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rinawantstosleep · 5 months ago

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𖹭༉‧°𓂃 𓈒𓏸‪‪

bf satoru x fem single mom reader

wc: 1.1k

— a pair of troublemakers residing in your house; both of whom are (unintentionally!) dead-set on making themselves the death of you.

"I don't like your stupid, white hair."

"And I don't like your boring, brown hair, buddy."

"W-well... well, I don't like your ugly, doo-doo face!"

"Your mama does."

The two could go bickering like this for hours on end if you let them. What may seem to be a mutually digressive arrangement is actually an oddly adorable bonding in disguise. Satoru and your son put on a front of being annoyed at the other's presence, but you've never seen them apart for longer than a few minutes at a time. They've grown on each other; much like how moss grows on a statue that's been lingering out in the open. An indispensable cycle of life that's truly inevitable.

"No, she doesn't! She doesn't! She likes... sof- sofis... sofistogated guys."

"You mean sophisticated?"

"Shut up!"

You'd been terrified that your little one wouldn't have a father-figure to rely on anymore after you divorced your husband. However, it was something you had to do for his sake. The child deserved to live in an environment that wasn't always reeking of alcohol, where he wasn't subjected to the constant, drunk yelling of a pathetic excuse of a father who couldn't get his shit together and lazed around at home all day while you did all the work. If that meant that you'd have to raise him on his own, then so be it. At least he'd be raised properly. Signing those papers was, by far, the easiest decision you'd ever made.

"I'm not shutting up because a kid in clothes too big for him is telling me to."

"You... you're the one always wearing tight clothes around the house to impress my mama."

"No, that's because I'm ripped. Gotta show off what I've got. And your mama loves that."

"Oh, yeah? That means you show off your... your - um... ugly, doo-doo face!"

Would you regard it a miracle that Satoru just so happened to stumble into your life around that very time? Well, relatively. Meeting him wasn't something you'd planned, nor anticipated. The kind stranger who offered to pay for your order at a café a year ago has somehow, thanks to quite a romantic sequence of events, turned into your boyfriend; a rock to lean on for when you need the support. And, also, someone that your little one can look up to (with the fun, bonus benefit of the pair getting into silly, childish quarrels nine times out of ten). What is Satoru if not a three-hundred-and-thirty-six-month-old toddler, too? Puts your five-year-old to utter shame with the way he acts.

"Enough. Baby, we've been over this before. Behave."

"But, mama, he's being a meanie!" "But, babe, he's acting all pretentious."

The responses come simultaneously: one is high pitched and whiny, and the other is your son. Sometimes, you have to pause and ask yourself how you haven't gone insane yet. It's the love that keeps you from falling apart. How could you ever harbor any other feeling for these two, except for wanting to cherish them? You just... need to work on a pet name that doesn't apply to the both of them at once.

"I don't want to hear it. Sweetie, finish your lunch. And, Satoru?"

"Yes, honey-who-loves-me-and-my-'ugly, doo-doo'-face?" He's smirking, snickering, while saying this, the sly bastard. When will the pair ever relent on trying to one-up the other?

"Why have you got one of my hair ties on your wris- never mind. Don't forget to change the sheets in our room. I'd do it myself if not for the meeting I need to get to in an hour."

"Yes, ma'am."

Cue a tiny gasp.

"But, mama..." The voice of your little one breaks the peaceful silence at the dining table once again. His legs start kicking back and forth - a sign that he's growing restless - from the chair they're dangling off of. He's got a protest already forming up in that head of his. "Toru said he'd take me to the skate park today. And he promised to get ice cream after."

Toru, huh? That's new. You can't help the smile that paints itself on your lips. The two have been getting along pretty well, it seems, contrary to all the bickering they do. That's always nice to know. It's amusing to see the dynamic they've built. One second, they're riling each other up to no end, the next, they've already formed a secret alliance to go out and have fun together. How cute. "Is that so?"

"Mhm! So that means we need to leave riiight after I finish my lunch. Don't get mad, okay?"

It's the small things like these that warm your heart. Some sacrifices can be made if it's in regards to this adorable (step, even though you haven't married Satoru yet)father-son moment. The sheets are insignificant right now. "Awwh. Of course I won't get mad, baby. It's good for you to want to spend more time with Satoru. Isn't he a fun guy?"

"... maybe."

. . .

"Just make sure he's safe out there. Helmet and gear on at all times, no big ramps. And don't let him eat too much sugar. He'll get hyper. Once the rush dies down, he'll get cranky -"

Satoru's arm wraps around your waist before you can finish your sentence, pulling you overwhelmingly close to his frame. Instinctively, your arms move to wrap around his neck, just the way Satoru likes it. Oh, how he wants to just throw everything else out the window and drag you to the nearest room with a lock in place.

"You -" A quick peck to your lips, followed by a nibble on your bottom lip. "- worry -" Another peck. "- too -" Another. "- much." Then, an unexpected bite on the shell of your right ear. "I'd never allow myself to let that little demon get hurt; or hyper."

Large hands wander across the curve of your back, resting firm on your butt. Satoru doesn't want to expose your son to the way he's squeezing your plush flesh with his long digits, so he shifts to have your back pressed against the wall. A perfect opportunity to kiss you - which the man can't help but seize. What else is a smitten boyfriend to do while waiting for your son to get ready and come down from his room upstairs? Lips against lips until one of you pulls away for air. "He's safe with me, okay?"

"Okay."

"Atta girl. Now, you go to that meeting of yours. And, tonight, after we both get back- oww."

"Groooss! Don't kiss my mama, or you'll make her ugly! Like youuu!"

"Baby, no. Don't kick Satoru's ankles-"

"I'm saving you, mama."

with 𖹭, rina !!

#jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu gojo #jujustsu kaisen x reader #fluff #gojo satoru #satoru gojo x reader #jjk satoru

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monstersholygrail · 3 months ago

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Hi…. I can’t share this with anyone in real life, but I just wanted to share with someone that I finally got a tentacle dodo and the knot dodo just came in the mail today and…..

😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

AHHHWNDJDNDKW, Hey babes!! I’m actually so fucking jealous lol

I am honored that you’ve come here to share such joyous news of your pleasures both now and in the future hehe. I’ve honestly always been super curious about both kinds of dildos and wanting to try them. You’re fr living the dream right now. I bet the different textures and aspects of a tentacle dildo would be just brrrrrrrrrajjekejfkejkf. Legit would need a reboot. And the streeeetch of a knot dildo. Ugh, I’m so well. I hope they manage to drive you absolutely insane and help sate the need to fuck a monster 🙏🏼

And oh, but like imagine an agency run by witches that pays monsters for their cock molds to make dildos and secretly connects the toy to their real cocks. So whenever a human orders one and uses it, the monster can feel everything they’re doing to themselves with the dildos.

Imagine one of the dildos gets really popular at their shop, literally hundreds of orders, leading to the monster never getting a second away from the mind numbing pleasure of being in hundreds of holes, sometimes he’s in more than one at a time which makes him all the more sensitive. The overstimulation is constant. Even when he’s just shooting blanks he can’t seem to stop. Form hunched over and shaking as he cums over and over again, technically untouched even though it feels like he’s actually there himself.

He’d regret having given those witches the mold if he wasn’t having the time of his life, despite any pain.

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bimboficationblues · 5 months ago

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so the thing about "read theory" as a mantra: in the social media sphere there is a consistent downplaying of what that kind of commitment actually entails, plus a consistent obfuscation of what exactly the commitment is necessary for.

let's say that you're interested in learning more about specifically "Marxist theory." This, I think, also raises a bunch of questions about what we mean by theory - works of political philosophy, texts on revolutionary and military strategy, political speeches, journalistic or sociological analysis, historiography - these varying things with very different discursive norms and standards of evidence or logic often get rolled into one singular object called "theory." but let's set that aside for now.

you want to learn this for maybe an assortment of reasons, here's a few (non-exhaustive) good ones:

Marxism has been a substantial historical force that has probably had a notable impact on the world around you in some way.

Learning about Marx/ism might offer some level of insight into your current social world that other things are unable to offer.

Many texts - Capital, The Wretched of the Earth, The Second Sex, The State and Revolution - are also world-historical forms of political literature, which is interesting.

Follow-up to 2 - maybe having some level of familiarity with these things will give you the ability to better articulate yourself and participate in social and political movements around you.

generally speaking the Social Media Marxist approach is to tell you to go read off a list of texts of whatever writers the author personally agrees with or whatever works she happens to have read. so you decide to start with the big guy Marx, who is at the top of the list. totally reasonable decision.

however, there are a few contextual questions that might reasonably come up when doing so.

first, it will be clear that Marx did not pop out of an intellectual vacuum; Lenin has a rather popular identification of the "three sources of Marxism" - post-Hegelian German philosophy, French socialism, and English political economy. from my perspective, these are more like three of his main objects of ire (and so in some sense are both influences and also breakages - but not strictly speaking a synthesis), but I digress. so, frequently, in order to grasp what Marx is talking about or responding to, you are going to need some level of familiarity with a lot of additional people: Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Hegel, Bauer, Feuerbach, Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Mill, Sismondi. suddenly you are not just learning about the works of one guy, but his attitude towards all the people he relies on for support or aims his criticisms at. and each of those different intellectual relationships is going to be different. sometimes at different times!

second, and relatedly, Marx is not always the most charitable to the people he's criticizing, who were often rival socialists (so there were pretty notable political and personal stakes at work in proving them wrong or diminishing their influence over the movement). the introductory materials to the new translation of Capital also observe that Marx's approach to scholarship is, shall we say, haphazard; often he makes quotes or citations that are not actually representative of what he's citing. finally, many of the people he's criticizing have sort of been rendered obsolete historically *in no small part* due to the success of Marxism as a political orientation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. so to determine whether Marx is being fair to the people he is basing his critique on, we will have to do some level of intellectual work to check. so now we're not just evaluating Marx's relationship to different thinkers but also the substantial content of each of those thinkers themselves.

third, Marx did not pop out of a social vacuum. all of these different writers didn't just crop up from nowhere but wrote within particular sociohistorical contexts, some of which were rather divorced from the European revolutionary wave, first worldwide financial crisis, and the shifting character of the United States in the wake of the Civil War and the formal abolition of slavery - some of the historical events that Marx was more explicitly engaging with. and the radical liberals, republicans, and socialists Marx criticized all also had their own intellectual and social histories. so now we're getting a little far afield from the initial notion, which was just to read some guy, and getting into the realm of social history, and trying to understand the relationship between world history and the ideas produced within it.

fourth, you are a subject in the world, which is to say YOU did not pop out of a social or intellectual vacuum. you likely bring predispositions, assumptions, biases, and cognitive distortions to what you read; we all do. working through those and trying to note where they're happening - where they might be fine and where they might be problematic - will require a certain willingness to reflect, to write, to take notes, to analyze and self-scrutinize, and to be critical of both yourself as a reader and of the text you are reading. (a nested problem is that we have a truly staggering amount of material from Marx and Engels, and you might have to make certain determinations as to which material is important or worthwhile or more useful, and identify the standards by which you think that - all of which requires a certain reflection on your status as a political thinker).

okay, so consider all that. we started with "I wanna read this one guy," we end with "to really grasp the work of this one guy it's also important to know both preceding and contemporaneous world history, his intellectual influences, and the gaps or silences or errors in his work.” now consider that, if you really want to be able to speak on them with some level of confidence and intellectual honesty, you have to apply approximately the same level of rigor to every other writer on the Social Media Marxist approved list - Lenin, Fanon, Che, Kollontai, Cabral, Mao, Luxemburg, whoever. not to mention their critics, both direct and indirect!

Marx developed his work through an incredibly sustained engagement with enormous volumes of different material; we have entire notebooks of him poring over Max Stirner, or Spinoza, or the political economists, or the empirical observations of English factory inspectors. I'm not saying that you have to do that, or even that one strictly *has* to go down any or all of the first three rabbitholes I identified. Marx was in the somewhat unique position of sustaining himself through the support of Engels and his journalistic work, as a product of being in perpetual exile. that's not the kind of position that most of us are typically in.

the point is not "commit yourself to being a perfect monastic scholar in order to reach perfect truth" - such a thing is probably a fantasy, even if we wish otherwise. the point is that if you think "theory" is worth taking seriously, well, you have to actually take it seriously. if you don’t think it has stakes or utility, that’s fine; different people find different things useful. I think “theory” is not a set of dead letters by canonical authors but produced through social life. but if “reading theory” is a way to clarify and assert yourself as a political subject and agent, to claim some intellectual autonomy and acquire some understanding that you can put into practice in your life, then that’s demanding. it’s not impossible, but it does take real effort and a commitment to study and a certain level of resistance to being dogmatic. otherwise you are just letting yourself be rhetorically persuaded by whatever is in front of you or whatever affirms your biases.

as Marx says in the preface to Capital, Volume I, "I am of course assuming that my readers will want to learn something new, and so are ready to think for themselves."

