is the time to lean on others!"

I do agree, and it's scientifically sound (pretty sure there is data about how people with better social networks live longer and etc) but also....augh..... what about the severe social issues, difficulty to leave the house, physical issues which lead to like zero socialization energy a majority of the time, etc. etc. Social support can be a replacement for structural support, but.. I guess I just wish it didn't have to be. Community is extremely difficult to build, even moreso if you're someone who has issues with social cues or group conversations or even just being around others in the first place. And blah, nuance, of course I'm just complaining or maybe being too negative or maybe misunderstanding, but, I hardly have the energy to brush my hair once every 2 months.. how am I supposed to maintain a wide social network and be active in a Community and Join Groups lol... sometimes it kind of feels like "er.. well if thats my only option then...... ruh roh". It's overwhelming

#Kind of like some post I saw a long time ago talking about how even the meanest shittiest most difficult to get along with #elderly people or whaever still deserve to have some sort of systems in place to support them so they're not just relying on the #grace of relatives or etc. who may not be able to deal with them. Not saying that I'm like mean and cruel or anything #but the fact of the matter is in most social situations either I am compromising or the other person is. Not in like an ~`ouuu im so weirdd #nobody willever understand my quirky swagg hee heee~' way but like a.. Just factually the things that make me happy and comfortable #are often incompatible with people. The way I communicate and process things is different from the way other people do and that #is always a barrier. I cannot have ''easy''' interactions. Even with 'understanding' people there is nearly always a significant #amount of effort. You can't walk into a group of people and then be like ''okay you guys all have to wear #masks and you also cant play music too loud and also we should communicate turns of speaking very clearly so group conversations #arent too stressful. and also i need this and that and we have to do this and that and '' etc. etc. You CAN. And some people will #go along with that. but they will ALWAYS secretly resent you for it. You will be the one person they're relieved to not have to be around.#theyre glad when you dont show up since they can go back to doing things however they want and not masking and all these boring #annoying things. OR you can say none of that and just deal with the loud music and the talking and the unmasked people. but then #YOU'RE compromising. and no matter how nice they are it's exhausting to be around and youre just further alienated #while in the presence of people and uncofmrtoabel the whole time.#Which I'm not saying the only form of community is a group setting specificially but just giving that as an example lol #I just wish there were a better option than ''well learn to socialize normally or just suffer then'' . Which I know is not what people are #saying. I guess I just always feel a bit scared when 'community is the answer'. Since its not like 'oh im just socially anxious and need to #get out of my shell~!' or something thats really that remedy-able. It's like.. my mostly unchangeable physical health issues combined #with the mostly unchangable literal way that my brain processes sensory informationand other things means that interacting with #others in a normal and easy way is incredibly difficult and often exhausting especially to maintain in any longform fashion. So then #when it's like ''the answer to staying safe is to maintain longform social connections!! :3 just reach out!!'' then.. ermm... O_O #also I'm not even one of the cutesy shy emotional hermits that's nervous. I'm the Bad Stereotype emotionless robotic cold seeming #looms in the corner of the room type of thing so people have less pity on you in that way. -_- ANYWAY gghj #I need like.. a designated social representative or something.. When I did work in that bookshop forever ago they gave me a #person who basically was just with me to help communicate with others on my behalf and supervise me and stuff. I need that.. Some #more extraverted person I can latch onto and they can maintain the Social Support Network for me and I can just be their +1 to all #of the Social Things and community. I have helpful skills I can contribute to other people and stuff it's just like.. I cant socialize lol #I cook food or something for you.. then you keep me in contact with Community.. a deal. (but then what about when I'm too sick to #contribute? as is often the case. there's not much place for people like me in communities sometimes i fear.. sigh.) ***

13 notes · View notes

gurenkurosen · 5 months ago

Text

ohh i think im coming to a bit of a realization actually as to why mmos are so scary when im forced to party

#its like #in a single player game i can take all the time i need to prepare myself if i have to and i know pretty much the extent of my ability/skill #but with other people (especially people i dont know) i have no idea if theyre ready or if theyre confident #so i feel like i have to sorta... carry everyone? even if im already aware that they have much more experience than me #i dont really mind the learning process of wiping until we memorize the fight i actually think its really fun #but it sorta always lingers in the back of my mind that if *I* dont play well then it might make things unfun for everyone else #which is massively amplified when most of the party are complete strangers who are also new to the content because then i *really* dont know #so i have to play really really well or else if someone has a bad time or the run goes really badly itll be “my fault”#but since im still pretty new im almost guaranteed to mess up eventually. so i guess im considering it a foregone conclusion at that point #which is apparently way too much self-inflicted guilt for me to handle. i just kinda give up before i try because i think ill cause problems #this all probably has absolutely nothing to do with how i think about myself subconsciously in general though. nope. probably not.#anyway thank you for coming to my fucking ted talk im sorry if anyone actually read all that

4 notes · View notes

asgardian--angels · 2 days ago

Note

Thanks for your insight! I had come to the same conclusion on a lot of these points.

