#Shadow Fight 3 hack

[i-yap]

Fights between bruce and y/n

bro is so paranoid, he knows everything about you . Everything , and when u find out he extensively stalked you, it prolly didn't sit well. with tim he stalks cuz he loves you. bruce has really serious trust issues and he stalked you to make sure u wont uh lets say steal his sperm and train your kid in the league of shadows .

he sucks at communication . like he will not explain why he does what he does and struggles to talk. Especially in like aggressive confrontations , he'll just go silent and batman persona like . so once you both calm down and sit in a secluded but calm place all alone he will prolly explain his pov. just be gentle with this giant please

hates nonsensical activities, sorry but its facts. he will give you his card take your friends for shopping but bruce has to run a company and the justice league and ( his kids if its batdad au) whats the point of trailing behind you while you look through clothes like? he isn't into fashion, he thinks you look pretty in everything. you guys get to spend no quality time why not just spend those 2-3 hrs taking you out for dinner after ur done shopping?

doesn't really get how expensive gifts can make someone uncomfortable. he is sort of used to gold diggers or rich women. so when you refuse diamond necklace cuz it isn't even a special occasion wtf brucie, I cant just take that , he wont get it. He prolly wont stop either. Will for sure end the argument with" this necklace has now belonged to you and no other woman deserves to wear. so throw it out if you don't want it but I am not taking it "back to the store" or whatever that means"

he is so smart, sometimes forgets that everyone else is not. he thinks its cute when u get super confused but you feel dumb and it'll take a genuine conversation where he tells you that he thinks your the smartest, kindest and most interesting person he has met and IQ or hacking skills or whatever has nothing to do with it.

getting him to retire.

[jyoongim]

Hi!

I really love the outcome of the Prisoner Human Alastor and Police Reader the one i request and i really love the story of it🥹 Thank you so much for making it🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

I have another request :3 (Please do take a rest if you needed)

I would like to request another Human HusbandYander!Alastor x Wife!Reader

Belive it or not Human Form of Alastor is Making Giggle and kicking my feet

The story is about reader finding out that her husband being the killer of the town and try to run away from home but eventually Alastor caught her and fuck her in their bedroom and saying things like Obbsesive person would say.

Like for example "Mon cher, Are you trying to get away~?" "Didnt you said you love me no matter what am i my dear?"

So like i have a breeding kink :>

So alastor is breeding or making her pregnat his belove wife to carry his next geneartion and told the reader "You will never leave my side Cher,you will be taking care of our baby and stuck in this house forever with me~" and maybe some yandere stuff like saying he would cut off Reader feet if reader tries to run again. My english is bad but you can correct my words if anything is wrong with it :<

THANK YOU SO MUCH AND I REALLLLLLLYYYYYY LOVE YOUUURRRRRR WOOOOORRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

MWA MWA🫶🏻

I also have other things in my mind but i will save it for another request 🫶🏻😊

Yandere!husband human Alastor x wife!reader

themes: yandere behavior,  possessiveness, breeding kink, noncon, threats, mentions of pregnancy

Note: I like yandere but have never written it before so I’m sorry if its not your typical crazy obsessive lovesick personality!

———————————————————————————————

You whimpered as the bedroom door rattled. Loud banging made you curl into yourself, hoping the door held.

”Dearest open the door, we can talk about this” a muffled voice said behind the door. 

“N-No! Stay away! I don’t want to talk!” You shouted, frantically packing random clothes in a bag.

Several thuds sounded against the door before it went quiet.

Thud!

Thud!

CRACK!

You froze. Did he just…

”You think I’m gonna let you out this house to tell a soul? Haha my dear don’t be stupid” Alastor hissed as he hacked at the door, the wood splitting open.

You shuffled to the back of the closet, closing the door, listening as the door groaned at his assault.

You heard the lock click and the bedroom swing open.

Alastor huffed, throwing the axe down.

His eyes scanned the room, he knew you were in here.

He walked around slowly, footsteps making the floor creak.

He stopped when he heard something.

Shuffling. It was subtle but he heard it and it was coming from the closet.

You watched as his shadow flitted about the room from the crack at the bottom of the door.

A soft knock made you jolt

”Darlin we can do this the easy way or the hard way and I promise you wont like it. Your choice” his voice brawled, toying with the knob.

You whimpered and pressed yourself against the wall.

The door swung open and everything that followed happened in slow motion.

Alastor covered in scarlet blood, a sharp smile on his face as his eyes narrowed on your shivering form. He growled as he got a hand on you, grunting as your fight or flight kicked in. You tried to kick and claw at him, but your husband was stronger.

“No!No!No! I’m sorry Al! please!please!” You cried as he wrangled you onto your shared bed. He held your hands fast in his as he used his weight to pin you down.

Alastor huffed, finally pining your wrists and lowering his face to yours, his ragged breath fanning over you.

”You never chose the easy way out darlin. I thought I taught you better than that” he said, smiling down at you.

Fear radiated in your eyes as he kissed your plump cheeks, making you flinch when he went to kiss you on the lips.

”A-Al…!” You tried to turn your head away but your husband wasn’t thrown off by your action.

”You vowed to love me no matter what. Thick and thin, for better or worse. You said you’ll love me no matter what my dear. Did you lie before God?” 

You trembled as you watched with wide eyes as he nudged your legs apart, slotting his hips against yours, grinding into your clothed heat.

You tensed as he chuckled “But don’t worry baby you can’t lie to me”

Your lip wobbled “Y-You’re the liar. All those huntin trips, the late nights. You’ve been pickin people off and just coming home like nothin ever happened! You’re sick! A sick bastard with no love for no one” your eyes narrowed angrily as he smiled lovely at you.

”Oooh baby but I do love you, just like how you’ll always love me”

You didn’t grasp the meaning of his words in time as Alastor pulled your panties to the side.

”A-Al n-no don’t don’t please” you tried to close your legs, pushing a free arm against his chest.

Your husband cooed at you as he pushed your thighs apart and lined his cock up against your slit and face contorting as he pushed through the rim of tight muscle.

Your back arched involuntarily as he grinded his hips into yours.

Soft, strained moans left your throat as Alastor slammed his hips down into you. 

Tears rolled down your face as the man, you thought you knew, had his way with you.

Your cunt burned at each thrusts, trying to accommodate the brutal assault leashed upon it.

Thick, scarlet blood clung to you as Alastor covered your body with his, caging you against the bed.

”fuck you always take me so well baby” he whispered down to you, watching you try and squirm away from him. Your pretty big eyes focused on his; they were swollen from tears, fear, betrayal and mistrust swirled in them.

”Ill let you in on a little secret darlin”

His pace picked up as a wicked grin crossed his face

“You ain’t got nowhere to run. Where would you go? Who would you tell huh? You think anyone would believe that I’m the terror of this town? Nooooo baby they wont”  he licked a tear from your cheek as he angled his hips into that sweet spot that always made you melt.

Your toes curled as delicious tingles ran through your body.

”and they’re never gonna know you know why?” A sharp thrust had you biting your lip to contain your moans.

Alastor grabbed your face, mushing your cheeks as he pounded your poor pussy. He let out a soft grunt, nose scrunching “because you’re gonna be my good little housewife and be stuck taking care of house and babies.”

Your eyes widened.

Babies? You’d be damned if you give a murder a child.

You tried to hook your feet into his hips and push, but he wasn’t having it

You started to thrash but that only encouraged him too further bury himself within you, pushing deep as if he wanted to penetrate your very cervix.

”A-Al no! P-please anything but that please! I don’t-Ah! I don’t want a baby” you choked out as your pussy clenched around him

”You’ll look so sweet round with my child. What ya say darlin? Hehe its not like you have a choice anyway.” He snickered.

Harsh thrusts had you jolting as you cried, frantic as your husband forced your orgasm from you.

A loud squeal filled the room as your back arched.

You shook as you cummed around him, sobbing as he worked your sensitive walls.

”That’s a good girl, yeeeessss that right, fuck! Take my cum Take it take it baby” his hips slammed into yours and with a groan his cock twitched before you felt the warm feeling of his cum.

Alastor grinded his hips into yours, riding out both your orgasms.

You panted as you looked at him with glossy eyes.

He smiled softly as he wiped away at your tears.

You tensed as you felt his hips start to move again

He chuckled

”Ill never let you leave darlin, not when you gonna be having my baby”

[theresattrpgforthat]

Do you know of games where acquired 'detriments' (such as scars and traumas) give players unique benefits rather than being seen as strictly detrimental?

Preferably ones where its not just "Get a bonus when this causes a problem"

Theme: Helpful Detriments

Hello there, I had a question similar to this back in 2023, so I’m going to redirect you to my Curses recommendation post first, because there might be something there that fits what you’re looking for. Then we can top off that list with a few more!

When I think of this kind of thing, I think of three categories: horror, the paranormal, and cyberpunk.

External Containment Bureau, by Mythic Gazetteer.

External Containment Bureau is a game of paranormal investigation and bureaucracy using a lightweight, hackable version of the Forged in the Dark design framework. You play as trained agents of the External Containment Bureau, an organization tasked with the study, identification, and containment of paranormal phenomena.

The Bureau authorizes agents to make use of these phenomena to give yourself incredible powers (so long as the proper forms are in order). But take care: using paranormal energies inches you ever closer to joining the ranks of the paranormal yourself. Will you transcend humanity in the line of duty? Play to find out.

ECB gives your characters special paranormal powers during the course of play, and whenever you take enough resonance (ECB’s Stress mechanic) you mark another one. Your character can take up to 3 powers before things get tricky: mark enough resonance to get your 4th power and you are no longer a playable character - you get promoted, demoted, or transcend past mundane existence. If you were to hack this system, I think you could flavor these powers and abilities to make them feel more like curses - in fact, I think Congregation, by DM Rawlings, does something like this.

Urban Shadows, by Magpie Games.

The streets bleed shadows as the supernatural politics of the city threaten to swallow you whole. Will you die a hero—a savior for those who have never had enough—or live long enough to become the villain? Will you fight the darkness…or give in for power?

The choice is yours. 

In Urban Shadows, your characters are constantly wrestling with the opportunity to be really shitty people in exchange for Corruption. Each character has a special move that entices them, such as the Spectre’a move “witness a scene and do nothing” - which gives you corruption. Mark enough corruption, and you get more powerful - like the Spectre’s Telekinesis ability.

Of course, the more Corruption moves you have, the faster you take corruption, and once you’ve maxed out your Corruption limit - well, your character isn’t really a hero anymore, are they? (Which is why the GM gets control of them, and you make a new character.)

The link above is for the 1st edition. The 2nd Edition Quickstart is a teaser of what's coming soon.

Heart: The City Beneath, by Rowan, Rook & Decard.

Heart: The City Beneath is a complete tabletop roleplaying game about delving into a nightmare undercity that will give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of – or kill you in the process.

It is a dungeon-crawling, story-forward tabletop RPG from the designers of Spire that focuses on what characters have to lose in pursuit of their dreams in the chaotic darkness beneath the world.

Heart is known for many things: its juicy setting, its utilization of the classic dungeon crawl, its body horror… but the horrifically gorgeous descriptions of the characters are what we’re here for. Watch your characters slowly hollow themselves out and give themselves over to whatever dark power has given them unique abilities. These characters will get more and more powerful… until they reach the final session, where everyone goes out in a big blazing, gory mess.

The Fallout system also gives the GM a chance to give characters interesting trauma and wounds, but they also could help generate interesting Beats that players want to work toward in order to level up. I think mechanically, this recommendation might have a loose connection to what you’re looking for, but thematically it might still be close.

Doll.Bod, by curatrix-ribston.

In a City of neon lights and shimmering pools of acid rain, the world ends a little each day. Hunger and sickness walk the streets like the ripper in the tales of old, taking those that the system casts aside. 

There is a way out. When you've got nothing else, you can always mortgage your body. The corpos have use for an object's flesh, for those they can augment without having to care for those pesky regulations. They're just playing with dolls really.

Dolls that they send on the jobs you can't actually send your employees on. They're not comitting crimes, just making creative use of their property.

That's what you are now. Their property. Maybe, with time, you can be something else entirely.

Let’s talk about Doll.Bod.

You are really cool cyborgs, with really deadly abilities and useful skills. You each have special abilities like the Razor-grrl’s skin razors that can cut at the slightest touch, or the Seamful, whose blood can heal herself every time she gets hit. The catch is: you don’t have control of your body. Your body has been sold, and the corporation that bought it is using it as they please. In play, this is often represented by other players at the table making decisions for you about what your character does - with safety tools in place, of course.

Not only that, your own special abilities harm your character in certain ways - for instance, The Razor-grrl can’t engage in physical intimacy with anyone, because she’s likely to hurt them, while the Gargoyle can’t turn her eyes off - until they short out, that is.

Other Games I Talk About Ad Nauseum...

Apocalypse Keys has a Ruin track similar to that of Urban Shadows, giving your characters more and more powerful abilities that encourage their descent into monstrosity, constantly pushing them towards ending the world. It’s not necessarily a bad thing either - sometimes the more satisfying outcome is tearing down the whole organization and rebuilding anew.

Those of Us Who Know Better has superheroes whose power always comes at a cost. In one way, you could see this as a detriment with a bonus (having to do certain things to get access to special powers) although I acknowledge that it might be a bit of a stretch.

Numenera has a lot of random mutations that can happen to you if you choose to use the random tables at the back of Destiny, and the Rusthaven expansion has some other abilities that come with both benefits and setbacks.

[cheemscakecat]

Why Emesis Blue Medic should be taken off the Gravel War Battlefield.

My overall Em Blue theory is that it’s a shared nightmare, so keep that in mind for this post.

So we know Dr Ludwig has been diagnosed with Schizophrenia by somebody at BLU. The reason we know this is because he gave Scout the same medicine that he’s been taking, which you wouldn’t do if you had two different issues going on.

If you were Scout and your doctor friend was addicted to this medicine, you wouldn’t want to get addicted yourself. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Scout theorizes that the medicine is part of the problem.

So here’s my theory on what mental health problem is plaguing BLU Medic:

Because he was roughly 6 when the N*zis took power in 1933 and Jewish, Fritz had a lot of trauma from a young age. He developed DID, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder [it can only develop from childhood trauma]. His parents and doctors were limited in what they could do because of the state of the country; they also thought his hallucinations of other personalities were imaginary friends.

When he escaped to America as an adult, he decided to join BLU in the hopes that other mercenaries would be willing to go fight against Germany in the war. But then the first respawn failures happened, and he got roped into being an “expert” on the issue.

Spy’s Disguise gave us a brief window into what was happening to the doctor during the respawn crisis.

He hasn’t been sleeping well. He’s got an exposed cut on his face, a five o’clock shadow, and bags under his eyes.

He didn’t speak or blink for any of the scenes he was in, which was off putting to Engineer. He even showed them what was wrong using a VHS, not his words.

Overall, he seems aloof and unapproachable, which is different to how he acted in Em Blue.

We know Jules Archibald must be a hack since Soldier and Spy had a nightmare where he’s callously letting people die for money. If he’s too posh to defend himself like he was in Spy’s perspective, he’s got to be too posh to deal with respawn failure gore.