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sammylkcho · 4 months ago

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Hello

Heard you were doing epic requests...Telemachus x reader, if you already had ideas for this x reader go for it, if not, maybe the reader is a servant at the palace or it takes place after I can't help but wonder. No pressure to actually do this btw, I'm sure you getting too many requests to keep up with.

Have a nice day! <3

Howdy! I liked the idea of the request, and to make it less challenging for me to write, I decided to make Reader a personal (or close) servant to Telemachus

Warnings/Notes: none!

"Prince Telemachus, would you like me to bring up your dinner tonight? The suitors are still eating and helping themselves to numerous trays of food," you informed him in a formal tone, awaiting his response to see what orders he would give you.

Lately, Telemachus had opted to dine in the comfort of his room to avoid discomfort or any comments from his mother’s suitors. It wasn’t exactly proper, especially for him as the prince, since he was expected to accompany their "guests."

You had tried to gently persuade him, following his mother’s orders, not to be discourteous by leaving the suitors to dine alone. In the end, all those efforts were in vain. You understood that the prince had his reasons for avoiding the same table as them.

With your hands clasped behind your back, occasionally fidgeting nervously, you waited for the prince’s reply—even though you already had a good idea of what it would be.

"I'm not hungry, but thank you," the prince informed you, his tone clearly disheartened and subdued.

You made a visible grimace of displeasure and concern at his words. His demeanor didn’t sit well with you—not that you hated it, but his spirits hadn’t been the same since his argument with Antinous. Each passing day seemed to weigh on him more heavily, especially as the suitors grew increasingly impatient over the lack of a king being chosen.

You bit your lower lip, a tinge of doubt crossing your mind about what to do next. You didn’t want to simply fulfill your role as a servant this time.

Deciding to break that boundary, even if only for a moment, you chose to be Telemachus’s close friend—the one who had stood by his side all these years.

Without needing to say a word, you sat down beside him on the bed. That alone was enough to draw his attention.

The dim light of the two torches flickering in the room seemed to conspire in your favor, casting its glow over the prince’s face. You could see the bruises on his skin, now less swollen—a marked improvement from how they had looked just days ago—and the shadows forming under his eyes, the evidence of sleepless nights spent training or lost in thought.

You remembered those nights. The times you stayed up with him, watching him practice with his wooden sword when you were both still children, or when the two of you would sneak out of the castle. You thought of the moment he had cried in front of you, overcome by the helplessness of not knowing how to rid his home of the men who were taking everything from him—from his family’s food to their dignity.

Maybe it was instinct, or perhaps just muscle memory. As if your body already knew what to do, your hands rose gently to cradle his face.

Your thumb moved softly across his cheek, avoiding the areas where the wounds from his fight with Antinous were still tender.

“We’ll get those men out of here, and they’ll leave your mother alone, I promise.” You whispered, almost afraid that anyone other than him might hear.

Why were you the one making that promise? A simple servant of the castle, tasked with daily mundane duties, with no power except to stand by your prince. You prayed silently to the gods that your words would not be empty, that someday those men would be gone, and Odysseus would return to the home he’d left behind so long ago.

“That.. I swear by the gods, especially by the goddess Athena herself, they couldn’t have given me anyone better than you.” Telemachus murmured.

His voice was just a whisper, so soft that you almost doubted if you had heard him, but the weight of his words filled the space between you with a profound meaning.

Time seemed to pause as you felt his hand, warm and firm, resting over yours. It wasn’t scorching hot or uncomfortably cold; it was just the right warmth, as though it belonged there.

“That punch you gave Antinous must still be giving him a headache. Next time, land an even stronger one for me, but make sure you come out unscathed, okay?” you teased, trying to lighten the mood.

For a moment, something flickered in his eyes before a quiet, sheepish laugh escaped him. You couldn’t help but laugh along.

“With Athena’s strength on my side, I’ll make it happen,” he replied with a newfound confidence, his spirits slowly lifting.

Heat rushed to your face, crawling torturously to your cheeks, and you cursed inwardly, hoping the blush wasn’t too obvious to him.

“It better be. I’d rather not see your face battered again or listen to you complaining while I try to patch you up.” You joked, letting out a soft laugh as he groaned in mock protest.

You treasured moments like these. There were no suitors to humiliate him, no interruptions to break the fragile bubble of peace around you. It was just you and him.

And in your heart, you kept praying to the gods. For Odysseus to return soon. For a way to rid the castle of those men. For these fleeting moments of calm to last just a little longer.

#telemachus x reader #epic the musical x reader #epic x reader #telemachus fanfic

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mirohlayo · 1 year ago

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YOU STOLE IT

( what happens when lando reunites with the girl who stole his first kiss ? )

warning : a bit of jealousy, fluff, lot of fluff

note : i love this okay. i won't write a part 2 so no requests please !!

word count : 4.9k

Lando hasn't always been very lucky in love. While he separated from a failed romantic relationship, he now finds himself alone, surrounded by his friends who are experiencing their perfect love, alongside their soulmates.

This doesn't bother him that much, since he himself admitted preferring to concentrate on his sporting career and thus become one of the best F1 drivers. No girlfriend yet.

But when he has to endure all day long the sweet words that other drivers address to their lovers, when he himself can feel love in the air, it becomes difficult not to think about starting a new chapter, this time here happy and healthy. A chapter that will fill him with happiness, as he has never been before.

Is this decision of not having enough time to find a girlfriend in order to concentrate on sport actually an excuse to hide the pain and despair that is gradually beginning to nestle in his heart?

He tries as best he can to reassure himself, to convince himself that he doesn't need this feeling of being completely in love and devoted to a girl. But when he continues to be the third wheel among the couples his friends form, he comes to desire a relationship more than anything else.

And every time, he can't help but think of this girl. This pretty girl he met during his summer vacation when he was 16. She was divinely beautiful, her shy but bubbly personality made Lando's heart capsize in a unique way, his whole being was alarmed just by hearing her name.

They both had a wonderful vacation, just the two of them together. During these two summer months, they did not let go of each other, spending every day alongside each other. They had become so close and complicit that they proclaimed themselves best friends from their first meeting during a kart race where Lando was racing for his life.

And since that day, they both developed deep feelings for each other. At first it was innocent. And it still is, in fact. They just thought it was a deep friendly connection, that they were just friendly soulmates. That those little stolen smiles and tactile touches were just childish, and just affectionate.

But it turned out that his feelings were ultimately more than that. More than just a friendly relationship. Lando found himself falling in love with you so hard, so passionately that he regretted not asking for your number when you two suddenly said goodbye.

You were his first love. And you still are. He thought that with time, you would eventually slip out of his head, that he would eventually forget you and move on, that it was just a big embarrassing crush from his youth but that he wouldn't think about it anymore growing up.

But that is absolutely not the case. He hasn't stopped thinking about you for 8 years. Every day, even before going to sleep, the only person he thinks about is you, that little girl he was madly in love with before.

He knows it, he maybe denies it a little, but deep down he realizes that he still has feelings for you. Perhaps less intense, less ardent, but there is no doubt that his romantic feelings will double in strength if he meets you again one day.

Of course, the old relationships, flirts, that he had before were sincere and true. He liked these few girls, that he was even happy in his last relationship. But for all that, it was by stopping this relationship and these flirts that he realized that everything brought him back to you. No matter what girl he meets, the only one who will forever remain deeply anchored in his heart is you.

He knows now that you two were more than friendly soulmates. Well, at least from his point of view. He was absolutely unsure about your feelings, which is why during these summer vacations, he preferred not to tell you anything for fear of destroying such a pure and important friendship in his eyes.

But again, he finds himself thinking about you, about how everything would be different with you. It was by going through all these different relationships with girls that he understood that he had never felt anything as powerful as with you. All these girls don't give him even a quarter of what he felt for you back then. So, how will this feeling change when he has the opportunity to meet you again?

The warm air of Saudi Arabia blows gently through the driver's curly hair. Free practice will begin in a few hours now, so Lando is using this time cooped up in the garage, surrounded by his teammate and his racing team, to discuss about the car.

“Hello Oscar!!” Lando's teammate is welcomed by his girlfriend, Lily, who smiles lovingly at him. The interview with the team is over, and she took the opportunity to spend some time with her boyfriend Oscar. The second driver comes to wrap his arms around his lover, before pressing a kiss to her forehead. Lando scoffs and rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. “Can you do this in private please? In addition to be the third wheel, I have nausea coming on.”

Oscar mocks his teammate, still holding Lily tightly in his arms. “Mate, it’s not my fault you’re a failure in love.” The Brit stops himself from hitting him, before putting on his McLaren cap. “Need I remind you that I’ve been in a relationship before?” He says to him with a completely proud look. “Couple who ended up in a failure, by the way.” He remarks, pointing at him.

“I really loved her…” The curly pauses. “It’s just that there is someone who- no, nothing, forget what I've said” He grumbles and withdraws into himself. Oscar frowns, Lily now concerned about the situation. “What?” She questions him gently.

Lando refuses to face this situation and simply shrugs his shoulders and ends up running away to join Zack further away. He can't say more, he can't talk about this girl who obsesses him. The two lovers look at each other confused by the British's behavior.

Zack smiled as he saw Lando walking towards him. “Are you already tired of feeling love in the air?” He says in order to tease him, which works. “Stop with that, I don’t care if I’m in a relationship or not.” What a lie. Zack knows his driver is lying, but he doesn't bother him more than that, not wanting to make him uncomfortable.

“So, how are things going at Ferrari?” Lando asks to quickly change the subject, not wanting to face another charade about his catastrophic dating situation. The two men then turn towards the Ferrari garage, where they can see the two drivers and the mechanics. "They look like they have a really good car, that's all I can tell you. But that doesn't mean-"

But it's too late, the British Mclaren driver no longer listens to his boss. As the Ferrari mechanics and strategists set to work, he saw among this small crowd Charles alongside a girl. At first glance, he thought it was his girlfriend. But upon closer observation, the woman, who is facing away, has a little shorter hair and is smaller in stature. And her hair color reminds him of her.

The girl he's been hopelessly in love with for 8 years now. But it can't be real, right? Why would you be here at the free practice sessions, and even more so accompanied by Charles Leclerc? His eyes must surely be hallucinating. But that silhouette from behind reminds him so much of you. But he tries to reassure himself. Or rather convince himself that there are so many brown girls in the paddock that he has confused you with someone else.

“Are you still listening to me or not?” Zack's serious voice rang in his ears. "Uh, yeah, sorry..." "You must need some time alone, I think" A mocking but concerned smile takes its place on Zack's face. “Yes, I think I need a little rest, excuse me” Lando smiles at him with difficulty before his boss goes further away.

The driver takes a deep breath. He can't help but look away at Charles and that girl. The more he looks, the more he feels like he's going back 8 years and seeing the girl he loves in front of him. He needs to know. He needs to be reassured and to be sure if this girl is really you.

And as if fate had heard it, the woman disappears from the garage, and seems to be heading to the paddock. So the British guy doesn't miss this chance and almost runs behind her to follow her. A few people give him confused and questioning looks, but he continues to pursue this dark-haired woman who hypnotizes him.

As he gets closer to you, his heart beats harder and harder. He feels like he's going to burst out of his chest and this feeling of stress eating away at him makes him want to vomit. Because he is realizing that he may have found his first love again. His eternal childhood crush.

That all those nights lost looking for you on social medias, trying to find your account and reconnect with you may not have been in vain. That all those nights lost thinking about you for a long time before falling asleep may not have been wasted in vain. That all these memories of you that he replays in his head finally make sense.

So, he goes for it without a second’s hesitation. "Excuse me ?" He speaks a little hesitantly, afraid of ending up with a woman who doesn't know him. But when the girl turns around, her brown hair flowing in the air, her eyes meeting his, Lando's heart skips several beats.