I agree that if Jayce didn't blast him, he wasn't weakened, wouldn't have become the Herald, and was using the hexite cores to power up. However, I didn't think that Vander overloaded because Singed injected him - we see Singed use the serum (do we even know what that mysterious serum was?) on Warwick's corpse during the Evolution scene - this actually appears to be the thing that transforms Viktor, not just the apex shimmer. The apex shimmer was maybe sustaining Viktor in his cocoon but it didn't appear to be enough to heal him ("I sense my twilight approaching"). It's only when Singed injects the orange serum into Warwick, mixing with the shimmer, that we see Warwick's memories disintegrate and that serum passes into the cocoon, triggering Viktor's evolution. Now, Richter (spelling??) puts his axe through the steam-powered thingie on Warwick's back, and I thought that would have perhaps caused the overload - but he appeared alright after that. I really do think that Viktor's connection was what was stabilizing him and when it was shattered Warwick couldn't hold back that flood. If that hadn't happened, Jinx, Vi, and Cait could have gotten him out of there, changing everything, and I think Viktor would have likely refused Ambessa's pitch as he wouldn't need an army to get him to the hexgates if he believed he had Jayce on his side.

I'm still in the process of working out my thoughts on the ruined timeline, because Ambessa's a bit of a wild card as to what she'd do if the circumstances are even a bit different. She went down there with the intent of capturing Warwick, only turning her attention to Viktor once he's already in the cocoon and she learns he can create these immortal soldiers. Otherwise, she fears and resents mages. I think her intent was, in our timeline, ultimately to try and (foolishly!) harness Viktor's power for herself to fight the Black Rose, which wouldn't have worked, but regardless. I won't get off on an Ambessa tangent, tho I think her actions in the crucial few hours after Warwick decide the timeline tbh, but working it all out made me realize how quickly things in the commune happen. If Jayce had willingly joined Viktor, he would have had almost no time (like...minutes) before the rest of the events unfolded (sorry fic writers who want him chilling in the commune for weeks). I still think Jayce would have to turn against Viktor once he sees the Evolved - but he couldn't bring himself to hurt Viktor. I would guess he scrambles off to Piltover to warn the council. Things would have to play out similarly if Ambessa continues with her attack on Piltover, with Jayce knowing that Viktor was going to be in the hexheart and going down there to confront him instead - but maybe giving his best emotional 'you're still in there!' pitch. I'm still inclined to think when he kneeled atop the tower it was out of defeat, but I'm open on it.

(This brings me to another tangent, being that this surely has to be the first Jayce brought to this timeline - because husk Jayce gives over his hammer, and he can only do that once. There's, to me, something uniquely special about that hexcorized hammer that is able to really hurt Viktor/the hexcore vs just a blast from his regular hammer? Seeing as the hexite cores don't hurt Viktor, and the power of the hex crystals are one with those of the hexcore, just powering him up. But even so, if any other Jayce came and fell down that cave etc, they'd be left with no weapon after. I can't stop thinking about the rune embedded in Jayce's arm with hexcorized damage, and how it seems to be the thing that activates the hexcorized hammer, as it glows on his arm whenever he uses the hammer. I could get off into another huge thing about how I've been struggling to figure out what mage Viktor's actual plan was for our Jayce to do, and how that rune fits into it, but I digress)

I think Viktor's plan would have been, as we saw in the prime timeline, to activate the hexgate, concentrating its full power into a vertical beam which would shoot upwards through the hole in the roof, through him/through the hexcore, channeling that power into the Anomaly to enact the Glorious Evolution (thus producing the mage visual we see in the tome/Black Rose illusion). Our Viktor didn't get there, but Mage Viktor did. I also noticed like you said that there were no drones on top of the tower, but they were scattered around the city, on the bridge, in the undercity. I don't truly know if that is significant or if they just, dispersed after a while. To me they're discolored from decades of corrosion and exposure, not because they're any different from our version of the Evolved, showing how once the Evolution took place, there was nothing to do after. Everything just went silent, stood still. Viktor had no orders for them, so they just wandered off without purpose and sat to rust. Or maybe once Viktor realized what he'd done, he didn't want to even look at them so he sent them away from his eye of the storm area.

Sorry for the ramble - I wrote this out of order lmao. I have been thinking a LOT about the ruined timeline, trying to piece it together, and there's an incredible amount going on that's subtle and easy to overlook in lieu of the big stuff.

