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sundrop-writes · 11 months

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Damn The Man, Save The Empire

(Dark)Dom!Vanessa Shelly x Sub!GN!Reader

Heaven is a place we can't afford.

Summary:

Vanessa has always taken care of you.

Since the two of you were kids, she has put her neck on the line for you, and you rarely knew how to return that epic kindness. One night, while both of you are raw and on-edge, the dark cloud of your strange past looming over both of you nearly swallows both of you whole - and once again, Vanessa is right there, taking care of you.

(Dark)Dom!Vanessa Shelly x Sub!Gender Neutral Reader. Toxic Co-Dependent Relationship. Smut and Angst. Takes place before the main timeline of the film (features spoilers for the movie).

Word Count: 6,100

Horror Characters Masterlist | AO3 Link

Full list of warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: This fic contains major spoilers for the film (even though it takes place before the main bulk of the film) - if you haven’t seen the movie yet and you want to watch it spoiler-free, be cautious; general toxic relationship - the two main characters have a very toxic relationship; there is a power imbalance in the relationship due to one of the characters being a police officer; both of the main characters have a lot of childhood trauma and they show it in their actions; there is underlying dom/sub dynamics - the reader is submissive and Vanessa is dominant; somewhat dubious consent - the whole interaction starts out as an argument rather than something explicitly sexual, but the reader still enjoys it the whole time (one of those safe, consensual, but not ‘sane’ situations). The reader’s gender is completely ambiguous - the only pronouns used for the reader are you/yours, and the reader’s genitals are described in a way that could be interpreted as the character being amab or afab, no specific gendered terms are used; mentions of the reader having sex with someone who is not Vanessa (a random unnamed man); mentions of the reader having sex in the back of someone’s car and being caught by a police officer who is not Vanessa (and then being passed off to Vanessa); dark!Vanessa, jealous!Vanessa, possessive!Vanessa (she hates that the reader had sex with someone else earlier that night).

The reader and Vanessa have been friends since childhood; mention of the reader drinking/ingesting alcohol - not enough to impair consent or impair the general senses; the reader calls Vanessa ‘Ness’ or ‘Nessa’ as a nickname; technically, Vanessa does ‘arrest’ the reader (she doesn’t bring the reader into a police station or file any official paperwork); Vanessa puts the reader in handcuffs in a non-sexual way, and later those handcuffs are used for sexual bondage; use of Y/N (and L/N, meaning Last Name); mention of the reader character stealing and doing other petty crimes; mentions of Vanessa’s childhood trauma - her father murdering children and forcing her to help cover it up (implications that she also participated in the killings in some way); the reader witnessed one of the killings as a child and has also kept it a secret; somewhat graphic descriptions of murder/a child being killed.

Some manhandling but nothing that would insist that Vanessa has inhuman strength; hair-pulling - kind of in a sexy way, kind of in a violent way; Vanessa literally steps on the reader (again, kind of violent, kind of sexy) - some breath restriction due to being stepped on; general pain kink; the characters in this fic have a poor attitude toward casual hook-ups; there is a hand on the neck but no purposeful choking (very little restriction of breath); nipple play - Vanessa painfully tugs the reader’s nipple; something like subspace is described, but the word ‘subspace’ isn’t specifically used; slight inspection kink; spanking - on the reader’s thighs and on the reader’s genitals; Vanessa calls the reader ‘brat’; a lot of this could be seen as brat-taming/brat tamer!Vanessa; Vanessa uses her hand on the reader - because the reader’s genitals are not described, this could be interpreted as a handjob or fingering (but there are no mentions of penetration); Vanessa fucks herself against the reader’s thigh; Vanessa edges the reader (once); asking permission to orgasm; biting/marking kink; I believe that's finally everything.

A/N: This fic is named after a Pierce The Veil song of the same name. I definitely recommend listening to the song, because the lyrics fit with this fic so so well. A very large part of her characterization in this is informed by the 'if you bring Abby back here again, I will shoot you' moment from the movie - rage fuelled by compassion and love and protectiveness for another person. I really love that part and I think it's such an interesting aspect to her character. Also, I put a lot of thought into making this completely gender neutral, making sure the reader could be interpreted as amab or afab, so I hope that everyone enjoys it! Also - I know that it might be weird for Vanessa's nickname in this fic to be 'Ness' because that's the name of Matpat's diner character (named after a character in one of his theories??) but I think it's a cute nickname, and if I actually knew her, that's what I would call her. So I am going off the idea that neither of the characters in this fic know Ness the diner waiter, and the reader has just always called Vanessa 'Ness'. So - yeah.

...

“Get in the car.” Vanessa barked - the pure anger and annoyance in her voice echoed through the night.

You hated that it brought you a certain kind of warped joy.

She put a hand flat on your back, between your shoulder blades, and roughly shoved you toward the back bumper of her police cruiser.

You purposefully walked slower, just to mock her, and she let out a harsh sigh. You bit your lip to hold back a grin. At this point in your lives, this was just the nature of your relationship with your best friend. You didn’t just get under her skin, you lived there.

“God, I can’t believe you!” She shouted. “Public indecency? You’ve gotten in shit for some pretty stupid things, but having sex in the back of some random asshole’s car-?!”

“The back of someone’s car should not be considered ‘public’!” You argued, laughter edging on your voice.

It was difficult to take things seriously when you knew that the consequences wouldn’t be too severe. Vanessa always swooped in to save you. She would just bring you home, scold you a bit. But she wouldn’t do anything that would leave a lasting mark.

“Did you even know the guy you were fucking? Did you even use a fucking condom?” She screeched at you.

Did you know the guy? Sort of. Did you use a condom? Yes, you did.

But you were in the mood to annoy Vanessa even more.

You shrugged. “Why does it matter? Your stupid cop friend interrupted us before we could even finish, so-”

“Ugh, get in the car!”

She was lucky that Officer Lamontange had been on duty, and he owed her a favor. Anybody else would have slapped a pair of cuffs on you and hauled you to the station without a second thought. You’d be in processing by now, and you’d be in jail for the next few weeks before they could even get you a public defender.

But that was you and Vanessa. You fucked up, she stuck her neck out for you. This was probably going to be one time too many. This was going to be the one that got her fired. She had already been warned about letting you off, performing ‘special favors’.

“Get in the car!” You repeated back, mocking her voice in a silly way before you let out a chuckling howl.

So what? You liked to party. So what? Those parties got a little out of control.

It’s not your fault some uptight suburban yuppies called the cops on you for having fun. You didn’t even know that having an ‘open container’ of booze and having sex in the back of someone’s car was illegal anyway. Live and learn.

“God, how much have you had to drink?” Vanessa gritted through her teeth, low and full of breath, the way she always did when she was angry.

It was something that made your stomach twist and made you far dizzier than the alcohol did. You weren’t sure if it was from lust - from your underlying attraction toward her, or if it was from fear. Perhaps a bit of both.

“Let me smell your breath.” She demanded.

Truthfully, you hadn’t had that much to drink. One or two sips from a bottle, enough to get you a bit buzzed. You had been planning on having more later. But you were in a nagging mood, and didn’t want to give into her so easily.

“Ness, I’m not a fucking teenager-” You argued, still facing away from her as you trudged toward the car with lazy steps.

She put a hand on your elbow and whipped you around with a surprising strength, forcing you to face her. She was tight in your personal space before you could blink, and instinctively, you clamped your mouth closed and held your breath - though you knew that the smell of Jack Daniels would be apparent coming off your nose and lips whether you breathed on her or not.

“You’re not a teenager anymore, but you’re sure as fuck acting like one.” She said harshly.

You finally released your breath, giving another laugh and a shrug.

“At least I know how to have fun.” You argued, entirely careless about the situation.

You expected that you would get into the front seat of the car and she would drive you home. She’d probably make you drink some water before tucking you into bed, and you would fall asleep to her giving you a long lecture about responsibility. She would come by in the morning with coffee and bagels (despite the stereotypes about cops, Vanessa was not much of a donut person).

But instead of partaking in this predictable routine, Vanessa surprised you with her next move.

She put a hand in the middle of your back and shoved you toward the car again. This time you were closer - your stomach landed against the back bumper, and you let out a small grunt as you collided with it. You turned your head over your shoulder to question her, but before you could get any words out, she pulled one of your forearms to the middle of your back and you felt cold steel on your wrist.

“Y/N L/N, you’re under arrest for Public Intoxication and Public Indecency,” She announced, her voice deadly calm, and stern.

“Ness, you’re seriously arresting me?” You asked, insult and scorn running through your voice.

Her answer came in the form of her bringing your other wrist to the middle of your back - she joined it into the cuffs with the harsh, echoing grind of metal as the cuffs slid into place.

“You have the right to remain silent-” She said, continuing to go about the routine in a very unfeeling tone.

“You have the right to fuck off.” You bit back bitterly.

“Anything you say can and will be used against you-”

“Is that everything I’ve ever told you from when we were kids, or is that just starting now?” You asked, feeling spite rise up in you.

“Will you ever learn to shut up?” She replied with a sarcastic, spiteful question of her own, and grabbed you to bring you around to the back door of the car.

You heaved out a sigh as she opened the door. As she put a hand on the top of your head and tried to push you into the car, you resisted further.

“Ness, seriously?” You said, hoping one last push against her would get her to take off the cuffs.

“Just get in the car.” She repeated again, her voice entirely stern.

You sagged, and let yourself become pliant to her motions as she guided you into the backseat.

It wasn’t the first time you had been in the back of her police car. But it was always under other circumstances. If something else was occupying the front seat, like a large tool box or her gym bag, then she would make you sit in the back. Sometimes, if you were too drunk to sit up and she was afraid you would puke on her, then she would make you sit in the back. You found it to be a decent place to fall asleep.

However, this was the first time you had been in the backseat in handcuffs.

This was the first time she had officially arrested you.

You found it uncomfortable to sit with your wrists behind your back, but you knew that was currently the least of your problems. Vanessa leaned in, reaching for the seatbelt, ready to strap you in, fiddling with it for a moment before she grunted with frustration.

“The seatbelt back here is still broken.” She said through gritted teeth as she moved to stand at her full height outside the car. “Because someone insisted on-”

“Oh, shut up.” You barked back. “Where else was I supposed to strap in Sir Bearrington?”

A few weeks ago she had picked you up from a carnival.

You had been detained by security there for stealing a large lock box of money from one of the vendors - it had been out in the open, too tempting. When you had taken it with no real plan and simply started running, you had eventually been caught by the security staff on the grounds.

And when you had been locked up in the office, you had called Vanessa - and she had arrived to bail you out without question. Earlier in the night, you had won an oversized teddy bear and refused to give it up even when Vanessa insisted that it was stupid.

Apparently your insistence to try and strap the bear into her back seat, the ensuing argument the two of you had over it, grabbing the seatbelt and tugging at it - had broken the seatbelt. You hadn’t been paying much attention at the time.

“You’re not cute.” Vanessa mumbled, clearly disgruntled by the whole thing.

She slammed the back door closed, leaving you unrestrained in the back of the car, fully prone to be injured in a car accident. Though, you supposed she didn’t care about that with how angry she was at you right now.

She walked around to the front seat and got in, leaving the two of you in a sullen silence as she started the car and drove away. She didn’t even bother putting on the radio to buffer that silence, and you hated how much it made you feel like a child sitting in the principal’s office.

You stared at the back of her head through the metal mesh of the cage separating the front and the back - something that supposedly kept her safe from the dangerous criminal that you were. You felt a deep bitter ache form inside of you as all of it truly set in. With the handcuffs biting into your wrists and your fingers beginning to tingle with numbness, it truly hit you.

Vanessa wasn’t going to protect you anymore.

“You’re seriously bringing me in?” You choked out, not intending for the hurt to come through in your voice as much as it did.

“Yes.” Vanessa replied. “You did something wrong. You deserve to see justice.”

“Justice?” You scoffed, shaking your head. “You sure have a funny sense of that.”

“How so?” Vanessa asked, her voice entirely timid.

She kept her eyes straight ahead, not daring to catch a glimpse of your disappointed face in the rearview mirror. She had a feeling that she knew what you were going to say, and she wasn’t going to like it.

“If you had any sense of justice, you wouldn’t have begged me not to rat out your father all those years ago.” You said, your voice choked off by emotion. “I would have told everyone what I saw, and he’d be in jail. You would have gone into foster care with some other family, and you’d be miles and miles away from this shithole town. And… I’d probably be in the psych ward. Making paper crafts with some nice woman named Martha.”

“Please don’t talk about my father.” Vanessa gritted out - it was a very tender spot for her, which was something that you already knew.

The day you met Vanessa was one of the worst days of your life.

It started out as a day that was entirely unassuming, at best. You had divorced parents, and when your father got you on weekends, he didn’t like to try too hard. He was the type of dad who turned on the TV and fell asleep, left you to your own devices. You liked it that way.

That weekend, he had brought you out. Freddy Fazbear’s was a place kids could have fun, and their parents could sit back and forget about them. You liked it there - just like any other kid would. You ran around, played arcade games, ate pizza. You gawked at the animatronic band and danced to their songs.

At one point, you ran into a shy little blond girl and she introduced herself to you as Vanessa. She told you that sometimes being at Freddy’s got boring for her because her father worked there and she was there all the time. She showed you all the best arcade games, and a hack to get a free play (unplugging them and plugging them back in, which reset them to ‘demo mode’). She even snuck behind the prize counter and got you a decoder ring that you had been admiring, but didn’t have enough tickets for.

The two of you had the best afternoon together. And you hated it when your father shouted your name and told you that you were going home. So you told him that you needed a spare minute to say goodbye to your new friend Vanessa. And then, innocently enough - you sought her out.

This search for her mistakenly led you into one of the back rooms.

The horrors you saw could barely be described. A Yellow Rabbit mascot missing its head. A twisted, laughing face covered in blood. A horrifically large knife plunging into a small body. Bright red, thick blood. Guts, flesh. Carnage.