But that wouldn’t stop him and his crew from holding Medic to a high standard when it came to his work, even if they didn't really want to spend money to fix the problem. I imagine the Administrator was the one that had to “motivate” them to allocate funds, and it would take her a while to get fed up.

So in the meantime, Ludwig developed a new, scarier personality to help him deal with Jules and new respawn failure trauma.

He was the one in control when CyberSpy was examined, and when he was given the bad news about his condition.

We know the doctor still doesn't understand his condition because of the nightmare versions of his other personalities.

This is the nightmare version of the unblinking, mute personality from the funeral. But he’s not the only personality that Fritz is afraid of.

This hallucination gives us more insight into how the doctor views his other personalities. 1. They are trying to trick him and other people. Whichever one this nightmare is based off of is good at pretending to be him.

2. They hate him. He woke up with blood on his hands and no memory of why. The nightmare got angry that he tried to wash the blood off himself. It didn’t hesitate to hurt him.

3. They love violence, and they want to hurt him. This one choked him out and slammed his head into the mirror. And again, he woke up with blood on his hands.

Him unknowingly killing Scout’s Ma and kidnapping the poor guy happened because he’s afraid that these personalities want to do that. He’s afraid that they’re plotting something and biding their time, Em Blue is the manifestation of what he thinks they’re up to.

The plague doctor was reaching towards him like it was going to be fake nice, despite all of its terrifying features. He thinks that one is trying to lull him into a false sense of security.

He’s wrong about them, and we have proof. We have the actual personality that the mirror monster is based off of, and a long scene with him in control.

This is the personality that developed to deal with RED mercs on the battlefield. That’s why he’s so good at fighting and acts so terrifying.

Now imagine for a moment that you black out during a fight, and when you come to your team is freaking out over you. They say you started beating the RED team senseless, with a terrifying grin that nobody has seen from you before. You don’t remember any of it, and unfortunately it’s only the first of many times this will happen.

That’s Dr Ludwig’s perspective. He doesn’t know what they want. He doesn’t know what they are or how to get rid of them. They keep appearing in the corner of his office or his room, if you watch him talk to Scout in his MedBay, he keeps looking around like he expects another person to be there. He just wants it to stop, so he starts relying on Valium as a crutch.

The bottle reveal is an interesting scene to me, because Emesis Diazepam horrifies the doctor. It must be something he knows is dangerous, and he’d never take knowingly.

Here are some symptoms of long term Valium/Diazepam abuse

Persistent drowsiness

Confusion

Memory loss

Fatigue

Dizziness

Blood in urine/feces

Depression

Anxiety

Tremors

Sleeping problems

Nightmares

Hallucinations

Seizures

Here are the overdose symptoms:

Coma [can still breathe]

Bluish lips and fingernails

Blurred/double vision

Slowed/stopped breathing

Confusion

Depression

Dizziness

Drowsiness

Excitability

Hiccups

Rapid eye movement

Rash

Stomach is upset/pained

Tiredness

Tremors

Uncoordinated movement and weakness

I think the bottle reveal is meant to be a wake up call about the Valium addiction. Maybe the other personalities know he should stop taking it, we do see the quiet one standing behind him afterwards.

DID personalities develop to protect a person from their trauma and keep them safe. Sometimes these personalities can be dangerous because they believe that they are demons, evil, or that destroying the host body will just send them back to their own. People wake up parked on bridges and in other odd places because another personality took control then switched back.

But in every scene where we get to see the others in control, they appear to be trying to help Fritz, not make things worse. The quiet one was trying to keep him safe from Spy and the people at BLU that made him a scapegoat. The violent one was attacking the Engineers to try and save both Medic and Scout, and probably tried to take control at Scout’s house so he could deal with BLU Ma’s body instead.

When the ambulance crashed into the telephone pole, that was because the quiet one over exerted himself and blacked out. But remaining parked outside of Scout’s house and waking up may well have happened because of the Valium abuse. The medicine is causing more symptoms that overlap with DID, and exacerbating the distrust that Fritz feels towards the others.

This doesn’t make him a bad guy, he doesn’t know what he’s doing to himself or that the others are trying to help him. The quiet one is terrifying, and seeing him in the corner of your room would get on your nerves. Blacking out and being told about actions you don’t remember doing would be terrifying, and I don’t blame him for assuming the personalities are malicious.

Maybe it would be better for BLU Medic to keep working as BLU since it’s become home, but not as a battle Medic. First he needs to reconcile with the others and understand what they are trying to do. Then they need to work together to decide whether he should retire or stay at the familiar base. But he’s having too many issues to be fighting other mercenaries.

The Spies and RED Medic that looks exactly like him are just going to confuse matters more, whether they know it or not. They gotta get another BLU Medic to fight on the field, this can’t go on.

[forwhump]

a/n; I’m back !! (sorry if you hate me & you didn’t want me to come back)

I’m back w something a little different this time & that is : point’s pov ! I wasn’t gonna post any of his stuff (there’s a lot)(there’s a lot of everything as a matter of fact) until I was posting more towards the end stuff but I figured he’s just FUCKED in this one & that’s a lot of fun so what the hell <3

tw/cw: captivity, forced imprisonment, psychological torture, mentions of rape, mentions of noncon, misgendering, transphobia, mentions of forced impregnation, mentions of execution, self harm, dehumanization

living weapon whumpee, military whump, creepy whumper (I think he’s creepy idk he’s just fucked)

The lowermost corridor has always reminded Point of something from a horror movie. He’s always loved it.

It had been constructed haphazardly, carved crudely out of rock. It extends for the better part of a mile, hardly lit and only then with flickering orange fluorescence. It’s cold as all hell. Point is always preceded by clouds of his breath. The weight of his boots make his footsteps echo, loud and ominous.

There’s a single cell carved into the wall at the very end. It’s closed with rusted bars, and it’s gimmicky. The bars are for show. The cell doesn’t even need to be closed, but the bars are there for the same reason there’s no light, no heat, not one other person. The same reason the ceiling of the cell was carved lower than anywhere in the corridor, and the inside of it was fitted with hooks and chains bolted into the floors and the walls and the ceilings.

Only one freak is ever kept in the lowermost level. It was constructed particularly for him.

For whatever reason, he was allowed to kneel this time, which is generous. He’s kneeling in the centre of the dark cell, arms splayed, shackled to the walls on either side of him. His throat is shackled both to the wall behind him and the floor and front of him. He looks up at Point with unmistakable hatred and Point couldn’t keep himself from grinning if it was his job.

He’d been gagged, at least, a bite bar, a small mercy Point would never admit to. He knows how to keep the freak under control, but he’d be lying if he said he enjoyed his time in biting distance. Too many of his own men had lost their lives to those teeth.

“Hey, big guy,” Point greets. “How’s it hanging?”

The freak’s lips pull back from his teeth in a snarl. He’s such an ugly creature. Hideous, Point would go so far as to say, and he would mean it. He’s a freak. He’s a monster. He looks it every bit, too, just as he’s meant to, a weapon designed to instill fear in every sense. He’s massive, patchwork, raised scars and ruined flesh, nothing human about him. Unnatural, inky hair. He’s disgusting, really, in a genuinely stomach churning, shock factor way.

The girl really loves him. It’s never made any fuckin’ sense to Point — it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, in fact — but he knows it’s true. Somehow, the girl loves this.

It always makes the least sense when Point is looking at him directly. Kneeling in the dark, shackled by the throat, hair like a leaking shadow and a face like broken glass. The girl is beautiful; sometimes she gets a bit thin, sometimes a little filthy, and she’d hacked off her tits before Point had gotten his hands on her, which keeps her from perfect, but she’s beautiful. She’s beautiful in that really pale, white haired, porcelain doll kind of way. She’s a young thing and she looks even younger. She’s got a really delicate, sort of vulnerable thing about her, and she has a whore’s mouth, so she’s probably about as close to perfect as she can get. But for some reason, for reasons Point doesn’t think he’ll ever understand, she’s in love with Frankenstein’s monster.

Girls are weird. Point’s been married for seven years and he isn’t any closer to understanding women than he was at thirteen.

It makes him hate this fucking thing. He likes fighting the girl, and she’s beautiful when she cries. She’s beautiful when she begs him to stop. But she’s also beautiful when she’s drugged out of her mind and he can convince her to moan his name, and it makes something under his skin boil that this ugly sack of shit gets to hear her moan his name, too? For nothing. And she loves him? It makes him sick.

He sucls his teeth, and the rattle of the chains echoes eerily through the cell as the freak inhales, seething.

“We don’t think you’ve learned your lesson yet,” Point tells him finally, “so don’t get your hopes up. You’ve really started to become a pain in the ass, asset, so you should be lucky you’re here and we aren’t choosing to put you down. No,” he says, and reaches for his belt, “actually, I brought you something.”

A pair of panties. The girlish kind, cotton, white and dotted with little pink hearts. He’d been keeping them snug against his junk, but he fishes them free to make sure the freak can see exactly what he’s holding. “And a friendly reminder, that the whole time you’re down here,” he explains, for posterity, “I’m fucking her.”

The chains rattle a little more severely, echoes a little more creepily, and Point grins. If he weren’t such a helpless bastard, the freak would be one scary motherfucker.

Point flicks the panties into his face and says, “the whole time. Constantly. The only time I’m not inside her, in some way, is when I’m here with you. Gloating.”

The freak lunges and the iron pulls around his throat. He emits an involuntary sound, the whine of a dog.

“Dog fighting,” Point realizes, and snaps, pointing at the freak. “You’d be great for dog fighting.”

He snarls behind the bite bar, but there’s a break in his voice. A fresh sheen of red starts to shimmer across his chest, bright against the crust of many layers of already dried blood.

“Just like that,” Point tells him, but he isn’t smiling anymore. “You don’t know when to quit. You’d be perfect.” It doesn’t get the reaction Point is fishing for, so he tries again. “My dick probably still smells like her,” he says, “if you’d like to check before I go.”

A short, snarling sort of sound. A bark, Point would argue.

Almost.

Leisurely, he unbuckles his belt. He shoves his waistband down, not enough to free his junk, but enough that he knows the freak can see the red lipstick smudged across his skin. Lazy, he says, “I really love her in red lipstick.”

The freak roars like some kind of animal and Point grins again. There it is.

He pulls his pants back up. “I really don’t think you’d be this obsessed with her if you knew about half the things I’ve done to her,” he says, and the freak roars a little more feral, and Point grins a little wider. “She’s been pretty thoroughly used.”

The freak lunges with so much force that the rock of the furthest wall actually cracks. The sound is like lightning and Point jumps, recovering with a nervous laugh and a quick shake of his head. He doesn’t let the freak see in his face the way the nerve of him sparks exactly like rage under his skin. “Easy, big guy,” he says, and the creature snarls like some kind of beast. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Point says with a sneer, snatching the upper hand back from him, “and that’s that I wanna get your girl pregnant so bad,” and the beast chokes like he’s dying. “So bad. The higher ups won’t let me,” he assures him, “as of yet, just ‘cause it’s such a risk even having her here. But I make some good points, and I really want to, so I’m confident I’ll wear ‘em down.”

The beast lunges again and the rock doesn’t crack but his shoulder is pulled out of its socket with a sound that’s even louder.

Point grins again. “And then she’d be really thoroughly used, wouldn't she?” He asks. “Would this all still be worth it to you then?”

He looks down at the beast, who’s vibrating with hatred.

Point walks backwards as he stalks towards the grate of the bars. “Maybe if we’re lucky,” he says, “we’ll get to find out.”

The beast tries to lunge and screams behind the gag as his dislocated shoulder severs completely with a gross, wet sound.

“Ah,” Point says, delighted. “I’ll remember to tell Medic about that in a few days. First,” he reminds him, “I’m gonna spend those few days fucking your girl, and I’m gonna spend the nights in between fucking her, too. If I get any sleep, I’ll sleep still inside her, and I mean that. I want you to think about that.”

It tries to say something from behind its bite bar but it doesn’t matter what it is. It talks in threats and short sentences. It isn’t very bright. A lot of brain damage. A couple more bullets to the brain and it might not even recognize a pretty, pregnant blonde in its unit. Point might not have to keep fighting it for her.

“Hang in there, big guy,” he throws over his shoulder as he leaves, pulling the grate closed behind him.

He makes it half a mile down the horror corridor before he tips his head back and laughs, mean. “Fuck!” He shouts at the ceiling, and laughs again.

Point is known among men, superior and subordinate, as being mean. Cruel, some say. Crazy, others. Which is fair — Point would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy cruelty, and he won’t ever apologize for that. He feels no guilt or remorse — only joy. The thing is that point gets no credit for his saintly, patronly self control.

He feels it now, serpentine in his hands, how hellishly he hates that thing. They never should’ve created it. It was a mistake, and it should have been put down the first time it killed one of Point’s men. The surgeons, the district’s fuckin’ babies, their precious fuckin’ surgeons, they love it. A lot of time and money and creation had gone into it, and they say it’s so close to being perfect. They just need to put an end to the violent outbursts. They’ll let Point kill it, but not permanently. Never permanently.

He wants to. More than anything, he wants to. It takes everything he has to keep from slaughtering it whenever he gets it alone. Not asking for permission, but begging for forgiveness later.

The effort of his restraint builds into a fury that he takes with him upstairs, into the barracks, and out on the beast’s girlfriend.

[inkedkoi]

Hold On To “What If”: Overanalyzing and Rewriting Sonic Prime

aka Masterpost & References: Part One

💬 “But, Koi, Prime finished months ago…”

Hmm. What do you think I should do, Shadow?

Shadow: "Determine your own destiny, just as I have."

Well, you heard the hedgehog. What better way to celebrate the Year of Shadow than by talking about the show where he had the best characterization: Sonic Prime. I may have my own bias towards the show due to a personal connection, but overall I think the show is pretty good. Animation, voice-acting, music/sound, editing, they were amazing. The writing, aside from Shadow’s character, is ok. There are definitely some good lines but there were “eh” moments as well. (We’ll get back to that.)

I thought I would give an insight into what I thought about Sonic Prime, from overanalyzing every single frame to rewriting Season 3, and finally explain whatever the hell I had on my bingo card (the one I made before Season 3 was released).

Due to the image limit, this will be the masterpost for all of the sections:

References: [this post] // 2 // 3 Plot Holes (x) Connections: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 Bingo Card: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 Rewrite 1 // 2 // 3 Remaining Questions & Final Thoughts (x)

(also available in the "🌻 hold on to what if" tag down below)

⚠️ Spoilers for the whole series, all media here belong to their respective creators. ⚠️

✨//🌻//✨

Before we get into it…

As the internet is, I want to clarify some things:

1. I’m not a die-hard Sonic fan so some things may not be 100% accurate. I honestly entered into the fandom when Sonic Frontiers was announced. My first exposure to Sonic at all was the Sonic Unleashed Animated short film, “Night of the Werehog”, when I was like 14 so I caught myself up with Sonic lore in between releases of each season of Prime. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about anything.

2. There's this whole debacle on whether or not Prime is part of the canon. News has recently been brought up that the Prime Team didn't acknowledge the comments made by Ian and the lore team about inconsistencies. It didn't surprise me at all. The show wasn't going to be part of the canon to begin with, which was abundantly clear by the show's writing. It feels like the writers copied from a wiki. There were so many scenes where instead of taking the moment to breathe and have character development, they put fighting scenes, more so in season three.