He finally found you.

The look of shock and surprise on your face mirrors Lando’s perfectly. Neither of you knows how to react, so you stay stuck like this for what seems like an eternity. But it is during this moment that the air suddenly seems changed. As if a connection, which once existed, was finally present again. As if an invisible link had finally reconnected between you, and united you for eternity. This change in atmosphere makes Lando's heart beat a little harder.

It seems unreal. So unreal that he thinks he's dreaming for a moment. For years, he never stopped thinking about you. To wonder what had become of you, what you looked like. And here you are now in front of him, more radiant than ever. This supernatural trance finally breaks when you decide to speak.

"Lando?!...Lando!!" You can't help but smile with all your teeth, a smile so sincere and strong. And oh God he suffered so much for the last eight years without being able to admire your magnificent smile. He adores it so much that he dreams of framing it in his memory forever. He knows how weak he becomes every time he gets the chance to admire your smile.

He can't help the big smile that comes over him as well. He feels so many emotions inside him that he feels like he's going to explode with happiness. "Y/n! Oh it's really you, I can't believe it!!" He can't even hide his joy and excitement, which makes you smile more, although it already seems impossible considering your cheeks already tired from just smiling.

“Me either, I feel like I’m in a dream” You admit, still a little surprised. “I didn’t think you were going to recognize me to be honest” You tell him, trying to contain your bomb of joy. “How could I not recognize you, when you are literally the most precious person to me?”

This simple sentence makes you blush violently, as you try to hide your embarrassment. “Uh- well it’s been 8 years since we last saw each other, so I doubt I’m still your favorite person” You laugh sweetly, and the sweet sound melts his heart. “So don’t doubt anymore, because you really are y/n” He addresses these few words to you while looking into yours.

And that's when he realizes how much you've changed. But changed in an incredibly beautiful way. You have kept this divine beauty which never fails to take his breath away. Your sweet facial features, that beautiful smile that he can't help but be obsessed with, and just simply your face that he could gaze at for hours and hours without ever getting tired of it.

You were already very beautiful when you were younger, when you were teenagers. But now you are infinitely more magnificent and resplendent. You look much more mature, and much more feminine. He has the impression of seeing an angel, a goddess before him. And that too has not changed, you remain for him the most beautiful woman he has ever met in his entire life.

The same goes for you. He's grown up so much, he's no longer the immature but adorable little Lando you loved so much before. Now he's a real man. He is more muscular, more virile but above all he has retained this eternal beauty and attractiveness. His beard makes him look a lot older too.

And then his hair. You teased him back then because he had trouble combing his hair. But these beautiful silky and shiny curls make you want and want to play with them, to caress them until they are messy enough for you to style them again.

“I see that my karting races have brought you to the wonderful world of Formula 1” The driver then says in order to hide the fact that he has been gazing at you for a few minutes now. You chuckle, before nodding. “Yeah, it must be said that a certain Lando Norris passed on his passion for motorsport to me” He lets out a little embarrassed laugh before turning his attention back to you.

"But Lando Norris was replaced by his opponent apparently. Bad luck." Lando's eyes land on the monegasque Ferrari driver who joins the conversation, right next to you. His tone turns colder as he stares at Charles. He can't help but feel a pang - or rather a big pang - of jealousy at the idea that you potentially replaced him with the monegasque driver.

Maybe your heart finally fell for Charles? Maybe in the end you always preferred him. He can't get these assumptions out of his head, because they haunt him now and just thinking about them makes him even more jealous. How come you're as close to Charles as you once were to Lando?

"Wow, what a reunion! Y/n told me how you were best friends before" Charles smiles kindly, and Lando seems surprised by his words. “Did she really tell you?” He asks suddenly. You clear your throat, embarrassed by what you told your friend about your relationship with the Brit.

"Yes, she told me so many things about you. That you were her favorite boy - and still are, that she loved spending time with you so much, that she really found you adorable and cute-” “Hey shut up!!” You beg Charles, placing the palm of your hand over his mouth.

Lando feels himself blush violently upon hearing Charles' words. Is this really true? “Do you think I’m cute ?” He teases you gently, but you feel even more embarrassed that you end up pressing your hands to your cheeks to hide the already terribly apparent red color.

"And that's not all, I still forgot lots and lots of things... anyway, I'll leave you, work awaits me again" Charles ends up patting the Mclaren driver on the shoulder, before to give you a smile and walk away.

A silence falls for a moment. The atmosphere has suddenly changed, it's more tense. But tense because you now know that a more than ambiguous and friendly feeling has settled between you. Tension paralyzes you as you fight the urge to jump into each other's arms.

Lando finally clears his throat before looking into your beautiful eyes. “How did you meet Charles?” “I’m a friend of his girlfriend, and she introduced us.” You respond simply, staring at him intently. Until you notice that his eyes no longer support your gaze but attack your lips.

It makes you think of that moment. And it makes him think of that moment too.

He stared intently at your pink lips. He wonders if he can. If he has the right. If he can taste them again. To move his lips on yours, to see if they are as soft as they seem.

To relive this moment. This moment, which is undoubtedly the most beautiful of his memories, and even more the most beautiful day of his life.

England was probably now one of your favorite destinations. Maybe because you found your confidant there, your best friend, this boy as adorable as he was immature who dreamed of being a Formula 1 driver. But all good things come to an end, and you already knew that destiny had to separate your paths. That these two months of vacation spent alongside Lando will only be distant but happy memories of your adolescence, and that you will perhaps end up watching him race on TV, being only a spectator and no longer his childhood best friend.

Lando knew it too. He knew that you had to return to your homeland, because after all England was only the destination your parents had chosen for the summer holidays. But his heart was breaking, suffocating at the idea of letting you go, when he had just accepted the fact that you were for him, potentially the woman of his life. You couldn't suppress the feeling of apprehension and sadness, as each minute that passed reminded you of how much time you would miss, passing by at a crazy speed.

Sitting on large rocks on the beach, you both admired the beautiful sunset that was falling on this last day of vacation. Tomorrow, a new chapter would begin. So you wanted to fully enjoy your last moments with your secret lover, because you might never meet him again. Silence reigned, peacefully, while the sound of the insolent waves lulled your ears with a bitter melody. You hoped you could slow down time, or rather extend it, because he seemed so stingy and selfish about giving you a little more to even exchange your unspoken thoughts.

Suddenly, you felt the boy's gaze on you, a gaze so intense that you had to turn your head away to look at him the same way. A mischievous smile appeared on his thin lips, as he opened his mouth to say a few words to you. “You promised me a gift if I won my kart race. I’m still waiting for it, Y/n.” His eyes filled with mischief and impatience, as you remembered the promise you had made to him. He had won his karting race earlier in the day, and you had promised him a gift if he managed to win it. However, you didn't think it would be so easy, since you had secretly chosen a rather... surprising gift.

A kiss. Not on his cheek, his forehead, or even his temple. No, it was more than just a childish, awkward kiss. A real, quick kiss on his lips. You thought about it because, although you sincerely believed in Lando's phenomenal abilities, you didn't think he would end up on the top step of the podium so easily and quickly. And now you're in trouble. Lando continues to stare at you mischievously, still impatient to discover your precious gift. Your brain was no longer able to function, your heart was speeding up. Did you really have to go for it? Take the plunge and place your lips on his?

Lando's impatience and waiting were more evident, while you were still panicking inside. And then, that's when you understood. That there was only him in your heart, and that there was only one chance. Only one life to live it to the fullest, without regretting anything. That worst case scenario, you'll go home the next day, forgetting this stupid promise and action. That in the end, this vacation, this boy, and this kiss, will remain engraved as the most beautiful adolescent chapter of your life, and that you will remember it with full joy and nostalgia.

Then the next second, Lando was surprised to feel a pair of lips on his. The kiss only lasted a short second, yet long enough for him to feel a bunch of different emotions. His heart felt like it was stopping, just as his brain was trying to properly process what had just happened. A powerful, strange but sweet feeling came over the young British man. He had just received his first kiss, and even more so from the girl he loved desperately. As you pulled back to look into his eyes, his looked back at you, confused. But because he understood.

He understood that this was love. That he was destined to remain faithful to you, for the rest of his life, because that kiss was the promise that his heart would belong to you forever.

It's been a little over a week now since you and Lando got together. And these last few days have been filled with nostalgia, reunions and above all strong and intense emotions. After the Jeddah race, Lando asked you to spend time together. Finally, he secretly wanted to insinuate that he wanted to spend every minute of his time by your side. Like before, like eight years ago.

He had finally found his childhood crush, the woman he considered the love of his life, and so he wasn't going to let her escape so easily. Especially since this reunion made him rekindle these deep feelings that he had not lost, but balked at because he had come to the conclusion that he will never find you again. However, talking to you again, spending time with you made him feel the love he had for you, but so much more intense, so much stronger and more powerful.

He's never felt like this before with any other girl, he's never seen himself in this state. Completely and obsessively in love, desperate to receive your attention and stay with you. Finding you was a sentimental blow to him, while he found himself lost forever in your heart. Finding you sealed his heart in your hands for eternity.

“It was a great day.” You hasten to say as a pretty smile takes place on your face. The driver looks at you lovingly, as he nods his head in approval. “Especially when I beat you at karting. It was the best moment of the day” He teases you and you stare at him. "I drove into the barrier because you hit my kart with yours. It doesn't count" You try to defend yourself.

“It doesn’t matter, I still won.” He adds as you sit side by side on the warm sand of the beach. “Still as narcissistic as back then” You roll your eyes but don’t hide that teasing smile on your face. “Still the same Lando Norris that you loved so much” He adds, his eyes scanning the horizon in the distance.

You swallow with difficulty, a lump in your throat. “Loved uh…” You whisper to yourself. Raising your head, you are greeted by the sunset. A pretty sunset, the same one that accompanied you on that last day of vacation eight years ago. You can't help but feel this feeling of nostalgia, of happiness.

It's exactly the same pretty frame, and the same boy by your side. It reminds you so much of that beautiful day long ago. Your heart warms at the thought. You finally found the man you love so much, and you couldn't be happier than right now.

The waves play the same melody, but this time the melody is more beautiful. Brighter and strangely romantic. As you gaze at the clouds in the distance, you feel Lando's intense gaze on you. Exactly the same look he gave you back then. Then, as if you were rehearsing the same scene, like a play that you are performing to perfection, you turn around to lock your gaze with his.

And there, that famous mischievous smile takes over his lips. Eight years later, he has the same look, this smile that changed everything. "You forgot your promise again, like back then. I'm still waiting for it, y/n" His words hit you like a bomb. Because they are exactly the same ones he said to you the day you made that stupid promise to him. This stupid gift.

And as if you weren't stupid enough, you secretly thought of the same gift. You internally promised yourself that you would give him the same kiss if he managed to beat you in karting. And he did it, as if he had put all his soul into the race to deserve this surprise gift from you. You feel helpless as the same panic takes hold of you. Everything seems so unreal. This sweet memory will finally happen again.

You see his eyes drop to your lips for a split second. But it's that split second that changes everything about you. Now you know it's for life. That you found the boy of your heart, that you will never leave him again, even if he doesn't feel the same way as you. That you only have one life to regret nothing, and this childhood kiss you have never regretted. So you never want to regret it.

You smile shyly, and without him being able to do anything, you crash your lips onto his. Lando's eyes widen, but he finally realizes what's happening. And he doesn't wait any longer to move his lips to yours. But this time the kiss is totally different. It is no longer innocent and shy like it used to be. It's no longer a little kiss between two teenagers who promised each other a gift.

No, this time it's much more romantic. More intense, deep and passionate. It's so comforting and sweet. This kiss is the fruit of the unconditional love he feels for you. So, he continues to deepen the kiss, his hand delicately cupping your cheek while his arm comes around your waist.

He licks your bottom lip with his tongue before nibbling it gently, letting you completely devote yourself to him. He continues to kiss you passionately, but yet it's not vulgar or crude. It's a soft and pleasant kiss, where only love is exchanged between your lips.

You finally broke the kiss by pulling back, a shy smile matching your pink cheeks perfectly. He opens his eyes, a silly smile on his lips before quickly pecking your lips again. You stay like that for a moment, admiring each other for a long time, love in your eyes.

