#and that is infinitely more important than a fucking soul

[mvnic-th0ughts]

“You sacrificed your soul to be where you are.”

You can’t sacrifice something you never had sweetheart.

[ibvix]

YOUR GORGEOUS BABIES ARE BOTH SO LOVING, LIMITLESSNESS TO THEIR UNDERSTANDING AND EMPATHETICALLY COMPASSIONATE MY BEAUTIFUL LITTLE BABY FUZZIES HAD ME AN UNKNOWN AND YOU ... YOU THE MOST LOVINGLY COMPASSIONATE BEAUTIFUL WISE SOUL WITH THE WHO WOULD ULTIMATELY BEGAN BRINGING A SURGE OF LIFE INTO MY HEART AND ANIMATED AND WOKE ME FROM BEING AUTHENTICALLY DEATH ... NOTHINGNESS ... SHORTLY AFTER LEARNING AND COMMUNICATING WITH EACH OTHER ... WE VOWED NEVER WOULD WE HAVE ABANDONED EACH OTHER. MY OWN TRUE PURE INNOCENT SOUL LOVE IS THE ONLY ONE WHOM I HAD EVER TRULY LOVED IN MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE, BUT FOR MY BELOVED SWEETIE BABY !!!

[liesmyth]

Is it better if John erased their memories, or if they came back that way and he just decided not to fix them?

It's immensely better if he intentionally mindwiped them. TO ME.

I'm a John fan. I think he's a tremendous tragic antagonist, and that everything he does in the HtN backstory is relatable if not painful familiar. He was under immense pressure, trying to mitigate the literal end of the world, having his mind and his whole self changed in ways he had no frame of reference to understand. He went from being desperate and trying to do his best to being carried away by circumstances to going absolutely fucking insane. There are many ways to rationalise John's actions all the way to the end, which is what makes it such an effective corruption arc. If you want to engage in some blorbo apologism, there are plenty of excuses to be found.

There's absolutely no fucking way to excuse mind-wiping his friends. THAT is why it's so important to me that he did it deliberately, in cold blood, justifying it to himself as a way to take their burdens upon himself so they wouldn't have to feel guilty. He removed their agency. He didn't want any peers in the world he'd created. He could have acknowledged what had happened, for better or worse, and tried to make amends - but instead, he chose to remove their knowledge that something had even happened in the first place. It's the turning point! I need him to go into that with his eyes fully open. He's doing it on purpose! He weighed the pros and cons and prioritised his comfort over his friends' identities.

EYE believe that his story arc is infinitely more powerful if there's a point we can look at and say "here is when John's story went from things happening TO HIM to John doing terrible things". Especially in a backstory that's ultimately about divine corruption and losing touch with your humanity, I think that turning point needs to be something that has a personal value to him, something that can't be chalked up to "he was high on death" or "humanity was doomed" or even "he touched the soul of the earth and went insane."

I think it's important, thematically, that one of his first actions after acquiring godlike powers was to make sure that no one would be able to remember his human self and challenge him on equal footing, even if he's still internally lamenting his own loneliness and wishing things were different.

Obviously, this is all coming from a known John Girlie™ and Eldritch Alecto Enjoyer — I interpret John's ascension to quasi-divinity as something that was mostly imposed ON him and he couldn't control, which is why I need him to cross the moral event horizon outright with the mind violation of his inner circle. Someone who views John as more directly culpable in the end of the earth might feel less strongly about the importance of the mindwipe in his story arc than I do, but TO ME it's the culmination of the tragedy. You've become the inhuman horror, baby.

/post that inspired the question

[phregnancy]

the way “basically, yeah” mirrors “basically, i’m gay” is so important to me specifically. i don’t necessarily know if it was a conscious choice on dan’s part but it’s definitely something that reads like a neon sign of sincerity and authenticity to me and i hate how much people minimize “basically, yeah” as a response. there are infinite other responses. “it’s more complicated than that” or “no not really” or even fucking “i guess so” or any noncommittal brushing off of the question under the sun. and dan chose to say “basically, yeah” and that’s all he should have to say about it imo

i know in my soul that if dan didn’t want to answer that then he would’ve said “what even is normal nowadays” or another non-answer to the question, but he did answer it. and i can hear him saying “basically, yeah” after his romantic spiel, and i know it is so sincere.

[sevenop]

Billie Eilish x Fem!reader: But I already have love in LA

A/n: 5,692 milli is the distance between calm nighttime Paris and sweltering Los Angeles, which almost makes Eilish howl like a wolf. A Paris promo in honor of the album mercilessly separates the two of you on an important date, but you find a way out.

Billie's point of view. 'Cause I like it.

"The person you are trying to reach is currently unavailable, please call back later," is the peremptory verdict unchanged over these endless eight hours, echoing coldly from a woman's voice on the other side of the handset. Not the voice I want to hear so much, not the timbre that makes my heart flutter so incredibly, as if it were your most expensive wind-up toy. Not your voice, absolutely not. You don't get in touch for such an ungodly long time, and I just diligently shut up the feeling of anxiety devouring from within throughout the day: a dark woolly monster grins hungrily with its wide mouth, loudly clicking its massive, fanged jaw. Each click is a new, painstakingly detailed picture in my head, causing hot anxiety. What if you're really lying helplessly on the hot as hell asphalt of LA, caught under the spiked wheels that tried to slow down with a soul-shattering screech? I know how hurried you are. What if you turned into a disadvantaged area, taking a shortcut, and now your lifeless body is lying in the nearest ditch, turning paler and colder by the minute? What if you just stopped breathing in your sleep for no reason?...