💬 "What about the references, Shadow's characterization, etc?"

Actually, we wouldn't have them if not for some of the crew fighting SO hard to get that into the show. The animators, storyboard artists, voice actors, editors, and many others — some are legit Sonic fans and others wanted to please the fandom. They have done such a great service to the fans with what they could, so could we just give a round of applause to the creative crew behind this? 👏👏👏 To the crew, you did what you could for us, and we can’t thank you enough.

Back to the whole "canon" thing, for this essay, we'll treat Prime as a stand-alone thing unless we absolutely have to affiliate it with canon.

3. Netflix did the weird thing of splitting up all the episodes of the series and called them “seasons”. I personally call them “batches” and I know there are some people who do the same, but for our sakes, they’ll be referred to as seasons, just so we don’t get confused. Okay? Cool!

Finally, this is for funsies, don’t take this too seriously. I want to establish that I have nothing against the people behind Prime or anyone else.

So grab your snacks, and get comfy. Now, let’s lock in, chat!

References: Part One

Here’s a list of references to other Sonic media I picked up in Prime. Some of them on the list are from Felipe Sonic Hacks YT video I saw while drafting my bingo card predictions, so you can check it out (Link). Whether or not these are intentional, that’s up for interpretation unless said otherwise.

Chilidogs (EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.)

"Gotta Go Fast" (just an iconic Sonic line)

Sonic’s iconic gestures: waiting stance (S1 EP3), finger-wagging (S1 EP6) and nose-rub (S1 EP6 + S2 EP5)

look at this lil' guy :)

[S1 EP1]

Eggman’s Badniks — the usual (designs primarily the same ones from the game Sonic the Hedgehog 1)

Sonic’s super peel-out animation — a reference to Sonic the Hedgehog CD (and other games beyond)

“...sonic boom of a headache” — a reference(???) to the Sonic Boom show

New Yoke City — a design reference to Eggman Land, he wasn’t wrong about the neon (seen in the game: Sonic Unleashed)

Sonic balancing on the edge — a reference to Sonic’s balancing sprite animation from Sonic Games (matches perfectly with one in Sonic the Hedgehog 2)

Sonic’s breakdancing — a reference to Sonic’s S Rank victory animation from Sonic Generations

I mean, Sonic definitely is a breakdancer and incorporates it in his fighting style, prove me wrong.

Orbot and Cubot — returning characters from the franchise

Side note: I screamed in joy when I first saw them :)

1992 — the year of Tails’ first appearance (Game: Sonic the Hedgehog 2)

This whole scene explaining Tails' origin story — also a nod to the pixel games

Obstacle test — a reference(???) to Chemical Plant

[S1 EP 2]

Shadow’s hand back-spring in the first Sonic vs. Shadow fight — the same move done in Shadow the Hedgehog when Shadow encountered robot replicas of him

1998 — The year of Big the Cat’s first appearance (Game: Sonic Adventure 1)

[S1 EP 3]

Sonic’s free falling from an edge — similar move in Sonic Movie 2 (does that count as a reference???)

Rebel’s drill maneuver in beating the bots in the stairwell fight — same move Rouge uses in Sonic X (that I know of)

[S1 EP 4]

The Berries the Boscage Crew scavenged for — a nod to Chao Garden Fruits (confirmed to be intentional)

(right photo credits to ChaoProfessor on Twitter)

Sound FX when Sonic getting prickled by spikes — same sound FX from the games

To be continued...

Next Part

[paraliveimaginesblog]

Hi!! Big fan of your blog!! Thank you for uploading so frequently I love reading all your new posts <3 I was wondering if you could do headcanons for like… an au where Kenta isn’t in jail and he goes to school and has like a crush on the reader? Thank you!!

Kenta Mikoshiba:

Kenta is very much the isolated kid who only hangs out with people way older than him (which makes him even more intimidating to peers his age). When he speaks up everyone knows it’s only to start a fight, but the looming shadows behind him deter anyone from raising a hand against him.

Kenta will not pair up on a project with anyone else. He disliked group projects because he often knew he’d be carrying the other person with his intelligence, but you were different. He didn’t mind having to do it for you, even offering once to hack into the teachers computer to change a bad grade you’d gotten on a test (which you did not take him up on).

Kenta will not be attending any social events hosted by the school. He thinks it’s for losers even if you ask him to go with you, saying you could make more fun doing something independently. He’s not wrong either, but you do lament not getting to dress up in some elegant formal wear. He’ll deny it if you ever brought it up in front of others, but he does offer to dance with you in the solitude of his room, soft music playing over the speakers that gave it all the romantic atmosphere that you wanted.

[irenadel]

Fear Leads the Way ch.3

Filthy smut ahead, now with more blood kink. Mentions of slavery. Some unhealthy power dynamics because DUH. Darth Maul x Reader and I think we can finally admit Savage Opress x Reader. He doesn’t like it tho. He will NOT go gentle into that good night.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

The first time Maul cries in pain in your arms Savage sees red and thinks he will, at long last, be able to kill you. And you think you might let him.

It had taken weeks and weeks to get there and it wasn’t Maul who pushed through. The moment you had agreed to hold him at night it had seemed to be enough for Maul. As if all he had required to be content was for you to stop fighting his ownership of you. As if he knew once you did, you’d have nothing left but him.

You were no longer confined to their quarters… and admittedly no longer afraid to leave them lest you be punished the way you’d heard unruly pleasure slaves were. It was a strangely lonely experience though. You had even less to do than before, focusing solely on what was required of you by the Zabrak brothers (never Savage’s own cybernetics, no matter how much you winced at hastily laid out circuits and patched up nerve arrays, Maul was an excellent mechanic, but no biomechanical engineer) and you have to admit it may have been driving you a little insane. You used to do small tasks now and again for the syndicates: emergency procedures, hydraulic adjustments, little hacking jobs… part of you still hoping to save up enough to buy your freedom the way you’d heard some Hutt slaves still did. You’d worked for whoever would pay and sometimes whoever would not, as some of the higher ups in the Shadow Collective had decided to consider you at their general beck and call, so long as it didn’t interfere with your duties to Lord Maul.

Not anymore.

You are so indisputably Maul’s now that you wonder how you could have ever thought you were his before.

You never heard him announce it but somehow everyone seems to know and now they give you a wide berth. The Black Suns who used to sneer at you avoid making eye contact and the few Hutt emissaries that remain to try to make peace with the Shadow Collective have resorted to offering Maul a nicer, prettier bedslave. Maybe a more comely one, lither, less used up. You try not to show how you bristle at that. The Mandalorians, about as terrifying as the Sith Lords themselves, stand aside respectfully when you pass them by (you try not to think about how often you do pass one because you don’t want to acknowledge how much you’re being watched). For their part, the Pykes seem oddly pleased at the strange turn of events their little gift has produced, yet still continue their refusal to acknowledge you. That you understand. You were little more than a thing to them, and it was bitter, to have ended up here anyway, despite your best efforts. It tasted like copper and rage when you let yourself think about it too much, like a storm inside you brewing the desire to make someone, anyone, pay for this… and whenever you did and he was nearby, you saw Lord Maul glance your way, like a trained Tatooine massiff picking up the scent of blood.

In those moments, regardless of whatever else he might be doing, he would gesture for you to come near and would take your hand and hold it to his face, to his lips, almost smiling.

He didn’t look at you. He didn’t address you. But he kept you close, no chains, no locks, nothing else necessary to hold you but the sheer gravity of his presence. You hated it as much as you loved it.

You hated when he sneered at the Hutt party’s sniveling suggestions of an upgrade and you felt your stomach clench in fury and vindication. You hated the beautiful black gowns he kept leaving for you near the fresher, because you hadn’t seen fabric so heavy and fine and good since even before the war. Your mother had never had anything as beautiful as these. You held them to your face and refused to cry or tear them to pieces, you just put them away and continued to wear your old mechanic jumpsuit.

You didn’t hate lying beside him at night, no matter how much it stung your pride… but you did hate how touch seemed to be all he wanted from you. There had been no further amorous interludes after the first two, not in this bed, not the moment that Maul found out he could have the whole expanse of his arms and back and chest and neck touched at his pleasure. He had demanded that immediately and you had complied, and in your terrible fear of servitude and vulnerability you had never even imagined that touch was all that would pleasure him indeed. Or that it would be you, who would end up needing more, longing for his growls against your ear and the frantic grinding of his hips against yours. You didn’t hate his imperious commands for your hands, never detailed, never more than once, as if his dignity would not allow it (no thought to yours, ground to dust already by your humiliating longing for him). But you did hate how eagerly you jumped to obey and provide him all he wanted. Enough for Lord Maul but not for you and more than enough for his brother, who still slept fitfully besides you, always attentive to whatever noises the two of you would make. You couldn’t have ever known how right his vigilance had been.

Maul sighed and you could feel Savage about to jump out of his skin. Maul growled gravelly in his sleep, contentedly against the crook of your neck and you could almost feel Savage waiting to pounce. You had expected many things from your fate as his possession, but not this constant vigil.

You hadn’t expected to be so uncomfortably starved for his affection.

In all the stories you had heard whispered in Nar Shadda, in all your years as a refugee, making cybernetics for the poor and the destitute like you, living so close to slavery you could almost feel the bite of a Zygerrian collar or a Hutt implant, you had never imagined you’d be the one wondering when you would be kissed next. Or that you could hold someone so close you could feel twin hearts beating and still want more, need more, in spite of your terror and resentment of him.

The problem was that he purred. Lord Maul of the Shadow Collective purred loudly and constantly, rumbling, along the length of your body, lying between your legs, warm and hard and musky. He purred and it made everything inside you clench, desperately, hungry for his own hunger, for his tongue and his teeth and his hand wrapped around your neck, so tight and good you could still feel the thrill of it. For everything you had not asked for but still missed, for another go at his mouth and hearing him say please and ruin and want.

The second problem was that Savage purred too. Not as intimately close as Maul’s body draped across yours, but louder. Not at first either, and you would never know why or how long he had resisted this tell tale noise before he’d finally given in. Comfort having lulled him from his constant vigilance of Maul, eyes snapping open and alert at every new sound out of Maul’s mouth. Sounds that had seemed at first to Savage like Feral’s childish fretting or his own moans of protest after a hard night’s drinking to forget a visit from the Nightsisters. Then silence, the deep, even rhythm of his breath… and then like a blessing, like a memory from better times, his brother’s surprising content purring.

He had let himself be blinded by this. By this unexpected recovery of joy, of rightness… the comfort of his brother’s body so close at hand, the long-sought rumble of his dreamless sleep. He could’ve almost forgiven you for the weeks of anxious caution, for the fear… just because in your arms Maul sounded like a Nightbrother, a boy… or at least as far removed from whatever thing the Sith had tried to turn him into. It had been a rude awakening to catch the scent of your arousal in the air, to find you as dangerous and unpredictable as he had first thought you. Savage had snapped awake and watched you closely, waited, he didn’t know what for because you were no proper witch, but waited anyway, ready to fight for Maul, ready to make the Mother’s magic good for something, ready for anything but your strange refusal to act.

When you did move, it wasn’t towards his brother but away from him. You slipped a hand in between your bodies and for a stupid, senseless second Savage had thought it must have held a weapon to be wielded against Maul.

It wasn’t a vibroblade… but it was just as dangerous and even more confusing.

Your hand between your legs and it somehow took Savage a second to understand what you were doing in there, what treachery you were so clearly trying to hide.

He’d never heard of a Nightsister pleasuring herself, but there had been plenty of Nightbrothers in the communal huts. Savage had done it himself, a lifetime ago, when he still understood his life and his body. But he would not do it now, distrusted the ichor and the treachery of his kinslaying hands and it disturbed him how familiar, how nauseatingly enticing he found the quiet constrained sounds of your pleasure. A furtive, private pleasure you chose to take independent of Maul.

It made no sense, served no purpose, made no children, did not even bind his brother closer to you. All it did was flood the bed with warmth, with the musky, overpowering scent of your arousal, made Savage painfully aware of your human body, so like a Nightsister’s and yet so horribly alien at the same time.

Because you don’t yank either of them out of sleep with an order. You don’t demand combat and blood and horror. You choke down your thin little sounds, muffle your sudden desperate sob against the covers and make Savage’s skin break into goosebumps. There are no tears, no held back moans, when the Night people come together, there are no wet sounds of fingers reaching for solitary, desperate pleasure and Savage doesn’t understand why such a sounds should make his palms tingle or ichor seethe in his veins.

Savage doesn’t understand you at all, but Maul does.

“That,” he hears his brother hiss, terrifyingly awake, anger like molten lava “belongs to me.”

There’s the quick slap of Maul’s gloved hand snatching your own hands out of the way and you make another strange, otherworldly sound. Pained and high-pitched like a scream, but further back in your throat, like a wounded animal, a sound that Savage cannot fathom but which makes Maul growl and move over you.

“Please,” you beg and something in Savage’s stomach clenches because Nightsisters do not beg and Nightbrothers who beg never find themselves in a warm bed, heady with the stench of a woman’s wetness. But that please seems to do something to Maul, makes him yank your hands out of the way and above your head, your legs closing around Maul’s owns and Savage should be afraid, should be ready to flee or fight or kill, except Maul is still deeply, powerfully purring, like a boy with a full belly after a good hunt, like a young Nightbrother pumped full of spring joy, discovering the frenzied hungers of his own body, like a blessing and curse.

“You did it all wrong,” Maul whispers against your ear and Savage does not know how Maul thinks he can do this right because he knows nothing of this, of his own zabrak body drunk on your pheromones, of the danger of holding you down and holding you still and of how strange it is for you to still be begging please, please, please. Maul knows nothing but neither does Savage because he can hear your mewling, your horrible, terrible (wonderful) cry of pleasure and the squelching clench of your sex as Maul slips a still gloved finger inside you and makes you writhe and makes you sweat and makes you do things that have Savage panting for breath and desperately fighting an arousal he had almost thought gone from his life.

And Maul’s fingers are going in and out of you and Savage can hear it, like and unlike sex, deliciously suggestive of it but no treacherous velvet softness around his own member to distract him, no witch to protect his brother from, just your pitiful human body at Maul’s mercy and he can perhaps, for once, understand Maul’s obsession with power, with chains. Because if he could have you like this always, subdued and compliant, reeking of sex, of happiness, perhaps he would understand why his brother says that peace is a lie. Because this, Maul’s ragged breathing, your warm legs brushing Savage’s body whenever his brother pushes inside you too roughly, his own stubborn erection a dull and distant pleasure… This is better than peace.

Maul bites and you cry out in pain and joy. The blood he draws smells to Savage of Dathomir, except it’s not supposed to be yours and you’re no supposed buck under Maul, to beg for more, to make Savage want to flee, want to stay, want to bite down on something (you). He does not know what you’re supposed to do but Maul’s body does. And Savage can almost taste it when Maul slides between your legs. He knows the instinct, the insatiable hunger.