"I'm so fucking in love with you, baby. Not since yesterday, not since last week, no. Since ages ago, for so long that I've stopped counting." You smile at him tenderly, your cheeks still pink. "Me too, Lando. I've loved you since we first met."

He smiles wider as his arms pull you a little closer to him. "You know, you're the girl who stole my first kiss. And you're also the only girl who managed to steal my heart. My heart has been yours for eight years, since the very moment you took me kissed." You can’t help but giggle, which melts Lando’s heart. “I thought you stopped counting.” He scratches the back of his neck, somewhat embarrassed. “Let’s just say I kept counting because I was desperate to know when I was going to find the woman I love.”

In the meantime he leaned over you, until you were lying on the soft sand. “Every day you were gone was like a bullet in my chest.” “What a romantic, I’m almost going to get emotional” You tease, a mocking laugh coming from you. “Still as teasing as before” He adds, pressing a kiss to your cheek.

"For eight years, you were the only girl who never stopped staying anchored in my thoughts. From our first kiss, my heart already belonged to you, and it will continue to be yours for the rest of my life. I never wanted any other girl but you, and I waited so long for you that I'll never let you go. I love you so much, sweetheart” His words warm your heart, as you gently caress his face with your thumbs. “I’m completely in love with you too, Lan.” And in these last words, he rushes to kiss you again.

You feel like eight years ago, like the two idiots in love who stole their first kiss. Nothing has changed except the reality that reminds you that your love is bound for eternity, and that it will continue to exist because it is deeper and more passionate every day. That this is the present moment, and that your hearts are finally filled with happiness to have been able to find their other half, after so many years of desperately continuing to live without the presence of the other.

#f1 imagine #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #lando norris x reader #lando norris imagine #lando norris x y/n #lando norris x you #ln4 imagine #lando norris fluff #lando norris fanfic

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frownyalfred · 4 months ago

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Hi. I'm not a canon purist and enjoy some fanon content very much, but I do think people in the fandom should at least familiarize themselves with the canon content and source material. It's easier to break the "rules" so to speak and experiment with canon when you know what that actually is. I've noticed a lot of fans that are only familiar with fanon criticise content that doesn't line up with what they believe to be canon but isn't. The Red Hood for example. I've seen writers who portray him as the violent criminal he is in much of the canon be completely decimated by Jason fans who only know fanon and the retconned version of Red Hood and completely deny canon even exists and refuse to even glance at the comics. Transformative works are important and playing in the sandbox is for everyone but fandom literally cannot exist without canon. Canon is important and people can do whatever they want with it but they should respect it enough to at least look at it.

Hi anon, I'm going to hold your hand as I say this, and I will say it as gently as I can: This is still a form of canon purism.

We can absolutely agree that readers shouldn't berate or abuse writers for how they choose to portray characters in fic, whether that's a more canon-faithful characterization or a popular fanon version. If readers don't like how a character is portrayed, we should encourage them to hit the back button instead.

I want to draw your attention to some of the words you used in your ask above: "should" "respect" "decimated" etc. Those are some strong words to describe how you think people need to behave, in order to exist in fandom. Of course, there is no fandom without canon source material -- I'm not denying that. But with such a wide and varied canon, the DC fandom has examples of the Red Hood you mention above, AND the "retconned" version you also reference. Both are canon, as in actually, officially, canon. WFA is canon, and that Red Hood looks very different from the Red Hood you describe.

Now, I think your issue is that you enjoy a certain version of canon, and you're frustrated that the fandom doesn't also, as trends ebb and flow, enjoy that canon as much as you do. Again, I want to acknowledge that just because a certain version is popular, it doesn't give folks the right to berate authors for writing a different version. But again, I don't think that's what we're really talking about here. From your ask's tone, I think you're suggesting that people should, in order to participate in fandom, read that older canon, that different version, or as you say, "glance at it" before enjoying or writing the fanon version.

Guess what? They actually, really, really, don't have to. It sounds like you have some issues with judging your fellow fandom members who don't read what you do or reference certain canon. But the magic of this fandom is, you can enter it at any point. We're a big pool, and if someone's entry point is the Lego Batman movie and that's it, that's still valid.

Fandom stems from canon, yes, but I almost never hear people talk about movies, or web comics, or other media when they talk about "required reading." It's always a comic. I really wish people would reflect on that before suggesting it as the one true path to being a fan.

The other thing I don't see asks like these reference ever is the reality that sometimes a fandom outstrips its canon material, and that that's an eventuality in some spaces. Fanon interpretations become popular, and people write about those specific characterizations or scenarios. They ebb and flow, like I mentioned, and some are more canon-faithful than others. Some completely reject canon, and again -- it's still fandom. It doesn't make it better or worse than a more canon-faithful fic. It's just different.

I had a couple asks about this topic a few weeks ago, and I'm assuming you haven't read those or you likely wouldn't have sent me this ask. But in them, I discuss how sometimes we need to suck it up and be unhappy that canon-faithful fics aren't as popular in a fandom at a specific time, and stop punishing fellow fans for writing and enjoying those fics. And we really need to stop shitting on them publicly on Tumblr.

Because often, what you're really saying is that you wish more people would write more canon-faithful fics, and stop writing ones about fanon topics you don't enjoy or think are accurate. And to that, I again say, there is nothing you can or should do to change that behavior from others. If you want to read it, write it, enjoy it, etc, do it yourself. Build the comic-faithful community here, write fics and promote challenges, create a discord channel and discuss your "required reading" there.

We are all writing and reading fanfiction at the end of the day. It is a great equalizer in many ways. My silly Lego Batman fic is just as valid as a canon-faithful rewrite of a certain Batman issue. One is not better than the other, or more deserving of respect. You will never get me to admit otherwise on this blog.

tl;dr: people should absolutely not berate authors who choose to write canon-faithful characterizations. however, there are layers of judgement and disdain many DC comics canon-faithful authors/readers have for their fellow fans that I think we need to examine critically in order to coexist respectfully.

#asks #anon #fandom #batman #dc #jason todd #red hood #dc comics #dc fandom

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d-emeter · 4 months ago

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The world has gone to hell, but you've found your own paradise (or: apocalypse au with task force 141) — plus-size!fem!reader x poly!141

CW: zombie apocalypse (but no real zombies mentioned lol), allusion to smut but doesn't actually happen yet, soap being a horny bastard, implied age-gap?

HEAVILY based on the bill and frank storyline from the last of us but can be read as a generic zombie apocalypse so no worries if you haven't seen/played tlou! Also different format? Is this something?

Captain John Price who, over the years, has become a bit of a survivalist nut — a prepper, if you will.

Sure, his sergeants make fun of him for it sometimes, but he more than anyone knows the shit that plays behind the scenes, the things governments keep hidden, the threats that loom every damn day — so he'd rather be safe than sorry when the world inevitably goes to shit. He's almost smug about it when it does (he hadn't calculated in the zombie aspect of it all, but still)

Unfortunately for him, however, he and the rest of 141 are deployed when outbreak day comes around. More and more cities are bombed by the hour, the population dwindling by the second, and in the week that follows he and the boys are amongst those assigned to evacuate the smaller towns and villages and escort the citizens to quarantine zones — that is, until the QZ's are full and they're under direct order to execute those that didn't make it in.

Now, Price's moral compass has been skewed for some time now. He's done some stuff during his years serving — man or woman, guilty or innocent, it hadn't mattered to him then. It doesn't now, either.

What does him in is the tear that rolls down Soap's cheek when Price shoots the mother and child his sergeant couldn't bring himself to ("Aren't these the people we're 'posed tae protect, cap?")

He convinces his task force to desert that very night (they'd been hesitant, but in the end, they'd follow their captain to hell and back). They gather as many weapons, ammo and MRE's as they can get away with without being caught, and they're off into the night.

Price brings them to his home — a big, old house inherited from his grandparents somewhere in a small, sleepy village. He had spent the better part of his time on leave preparing the house to be self-sufficient should the need arise: generators on solar and wind power, water filters, a chicken coop and a garden set up in the backyard (that, and enough weapons to supply a small army in the garage)

They wait until this village gets evacuated, too, so they can claim it for themselves before raiders come around. They fence off a section of the town, set up traps and cameras, anything to ensure no unwanted visitors can enter, infected or not.

It's their own form of paradise, in a way. (the house has enough bedrooms to give them all their own — they end up in eachother's more often than not)

One day, you fall into their lives — literally. You've fallen into one of their traps, a literal hidden hole in the ground, and within a few minutes you hear the creak of a gate, multiple sets of feet and the unmistakable sound of a gun being loaded ("I'm not infected!" You yell from your hole before they can lay eyes on you, certain they'd shoot you on sight if you didn't)

The first thing you see is the barrel of the gun leering over the edge, before you see its owner — a man with a beard and the most intense eyes you've ever seen. He keeps his gun pointed at you while he makes you recite the alphabet, forwards then backwards, all with your hands held before you to ensure you weren't twitching. You pass his test, it seems, and a ladder is lowered into the hole.

Once you're back on the surface, you see it's not just the man with the beard — there's four of them in total, each looking more terrifying than the last, all muscle and bulk and having the ability to snap you like a twig should they feel the need. There are still guns pointed at you as you explain your situation and simultaneously beg for your life — you were with a group travelling to the nearest QZ, you're the only one left now ("Please, I didn't mean- Please don't hurt me, I'll be out of your hair before you know it — I won't tell anyone about this place! I haven't eaten in three days-")

John and Simon were hesitant at first, but their sergeants manage to convince them to let you inside, offer you some food before sending you on your way again (Soap had been frothing at the mouth a little the moment he had laid eyes on you — sure, they had kept eachother... satisfied, but "Cap, when's the last time any o' us felt the touch o' a lass? 'N such a pretty one at that..." and Price knows he can't deny them when Gaz leans over to whisper how prettily you had begged for your safety, surely it'd do no harm?)

Your eyes widen a little when the scary man with the beard tells you to come with them — your hunger ends up winning the battle with your brain as it tries to convince you that following four big male strangers into their fenced home is not a good plan.

You expected a dented can of beans and maybe a cup of water, so you're definitely more than a little surprised when they usher you into a bedroom with an ensuite, telling you to go take a shower (Soap wanted to follow you into the bathroom, mumbling something about wanting to double check for any bite marks. Ghost had to hold him back by his shirt)

You nearly cry when you feel the stream of hot water on your skin, and feel like you're in some sort of fever dream when you see the clean clothes laid out on the bed for you — granted, they're men's clothes, but anything is better than the rags you had on before.

You start to wonder if maybe you died and are in some sort of weird state between worlds when you come back downstairs to a table that's fully decked out and beautifully presented plates of food.

All of them turn to you immediately and you have to do your best not to falter under their stares (you don't notice the flustered little cough Price lets out at the sight of such a pretty creature in his shirt — god, maybe Johnny was right, it had been a while since he's had a woman, and such a young, plush one at that)

One of them — the one with the darker skin and the prettiest face you've seen in months — is the first to jump into action, hand on your lower back as he ushers you into a chair.

You're convinced you're dead when you bring the first bite to your lips — God, that's good. (Johnny nearly chokes on his food at the small moan you let out. Simon remains stoic, but damn him if he didn't feel a spark of heat in his gut at the sound)

The men start introducing themselves while you're shoveling food into your mouth. The man with the beard — John, you now know — explains that they're all ex-military. Through bites of food, you do your best to introduce yourself as well. You tell them your story, they tell you theirs (well, Johnny and Gaz do, mainly. The one called Simon still hasn't really said a word to you, and you can tell John is a little paranoid about sharing too much information with a stranger)

As the night progresses, there's a shift in the air. Kyle leans in a little too close while brushing a crumb away from your lip, and John lingers behind you a little too long as he refills your glass (you pretend not to notice the sound of his deep inhale as he leans over you).

John insists you don't have to help with the dishes, so you wander into the living room and are immediately intrigued by the piano standing there. Johnny joins you on the bench, thigh pressed against yours as you play with the keys. Simon — or 'Ghost', as you noticed the others called him sometimes — leans over you from behind, and your breathing nearly stops (Simon knows he's too close, but so what if he wants you to accidentally brush against his abdomen?)

Once it's all said and done, you try not to let your disappointment show as you prepare to leave. Much to your surprise, it's Simon that grunts something to you, speaking the first words he's said that night. ("Stay. F'r the night. 'S not safe out there.")