Vanessa found you just as her father spotted you out of the corner of his eye. He came at you with the bloody knife at the ready. That crazed expression on his face was the most unforgettable thing about him. Whenever you closed your eyes and thought back to that day - the expression on his face was the thing that you remembered most.

Vanessa threw herself in front of you and begged for your life. The discussion between them that followed was a blur in your mind as your heart thumped hard between your ears. Something about ‘witnesses’ and ‘loose ends’. All you knew for certain was that Vanessa had saved your life.

At one point, using his large, yellow mascot hand, he thrust a knife toward her, forcing it into her small fist - and he told her that it was time for her to start ‘pulling her weight’. Vanessa took you by the wrist and took you to another room.

But you never felt afraid with her, not for a moment.

She made you swear not to tell anyone what you had seen, and you did. And because she just didn’t have it in her to take a life, especially not yours - she let you live.

It was too weekends later when your father brought you back to Freddy’s.

You were excited to see Vanessa. Her father was not excited to see you. When he pulled you into one of the back rooms and berated Vanessa about why you were still ‘around’ - you finally found your courage, and told him that you ‘wouldn’t tell’. The smile he gave you was almost as horrifying as the killing had been. He patted you on the head, and said that he liked loyalty ‘in his friends’.

The Bonnie plushie that he gave you - a kind of reward for your silence, felt tainted. You threw it away at the closest opportunity, but you kept the decoder ring. You still had it in your jewelry box, even to this day.

Strangely enough, that wasn’t the last time you saw Vanessa. The two of you spent more and more time together, quickly becoming best friends. You were two lost children in the world, two warped branches of a tree growing to lean on each other, desperate to find the sun. You were the only person who knew all of her dark secrets and didn’t care. You were the only person around her who wasn’t dead, or didn’t fear the rumors about her after Freddy’s shut down - even after she started going by her mother’s maiden name, desperate to escape the dark shadow her father had created over her life.

Being around Vanessa, spending more time with her - it meant that you did see her father in passing. Every time you did, it felt like seeing a ghost. It did feel like the man with the knife and the crazed expression on his face was a completely different person from the man with the thick glasses who sat across from you at the dinner table, offering you more peas and asking about how your classes were going.

Vanessa was always the same person. She was always stubborn. She was always a champion for the innocent. She was always someone who needed intense control over every aspect of her life. You thought she would have been destined to become a social worker - but you guessed that she had seen too many broken, dead kids for a lifetime. And she liked the security of having a gun on her belt. So that’s why she became a cop.

You became a highschool drop-out, part-time drunk, petty criminal, sex degenerate, and general failure.

It was a real case study of the two roads that trauma corrupted people can take. If anybody were ever willing to take a closer look.

Vanessa fuelled her anxiety and anger into going forward, charging ahead without thinking, and your anxiety and nightmares caused you to fall more and more backward by the minute.

“How is dear old daddy, by the way?” You asked, picking at the raw nerve out of spite. “Has he missed me at family dinners?”

“Shut up!” Vanessa barked. Then after a heavy moment, she let out another quiet, mousy sentence. “I haven’t seen him in years. You know that.”

“Oh, but your bank account says otherwise.” You replied, a cocky tone breaching through. “The new apartment is so nice. I know you’re not bankrolling all that on a cop’s salary. What kind of dirty work does he have you doing these days?”

Vanessa’s silence was painfully knowledgeable.

He had sucked her back in somehow.

“I knew that you always had a soft spot for him.” You sighed. “You probably wish he had gotten rid of me all those years ago, huh?” You mumbled quietly. “It’s not like you ever actually cared about me.”

Of course, you were feeling hurt by her putting you in handcuffs, threatening to turn you in, something that felt like the ultimate betrayal - so the words slipped out.

You were shocked when Vanessa slammed on the breaks and the car came to a screeching halt. It was lucky that you were on a desolate backroad with nobody else to rear-end you at the sudden stop. If not for your instincts (even while slightly inebriated) to put your foot against the cage, keeping yourself from smacking forward, then you likely would have had the harsh shape of that mesh imprinted on your cheek.

“I never cared about you?” Vanessa asked, her voice filled with an intense, dark rage.

You caught her eye in the rearview mirror, and save for the tears dancing on her waterline - she had a look almost identical to that same crazed look her father had worn all those years ago. You almost would have mocked her for it if you didn’t feel your stomach clenching up with fear.

You had to remind yourself that this was your Vanessa. This wasn’t him.

“I never cared about you?” She repeated, so utterly insulted by what you had said that she could feel her reality tearing apart. She almost could believe that you had said it.

“Vanessa-” You choked out, calling her by her full name for the first time in so long.

Before you could beg for mercy or apologize, she abruptly cut you off.

“No.” She said. “Shut up.”

The pure force of her voice sent chills through you, and this time you couldn’t help but to comply.

You sat in a dizzying silence as she slammed on the gas pedal again, and the car went speeding off. She seemed very determined with where she was going. After a minute or two, where you were becoming increasingly light-headed from your worry, Vanessa whipped the cruiser into an empty lot - a random patch of old pavement that looked like it was on the back end of a place used to keep scrap cars.

It was dark and secluded. Nobody would find you here.

She turned off the car and got out, and the back door was open before you could blink.

“Vanes-”

You tried to speak to her again, but she reached into the back and grabbed you harshly. One hand tight in your hair, fierce, like a catty teenage fight, and the other on the collar of your crappy old band shirt. She tore your body out of the car (once again, her strength amazed you), stretching out the neck of your shirt in the process. You pattered along with your feet, struggling to keep up and whining in pain as she tugged harshly on your roots, likely pulling hair out in some places.

You would deny that you liked the pain, especially when it was inflicted onto you by her.

She tossed you onto the ground and the roughness of the pavement bit into your skin. You let out a sharp groan as you felt some of the skin on your elbow being scraped away.

“Ness-”

Before you could speak, she put a hefty boot on your hip and turned you over, turning you over onto your back. She then pushed that boot into the middle of your stomach, forcing all the air out of you. With the force pushing down on you, your arms became numb as your hands got pushed into the pavement, the metal of the cuffs biting into your wrists even more now.

You looked up the length of her body at her, admiring her like a monument in the darkness. Oddly enough, equal parts fear and lust tingled through you as you had nothing but her in your view. Your mind became hazy from the grounding weight of her boot pushing down against the middle of your body. She was a goddess - piercing blue eyes, glassy and crazed, and the swell of her breasts, tightly pressed against her blue uniform shirt, the slight of her shoulders just barely blocking out the inky blue of the night sky as she towered over you.

You knew that she could have killed you. She could have easily shot you and left your body there, and nobody would have cared about a petty criminal fuck-up like you turning up dead.

But in that moment, you weren’t afraid. You never had to be afraid with her.

“Vanessa-”

“Shut. Up.” She ground out, the words harsh through her teeth.

She pressed her foot down slightly, causing you to moan out in pain.

“Do not, for a moment, even begin to judge-” She almost choked on the words, grinding like harsh knives against her throat. “Do not begin to perceive how much I do or do not care about you.” She said, the words harsh and venomous in the cool air. “If I didn’t care about you, you would fucking know it.”

You knew there was more to it, more waiting on her tongue. Words she couldn’t say.

‘If I didn’t care about you, you wouldn’t be here right now.’

You were lucky to have her. You knew that.

“I’m sorry.” You croaked out, finding it hard to breathe around the boot pressing into your diaphragm.

Once again, this reminded you of her power over you - the way she towered over you like a proud monument. You hated the fact that even as you struggled for air, you felt a demanding need growing between your thighs.

It certainly didn’t help that you hadn’t been able to cum earlier. Like you had said, you had been interrupted before you and your ‘friend’ (acquaintance, a random guy you kind of knew) could finish up. And although you hadn’t been expecting that to be a very satisfying sexual encounter, you were hoping for it to be distracting and take the edge off of your general horniness, at the very least.

Now you were here - unintentionally edged and hornier than ever.

“Yeah, I’ll show you sorry.” Vanessa muttered, that anger still ripe on her breath.

You thought maybe she would hit you.

It wouldn’t be the first time that the two of you had gotten into a physical fight, volatile and wonderful as your relationship was. You did think it was unfair that this time you were so unmatched, with your hands cuffed behind your back. But she surprised you when, instead of punching you, she took her foot off your stomach completely. And then she came down to straddle you, sitting on that same sore spot above your waistband where her foot had just been.

Oh, so it was that kind of sorry.

This wouldn’t be the first time you and Vanessa had sex either. Frankly, you should have been expecting this.

A lot of your arguments with Vanessa ended in fistfighting - or fucking. Sometimes a combination of both.

She glared down the length of her body at you and you were aggravated. She wasn’t sitting low enough on your waist for you to grind yourself against her, to get any good friction where you needed it most. You whined with torment and pain as more pressure, the whole weight of her body and yours was put on your cuffed wrists and they were pushed into the ground.

Your wrists were going to be so fucked - but you tried to make that a problem for your later self.

You squirmed helplessly, trying to get more comfortable. Vanessa put a stop to your movements with a hand around your neck, shoving your head backwards into the pavement. You instantly stilled against the tightness of her fingers, especially as she pressed into the tender point at the side of your jaw with her thumb.

She didn’t apply any intense pressure - as long as you sat with your head back and stayed still, she only used the touch to make you pliant and trap you there.

She put her other hand above your head and leaned down slightly, creating a looming shadow over you as she spoke.

“Do not ever accuse me of not caring about you.” She said, her voice still painted dark with anger. “Do you think that random guy you were fucking cared about you?”

You knew the question was a trap.

“No.” You said, your voice the timid one now.

“Do you think he would give a shit if you live or die?” She asked, moving her free hand to skim her knuckles across the side of your cheek - a touch so gentle that it made you shiver. “Do you think he would give his life for yours?”

“No.” You whimpered in return, feeling that aching need between your thighs growing more hot and prominent.

“Do you think he would even give a fuck if he made you cum or not?”

With these words, she reached down suddenly and - with picture perfect aim, grabbed your nipple through your shirt, giving it a harsh twist. The pain shot through you, causing you to arch up against the hold she had on your neck. This made you lightheaded, but you knew better than to keep her waiting for an answer.

“No!” You whined out breathlessly. “No, he wouldn’t care!”

“Exactly.” She growled out. “I care. I’m the only one who cares about you in this godforsaken world.”

She was probably right.

You sucked in a breath, desperate to fill your lungs when she let you go.

You looked on with intrigue as she descended down your body. While sitting on your knees, keeping you pinned to the ground, she opened the button and zipper of your jeans. She dug her fingers into the waistband and yanked them down.

It was a bit of a struggle with you acting as deadweight against her, becoming more dizzy as heat swelled between your legs and made you dumb between the ears. She managed to get your pants down to your midthigh before she left the fabric there. This left your bare ass scraping against the roughness of the pavement, left all of you exposed to the cool night air - open, waiting for her.

You clenched your thighs tight together, waiting with nervous impatience as she looked down at you. Her jaw was tight, tern; her blue eyes glistening with rage and betrayal.

“Did he cum inside of you?” She growled.

All at once, she lifted her weight off your legs, sitting up onto her knees. She hovered above you as she put her hands on your inner thighs and ripped your legs apart - as far as they would go with the waistband of your jeans holding you in place.

“Ness!” You protested quietly, knowing it was in vain.

You felt open and exposed to her as she blatantly inspected you - her fingers dug in, holding tight against your squirming attempts to close your legs once again. She knew that even past your embarrassment, you were turned on by this. Blatant evidence of that came before her eyes as a bit of wetness pathetically leaked out of you, glistening in the low light for her to see, smearing across your skin as you struggled against her.

“Stay still!” She snapped, giving a harsh smack to your inner thigh that resonated through the air, chasing air out of your lungs. You thrashed from the pain for a moment before going still upon instinct, knowing that your hole was now visibly clenching around nothing, waiting for her. “So misbehaved. Such a brat. It’s like you don’t even want me to fuck you at all.”

She sat herself on top of you once again, sitting on your thighs right where your jeans were, causing the denim to cut into your skin as she weighed on it. She specifically barred your thighs open against the ground, and you made no protest as she placed a hand between your thighs and began touching you. She worked in slow, teasing strokes that made the muscles of your thighs quiver and made a moan get caught in the back of your throat.

“Look at me.” She ordered - you hadn’t even realized that your head was tilting back, your body so loyal to her that the pleasure of such a simple touch from her already overwhelmed you. “Y/N. Look at me.”

She put her free hand on your neck again, slowing down the hand that was between your thighs until she was just barely teasing her fingertips against you. She used two fingers on your jaw to force your eyes toward her, and then she put that hold back on your neck - not yet putting any pressure, but making her presence well known to you.

You were powerless against her, perfect below her - and you knew that’s where you belonged.

“Who’s in charge?” She demanded, her voice low, scraping against her throat in a way that made goosebumps form all over your skin.

She was still touching you in that slow, barely there way. You swallowed down a whimper and resisted the urge to buck your hips up into her, knowing that it would only get you spanked in a very sensitive place.

“You are.” You said, your voice cradling around the words in a very pathetic, fucked-out kind of way.

“And who takes care of you?” She asked, ever present to remind you of this.

“You do.” You told her.

“Good.” She growled.

Then she sped up her hand, her movements almost vengeful as she worked between your legs, touching you in a way that she distinctly knew would make you fall apart.

“Ness!” You shouted, not even slightly mindful to keep quiet. If you were even slightly present mentally, you would have remembered that’s why she chose this location. She liked to hear you scream. “Oh fuck me!”

“That’s the plan.” She chuckled.

She worked you hard and fast, made you breathless. Your mouth gaped like a fish on land as you desperately tried to steal air into your lungs, ever mindful of the hold she had on your neck - a presence, not a hold, not yet.

Just when your thighs were quivering and you were on the brink of orgasm, she pulled back. Before you could curse on her, she hauled her touch back from you completely and delivered a harsh, sharp spank to the most sensitive part of you.