Hi! I wanted to hear your thoughts about something that keeps on nagging me about the Glorious Evolution... what's the difference between the Evolved and the Pompeii-esque husks we see in the ruined timeline? Viktor states his intent is to Evolve everyone willing and connect them into one mind but we only ever actually see him evolve his commune followers. Towards the end we see that either Viktor himself, the drone bots, or the anomaly via the mind-strings, can begin to 'assimilate' people, but that never progresses to getting Evolved. Jayce almost losing himself in golden light seems to be what happens if it's allowed to finish. So does everyone else who isn't 'touched' just get decimated by the anomaly blast? What was Viktor's intent for Jayce ultimately - I feel like he wasn't going to Evolve him, he wanted him by his side and we see in the ruined timeline that he's a husk, not a drone. I'm still struggling to make sense of these different end-states for those who get plugged into the hivemind, and how it's decided who ends up getting connected or just destroyed.

Sorry it took me a while to get to this one, it was a combination of real life and not really having an answer ready because I agree, it is vexing.

I don't quite know how to break down what happened and who is what, but I can try to make sense of it with the things we know:

In this reality, Jayce never shot Viktor through the chest. Presumably, this means Viktor continued with his plans without interruption.

Ambessa arrived at the commune before Jayce did, so his going back did not alter that event. So that would be the same in both universes. To me, this means that Viktor was heading towards his moment of disillusionment either way, either by Jayce's hands or by Ambessa.

Keep in mind, Jayce shooting Viktor is NOT why Vander went crazy. So many people miss this, but it's actually because of Singed injecting him. Admittedly, he did so while everyone's backs were turned because of the interruption of Jayce's attack but I think the full-scale conflict that broke out was quite likely in either universe, with or without Jayce.

I think what also gets lost in this discussion is what Salo was doing at the base of the Hexgates: retrieving Hex crystal cores.

So, while Viktor was running low on energy, he may have found an alternative by using Hex crystals which Jayce scuttled by killing Salo. No one else from the commune (except arguably Viktor himself) would have the authority to get into the Hexgate base without getting stopped.

As far as we know, without getting shot, Viktor never turned to Singed for Apex Shimmer via Vander/Warwick. I believe this because Wizard Viktor doesn't have the Machine Herald appearance. Arguably he's able to shed it or it's an illusion, etc etc, but truly I believe the Machine Herald appearance is a direct result of Jayce shooting Viktor and him being forced to turn to Apex Shimmer to heal.

We also know in Wizard Viktor's original timeline, Jayce probably joined him instead of shooting him. I've argued before in another meta that Jayce in Wizard Viktor's timeline likely gave into Viktor willingly at the top of the tower.

So, where does that leave us? I'm going to propose this alternate timeline:

Viktor is disillusioned by Ambessa's attack but he's not weakened because Jayce never shot him.

Using the Hex crystals Salo stole from the Hexgates, Viktor has enough power to continue assimilating people.

I'd argue: Viktor forcibly assimilates Ambessa's forces or he otherwise begins an assault on the city, perhaps with her as an ally. I only note this because it does look like there are more converted/ascended people in the Anomaly Future that there were cultists and him assimilating Ambessa's forces (including Cait, for example, but not including Jinx because her balloon is visible crashed into the Hexgate tower in the Anomaly future) is one possible explanation.

Viktor achieved this using Hex crystals, not Apex Shimmer. He was also able to do a version of the robot/ascended cultists because of the Hex crystal powers but not enough to give them that porcelain and gold "sheathe". Perhaps he didn't even feel the need to design his ascended cultists that way in this world, because he wasn't competing with Mel, because Jayce had already joined him.

Viktor then goes to the Anomaly at the base of the Hex tower. He believes that this will give him the power to convert the rest of the world and end all conflict.

And this is where things get really damn speculative but I'll try my best:

Viktor claims the Anomaly. He and Jayce go together willingly to the top of the Hexgate tower to make this vision of peace a reality using its power.

In celebration of their plan finally reaching its successful conclusion, Viktor brings Jayce into the hivemind. Jayce is kneeling in front of Viktor willingly, with his hammer held before him in fealty.

Unlike in the canon timeline, we also know Viktor didn't bring any other robots up there with him, possibly because he didn't need the show of force or to restrain a willing Jayce. (or they could have descended later I guess but eh, I'm taking my visual difference as clues where I can)

Viktor converts Jayce to be his equal, somehow, in that he's different from both the cultists and the corpses.

However, this does not bring Jayce to his level, it just adds Jayce's consciousness to the growing soup of consciousness inside Viktor's head/the Hexcore, whatever it is. Jayce is effectively dead.