John keeps a heavy hand on your shoulder as he leads you back to the bedroom you were in earlier. It's his, he tells you, but he can stay with one of the others. ("Are you- Are you sure? I can take a couch, or-" "'M sure, love, good night's sleep 'll do you good. Give me a yell if y'need somethin', yeah?")

With that, he leaves you to it, shutting the door behind him. Fuck, that bed does look inviting, and you can almost hear your vertebrae begging for a soft mattress. As you get ready for bed, a thought enters your mind. It had... been a while.

Is what you're about to do a stupid decision? Maybe, but you figured if these men had wanted to hurt you they would've done it already, and you'd be lying if you said that all their touches and affection weren't having an effect on your panties.

You yell out their names from the room, and the four of them are there within a second, though they all falter at the door as they take in the sight before them — you're sitting in the bed, covers pulled up so the only thing visible are your bare shoulders and arms, and it's immediately clear what your intentions are.

Soap, once again, has to be held back by the scruff to prevent him from pouncing on you immediately. John, instead, is the first one to actually enter the room, sitting down on the bed and carefully bringing his hand to caress your cheek while asking if you're sure about this (he'd rather not admit the way he shuddered a bit when he made contact with the soft skin of your face)

Your answer is immediate, you've made up your mind — on one condition ("I'm not... a whore, or anything. I don't sleep with people for food or shelter or anything, just- if we're doing this... I'm staying. For a while.")

Simon nearly laughs at this — funny how you think they would have let you leave otherwise.

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thewriteadviceforwriters · 10 months ago

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Creating Compelling Character Arcs: A Guide for Fiction Writers

As writers, one of our most important jobs is to craft characters that feel fully realized and three-dimensional. Great characters aren't just names on a page — they're complex beings with arcs that take them on profound journeys of change and growth. A compelling character arc can make the difference between a forgettable story and one that sticks with readers long after they've turned the final page.

Today, I'm going to walk you through the art of crafting character arcs that are as rich and multi-layered as the people you encounter in real life. Whether you're a first-time novelist or a seasoned storyteller, this guide will give you the tools to create character journeys that are equal parts meaningful and unforgettable.

What Is a Character Arc?

Before we go any further, let's make sure we're all on the same page about what a character arc actually is. In the most basic sense, a character arc refers to the internal journey a character undergoes over the course of a story. It's the path they travel, the obstacles they face, and the ways in which their beliefs, mindsets, and core selves evolve through the events of the narrative.

A character arc isn't just about what happens to a character on the outside. Sure, external conflict and plot developments play a major role — but the real meat of a character arc lies in how those external forces shape the character's internal landscape. Do their ideals get shattered? Is their worldview permanently altered? Do they have to confront harsh truths about themselves in order to grow?

The most resonant character arcs dig deep into these universal human experiences of struggle, self-discovery, and change. They mirror the journeys we all go through in our own lives, making characters feel powerfully relatable even in the most imaginative settings.

The Anatomy of an Effective Character Arc

Now that we understand what character arcs are, how do we actually construct one that feels authentic and impactful? Let's break down the key components:

The Inciting Incident

Every great character arc begins with a spark — something that disrupts the status quo of the character's life and sets them on an unexpected path. This inciting incident can take countless forms, be it the death of a loved one, a sudden loss of power or status, an epic betrayal, or a long-held dream finally becoming attainable.

Whatever shape it takes, the inciting incident needs to really shake the character's foundations and push them in a direction they wouldn't have gone otherwise. It opens up new struggles, questions, and internal conflicts that they'll have to grapple with over the course of the story.

Lies They Believe

Tied closely to the inciting incident are the core lies or limiting beliefs that have been holding your character back. Perhaps they've internalized society's body image expectations and believe they're unlovable. Maybe they grew up in poverty and are convinced that they'll never be able to escape that cyclical struggle.

Whatever these lies are, they'll inform how your character reacts and responds to the inciting incident. Their ingrained perceptions about themselves and the world will directly color their choices and emotional journeys — and the more visceral and specific these lies feel, the more compelling opportunities for growth your character will have.

The Struggle

With the stage set by the inciting incident and their deeply-held lies exposed, your character will then have to navigate a profound inner struggle that stems from this setup. This is where the real meat of the character arc takes place as they encounter obstacles, crises of faith, moral dilemmas, and other pivotal moments that start to reshape their core sense of self.

Importantly, this struggle shouldn't be a straight line from Point A to Point B. Just like in real life, people tend to take a messy, non-linear path when it comes to overcoming their limiting mindsets. They'll make progress, backslide into old habits, gain new awareness, then repeat the cycle. Mirroring this meandering but ever-deepening evolution is what makes a character arc feel authentic and relatable.

Moments of Truth

As your character wrestles with their internal demons and existential questions, you'll want to include potent Moments of Truth that shake them to their core. These are the climactic instances where they're forced to finally confront the lies they believe head-on. It could be a painful conversation that shatters their perception of someone they trusted. Or perhaps they realize the fatal flaw in their own logic after hitting a point of no return.

These Moments of Truth pack a visceral punch that catalyzes profound realizations within your character. They're the litmus tests where your protagonist either rises to the occasion and starts radically changing their mindset — or they fail, downing further into delusion or avoiding the insights they need to undergo a full transformation.

The Resolution

After enduring the long, tangled journey of their character arc, your protagonist will ideally arrive at a resolution that feels deeply cathartic and well-earned. This is where all of their struggle pays off and we see them evolve into a fundamentally different version of themselves, leaving their old limiting beliefs behind.

A successfully crafted resolution in a character arc shouldn't just arrive out of nowhere — it should feel completely organic based on everything they've experienced over the course of their thematic journey. We should be able to look back and see how all of the challenges they surmounted ultimately reshaped their perspective and led them to this new awakening. And while not every character needs to find total fulfillment, for an arc to feel truly complete, there needs to be a definitive sense that their internal struggle has reached a meaningful culmination.

Tips for Crafting Resonant Character Arcs

I know that was a lot of ground to cover, so let's recap a few key pointers to keep in mind as you start mapping out your own character's trajectories:

Get Specific With Backstory

To build a robust character arc, a deep understanding of your protagonist's backstory and psychology is indispensable. What childhood wounds do they carry? What belief systems were instilled in them from a young age? The more thoroughly you flesh out their history and inner workings, the more natural their arc will feel.

Strive For Nuance

One of the biggest pitfalls to avoid with character arcs is resorting to oversimplified clichés or unrealistic "redemption" stories. People are endlessly complex — your character's evolution should reflect that intricate messiness and nuance to feel grounded. Embrace moral grays, contradictions, and partial awakenings that upend expectations.

Make the External Match the Internal

While a character arc hinges on interior experiences, it's also crucial that the external plot events actively play a role in driving this inner journey. The inciting incident, the obstacles they face, the climactic Moments of Truth — all of these exterior occurrences should serve as narrative engines that force your character to continually reckon with themselves.

Dig Into Your Own Experiences

Finally, the best way to instill true authenticity into your character arcs is to draw deeply from the personal transformations you've gone through yourself. We all carry with us the scars, growth, and shattered illusions of our real-life arcs — use that raw honesty as fertile soil to birth characters whose journeys will resonate on a soulful level.

Happy Writing!

#writing #writeblr #thewriteadviceforwriters #creative writing #on writing #writers block #writing tips #how to write #writers and poets #writers on tumblr #authors on tumblr #author #historical fiction #fiction #novel #publishing #short stories #short story #character arcs

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weebsinstash · 1 month ago

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In your Cecil work, you mentioned how he’s seen reader naked with all monitors and stuff. But to be a little freaky/sinful, has he seen them also pleasuring themselves? I can only imagine the amount of murder he’d be willing to do for the unfortunates who decide to comment their enjoyment. If not if they have those Superman abilities, do you think they knew they were being spied on and took someone home to bone to mess with him.

You know how in the first season Cecil straight up tells Mark something along the lines of "the GDA knows everything about you, from your daily routine to the porn you jack off to". Well :)

Imagine in a "Nolan's child who hides their powers" scenario, or I guess just in general as a viltrumite/alien hybrid or someone who the government was always keeping tabs on for whatever reason, you suddenly develop your powers, but also, something more, and you can suddenly hear the buzzing and electrical hertz of the hidden cameras in your room. Like... what the fuck do you even do in response to that

God... god... remember in Death Note where Light predicted he was being watched by the police so he would do shit like read dirty magazines to maintain his cover of "behaving like a normal young man". Imagine you making the realization that like ... you had a daily or some real specific masturbation habit and you're like "oh fuck, I can't suddenly change what I'm doing or it might tip them off that I know something or make them suspicious"

Reader begrudgingly continuing to jack off like normal and you KNOW people are watching, for survival's sake. Reader having their first real conversation with Cecil as he's touring you through the GDA and you finally go "no bullshit" and hit him with the bluntness question possible, "so are you one of the men who watches the cameras in my bedroom or has it been someone else watching me masturbate" and it actually manages to make him stutter and stumble to answer

Cecil literally ordering everyone else out of the room whenever they're watching the footage and he knows you're about to jerk off, because, he's obsessed enough with you that not only does he see it as "protecting your modesty" but also he literally cannot stand knowing other people are seeing you in such an... intimate and vulnerable state. He's protecting you, obviously :) he's not a pervert, he promises--

Cecil having the utmost pokerface as he watches you pleasure yourself but his cheeks are still-- actually, he's technically covered in a synthetic skin so COULD HE even blush??? We're gonna pretend he does. Cecil trying to be all stonefaced but he can't stop his face from turning red and the way you manage to make him sweat

Ngl... I really like the idea of Reader who, upon unlocking their powers, basically becomes like, you took the fucking pill from Limitless and you become this, super memory unlocked brain capacity genius and you quickly pick up on how Cecil's heart rate increases whenever he talks to you and you compare it to, say, how he treats "equal threats" like Mark and Omniman and you quickly form the hypothesis he's got some weird crush on you. Maybe you test your theory out or try to trip him up by, say, hitting on another member of the Guardians or another superhero. Your superhearing picking up Cecil grinding his teeth from the other side of the room as you make some flirtatious inappropriate comment to a coworker or hero/alien you just met. I'd be out here giggling twirling a piece of hair around a finger, "so, is there a Mrs Battle Beast?" as Cecil then creates some diversion or reason to pull you away. "There's a mudslide in the Philippines and we need you to help the search and rescue efforts" "but you guys never ask me to help with shit like that?" "Just shut up and follow me"

Some... lose-lose scenario where you try to defy Cecil and the GDA and he won't let you and fabricates some justification for locking you away or putting some sort of method of control on or in you. You being completely restrained as Cecil tells you it's for your own good, for the planet's own good, until you "can calm down and see the light" and you can tell he's... suspiciously into it as he sees you completely at his mercy, even reaching out to touch your face, or even... other parts of you.

Donald just out here, "sir I brought you the documents you requested and-- sir do you have an erection watching the new recruit??? Are you peeping on their bedroom again??" "Shut up, Donald. Get your glasses fixed and do your damn job. I'm just watching them fight a giant alien monster"

You can't deny Cecil gets results, so everyone who has suspicions that he's being a lil... freaky... just has to put up with it or convince themselves they're imagining it, but... they're not :)

#yandere invincible #cecil x reader #sinprompts #yandere stuff

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writingwrongwjc · 3 months ago

Text

First Date With the Munson Boy

Eddie Munson x Reader

Warnings: maybe slight angst for a second otherwise all fluff!!

“Should I wear this one or the red one?” You look past yourself in the mirror at Steve and Robin lying on your bed. Steve looks up hastily from the magazine but gives no response. Instead offering a lost expression

“Why are you even going on a date with this guy again?”

Robin props herself up, throwing the nearest object she can find toward Steve.

“Dude you can’t just say stuff like that.”

“Why not? I’m being honest he’s kinda… well he is a freak.”

“He’s... sweet.” You say, swinging around toward them; making sure your dress swishes as you do so.

“Plus I could make fun of you for so many girls… Linda!” Robin Chimes in.

“Okay, glasses Linda? That’s not fair becau-” Steve begins to ramble but you interject before his poor excuses can manifest themselves.

“You guys! You are no help.” You throw your hands in the air, flailing the dresses as you move.

“Red.”

“Red!”

They both say in unison. Given their struggles with finding love, and your growing irritation you opted for the white dress.

“Mmm it’s classy.” you quip, leaving the room to put on the dress.