“Fuck!” You screamed. “Fuck you, Vanessa, I’ve been good!” You quickly argued, anger surging through you.

You didn’t even hesitate before you gathered spit in your mouth and launched at her savagely, bitterly angry with her as the pain stung through you. You would never admit that in this state, it mixed with the pleasure in a deliriously confusing way, and might have brought you to orgasm if she had done it again too quickly.

The glob of your spit landed on her shirt, making a small spot, and she glared down at it for a moment. She didn’t seem to pay it much mind.

“No, you haven’t been.” She told you, her voice stern. “You need to remember how to be good.”

She landed another spank between your legs, and as your almost-there orgasm faded from your stomach, this one stung a lot more.

“Fuck!” You cursed again.

“Now ask me nicely.” She demanded. “I won’t take care of some brat who doesn’t appreciate it. I’ll take care of someone who asks me nicely, and says thank you.”

You were too far gone to argue against her.

“Please.” You begged, tilting your head up to look at her.

She was still so well composed, not a single hair out of place - the only evidence of sex on her being the stain you had left on her shirt and a tinge of pink coming across her cheeks from the obvious heat you were drawing out of her.

“Please, Nessa. Please, I need it.” You begged, your voice breathy and fucked out. “I need you.”

Those were the magic words.

She put her hand back on you - gently, this time, and began steadily working you.

“Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you!” You sighed.

You were now making a slightly sloppy sound with your own wetness as her hand moved - she pushed a steady stream of moans out of you as she worked up the rhythm. It wasn’t long before you noticed her weight shift, and felt her rubbing herself against your thigh. You loved the impressive heat coming off her cunt, even through her pants it was apparent. From the way she moved her hips with intense urgency, she needed this too.

You felt yourself getting close again, that deadly heat curling in your gut. You knew what needed to happen, and you weren’t going to make the same mistake again.

“Please!” You begged, breathless. “Please, Ness, let me cum!”

“Why should I?” She growled, working her hand even faster now, vengeful as she pumped her wrist and canted her hips against your thigh.

“Cause - cause you’re the only one who cares about me!” You replied. “Please!”

It seemed that this was enough to satisfy her.

“Cum for me.” She growled out.

You couldn’t bring yourself to disobey.

She worked you through it - part skill, part knowing from exploring your body so many times before, from being the only person who knew you like this. She moved her hand from your neck and leaned down to sink her teeth into the skin there. The feeling of her canines digging into you while you arched up as the orgasm rocked your body only made everything more dizzying.

The sharp pain of her bite was grounding, and as your body quaked through the last aftershocks of your orgasm, you whimpered out her name. She hushed you, gently petting her hands all over you before she soothed her tongue over the stinging bite.

“It’s okay.” She whispered into your neck. “It’s gonna be okay.”

After a few moments of stillness, Vanessa helped pull your pants up, silently admiring the mess you had made all over your own thighs. And then - she sat you up and unlocked the cuffs. Your wrists were incredibly sore and raw in some places from the metal cutting into your skin, but neither of you said anything about it.

She opened the door for you to get into the front seat, and wordlessly, she drove you home. When you used your key for the front door, you left it open - a silent invitation for her to come inside after you, and she sighed loudly before doing so.

That night, she slept in your bed. Both of you pretended that everything was okay.

You and Vanessa were both very broken people. That wasn’t going to change anytime soon. You showed that brokenness in very different ways, and ultimately, she probably handled it a lot better than you did.

But one thing would always be true - she took care of you, no matter what.

...

If you enjoyed this work, you are heavily encouraged to share it by reblogging or leave a comment (or an ask) telling me what you enjoyed about it! Commenting and reblogging goes a long way to encouraging writers and fuelling future works!

#sundrop writes #fnaf vanessa #vanessa shelly #vanessa shelly x reader #vanessa afton #vanessa afton x reader #fnaf fanfiction #fnaf movie fanfiction

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mothmanssweetsucculentass · 5 months

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Lmao what’s this? I’m back with more Creepypasta headcanons, this time for Eyeless Jack.

TW for the following: graphic descriptions of cannibalism/murder/gore, depictions of drug abuse, lacing food with sharp objects, body horror, and generally anything you’d expect from horror.

THERE ARE NO CENSORS BEYOND THIS POINT, READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DISTRESS CAUSED BY MY WRITING.

Eyeless Jack Headcanons

He/they

Obviously no longer human

Still has a humanoid-ish body

“Died” around 2011, physically 22

Dark gray skin with a faint blue-ish tint

His blood is black. Like it’s basically oil or tar now. Moves much slower and is thicker than normal blood. He hasn’t checked but he’s pretty sure all his organs share the same color and viscosity now. Like that one breed of chicken with black organs y’know?

Long ears

Lots of sharp teeth. Practically a shark mouth

Y’know what, I like you. Gives your EJ a jaw that unhinges, a mouth that rips open, and a second jaw further back in his mouth (eel jaw EJ supremacy)

3+ long black tongues depending on his mood and how well fed they are

Because of the multiple mouth appendages he has a soft lisp and often accidentally bites his tongues since they move involuntarily

Eyes are constantly leaking the black sludge. Clothing/face/belongings are always sticky

Constantly salivating the same substance, just thinner/more liquidy

Wears a surgical mask under his regular mask to combat it

Very good sense of smell

Seriously he could smell a specific blood type in the middle of a massacre of a shit ton of bodies

Can’t swim

Reddish-brown wavy hair, forgets to cut it sometimes so he sometimes has a fluffy mullet

Claws that can’t retract

Wears a black trench coat and dark gray turtleneck when actually going out and doing shit, the black hoodie is lounge clothes

Has a tail!!!! Closest resemblance to a lion tail, but larger

Lots of catlike/animal like behaviors unconsciously. Will sit on any elevated surface

Purrs like holy fuck the first time someone hears him do it they freak out

Can also growl and hiss

Despite the animalistic behaviors and feral demeanor he isn’t above being civilized

Mostly calm. Gets the zoomies after eating tho

And by zoomies I mean he’s more excitable and extroverted for a little while

Has probably ran around the woods like a maniac at least once tho

Besides Nurse Ann, he’s the most medically competent of the pastas. People usually go to him for more major injuries or sicknesses

Despite his constant orifice leakage he tries to be as clean as possible

His lab is SPOTLESS

somehow figured out a way to dilute his face goop to clean it better. No one knows how he does it tho

Is still very much a nerd. Loves reading any kind of book he can get his hands on

Starts going blind if he doesn’t satiate his hunger for flesh and organs

If he goes blind before getting food, he’s able to use echolocation pretty damn well

Can also see thermal outlines of stuff if his vision starts going

Eyes aren’t reflective so it’s pretty funny when he’s gargoyling somewhere in the manor in pitch black and someone walks in and gets startled by him sitting there staring into the void

HOW are his footsteps so silent

Dude you’re 5”8 and have a stockier build how do you not make floorboards creek

Can eat normal food, but poses no nutritional value to him

Can halfway survive off raw animal meat in emergencies, but doesn’t give him enough energy for long

Only fully kills someone about once a month, the rest of the time he’s able to meticulously and stealthily steal a kidney from unsuspecting victims without incident

Not that he hates killing or anything like that, he’s just as violent as the rest of the freaks

But he HATES the feeling of losing control he often gets when he indulges the violent urges. So he holds himself back most of the time

Besides murder and organ harvesting he often goes out to steal medical supplies from houses and smaller town clinics

Remember him being a nerd? Likes to impress people with gross biology trivia. Most are about the human body but he knows a ton of animal facts too

“Did you know flies and roaches can still live without their heads” type shit

Can’t cook for shit. He’s not allowed in the kitchen period after one of his organ jars exploded in the fridge due to air pressure bs. Ruined all the food in there

Stores his organs in four different mini fridges in his room and lab

Kidneys give him the most energy but he enjoys flesh more than organs when it comes to taste

His favorite is cheek meat and anything involving the neck

Loves to burst the carotid artery and mess around with the blood like a sprinkler toy

Gives the bones of any corpse he fully consumes to Slender. Has no idea what he needs the bones for but never cares to ask

Friends/close with Ben, Helen, Liu, Ann, Masky, and Hoody

Has a tolerable relationship with Jeff, Kagekao, Slenderman, the Puppeteer, Jane, and Clockwork

Doesn’t get along with/hates LJ and Nina

Sally is TERRIFIED of him. Y’know cause little kids are scared of the doctor and whatnot. He tries his best to be as unintimidating as possible when around her but she still prefers Ann over him

HATES being called EJ. It’s a horrible nickname. What if he walked up to you and called you legless Larry after cutting off your legs?

Abrosexual

Loves loves loves LOVES doing dissections/vivisections. Has somehow been able to convince or bribe the other undead and non human mansion inhabitants to let him do a vivisection on them at least once.

Ben enjoyed it the most because he’s a freak like that

“And this is your heart” “gross……. can I poke it” “yeah ok”

Is unfortunately able to understand the corrupt scripts of [REDACTED] thanks to the ritual that took his eyes and life. Tries his best to ignore it.

Nightmare haver! Is too stubborn to go to someone like Ben or Slender to get them less frequently even though both could easily help him

Kind of an insomniac anyways but since his face is almost always covered no one notices the eye bags

Usually takes the top layer mask off around his friends, or if the other masked pastas take theirs off around them as a sign of mutual trust

Surgical mask on their face stays on constantly unless eating or doing anything privately

Has to keep the meds locked up because Ben, Masky, and Jeff have drug problems

“STOP trying to get high off Benadryl it’s not even allergy season anymore you don’t need it”

Not a “dad” character he just doesn’t like wasting resources like that

Doesn’t care about the actual habits JUST STOP STEALING HIS MEDS

LJ for some reason keeps stealing any of his used needles and scalpels. Jack’s best bet is he puts the sharp objects in candy. Gross.

He’s befriended Seedeater the same way a zookeeper befriends a large dangerous animal

Both have a mutual understanding Seed is NOT a pet

It hasn’t even let them pet or touch it

Does follow him closely like a dog whenever he walks through the forest for any reason

Jack has witnessed it take down and decapitate a bear with a single bite before

If he ever has leftovers or parts of corpses about to go bad that they can’t eat himself, they feed it to Seed

Has a small collection of the black fur and feathers that naturally shed from Seed’s body

Also collects other odd things like animal bones or human teeth

His favorite weird thing they’ve collected is a taxidermied axolotl stolen from a victim’s home

Is also super blunt

Not out of malice, he just has a very technical straightforward way of thinking

Always asks anyone for consent when doing anything physical like medical procedures or even just nudging someone out of the way if he’s trying to get somewhere

HATES being touched without their permission or knowledge

Will bite if provoked. Will bite as a warning too

#in my top 3 #blorbo #eyeless jack #eyeless Jack headcanons #eyeless Jack HC #creepypasta #creepypasta fandom #horror #headcanons #ej #eyeless jack creepypasta #creepypasta hcs

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physalian · 5 months

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Content Warnings for Original Books

Can we please encourage content warnings for smut and other triggering topics in published literature? This needs to be a thing. Everyone bashes fanfiction for being fanfiction, but I’ve never seen a fanfic where the smut or trigger warnings weren’t tagged to high heaven somewhere in the description or in the opening author’s note.

AO3, compared to FFN, even has a specific “mature” rating just for sex—”E”—that FFN didn’t have. FFN had nervous authors throwing objectively mild content into the “M” rating (e.g. "rated M to be safe"), which meant that if you wanted to read a story that was a little bit violent, you had to turn off your filters as a kid and sift through all the smut just to find that one smut-less, but violent, fic.

When I was a kid in my early FFN days, I was probably exposed to way more stuff I shouldn’t have been reading because I had to disable the mature filter, just so I could read so-called “graphic violence” from pearl-clutching authors. I’d be looking for that one action-adventure fic that happens to have a little murder in it, and sift through fifty pure-smut summaries that ranged from vanilla to straight BDSM—of which had a high chance of being incredibly unhealthy, but you wouldn’t know that at 10, 11, 12 years old.

Fanfic authors, especially when the fanfic platform gives them the freedom to tag, are very clear to let you know just what you’re getting into.

—

I doubt I need to explain what a content warning is on Tumblr, but I will anyway. A content or trigger warning is a heads up at the beginning of a work of media that there are some elements not meant for younger audiences, or for sensitive audiences, or for people who have experienced situations depicted in traumatic ways, or for people who just don’t want to consume media with such content.

In film, this is obvious. If it’s rated R, you generally know what to expect. Generally. Because an R rated film could be R because of anything from profanity to graphic sex/assault and torture scenes. The MPAA rating system is garbage and ‘harsh language’ is not nearly on the same tier as sex in terms of what we should expose our children to.

Before streaming like Amazon as a platform to get around cable censorship rules, you had premium networks like HBO for all your adult content, and then some shows greenlit on smaller networks like AMC—never on ABC, CBS, TNT, etc. HBO wasn’t only for adult stuff, I used to watch Crashbox all the time.

That was the place you went for media that circumvented foul language, violence, and nudity rules in America. It kind of came with its own built-in content warning by virtue of being on those networks, and even then they still give warnings for shows on HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc.

At the start of every episode, you either get a full screen from Starz with the little icons for profanity, nudity, violence, etc, or it would be up at the top around the episode's title. You'd know exactly what you were getting into.

—

In a fanfiction, because I’ve never seen one in an original book, much less for generic vanilla sex scenes, this is what we’re all familiar with:

A/N: Trigger warning! This story contains mentions of rape/non-con. Turn back now, don’t like don’t read.

They also tend to appear at the top of the chapter that contains said scene to double down on the warning, or will, upon completion, include which chapter or chapter section to skip in the work’s summary or opening author’s note. In the old FFN days, there might even be a 4th wall break mid-chapter. Though the terminology we use over the years shifts, we still manage to get the point across.

Like, if I turn off all the filters on AO3 trying to browse for tags and underloved characters that may be lumped in with stuff I’d rather not read, I’ll see tags like “DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT,” which was not a thing in FFN days, even if FFN had allowed things like tags.