I take a deep breath, and the chains behind the monster immediately tighten with the deafening clang of massive links: it leaps, wanting to grab at me with its clawed paws, to pull me into the viscous pools of panic, but it still can't reach me. With a menacing guttural growl, its fangs gleam faintly in the semi-darkness, covered in viscous saliva. It's actually easier to contain my anxiety when my head is full of thoughts about the shoot, about the phrases I have to elegantly slip into the interviewers, turning their question marks into confident dots. It's easier when you're surrounded by a horde of people: security, staff, family. But when I'm in the silence of an insanely expensive French hotel, drowning in the uncompromising gloss of the surroundings, still perfectly styled and dressed in expensive dark clothes, coming straight from the shoot, nervous and clutching my phone in my hands with hope - it all becomes so impossible.

I'm dialing twelve digits again, just a little more and I'll be able to dial your number blind. "The person you are trying to reach is currently unavailable, please call back later." I lean back noisily on the cold silk of the sheets while that toothy, infinitely dark ball of anxiety laughs snidely. I check all the messengers, only to fling my phone away in a brief flash of anger somewhere upward, toward the ruched beige pillows: you still haven't been online in eleven hours, my messages unanswered. Fuck! It's becoming more and more like Jenga, where with each passing hour I take one wooden brick out of the structure and put it on top, making it even more rickety than before. Indeed, something has definitely happened, you couldn't just disappear from everyone's radar for no good reason, especially when today is our little celebration of a month-long relationship. There's five thousand six hundred and ninety-two miles between us, and the silence on the wire makes me want to howl. God, I'm going to go crazy...

Beep! It sounded like someone had thrown a grenade with the pin pulled right under the bed. I reacted immediately, but on the desplay is just a message from Fin in an endless string of unnecessary things. Well, better than nothing. Better than drowning in madness alone.

"Are you asleep?"

"No." How the fuck can I, bro?

"She still hasn't responded?"

"No."

The three dots bounce around again as my brother puts the right letters into words. Maybe I should call you again.

"Can you open the hotel room door right now?"

The restless gears in my head rumble to a grinding halt. Now? For what?

"For what?"

"Just open it, sis." - so unobtrusive and unexplanatory, followed by another gray block of letters: "You'll thank me later :)"

"Don't smile at me."

":)" - naturally, a smile. Damn Finn.

I dial you again and reluctantly get out of bed, shuffling my feet as if I were going to the lacquered scaffold under the shouts and whistles of the French Revolution crowd, but in fact only the thin tulle is swaying in the night wind, and the noise of rare cars, which enters the room so valiantly with the help of the open balcony. And here is the guillotine itself in the form of an oak door. I touch the gilded cold handle with the palm of my hand with pressure, and feel the massive blade whistling as it flies straight at my neck, severing my head. You're standing in front of me.

You look me in the eye and leisurely take the phone out of the pocket of your wide bard palazzo pants. Your accurate fingers finally touch the ill-fated green answer button before you bring the display to your ear. There's a slight, confused smirk on your lips, and on my end of the line there's finally the beeps and this mechanical female voice have finally died down. But it is still impossible to answer you, I can only stare at you in disbelief, as if you were a masterpiece that had escaped from the Louvre and had personally come to my doorstep.

"Bonsoir, Madame Eilish," your soft, purring timbre mightily shatters all anxiety, defeating the monster in my head. The only thing left were the massive chains of patience and self-control that held it back. You say what I've been longing to hear for these fucking eleven hours. You sound the way you've imprinted on my memory for the many hours we've spent together. - "A special gift exclusively for number one hundred and eleven."

I grab you into my hage, pulling you into the room in a flash. The door slams too loudly for midnight, but I don't care, you gasp, rustling a small package - I don't care, you babbling a hundred apologies for this frightening silence - I also don't care, girl. I don't care, I don't care, I don't care! I just leave a lot of barely visible lip gloss prints on your face, showering you with hot kisses, clinging to your lips with mutual hunger, making you almost choke, but I don't care! You don't pull away, just squeeze tighter, sliding down the wall a little. You're here right now, and the rest of it doesn't matter. And how can I take offense at you, when you have overcome five thousand six hundred and ninety-two miles...? At least not right now.

We calm down only when we reach the floor and settle down on the soft pile of the carpet. Your face now gleams beautifully in the warm light of the bedside lamp, your hair slightly ruffled either from my hands or the wind outside.

"I'm sorry." - You gulp in air with your mouth and repeat again, touching my cheek gently as if I were fragile Chinese porcelain.

"I almost lost my mind, Y/n." - I snuggle closer into your palm, finding the needed reassurance finally. - "But I'm so glad you're here now, my dumbass."

You chuckle lightly before rising to your feet in one merged motion, then gallantly offering your hand to me. My gaze first clings to the not-so-little bard stain spilling over the once flawless whiteness of your favorite shirt.

"What's this?"

"It's wine," you answer innocently as we walk to the back of the room, me holding your hand and intertwining our fingers, you holding the paper bag in front of you in your free left. - "I thought it unseemly to show up on a deep Parisian night and on our little holiday without a present. While we were choosing a variety with a nice elderly sommelier, he accidentally spilled some on me, for which he apologized for an extremely long time and stuffed a whole assortment of vegan sweets into the gift."