How you met Eddie is a story you’d rather not share with them just yet. Although Steve and Robin are your best friends they don’t exactly know about your habitual love for Mary Jane. They know you’ve smoked before, even trying a little for themselves when drunk and adventurous. You have just been embarrassed to admit that you enjoy the little herb, and many of the outcasts that come with it on a consistent basis. One such outcast is the man who started to sell it to you in the first place, Eddie Munson. Town Outcast, drug dealer, and according to neighborhood moms; occultist! After you started buying from him more the two of you started to hang out in those woods more consistently, even when you didn’t want to buy, but knew he’d be back there.

“We can’t keep meeting this way.” He’d say one day, cocking his head with a gentle smile.

“No? Then maybe you should take me out somewhere?” You cocked your head back at him with a slight of mischief on your face.

So now, you stand in your living room all dolled up to go out with the Munson boy.

“He’ll be here any second you guys need to leave! Go!” You shout, pushing Steve and Robin out the front door; giggling as they shuffle through at the same time.

“Have fun!”

“Don’t get murdered!”

“Oh yeah. Use protection!”

Not even a minute later Eddie pulls up in his beat down old van blaring some Iron Maiden song. Rather than allowing him to retrieve you from the house you meet him at the curb so that your parents don’t berate him about where he’s taking you and what his intentions are. He stumbles over his own feet in an effort to reach the van door before you can.

“Your chariot awaits you.” He bows, hand still on the door, eyes lingering on your form for a moment. “You uh, wow.” He says, shaking his head in disbelief releasing a huff of air. “You look amazing.”

“Oh thank you,” you say blushing at his genuine comment. He shuts your door hard, galloping over to the driver’s side, jumping into the seat. The music is now at a comforting volume rather than its usual roar.

“So, where are you taking me?”

“I was thinking we could hit some takeout, then drive out to the quarry and have a bit of a soiree?” Eddie seemed unsure of his idea now that he’s presenting it to you.

“Who knew you were a romantic Eddie!”

“I just, I thought that the stars would be brighter out there, and… you wouldn’t have to actually be seen with me.”

The street lights lit up the sadness glistening in his eyes, although he hid it well under his vibrant expressions and smiles toward you as he spoke.

“If I didn’t want to be seen with you I wouldn’t go out with you, dummy.” You jabbed him in the side in order to lighten his mood.

“I yearn for adventure! There’s no adventure in a drive in. Just making out before you're ready.”

He laughs vibrantly fidgeting with the rings on his fingers as he palms the steering wheel. Quicker than you thought that you would, you arrived at the quarry with takeout cheeseburgers in hand.

Eddie parked at the edge of the water away from the main road. As romantic as it truly was, Steve's words popped back in your head for a moment: “Don’t get murdered.” Not that Eddie would hurt you, just the fact of how dark it is way out here and the colorful history of the area. It's peaceful, but in an eerie way. While you’re thinking about how eerie it is Eddie got into the back of his van to grab a blanket.

“Here it is! Only the finest silks for a lady.” He approaches you staring into the darkness. “Oh. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah! It’s just dark out here. Spooky.” You wiggled your fingers at him when you said the word spooky. You take the blanket from him and turn to find a spot while he turns on some music.

“Okay so options, killer options by the way. We have Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Dio, Slayer. Oh I have my guilty pleasure prince tape! Or, behind door number three, surprise mix! I have no Idea what’s on this one, I think I was high when I made it or it’s like one of those things where we listen to it and a quest starts”

He holds up each cassette tape like a salesman attempting to get your buy. You couldn’t help but admire his features, complimented so well by a nice leather jacket, cleaner, sturdier than his usual jacket but it suits him so well.

“Door number three, Surprise me! Now come eat, it's getting soggy!”

“Oh one more thing!” he leans into the van once more sliding the cassette into place then reaching to grab something. The first song on the surprise cassette is certainly a surprise to you. Africa by Toto.

He holds up a small hand rolled joint with a crooked grin on his face.

“We’ll save it for dessert!” you say as he sits beside you on the blanket warming the brisk air.

“Oh I thought I was gonna have something else for dessert.” He looks you up and down, biting his lip slyly. Not sly enough, you push his face away from you.

“Eddie! Who do you think I am?”

Rather than taking your shove for what it was he threw himself to the ground with haste feigning injury. Making you burst into laughter from his theatrics. Sitting up again he looks at you with puppy’s eyes.

“I meant Ice Cream, freak. We can go get some ice cream!”

“Oh yeah sure you did, but I’ll hold you to that now.”

After stuffing your mouths and talking a bit in between, Eddie lights up the joint offering you the first hit. You can feel his eyes on your lips as you draw in the smoke. His gaze is soft and his eyes dart across the entirety of your face. As you go to hand him the lit joint you hear a crackle in the woods beside you. Reacting with instinct you gasp harshly scooting your body closer to his, dropping the joint onto the blanket.

“Oh. shit.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

The two or you scramble to pick it up and snuff out the embers, tangling into one another while doing so. Your arm is now hooked around Eddie’s bent leg and his arm under yours, hand resting on the tops of your knees. The tension between the two of you is palpable but you both laugh off what just happened, especially since the weed is now settling into your system.

“You’re honestly such a mage.” Eddies says out of nowhere.

“Huh?”

“I was just thinking if you were a class in D&D it would be mage.”

“I have no idea what that is.” You say looking at him confused but eager to learn more.

He takes the time to thoroughly explain the D&D classes and other game mechanics you didn’t fully understand but thoroughly enjoys the enthusiastic expression on his face while he explains something he loves.

“Basically, they’re very versatile in their magic, like you. Pretty, funny, smart, it's all magic!”

“So would you be a bard then, because they play instruments?” The glow leaves Eddie's eyes and his expression drops, pouting his bottom lip out slightly.

“Well, they play lutes and stuff, it's not the same.”

“I mean sure it is, your electric guitar is just a way cooler version of a lute.”

“There’s more to it than that I’m more of a rogue.” He stands up, broadening his shoulders, with an over dramatic sneaky look on his face.

“Whatever you say, oh great D&D expert!” You hop onto your knees fanning your arms up and down at him. “I dare not question thee. Forgive me my Lord.” Sarcasm thickens with each word.

“I’ll forgive you, fair Lady. Stand!” Eddie poses himself as a king making his decree. “On one condition!”

You stand to your feet with a bit of a wobble, choking back a giggle as the song that is playing ends and the song Hungry Eyes comes on.

“That is?”

Suddenly the air shifts. No longer do you feel playful, but a tickle of anxiety. Nothing surrounds the two of you now. Eddies searches for words to say but can’t think of a royal decree. He crosses his arms loosely.

“Man I suck at this.”

“Or you're distracted.” you offer up walking closer to him until your hands meet his shoulders. The leather cold under your palms. He lets his arms unfold, grabbing you by the small of your back.

“Yeah that’s-” He trails off nervously. You can feel his shaky warm breath amid the cool autumn air.

“Next time I want to go to the most popular spot in town.”

“Next time?” He smiles.

“Yes next time, dummy.”

You slide your hand onto his jawline and then to the base of his neck, burying your fingers into his mess of brown hair. He leans forward slightly, pausing just before he kisses you allowing you to direct the moment. You pull his head closer to yours, your lips crashing together sweetly. His lips full and passionate yet not hungry for more instead satisfied in the moment. You linger in the kiss allowing passion to blossom. When you pull away you linger close to one another, Eddie’s deep brown eyes locked onto your’s, his cheeks are full of color, and his lips forcing themselves upward.

The sweet silence is finally disrupted when you speak up,

“Did you know this mixtape is full of love songs?”

He says nothing, instead stifling laughter as he pulls away from you unable to hide his expression.

“You did, you sneak! Surprise, door number three my ass!”

“So how bout that ice cream, my lady?”

Authors Note: Steddie and Stucky Fics are coming soon! I know I write a lot of x reader but I am workin on others as well!!

#stranger things imagine #stranger things #stranger things 4 #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #steve harrington #steve stranger things #eddie stranger things #robin stranger things #stranger things 2 #stranger things 3 #hawkins indiana #Spotify

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babe-a-yaga · 5 months ago

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What was done to Isseya is one of my personal biggest upsets with this game. I loved her in Last Flight. She's a genuinely interesting, complex character, and given the themes of mistakes and regret present through Veilguard, it makes TOTAL sense for her to make an appearance! What makes no sense at all is for her to be reduced to a two dimensional villain with no clear motivation who's just...doing exactly the thing she fucked up in life? Except worse? I'm gonna summarize the events of last flight for the folks who haven't read it;

The first griffin Isseya put through the joining was already blighted in battle, and dying from it. Quickly. Griffins are extra sensitive to the Blight and any attempts made to join them resulted in the animals going berserk and tearing themselves, and anyone else in range, to pieces to get away from what was now in their veins.

In a well meaning, but misguided effort to save one of the animals she loved, she used blood magic to alter the griffon's mind, to convince it the Blight in it's system was just a regular cold, and it didn't need to fight it, then put it through the joining.

It worked, but it changed the griffon. Made it stronger, fight harder. More difficult to handle. The griffon ultimately went out in a spectacular blaze of glory, and people didn't know what she did, just that she did SOMETHING, and that griffon did ten griffons worth of damage on it's way out.

The fourth blight was far worse, far longer than any of the blights we have witnessed first hand. I think it lasted like 15 years? And it was going badly for Thedas. They ordered Isseya to do what she had done to the first griffon again as a last ditch to stand a chance at I *think* Starkhaven (it's been a little bit since I read last flight, so I'm sketchy on dates and what battles were fought specifically when). She hated doing this, but it was orders, and it was exploit this handful of griffons or watch the world die. She's a warden, she signed up to stop the blight at any cost. In war, victory. In death, sacrifice.

By the time her brother Garahel slays Andoral, she's had to blight a number of griffons, and the constant blood magic use has massively accelerated the blight in her own body. Her brother garahel is this golden haired pretty boy beloved by everyone who looks upon him, and Isseya looks so much like a ghoul at this point people are uncomfortable being in the same room as her. Even though this is completely due to her service to the wardens.

Then, the remaining joined griffons start going mad. And then it starts to spread to the other, non-joined griffons. In using blood magic to convince the griffons the blight was just a disease, she had caused it to become one. A contagious one.

It's one of the most interesting examples of how dangerous blood magic actually is we ever see. We're just told over and over "blood magic bad, slippery slope to killing people. Bad. Even if you use your own." And we never really see explicitly why it's an inherently dangerous form of magic until this.

Back to Isseya though. Garahel's lover's Griffon had a clutch of eggs sired by Garahel's Crookytail. Isseya, knowing there was no stopping what was now in motion with the griffons, set out to do her one last act of penance. She took, and purified those eggs, hid them in a ward that kept them in stasis, so that they might only hatch once the griffons were gone, and this disease had died with them, so they might have a chance. And then she hid the clues to their location, and begged that whoever find them not let them be used by the wardens again.

And then she went on her calling.

These are not the actions of a villain. Isseya EMBODIES the warden principal of sacrifice. But it isn't glorious battle rewarded by a quick death alongside an archdemon for her. It's death by inches, by blight, knowingly and willingly accelerated in her own body to stop it from consuming the world. Sacrificing her ideals, the animals she loves, her brother, Garahel. Isseya gives it all for the wardens, to end the blight, and is not thanked for it or remembered kindly.

And she did everything she could to seed the slightest bit of hope, that both in spite of her and because of her, griffons might return to the world, as free creatures.

Her Veilguard arc feels like really egregious character assassination, and I wish she had been given an ounce of the sympathy that other characters had been given. It made sense for her to be here, thematically, mistakes and regret, and good intentions still leading to bad ends, but she deserved the same opportunity for forgiveness and/or redemption that Solas, Mythal, Cyrian, even Illario got.

Isseya was done dirty by Veilguard.

#veilguard spoilers #veilguard critical #last flight #Isseya #i feel the need to disclaimer that im not anti veilguard #i by and large like it and am willing to give it a lot of grace for some things #but Isseya is not one of thise things

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sweet7simple · 11 months ago

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Mech Pregnancy and Protoform Development of Gestating Sparklings

Here is what I have compiled on Cybertronian "reproduction" from More Than Meets the Eye, specifically the Holiday Special and Volume 5:

Holiday Special:

So this would be the protoform development for a forged sparkling and it lends support to that, if Cybertronians gave birth to their own Sparklings, then they would likely be an egg-like form (yes, I know it's not actually a sparkling, but can we all agree that Swerve is strangely well-informed on protoform development for forged Cybertronians?)