Then, this moment happens, which was the goal of the Hexcore the whole time: to lay waste to civilizations who overuse magic:

The mage rising over the city.

Wizard Viktor does this either out of grief at having lost Jayce or he does so before he loses Jayce (the order isn't super important, he loses him either way) and the Hexcore takes over to finish its own goals.

Everyone who isn't already assimilated gets taken out by the subsequent violent shockwave.

I might be missing some things. Honestly, we know some things went different because Viktor was never shot, because he got Hex crystals, because Jayce might have joined him at the commune, but how the battle broke down after that is very unclear. We do know that Jinx took part in the battle because she also flew her balloon into the Hexgate tower. How exactly that battle kicked off and who the combatants were is much less clear. We do know that Viktor didn't convert all of the city before those remaining got annihilated, so something must have gone wrong with his attempt to hive mind everyone that they all died instead.

The only curious note I can't quite reconcile is Wizard Viktor's speech about, "Once every equation is solved." Because it sounds like the Hexcore, or Viktor, determined that the only way to actually stop all conflict, the way to solve the equation, is to just murder everyone.

Which... um, yeah. I guess that works! But it definitely casts Wizard Viktor as either a pawn of the Hexcore or as an absolutely terrifying psychopath if that's his definition, which by the way I'm totally cool with because I love Wizard Viktor but I can easily see him being actually insane at this point and an only mildly remorseful supervillain who's really only sad Jayce died too so there was no one to save Viktor before he ended up in this dreamless solitude. Make of that what you will too.

I still don't feel like I have a clear answer for you, but hopefully this helps!

#i have. a 14 page word doc with my ideas. it keeps growing. nothing makes sense. make it make sense.#is this show utterly genius or is it riddled with plot holes. or both #sometimes i feel incredibly stupid for not being able to grasp what they're laying down yknow?#but you're the best person I could think to discuss it with! if anyone could figure it out it's you #arcane #meta

59 notes · View notes

prettycottagequeer · 2 months ago

Text

#ok tag rant time yay #cus i need to process some shit #soooo the big thing is ajdhfnfhdk pretty girl!!! yay!!!!! and first time for that!!!!!!!! we matched on an app last friday #got coffee the next morning then met up again monday night (implied fun things) then in the wednesday morning shit show she came over just #to sit with me and so everything could be ok for a while and i felt the safest I ever have #which is a big deal because last time i had that feeling i was with the guy i like and one of my best friends sleeping on the floor because #little tiny college beds dont fit three people and then they left me on the floor to sleep in one bed together and i cried a lot #then they essentially kicked me out of the polycule and started dating soooo :) yeah #good to replace that with a (absolutely fucking gorgeous) pretty girl holding onto me while the world falls apart #and yeah she's sosososo prettyyyyy she has such nice dark long hair and really pretty eyes and she's literally #6 feet tall (which. ajdhdjfndbsmdjcjfj.) and she's the biggest nerd omg i had a like 2 hour conversation with her and her gf about star trek #its great #we're moving sapphic fast lol which is a lot but im obsessed with her a bit #did i mention shes so pretty? its fr like that one tiktok sound about a hot girl and her little gay boyfriend #oh and she came over again last night and i think im gonna dieeee lol i never realized how much of a physical touch person i am before #i mean i knew i liked it a lot but i just do not want to let go. at all. ever. i miss her #this is what i mean by bisexual so gay for men and women and it happens liek the stereotypes for both #sadly she's already mentioned maybe having to move because of everything and i really don't want that #but i guess we'll try it for as long as we can #overall though yay yay yay!!!!!!!!!!!!

3 notes · View notes

taeyungie · 1 year ago

Text

😺

#i haven't addressed yoongi's situation yet because i'm honestly still not hit by it i guess. like it didnt gwt to me yet #i dont think ill ever love anyone the same as i love him you know what i mean #he has been the first reason of my self development. like he literally raised me??? i learned from him how to be the person i am today #and its like im saying goodbye to a family member. the thing is i have never griefed anyone's absence like this #its like a part of my soul will be missing until he comes back #but at the same time i know what he would want for me. to move on and to become my own reason #he would want me to be kind to myself. to focus on myself and not miss him that much.#he would want that for all of us right #but i have a very hard time processing things. do you guys remeber the festa last year? when we found out theyll be going on hiatus #the reality of it snd the fact that it will be happening hit me onky after around 3 months.#thats when i first cried because i realized what it meant. ofc i knew but it didnt occur to the emotional part of my brain at that time #and i feel like im truly gonna fall apart when THIS hits me in 3 months lol #my life has never been worse and thats honestly the time when i need the reassurance the most #when i need the people i love and find comfort in the most.#but its just me and thats technically just my problem. but since i am talking about my view on this then thats okay i guess hahah anyway #i just hope he knows there are milions of ppl who love him as much as i do. and thats like extra love like forever & beyond type of shit #i honestly dont think other people ever truly fully understand how we feel towards them. especially when you really love somebody #because they have their own opinions about themselves. they debate whether they deserve some kind of treatment or not. we all do that right #and i just know he does that too. i just reslly want him to feel completely loved and cherished and appreciated.#i want him to see himself through our eyes. to surround himself with people who see him exactly the way we do.#to fall in love with somebody who will see him like we see him #nobody deserves better life than this man. and i hope that after our reunion he will live that life to the fullest 💓 i can't wait to see it #anyway. if somebody needs to talk about it or wants to get sadness out of your system - im here 💓#please keep your heads up and lets wait for him 💓#we have esch other and we will be okay 💓#sorry for typos i can barely see its 1am 🤓