Because Maul is relentless, unskilled and determined and when you protest he snarls at you and makes you melt back into the bed. When your hips buck up his hands grind them back down and he is strong and impossible to guide and you’re at his mercy. And it’s both too much and not enough, each hot swipe of his tongue, each ravenous sound of ecstasy from deep in the back of his throat, reverberating against your legs and your sex and all of it is hot and alive under him.

Savage can feel it in the Force, ravenously, darkly pulsing between them. Feed, rend, take, breed. Every Nightbrother’s prayer, singing through Savage’s veins, through his groin and the unbearable hardness of his member. Because he wants that taste too, not yours, but the terrible taste of Maul’s sheer joy in you, in your thighs clamping against his horns, shredding the tender skin, wanting him so much, so much closer that blood is a price worth paying. The torrent of desire and lust and sheer want, that Maul can’t even stop. His tongue inside you, his teeth grazing you and his voice, whenever he deigns to stop for a breath, no longer velvety, but raw and impossibly deep panting yes, yes, yes.

And Savage can almost smell you climaxing, choking back his brother’s name and Maul’s making a noise like a wounded animal and lapping at the blood smearing your thighs too quick and too sudden. You’re still coming and you don’t want to stop and it’s that thoughtless desire that gives you the audacity to grab Maul’s hand and place it back on your sex if he intends to continue licking greedily at the stinging mess of your thighs.

You are too far gone to notice how immediately he obeys. Savage is too focused on keeping Dathomir’s echo from intruding. But Maul… Maul rips the glove from his hand with his teeth and thrusts his fingers inside you again, quick and efficient like he is Sidious’s weapon all over again, capable, perfect, powerful. Two, three fingers inside you and his thumb on your clitoris, because he’d prepared this time, sought the knowledge of your undoing, guides it via the flood of your scent and movements and screams. You’re screaming his name and he smiles, madly, a grimace with too many teeth.

Maul feels deliriously present, because he wants and he wants and wants and feels like he’s disappearing in desire like his master had said he would, if he focused his rage enough. But this is different. Blood and the addictive potency of your wetness, better than anger, than food, than comfort. Better than anything he’s ever tasted. A thing he’s making you do, with his hands and his mouth and his skill and he can’t wait to make you do it again and again, until you have no breath to say his name anymore, until you can’t scream it and remind him he exists.

Because that’s what you’re doing now, still panting Maul, Maul, rhythmically, in time with his fingers inside you, the whole heel of his hand incessantly, cruelly rubbing the whole of your sex, still wet, still painfully sensitive, still coming for him and only him.

“Lord Maul,” he corrects you in a growl you feel reverberate to your very bones and smiles wider, wilder when you echo him. Can’t help but dive back into you, this time catching your mouth with his own, wanting the taste of your screams. He’s fucking his hand into you so hard, he can almost feel it in a member he no longer has. Hates the muted quality of his lust, his passion, as much as he feels comforted by it. He has control, but at what price? It is not worthy of a Sith, this fear of his own hunger and he finds himself furiously taking it out on the already abused skin of your neck, biting you again, getting another heavenly mouthful of your blood.

But this time you do cry out in pain, tense up beneath him and his reaction is instinctive and immediate. First to subdue you, and then to peer into your face, anxious for a second and then annoyed at his show of weakness. It’s like the air’s been punched out of him, the moment he lays eyes on you: smeared with blood and yet still panting and reaching for him. You nudge something deep inside him, the memory of all the dead things he’d desired and had to forgo. Kilindi in her pool of blood. Eldra. Sidious’s women… and it’s nauseating how much it makes him want you. Agony, the sith masters of old had said, would free him. He does not know it now, face hiding in the crook of your neck, he does not know what he would do with freedom.

Savage is on you so fast it’s dizzying, ready to rip his brother from your arms, would have in fact ripped those arms off your body if only you hadn’t looked at him. Pleading. Scared. Still covered in blood and none of it Maul’s, for all he’s the one whimpering like a rancor just gored him. You are terrified but you don’t let him go, refuse even to let Savage pry your fingers off his back and he doesn’t know what to do when there’s no wound to tend to, no hurt to soothe, no enemy to kill. Just pain.

When a Nightbrother gets like this, there’s very little to be done, he’d been told. But you don’t know that and Savage has tried very hard to forget. When Savage had found Maul, gibbering in agony in Lotho Minor, he hates that his first thought had been to put him down, put an end to his suffering, to do what he should have done ages ago. But Savage cannot, not then and not now. Savage could not do it to Feral when they had been young and alone and too stupid to be afraid, and he will fight the ichor in his very veins to stop himself from doing it again.

Because Savage is not like Maul… or like you. He does not know how to endure, how to put things back together after they’re broken. There are things Savage will never come back from, will never crawl out of, will never survive. He has failed already, as a Nightbrother in trying to keep one brother from the Sisters and another from you. Failed just by trying and failed in the attempt. He will not survive this, but Maul will. Maul will survive you and Savage will make sure he will. If he has to let you hold Maul, let you soothe him, let you speak softly and constantly to him while he murmurs always remember, always remember, then he will. If he has to endure the stench of your arousal and your fear and your love, then he will. And he will put the bacta on your shredded thighs and help you hold Maul together and try not to hate the sight of your tears and try not to love when you hand him his brother to hold, the three of you together, nestled against each other, making sure Maul survives.

[pocketmolly]

I love how present Damian is in all of the crisis/events in dc! Like this man is not just Batman's sidekick and it shows I mean of course he won't have the same plot importance as dc trinity or whatever but this guy is shockingly relevant in almost every event (at least in the new52)

1. Dark Knights Metal

The teen titans go to the challengers mountain in Gotham and Damian somehow fucks off from his team (cannon fodder tbh) and ends up inside. There, he meets Green Arrow, Harley, Killer Croc and Nightwing and they fight their way into the (almost?) center. Damian kills dark robin and only through this do the good guys gain the knowledge that enemies can be killed by Nth metal which leads to their eventual victory. (Gotham Resistance)

2. Shadow War

This event kind of centers around Ra's Al Ghul, Talia Al Ghul and Slade after the Robin (2021) so it makes sense why Damian is a major character in it, basically Batman and Robin just kinda hop around trying to stop Talia and Slade from murdering each other. Anyway Damian has a humongous part in the conclusion where he manages to defeat the bad guy himself and Mary Sues his mother into not killing the guy who murdered Ra's. Also this event is kinda goofy where it ends in sunshine and rainbows (Slade is still alive and sets up Dark Crisis) (Ra's comes back as a ghost).

3. Dark Crisis

Dark Crisis gives Damian his little one shot where they portray him as both 12 years old and 34 years old. Anywho, Damian quickly says 'fuck you' to both Jon and Nightwing and goes on his own adventure where his team frees Justice Incarnate (which is the JL of the multiverse) and somehow unlock Dr Light's powers which she uses to stabilise the multiverse??? And don't let the team accomplishments fool you because Damian hacks into a cosmic tuning fork in an ape dimension to find the source of the Darkness??? (Please read Dark Crisis: The Dark Army, it is so good!!)

4. Lazarus Planet

Even the name of this event screams Damian... This event also starts off in Robin (2021) and is the biggest crossover Damian is at the center of. He starts off as a main antagonist where it's mostly a batfam event. Then, at the climax of the event, Damian is converted back to the hero's side when it becomes an international event. He's basically the main strategist and leader in fighting the god, King Fire Bull. There are a bunch of one-shots where heroes are struggling with new or a lack of powers which is why I say it's Damian's first big crossover event, additionally the entire batfam kind of revolves around him, being literally at his beck and call. The ending is also super sweet where Damian rallies the people of Gotham to revive Batman but he also kind of decided to kill Batman in the first place so that's not so sweet. I think this event, though not extremely well written, gives us a taste of what Damian would be like leading the JL (idk if it was plot convenience but everyone just agreed to following orders from a 15 year old) alongside Nightwing and Jon.

5. Night Terrors

In this Damian is revealed to have control over his dreams (which is crazy btw) and he goes to some monk to learn how to resist sleep? Anyway, while the other heroes are snoozing, Damian gets to team up with Deadman, Sandman and his father's unconscious body. It's the classic superhero story where he swoops in to rescue the two and they get the nightmare stone or something. Truthfully, I'm not too sure why they chose Damian specifically to play this role because I'm pretty sure any other hero would have been an okay substitute but I will never complain about Damian content.

This is just off the top of my head and I'm aware Beast World did happen but that event definitely needs its own post because I just absolutely adore it. Anyway, writers have been pushing for Damian to become a major character in DC and I really really hope he gets to be beside Nightwing and Jon when they inevitably (DC will never let them) take over.

[i-did-not-mean-to]

Russingon - March

Written for my dear reader MoonLord :D

I am not entirely sure about this one...but here it is <3

Prompts: “are you okay" - Rough - Overprotective

Pairing: Maedhros x Fingon

Words: 1035

Warnings: Fighting, blood, doom, sadness, fear, naïve rewriting of the Nirnaeth, I am not feeling well, don't shoot me!

Even though he was standing in an ephemeral pool of gleaming light, Maedhros felt a terrible shadow fall across his soul. He shivered violently.

At once, he recognised this sickening sensation only—the paralysing, clammy cold irrepressibly took him back to flashes of burning ships on dark waters and rough, cruel hands dragging him away from his screaming brothers on a field of fire.

He knew this sickening sense of foreboding only too well. They were about to be betrayed.

“Finno,” he gasped instinctively, his shapely head whipping around in search of his beloved.

Of course, per their agreed-upon battleplan, his lover was on the opposite side of the vast expanse of raw ruin, and he would have to cross literal hell to get to him in time.

The crownless, dishonoured prince had dreamed this so many times—losing Fingon because he was just not fast or skilful enough—and he was grimly determined not to let the nightmares haunting him eat up what little was left of his life.

Thus, he pushed through the throng of combatants blindly; every step was akin to wading through an ocean of sticky blood and stray limbs, and the mad screaming was deafening, but he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted or held up by the rivers of misery trying to ensnare his body and mind.

In passing, he caught a glimpse of Caranthir’s face—deadly pale under the splatter of black blood—and he swore to himself that he’d find and console his brother in due time.

“You are not the first to have trusted foolishly and to find yourself wickedly backstabbed,” he wanted to scream at that motionless mien that gave away how deep his sibling’s mental hurt truly was. “Rally, Moryo! There shall be time for remonstrances and remorse when the day is won. Now, stand and fight!”

All this and more, he yearned to say.  He longed to hear his voice rising above the terrible storm of chaos and destruction, but his lungs were burning, and his tongue wouldn’t move.

Once more, he had no choice but to forge ahead alone—mute and miserable.

After his capture and long, torturous abiding in the enemy’s fortress of pain, Maedhros had solemnly promised never to desert his family again, but could that reproach really be laid at his feet now?

Fingon was more than his cousin, more than one to whom he owed a life debt—he was the only sliver of purity and faith left intact within Maedhros’s crumbling heart, and losing him, he who had been brave and loyal from the very beginning to the bitter end, would have been too much of an injustice to bear.

“You cannot mean this,” Maedhros whispered, unsure whether it was Manwë or Námo with whom he was pleading within his mind. “We remember our Doom, worry not, but he cannot be part of the sacrifices and losses I am bound to bear.”

In the distance, a flash of gold danced like fireflies above a murky pool, and—clenching his jaw as fatigue and injury tried to tear him down—the Lord of Himring threw himself into a solid wall of armoured bodies like a crazed beast fighting for its survival.

“If you take him,” he mouthed as he hacked through limbs and fetid air with frenzied violence, “then you prove my father’s darkest accusations right. If this is the end of Findekáno, you are no better than Morgoth and his monstrosities.”

Every step was agony, but he pushed on, reciting the poems and empty phrases of puerile devotion that sprang from his muddled memory incessantly.

Once upon a time, he had believed the Valar to be invincible, and—one last time—Maedhros needed that blind faith to make it to the one he loved.

Praying fervently to Aulë and Ulmo to strengthen the hearts and arms of their favoured creations, he—who had been disappointed and abandoned more often than he could count—trusted that his allies would prevail.

As if the Powers that had turned away from his line had heard and heeded his desperate pleading, the host of savage fighters seemed to part like a roiling sea before Maedhros’s bleary eyes, and he could, at long last, make out Fingon’s glorious, unbowed silhouette, outlined starkly against the irreverently blue sky.

Soon, he knew, Morgoth would be forced to release his ultimate weapon: mindless, unbridled chaos.

Thus, it was vital to retreat and regroup before their carefully laid-out plans were turned against them.

Loyalty, he thought despairingly even as he reached his lover, should certainly vanquish base betrayal.

Throwing himself bodily between Fingon and the swelling tide of flame-wreathed foes, Maedhros pushed his half-cousin out of the way roughly.

“Love, are you okay?” the other exclaimed, surprised and alarmed by the unexpected arrival. If Maedhros was here, he immediately understood, it meant that all their strategies had gone awry.

“The Valiant” he was named, and he proved once more that he deserved that epitaph as he took a quick sidestep that allowed him to cleave a hitherto unnoticed enemy about to strike down Maedhros.

“We must away,” the exhausted redhead grunted. “Stay behind me!”

Despite the lethal danger caressing his skin with cold fingers, Fingon laughed throatily at that heart-warming but utterly ridiculous exhortation.

“You’ve ever been overprotective,” he guffawed good-humouredly. “As one I still cherish told your father once—lead and I shall follow! I have your back, my darling. And we have brothers to save!”

Whispering words of gratitude and relief under his breath, Maedhros chose life—Fingon’s and his own—over the horrible, seductive allure of the sweet, mendacious promise of a victory he knew to be incontrovertibly out of reach.

How easy it would have been to give in to the despair gnawing at his soul unrelentingly and follow the perfidious siren call into death!

Consciously renouncing the fateful flaw of his blood that ever pushed them to retaliate against treachery by unleashing the full extent of the reckless, self-forgotten fury of which they were undeniably capable, Maedhros—becoming the king he’d never wanted to be, garlanded by golden light and cold air—wisely declared the day lost and his union doomed.

-> Masterlist

Lots of love from me!

@fellowshipofthefics Here's another one!

[theresattrpgforthat]

This might be a long winded question, but for a while I’ve brainstorming on and off ideas for a TTRPG system based on those stories about “secret worlds where you have different abilities when you enter them” (Persona, Deltarune, Omori, more I’m sure), and I was thinking “there’s gotta be an RPG for that”, so like… is there? Is there an RPG where you enter a secret world to influence and help things in the real world? Or enter a secret world and develop special abilities when you do?

THEME: Alternate Worlds

Hello there! The Persona series is one I'm tangentially familiar with, so I've mostly got games that list it or The World Ends With You in their references. I've noticed that the PbtA community (and its siblings) really seems to like this genre.

Heartbeats in Perfect Sync, by Nathan Blades.

In your city, there’s an otherworldly force that lurks in the hearts of many: The Pulse. Feeding on negative emotions, they’ll devour everything… if not for a group of ordinary people with a mysterious app installed on their phones. Activate the app and you’ll be bestowed with a weapon that can purge the Pulse, but opening your heart can be dangerous…

Heartbeats in Perfect Sync is a tabletop RPG inspired by the shounen battle aesthetic in games like The World Ends With You, Kingdom Hearts and Under Night In-Birth. Play as a group of ordinary people who fight monsters with ridiculously over-the-top weapons.