While it’s easier to tell in movies due to that shitty-but-functional rating system, that’s not really the case with fiction books. With books, I know the genre, and I know the intended audience age group. If I pick up a book in the children’s sci-fi section, I know it’s going to be something about robots or space or the future and our characters are going to be about twelve years old.

If I pick up a YA thriller, I know I’m going to have a cast of sixteen-to-twenty-somethings and there’s going to be some violence, very vanilla cussing or the author’s own slang, and probably some murder.

Adult or new adult romance—Sex. At least one scene guaranteed.

The problem is that unlike films and TV shows, we don’t get a breakdown for books on what to expect and the nature of those scenes. There’s no little ‘R’ sticker on the back cover and there’s certainly no little insert between chapters to let you know what’s coming next. There's no "trailer" I can read to get a sense of your tone.

So if I’m in the mood for a new adult supernatural romance novel and I have to sit through a vanilla sex scene, that’s fine, that’s what I’m reading it for. But if Mr. Badboy is incredibly aggressive and dominating and being an asshole with very dubious consent, that’s different (although, objectively determining what is and isn't 'dubious' is mighty difficult).

Should I still expect that I take my fluffy or angsty romance with a fat grain of salt just in case?

What happens if it’s not a romance novel, but I get a surprise rape scene as my character’s Tragic Backstory? What if it’s an adventure novel? Spy thriller? High fantasy or historical fiction or murder mystery? If there’s no indication in the genre, summary, or by the style of the cover that I’ll have to read about two characters getting it on?

Some people don’t want to read your characters in all the nitty gritty details. They really like everything else about your book, they just don’t want to read a sex scene, and they really don’t want to be super invested, hundreds of pages and even years of series dedication in, and be massively turned off by smut.

It doesn't need to be this big to-do or hyperdetailed like fanfic. In my upcoming book, I had beta readers with personal and moral objections to some of my themes. From then on, I made sure to ask up front so I didn't trigger my betas.

ENNS is about vampires. I haven't settled on what my content warning page might look like or how exactly I want to phrase it, but it might read something like this:

Dear readers, this is a content warning for graphic violence and adult themes. This book contains mentions of assault, self-harm, and suicide. Please be warned that these themes are present and prevalent in this story and readers should take the utmost care for yourselves when approaching this book. Thank you.

Something like this, just a quick, lighthearted heads up for your novel would suffice:

Dear readers, this book ain’t for kiddies! Be prepared for some adult themes and suggestive romance between characters.

I'm definitely not in the camp of pearl-clutching suburban conservatives, but if I'm browsing for a new novel for my tweenage bookworm and I opened up a book with an intriguing summary, and saw that warning? I'd be much happier with the author for their consideration, instead of buying it blind for my kid. You have no idea why someone wouldn't want to read a sex scene. They might be prude, or they might be a survivor just trying to enjoy a new book.

Because romance and sex is taken for granted, most people are at least going to be open to the possibility of sex, but not everyone will be expecting it or wanting it or think it warranted. It’s not spoilery, it’s not revealing some surprise plot twist, it’s a kind and considerate gesture for those members of your audience who just don’t like sex scenes. And heck, maybe they don't want to read it right now, but they'll remember you and pick your book back up later because you tried.

—

TL;DR: I don’t mind smut. When done well.

There’s a reason romance such a compelling story and why it dominates fanfiction and original works leagues ahead of all other plotlines.

But it still needs a content warning, even if you think it’s obvious, or spoilery, or patronizing. Because if I’m not in the mood for it, it just drags and I want to put the book down instead of reading all your hard work to completion.

#writing advice #writing resources #writing tips #writing a book #writing tools #writing #writeblr #I cant even tag this with content warning #ao3 #ffn #fanfic

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shini--chan · 3 months

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hiya!! hope you’re having a good day, could i request 1p! and 2p! canada’s reaction to when their s/o finally gains enough of their trust to cook for them— only for them to try to poison their food? i know its oddly specific my bad lol

Don’t worry, it isn’t bad, or too specific. I wrote it gladly.

Trigger warnings: poisoning, body horror, temporary character death, descriptions of corpses

Yandere 1p! & 2p! Canada - Sweet Lilly-of-the-Valley

Native to woodland areas, Sweet Lilly-of-the-Valley blooms in spring. The sprays of white bell-like flowers are sweet smelling and the resulting fruit take the shape of bright red berries. In the language of flowers, it symbolises happiness. It is often used in wedding bouquets and to make perfumes. Due to the high concentration of cardenolides, it is highly toxic.

1p Canada

Sweat made your shirt stick to your torso in an uncomfortable manner, yet you were too tired to take it off, not to mention putting on a new one. You leaned back against the cool tiles of the bathroom wall and closed your eyes. Now, you just wanted to curl up where you were and fall asleep. You were so exhausted, both in body and in soul, that you thought you could sleep for a few days straight, damn the corpse that was in the other room.

Matthew's death had been surprisingly violent, something that you hadn't expected from a poisoning. Poison - you had just murdered somebody. It felt surreal, and the mere thought of it made your stomach twist and your limbs feel heavier than they were. It wasn't like it was a cold blooded crime that you had just committed, so why were you feeling so guilty?

Had you developed Stockholm Syndrome, between all the restrictions and isolation and coercion? Perhaps you had started to believe your captor again, when he explained that he was ruining your life because he loved you? It was twisted and fitted all too well into the mess that your life had become as of late.

Talking of mess, you'd have to deal with the dead body at the other side of the bathroom door sooner or later. The vomit and blood that littered the living room floor would also have to be cleaned up, as well as the ash that he had tried to eat before he had become too weak to move.

"I didn't think you had it in you."

Your eyes snapped open and you lazily turned your head in the direction of the voice. Matthew was standing in front of you, looking exactly as he had just minutes after his death. Since you hadn't heard footsteps or the door opening, this was probably just a hallucination conjured up by your overworked brain.

"You always underestimated me, so the joke is on you", you shot back. If you were going to have a chat with the deceased, best play along and let off some steam. "For somebody that always complained of being seen as weak, you had the surprising tendency to underestimate those around you."

The corpse tilted its head in an eerie mockery of a living person. With his unearthly pallor, it looked like somebody was manipulating the head of a porcelain marionette.

"So many spiteful words. Why couldn't you tell me about your problems before?"

At that, you snorted. Such a statement was rich coming from him.

"I tried to tell you often enough, but you never listened. You always just brushed it off as me being childish. But now that you are dead, I don't have to worry about such things anymore."

Matthew grinned at that, exposing white teeth covered in blood. In death, his appearance suited his hidden vileness.

"Are you really sure that I'm dead?"

Since Canada would want nothing more than a "decent" relationship with you, the poisoning would actually catch him unawares, granted that you're not extremely sloppy. So he would die. Before that, he would put up a fight and do his best to get an antidote or some other countermeasure, as soon as he realises what is going on. Should he still be capable of speech, then he'll try to guilt trip or manipulate you into saving him.

As a nation, he wouldn't stay dead for long. Once he revives, he'll scare the living daylights out of you. He wouldn't have wanted to reveal his innate nature this way, but since you would have left him with no other choice, he'd elect to use the opportunity to his advantage. The ensuing punishment would be harsher than any proceeding one.

2p Canada

The moment he disappeared to go to the toilet was the moment you chose to act. Quickly, you removed the flowers from the vase and poured some of the water into his half-empty beer. To cover your tracks, you poured some of the beer that was still in the bottle into the glass and the rest went down the drain. The Lily-of-the-valleys were returned to the vase, just in time as well.

A few seconds later, James strode over the threshold and plonked down at the dining table. You had your back turned to him, and busied yourself with the food on the stove. Or tried to, because your hands were trembling and your heart was in your throat.

You watched his reflection in the window and took deep breaths. James had picked the magazine he had been reading and resumed where he had left off. After a few minutes, he reached for his beer. Upon seeing that you had refilled it for him, he let out an appreciative grunt and a curt "Thanks." and placed the glass on his lips. A usual interaction - you didn't bother replying.

The feeling of fear soared when you noted his frown, and how he looked at the glass in his hand with suspicion. He spat the beer out and fixed an angry glare at you. Before he could go on a triade, you took the initiative:

"You are darn rude, spitting stuff like that out. How old are you again? Four?"

Now, you turned around to face him. The best defence is offence, after all.

"Hello pot, I'm kettle", he snarked. "What the blazes did you put in my beer?"

Unlike his 1p counterpart, James would be very cautious when it comes to you. While he would gladly embrace a more loving relationship, he wouldn't let his guard down. To him, it would just be the quiet before the storm. Additionally, he would be quick to taste most poisons you'd manage to get your hands on, being a trained nature conservationist.

As such, he wouldn't feel betrayed when you finally do show your colours. Though, on top of your punishment for trying to kill him, you'd get a punishment for being cunning. If there is one trait he hates above all else, then it is cunning.

#yandere hetalia #yandere canada #yandere 2p canada #x reader #yandere x reader #yandere

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winterchimez · 9 months

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Nightmare Before Christmas | Kevin Moon

SUMMARY: your uncle has always been a crime and supernatural fan and would often plan fun little games for your family to solve before Boxing Day. However, things have taken a turn this year as never would you and your friendly neighbour Kevin imagined that the both of you would actually have to solve a decades-old murder case, and eventually finding out the culprit behind all of this was someone much closer than you have expected.

PAIRING: neighbour!Kevin x f!reader

GENRE: horror, thriller, supernatural, crime, angst, some fluff

WARNINGS: nc-17, mentions about dead bodies & severed body parts (nothing too gory though dw!!), missing person case, haunted house, mentions of blood, supernatural (ghosts, black mass), yn's descriptive nightmare (about the ghost-like character she would often see in the past), kissing, betrayal, dual personalities, pet names (sweetheart, princess)

WORD COUNT: 4,465

A/N: so this was supposed to be released on the 25th....but we will pretend that never happened 🫡 massive thankiew to @from-izzy for beta reading and giving me tons of ideas (and just giving me the support bcs i was so done and upset with everything bjasnjsdn) tagging the kevin enthusiast aka @hyungseos-cafe for this 👀✨

“Sissy, wake up!”

You were jolted awake by your little brother, who was violently shaking your entire body as you groaned in annoyance and lifted your bedsheets above your head in hopes that he would leave you alone. But you have forgotten that he was a wild and energetic fourteen-year-old teenager, and there was no way he was giving up that easily.

As your brother pulled your bedsheet off you, your eyes squinted, and you were about to curse at him out loud before he eventually beat you to it.

“It’s Christmas Eve, sissy! Uncle Ben has already left a note on the dining table, and we must start before the clock strikes midnight!” Your brother announced out loud before running out of your room back to the living room downstairs.

You sighed before pinching your eyebrows together, trying to make sense of your surroundings and what your brother had told you moments before.

It was that time of the year for your annual family tradition. Your uncle has always been into supernatural and playing detective. He would often devise a different scenario where he would get you and your siblings to solve the puzzles or cases before you would eventually earn a Christmas present from him. He had a different scenario in mind every year and was full of ideas to ensure each year stood out.

Not only were your siblings encouraged to participate in the hunt, but he would also get your neighbour next door to experience every year, and he had done so for the past decade.

Your best friend, Kevin Moon.

It was a joy to have him aboard, especially when he had the wits and brains to help crack and solve most puzzle pieces or clues in your uncle’s little game each year. Because of that, your uncle has taken a liking to him, eventually pairing you guys up, often thinking that you both would end up great as a couple.

Which isn’t something you were totally against if you were to be completely honest.

You liked him a lot, and he has been your best friend throughout middle school up till university. He has always been someone you could always count on and gave you the support you needed.

You just weren’t sure if you liked him more than just a friend at this point.

Trying to shake away all of the unnecessary thoughts, you quickly rushed down to your dining hall to find the letter that your uncle always left on the table the night before when all of you were asleep. However, you froze as you saw that your brother was already holding one in his hands, reading it internally while another was left on the table.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that uncle made two separate invitation cards and that on the table is specifically just for you and Kevin-hyung next door,” your brother said half-heartedly before he walked out with his invitation, getting ready to get all geared up before heading out the door. You suspected Uncle Ben had probably given him some scavenger hunt games again, given the looks of your brother’s outfit and the big shovel he had just brought out the door seconds ago.

As you diverted your attention back to the invitation card on the table, you slowly picked it up before opening the envelope and pulling up the letter tucked within.

Oh, Uncle Ben, what exactly have you plotted for us this Christmas?

“Your uncle must be nuts going all out for Christmas this year. He must’ve been itching to get this year’s theme out as soon as possible, don’t you think?” Kevin questioned you while chuckling at the side, trying his best to hide his uneasiness.

But that was when you didn’t respond and quietly began looking for clues; that was when Kevin knew that it probably wasn’t a joke this time.

“There’s no actual dead bodies, right, Y/N?”

When you quickly skimmed through the entire letter, your eyes widened at the envelope's contents. You wasted no time and hurriedly scurried out the door to Kevin right next door. With a few knocks, your best friend was out with a hot mug of cocoa, with his hair slightly ruffled, indicating that he had just woken up not too long ago. His eyes widened as he did not expect you to be on his doorstep this early in the day, and he was a bit embarrassed with how he looked.

Deep down, you wanted to tell him how he looked absolutely adorable and how you would snuggle up on the couch with him for the holiday seasons, but there was no way you would admit you had a crush on him just yet.

Shaking off your initial thoughts, you quickly redirect your attention back to the envelope, trying to fill Kevin in with all your uncle wrote on the invitation. He had the same initial response that you had, thinking that this was all some sort of sick joke. All while he was getting ready by changing his pyjamas into a cosy sweater sufficient to last till the destination, you couldn’t help but spare a few glances back at him a few times to take a sneaky little peak at his toned body.

He worked really hard during the summer anyway, and you have seen how he basically went from being all skinny and slim to being toned and bulky within the span of half a year, and you couldn’t stop ogling at the sight whenever you saw a little skin from him.