"Actually, it looks pretty good," I touch my hands to the damaged fabric where the wine petals had opened exactly opposite the heart. - "It looks like a flower, and it goes well with the pants."

"I told him the same thing, only in broken French!" - you laugh, sitting down on the bed. The package drops to the floor for nothing, revealing a dark bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, a corkscrew, and a dark blue box of obviously not cheap candy. - "Got a cup of any kind?"

"Only if it's cup after some coffee," the porcelain taps lightly as I hand you the cup along with the saucer that was on the bedside table. Drinking coffee at night is a little professional whim.

The cork easily yields to you under the spiraled steel of the corkscrew, so the generous scarlet stream quickly fills the porcelain cup almost to the brim, cleverly masking the coffee ring, which has already managed to imprint on the white dishes. You carefully pass the cup back to me, giving me the honorable right of the first sip. You already have a chocolate candy hiding behind your cheek. Sweet tooth.

You ask me about the past day, listening with incorruptible interest, you ask about the progress of the promo, about my dreams, I listening about your flight, about our first meeting, about Paris at night. We just talk about everything that comes into our heads, while the candy slowly runs out and the scarlet column of alcohol reaches the glass bottom of the bottle, and the bottle becomes more transparent than before in the weak light.

"You look ravishing, did I mention?" - My throat burns a little with the slight spice mixed with the flavor of currants and cherries, and your careful and transfixed gaze, albeit slightly cloudy from the wine, pleasantly burns my heart. - "Although, you absolutely always have that."

And I see you blush and your lips bend into a pleasant smile. When you're drunk, you're so sweetly embarrassed every time, like the word compliments are received by you, not me. Insanely nice. Insanely beautiful.

"Merci beaucoup, L'amour de ma vie." - in sweet, purring French, because you are a total provocation today, presented so elegantly and unobtrusively that I can't think of anything else. The chiseled collarbones are not only hidden under the thin fabric of the branded shirt, but also topped with a weighty gold chain. I catch myself thinking that you remind me of exactly this wine in the porcelain of the cup, which I want to sip leisurely, enjoying it alone. To taste you on my tongue is much more desirable than that cedar-currant flavor in the cup.

The bottle is almost empty, and you will soon begin to look like this pink wine stain blooming on your shirt. You giggle, shifting your gaze in embarrassment to the rich black lacquered wood that elegantly fills the bedroom space.

"Wow, is that a piano?" - so childishly naive, just to avoid my gaze. Gently I place the cup in your palms and then touch your chin with my fingers, turning you straight toward me. - "it's beautiful."

Along with the alcohol and fever rushing through my arteries, an absurd idea popped into my head, and it was an original sin not to realize it. I lean closer, deliberately slowly, though the knot of heat has tightened quite a bit. I like getting you so hot, Y/n, you'd know.

"It's beautiful, but it's only missing your nakedness," a languid whisper in your ear and you're already burning like a match. It's gorgeous. - "Shall we fix it?"

And you nod so obediently that even an expensive room in the best hotel in France and the same expensive wine are nothing compared to this one gesture. This will be the first time for you, the first time for the two of us, and believe me, I'll do everything I can to make sure that it goes well. I won't disappoint you, because all I really want is to drown you in a sea of pleasure. Think of it as my little gift to honor our date, like this wine.

×××

You moan so sweetly, and the only thing I really want right now is to seal your voice in a bottle so that I can open it later at any opportunity when you're not around again. You rest both palms against the shiny black lacquer on the closed top of the grand piano, standing with your back to the most elegant instrument and your face to me. You're standing completely naked, just a pile of clothes under your feet, and I'm already face between your thighs, kneeling. You grip the fabric of my black cardigan with trembling fingers, and like a whimpering child, you pull it on yourself. And it's so exciting to fulfill your little whims, knowing that it's still going to be the way I want it. I throw the dark, soft cotton off of me - a "storm cloud" glistens and shimmers slightly in the light of one dim lamp before falling to the carpet with the rest of my clothes. I'm completely naked now, too. Your lustful eyes dance on the ink of my tattoos, as if not knowing where to stop.

"Do you like the view too much, my girl?" - a grin, and you look away a little in renewed embarrassment. I touch your beautiful thigh, stroking it. "Hey, I like it when you watch."

And you watch again, only now you're looking clearly into my eyes, looking into the depths of my abysses, which for you alone are ready to serve not as destruction but as an unbreakable refuge. Your gaze is so focused, as if you want to dive in headfirst into my seas.

"I just... I just like absolutely everything, and I really don't know where to stop."

"So look, you can even touch me, as much as you want and wherever you want. You're allowed, Y/n." - I rise from my knees to push the banquette back to the piano again and sit down. - "Just for you."

And you explore, touching my skin with a gentle that the most distinguished musicians of classical orchestras will envy. Your hands outline my hips, my waist. You cling to my ribs with your fingers, then you stroke my shoulders and arms. I see a spark of delight in your eyes when you feel how the muscles are easily felt under the alabaster of my skin, while you reach to the very tips of my fingers, interlacing one hand in a lock with yours. Your other hand touches my chest, alternately slightly squeezing each one, and frankly speaking, it becomes infinitely difficult to breathe evenly. The same your hand slides over the stomach, heading to the bottom with like a sharpened arrow. Oh, my Goodness...

"Does that feel good?" - you whisper, touching two fingers to my clit with light pressure, alternating with circular motions. It feels good. Crazy.