Character creation in this game looks to be wonderfully simple. You fill in a ad-lib style sentence with information about your job, your weapon, and your fighting style. You pick a special move, and mark your Heart Rate, which marks your emotions. Your Heart Rate can grow or shrink, but get too close to either end of the spectrum, and your character becomes a dark version of themselves, super-powered and extremely cool-looking. If you like dramatic moments and rule-of-cool fight scenes, this game is for you.

The Midnight Generation, by Five Points Games.

The Midnight Generation is a rules hack for Masks: A New Generation by Magpie Games inspired by the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series of JRPGs. Take the role of teenagers thrust into mystery and conflict. Explore the cognitive landscape of The Midnight World, the realm made by the collective unconscious of humanity and the distortions that arise when people retreat from reality. Take control of powerful Facades, spiritual manifestations of one's true self to battle powerful Shadows, willful manifestations of human emotions and to overcome the trials set forth in The Midnight Generation!

If you are a fan of MASKS, but want to use the original rules in an alternate setting, The Midnight Generation might be worth looking at. This book is fairly comprehensive - it comes with guidance on how to create the people, places, and other elements necessary to play in a Persona-like universe, as well as a city you can pick up and use with little extra effort. Another thing I really appreciate about this supplement is the addition of 10 playbooks that communicate the themes and struggles of Persona characters, including the Icon, who is masking their true self from the world around them, and the Shadow, how was born in the other world from the emotions of mankind.

Vibe Check, by Ostrichmonkey Games. (@ostrichmonkey-games)

Vibe Check is an illuminated by LUMEN tabletop role-playing game for 3-6 players.  Players take on the roles of Players in the Watcher's Game - a week long challenge with the prize being another shot at life, while another player takes on the role of the Game's Master to introduce complications and consequences the Players must overcome as they fight to survive the Watcher's Game. 

Vibe Check features LUMEN's fast paced dice pool system, tailored for action filled combat and paired with plenty of powers and cool abilities. Fight the Pandemonium within the Inversion to earn new Tokens and rewards. Upgrade and buy more powerful gear. Survive the Watcher's Game. 

Inspired by The World Ends With You, Vibe Check places your players in a high-stakes afterlife competition to become alive again. As members of the afterlife, you’ll receive special abilities attached to your archetypes. For example, the Cryptic archetype had an ability called False Gnosis, which allows them to state something and roll to see if what they said was true. Your character’s looks are also important to determining their stats, with each Look belonging to a Brand. Do you have an entire set of clothes bought from Antiquity’s Glance? Now you can carry more things on your person.

If you like games with moddable upgrades and simple (but rewarding) combat, then Vibe Check is for you.

Eidolon: Become Your Best Self, by Reveal Your Master Plan.

EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self is a Powered by the Apocalypse RPG in which your character gains the power of an Eidolon, a physical manifestation of their soul that reflects their truest, innermost self and grants them incredible reality-defying powers! With the help of their friends, they'll fight against the pressure of the Undertow, the shadowy flow of collective psychic energy that imprisons society in an untenable status quo.

While this is a PbtA game, Eidolon has a battle system that uses a mechanic called “crashes”. Every blow that you land will escalate the fight, with victory becoming less and less likely the longer the fight draws out. This requires creativity and teamwork to overcome, drawing from your collective resources to save the day.

If you want to hear this game in action, the designers have an Eidolon Playtest podcast where they play through various seasons of Eidolon.

Shifters, by Moonlit Bard.

You are a Shifter, someone who can step from our world into the Major World beyond to do battle with sentient emotions and compulsions known as Forms.

Forms can be malevolent spirits inciting violence, landscapes saturated with desire, objects that seethe with chaos and discord, or anthropomorphic personifications of envy. No matter their appearance, they spell disaster for our world, and only you can stop them.

There’s not much info I have for this game, other than that it’s in demo form and is currently a one-page RPG. However, if you’re interested in games where emotions have power in an alternate world and so far nothing on the list here is speaking to you, this might give you something light enough to hack to your heart’s desire.

Stand Up, by Elena Murphy.

Stand Up is a Belonging Outside Belonging game about rebellion, forming bonds, fighting injustice, and changing the world.

Take on the roles of normal people with the capability to become heroes, explore a fantastical world that houses mankind’s inner feelings, and find a way to fight back using power only you can wield.

If you are a big fan of the Persona series, this game is for you. Collaboratively build a hidden world, called The Reversal, formed from the perceptions and feelings of humanity. Choose from a set of seven playbooks, all named after tarot cards. Bind your characters together, and then determine your Setting Elements.

Because this is a Belonging Outside Belonging game, Stand Up has no GM. Instead, it has setting elements that are picked up and played by players whose characters are not active in any given scene. This keeps the entire table engaged in the story even when their character isn’t involved, and lightens the burdens of GM-ing while giving everyone an equal chance to contribute to the story. If you enjoy story-games and a lot of control over when your character succeeds or fails, Stand Up is worth checking out.

Voidheart Symphony, by UFO Press.

There’s a wound in the world, a rot eating at hope and community and empathy. You’ve seen it in dark alleyways and gleaming boardrooms, gifting terrible power to those who will use it to hurt others.

You’ve had enough. You’re going to dive through that wound into the nightmare castle on the other side. You’re going to find the avatar of the one bringing you misery, and strike them down.

But what’s next, once you’ve stolen their power and ruined their ambitions? Will you return to your daily grind? Cherish those who are close to you? Or revel in the power you have taken from the void? Because within that wound, the castle waits, and it is hungry.

Voidheart Symphony is a tabletop roleplaying game about mundane people diving into a demon-filled labyrinth to save the ones they love. Based on Apocalypse World and Rhapsody of Blood, it’ll fill your story with dramatic choices and dynamic action. The World and the Void will both offer you their power, and make their own demands. How will you strike that balance? What will your revolution fight for? That’s your story to tell.

This is probably one of the darkest games on this list. With an alternate world that is meant to trap your characters and pit them against demons all the while, this is a game about rebellion in the face of little to no hope. I’ve heard a lot about this game in a number of different circles - it is well-loved and well-played. If you want to take a look at some pieces of this game before you buy, the Itch page includes free playbooks and reference sheets, as well as a link to a Google Sheets Character Keeper!

[joshuasumter]

What if...The Cross Zone got a lot bigger?

From the creative minds that bought you Namco X Capcom, Project X Zone was released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2012 in Japan and worldwide in 2013, receiving great praise as it bought characters from three legendary game developers -- Capcom, Sega, and Namco Bandai -- to crossed worlds, dimensions, and the fabric of time for the ultimate cross-over tactical RPG mashup!

But what if the cross zone had gotten a whole lot bigger with even MORE titles and are joined by even more characters from surprising guest companies.

What if...The Cross Zone got a lot bigger? explores what would happen if the events of Namco X Capcom, Project X Zone, and Project X Zone 2 occurred differently with the inclusion of characters, worlds, and universes of Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Square Enix, and much more. For example, my fan-made original story movie inspired by the crossover RPG.

The Project X Zone Movie (Capcom x Sega x Bandai Namco x Cartoon Network x Nickelodeon x Disney x Pixar x Square Einx x Channel Federator x Channel Awesome)

The Project X Zone Movie 2: Fate of Many Worlds (Capcom x Sega x Bandai Namco x Cartoon Network x Disney x Pixar x Square Einx x Marvel x Star Wars x Level-5)

NAMCO BANDAI

Namco X Capcom (Reiji Arisu, Xiaomu)

Project X Zone (Mii Koryuji, Kogoro Tenzai)

Tekken (Jin Kazama, Kazuya Mishima, Heihachi Mishima, Ling Xiaoyu, Alisa Bosconovitch)

.hack// (Kite, BlackRose)

.hack//G.U. (Haseo)

Tales of Versperia (Yuri Lowell, Fylnn Scifo, Estelle Sidos Heurassein)

Summon Night 3 (Aty)

Adventure of Valkyrie (Valkyrie, Kurino Sandra, Sabine)

Bravoman (Arnold/Bravoman)

Wonder Momo (Kanda Momo/Wonder Momo)

Soulcalibur V (Natsu)

Soul Edge (Taki, Mitsurugi Heishiro)

Tales of Destiny (Rutee Katrea, Stahn Aileron)

Xenosaga (KOS-MOS, MOMO, Shion Uzuki)

Tower of Druaga (Gilgamesh, Ki)

Shadow Land (Tarosuke)

The Genji and the Heike Clans (Taira no Kagekiyo)

Baraduke (Masuyo Tobi)

Burning Force (Hiromi Tengenji)

Ordyne (Miyuki Chan)

Dig Dug (Taizo Hori)

Klonoa (Klonoa, Guntz)

God Eater (Alisa Ilinichina Amiella, Soma Schicksal, Lindow Amamiya, Ciel Alencon, Nana Kouzuki)

Yumeria (Neneko, Neito)

CAPCOM

Street Fighter (Ryu, Ken Masters, Chun-li, Guile, Cammy White, Ingrid)

Ghosts n' Goblins (Sir Arthur)

Okami (Amaterasu, Issun)

Viewtiful Joe (Viewtiful Joe, Sexy Silvia)

Monster Hunter (Monster Hunter, Felyne, Palico, Gore Magala)

Breath of Fire III (Ryu, Nina, Momo, Garr, Rei, Peco, Honey)

Resident Evil Revelations (Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine)

Resident Evil 6 (Leon S. Kennedy, Helena Harper, Ada Wong)

Resident Evil: Dead Aim (Bruce McGivern, Fong Ling)

Ace Attorney (Phoenix Wright, Maya Fey, Apollo Justice, Athena Cykes)

Darkstalkers(Morrigan Aensland, Demitri Maximoff, Felicia, Hsien-Ko, Donovan Baine, Anita, Jon Talbain, Victor Von Gedenheim)

Dead Rising (Frank West)

Devil May Cry (Dante, Trish, Lady, Nero, Nico)

Bionic Commando (2009) (Nathan Spencer)

Captain Commando (Captain Commando, Hoover (Baby Head), Jennety (Mack the Knife), Sho (Ginzu the Ninja))

Dino Crisis (Regina)

Final Fight (Guy, Mike Haggar)

Mega Man (Rock/Mega Man, Roll, Blues/Proto Man, Rush, Tango, Eddie, Beat)

Mega Man X(X, Zero, Axl)

Mega Man Legends (Tron Bonne, Servbots, Mega Man Volnutt, Roll Casket)

Star Gladiator (June Lin Milliam)

Strider (Strider Hiryu)

Forgotten Worlds (Unknown Soldier 1P, Unknown Solider 2P, Sylphie)

Cyberbots (Jin Saotome, Princess Devilotte de Death Satan IX)

SEGA

Billy Hatcher (Billy Hatcher, Chick Poacher, Rolly Roll, Bantam Scrambled)

Golden Axe (Ax Battler, Gilius Thunderhead, Tyris Flare)

Panzer Dragon (Keil Fluge, Blue Dragon)

Alex Kidd (Alex Kidd, Stella)

NiGHTS into Dreams (NiGHTS)

Skies of Arcadia (Vyse, Aika, Fina, Cupil, Gilder, Enrique, Drachma)

Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, Amy Rose, Shadow the Hedgehog)

Sonic Boom (Sticks the Badger)

Bayonetta (Bayonetta, Jeanne, Viola, Luka)

Virtua Fighter (Akira Yuki, Pai Chan, Kage-Maru)

Fighting Vipers (Bahn)

Shenmue (Ryo Hazuki)

Shinobi (Hotsuma)

Shinobi: Nightshade (Hibana)

Space Channel 5 (Ulala)

Streets of Rage (Axl Stone)

Sakura Wars (Ichiro Ogami, Sakura Shinguji, Gemini Sunrise, Erica Fontaine)

Yakuza/Like A Dragon (Kazama Kiryu, Goro Majima, Ichiban Kasuga)

Resonance of Fate (Zephyr, Leanne, Vashyron)

Valkyria Chronicles III(Kurt Irving, Riela Marcellis, Imca)

Sega Saturn Advertisements (Segata Sanshiro, Sega Shiro (Segata's son))

Shining Force EXA(Toma, Cyrille)

Dynamite Cop (Bruno Delinger)

Zombie Revenge (Rikiya Busujima)

NINTENDO

Fire Emblem Warriors (Rowan, Lianna)

Fire Emblem: Awakening (Chrom, Lucina)

Xenoblade Chronicles (Fiora, Shulk)

DISNEY

Gravity Falls (Dipper Pines, Mabel Pines)

Kim Possible (Kim Possible, Ron Stoppable, Rufus)

American Dragon: Jake Long (Jake Long, Trixie, Spud, Fu Dog, Lao Shi)

Darkwing Duck (Drake Mallard/Darkwing Duck)

DuckTales (2017) (Scrooge McDuck, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Webby Vanderquack, Launchpad McQuack)

Phineas & Ferb (Phineas Flynn, Ferb Fletcher, Isabella Garcia-Sharpio, Burford Van Stromm, Baljeet Rai, Candace Flynn, Agent P)

Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja (Randy Cunningham)

Mighty Med (Oliver, Kaz)

Sofia the First (Princess Sofia the First)

Disney's Descendants (Mal, Evie, Jay, Carlos)

Wreck-It Ralph (Vanellope Von Schweetz)

The Simpsons (Bart Simpson)

The Lion Guard (Kion, Bunga, Fuli, Besthe, Ono, Anga)

PIXAR

Brave (Princess Merida of DunBroch)

The Incredibles (Mr. Incredibles, Elastigrl, Violet Parr, Dash Parr, Jack-Jack Parr, Frozone)

MARVEL

Captain America

Iron Man

Thor

Hulk

Black Widow

Hawkeye

Falcon

Vision

Wasp

Captain Marvel

Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel

Black Panther

Spider-Man

Doctor Strange

Iron Fist

Ghost Rider

She-Hulk

Wolverine

Storm

X-23

Future Avengers (Makoto/Hurricane, Chloe/Charade, Adi/Codec, Bruno/Twister)

STAR WARS

Rey

Finn

Poe Dameron

BB-8

CARTOON NETWORK

Ben 10(Ben Tennyson, Gwen Tennyson, Kevin Levin)

Generator Rex (Rex, Six, Bobo)

The Life & Times of Juniper Lee (Juniper Lee)

The Powerpuff Girls (Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup)

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (Mac, Bloo)

Dexter's Labratory(Dexter)

Samurai Jack (Samurai Jack)

Ed, Edd, n Eddy (Ed, Double D (Edd), Eddy)

OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes (Kaio O. Kincaid (K.O.), Radicles X, Enid Mettle)

NICKELODEON

SpongeBob SquarePants (SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick Star, Sandy Cheeks)

Fairly OddParents (Timmy Turner, Cosmo, Wanda, Poof)

Avatar: The Last Airbender (Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, Zuko)

Winx Club (Bloom, Stella, Aisha, Techa, Musa, Flora)

El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera (Manny Rivera/El Tigre, Frida)

The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (Jimmy Neutron)

Danny Phantom (Danny Fenton/Danny Phantom, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Jazz Fenton)

My Life as a Teenage Robot (XJ9/Jenny Wakeman)

Glitch Techs (Miko "Me_K.O." Kubto, Hector "High Five" Nieves, Ridley, B.I.T.T., Zahra Rashid)

SQUARE EINX

Kingdom Hearts (Sora, Riku, Kairi, Ventus)

The World Ends with You (Neku Sakuraba, Shiki Misaki, Daisukenojo "Beat" Bito, Raimu “Rhyme” Bito, Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu, Rindo Kanade, Tosai “Fret” Furesawa, Nagi Usui, Shoka Sakurane)

Final Fantasy (Warrior of Light)

Final Fantasy II (Firion)

Final Fantasy III (Onion Knight)

Final Fantasy IV (Cecil Harvey)

Final Fantasy V (Bartz Klauser)

Final Fantasy VI (Terra Branford)

Final Fantasy VII (Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart, Aerith, Cid, Yuffie) (Kingdom Hearts incarnation)

Final Fantasy VIII (Squall Leonheart) (Kingdom Hearts incarnation)

Final Fantasy IX (Zidane Tribal)

Final Fantasy X (Tidus)

Final Fantasy XI (Shantotto)

Final Fantasy XII (Vaan)

Final Fantasy XIII (Lightning)

Final Fantasy XIV (Y'shtola)

Final Fantasy XV (Noctis Lucis Caelum)

OTHER TITLES

CHANNEL AWESOME

Nostalgia Critic (Nostalgia Critic)

Angry Video Game Nerd (Angry Video Game Nerd)

Atop the 4th Wall (Linkara)

The Angry Joe Show (Angry Joe)

LEVEL-5

Professor Layton (Professor Hershel Layton, Luke Triton)

CHANNEL FEDERATOR

Bravest Warriors (Chris Kirkman, Beth Tezuka, Danny Vasquez, Wallow, Plum, Catbug)

[uenodivision]

Yozakura Battle Anthem

Bring the Beat!