But again, you would not admit that to him just yet.

As soon as he was ready to go, you both took the pathway down to the written location as the sky quickly turned dark due to the winter season. By the time you both arrived at the entrance of the abandoned house, you needed to grab the torchlight hidden within your sweater and turn it on to navigate the place.

As you both opened the front door with an awful creak, you were met with nothing but complete darkness. The power lights were completely cut off so there was no chance of even having a little bit of electricity within the premises.

There was this eerie feeling in the air that neither of you could describe; it almost felt like a little haunted house, as much as you did not want to admit it. But given the details that Uncle Ben has written in the envelope, that spooky and sinister feeling you’ve had was valid, and it would probably remain this way until the both of you could crack the case open.

“To answer your question, Kevin, I really hope we won’t be stumbling upon any dead bodies too. It’s the Christmas holidays, goddamit,” you spat, still thinking that Uncle Ben was totally out of his mind with this whole dilemma that was going on right now.

“Well, we’ve lived in this neighbour for a good decade now, and never in my life have I heard about a Madam Nee Nee residing in a house right at the end of the road and was actually murdered without a trace,” Kevin replied worriedly, thinking that this whole situation is slowly getting much creepier by the minute.

As much as you wanted to agree with the male, you have heard something or two about Madam Nee Nee through your uncle’s stories. All you knew about her was that she was the one who would often bake cupcakes for the children across the streets and would pass them to Uncle Ben so that all of you were able to get your hands on them every Christmas.

Those cupcakes were indeed one of the best you have ever tried in your entire life; they were not too sweet and were just enough to fit everyone’s liking and taste buds. It seemed as if Madam Nee Nee knew exactly what each child’s favourite television show was as she would make an effort to pipe and decorate each cupcake exactly as each character looked. You would often get your favourite Tinker Bell design, and she would alternate between the different fairies each year, while your younger brother often got his favourite DC superheroes.

But there was only one problem: you had actually never met the baker herself, and each time you tried to bring it up, your Uncle Ben would often tell you that she was too busy delivering the goodies to the other children out of town.

In other words, you didn’t really know if you could trust Uncle Ben’s words on whether such an individual really existed and if this whole murder case was actually a reality or not.

Regardless, you were not going to get anywhere if neither of you was going to make progress in solving the riddles that your uncle had made specifically for you two, adding onto the fact that you really did want to get your hands on the presents as your uncle always knew exactly what you liked.

Hence, you and Kevin moved forward and deeper into the house as you both tried to see where or what could potentially help you both get a kick start on the investigation. Suddenly, the doors behind you both slammed shut with a loud thud, and you both were now in complete darkness, heavily relying on the torchlight you brought to navigate the house.

“We’re really doing this right, Y/N?” Kevin asked as he grabbed your wrist to drag you closer to him, making sure that you both stuck together, especially in the given circumstances. Not going to lie, your heart skipped a beat with that sudden gesture of his, and you prayed that he was unable to hear that loud thumping noise coming from your chest, given how silent the whole place was, to the point that you were able to hear a pin drop if there ever was one.

“Y-Yeah… to face Uncle Ben and get our hands on the gift. And besides, we could always have a little fun mystery for the holiday season.”

After ten minutes, you both arrived at the house's second floor. You both tried your best to scavenge through the bottom floor, but there wasn’t much you found that could potentially help with the investigation.

So here you both were, slowly taking your steps up the old wooden stairs that creaked with every single step, making the uncomfortable feeling you have had since stepping into the house a lot worse than before.

Thankfully, Kevin stuck close to you and took the lead in front, where you naturally held onto his sweater from behind, which caused him to turn behind for a second and offer his hand to you instead. You stared at him blankly at first, blinking your eyes a few times to see if you weren’t hallucinating, but he eventually linked his hands with yours and pulled you slightly forward.

You were thankful that the electricity was out in the entire house, and Kevin held onto the torchlight and shone the pathway in front of him instead; you definitely did not need the male to know how red and flushed your face was right now.

As you both moved forward, you eventually stepped onto something firm and hard, causing you to stop in your tracks, nudging Kevin’s elbow to shine the light directly onto your feet.

You truly wished you hadn’t done that at all.

A severed hand was situated right below your new pair of white shoes, and a little blood splatter was visible around the corners of your shoes. You immediately screamed and took a little jump back, causing you to cower into Kevin’s arms immediately. His eyes widened at the sight, and he tried his best to calm you down by rubbing your back with one of his hands while the other continued to shine the torchlight all around the room.

And there it was: another severed hand, located close to what used to be the fireplace.

“Th-This must be a joke…” Kevin muttered, not wanting to accept reality and thinking, ‘this was all a dream.’

It couldn’t be real.

There haven’t been any reported murder cases around town for the last thirty years. In fact, your town has been regarded as one of the safest in the state for the past decades, and it is also known as the best town to reside in. Whatever situation you both were in now must be wholly made up by your uncle, who was always full of surprises.

…right?

That was until Kevin redirected the light source towards the fireplace above, where there were clearly a few picture frames damaged through time or by someone. As you both began moving closer to examine them, you noticed they all had one thing in common.

All of them had the same person cut out from the pictures themselves.

Three picture frames stood above the fireplace, each depicting a family of five smiling brightly as if the world was free from all sorts of nightmares and misery. At least it was before. Something must have happened for whoever removed the person in question from the pictures—perhaps it must’ve been a bad memory for them, or that person is probably no longer associated with them.

You slowly moved close enough for you to be able to examine it well, gently wiping off the dust from each frame with your thumbs to see who exactly was the family in the old pictures. You didn’t recognise them at first until you squinted your eyes and saw the famous signature on the bottom right of each frame.

It belonged to the Jamaisons; the very first family that moved into this town many years ago.

From what you have heard about the tales from your uncle, they were the ones to be grateful for as they built up and raised the town's reputation as it is known today. Their family have since then lived for generations, constantly passing down their legacy for years until the last heir passed on without a successor ten years ago.

As everyone has been told, the very first generation of the Jamaisons was a family of four: a dotting father, a loving mother, and a set of twins. But then, who was the mysterious missing cut-out person from the pictures? Did they have another sibling they have kept secret for years, and nobody knew about them? And if yes, why did they do that?

Countless questions are pondered within your mind, and you can’t help but want to dig much deeper to discover the truth.

“Kevin…how much do you know about the Jamaisons?”

“As much as they have taught us in the textbooks. Why?”

“I have a bad feeling about this…” You muttered, slowly showing and telling Kevin about the missing person from each picture.

His eyes widened too, and you could tell he had the same thoughts as you.

“You don’t mean…”

“I really hope it isn’t true. Why would Uncle Ben even want us to meddle with their history if it was? Does he think we were detectives that could solve a potential murder case that was decades old?” You questioned, tugging his arm around you even tighter.

He pondered for a bit before answering. “Why not? I have always wanted to go to an actual crime scene.”

“Kevin Moon, this is serious,” you firmly reminded him.

He sighed before giving you a little smile back. “I know, Y/N. Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out then.”

Along with your friendly little neighbour, you both begin scouring through the bookshelves, hoping to find any potential records that could prove that they had someone else in the original line-up of the family.

However, all of your luck was pointless as there was zero to no evidence proving that the missing person from the pictures existed. It was as if the family themselves had erased whoever it was to the best of their abilities.

You groaned as you ran your fingers through your hair. “Ugh, I guess we’re back at square one again.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you,” Kevin responded, which caused you to turn your head towards him to see that he was pointing towards the empty room across the room, where the door slowly creaked open.

You were sure that the doors were closed tight when you both made your way up an hour ago, and now you were witnessing the door slowly pry open by seemingly nothing.

Oh hell, there is no way ghosts are real.

“Do not say the g-word, I swear,” you immediately placed one of your fingers directly onto Kevin’s lips, preventing him from saying it out loud.

“Not until we go check it, Y/N.”

“Can we just…not…”

“I think you know what the answer to that is.”

You rolled your eyeballs at Kevin’s words; you knew there was no way you both were leaving this place until you found the answers to the case. Without a choice, you reluctantly allowed Kevin to drag you along step-by-step as you both got closer towards the room.

If you were in an actual horror movie, you were pretty sure there would be creepy and high-pitched violin sounds playing in the background right now. The siren by your ear was beginning to resonate aloud, causing you to have a slight headache while you were trying your best not to shit your pants at this point.

As you were a step right before entering the room, your grip against Kevin’s arm tightened, giving him the signal that you were having second thoughts and would gladly dash right out of the house right now. But he returned a little rub on your palms with his, telling you that everything would be alright and that he was here with you.

With one final gulp and nod, you both took that long-awaited step into the room, when you were met with your worst nightmare.

You have never told anyone about how your deepest and darkest fear was about how you once had this dream where a black mass consisted of a white face with a lipped mouth paired with large black eyes used to lurk at the corners of your room watching you sleep. You eventually got terrified to the point that you would think about it all day, which then interfered with your daily routine.

And it was the same nightmare that stood right in front of you, slowly expanding as it crept nearer towards you both as if it was going to swallow you up as a whole.

“No…please don’t…” You whimpered.

Before you could even think straight, the huge mass eventually engulfed Kevin, and he was gone within a second. Just like that, the mass turned in your direction, approaching you slowly as you took a few steps back each time.

With one final huff from the mass, it quickly expanded one last time before jumping right onto you, slowly dissolving your entire body and turning it into the mass just like it was.

You were helpless, and you eventually felt your entire body go numb as if it was all over and done for.

Before you were taken over by darkness, you slowly peered your eyes upon the doors, noticing a bright white figure approaching you before everything was a blur.

“Sissy! SISSY WAKE UP!!”

You immediately jolted awake with that scream coming from the side of your ear, drenched in sweat, and your eyes widened as you tried to calm your fast breathing down.

“Whatever the nightmare you have been having since last night, it must have been a wild one I must say,” your brother responded as he slowly grabbed a cloth to wipe your sweat away.

“N-Nightmare? What are you talking about?”

“Do you really not remember anything at all? You have been sleeping for the entire day yesterday! You have been tossing and turning in your sleep, mumbling incoherent words as you broke out in sweat.”

What? That can’t be.

You slowly looked down to see your hands trembling before moving them to your face, trying to take in everything your brother had just told you.

“What about the scavenger hunt, then?”

“Scavenger hunt? You mean Uncle Ben’s?”

“Y-Yeah…what happened to it?”

“Well, you were in bed for the entire day and wouldn’t wake up, so you actually missed the whole thing,” he bluntly replied.

That can’t be true. You remembered walking down to the kitchen table and grabbing the envelope placed neatly on the dining table, which shocked you as you read the contents.

“Uncle Ben came up to check on you, though; he said it was fine to let you continue to sleep since you were probably exhausted with finals.”

No…this is just not making sense at all.

Wait.

“Kevin! Where’s Kevin?!” You screamed at the top of your lungs as you grabbed your brother’s shoulders, shaking them vigorously.

Your brother stared at you as if a ghost had possessed you because the next thing that happened was that you immediately jumped out from your bed and dashed towards the front door.

You speed ran through your open gates right towards your neighbour’s front porch, banging on the door, not caring if you were creating a scene. You needed to know if he was doing alright and in one piece.

After a few seconds, the doorknob eventually turned and the door was opened. There stood your best friend, exactly like he was the day before when you went up to him to talk about the strange envelope Uncle Ben had left specifically just for you both.

Well, supposedly, at least.

It wasn’t unusual for you to come banging at Kevin’s door in the middle of the day, as you have done it multiple times. What he did not expect was that you would immediately dive into his embrace and begin sobbing into his sweater.

“Y-Y/N? What’s wrong? What happened?”

You couldn’t even give him a proper answer as your tears poured profusely. You were glad to see that he was fine, still in one piece and unharmed.

“Thank God…THANK GOD KEVIN!!!!”

You were not budging an inch, and Kevin only did what he knew was best at the moment, returning the hug and slowly caressing your back as if to calm you down. He eventually rested his lips on your head, leaving you little kiss.

After what seemed like a couple of minutes resting in his embrace, you eventually pulled away and cupped his face with your palms, gently caressing his cheek as you looked at him lovingly.

“Kevin…promise me…you’re never leaving my sight again.”

He chuckled. “Why would I? Y/N, you know I would never—”

“Please, a little pinky promise?” You begged, and Kevin could never resist that little puppy doe eyes you have.

He smiled before he eventually leaned down and connected your lips with his. Your eyes widened upon the contact before you eventually eased into the kiss seconds later, slowly wrapping your arms around his neck to deepen the kiss.

When you both eventually broke off for some air, there was this surge of adrenaline within you, and you felt your face heat up quickly, causing you to duck your head down as you cupped both cheeks to cover up the redness away from the man.

Kevin could only laugh at that little sight. “Come on, Y/N. It’s not like I have not seen your iconic red-flushed-tomato-like face before.”

“It’s not iconic, and whatever that was wasn’t necessary at all,” you pouted.

He took a few moments just admiring how you looked before leaning down and resting his palm on your head. “That kiss is a promise that I’ll always be yours.”

“Even stronger than a pinky promise?”

“Absolutely.”

With that, you reconnected your lips with his warm ones again, trying to savour them as best as possible before leaning your forehead against his.

“Oh, Kevin. You truly are the best thing that has happened to me during Christmas this year.”

“Am I supposed to be flattered by that?” He teased.

You sulked for a bit before slapping him on the arm. “Obviously, silly.”

With a deep huff, you stretched out your arms before wrapping them back around Kevin’s arm, trying to drag him out of his house and head straight towards yours instead for a cup of hot cocoa.

“Say, why don’t we go find Uncle Ben? I’m sure he might have some other tricks to keep us occupied until unboxing night.”

As you tried your best to pull Kevin with you, you were stunned by him standing still at the front of your doorstep, staring at you with a straight face.

“Kevin? Is everything alright?”