So what would slide out from the gestation tank has no discernable features yet and still needs hours if not days before the protoform resembles an adult Cybertronian, but I still don't have an answer for the size of this thing - at what point does it reach its full size? Cybertronians before the war went to academies, so what point does the protoform receive an education instead of having relevant information jammed into its brain module right before deployment like a MTO cold construct?

(More under cut)

But, let's be honest, I am going out of order here. Let's go to Volume 5 where we encounter a hot spot of re-ignited sparks on the moon:

So this is being constructed cold.

And this is forged - as well as the official story for how cold constructed bots were made, which apparently differs from the truth. Here is the truth for how cold constructed sparks were actually formed:

So all cold constructs were made from the matrix - but what if they did come from igniting healthy sparks to make new ones?

What if you used the energy of two sparks to create an entirely new one and that sparkling attached itself to a parent spark for some time before it dropped to a gestation tank (this is common in fanfiction and I love it so much, it makes the most sense)? As these two orbs of immense power and life resonate with one another, creating waves of energy that can be interpreted as pleasurable for the interfacing bots, excess energy could gather itself into a separate orb that borrows the life code from both parents, becomes randomized, and this creates a new life code for a separate entity. It stays in the spark chamber for a period of time - I don't know, decoding or storing energy or something, I am very bad with electronics - before dropping down to an artificial gestation tank.

And this is where the valve/plug comes into play if you so desire because now we have the issue of, where is the spark going to go? It needs a protoform. It needs the materials to make a protoform. It also needs liquids.

Cybertronians seem to live off energon and anything you can make from energon, but there have been references and images in the comics of Cybertronians have oil as a waste product, so they need a separate compartment for oil away from their energon tank and they also are said to have (in fanfiction, at least): oral solvents, lubricant, transfluid, optic fluid, etc... All those will require their own compartments and they will all have either been diluted from the energon or will have an origin in a separate liquid that isn't mentioned. Let's keep in mind that they will also need some sort of oil for their hinges and their nanites for upkeep.

So I believe these gestation tanks are where the Sparklings develop their egg-like protoform with all these liquids that they themselves can't make yet, and I think they get what they need from nanite colonies as there is no umbilical cord (not unless you want the bots to have belly buttons). I like to think of them as nannyites - nanites that, once a protoform hits the gestation tank, have latent codes that becomes active and now have protoform-related tasks versus whatever tasks they did beforehand. The nannyites will likely take these resources from the carrying parent, everything from fluids to energon stores to living metal that the nannyites will adapt or make compatible for the sparkling.

So this carrying parent suddenly has fewer nanites colonies themselves, a thinner layer of living metal, and depleted storages of fluids.

Hear me out, hear me out: Valveplug interfacing helps the carrying parent because transfluid will contain necessary materials for the protoform.

I am going to take it a step further and say that it is that first shot of transfluid into the gestation tank during spark and valveplug interfacing creates input that electronically signals to the receiving parent to gather the excess energy from the spark play via centripetal force like a satellite and that force signals the excess energy to turn on life codes it recycled from both parents and create its own life code. That transfluid inside of the gestation tank also turns on those latent codes for the nannyites to get the compartment prepared. It's that first dose of necessary materials and every dose of transfluid after that is stored in the gestation tank for the protoform.

Which brings me to the idea that I have seen on AO3 where bots go into heat:

What if a mech goes into heat as a way to store transfluid from their partner?

I am largely talking out of my ass here because I don't know anything about how machines work, but I know there are a lot of hormones and signals and work that goes into human pregnancy.

The downside of this is that, if all bots were once forged and now they are, let's say, "birthed", then these constructs would be artificial: the gestation tank and the fertile centripetal force with its satellite sparkling and the interface array with its gestational passage and the nannyites and the transfluid. These would have to be constructed cold and surgically added, and you would have to create codes that turn on these cascading or stacking protocols (I don't know the correct computer term for when one event triggers another event triggers another event and so on) and you would have to manufacture filters and tanks and lines for the creation of gestational lubricant and transfluid.

This is just me rambling because I can't stop thinking about all this, but I am not ready to write a mechpreg story.

Please talk to me about Cybertronian reproduction, I am not normal about this.

#macaddam #transformers #mtmte #tf comics #more than meets the eye #mechpreg #valveplug #interface #Protoform #Protoform Development #cybertronian biology #HOW DO WE MAKE ROBOT BABIES

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months ago

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Enshittification isn’t caused by venture capital

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

Many of us have left the big social media platforms; far more of us wish we could leave them; and even those of us who've escaped from Facebook/Insta and Twitter still spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the people we care about off of them, too.

It's lazy and easy to think that our friends who are stuck on legacy platforms run by Zuckerberg and Musk lack the self-discipline to wean themselves off of these services, or lack the perspective to understand why it's so urgent to get away from them, or that their "hacked dopamine loops" have addicted them to the zuckermusk algorithms. But if you actually listen to the people who've stayed behind, you'll learn that the main reason our friends stay on legacy platforms is that they care about the other people there more than they hate Zuck or Musk.

They rely on them because they're in a rare-disease support group; or they all coordinate their kids' little league carpools there; or that's where they stay in touch with family and friends they left behind when they emigrated; or they're customers or the audience for creative labor.

All those people might want to leave, too, but it's really hard to agree on where to go, when to go, and how to re-establish your groups when you get somewhere else. Economists call this the "collective action problem." This problem creates "switching costs" – a lot of stuff you'll have to live without if you switch from legacy platforms to new ones. The collective action problem is hard to solve and the switching costs are very high:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/

That's why people stay behind – not because they lack perspective, or self-discipline, or because their dopamine loops have been hacked by evil techbro sorcerers who used Big Data to fashion history's first functional mind-control ray. They are locked in by real, material things.

Big Tech critics who attribute users' moral failings or platforms' technical prowess to the legacy platforms' "stickiness" are their own worst enemies. These critics have correctly identified that legacy platforms are a serious problem, but have totally failed to understand the nature of that problem or how to fix it. Thankfully, more and more critics are coming to understand that lock-in is the root of the problem, and that anti-lock-in measures like interoperability can address it.

But there's another major gap in the mainstream critique of social media. Critics of zuckermuskian media claim those services are so terrible because they're for-profit entities, capitalist enterprises hitched to the logic of extraction and profit above all else. The problem with this claim is that it doesn't explain the changes to these services. After all, the reason so many of us got on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram is because they used to be a lot of fun. They were useful. They were even great at times.

When tech critics fail to ask why good services turn bad, that failure is just as severe as the failure to ask why people stay when the services rot.

Now, the guy who ran Facebook when it was a great way to form communities and make friends and find old friends is the same guy who who has turned Facebook into a hellscape. There's very good reason to believe that Mark Zuckerberg was always a creep, and he took investment capital very early on, long before he started fucking up the service. So what gives? Did Zuck get a brain parasite that turned him evil? Did his investors get more demanding in their clamor for dividends?

If that's what you think, you need to show your working. Again, by all accounts, Zuck was a monster from day one. Zuck's investors – both the VCs who backed him early and the gigantic institutional funds whose portfolios are stuffed with Meta stock today – are not patient sorts with a reputation for going easy on entrepreneurs who leave money on the table. They've demanded every nickel since the start.

What changed? What caused Zuck to enshittify his service? And, even more importantly for those of us who care about the people locked into Facebook's walled gardens: what stopped him from enshittifying his services in the "good old days?"

At its root, enshittification is a theory about constraints. Companies pursue profit at all costs, but while you may be tempted to focus on the "at all costs" part of that formulation, you musn't neglect the "profits" part. Companies don't pursue unprofitable actions at all costs – they only pursue the plans that they judge are likely to yield profits.

When companies face real competitors, then some enshittificatory gambits are unprofitable, because they'll drive your users to competing platforms. That's why Zuckerberg bought Instagram: he had been turning the screws on Facebook users, and when Instagram came along, millions of those users decided that they hated Zuck more than they loved their friends and so they swallowed the switching costs and defected to Instagram. In an ill-advised middle-of-the-night memo to his CFO, Zuck defended spending $1b on Instagram on the grounds that it would recapture those Facebook escapees:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/29/21345723/facebook-instagram-documents-emails-mark-zuckerberg-kevin-systrom-hearing

A company that neutralizes, buys or destroys its competitors can treat its users far worse – invade their privacy, cheap out on moderation and anti-spam, etc – without losing their business. That's why Zuck's motto is "it is better to buy than to compete":

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/zuckerberg-its-better-to-buy-than-compete-is-facebook-a-monopoly-42243

Of course, as a leftist, I know better than to count on markets as a reliable source of corporate discipline. Even more important than market discipline is government discipline, in the form of regulation. If Zuckerberg feared fines for privacy violations, or moderation failures, or illegal anticompetitive mergers, or fraudulent advertising systems that rip off publishers and advertisers, or other forms of fraud (like the "pivot to video"), he would treat his users better. But Facebook's rise to power took place during the second half of the neoliberal era, when the last shreds of regulatory muscle that survived the Reagan revolution were being devoured by GW Bush and Obama (and then Trump).

As cartels and monopolies took over our economy, most government regulators were neutered and captured. Public agencies were stripped of their powers or put in harness to attack small companies, customers, and suppliers who got in the way of monopolists' rent-extraction. That meant that as Facebook grew, Zuckerberg had less and less to fear from government enforcers who might punish him for enshittification where the markets failed to do so.

But it's worse than that, because Zuckerberg and other tech monopolists figured out how to harness "IP" law to get the government to shut down third-party technology that might help users resist enshittification. IP law is why you can't make a privacy-protecting ad-blocker for an app (and why companies are so desperate to get you to use their apps rather than the open web, and why apps are so dismally enshittified). IP law is why you can't make an alternative client that blocks algorithmic recommendations. IP law is why you can't leave Facebook for a new service and run a scraper that imports your waiting Facebook messages into a different inbox. IP law is why you can't scrape Facebook to catalog the paid political disinformation the company allows on the platform:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP law's growth has coincided with Facebook's ascendancy – the bigger Facebook got, the more tempting it was to interoperators who might want to plug new code into it to protect Facebook users, and the more powers Facebook had to block even the most modest improvements to its service. That meant that Facebook could enshittify even more, without worrying that it would drive users to take unilateral, permanent action that would deprive it of revenue, like blocking ads. Once ad-blocking is illegal (as it is on apps), there's no reason not to make ads as obnoxious as you want.

Of course, many Facebook employees cared about their users, and for most of the 21st century, those workers were a key asset for Facebook. Tech workers were in short supply until just a couple years ago, when the platforms started round after round of brutal layoffs – 260,000 in 2023, another 150,000+ in 2024. Facebook workers may be furious about Zuckerberg killing content moderation, but he's not worried about them quitting – not with a half-million skilled tech workers out there, hunting for jobs. Fuck 'em. Let 'em quit:

https://www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-meta-right-now-employees-protest-zuckerbergs-anti-lgbtq-changes/

This is what changed: the collapse of market, government, and labor constraints, and IP law's criminalization of disenshittifying, interoperable add-ons. This is why Zuck, an eternal creep, is now letting his creep flag fly so proudly today. Not because he's a worse person, but because he understands that he can hurt his users and workers to benefit his shareholders without facing any consequences. Zuckerberg 2025 isn't the most evil Zuck, he's the most unconstrained Zuck.

Same goes for Twitter. I mean, obviously, there's been a change in management at Twitter – the guy who's enshittifying it today isn't the guy who enshittified it prior to last year. Musk is speedrunning the enshittification curve, and yet Twitter isn't collapsing. Why not? Because Musk is insulated from consequences for fucking up – he's got a huge cushion of wealth, he's got advertisers who are desperate to reach his users, he's got users who can't afford to leave the service, he's got IP law that he can use to block interoperators who might make it easier to migrate to a better service. He was always a greedy, sadistic asshole. Now he's an unconstrained greedy, sadistic asshole. Musk 2025 isn't a worse person than Musk 2020. He's just more free to act on his evil impulses than he was in years gone by.