So much so that all the words suddenly disappear from my head and stick in my throat in broken syllables, unwilling to form into something intelligible. I had to make an effort not to just nod like a silly dummy, chiseling out a single: "good."

You smile, feeling a gradual confidence, as if you're finally stepping on solid ground after the weightlessness of space, having been successfully rehabilitated. And I finally realize I don't have to hold back anymore. I can pull you close to me, rewarding you with a dozen deep, hot kisses, I can marked you with a bright hickeys on your neck, I can pick you up under your hips and lay you top of the piano cover with your shoulder blades, under which steel strings are silently stretched. While you're trapped in a haze of excitement, I can trace a path with my tongue and lips from your breasts to the bottom of your belly, where everything is burning Vesuvius flame. I can, I can, I can...

"It's so romantic in Paris, isn't it? Won't even try to compare it, it's all love everywhere." - I make the first quick stroke of my tongue and then pull away, hovering over your face again. You barely keep the back of your head from banging against the wooden lid, arching your back in longing. Who says I forgot to get back at you for my nerves?

"I don't know, I guess, but I already have love in LA." - You exhale so hotly, but you endure stoically. You realize you deserve it, yes. - "And I don't need anyone else."

My own heart begs for mercy on your account with a solid thump against my sternum, and I'm back down in a flash, repeating the strokes again, playing with your folds to the accompaniment of your moans. You're delicious.

And when you thrust yourself on my fingers so obediently, waiting for the denouement, which burns you to the point of shaking, and then you spur me with my back to the lid, hovering over me with intermittent heavy breathing, but with such selfless love in your eyes; when you enter me with two fingers sharply, but so necessary and precise, easily beating out moan after moan from my lungs and ligaments, that I really realize how suitable an instrument like a piano is for you.

I realize that I also definitely already have love in LA, in the form of you.

[darkonekrisrewrite]

Emily from Hazbin Hotel would be infinitely better at Deku's job (narratively and literally) than he is. For the simple fact that when she finds out about Heaven's dark secret, the exterminations, she is horrified and goes this is not okay, it's not okay that this is happening, I am not going to be quiet about this. If we are judging people off of one moment and are refusing to look at the context, or improvement, while allowing our people to get away with this, than this entire system is a lie. We get this in one episode, fuck it, a song

Deku meanwhile in 400+ chapters finds out horrifying truth after horrifying truth about hero society, and doesn't care, half the time it doesn't even occur that this is fucked up, and should not be happening. He is bullied for years based on his quirk status, especially by Bakugou 'well he's going to be a hero so this shouldn't be taken seriously' He learns that the number 2 hero bought his wife, neglected his not perfect quirk babies and abused all of them, and was already an ass before that, 'theres no need to bring this up to All Might, or the principal, or do anything about that, I just need to get this victim to be cool with his quirk' (this also goes for Bakugou the easedropper). His upperclassman stops him from saving a six year old in blatant danger, and both that top upperclassman, their boss, and his past mentor outwardly state/ agree with it would be bad publicity if they didn't arrest all the Yakuza at once, and that they barely care about that child after learning see was the ingredient to the weapon they were making, 'well were saving her now'. Lady Nagant was and Hawks is the personal assassin for the commission against whoever they want without trial or due process, 'Hawks is going to make a great new president of the commission'. Rody Soul was forced to support his younger siblings as a child, was assaulted by adults, was forced to turn to crime, while heroes did nothing, 'well I'm helping now (because it goes along with a larger case) so it's all good'

After all this Deku is a fucking bootlicker who is mentally so fucking lazy he has never questioned this shit ass system after all this, his values are empty because he only cares to look at the titles and not reality, he has gotten worse, not better, at this over the course of the series. Meanwhile Emily wasn't tolerating this shit day one of finding out, and she was working within this system too

Yeah pretty much true.

People say that hazbin hotel rushes things because of it's short episode count/runtime but at least it always gets to the point without going in circles for years, dragging out the characters finally understanding the message.

When something obviously wrong and counter to everything they believe in, is shoved in a character's face, there should be a reaction equal to the importance of the 'idea/theme' in verse.

In theory, it doesn't matter if their reaction is good or bad/for better or worse, because either way it should be an understood event that causes a blow to their way of thinking, based on the importance of the revelation.

Deku did that all of 1 time.

And that's putting it generously, in him mildly calling out Endeavor at the sports festival, way back at the beginning of the series.

This never happened again, not towards anything related to heroes or hero society.

It should have been a very big deal for Deku to realize that the number 2 hero was able to buy another human being as part of a eugenics goal to make a more powerful hero.

He at least should have considered telling an authority figure (All-might or Nedzu) about it, just in case there was anything else that may have been going on with Endeavor.

It should have been a very big revelation for Deku that his upperclassmen was willing to let a very clearly injured (wearing bandages) and terrified little girl go back with the guy who was obviously implied to be responsible for doing it to her.

Mirio could have beaten or at least stalled overhaul until backup arrived while Deku took Eri and ran.

(He definitely could have too, as he was able to fight against overhaul in a confined space while quirkless, for a fair amount of time.)

But until everyone knew exactly what was going on with Eri, Mirio was fine with putting the mission above a little girl's life, letting her go with someone who they knew was a dangerous Yakuza.

Gigantic red flag regarding what the heroes prioritize when the situation isn't ideal.

It ties back into hero society abandoning those who are inconvenient perfectly, leaving them to suffer and eventually become villains or die.