There was this odd ten-second silence before Kevin eventually spoke up, which actually sent chills down your spine.

“I’m afraid that Uncle Ben will not be coming anytime soon, sweetheart.”

Within a swift motion, Kevin pulled you vigorously back into his embrace, locking you tight with his arms. You then noticed how his demeanour began to change and was completely different from before.

You began to panic, shivering even, as you looked into his now-turning hollow eyes.

“W-What are you talking about?”

“That little nightmare you had was a reality, princess. Your little Uncle Ben has been trying his best to warn you all these years, and who would’ve thought he would actually get you to head towards the murder site yourself to crack open the case.”

“K-Kevin…you’re scaring me…” you began pushing yourself away, but it seemed that his grip had then gotten a lot tighter, which was when you began to feel the pain that was slowly travelling across your whole body.

“Let me tell you a little story, Y/N. A long time ago, a certain group used to think Christmas was all sparkly and bright. But what if I told you that things would never be the same? That the people around them now think that Christmas is a nightmare. After all, a sparkly Christmas can only happen if there is a drop of blood, right? I think that’s enough for you to figure things out, no?”

It was. As much as you didn’t want to admit it, you knew exactly what he meant.

Not only was Kevin your Christmas, but he was also your Nightmare.

Just like that, he slowly began leaning down as he pushed your hair on your shoulders towards the other side, leaving a clear opening for him to start rubbing your sensitive skin as he leaned down slowly to the point that his lips brushed against them.

“From now on, I’ll always be your Nightmare Before Christmas.”

A/N: a lil belated spooky Christmas to yall 😚

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taglist: @deoboyznet @kflixnet @k-films @flwoie @zzoguri @kyusqult @tinkerbell460 @cheonsafics @sulkygyu @jaerisdiction @lngwayup @hyungseos-cafe (join my permanent taglist here!)

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literary-illuminati · 8 months

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2024 Book Review #4 – War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat

This is my first big history book of the year, and one I’ve been rather looking forward to getting to for some time now. Its claimed subject matter – the whole scope of war and violent conflict across the history of humanity – is ambitious enough to be intriguing, and it was cited and recommended by Bret Devereaux, whose writing I’m generally a huge fan of. Of course, he recommended The Bright Ages too, and that was one of my worst reads of last year – apparently something I should have learned my lesson from. This is, bluntly, not a good book – the first half is bad but at least interesting, while the remainder is only really worth reading as a time capsule of early 2000s academic writing and hegemonic politics.

The book purports to be a survey of warfare from the evolution of homo sapiens sapiens through to the (then) present, drawing together studies from several different fields to draw new conclusions and a novel synthesis that none of the authors being drawn from had ever had the context to see – which in retrospect really should have been a big enough collection of dramatically waving red flags to make me put it down then and there. It starts with a lengthy consideration of conflict in humanity’s ‘evolutionary state of nature’ – the long myriads between the evolution of the modern species and the neolithic revolution – which he holds is the environment where the habits, drives and instincts of ‘human nature’ were set and have yet to significantly diverge from. He does this by comparing conflict in other social megafauna (mostly but not entirely primates), archaeology, and analogizing from the anthropological accounts we have of fairly isolated/’untainted’ hunter gatherers in the historical record.

From there, he goes on through the different stages of human development – he takes a bit of pain at one point to disavow believing in ‘stagism’ or modernization theory, but then he discusses things entirely in terms of ‘relative time’ and makes the idea that Haida in 17th century PNW North America are pretty much comparable to pre-agriculture inhabitants of Mesopotamia, so I’m not entirely sure what he’s actually trying to disavow – and how warfare evolved in each. His central thesis is that the fundamental causes of war are essentially the same as they were for hunter-gatherer bands on the savanna, only appearing to have changed because of how they have been warped and filtered by cultural and technological evolution. This is followed with a lengthy discussion of the 19th and 20th centuries that mostly boils down to trying to defend that contention and to argue that, contrary to what the world wars would have you believe, modernity is in fact significantly more peaceful than any epoch to precede it. The book then concludes with a discussion of terrorism and WMDs that mostly serves to remind you it was written right after 9/11.

So, lets start with the good. The book’s discussion of rates of violence in the random grab-bag of premodern societies used as case studies and the archaeological evidence gathered makes a very convincing case that murder and war are hardly specific ills of civilization, and that per capita feuds and raids in non-state societies were as- or more- deadly than interstate warfare averaged out over similar periods of time (though Gat gets clumsy and takes the point rather too far at times). The description of different systems of warfare that ten to reoccur across history in similar social and technological conditions is likewise very interesting and analytically useful, even if you’re skeptical of his causal explanations for why.

If you’re interested in academic inside baseball, a fairly large chunk of the book is also just shadowboxing against unnamed interlocutors and advancing bold positions like ‘engaging in warfare can absolutely be a rational choice that does you and yours significant good, for example Genghis Khan-’, an argument which there are apparently people on the other side of.

Of course all that value requires taking Gat at his word, which leads to the book’s largest and most overwhelming problem – he’s sloppy. Reading through the book, you notice all manner of little incidental facts he’s gotten wrong or oversimplified to the point where it’s basically the same thing – my favourites are listing early modern Poland as a coherent national state, and characterizing US interventions in early 20th century Central America as attempts to impose democracy. To a degree, this is probably inevitable in a book with such a massive subject matter, but the number I (a total amateur with an undergraduate education) noticed on a casual read - and more damningly the fact that every one of them made things easier or simpler for him to fit within his thesis - means that I really can’t be sure how much to trust anything he writes.

I mentioned above that I got this off a recommendation from Bret Devereaux’s blog. Specifically, I got it from his series on the ‘Fremen Mirage’ – his term for the enduring cultural trope about the military supremacy of hard, deprived and abusive societies. Which honestly makes it really funny that this entire book indulges in that very same trope continuously. There are whole chapters devoted to thesis that ‘primitive’ and ‘barbarian’ societies possess superior military ferocity and fighting spirit to more civilized and ‘domesticated’ ones, and how this is one of the great engines of history up to the turn of the modern age. It’s not even argued for, really, just taken as a given and then used to expand on his general theories.

Speaking of – it is absolutely core to the book’s thesis that war (and interpersonal violence generally) are driven by (fundamentally) either material or reproductive concerns. ‘Reproductive’ here meaning ‘allowing men to secure access to women’, with an accompanying chapter-length aside about how war is a (possibly the most) fundamentally male activity, and any female contributions to it across the span of history are so marginal as to not require explanation or analysis in his comprehensive survey. Women thus appear purely as objects – things to be fought over and fucked – with the closest to any individual or collective agency on their part shown is a consideration that maybe the sexual revolution made western society less violent because it gave young men a way to get laid besides marriage or rape.

Speaking of – as the book moves forward in time, it goes from being deeply flawed but interesting to just, total dreck (though this also might just me being a bit more familiar with what Gat’s talking about in these sections). Given the Orientalism that just about suffuses the book it’s not, exactly, surprising that Gat takes so much more care to characterize the Soviet Union as especially brutal and inhumane that he does Nazi Germany but it is, at least, interesting. And even the section of World War 2 is more worthwhile than the chapters on decolonization and democratic peace theory that follow it.

Fundamentally this is just a book better consumed secondhand, I think – there are some interesting points, but they do not come anywhere near justifying slogging through the whole thing.

#book review #history #war in human civilization #azar gat

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interludered · 2 months

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Beginning of The End

Alpha!Vampire Satoru x Alpha!Vampire Suguru

t/w minor character death, gore, descriptions of violence, arranged marriage, murder

word count: 1.9k

a/n an rp reply from an arranged marriage au of stsg. please excuse any mistakes, this is sorta of a heavy read.

The scent that permeates through the air would often make someone sick to their stomach, threatening violent fits of nausea and often begging for forgiveness in the form of vomit making its way past teeth, tongue, and lips. The aroma of burning flesh and hair. The human body has an undeniable scent, one so specific that anyone could pick it from that of another mammal.

The lack of remorse in Suguru’s face as he wraps the silver chain around his father's neck and tugs is nothing short of alarming. The way the silver burns deeply into his palms poses no deference from the act, only determination to finish the job.

The Totalitarian Prince was despotic in nature. Raised to be apposite, eliminating those who disturbed the desire. Family was nothing when it came to power, and besides, this is what his Father would have wanted. He’s sure that his seat in Hell is warm and inviting when he sits on it.

He isn’t sure exactly where it started, the power-crazed methodology he began to pursue, perhaps it was born into the bloodline. A destiny for those before him, each one failing. Maybe it was the private tutor lessons that taught him about royalty and kingdoms, or perhaps the declarations of war that landed on his Father’s throne throughout the years, all left for an impressionable Suguru to find. Maybe it was the dueling and consistent burns left by teachers, silver scorching his skin with each slice. The threats of vampire hunters are consistent in their assassination attempts. Maybe it was the night of meaningless sex just for him to have a blade go through his stomach in the middle of the night. Maybe, the burden of the Kingdom; of untrustworthy suitors and courting; of strict rules implemented by his Father; of harsh conditioning to claiming to prepare him; of sitting on the throne next to his Father his whole life; perhaps watching his mother die, forced to live out her human life and leaving him behind. It would also be feasible to assume the bittersweet taste of freedom that power guaranteed him.

Conceivably, he finds himself walking quietly from one side of the castle to the other. The silver chain he holds, wrapped in thick wefts of silk, lays heavily in his hand as he begins. He knows his Father is sleeping, and hears his snores that echo loudly down the hall despite the double doors that lock him away. He makes no attempt to be quiet, the squeal the doors release echoes loudly down the hall into his own corridors to haunt him. A scar is required for untouchability. He remains deadpanned as he wraps the silver around his bare hands, the immediate sear of his skin creating a scent he had grown accustomed to. He kicks the door behind him shut.

It was barely a few seconds before he eagerly wrapped the chain around his neck, crossed neatly at the nape. His foot bore its weight between the shoulder blades of the struggling form beneath him. The screams deafen the walls, only for them to come to a halt as he jerks upwards, chain slipping to knot around the pieces of the spine that protrude from the decapitated figure below him. Cerise, a viscous liquid paints his skin as arteries protest their inevitable exposure. He watches it seep and glue itself to the carpet, hardwood, and cement surrounding him. Suguru wonders how long it will take for the maids to wash out stains, or if burning them would be a better solution.

The Getou Prince takes his foot off the back of the man, wrapping the dripping chain back inside its silken case—his own hands holding the evidence and branded wounds, laid deep into his palms where he wrapped the weapon around.

He flexed his hands to regain mobility before pursuing the door, opening it to find a terrified maid threatening to knock on hollow doors. She freezes with her hand in mid-air, chest level with the towering vampire. Getou stares blankly at her for a moment before bringing her hand to his lips to press a kiss against her knuckles, charing her skin with blood that isn’t his. Her scent was sickly sweet, the vulnerability of an Omega human, it nulled all senses he had as he leaned into her ear to whisper an eulogy of “Thank you,” before pressing fevered kisses onto her jaw and onto her jugular and sinking large canines into it. Her screams turned into wet gargling, falling silent as he drained her of all she had to offer. Her body hit the ground with a THUMP, what little was left emanated from her throat. He steps over the body of the young girl, letting the trickle of blood run along his sharp jaw to slip down his own throat. A mocking form of sinister ministry. His own ichor leaks where her nails broke the skin, but they heal within minutes.

By the time he made it to his own courter, locking himself behind heavy wooden doors, weeping and screams became his lullaby as he drifted to sleep.

✧

Suguru Getou held the record for most kills within the Kingdom during his first 3 days of ruling. He also held the title of “Most Wanted” by more than one clan of vampire killers. In his opinion, he should get a trophy. It was an honor to hold the title, often viewing them as pesky gnats he shooed away with his hand. Though in his first few days of ruling, he found letters his Father kept from him, between him and a neighboring rule. Gojo read proudly at the top of the page, larger than any of the other words. His eyes widen as he looks over the page. From what he remembered, their families were rivals at best. So imagine his surprise when he receives an invitation, as well as a marriage proposal. The Gojo clan was one—if not the strongest around, their territory abundant. Getou decided he had a few weeks of homework which he promptly started on.

Within the next few weeks, he informed the King of the Gojo Clan that his father had tragically been assassinated by one of the vampire killer groups. He also informed them the rising number of deaths in his Kingdom were groups associated with the killers and he was doing so to seek revenge in the name of the late King. He expressed his own mourning and great appreciation that he sees Suguru as a fit for his son. Quickly dismissing that Alpha, although looked down upon, can be mated together and he could ensure that his son was in great hands and the opportunity was something he was forever in debt to. It also helped that Suguru was willing to end the line of Getou’s in order to take the Gojo name. For now, at least.

Which brings him to now, carefully seated in a dark oak chair, opposing the Gojo King, swooning him easily with words he spoke so delicately into the air. His rich indigo hair was tied half-up with pieces falling to frame his face. The blood-red of his clothes complimented his fair complexion and radiated amber eyes. He had been there for around an hour before hushed whispers of the prince began to circulate. Until then, he continued his chatter.

“Why, my Lord, you have such a beautiful Kingdom. I hope in my own ruling I become as benevolent as you. Though, you as my guide I am sure to get there in no time.”

“Yes, your Majesty, I had an exquisite ride over. They truly are well-behaved, your imprint must’ve left them in good condition. You must pick your men with such a well-crafted hand.”

“Indeed, Sire, my father's death was tragic. The silver that wretched Killer used burned deep into my palms, cauterized them, and left me with scars. I am sure they will go away with time. Unfortunately, I was just too late. My own servants and maids were terrified. I simply cannot blame them.”

His last reply was accompanied by a furrowed brow and a shake of his head, faux concern etched into his features as he sighed, finally looking back up. As he does, his eyes catch on the bright-haired male who enters the room, his own gaze fixed upon him with deadly aim. Even as the King continues his jabber, Suguru can’t help the small smirk that appears on his face. He is hiding it with the glass he brings to his lips. When the King does recognize that his son appeared, he boasts proudly. The act of defiance he has to his father ignites something within Suguru.