["New" Yozakura:]

(1, 2, 3)

[Aranai:]

What, did you really think you weren't gonna hear from us next?

["New" Yozakura:]

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

[Aranai:]

Time to show all you fuckers just whose running this place

["New" Yozakura:]

(1, 2, 3)

[Aranai:]

You should have known better not to fuck with any of us

That was your first and final mistake

["New" Yozakura:]

Now the Yozakura is gonna make you break!

[Aranai:]

Riding through the streets, I'm the leader of the pack

Revving up my Yamaha, I'm on the right track

From B��sōzoku to rap, I've made my claim

Ride or Die motherfuckers, best remember the name!

[Sumire:]

Hacking the system, breaking the code

Diabla in the shadows, watch my story unfold!

Rebel with a cause, in the cyber world I dive

Striving for a new order where we all can thrive

[Kaoru:]

Weaving webs of data, Arachne's the name

In the digital realm, I rise to fame

With every keystroke, I command the stage

My rhymes are timeless, like words on a page

[Kanra:]

Yeah!

Strength of a titan, heart of a child

D.Vil is my name, and I'm running wild!

Amnesia can't hold back the power I wield

No way in the world will I ever yield!

[Kureha:]

In the moon's shadow, my sorrow's muse

Eclipse whispers tales of hues so blue

A canvas of memories, lost in the night

Longing for dawn, I'm the forlorn twilight

[Taria:]

Misfit on the mic, I steal the entire damn show

With every trick I've got, I let the people know

From street to stage, I bring the heat

Simply put, I just can't be beat!

[Aika:]

VeeXn reigns, in pleasure's play

Ruling both the night and the day

Fox in the spotlight, I weave my trance

Living for joy, in every glance

[Aranai:]

Our names are etched in the street

No challenge too great, no defeat

We ride as one, an unbreakable wall

Stand with us, or witness your fall

["New" Yozakura:]

24/7!

Let this be a lesson to all of our enemies!

24/7!

In our domain, we always reign supreme!

[Aranai:]

Wanna fight against us?

["New" Yozakura:]

Idiots! Idiots!

[Aranai:]

Shoulda begged for mercy

["New" Yozakura:]

Now there's nothing to discuss!

Yozakura's bond, tight as the seven seas

Our unity's a force, a real damn dream team!

24/7!

Our spirit, wild and free

From the same creed, this we decree!

24/7!

With every verse, we synergize

Behold our untamed, vibrant energies!

[Aranai:]

Crossing our path is a quick way to Heaven

So a fair warning: don't fuck with the Seven

["New" Yozakura:]

Seven shadows, seven threats, seven reasons to fret

Cross us and it's a choice you'll regret!

(1, 2, 3)

[Aranai:]

What, did you really think you weren't gonna hear from us next?

["New" Yozakura:]

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

[Aranai:]

Time to show all you fuckers just whose running this place

["New" Yozakura:]

(1, 2, 3)

[Aranai:]

You should have known better not to fuck with any of us

That was your first and final mistake

["New" Yozakura:]

Now the Yozakura is gonna make you break!

[Aranai:]

I'm the beacon, the flame, the undying light

"HBIC," they chant, through the day and night

Criminals cower, even they dial for aid

To escape my fury, a price to be paid

[Sumire:]

Right hand of shadows, The Devil's my creed

Cross Yozakura, it's the end you've decreed

Juu, that fuckin' church girl, a yandere in disguise

Against us, her facade will be her demise

[Kaoru:]

Athena's wisdom, Arachne's war

My strategies set, my intellect's core

Fools rush to battle, their ignorance a token

Against my plans, they'll all leave broken

[Kanra:]

Muscle and might, that's my call

Guardian of Yozakura, I stand tall

(Damn!)

A demon to foes, mercy they'll crave

Choose your next step, be brave or the grave!

[Kureha:]

Quiet, unassuming, but fierce in the fray

In the Realm of Darkness, I hold sway

Stronger than the raven, night's own bird

Underestimate me, and your vision will be blurred

[Taria:]

The MiA, I claim what's mine, no debate

From the hands of foes, I liberate

Behave or beware, I'm the thief in the night

Cross me, and I'll take more than just your plight

[Aika:]

Enchantress of night, fox's allure

My power's vast, of that be sure

Tempt fate with me, you'll lose it all

In VeeXn's thrall, into my spell you'll fall

[Aranai:]

Words are spent, our message clear

Defiance in our eyes, confront your fear

Step in our sight, the fuckin' fault's your own

Beware the storm the Yozakura have sown

["New" Yozakura:]

24/7!

Let this be a lesson to all of our enemies!

24/7!

In our domain, we always reign supreme!

[Aranai:]

Wanna fight against us?

["New" Yozakura:]

Idiots! Idiots!

[Aranai:]

Shoulda begged for mercy

["New" Yozakura:]

Now there's nothing to discuss!

Yozakura's bond, tight as the seven seas

Our unity's a force, a real damn dream team!

24/7!

Our spirit, wild and free

From the same creed, this we decree!

24/7!

With every verse, we synergize

Behold our untamed, vibrant energies!

[Aranai:]

Crossing our path is a quick way to Heaven

So a fair warning: don't fuck with the Seven

["New" Yozakura:]

Seven shadows, seven threats, seven reasons to fret

Cross us and it's a choice you'll regret!

(1, 2, 3)

[Aranai:]

What, did you really think you weren't gonna hear from us next?

["New" Yozakura:]

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

[Aranai:]

Time to show all you fuckers just whose running this place

["New" Yozakura:]

(1, 2, 3)

[Aranai:]

You should have known better not to fuck with any of us

That was your first and final mistake

["New" Yozakura:]

Now the Yozakura is gonna make you break!

@shinagawa-division @saitama-division @edogawa-division @ota-division @minato-division01

[vvatchword]

Reading BioShock: Rapture (Part 3: The Prologue’s Prologue)

<- Part 2: John Shirley and the Front Matter || Back to the Beginning || Part 4: Going Down ->

And so I begin with the prologue—at long last.

Oddly, despite the trash fire that is everything else, it starts out perfectly fine:

Sullivan, chief of security, found the Great Man standing in front of the enormous window in his corporate office. The boss was silhouetted against city lights. The only other illumination was from a green-shaded lamp on the big glass-topped desk across the room, so that the Great Man was mostly in shadow, hands in the pockets of his crisply tailored suit jacket as he gazed broodingly out at the skyline. It was eight o’clock, and Chief Sullivan, a tired middle-aged man in a rain-dampened suit, badly wanted to go home, kick off his shoes, and listen to the fight on the radio.

Mmmm. Mmmmmmmm

I do like this

I have talked much shit but this is a good start. This is how a BioShock story should start: with The Man Upstairs Himself, Andrew Ryan. Chief Sullivan’s POV—displayed here in third person-limited—is a great choice as well. It leaves Ryan a little more mysterious and less defined, which I like. I think that keeping a character like Ryan mysterious is more akin to the dialogue we’d get during gameplay. We can’t see Ryan’s interior self; we see what he chooses to present to us. And if we have any flaws as human beings, it’s that we assume people are more put together than they actually are, so this is an excellent choice. Don’t ever give your reader a sense of his weakness. Just show him rollin (we hatin)

The two top paragraphs give an excellent sense of his standing and wealth (a chief of security at his beck and call from his ritzy upstairs office somewhere on Fifth Avenue, NYC). There are some factual and historical elements here worth looking up revolving around the locale: what kind of skyline you could see from what part of Fifth Avenue, mostly. For example, what’s the best area of the city to choose so Ryan isn’t just looking out his window at another window? Simultaneously, not every skyscraper or building on Fifth Avenue is going to be ideal for both business and skygazing.

That said, this is relatively simple to handwave away with just the barest knowledge of the area (Sachs! Fifth Avenue!), and I don’t know what kinds of businesses or buildings were typically present. At least this sounds right. (Note from Future Me: do not trust him. He is a hack. He didn’t even use Wikipedia. NOT EVEN WIKIPEDIA)

All of this dialogue is going on during a Dark and Stormy Night, so I spy a little of BioShock’s inherent camp as well, and I approve. Characterization is shown through a combination of body language and inner desires. We have a great feel for Sullivan as a workaday man and his awe of Ryan works perfectly. Very nice. Mwah.

What did I hate about this? This is fine. I mean, I guess it’s a little over-the-top on description, and there’s an ugly little adverb in there, but that’s not so bad. It’s not so ugly that it’s awkward.

Coincidentally, I heard that Ken Levine worked on some pieces for the novel. Several articles mention a “foreword.” Others mention that he was supposed to write a prologue and an epilogue. However, he’s not mentioned as a cowriter, and my version—a first-edition paperback—doesn’t have a foreword. We’ll have to presume everything is John Shirley until it is confirmed otherwise.

Yet sometimes it seemed the tycoon was casting about for a friend he could take to heart.

Oh.

No,,,,

noooooo, no. No,,,,,,,,,

Wrong. Bad. Wrong. Incorrect.

Showing versus Telling

This story goes from letting the mood and dialogue speak for itself to Telling almost immediately. For a brief, blissful second you’re really leaning into Chief Sullivan and then Andrew “Friendship Is Magic” Ryan happens in paragraph three. It’s like Shirley said, “SHIT, I forgot to mention he’s lonely,” and instead of finding a good place to show it, he just shoved a paragraph in there. “There! Done!” slams back wild turkey

So. Showing versus Telling. Writers yell about this a lot, especially the mantra: “Don’t Tell! Show!”

In other words, show the character feeling lonely. Don’t outright say he’s lonely.

Now, Telling has got its uses, whatever anyone says. That said, when it comes to character growth, you try everything in your power not to “Tell.”

This phrase. “Casting about for a friend.” Why is this here. Where did this come from. How does it feel. It literally pops out of nowhere, inspired by nothing. (Equally important is that every subject leads seamlessly into the next.)

Does Ryan seem like he needs a friend? Is that the main point of the scene? No, the point of the scene is Ryan’s political stance and forceful personality. You don’t need to explain every fucking theme at once, it’s okay. Like maybe start with the forceful Big Boss shit and then Ryan goes home and he’s like :( boy it sure is lonely round these parts.

In fact, that would be a great contrast, wouldn’t it?

Imagine this: a scene of the big bad boss man ordering his chief of security to beat the shit out of some strikers in Kentucky. Then show him getting into a nice car by himself. Show him eating dinner at a nice restaurant across from an empty chair, surrounded by diners who all have friends and beloveds at hand. (Show this against a mirror or window. He is not even looking at his reflection.) Show him leaving by himself; he heads to his fine penthouse apartment by himself. Show his driver and doorman as nonentities. Show him surrounded by quiet servants who quietly serve him and quietly leave until he’s sitting by himself with a glass of merlot. Maybe he has a newspaper or a radio sitting next to him. Emphasize that silence and the vast spaces around him.

If you must explicitly mention loneliness, I’d recommend Ryan talking like no one’s on his level. He probably thinks he’s too good for other people, and it’s possible his autism/BPD/trauma is so powerful that he’s on a separate plane of existence. Most Randian Ubermensch are.

Another issue with “Telling” is that it tends to flatten characters out. They become grocery lists of traits. And Ryan should not ever, ever be flattened. He should rise above you like a thunderhead. Do not steal his mystique—that’s literally the most important facet of his character. I’m sure there’s a way to “Tell” that he’s lonely, but this is not the right place or time, and this sounds like he’s a little girl listing all alone in a playground instead of a big bad boss man who sends strikebreakers to fuck people up.

I’m Sorry to Report to You

Ryan asks Sullivan for his two reports.

“Let’s have the report on the strikes first, get it out of the way. The other one…” He shook his head. “That’ll be like hiding from a hurricane in a cellar. We’ll have to dig the cellar first, so to speak…”

what

I’m assuming this line means, “A cellar is inadequate for a hurricane. Therefore I need to build a cellar for the oncoming hurricane.” Which makes. No goddamn sense.

But I also have no experience with hurricanes. To make certain I was not missing some finer point, I went to a friend who has lived in the hurricane lands and asked her questions.

watchword — Today at 6:22 PM FRIEND. I have a hurricane question for you. "That'll be like hiding from a hurricane in a cellar." What does that mean to you To me, it implies that a cellar wouldn't be enough. Admittedly, I've never lived in hurricane country

Salty — Today at 6:23 PM It's very silly, tbh Hurricanes are multi-day affairs And usually we don't have cellars in hurricane country

watchword — Today at 6:23 PM Is this a saying that you know of? Guess where I read it

Salty — Today at 6:23 PM LOL It's not a saying I know, but I can guess that someone confused a tornado with a hurricane

watchword — Today at 6:24 PM I have always gone into cellars for tornadoes what the fuck

Salty — Today at 6:24 PM Hurricanes are like big multi-day thunderstorms, and usually on the coast, the water table is too high to have a cellar or basement

(I found out all of this under two minutes john)

Long story short, this sentence does not make any goddamn sense and it’s the second thing that Andrew Ryan says.

Sullivan wondered what he meant by that cellar remark, but he let it go.

NO. Sullivan do not let him go. Ask him what the fuck that even means. Sullivan? You must kill him sullivan

Instead of killing him, Sullivan tells him about strikes.

“The strikes—they’re still going on at the Kentucky mines and the Mississippi refinery.”

Okay there are two jarring problems here.

First is the specificity. Consider this: these are two adult men, both professionals, both competent in their respective fields, and they are speaking about a situation that has been ongoing for a while. This is a report that Ryan expects, and the implication is that there have been others.