Looking back Deku should have realized that but because he got the approval of the system to go back and save the girl as part of the mission, everything's cool...

And this does show that he has gotten worse as the series goes on, as he's not even willing to bark back at the hero system.

Deku has called out villains all the time (Dabi, Flecturn, toga and Shigaraki), he knows how to talk back, so it's not that he CAN'T.

But whenever it's something that's got to do with hero's flaws, nothing.

It's that he WON'T talk back to heroes.

And if he really is just a kid who can't even talk back to his bosses or peers, or the "innocent" people who are responsible for (at least) half of the villains in bnha -

With the idea that they are responsible for the villain's current lives, showing how their callousness and cruelty drove the villains to that point.

-Then what the hell have we been following him all this time for?

Izuku has only temporarily saved their society, like Mirio said: "Setting things at Zero".

Is that it? The best to hope for?

Setting things back to Zero with no idea of improvement? Because it's "Impossible"??

[mothrocks]

So I recently caved and watched Hazbin Hotel. I like animation, musicals, and animated musicals, so I feel like I'm kind of obligated to watch this new animated musical cartoon. After watching the show, I can't help but compare it to other animated productions that have also been released within the last year, namely that of Disney's Wish. I have a lot of thoughts, so here's this essay I spent like 2.5 hours writing :D

Slight disclaimer, I do acknowledge that Wish and Hazbin Hotel have very different themes, target audiences, production methods, pipelines, all the things. As someone who just enjoys animation, I'm going to disregard this for the most part, largely because I just want to ramble about the animation industry as a whole and probably could for hours.

Hazbin Hotel features a cast of characters trying to rehabilitate the sinners of Hell to save them from dying a second (and seemingly final) death in the afterlife. I have my own thoughts on the show itself, but I generally thought it was good. You can tell there was passion behind it and that they were allowed a lot of creative freedom, rather than having to pander as much to studio higher-ups.

I'm choosing not to summarize Wish and trusting that if you've read this far, you have at least a fragment of an idea of what the movie is about (not that there is much of a memorable plot, anyways). I don't like Wish. The characters are static and flat; there's no growth or character development and we have little to no reason to root for the main character, Asha. The story overall is unmemorable. The animation is fairly lackluster and looks unfinished. Lastly, the songs, one of the most important parts of a Disney animated musical, are just bad and incohesive and don't fit whatever vibe Disney and its producers were going for. I want to add that I don't think these qualms are the fault of the creatives behind this movie, rather, the fault of Disney executives stepping in.

Compared to Wish, Hazbin Hotel has interesting and dynamic characters, a solid art and animation style, and a wonderful soundtrack. Hazbin Hotel, despite being a show about the afterlife, has life and soul to it. This isn't to say I'm a big fan of the show, I do have criticisms of my own. My question is, how does Hazbin Hotel, an animated adult cartoon practically birthed from the internet, manage to be infinitely better than Wish, a movie by fucking Walt Disney Animation Studios? The fact that Disney, the studio behind The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast (or even more recent things like Moana and Encanto), is the same studio that produced a movie as flat and lifeless as Wish is baffling to me.

My speculation as to why this show is so much better than Wish is specifically because it was cultivated from random people on the internet who were passionate about their projects opposed to a company like Disney, who made Wish just for money (and to promote their anniversary). Disney has changed from what it once was and no longer takes risks in their storytelling or animation, only pursuing whatever writing, casting, or cost-cutting decisions that will line their pockets best. As someone who grew up watching these movies so much as a kid and learning about animation and storytelling and music from them, it's so disheartening to see any creativity within this corporation be crushed. Walt Disney Animation Studio's latest animated films since 2018 (Ralph Breaks the Internet, Frozen II, Raya and the Last Dragon, Strange World, and Wish) have all been lackluster in one way or another, with Encanto being the one exception. Disney has historically had dips in the quality of it's content, but this new trend in addition to the rise of streaming platforms (and even the introduction of AI) leads me to have little to no hope for Disney's animation going forward. Passion projects such as Hazbin Hotel are what makes me have any semblance of hope for the future of animation as a whole. Seeing one of the leading animation producers dwindle to this extent and kill any creativity brought to the table is just sad.

[oblivionbladetd]

Lily/Lorch’s video on Media Literacy is a lot to unpack, so I’m just going to start with the most important part —

She honestly believes that having a point is the exact same thing as being objectively correct, and that’s why villains can never have a point and still be villains in her eyes.

Do I even need to tell you how ignorant and dangerous this kind of mindset is?

Please explain to the youngsters in the audience why she’s utterly wrong in this belief.

I could preach ethics all day long, but who's to say mine are the same as yours? Or anybody else's?

If we want objectively correct, then we can just look at Ultron or Thanos. Statistically speaking, we will never know true, lasting peace. Also, statistically speaking, half our population just up and disappeared in an instant. As long as we can pull the inevitable socioeconomic collapse out of a 90-degree nosedive, it's still a net positive. The only problems they had were that for Ultron, it's that the save humanity by killing humanity is not exactly great for humanity. the world indeed probably would be better without us, but i will not be made to apologize for having a sense of self-preservation.... And with Thanos, the sticking point really is that when you are playing with true infinite, there are actually limitless better options than his initial one.

There are indeed a lot of problems if you just throw ethics to the wind and live in a world where the ends justify the means 100% of the time. Indeed, a lot of the greatest tragedies of human history are statistical non-issues, objectively unimportant. If the ends justify the means, then I guess eugenics and mass culling are hunky dory as well. It's logic that has already been used to justify horrible acts all around the globe from times modern to ancient.