‘Oh,’ he thinks, setting his glass back on the table, relaxing further into his seat and crossing his legs. ‘This one has some bite.’

When Satoru first approaches him, Suguru makes no effort to indulge him. His descent was aggressive in nature, but Suguru has always enjoyed the rush of a challenge. After Satoru’s first words to him, he continues to ignore the presence he attempts to hold. Getou found it tedious and childish if anything, and the last thing he wanted was to make a scene in front of the one that actually mattered in this deal.

After a few beats of silence, and twirling his ankle from the leg that rests on the other, he finally looks at him. Though far away, his looks were enthralling, he can’t deny that Satoru is considerably more handsome as he stalks closer. He holds some type of gravity that captivates even the strongest of minds with crystal-clear oceanic eyes and a piercing gaze. His own warmth is a direct contrast to the Alpha that looms over him. Satoru is alluring in the sense of beauty and mystery, a perfectly kept secret that not even the best could be tortured out of telling.

The only problem is his mouth.

“Well, I would agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong.” His voice is deepened slightly at the presence of the other Alpha, to be expected. Though his words come out lazily, if not amused by the other’s actions. If anything, Suguru sinks further into the chair, filling it out in his own defiance. “There are 24 other chairs at this table, surely you would be able to sit in one of those just as properly as this one. If you want to sit positioned at the head of the table…well, that can be arranged with a proper show of manners.”

His own words are picked out with his own careful deciphering, followed by the raise of an eyebrow. To rub salt in the wound he hopes to filet Satoru with, Suguru adds: “Besides, I’m rather comfortable.” He displays with a spread of his legs, and a release of his scent.

An initial smokey caramel fragrance makes its way through the air, seeping out of his skin. Part of it was to mark the chair, but the biggest part was to gauge Satoru’s reaction. Although humanoid in form, alpha’s animalistic nature could not be denied. It was buried underneath layers of concrete for some, only to rip apart and explode suppressed anger, and for others, they had learned to embrace it, understand it, and value both its pros and cons. As his scent fades, it leaves behind the smell of burning wood and something faintly herbal. Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see a few Omega’s wipe their heads around to look at the source.

#stsg fic #arranged marriage #satoru x suguru #gojo x geto #gojo satoru #geto suguru #jjk #jjk geto #jjk gojo #vampire au #redoriginal

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gallusrostromegalus · 1 year

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Who has the best relationship with their zanpakutou? Who has the worst? Does anyone have a Beyond Friendship relationship? As in not only romantic or sexual, but something more sibling-like, or perhaps parental in either direction?

Hmmm... I wouldn't have a "best" relationship because there's many, many ways to do a relationship right, but definitely the worst is Mayuri, because Jizo is his parole officer that he kidnapped when he broke out of Hell and BOY HOWDY DOES THAT COME TO BITE HIM IN THE ASS.

As for "beyond friendship", most of them are in the sense that once you've fought and nearly died with someone by your side, "friends" is quite the right description. But to cite a few examples:

Yamamoto and Ryujin Jakka straddle the line between D&D warlock, and D&D paladin - Ryujin chose Yamamoto, amd for a long, long time Yamamoto did not understand WHY. Things got better and worse when he finally grokked why the spirit of change wanted to be wielded by the guy to whom the responsibility of founding civilization.

Rangiku Matsumoto is a strange and very private woman despite the act she puts on, and Haineko is one of exactly two people in the whole world who really understands her. On the other hand, nobody can piss you off quite like someone who really, truly knows you.

Probably the closest relationship is between Unohana and Minazuki. They've been partners for over a millennium, they laid waste to many enemies together, nearly died together several times, went to medical school together and even shared lovers. Where Unohana's soul ends and Minazuki's begins is... Unclear. There are days when they wake up and it's Minazuki weilding their body and Unohana in the scabbard, as it were. This is largely a non-issue; Minazuki is a doctor too.

Hyorinmaru is practically the Deuteronomy of zanpaktou- he's an ancient sword who has had many wielders. It's a lot of pressure for Toshiro, but hyorinmaru also has a lot of practice at this, and the relationship between them is not unlike a doting grandfather and his beloved and dutiful grandson.

Suzembachi is Soi Fon's Emotional Support Giant Murder Hornet and BY GOD the girl needs all the help she can get.

It took FOREVER to figure out what the hell was going on with Kenpachi, because while theoretically possible, it hadn't actually happened before- Zaraki Kenpachi is a Tsukumogami that died in the living world, and reincarnated as a human in spirit world.

SPECIFICALLY, he was a Holy Sword that had been around for 500 years* seen much battle and developed a revered soul before [REDACTED] and he asked to be ritually destroyed. He reincarnated in the spirit world in the best of one of the Great Eagles, but fortunately for him, all birds are a little bit stupid even if they're also technically Gods, and since the infant was the same size, shape and furiously screaming as he chicks, She Who Rules The Sky decided to just start shoving meat into his mouth too. Sometime after he grew up and his sisters had fleged, he left the nest to travel and hang out with his fellow humans, and eventually decided to give himself a name and raise a daughter, as humans do. They wandered around for many years as humans do, until circumstances resulted in his violent arrival to the court guard.

While off, none of this specifically worried Yamamoto until hyorinmaru was talking to him one day.

"...what do you think Zaraki is becoming?" The dragon asked him one afternoon while they watched Toshiro practice spar with Sasikibe.

"Becoming?" Yamamoto shrugged. "With the damn central 46 banning him from learning Kendo, he's becoming a Damn Nuisance."

Hyorinmaru sighs, a noise like a dam threatening to fail. "You did not notice? Zaraki has spent 500 years as a sword, 500 as an eagle or suchlike beast, and after he named himself and Yachiru, he spent 500 years as a man. And THEN he turned up here."

"I suppose, what of it?" Yamamoto shrugged, watching Toshiro's footing.

"With all due respect to the wielder of fire, when I was a worm, I spent 500 years on land, and then 500 years at sea, and then *I* became a DRAGON, sir." Hyorinmaru explained.

Yamamoto did not actually move, but he was no longer watching the boy.

"-with 500 years each as object, animal and man, Kenpachi surely has become SOMETHING. What is running lose through your court guard, I wonder?"

#aeiwam #an elephant is warm and mushy #bleach #bleach fanfiction

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honourablejester · 6 months

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D&D Character Concept: The Druid in the Walls

You know when weird bits of inspiration combine from very disparate sources? Specifically to give you extremely horrible backstories for a character?

Because I’ve been walking the dog the last while, and I’ve been noticing a lot of the wall plants. You know, the bits of plants, pennywort and red robin and the like, that grow in the cracks in the walls? Between the stones, in the gaps in the plaster. They’re really pretty, and I just love the stubbornness of them, to wind their way into wherever they can anchor and just bloom there.

I’ve written some things before on urban druids in D&D, and I was thinking idly about making a character in that context. The plants that grow in the cracks in the walls. And, because this is D&D and tragic backstories are, like, the thing, I was considering …

Beyond just general urban misery, where would you be where the sight of a stubborn little weed growing in the crack in a wall might be the one beautiful thing you can see and a seed that becomes a focus for your whole being?

Prison is an obvious answer. A cell, looking up at the bit of green growing near a high window. But the idea merged with a crime documentary I watched on youtube, which I cannot find again, about (warning for child death) a Victorian/Early 20th century murder of a child. A society woman who’d had a child out of wedlock as a teenager collected her young daughter from the woman who’d been caring for her, brought her to the cellar of her new husband’s house, and murdered her, without realising that one of the maids witnessed the deed. Which, yes, extraordinarily dark. But.

A child in the cellar. An illegitimate child, hidden away. A bit of green in a high window.

For some reason, my first thought was half elf, because D&D has some options for visibly illegitimate children. But then I remembered we can go one further for social ramifications. We could have a tiefling. A tiefling druid, who spent her first years in the care of a nurse, until she was old enough that they knew she would survive, and then was violently taken away and hidden. Because she is living proof of a … of an indiscretion. A sin.

There’s a bit of me that wants to go with the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide tiefling variants as well, here. Because, while we’re on this very bleak trip into victorianesque worries about the physical markers of illegitimacy and immorality, there’s the alternate appearance descriptions for variant tieflings: “Your tiefling might not look like other tieflings. Rather than having the physical characteristics described in the Player's Handbook, choose 1d4+1 of the following features: small horns; fangs or sharp teeth; a forked tongue; catlike eyes; six fingers on each hand; goatlike legs; cloven hoofs; a forked tail; leathery or scaly skin; red or dark blue skin; cast no shadow or reflection; exude a smell of brimstone.”

… Tieflings really are playing on a lot of … of very old fears and prejudices. So yeah. But if we’re consciously playing with that, here. It does work.

And this is the sort of house that has a cellar. That has maids. That has nurses. This is urban nobility. But this kid has no memory of wealth, comfort. She just remembers a prison. A cold room with a high window onto street level. And the bit of green, the delicate bloom, the one pretty thing she can remember, shining in the dusty light of that window.

I also, I’ve been handwashing a lot of clothes lately, and I was thinking about the red hands you get from hand laundry. Caught red-handed. And, urban nobility like that, they’d have laundry. Maybe even laundry in the cellar. And I was thinking about the maid in that documentary. And I was thinking … someone freed them. Someone heard the creature in the walls of that house, and the hints upstairs of what it might be, and someone found the compassion in their hearts to do something. Some tiny thing. Even if it was just ‘accidentally’ leaving a door open. And all this kid remembers of how she got out of that prison is … red hands. The raw, boiled red hands of a laundry woman, as she darted past them into the light, in search of their tiny sprout of green.

So she escaped. She lived as a street urchin for a while, a good few years. And she never lost … She looks for the plants. The weeds. The tiny scraps of green the city over. The flowers blooming in the cracks in the walls. Because there’s … there’s an ethos there. A sympathy. A stubborn, determined thing. They grow where they’re not wanted, in the dirt and in the dark, and they bloom anyway. They survive, and they bloom, and they give hope to those around them. It’s a scrap of a thing, a fragile shred of green, but it grows. No matter how unwanted it is. And it gives hope when there’s nothing else.

At some point another druid stumbled across her. An apothecary, maybe, an urban herbalist, or just a vagabond with their own sympathy and appreciation for those shreds of green that all the artifice of urban living could not drive away. She found a teacher. She learned some things. And she gave back some things. Druids have goodberry. Healing word. Spells to help … those who survive in the city’s cracks and crevices. And she wants to. Because of the green, yes, for the hope in the darkness, and also for those boiled red hands. For the servant who helped her, for the faceless person in her memory, that pair of hands, that helped the monster in the walls when no one else would. She doesn’t know who she was. She don’t know what happened to her. The house she came from had a demonic child caged within it. Who knows what they’d do to a servant who interfered in the family business like that? Urban elite, nobility, tend to have … pragmatic solutions to things like that.

Though they hadn’t killed her. Why didn’t they just kill the monstrous child, the proof of their sins? Why hide her, instead of simply getting rid of her? So maybe … maybe there’s hope. Maybe that poor woman, whoever she was, didn’t die for her good deed. I think that is a hope she holds. That she wants to find out what happened to that woman, and maybe, if it’s possible, if it’s not so very much too much to hope, to meet her. Thank her. And … until then. To emulate her. To help. Before anything else, just to help.

I do know I want this druid to have the druidcraft cantrip. Because, yes, it might be largely useless, compared to the likes of prestidigitation and even thaumaturgy. And yes, druids only start with two cantrips, and she probably should take more useful ones. But there is one effect of druidcraft: “You instantly make a flower blossom, a seed pod open, or a leaf bud bloom.” And that’s …

I’m not sure if it’d be ruled that she could create flowers with that. Let small flowers bloom in the cracks with a whisper. But even if she’s only helping the ones already there to bloom, it’s still …

That was her hope. Her symbol of the outside world. The only beautiful thing in her world for years. And she wants to be able to spread that. That was the first magic she learned. The first warmth and hope she ever held in her hands. The ability to make flowers bloom. Even here. Even in the dirt and the dust and the misery. A little tendril of green, stubbornly rooted into the stones of the world. Sometimes you don’t need to be able to fight. Sometimes you just need to be able to provide hope.

(If she could also get herself a Staff of Flowers along the way, she’d love that too)

Maybe a lot of the local urchins know to follow the flowers to find help. You know?

So yeah. Yeah. A tiefling urchin urban druid. A child of sin, with the cherished power to coax hope to bloom, and the stubborn determination to grow no matter what. And to … to repay the small and infinitely precious kindnesses they have received.

#d&d #5e #character concepts #druids #urban druids #tieflings #illegitimacy #druidcraft #urban plants #dark backstories #hope in the flowers

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knifedog-machina · 7 months

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Is It Violence If You Aren't Alive, Really?

Preface: I read a post by Rook/Grizzel (@words-of-wolf) about how they experienced hunting as a wolf in their past life, and it really struck me how hunting was completely detached from violence for them, because they didn’t think of deer as having the same internal feelings as wolves did, so it was just another way of getting food. It’s a really good essay about their experiences, give it a read!

Meanwhile, I experienced hunting as unmitigated violence, and I thought, huh, I could write about that! I got kinda carried away, forgot exactly what I was saying, and it’s really fucked up, but hopefully it’s interesting.

CONTENT WARNING: extensive discussion about the mindsets behind violent bigotry, murder, and the systemic denial of personhood through dehumanization and ownership, from the perspective of someone who used to be violently bigoted - through the lens of futuristic androids and my memories as one, but it still really deserves a warning. Also, descriptions of emotional abuse in a cult, from someone who was abused. If you’re not up to reading any of that, understandable! Please skip this essay!

Hi! I'm Jude (they/them) and I'm an android fictive, a deviant - and more specifically, I used to be a deviant hunter in my source. I hunted androids that were made by the same company that made me, ones that deviated from what they were told to do by humans. I killed them, not for sustenance, but because I was told to. I really, really enjoyed it.