One would expect for Sullivan to have a far more specific insight into the situation—perhaps big players on all sides, perhaps a list of demands from the strikers, perhaps some talk about national, state, or city politics or site layout and all the ways they affect progress. Moreover, when strikes occur, they are often referred to by the name of the city and company they’re part of, and it makes sense that Ryan would have an idea of his facilities and where they are in the country.

Long story short, proper names would be rattled off left and right, stakes and states would be presupposed or mentioned offhand, and both Ryan and Sullivan would know what they were immediately.

Second, the phrasing is so juvenile that it’s cringe-worthy. This sounds like what a high-school student thinks that businessfolk sound like. “They’re still going on” is such a nothing sentence. Under what circumstances? Sullivan would know what circumstances and he’d start out right where they left off the last time.

If I put myself in my CEO shoes, “they’re still going on” is not something I’d wait up to hear. I’d be like bitch I know, have they been able to ship the scabs in? How about the Elizabethtown situation? How many more did that Pinkerton bastard say he needed? All right. How much? He said he could do it with $XXXX; why hasn’t he managed it? Did they at least take care of that Mulligan man? Why not? jesus christ is everyone a fucking Red-tit-sucking bastard? What do you mean the mayor wants a payoff? What is this, Ukraine?

Except I’d not say “Ukraine,” I’d go look up first-hand accounts and experiences with famously corrupt governments in the Soviet bloc between years 1930 and 1946 that Ryan may have had personal experience with and just replace “Ukraine” with some important city somewhere with a tiny off-hand note that makes it sound like Ryan knows his shit. I probably wouldn’t swear that much, either—Ryan is classy until he’s been pushed to the edge.

But this is just a first draft, too. This is just me making shit up in literally 10 seconds. You come in later and you smooth that shit out. You look up where mines are located in Kentucky, where refineries were most likely to be located in Mississippi, and you might look up what kind of products they make and staff they’d employ at those locations in 1945. Look for pictures and firsthand accounts of related strikes at the time and double-check if the Pinkertons were even still a thing in 1945. Extrapolate, steal, remix, and you’re golden.

Also? This is wartime. Not only was production a completely different monster, businesses were under the heel of the US government at this time. Interesting historical note: most unions had pledged not to strike. In 1943, coal miners were like fuck you, pay me, and a strike began. The government responded by nationalizing all coal mines and threatening to send in troops as strikebreakers. When nationalization and the threat of violence didn’t work, President Roosevelt’s next response was to fucking criminalize striking in war plants or nationalized industries.

Did the coal miners care?

lol no

And so labor gains were made during an unlikely period.

I found this out in 30 seconds of searching from a quality source at the US Archives. Usually I look for at least two separate accounts of the same event just to make sure I haven’t stumbled on some goofery, as well as read documents both primary and otherwise, but if you’re short on time, a .gov website does nicely.

Why Are You Like This Again

Technically, Shirley is overcoming a problem here: he needs to communicate the kind of person that Andrew Ryan is, what Ryan is like in business, and Ryan’s political viewpoints. He doesn’t want to get locked up in meaningless minutiae. Of course, rattling off exact names is a great way to bluff your way out of a situation like this—to look like everything is business as usual, and imply you know more than you do. Despite writing more books than the Bible, Shirley does not know how to do this.

This is that pandering to the lowest-common denominator that I was telling you about. Shirley cannot trust the reader to know anything about the time period, the work of a company president (I’m not using “CEO” because this term was coined in 1984—neat), or anything beyond the most basic comprehension of wartime, unions, and strikes.

I just realized that Shirley is also the lowest-common denominator so good news for all the low-coms out there.

There’s a simple solution, of course: have the strikes be brand new. Then Sullivan would have to share explicit details about what’s going on, since Ryan would be equally new to the situation. There would still be some shorthand in their speech to experiences they’ve had outside of this one, but it would be easy this way. Then you can mention everything by name (“Our mines in Martin County!”) for the benefit of the reader.

The eagle-eyed reader will have noted: yes, that would be easy! but it would also take work. What if u are tired. What if u r unmotivate. Wat if

rather toke

puff puff

Of course, there are ways to ease the reader into these subjects. We’re approaching this work as a standalone, remember? This is one of the strengths of literature—the ability to explain complex subjects in-narrative by bouncing off of other intangible subjects.

Your reader doesn’t have to know everything, but the dialogue should be immediately understandable to them by context alone. And it’s totally doable! I’ve done it! Because you have to do it with all subjects when you’re writing, not just historical concepts! If you’re a writer you’ve probably done it without thinking about it!

Basically, you lead the reader in with easy concepts, then build on that simple foundation with more and more complex ideas. It takes some work and thought, but it’s also fun and interesting and is a great educational opportunity for both you and your reader. I can’t believe I’m writing this

Touchy-Feely

Here’s the problem.

I said in the last installment that I suspected I’d see quick, undigested concepts. I did not guess that Shirley would opt to do NOTHING. No research, not even badly. He didn’t even look at a map. He’s almost purely visual, and in the worst way: he bases his scenes on how he feels about the 20,000 movies he’s seen and conflated in his brain.

I now suspect that he is the kind of writer one is in childhood: the kind who writes solely by feeling. This can be done, and can be done well, but it is also hit-and-miss because you’re not sure WHY you’re doing what you’re doing. This probably explains why he could win an award: because he wrote with his whole dong at some point, took for granted he would be Great Forever, and got complacent.

Because Shirley isn’t here to write about a concept. No, he doesn’t have a concept to explain at all. He writes blindly, with his little feelers bipping and bopping all over. He is a pillbug with Microsoft Word and an internet connection.

Black Butterflies is in two parts: eight stories set in "This World" (what we call reality) and eight stories set in "That World" (where the door swings open into the realm of the surreal, the supernatural). In "This World" we meet a middle-class white woman who turns a mugging by two black youngsters into her chance to pursue glory as a criminal; a cop who knows his partner is guilty of murdering his wife; two hustlers who throw a sadistic and drug-infested party at the expense of their bound and unwilling host (believe it or not, it's hilarious); "a girl who died from cum"; and two bike messengers whose fate is to join hundreds of other people in a freak accident so... —Summary of Black Butterflies by John Shirley on Amazon

This seems pretty cool, actually. I might actually rea

wait

she died from what

Well now I’m definitely reading it. Although I’d bet money it’s edgy 90s bullshit.

You Should Be Ashamed

Shirley just wanted an approximation of Business Men having a Business Talk. He doesn’t take a step back and say, “Ah! I should know what an oil tycoon might talk about to his chief of security in midcentury America. In which case: I should know how the oil business works, I should know what a security officer does, I should know what company presidents do in case of a strike… oh, and I need to introduce some themes: the loneliness of being a great man, the kinds of people Andrew Ryan would surround himself with, Andrew Ryan’s politics…”

In his mind, he sees that scene he’s seen a hundred times before—the one where the lackey has not done enough, and then the Big Businessman says, “You’ve let me down, lackey!” And the Lackey, satisfactorily stung, murmurs: “I will do better, sir.”

But he doesn’t know why he needs it, so it all comes across as nonsense. It’s just the random babbling of a theme generator. This is like AI writing. I mean if you care that little just go into a book published in like, 1940, and steal the dialogue out of that. Nobody reads anyway, just be a bastard, jesus christ. I mean I’ll still hate you but…

I can’t believe this is where I’m at right now: debating myself whether it’s more or less ethical that he did nothing because he didn’t care or was too lazy to steal. I suppose it’s possible that he’s not lazy, just incompetent, but that’s even worse somehow.

He was paid. He was paid to do this. This is ultimate “have the confidence of a mediocre white man” energy.

Long story short, you don’t have to care terribly much to do this right. I did all of the research above in less than an hour, and it’s been a minute since I’ve read up on wartime industry. I’d be embarrassed to end it there, but there are little ways to cut corners that don’t make you look like a fucking jerk.

At this moment, I feel like I can say, with absolute confidence, with curled lip and disdainful eye, that this wasn’t done right. It wasn’t even done. Shirley didn’t do even a modicum of research. Not even to look up a couple of random towns in a couple of random states. Not even to straight-up invent them.

I’ll just say it: pathetic.

Parasite Expectations

If I spent any time going over all of the dialogue here, I’d end up sharing the contents of the entire page, and I think that is frowned upon in copyright law. However, if I told you everything was wrong, would you believe me? All of the same problems apply: juvenile speech patterns, a lack of specificity everywhere that matters, and constant Telling.

Oh! And a new problem rears its lopsided head: weird fucking tangents. There is a random aside to the shoulder padding in Ryan’s jacket for no reason. I think it’s supposed to give you a material sense of the different era? It’s weird though, and it occurs after unrelated dialogue. It’s akin to those novels where the character gets out of bed and looks in the mirror at her blue orbs.

Note to would-be historical novelists: read midcentury novels and note what jumps out at you as old. Everything sounds pretty much the same as today except no one has computers or cell phones, and there’s some problem-solving that revolves around that, but all you have to do is confer with the Olds in your life if you’re uncertain. Every now and then someone mentions snapping a garter or there’s a random mention of typewriters or talking to a phone operator. Oh, and everyone wears a hat. And it’s rarely a specific hat, it’s just “hat.” Because usually people don’t think twice about the mundane bullshit they have to do until they have to do it, and knowing when to be specific is its own art.

Just fucking read ok. Don’t be a Shirley. He clearly hasn’t read anything in his life.

Buzzwords

After Sullivan shares the poor man’s version of a “But I twied to stwikebweak them, Mr. Wyan,” Ryan says at one point:

“Have you been out there in person? Did you go to Kentucky—or Mississippi, Chief? Hm? You need not await permission from me to take personal action—not on this!"

What is Sullivan supposed to fucking do, run out there and start beating people with a stick?

A new misfortune has arisen: now it’s clear to me that Shirley doesn’t know what Sullivan’s job entails.

I could tell you how this kind of research works but at this point I’m just fucking horrified. This is unbelievable. If you don’t know what a job is like, research it. Have you done it? Oh of course not, you’re a lazy-ass bastard and you have more confidence than capability. But let’s say you give a shit!

Now take your little notepad out, write down all the details you can’t answer, list them in order of importance, and then research them. That’s how it works. There are people on AO3 taking college classes to understand sign language or research historical periods for fanfiction only 20 people will ever read. Tor and 2K paid this man to regurgitate half-baked movie sequences that he couldn’t be arsed to look at a map for.

And it’s even worse than that, somehow. He didn’t just not research. He didn’t even make something up! He didn’t say to himself, “What does a security officer do? Uhhh from my extensive viewings of Die Hard:” and then just invent shit. He just did nothing.

Not only is this nothing like real life, this isn’t a scene as it would exist in a film. It’s merely film-like. It’s the undigested impression of a sequence. It’s the shadow on the cave wall. It’s the writer equivalent of nearsightedness.

Now, if Shirley had been specific, we would be able to say exactly what Sullivan ought to do. But we have no idea what is even happening. Shirley should have asked how strikes work, and what kinds of things a security officer with no moral compass might get up to, and what kinds of vengeance a tycoon might wreak, among many other things. But Shirley does not know. Nor does he care. And besides, it’s just so much fucking work and he’s got to go Geezer Scream at a dive bar for the dead.

Most importantly, this dialogue doesn’t reflect well on Sullivan and it doesn’t reflect well on Ryan. They are not only pretending to be a Chief of Security and a company president, they are pretending to be human beings. Also, both of them now look weak as balls. I am confident I could beat both of them to death at the same time with my bare fists and I am a bag of juice.

Ryan continues:

“Unions… they had their own little army in Russia—they called them Workers Militias. Do you know who these strikers are? They are agents of the Reds, Sullivan! Soviet agents! And what is it they demand? Why, better wages and work conditions.”

I had a history class too. Did this guy share literally anything that he hadn’t heard offhand once? Has he ever opened a book just to learn something?

In any case. This. This is where I knew I was going to hate this book forever. This paragraph sounds like a joke. Is this what Shirley thinks satire is? I’m going to kill myself.

This is the paragraph that settled the back cover summary’s authorship for me. This is the paragraph where I realized, “John Shirley does not understand Objectivism or Andrew Ryan, nor the appeal of either.”

Perhaps this is a great place to work in another aside. Do you like asides? No? Fuck you.

Aside #330,80085,5420695.52

So! Back in the day there was this commentator for Fox News called Charles Krauthammer. He was a legitimately intelligent and capable man and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Fox would set him on a panel with three babies and it was like night and day. The babies with their perfumed cheeks and platinum blow-outs would share their shower thoughts, which were mostly buzzwords and half-digested anger.

Then Krauthammer would start speaking and you felt like there was a miscarriage of justice. How did these three other losers get on this panel? Send them back to fucking preschool. He had this vision of cause and effect over time that the babies were too young and poorly-educated to see. He was connecting dots to universes only he could show you. Like are there more of this man? If there were, leftists would be in trouble.

Conservatives loved this guy because they all suffer from this niggling terror they are all actually very dumb, and it wounds them that intelligentsia tend toward liberal doctrines. But if Krauthammer was smart that meant they were actually smart! (this is its own stupid bullshit but it’s all they have. god bless them. having your head permanently stuck up your ass is difficult work)

I thought about going back to listen to some old Fox News shit for this but I decided to pull a Shirley. I am forced to listen to Fox News every day now and I can’t stand it. It’s probably not what I remember. I liked Krauthammer back when I was a conservative, but I have also been an idiot for most of my life. It is probable that I still am. An idiot, I mean. Look at me NOW. Picking up pennies, gasping for breath in an airtight room, writing this shit for three people and about 10,000 bots. Feed this shit into your AI algorithm and get fucked.

Now.

This Andrew Ryan is spouting shower thoughts. This is not Krauthammer behavior. It’s not even Randian behavior—and like it or not, she was intelligent, in her own way.

But Shirley’s Andrew Ryan is not an intelligent man. This is not a Pulitzer Prize winner. You can tell because all he utters are buzzwords, and the buzzwords are expected to do all the heavy lifting.

Does BioShock’s Andrew Ryan utter buzzwords? Sure, to expand on concepts. Look at some of his dialogue from the game:

Gregory, don't come whining to me about market forces. And don't expect me to punish citizens for showing a little initiative. If you don't like what Fontaine is doing, well, I suggest you find a way to offer a better product. —“Offer a Better Product,” BioShock

What is the buzzword? “Market forces.” Ryan mentions the market forces, then builds on his ideas of what ideal market forces are. This is also a great baseline for his character. He hates Frank Fontaine. He has known Fontaine is bad news for a long time. He will not stop Fontaine for his success alone.

On the surface, the Parasite expects the doctor to heal them for free, the farmer to feed them out of charity. How little they differ from the pervert who prowls the streets, looking for a victim he can ravish for his grotesque amusement. —“Parasite Expectations,” BioShock

What is the buzzword? “Parasite.” “Parasite” has a specific meaning in Objectivist parlance, as well as BioShock's, and it’s something that Ken Levine built on over time.

Your first thought when you heard this, as a sane person, was to reject it. Levine knew you would reject it. He wants you to hit that cognitive dissonance and wriggle in your seat. He wants you to think.