If she wasn't just moving the goalposts in a stupid vendetta against a bunch of cheeky goobers, most villains have points. It's just good character writing. Outside of captain planet ass villains, nobody really sees themselves as a villain. There is a point to their cruelty, not always a great one, but a point nonetheless.

Let me tell you about a guy named Xykon for a webcomic called Order of the Stick. One of the protagonists, V, gets a humongous expansion to their spell list in a soul splice and fuck all else, full of bravado after nuking a dragon with a large amount of epic level spells gets it in their head the big bad ain't shit. After a brief bout of figuring out that hitting a spellcaster with far more practical experience and, more importantly, levels is easier said than done along with running a concentration based buff with a con of 6 means your epic super wizard transformation is good for all of three sturdy slaps being kinda ill advised. Proceeds to hit him with the single greatest speech in dnd fiction on how impermanent power is nothing and that whatever power you do have doesn't matter as long as you actually have it, proving it by showing that even the hail Mary of instant invisibility is nothing with little more than a higher than average spacial awareness and enough strength in their fleshless hands to crush a windpipe. Imagine being so outclassed an undead sorcerer that literally has magic imbued in his very bones switches to standard knuckle tossing just to put things in the ballpark of fair...

He has a good point and is very evil. Unapologetically so. If you are willing to let your mind explore and try to see through eyes that aren't yours, you will discover perspectives that will only ever enhance your understanding of the world. Hell, the very fact that there are war crimes is a widespread understanding that the only appreciable difference between the infantry of one country and another is a set of beliefs that might not survive the first time a soldier realizes he was a single inch away from being a corpse, so adding prolonged suffering is just needlessly cruel.

Hell, I'd welcome it as an open challenge to defend any villain as having a point because, again, short of stuff like has eaten bad vibes soup (chase young) or simply being a ancient force of nature. The list of bad guys that just are with zero explanation or justification is not as long as you'd think.

[jimmyogames]

Game Feel and How It Can Make or Break an Experience

What's up. I'm Jimmy, also known as JCJimmy, also known as "shitty Ridley", also known as yet another douchebag on the internet.

Things I hate about the essays I see online: meandering, summarizing, and barely-supported theses. It's my goal with this blog to avoid these pitfalls, or may God or Allah or whoever strike me down with a flaming, nuclear anvil like the proverbial Looney Tune I am.

With that out of the way, today I want to talk about "game feel", and particularly how it can strongly affect one's ability to enjoy games regardless of their other qualities.

Let's start from the top: what the fuck does "game feel" even mean? Video games are usually on screens, right? Is game feel the sensation of a cold, Dorito-smeared screen against your equally-smeared hands? No. Is it the Dorito-smeared controller in your hands? Partially, but also no. Believe it or not, what I call "game feel" has nothing to do with Doritos at all!

When I say "game feel", I'm actually talking about a few different things — all bunched together like three kids in a trench coat. The elements of game feel are "controls", "pacing", and "feedback". Let's explore each of these one at a time, starting with controls.

So obviously, what makes video games stand apart from movies is that you have the ability to play them — to control them, interact with them, influence the events within to produce various outcomes. A movie will always go through the same series of scenes at the exact same pace, every single time. Video games are the exact opposite: there are infinitely many ways that they can play out depending on the unique series of command any given player inputs. That's the core of games as a whole, even beyond the digital realm. What you do matters.

But games are as varied as the people who play them, and every game controls differently, has different ways for you to interface with them. In Pong, for instance, you can only move your paddle up and down, and that movement is instantaneous the millisecond you move your joystick. Then you have something like the original Super Mario Bros. Compared to the titles that came after it, the very first Mario is ludicrously simple; yet compared to Pong, it might as well be a leap into a new dimension. Pressing the arrows on the D-pad doesn't just move Mario any which way instantly. First of all, you can only move left and right; vertical movement is controlled by the jump button. Beyond that, unlike in Pong, Mario is governed by a set of physics. Just like in real life, he has to build up to his maximum speed and ramp down when he wants to stop. Jumping has a distinct arch and is affected by the speed at which you were travelling. Running and jumping are ostensibly Mario's only mechanics, but you can see just how complicated his control is versus what came before, yeah?

Well, as we all know, just as there was a leap from Pong to Super Mario Bros., video games would only become more and more complex with time. Third-person action games like Resident Evil 4 and Dark Souls make the NES look like a toy for infants with how many inputs there are to learn and master; and the less I say about DOOM: Eternal's trillions of inputs, the better.

What I'm trying to say, though, isn't that simple controls or complex controls are better or worse than the other. I simply want to emphasize just how varied games can be on the basest of levels, and why it's important to consider how a game controls before anything else — because the ease with which you can pick up a game and start playing is often what makes or breaks an experience altogether.

This is why I, personally, can't stand playing Super Mario 64. To me, the controls of that game just don't aren't fun to interface with. The physics of the original Super Mario Bros. are already rough enough to get used to, but put that same hefty gravity and momentum into the third-dimension, and it goes from being something to get accustomed to to a wet blanket weighing down the overall experience. I don't like making jumps in Mario 64; I don't like the wall-jump and how finnicky it is; and I really don't like it when the game expects precision performance with such clunky movements.