14 notes · View notes

sysig · 1 year ago

Text

Ughhhhhhh

#I just......wanted to work on some new video editing techniques..........#Spoiler: It went........so fucking bad lol #Like restart my computer because it basically stopped functioning bad #That seems like a non sequitor but believe me getting from A to Z was an awful ordeal #I've been curious for a while if I could sync up my footage to the audio - y'know cut the video up in time with the music! Classic #Normally I'd fall back on WMM but it has this annoying desync glitch(?) where it renders everything correctly but previews it out of time #So trying to line up the visuals to the audio - well I have to restart and listen through everything so far for it to align properly :/#Lightworks is being a bitch as well - I guess it just stopped?? having a feature that it had a couple years ago that controls clip length #So I get random-length clips! That I can't stretch or extend! Y'know - The Thing I need to do!#I also tried Openshot and by about the point the advice had me changing my security settings I noped out #Literally would crash if I tried to import one (1) .png >:P #And I'm not about to give my info to Yet Another freeware like DaVinci Resolve since it went So Well with Lightworks #Didn't stop me from downloading and installing the wrong version for like an hour which Greatly lagged out my computer #And then as said it was the wrong version even if I did have access to it so I wouldn't be able to use it anyway!#How come we have such good opensource video capture and streaming software like OBS #And like LibreOffice for word processing and Audacity for audio and just - so many good opensource programs!#But video editing is a step too far #Ugh #Today's been a wash >:/#At least my uptime is all shiny sparkly new for streaming maybe tomorrow lol #I dunno it depends on how sleep goes - y'know how it is after being frustrated for so long #I really wanted to! I wanted to do a lot of things >:(#I'll see how it all goes #Guess I'm going back to WMM - ugh - once I've properly cooled down and Actually Prepared for the slog #If anyone has any video editing software recommendations I am all ears tho #Obviously not any of the ones mentioned here as they Did Not Work lol #I just want........an intuitive place where I can drag-and-drop images and be able to crop their length up or down to the audio #Hell I'll take a patch for the desync if such a thing exists lol - looks like it's been a problem for like 10 years! Hgg #I just want to Make Thing In Head happen! It is not a lack of will! I am 100% blaming my tools on this one lol #I'm an amateur video editor I have the right to be whiny! I want a tool that isn't hell to operate! JFLHFJKLFHIOSEJF Anyway lol

2 notes · View notes

elytrafemme · 2 years ago

Text

i love google docs and google drive but sometimes opening that shit is a nightmare bc literally what do u mean i have access to a state candidate for senator (?)’s campaign organizer in my docs. literally why would i have that shit readily accessible i haven’t worked any campaigns like, ever. ???

#nightmare.personal #if i had to guess i think 2 people in my activism circle campaigned for him #so probably what happened is i lurked on a convo about it and checked out the sites they sent #i still don't totally understand why they would have sent THAT information but honestly whatever there's been weirder shit in here #the other interesting thing is because of how we do accountability and just our general process for invoicing #i constantly have access to everyone on our team's invoices (of the people who do invoice) like all the time #which has been helpful in cases where i need to figure out how to format something #but otherwise is just a little strange because we just see how much money everyone's getting #but nobody really judges about it so again it's fine just. funny 2 me

6 notes · View notes

makerofmadness · 6 months ago

Text

being a writer sucks sometimes because you need synonyms to keep yourself from using the same word too many times in succession without strategic purpose but you run into situations where you basically don't have another word. Or your pool is super small and you may need more than one

like you're telling me in the entire history of the English language that it still never bothered to develop more than like three words for love that can have a platonic application that aren't like. Huge stretches for synonyms. Like why is it all romantic words i can't just write about family in peace 😭 like majority of the synonyms are either inherently romantic in meaning or have strong romantic connotations to the point that I'd have to be super strategic in my usage in order to make them NOT sound really fxcking wrong like. And even some of the platonic words just wouldn't really fit right in the thing in writing like.