These are the two factors that make services terrible: captive users, and no constraints. If your users can't leave, and if you face no consequences for making them miserable (not solely their departure to a competitor, but also fines, criminal charges, worker revolts, and guerrilla warfare with interoperators), then you have the means, motive and opportunity to turn your service into a giant pile of shit.

That's why we got Jack Welch and his acolytes when we did. There were always evil fuckers just like them hanging around, but they didn't get to run GM until Ronald Reagan took away the constraints that would have punished them for turning GE into a giant pile of shit. Every economy is forever a-crawl with parasites and monsters like these, but they don't get to burrow into the system and colonize it until policymakers create rips they can pass through.

In other words, the profit motive itself is not sufficient to cause enshittification – not even when a for-profit firm has to answer to VCs who would shut down the company or fire its leadership in the face of unsatisfactory returns. For-profit companies chase profit. The enshittifying changes to Facebook and Twitter are cruel, but the cruelty isn't the point: the point is profits. If the fines – or criminal charges – Facebook faced for invading our privacy exceeded the ad-targeting revenue it makes by doing so, it would stop spying on us. Facebook wouldn't like it. Zuck would hate it. But he'd do it, because he spies on us to make money, not because he's a voyeur.

To stop enshittification, it is not necessary to eliminate the profit motive – it is only necessary to make enshittification unprofitable.

This is not to defend capitalism. I'm not saying there's a "real capitalism" that's good, and a "crony capitalism" or "monopoly capitalism" that's bad. All flavors of capitalism harm working people and seek to shift wealth and power from the public and democratic institutions to private interests. But that doesn't change the fact that there are, indeed, different flavors of capitalism, and they have different winners and losers. Capitalists who want to sell apps on the App Store or reach customers through Facebook are technofeudalism's losers, while Apple, Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech companies are technofeudalism's great winners.

Smart leftism pays attention to these differences, because they represent the potential fault lines in capitalism's coalition. These people all call themselves capitalists, they all give money and support to political movements that seek to crush worker power and human rights – but when the platforms win, the platforms' business customers lose. They are irreconcilably on different sides of a capitalism-v-capitalism fight that is every bit as important to them as the capitalism-v-socialism fight.

I'm saying that it's good praxis to understand these divisions in capitalism, because then we can exploit those differences to make real, material gains for human thriving and worker rights. Lumping all for-profit businesses together as identical and irredeemable is bad tactics.

Legacy social media is at a turning point. Two new systems built on open standards have emerged as a credible threat to the zuckermuskian model: Mastodon (built on Activitypub) and Bluesky (built on Atproto). The former is far more mature, with a huge network of federated servers run by all different kinds of institutions, from hobbyists to corporations, and it's overseen by a nonprofit. The latter has far more users, and is a VC-backed corporate entity, and while it is hypothetically federatable, there are no Bluesky services apart from the main one that you can leave for if Bluesky starts to enshittify.

That means that Bluesky has a ton of captive users, and has the lack of constraint that characterizes the enshittified legacy platforms it has tempted tens of millions of users away from. This is not a good place to be in, because it means that if the current management choose to enshittify Bluesky, they can, and it will be profitable. It also means that the company's VCs understand that they could replace the current management and replace them with willing enshittifiers and make more money.

This is why Bluesky is in a dangerous place: not because it is backed by VCs, not because it is a for-profit entity, but because it has captive users and no constraints. It's a great party in a sealed building with no fire exits:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes

Last week, I endorsed a project called Free Our Feeds, whose goals include hacking some fire exits into Bluesky by force majeure – that is, independently standing up an alternative Bluesky server that people can retreat to if Bluesky management changes, or has a change of heart:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/14/contesting-popularity/#everybody-samba

For some Mastodon users, Free Our Feeds is dead on arrival – why bother trying to make a for-profit project safer for its users when Mastodon is a perfectly good nonprofit alternative? Why waste millions developing a standalone Bluesky server rather than spending that money improving things in the Fediverse.

I believe strongly in improving the Fediverse, and I believe in adding the long-overdue federation to Bluesky. That's because my goal isn't the success of the Fediverse – it's the defeat of enshtitification. My answer to "why spend money fixing Bluesky?" is "why leave 20 million people at risk of enshittification when we could not only make them safe, but also create the toolchain to allow many, many organizations to operate a whole federation of Bluesky servers?" If you care about a better internet – and not just the Fediverse – then you should share this goal, too.

Many of the Fediverse's servers are operated by for-profit entities, after all. One of the Fediverse's largest servers (Threads) is owned by Meta. Threads users who feel the bite of Zuckerberg's decision to encourage homophobic, xenophobic and transphobic hate speech will find it easy to escape from Threads: they can set up on any Fediverse server that is federated with Threads and they'll be able to maintain their connections with everyone who stays behind.

The existence of for-profit servers in the Fediverse does not ruin the Fediverse (though I wouldn't personally use one of them). The fact that multiple neo-Nazi groups run their own Mastodon servers does not ruin the Fediverse (though I certainly won't use their servers). Not even the fact that Donald Trump's Truth Social is a Mastodon server does anything to ruin the Fediverse (not using that one, either).

This is the strength of federated, federatable social media – it disciplines enshittifiers by lowering switching costs, and if enshittifiers persist, it makes it easy for users to escape unshitted, because they don't have to solve the collective action problem. Any user can go to any server at any time and stay in touch with everyone else.

Mastodon was born free: free code, with free federation as a priority. Bluesky was not: it was born within a for-profit public benefit corporation whose charter offers some defenses against enshittification, but lacks the most decisive one: the federation that would let users escape should escape become necessary.

The fact that Mastodon was born free is quite unusual in the annals of the fight for a free internet. Most of the internet was born proprietary and had freedom foisted upon it. Unix was born within Bell Labs, property of the convicted monopolist AT&T. The GNU/Linux project set it free.

SMB was born proprietary within corporate walls of Microsoft, another corporate monopolist. SAMBA set it free.

The Office file formats were also born proprietary within Microsoft's walled garden: they were set free by hacker-activists who fought through a thick bureaucratic morass and Microsoft fuckery (including literally refusing to allow chairs to be set for advocates for Open Document Format) to give us formats that underlie everything from LibreOffice to Google Docs, Office365 to your web browser.

There is nothing unusual, in other words, about hacking freedom into something that is proprietary or just insufficiently free. That's totally normal. It's how we got almost everything great about computers.

Mastodon's progenitors should be praised for ensuring their creation was born free – but the fact that Bluesky isn't free enough is no reason to turn our back on it. Our response to anything that locks in the people we care about must be to shatter those locks, not abandon the people bound by the locks because they didn't heed to our warnings.

Audre Lorde is far smarter than me, but when she wrote that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," she was wrong. There is no toolset better suited to conduct an orderly dismantling of a structure than the tools that built it. You can be sure it'll have all the right screwdriver bits, wrenches, hexkeys and sockets.

Bluesky is fine. It has features I significantly prefer to Mastodon's equivalent. Composable moderation is amazing, both a technical triumph and a triumph of human-centered design:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation

I hope Mastodon adopts those features. If someone starts a project to copy all of Bluesky's best features over to Mastodon, I'll put my name to the crowdfunding campaign in a second.

But Mastodon has one feature that Bluesky sorely lacks – the federation that imposes antienshittificatory discipline on companies and offers an enshittification fire-exit for users if the discipline fails. It's long past time that someone copied that feature over to Bluesky.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis

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dailyadventureprompts · 7 days ago

Text

Hearthfire Health and Resting Overhaul

Artsource

TLDR: You can solve nearly all problems with D&D's powercurve (and a lot of other problems beside) by limiting the overall hitpoints your party gets, basing it off profficency bonus rather than character level.

If you’ve played anywhere close to as much d&d as I have, you’ll notice the game tends to play best at levels 3-8. Lower than that feels like being trapped in the tutorial, with players denied the majority of their interesting character options and the DM having to use kid gloves or else risking a party wipe. High level play invariably breaks down as player abilities trivialize most encounters, forcing the DM to reach deeper and deeper into the monster roster to provide adequate challenge, making more work for themselves in the process. There’s a definite sweetspot, and like anyone with a head for game design I want to widen that sweetspot to encompass as much of the game as possible.

As is typical of someone who’s into game design; I’ve bit off more than I can chew, deciding to build several interlocking rules changes/subsystems that I think will help me make the game function more like I want it to. This isn’t going to be for everyone, but if you’re feeling the need for a rules lite overhaul to rebalance how you plan encounters/ the rigours of adventure, this might be for you.

Here’s the overhaul in short form:

Character HP is determined as (Max Class HD + Con modifier) X proficiency bonus. This means they keep the same Max HP throughout the tier (1-4, 5-8 etc)

This means that low CR enemies stay relevant for far longer, making encounter building more reasonable. Likewise this prevents mid/high CR enemies from being trivialized. It allows you as the DM deploy mundane threats ( a steep drop, a detachment of city guards, the threat of a building catching fire) as legitimate challenges well into the later chapters of the campaign.

Temporary HP can be gained from using improved provision consumables (including those harvested from monsters), or by resting at inns and better establishments in town. A hardy, homecooked meal gives the party the strength they need to take on greater challenges, far more than a diet of salt pork & hardtack. In rare cases permanent HP boosting items can be sought as treasure.

Long resting in the wilderness is more difficult, requiring the party to find a safe campsite and spend provisions. Making sure they don't burn through these finite resources before encountering the real challenge makes for a great resource management challenge to go along with exploration based gameplay, acting as an informal ticking clock.

First, A small Testimonial: I've now tried this system with four different groups, and while there's still some bugs to work out I can say it feels a lot closer to my ideal form of d&d than the baseline rules. Planning combats is SO EASY, and I can actually scare my players with big monsters again. I've dropped the weird XP calculation and I can now use the group's level as a budget for medium-challenge combat encounters. Lower HP totals on both sides keep fights fast and punchy, which means I can fit more of them into a session, getting more progress through a gauntlet of challenges. While considering implmenting this system, I also encourage you to take a look at some of my combat hacks, which help to supplement fights the same way this system is meant to supplement exploration.

PROVISIONS: In order to get the benefits of a long rest while travelling you need 1) A place to set up camp that's not exposed to the elements 2) To spend a use of your provisions

Rather than beancounting individual servings per person, provisions are tracked through "The provision die", an abstract representation of what your party has left to eat that ranges from a d4 to a d20. This works off a depletion die system, meaning that every time provisions are used (generally once per night) you roll the die, and if it's a 1 or 2 it shrinks a size category. If it shrinks while it's a d4 the party is officially out of supplies and starts taking levels of exhaustion.

The base price or provisions is 5gp for a d4 depletion die, larger sizes of die may be bought based off the linked chart.

Alternatively, provisions (of an enhanced rarity even) may be salvaged from a monster, dungeon meshi style.

Without the extra carrying capacity from a bag of holding or wagon, the party's provision die is limited to a D6. Going offroad is tough, requiring characters to live off the land.

Living off the land generally requires a survival check with a DC based on how verdant the area is. Failure can mean a lack of finding anything suitable, or a delay in trying to acquire necessary provisions.

Features that can keep people fed like the outlander background or goodberry spell prevent the exhaustion buildup but still do not allow a long rest.

If ever the party is traveling for a week or more between settlements, their provision die drops by one size, regardless of how many times in the week they've rolled.

A party can buy better rations (consumable) or improve their camp gear (permanant) in order to gain temporary hitpoints when they consume provisions. A common upgrade will get you 2 class HD in temporary hitpoints, an uncommon will get you 4, a rare upgrade will get you 6. Enchanted camp gear (such as high quality tents, enchanted cookwear, rare spices) may also grant other bonuses when provisions are consumed, such as resistance to weather effects, bonuses to saves against fear, or even inspiration.

HAVENS: If the party is sticking in one place for a while it's likely that they'll be doing so in a Haven such as a tavern, outpost, or perhaps even their own bastion. Havens are rated on the same rarity system as camp upgrades and provisions are, which determines their overall level of quality and the amount of temporary HP they bestow per night.

As a guideline, if the party has to pay to stay in a haven, it costs 1sp per person per night for common accommodations, with the associated rarity price jump: (5 silver for uncommon, 5 gold for rare). Many inns have varying levels of accomidation, so some party members might chose to spring for greater amounts.

#homebrew #survival #resting #hearthfire #dnd #d&d #d&d homebrew #dnd homebrew #mechanic #homebrew mechanic #exploration

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