Super Mario Sunshine, on the other hand, controls like a dream to me. It's as if the iron ingots in Mario's underwear were extracted, giving him the freedom to fly through the air with agility that 64 Mario could only dream of. Couple that with FLUDD and the number of different techniques like the spin jump, and Sunshine is about as "fluid" as a 3D platformer can get, to my estimation. When I boot up Sunshine, I can hop right in and get to having fun in the various jungle gyms the game has constructed for me; when I boot up 64, I feel an exhaustion overtake me before I even get off the main menu, knowing that I'll have to take some time to reacclimate myself with Mario's gelatinous jumps and acrobatics. And don't even get me started on the actual Metal Mario you can play as.

Like I said earlier, however, control is only a third of what makes up "game feel"; another element of it is the game's pacing.

Pacing, put simply, is the flow of events from one to another. Think of how long movie scenes last before there's a camera cut to a different shot. The amount of time it takes for each cut is part of the pacing; the general progression of the narrative is the other big part of pacing. Both of these factors apply to games as well.

Just as every game controls differently, every game is paced differently, as well. There are fast games — Super Meat Boy, Ultrakill, and of course the likes of Sonic. There are slow games, too — puzzle games like Portal, text-heavy games like Disco Elysium, and even platformers that require more deliberation from the player, like Castlevania. The overall speed of a game can be either appealing or unappealing depending on what you like, or even how you feel at any given moment. No game is inherently flawed from its general pacing alone.

That said, games can be paced poorly, regardless of the speed at which they play. Let's pick on Sonic, as I am wont to do. Most of his games are blistering from start to finish, but there are a few outliers that really shit the bed. One of the most infamous examples is Sonic Unleashed, where half the game is spent running around like a coke fiend at a hundred miles an hour... and the other half is a half-baked God of War ripoff beat-'em-up that moves at a fraction of a snail's pace. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the two gameplay styles were integrated more cohesively. Instead, most of the time, you get to play one super-fast level before being thrown headfirst into a series of brawler stages that each take upwards of twenty minutes to complete. That is poor pacing, and if it's poor enough, it can easily be a reason why someone would drop their controller and go off to do something like pay their taxes, because even that's more entertaining than another half an hour of Sonic x DMC stuck in a brick of molasses.

On the contrary, when a game is paced really well, it can be downright hypnotizing, and you can kiss many hours of your life goodbye before you even start playing. Ultrakill, for instance, is broken up into levels that can be cleared sometimes in under a minute. This makes it appealing to go through stages again and again, grinding your times down; and because the game is just so fucking fast, it never feels like you're stuck doing one thing for too long. An hour of playing Ultrakill barely feels like any time at all. Again, though, even games with lower speed can have intoxicating pacing. Disco Elysium gets sucked off every day between my friends and I, and I'm about to give it another round of sloppy dome for how well it's paced. While it's slow to go around, talking to people, wading through mountains of text, there's always something interesting for you to do in DE. You can help solve local mysteries, try and recover pieces of your missing identity, learn about the history of the slum you're stuck in, or even, if you truly must... try and deal with that pesky case that your partner keeps telling you is sooo important.

Good pacing makes it easy to slip into a "flow-state", a kind of zen where you and the game are like lovers, entwined in a waltz of fun and frolic that can only be broken by realizing that it's nine PM and you have work tomorrow and oh god I haven't eaten yet and-

Bad pacing is a dance where neither you nor your partner know the moves and so you kind of just bumble around until you end up falling on your face and wishing dearly that you were anywhere else, doing anything else.

Lastly, an often overlooked aspect of a game's feel is its "feedback". The exact definition of "feedback" as it pertains to video games can be a bit nebulous, but if I were to try and describe it the best I can, I would say that feedback is how a game responds to your actions.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is one of my all-time favorite games, and it masters game feel in many ways. One such way is how the game responds to what DK does in the world. When you jump on an enemy, for example, there's a loud, satisfying bop that plays both from the game and from your Wiimote, emphasizing just how well you gave that baddie a righteous smackdown. DKCR puts you in the shoes of your player character masterfully; every jump you make, every enemy you kill makes you feel like you're actually a five-hundred pound gorilla, mercilessly bulldozing your way to reclaim what's rightfully yours.

But when a game lacks feedback, it's just kind of... underwhelming. Imagine if you stomped on a Goomba in Mario and there wasn't a nice little ba-boop in response to the impact. Imagine if you didn't bounce up either, so you just kind of fell down on top of the Goomba, silently flattening it. That would be so fucking lame, right?

I wanted to try and keep my examples diverse here, but since he just has so much relevant material, I'll talk about Sonic again. Particularly Sonic 2006, that notorious stain on the franchise's record that I am honestly surprised it survived. 06 has enough problems to fill a book, but in relation to the topic at hand, one thing it did wrong was feedback. In most other Sonic titles, when you homing attack an enemy, there's a crunchy wham, accompanied by the enemy you just blasted going flying off or outright exploding. It's fast, it's satisfying, and it reinforces the power that you wield while playing as this character. In Sonic 06, when you attack an enemy, there's usually just a little metal... bonk. And that's about it. Most enemies in 06 have large health bars, so don't count on them going flying after only a single hit. Instead, you have to repeatedly hammer them like a bent nail, and when they finally go down, they do so literally, ragdolling as if you were playing Garry's Mod and not a Sonic game. Instead of making you feel strong and giving your actions tangible weight, it makes you feel weak — flaccid, even. You aren't a blue cannonball of death; you're a wet stick slapping around your enemies until they lie down in sheer pity. In any other game, this would be a glaring flaw, but as far as 06 goes, it's just another problem for the pile.