literally and there's only so many times I can use the word "affection" before that becomes repetitive too-

What am I supposed to do with this

(Btw when you look up stuff like "synonyms for love that are platonic" the results are literally shzt like "love without sex" and "chaste love" so that doesn't work either fudging. Society 😭😭😭 can't write for shxt)

#This is gonna trigger my joker arc if nothing else does #Tenderness could work for the sentence I'm stuck on currently but I've been having this problem for like the whole writing process and #I just wanted to rant a little I guess fudging. One time I realized I needed a synonym for silence. But like what the fudge do I do #All synonyms for that have like. Way more specific connotations I think.#So I had to trade out the earlier usage of silence for one of the synonyms and then use silence in the later usage #In order to not be stale #Fudging we don't have enough words for No Sound No Talk I guess 😭😭😭😭😭#At least I've added reticence to my vocabulary now #Idk this is probably kinda incoherent but I just need to rant about language but like.#I feel like the love thing is like telling of something about how society treats non-romantic love compared to romantic love or something #Like the fact we have so many words for romance and even some words that technically aren't inherently romantic are just assumed to be #But if you want to write about the love between family or friends or like anything that isn't lovers you just. Good fxcking luck.#Shoutouts to aromantics y'all are braver than any US marine /ref for just like. Existing. Being alive. In This Sussiety.

1 note · View note

sheeezu · 14 days ago

Text

Shifting proof, you're not wasting your time.

"My beloved, the distances between us have been erased, I am here, I am here."

(If anyone is able to guess which song lyric I translated here I will love you for all my existence)

If you're doubting shifting, then read this:

Let's dive into your mind. Most importantly, into your dreams.

Have you ever realised why you dream? Dreams are just for your subconscious mind to reherse your current reality, in practice all its doing is to ensure you don't fall out of your reality.

No matter how insane of a dream you're having, it has some resemblance with the life you are currently leading. Have you ever tried to figure out just how weird the whole concept of dreams are? For example, it's common knowledge to everyone, even antishifters, that lucid dreams are a thing. Meaning you can literally play around in your mind. When you sleep, do you realise the passage of time? Sometimes your sleep stretches on for long and you don't realise you've slept that much, sometimes, dream cover a lot within a short cycle of sleep. So what proof of time could you possibly present to yourself during your hours of slumbers, where is this clock that's supposed to dictate your life?

Sometimes you don't even dream, although unconscious processes are going on in your human brain, but where are you? In the void, you're floating around somewhere in the void, without any care of your reality for once, this is called your common consciousness, or just the void state.

Whenever you wake up from a deep sleep, you feel disoriented and confused, you hear conversations and imagine things which didn't happen, there is no literal proof that these happenings are just caused by general grogginess. This confusion is your consciousness readjusting to the reality you're in.

Let's discuss what all of this science and physics is. It's essentially just a method your consciousness put up in order for you to not fall out of reality, and to not have to face thanos out of nowhere, therefore logic exists.

We are from our roots just souls floating around in nothingness, we're souls capable of creation of anything by thoughts, will, and energy. We need a medium for suitable existence, for all of the people existing alongside us, what we have in common is that our consciousness has chose a similar mode of existence for us, which is by living as human beings on this livable spherical ball, where we accept the principles of luck.

Why does a system of being ridiculed by your environment and people around you and the formation of unwanted doubts exist whenever you claim something "impossible" by human terms, for example, if you assumed and started claiming the sun rising from the opposite direction as the truth, that's going to become your base since you are creating reality, therefore you will break reality and to prevent it you yourself once put these limitations, just like how you script your DRs.

But once you realise the fact that all along this organised way of existence was put up by you in order to excite your consciousness by going through these experiences, you'll realise shifting realities, manifesting, or just going back to floating as a soul in the void is a known principle for you and easy, and you don't have to struggle to gain it, you've been doing it all your existence, then you'll shift on command.

Reality is just like a dough, which you have been molding and adjusting it accordingly.

Shape that dough into your DR

It's you. It's always been you, you've been the main provider and controller, you've just temporarily gone to existing in the form of a human vessel, breaking free is nothing difficult.

Anyways, belief in this is all you need to shift, it's freaking easy even if it's just you going to your DR to get railed. "But doubts-!!" Shush. If doubts are able to stop a process for you, you could also utilise them in a way which benefit you, from this moment do a complete uno reverse card on your doubts, you used to doubts your manifestations, go ahead and start doubting your existence being anything but perfect.

"I don't think I can be a common human being weeping over mere earthly problems, all ill ever be is a master manifestor who could do whatever I want."

...

I finished this draft at 5:55.