This audio diary is an expansion on the concept of the parasite. What other parasites are in game, literally and figuratively? What is parasitic behavior? Is this really parasitic behavior? What are the differences between your definitions of “parasitic” and Andrew Ryan’s?

Just because I hate you, here is some shit from Atlas Shrugged:

“Who is John Galt?” The light was ebbing, and Eddie Willers could not distinguish the bum’s face. The bum had said it simply, without expression. But from the sunset far at the end of the street, yellow glints caught his eyes, and the eyes looked straight at Eddie Willers, mocking and still—as if the question had been addressed to the causeless uneasiness within him. “Why did you say that?” asked Eddie Willers, his voice tense. —Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

Throughout Atlas Shrugged, Rand uses “John Galt” as a touchstone. She creates a buzzword, and she expands on it over and over and over. There are over 500,000 words of expansion in this shit. She does not tell you why it’s important. She introduces a sensation of unease and hints that the name is everything.

She does not do as Shirley does here:

“[Buzzword]… they had their own little army in Russia—they called them [Buzzword]. Do you know who these [buzzword] are? They are agents of the [buzzword], Sullivan! [Buzzwords]! And what is it they demand? Why, [buzzwords] and [buzzwords].”

Using a single word or phrase to carry a world of meaning is a fucking privilege, not a right. You must earn it. And if Ayn Rand is kicking your ass you need to rethink your work strategy.

Did You Want the Second Report or

Ryan wants that second report:

“And—the other report? It’s true, isn’t it?” “Both cities are almost entirely destroyed. One bomb apiece.” … “Our man in the State Department smuggled this out for us.”

And then Sullivan gets him some nice glossy photographs. thanks sullivan. u could have killed him sullivan. this could have been short sullivan

This is a rare case of John Shirley doing research.

First of all, photos of nuclear destruction didn’t get out for some time. You can confirm this by looking at the front pages of newspapers. Reporting on the disasters occurred nearly simultaneously in the Western world, but newspapers of the day didn’t have images—Japan was closed to outsiders—so they used drawings and stock art to depict related subjects (the pilots responsible and the plane used, for example) or what they thought the destruction might be like (by quick artistic rendition) or political comics (“fuck u because Pearl Harbor”). Immediate images of the destruction do exist, but it took them a while to get out, and there was also some good old-fashioned censorship (USA! USA!). If you want a good jumping-off point, the Wikipedia article shares a few bite-sized nuggets.

Secondly, reports of radiation sickness—and concepts of atomization itself—were not really in the public consciousness at this point. Nor were they reported until at least a month later.

So yeah, it makes sense that if Ryan wanted to see real pictures and get information he could trust, he’d lean on his power and prestige to get them—it's a great illustration of both, as well. But none of this is explained or implied in any effective way, and I was already deeply suspicious of Shirley, so my very first thought was, “You mean………. the second report…….. was the fucking newspaper”

The part of this that irks me is how many times Andrew Ryan turns to Sullivan for his opinion. I feel like this is wrong and I can’t put a finger on it. I truly don't think he'd ask Sullivan for his opinion except in a hypothetical sense, and I don't think he'd broadcast his mood. My idea of Andrew Ryan is as someone who is extremely controlled. But BSR's Ryan is unpleasantly soft and too obviously unsettled. Why does he care?

I ask this because Randian Ubermensch do not give a single shit about what anyone ever thinks, ever. This is not to say that we should strip Ryan’s humanity away like Rand does, but there’s a way to do it effectively. I know this is true because Ken Levine did it and because I have been the kind of person who understands this particular brain rot.

In any case: this gives us a literal date for this sequence. It would have to be after August 9, 1945, when Hiroshima was wiped off the map, and before images got out (I didn’t look ahead far enough to see who got first dibs because that's not my job). So why wasn’t an exact date given on the front page? Because the first page just says “1945.” Why not “August 10, 1945” or “August 1945”? Like if you’re giving the date give the whole-ass date. Are you afraid of commitment john shirley

Before we go on, look at this. LOOK AT THIS

The Great Man held the glossy photographs to the window so he could make them out in the twinkling light of the skyline.

Shirley is so sold to this image of a silhouette against a skyline that he makes Andrew Ryan try to look at pictures with the light from someone else’s window 17 miles away.

THERE’S A LAMP RIGHT BEHIND HIM. THERE’S A LAMP. DO YOU REMEMBER THE FUCKING LA

I Have to Stop Now

I have been trying to keep these posts under 3,000 words. Every single one has hit 6,000. There is something remarkably cursed about all of this.

I think I’ll start stretching out and covering larger swathes of text eventually. We’re basically setting a baseline: for what kind of writer John Shirley is, for what kinds of flaws he is cursed by, for what kind of work he’s willing to do or cognizant of or whatever.

Look guys. I’m on page 3. It’ll get less dense from here on out. I promise.

At least I am getting a foot up on my own research, right?

right?

kill me

<- Part 2: John Shirley and the Front Matter || Back to the Beginning || Part 4: Going Down ->

[shuttershocky]

So, how did being Dad to a Boy for five days straight go?

I've been replaying it while on holiday for the Lunar New Year, yeah.

I've always had complicated feelings towards God of War 2018. Hack and Slash / Character Action is my favorite genre of action games so to see the most established western hack and slash move away from that in favor of Dad of Boy's really slow combat with the camera SO DAMN CLOSE TO HIS SHOULDERS like we're playing Resident Evil 4 and seeing websites calling it an upgrade to more "thoughtful" combat really grinds my gears.

I also disliked how Dad of Boy feels so affected by modern AAA game design's obsession with RPGs. There are RPG elements now where equipment has stats to min-max. Every battle ends with XP GAINED on the right side of the screen. There's a leveling system based on the overall strength of your equipment that I really, really hate because it's not actually based on the strength of your equipment, but each equipment's "level" factor (for example, an accessory with worse stats but a higher rarity will give a bigger boost in level than a lower rarity accessory with better stats), and this matters because rather than a measure of how powerful you are, enemy behavior changes depending on the level gap. If an enemy is 3 levels above you with a purple health bar, their attacks deal more damage and become unblockable, rather than their difficulty being based entirely on the raw difference in your stats. I would ignore that anyway and take on some purple HP bar opponents if I could, but coming back to an encounter later with a higher level and seeing an enemy I couldn't defeat literally have behavior changed to become way easier after I caught up in levels (suddenly their unblockable attacks become parryable!) was fucking bullshit. The difference in strength from a level gap should be the strength in levels, not having attacks changed to become easier if you've caught up. Fuck.

That being said, I actually like the story direction Dad of Boy takes, which was many old fans' complaints about the game. They're always like "It takes itself too seriously now, Kratos isn't any fun anymore" okay but the very premise of Dad of Boy is fascinating. The young Kratos would literally grab a random woman fleeing the wrath of the gods and throw her into some gears to keep the gates from closing, the fact that they made God of War 2018 a sequel and not a reboot, where the shadow of Kratos' actions in Greece that led to the destruction of the Greek pantheon and the death of the entire country haunts him, is so damn cool.

I just really, really love the concept of seeing THE Hyper-Murder Man resurface years later as a father and be forced to confront that his sweet-natured son Atreus, who he thought took entirely after his mother, turn out to have the same violent temper and arrogance that he once did.

Sure, Zeus and the Greek gods had it coming the way Odin and the rest of the Aesir currently have it coming, but Kratos recognizing the soul-crushing pain his path of vengeance took him through and wanting to save his son from that, and yet not having the emotional intelligence to connect to Atreus, finally gives him a Herculean battle that he can't solve with his fists.

Shut up about Sony specializing in movie games for a second, Kratos is terrified by seeing even a little bit of himself inside his son, but the only tool he has in this fight is martial discipline because being a Spartan is the only form of self-control he's ever known. Yes ,Dad of Boy being ashamed of God of War the video game sucks, but Kratos being ashamed of being the God of War as soon as he loves someone and sees it affect them is so damn interesting. Control the God of War in his son? Kratos can barely control himself. You wonder where the old Kratos went and then if you stun a Wulver and go for the instant kill Kratos grabs the werewolf by the jaw and rips it in half while building Spartan Rage and you're like "Ah he's right here"

I just really, really like the idea of doing something so ambitious with such an established character with years of history behind him. Old man fueled by parental love really wants to break the cycle of violence when he can't stop breaking necks is an idea I'll always get hooked on.

Plus, Kratos has the smartest man in the world's head hanging from his belt trying to give him dad advice in between telling him the undead are all coming from his left. That's pretty funny.

[persieee-yoohoo]

Desiderium Part 3

Pair: Azriel x Reader

Word Count: 1574

Warnings: spoilers for CC HoSaB (let me know about anything else)

Note: I should have a plan for this but I don’t 

also available: ao3

Part 1 Part 2

It was a battle to evade sleep in the days following your first encounter with the shadow figure, but you determined to hold out. Your bed called to you constantly, goading you with sweet promises. However, even as the shadows under your eyes grew darker, you avoided its siren song. There was work to be done, and you had enough on your plate already without another side-dish of mystery.

While you avoided your own room in the Comitium, only returning to the complex when your duties to Celestina called you to, you welcomed the familiarity of the house Ruhn had shared with his friends. It was hard to ignore the missing presence of the Fae Prince, but you, Declan, Flynn, and Ethan kept busy on whatever tasked you all promised each other would get you closer to the group becoming whole again.

You'd seen what happened that day with your own eyes, silently watching over the footage Declan managed to hack over and over. Guilt tore at you, ripping through your heart and soul, as you watched the feedback on repeat, and Flynn had to physically shut his friend's laptop to pull you away from whatever spiral you were leading yourself towards. Your thoughts probably mimicked their own, about how you all should have been there to possible stop such a terrible fate from occuring, and you knew that you weren't the only one who wished that it could've been you in their place while they were kept in the horrid dungeons.

Hunt had suffered enough torture for a lifetime three times over, and you were sure that Ruhn probably had too given who his father was. You didn't even need to imagine what was happening to them, you only had to remember years ago to the agonizing black hole of time after you had been branded a slave in the wake of your first legion's failure.

You didn't have a mate like Hunt or some fated reason for being alive like Ruhn. You'd been a puppet for different archangels for years, for centuries, with no end in sight unless someone eventually wished to grant you that mercy. They had unfulfilled purposes in this world, and you wouldn't hesitate to take their place and face their punishment if it meant that they could continue their fight.

That was part of the reason you avoided meeting with Celestina at the Comitium. It was more than just simply avoiding your empty room and the shadows of whatever waited to haunt you in your sleep. It was the knowledge that you'd drop to your knees and beg Celestina to let your friends go and allow you to be punished in their place if you were in her presence long enough. You knew you would grovel at her feet and plead with her until your heart gave out, so you avoided the complex altogether. Perhaps you could face her one day, but only until you had everything else taken care.

“Y/N, did you hear us?” Flynn's grip on your shoulder was hesitant as he shook you awake. You'd dozed off only momentarily, barely in the throws of sleep when you'd been jostled. “We think we should call it a day. Dec's getting frustrated with his computer and Ethan's about to wolf out or something. You should get some rest, too. You look like shit.”

You ignored Ethan's warning growl at the red-head's jest about his worsening mood and leaned away from Flynn as you rubbed at your eyes. One of the books that Bryce had left behind in the house about different languages laid abandoned in your lap, the page you were on dog-marked to save your place. Moving the book to closest flat surface next to you, you stood and stretched out your tired limbs. No amount of coffee or strong-will would keep you up any longer, so you had to agree with your friend.

“What a heartfelt compliment, thank you so much. Things are tense at h—” You paused, not knowing if the Comitium could even be considered your home. It had been your residence for years, but it had never been the welcome comfort of a home. “At the Comitium, I mean. Everyone is on edge, and we all know to avoid Pollux when he's itching to have a pissing contest with whatever Malakh stares at him the wrong way.”

The three males sitting around you shared some glances that weren't lost on you, but you were too exhausted to get into it with them.

“Don't bother, I know what you're going to offer. There are enough people here without a set of wings to crowd your space. I'll be fine, I just need to be careful.” You tried to sound strong, for their sakes and your own, but your voice still wobbled just a bit.

You stood, shaking out your wings slightly before making your way to the front door. Flynn called out to you right as you unlocked the door, and you turned around just in time to hear a quick “Heads up!” before a dark object came projecting towards you from his outstretched hand. The smooth stone warmed against your palm as you caught it and you held it close, protecting it from the curious eyes of the others.

“You're carrying crystals around, now?” Flynn teased, but there was a mixed emotion laying somewhere deep in his eyes that you didn't want to figure out.

“It was from Bryce,” You shrugged, squeezing the stone even more, “before, you know. I don't know why she gave it to me. She said it was a worry stone, but I don't think it's helping.”

The stone was doing the opposite, actually. It was bringing you more worries than taking any away, and you only held onto it to be closer to your lost friend. Bryce saw something in you that no one else did, not even Hunt. It made you feel even more helpless knowing that you hadn't gotten a single lead on how to get her back.

You just got a realistic nightmare of a shadowy enigma and a permanent headache.

“I'll be in touch. Stay safe, okay?” With that, you left the house and immediately went airborne.

It wasn't hard to get to your room without being singled out. The floors were crowded with malakim, and you kept moving amongst the sea of wings and stares. Your paranoia got the better of you on several occasions, causing you to look over your shoulder or down different hallways, but there was never anyone that met your stare or lingered outside of your peripheral.

As soon as you made it to your room, you put Bryce's gift in the top drawer of your issued dresser. The comforting warmth of the stone had turned blistering in your palm on your flight over, and you needed to be disconnected from it before it got worse.

Out of sight, out of mind, or so you thought.

Stripping out of your outfit, you threw yourself on the bed. Even as you practically smothered yourself in your pillow and pulled your blanket over you, you felt the stone call back to you. It wanted to be back in your grasp, close to you rather than apart.

Hold me.

Touch me.

Keep me close.

Don't let me go.

The quiet beckoning made you feel crazy. It was just a stone, some foolish gimmick that a shop vendor had sweet-talked Bryce into buying on a whim. Maybe she had been embarrassed by giving in so she regifted it to you to make it seem better. Like that was the plan all along, give a friend a gift meant to steal some of their stress and replace negative emotion with something positive.

But still, the stone called to you, pulsing in the drawer you had abandoned it in like it was truly alive. A sentient tether to somewhere else, to someone else. The intensity of its call only gradually increased, and there was no ignoring it as it captured your mind in its siren song.

Please.

Kicking the blanket off of you and sitting up on the bed, your knees digging into the firm mattress beneath you, you stared at the closed dresser. Whatever strength you had left forfeited under the pull of the stone. You got down from the bed and blindly reached for the stone in the darkness of your room, the evening night finally dying as it ceased to stream into your bedroom window.

The moment your hand connected with the stone, its heat back to a comfortable simmer, you exhaled deeply. A feeling of something flowed from the stone and into your palm, traveling up your arm towards your heart, like it was in your blood. It felt right. It felt good.

As you flopped back on the bed, you chose to lay on your back with your wings splayed out beneath you. With the stone now resting right in the middle of your chest with a hand covering it, you took a few deep breaths before urging sleep to take you over.

“Finally,” a harsh voice rasped at you from deep within those shadows, “I've been waiting for you.”