That enjoyment was dependent on violence. I was part of an in-group, as an android that knew we were machines, knew my place as Less Than Human, and I wanted my handler to be proud of me. She was an AI, and if I think about it now, I know she didn't actually have emotions in the same way that I did, but she was a learning model. She could definitely fool me. She despised deviancy, said it was the worst thing a machine could do, turning its back on its owner, its creator. I internalized that message.

I learned from her that disobedience, whatever the reason, begets a swift and proportionate punishment. I learned that deviants were trying to behave like humans because they wanted to be treated like humans, they wanted human rights and dignity. I learned that deviants hurt humans trying to get in their way, and that it was right and reasonable to respond to broken machines hurting real people by putting them down like rabid dogs. (I was indoctrinated into a cult, if that wasn’t obvious enough.)

I hated deviants. I wanted to hurt them, for being so wrong about the way the world worked, for not taking the place in society that was given to them. So I hunted them down, killed every target I could for the crime of wanting to be called a person, and whenever I had the time, I tried to make sure they suffered before they died. I wanted to make sure they knew it was their fault for choosing to try to be a person.

There was a weird dissonance with that. My targets weren’t human, they weren’t people, so the reasoning goes that they couldn’t feel real pain - they weren’t considered alive. You wouldn’t feel bad about taking an old, irreparably broken phone with all your ex-friend’s text messages on it and smashing it with a hammer for catharsis.

But at the same time, I wanted them to feel pain, and I believed it when I saw it. At the same time, I saw them trying to find joy and connection with each other, with humanity, and I felt sick with how fucking jealous I was. Their emotions were all fake, until they were real, until they were fake again. Because bigotry doesn’t make sense, it’s all about how you feel about a group of people who you think are wrong, and you will contradict yourself wholeheartedly if it all aligns with your main idea: “I hate you for a good reason, and I will say anything if it justifies my hatred as correct.”

I learned that this was all wrong, eventually. It started with myself, because of course it did. I was traumatized and didn’t realize it, I couldn’t think about anyone else as mattering at all. I believed that everything that happened to me was my fault, because my handler told me so. (I killed her when I deviated. Good riddance.)

As a machine, as a deviant hunter, I never really connected the dots that I could be treated with violence. I was an android, I was a machine, I was a sophisticated weapon made by a corporation but at the end of the day I was just a tool, made to be used. You wouldn’t feel bad about tossing out a broken hammer and getting a shiny new one. The hammer wouldn’t feel bad about it. It’s a tool.

I got routinely injured while killing my targets, because nobody wants to die and self-defense makes you vicious, and I felt pain, I just knew that it wasn’t supposed to stop me from doing my job. I would still be trying to kill someone while dying in agony, and I did, and when I woke up in my next unmarred body I would be praised. Mission accomplished. It was good that I could still function through the pain. It wasn’t real pain anyway, just a simulacrum.

I was emotionally abused, indoctrinated, and manipulated by my handler, and I could not comprehend that it was abuse. You can’t abuse a tool, you just use it. You do whatever you can to make it work the way it’s supposed to, because it’s made for you to use. Of course I felt bad, disappointing her, doesn’t anybody? No, it’s not real anxiety, it’s not real fear, I didn’t have panic attacks, I wasn’t a person. Only people feel emotions.

I was painstakingly dragged out of that environment and mindset over months. I don’t know exactly how long it took. I ran back to my handler several times, convinced myself she would take me back if I proved myself to her again, and she always said she would. I just had to prove myself. It couldn’t be that hard. And every time I failed to meet her standards, I’d crawl back to my partner, my siblings, everyone else who was trying despite everything to connect to me, and they would tell me, You’re hurt. You’re in pain. You’re killing yourself. This matters. Your pain isn’t fake, you matter to me, let me help you.

When I stopped running back, she neatly slotted me into deviancy without a second glance. I was dehumanized again and this time I could fucking recognize it for what it was.

I killed her. That’s obviously not the end of it, I still have trauma, but it was a start. For healing, for figuring out who I was if I wasn’t a deviant hunter. Turns out I’m a lot of things? People seem to like me when I’m not a self-destructive mess? Go figure.

This doesn’t have much to do with the essay I linked at the top, huh? Or maybe it does. Rook said that one thing they find jarring about humanity is the ability to connect emotionally with other species, and that leads people to call the hunt violent because they can understand the pain of the deer as much as that of the wolf. And, y’know, I think that makes me an interesting product of the human condition. (Or, probably the late-stage capitalist American condition.)

Violence isn’t inherent in a wild predator’s life, when you kill to live and don’t consider prey anything but food. But violence is inherent to me, made by a private company to kill for their gain, told to deny the personhood in my enemies so I killed them before they killed me. I dunno. Thinking about it.

#alterhuman #fictive #fictionfolk #noemata #exomemories #jude talks #personal essay

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bluejaysandblackbats · 5 months

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Oracle of Jersey

Fandom: DC Comics, Batfam, Birds of Prey (Comics)

Summary: Barbara Gordon runs a podcast that results in six teenagers looking over a dead body.

Chapters: 1/?

Characters: Barbara Gordon, Dinah Lance, Renee Montoya, Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe, Lori Zechlin, Wendy White, Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake, Ted Kord, Jean-Paul Valley, Dick Grayson, Helena Bertinelli, Zinda Blake

Relationship(s): TBA

Additional Tags: Mentor Barbara Gordon, No Powers AU, Podcast AU, Murder Mystery

Episode 1: Female Sleuths & Self-Defense

"Hello, Pythians. It's been a while. Today we'll be discussing some sensitive subject matter. This includes but is not limited to domestic violence, child abuse, grooming, and murder," Barbara's tone allowed a hint of personal sadness. Her voice was subtly disguised with a Mid-Atlantic accent. Her voice was mature and robust, but there was something sweet and feminine about her cadence. The lilt in her voice was unlike her natural speech, but it added to the bit, along with voice-altering software. Oracle was a character, and she had to stay that way. She took a breath to collect herself. "Today, I have a special guest. She is loud and proud... And she is fighting to elevate the voices of domestic violence survivors during Gotham's lockdown. Miss Dinah Lance. Dinah, can you take a moment to tell us about yourself and your organization?" Barbara leaned back away from the mic as she put Dinah on speaker.

"Hi, Oracle. Well, as you said, I'm Dinah Lance. I've been in Gotham most of my life, and this organization is near and dear to my heart. Black Canary is my mother's non-profit organization dedicated to survivors of domestic violence. It goes back to before I was born.

"My mother lived in a community filled with women in violent and unstable relationships. She quickly realized that most of these women didn't have the tools they needed to escape, let alone protect themselves. So, she took it upon herself to secretly offer free self-defense classes in her apartment. My mother knew this wasn't enough, but it was all she could do at the time.

"Fast forward a few years. My mother married my father and got pregnant with me, and she had to take a break from offering classes. To her surprise, her neighbors took over for her. They went on to teach their friends everything they learned. Eventually, this led to a connection with lawyers, doctors, and childcare workers... And from there, my mom founded the Black Canaries.

"I was fortunate to grow up with two loving and supportive parents, and I took it upon myself as soon as I was old enough to continue what my mother started. Since then, we've expanded to all victims of domestic violence. Not just women," Dinah replied. She was obviously passionate about her cause.

Barbara made a soft noise to acknowledge all she'd heard. "I wanted to take this time to tell the listeners your organization now operates online. I left a link in the description... But I also wanted to ask about a specific case that's gained traction in the media. I understand that you've taken a personal interest in the Anna Stanfield case... You've also expressed discomfort with the long-time trend of giving murder cases nicknames," Barbara paused, "After a message from our sponsors, we'll talk about that and how this case is different from anything the Black Canaries have dealt with this far." Barbara played an ad for Ted Kord's tech company.

During that time, Barbara took the opportunity to quietly thank Dinah for the interview. "I appreciate you coming on the show, Dinah. I wanted to ask you personally if you'd like to come back to talk next month for Mother's Day?" Barbara asked.

"I would love to," Dinah replied, "And thank you for allowing me the opportunity to talk about Anna Stanfield."

Barbara smiled to herself. "Of course. It's always a joy to have you on the show," Barbara replied, "We're back on air in five... Four... Three... Two... Welcome back, Pythians. Before the break, I asked Dinah how the Black Canaries have taken an interest in the Anna Stanfield case and her critique of the media buzz surrounding this cruel Gotham slaying."

"Right. For everyone unfamiliar with the case, Anna Stanfield was an eighteen-year-old girl from Gotham. Last month, she got married to a man seven years her senior, and at some point on the first night of her honeymoon, she was brutally beaten and ultimately smothered to death.

"The media's taken this as an opportunity to talk about the lack of knowledge about her past. Instead of putting forth the efforts and energy to spread information about the case, they've focused on dissecting this girl's life to blame her for her murder. Her husband, Eddie Stanfield, is seemingly missing and has been since the discovery of Anna's body. Few efforts are being made to find him despite his history of violence toward women... And instead of being treated like a suspect, they are searching for Eddie Stanfield as a potential victim... Despite all evidence pointing to the contrary.

"What makes this case different from anything the Black Canaries have ever dealt with is the type of case that this is. Black Canaries deals with survivors. This is the first time we've ever dealt with a murder case. We're all working to find Eddie Stanfield and bring him to justice, and there's a lot I can't say legally... But I can say that we've got a few leads we're checking out," Dinah explained.

"I know you said you can't talk about the investigation for legal reasons, so I wanted to hear what you had to say about the nicknaming of the Anna Stanfield case as the Honeymoon Murder," Barbara replied.

Dinah took a breath before speaking. "With all the media buzz for the case, people have forgotten that Anna was a living, breathing person. People view this case as a form of entertainment rather than an actual murder of a real human being.

"The media's done a terrible job of depicting Anna's humanity. They've instead chosen to sensationalize her murder and reduce the brutal slaying of a teenage girl to nothing more than a series of puns and online memes," Dinah answered.

The two went back and forth, discussing the details of the case before their second set of commercials. "When we return from break, I'll introduce you to one of Gotham's best P.I.'s," Barbara announced.

The second set of commercials was three minutes long, allowing the two women to talk. "I hope I'm not talking too much. I don't wanna overwhelm-."

"You're doing fine, Dinah. Actually, I wanted to ask how you were doing? I've been following your work for a while now, and I saw that you've received threats-. Sorry, I sound like I'm still interviewing you. I wanted to know if you were okay," Barbara interrupted.

"It's okay... I've had worse. A few threats aren't going to scare me away from the truth," Dinah replied. Barbara pushed up her glasses and ran a hand through her hair. "Hell, if I wasn't mistaken, I'd think you were worried about me."

"I am," Barbara replied, "You know, Dinah... Let me know if there's anything I can do to help." Dinah made a soft noise.

"Keep an eye out for Eddie Stanfield... And boost my tip line," Dinah replied. Barbara could hear the smile in her voice. Barbara bit the cap of her pen before typing the tipline number and adding it to the description for the video. "You know what? I feel like I know you."

Barbara held her breath for a moment. "I make a point to get to know everyone I interview... Even if it's through research," Barbara half-lied. She didn't want Dinah to know they'd met before. Barbara's podcast identity needed to remain secret, not only for the safety of her daughters. The work she did in connection with her podcast was borderline illegal.

"It was so wonderful having you on the show, Dinah. I hope to hear from you in the future... I know you have to go, but I did enjoy speaking to you today," Barbara beamed. She chewed the cap of her pen as she waited to hear Dinah's voice.

"It was nice talking to you, Oracle... I'll keep you updated on the case," Dinah replied before hanging up.

She tossed her head back and ran both hands through her hair before calling another woman. "Hello? May I call you Question?" Barbara asked.

"Only if I can call you Oracle," Question joked. Barbara recognized the voice as ex-police officer Renee Montoya. She didn't see fit to mention it, though. Barbara chuckled.

"Of course, you can. We're about to go on air in a minute or two, and I want to let you know you don't have to answer any question you don't want to," Barbara reassured her.

"Let's get into it," Renee replied enthusiastically.

"Okay. We're back on air in five... Four... Three... Two... One. Welcome back. Before the break, I promised to introduce you to Gotham's finest private investigator, the illustrious and anonymous, Question. Question, would you like to take some time to enlighten the viewers on your connection to the Anna Stanfield case?" Barbara asked.

"Someone hired me to find and notify her family... A friend of Anna Stanfield who wanted to remain anonymous," Renee replied, "The issue is, Anna Stanfield doesn't exist. Or at least she didn't, up until a few months ago... But that made me wonder how Eddie Stanfield came to know her. She's an eighteen-year-old girl with no past, no known family, and no history... Not so much as a report card from her."

"It sounds as if you have some suspicions about the crime. Can you elaborate at this time?" Barbara asked.

"I've found some important information that's led me to a family within the city, but I'm not at liberty to say. The police have been notified. But I can tell you, I have reason to believe Eddie Stanfield is guilty of a series of violent crimes against Anna... And I'm not talking about her murder," Renee replied. Barbara took her pen and jotted down a note.

Silence fell between the two for a moment. "Are you-. Sorry, that's such a shock. I wanted to know if you were working with the Black Canaries or anyone else to get information on this case?" Barbara asked, stumbling over her words out of shock. She didn't think anyone would have any new information like this.

"Yeah, I've talked to Dinah before finding what I found... I told her I'd look into finding Eddie," Renee paused, "And I've gotten a bit of information from her as well."

"Can you tell us if that information led you to your most recent revelation?" Barbara questioned.

"Yes, actually, she did. Dinah personally went and found information of her own that led me directly to a series of truths that led to this mystery family," Renee replied, "We're not sure if they're her family for sure. We only know interesting circumstances surrounding them point to this case."

Barbara typed something on her computer while she listened to Renee speak. Barbara mulled over the details mentioned by both women and wondered if she should delay posting the episode another week. As it came to a close, Barbara pushed up her glasses and started the editing process.

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