Now that I think about it shifting using doubts could be pretty neat, but I still have another 2 methods bending from the poll, so that's on my pending list I guess.

This entire post was a rant from my side so if there is anything confusing or out of place, just ask. Ask away until your little heart is satisfied and then go shift because what are you doing here when you could just go study at hogwarts where the stairs try to put you in your grave.

...

#reality shifting #shiftblr #shifting #shifting antis dni #shifting blog #shifting motivation #shifters #shifting community #desired reality #shifting stories #shifting realities #shifting consciousness #law of assumption

1K notes · View notes

m4rv3l-girl · 3 months ago

Text

Happens to the best of us

Bucky x Y/N

Bucky wants babies.

Requests Open!

Warnings: implied smut

Bucky couldn’t help but stare.

He leaned against the kitchen counter of the compound, arms crossed, sipping at a beer that had long since gone warm. The raucous sounds of the Avengers’ party filled the air—laughter, music, the occasional clang of plates or bottles—but all of it was background noise to him. His gaze was locked on you, on Y/N, across the room, sitting on the floor in the living room.

Morgan Stark was giggling loudly, hands waving excitedly as Y/N built an elaborate tower of colorful blocks, her soft voice guiding the girl through every step of the process. “And look! If we put this one right here—” Y/N placed the final block delicately at the top, balancing it with a careful touch. “—we’ve got ourselves a masterpiece.”

Morgan gasped dramatically, her eyes going wide as she clapped her hands together. “It’s so tall! It’s the biggest tower ever!”

Y/N beamed at the little girl, the expression so full of warmth and love that Bucky felt his chest tighten. Morgan clambered into her lap, curling into her with a sense of trust and affection that made something primal stir deep within him.

He couldn’t stop thinking about how natural it looked—how easy, how right. You and a little one.

The thought had been poking at the edges of his mind all evening, ever since you’d arrived at the party.

You’d barely left Morgan’s side, whether it was helping her sneak extra desserts from the snack table (something that got you both a stern but fond look from Pepper) or carrying her around on your shoulders as she pretended to fly like Iron Man. And the whole time, Bucky watched. Watched the way you moved, the way you interacted, how effortlessly you handled every tantrum, every sugar-fueled burst of energy.

It made his heart ache—in the best possible way.

“Buck, you good?”

Sam’s voice pulled him out of his trance. Bucky blinked, realizing his friend was standing beside him now, raising an eyebrow as he leaned casually against the counter.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Bucky muttered, tearing his eyes away from you to focus on the beer in his hand.

Sam chuckled. “You’ve been staring at Y/N for the past hour, man. You sure you’re fine?”

Bucky rolled his eyes, but the smile tugging at his lips betrayed him. He tried to play it off, taking another sip of the lukewarm beer. “Just…admiring the view, I guess.”

“Uh-huh,” Sam smirked. “Sure. You’ve got that look, man.”

“What look?”

“That look. The ‘I’m head-over-heels, wrapped-around-her-finger, ready-to-settle-down’ look.” Sam bumped his shoulder against Bucky’s, chuckling when the ex-assassin groaned in response. “Don’t worry, old man. Happens to the best of us.”

Bucky shot him a glare, but the playful tone in Sam’s voice made it hard to be annoyed. Instead, he just grunted and turned his attention back to you, heart clenching as Morgan cuddled closer into your arms.

“I’m serious, man,” Sam continued, softer now. “You look like you’re thinking about something pretty heavy over there.”

Bucky didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. Sam wasn’t wrong.

The night went on, and Bucky stayed mostly quiet, content to let the party swirl around him. Occasionally, you’d glance his way, sending him a bright smile before returning to your playful antics with Morgan. Each time, his heart skipped a beat.

By the time the party began winding down, the kids—especially Morgan—were wiped out, and the Avengers slowly started to trickle out of the compound. You helped Pepper and Tony gather Morgan’s things, giving the little girl a tight hug before bidding the Starks goodnight.

When you finally returned to Bucky’s side, you looked a little tired but completely content. “Ready to go home, doll?” he asked, his voice soft as his hand instinctively found the small of your back.

“Yeah, I think I’m done for the night,” you replied with a sleepy smile, leaning into his touch. “It was fun, though. Morgan’s a little firecracker.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Bucky chuckled, but his mind was still swirling with thoughts, images of you and Morgan together playing over and over in his head. “You were great with her.”

You shrugged, brushing it off like it was no big deal, but Bucky could see the faint blush coloring your cheeks. “She’s a sweetheart. Honestly, I love kids. They’re fun.”

Love kids. The words echoed in his mind, sending a jolt of warmth through him that he tried to ignore for the moment.

The car ride home was mostly quiet, save for the low hum of the radio in the background. You rested your head against the window, eyes half-closed, while Bucky kept one hand on the wheel and the other loosely intertwined with yours on the center console. It felt…peaceful. Comfortable. Yet, underneath it all, there was this tension building inside him, an unspoken desire simmering just below the surface.

He didn’t know how to bring it up, didn’t know how to start that conversation. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized it wasn’t something he could just push aside. Not anymore.

When you got home, you kicked off your shoes and wandered into the living room, stretching your arms above your head with a satisfied groan. “That was a good night,” you said, smiling over your shoulder at him as you began to pull off your jacket.

Bucky followed behind you, his gaze trailing the curve of your spine as you moved. He felt the heat in his chest grow stronger, something heavier, more intense than he’d expected. His mind kept drifting back to the party, to you and Morgan, to the idea that had been slowly taking root in his brain all night.

It didn’t take long for you to notice the shift in his mood. You turned to face him, frowning slightly as you tossed your jacket onto the back of the couch. “You’ve been quiet since we left the party. What’s going on in that head of yours?”

Bucky hesitated, his mouth opening and closing a few times as he tried to find the right words. But he couldn’t. So instead, he took a deep breath and stepped closer, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you flush against his chest. “Just thinking, doll,” he murmured, his voice low as he pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “That’s all.”

“Uh-huh.” You raised an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced. You reached up, cupping his face in your hands as you searched his eyes. “You’ve been weird ever since we left the party. Tell me what’s going on.”

Bucky sighed, his heart pounding in his chest. There was no escaping this now. He might as well just say it. “It’s just…watching you with Morgan tonight,” he began, his voice soft, almost unsure. “You were amazing with her. It made me think about…about us. About our future.”

Your brow furrowed in confusion for a moment, but then realization dawned on you, your eyes widening slightly. “Our future?” you echoed, your voice just above a whisper. “You mean…?”

“Yeah,” Bucky nodded, his hands tightening on your waist. “I mean…a family. Kids. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

You stared at him for a moment, processing his words. Then, slowly, a smile tugged at the corners of your lips. “Bucky Barnes, are you telling me you’ve got baby fever?”

He groaned, his face flushing with embarrassment as he buried it in the crook of your neck. “Don’t make fun of me, kitten,” he mumbled, his voice muffled against your skin.

You laughed softly, running your fingers through his hair as you tilted your head back to give him better access to your neck. “I’m not making fun of you. I just didn’t think I’d ever hear those words come out of your mouth.”

Bucky pulled back just enough to meet your gaze, his expression serious now. “I’m not saying we have to do anything about it too soon if you don’t want to. But…I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Seeing you with Morgan tonight…it made me realize how much I want that. With you.”

Your heart swelled at his words, your smile softening as you wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. It was slow, tender, full of love and unspoken promises. When you finally pulled away, you rested your forehead against his, your voice barely above a whisper. “I want that too, Bucky.”

The way he looked at you then—like you were his whole world, his future, his everything—it sent a shiver down your spine. He leaned in, his lips brushing against your ear as he whispered, “You’d make such a good mommy, doll. I could see it tonight.”

You felt the heat rising in your cheeks, your heart racing as his words stirred something deep inside you. “And you’d be an amazing daddy,” you replied, your voice laced with mischief. “I know it.”

His grip on your waist tightened, his breath hot against your skin as he kissed along your jawline, his lips trailing down to your neck. “You think so?”

“Yup, the best,” you whispered, your hands tangling in his hair as he pressed his body closer to yours, the heat between you building with each passing.

“Doll?” He mumbled into your neck. The warmth of his breath raising goosebumps on your neck.

“Hm?”

“Can I put a baby in you?”

You brain stopped function for a fraction of a second and the air midway up your throat disappeared. “I…Right now?” You asked with a hint of disbelieving laughter.

“Yeah. Right now.” With a firm nod, his metal hand squeezed at the flesh of your ass, which happened to be one of his favorite things to play with.

“Can’t wait until you’re bigger, just swollen with my kids…” The words alone made him shiver. The thought of you sitting there, belly round and full of the babies he put in there, breasts growing and tender, filled with milk for his children. That was hot. It was making a familiar tingle slither across his chest and downwards.

“So? Can I?” He inquired, rather impatiently.

“Uh, yeah-..I…okay.” You nod. Still in shock that this was even happening.

“Don’t sound very sure.” Tightening his grip, he pushes you closer to him and you can feel the bulge in his pants pressing against your core, the small ball of tension forming right under his crotch.

“Yes. Yes, put a baby in me, now.”

“Say please, Doll.”

…………………………………………………………………………………..…………...………..

Part 2…? 🤨

Part 2 is now out!

#bucky x reader #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes #marvel

2K notes · View notes