Sonic 06 actually encapsulates all three of the things I've talked about today: it controls like ass; the pacing of its gameplay and story are agonizing, especially if you're a fan of Sonic's usual speed; and it barely reacts to the things you do, making it seem more like you're clacking action figures together rather than controlling a real character in a real, physical world. It is pretty miserable.

As for games with great game feel, I can think of a few examples... DOOM: Eternal, mentioned briefly before, is a pretty stellar one. It controls well (despite the amount of inputs you need to keep track of at all times), it's paced so that any stage never overstays its welcome, and the way demons blow apart into meaty chunks when hit by a Super Shotgun blast says more about its feedback than I ever could. Other games with tremendous game feel (excluding those already discussed) include Pizza Tower, Darkest Dungeon (1 and 2), the Like a Dragon series, both Hotline Miamis, and Sonic Mania (had to throw the blue fuck a bone at least once).

Thus concludes today's discussion. If you got this far, thank you for reading. I want to make running this blog a consistent thing, but for that, I will need support. Feel free to suggest topics for me to talk about using the blog's submission feature, as well as to post your thoughts down below.

If you enjoy this content, please consider supporting me fiscally via Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/jcjimmy. One-time donations are appreciated; subscriptions are very appreciated, and will all but guarantee that this blog continues for the future. I may also consider opening a Patreon if enough support is gathered, but that's just a pipe dream at the moment.

That's all I have to say for now. Take care.

[anarchywoofwoof]

good morning.

in this world that is built oh so precariously on the teetering surface of hustle and grind culture, it becomes infinitely more important to carve out pockets of time for things we truly love.

capitalism has a way of morphing everything into a commodity, even our passions. before we know it, we're sucked into this massive vortex of productivity at all costs, where even the joy that we seek is measured in terms of gains and losses.

here’s a little whisper of resistance for you though, babes. a quiet rebellion, if you will. finding time for your pure, unadulterated love for something, anything, is the boldest act of resistance. it’s like taking bits of your spirit back piece by piece from a system that’s always trying to leash you to monotonous cycles of work, consume, repeat.

i realize that stepping outside of our comfort zones and embracing the things that give us joy over security is not a comfortable task. it's like venturing out into uncharted land without a map and no idea of what lies ahead. but y'all: it is in the unfamiliar that we find the most profound and fulfilling blooms of personal growth and development. and personal growth is radical. it’s an act of defiance, a big “fuck you” to a system designed to keep us confined to our mode of production.

embracing what gives us meaning and what we love with open arms means unlearning a lot of crap that we've been fed, to reach towards authenticity, towards what’s real and raw and pulsating with life. it’s like breaking loose the shackles of societal expectations and dancing bravely into the arms of what sets our souls on fire.

and you know one of the most gratifying things about the whole situation is? the system hates it when we find joy outside of it. it can't stand when we manage to carve happiness out of the little nooks and crannies of every day life it forgot to commodify. to rob the system of its ability to bottle up happiness and sell it back to us in a never-ending loop of insatiable desires is the ultimate form of sabotage.

find that thing that makes you lose track of time, that makes your heart do little wiggles of joy, that thing that is unapologetically you and yours. grab it, cherish it, and don't let the grinding gears of capitalism taint it with its strive toward efficiency at all cost.

this is more than just a call to "do what you love" my dear mooties. this is a rallying cry to find and protect the sacred spaces where your spirit can roam free, wild and untamed. you deserve it.

[moltenwrites]

STORY NAME TAG

Thanks @thatuselesshuman for the tag

Rules: Post the names of all the files ( for me, files are the ideas fighting for attention in my head ) in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it!

After writing the post, I realize I very likely shared more than I was supposed to. Oops-

How our world ended

My current project, the first draft is finished and I’m shooting for a late 2024 early 2025 release

Souls Collide

My first project, and the namesakes of this universe. This one is indefinitely on hold untill I figure out how I want it to end.

Cadin & Raixen ( untitled )

A story focusing on two very important characters in the souls collide universe. This one is a more recent idea, but I’ve got a lot of it locked down in my head

Hart ( untitled )

A story focusing on an aging bounty hunter named Hart! This is the most recent full story idea I’ve had. I only really have the end figured out, but I like the idea

Council of fate ( untitled )

I may never make this one, but a story focusing on the council of fate, and how these people became as fucked up as they are is infinitely interesting to me

Asteri ( untitled )

One of two god based stories I’ve thought of, this one would focus on Asteri, a character who actually made a brief appearance in the How Our World Ended prologue

Other god story idk ( untitled, obviously)

I want to make a story focusing on the Gods post Asteri.

Shorter projects

These projects wouldn’t be full novels like the last, but I felt they were worth mentioning!

The Unfaithful - A remake and expansion of a ( admittedly terrible ) short horror story I wrote many years ago. I actually wrote a couple of paragraphs for this one, but I’m waiting to develop it more

Another Soul - A short project focusing on Oti, the God of death, taking a single soul to the afterlife

Untitled religion idea - this one is probably never gonna see the light of day, but it has a cool concept that I kinda fuck with

Island story - Also very likely never gonna see the light of day, but I thought of it two days ago and it was kinda cool

TAG LIST

Tagging @aintgonnatakethis @ddgraywrites @jjoneswriting @revenantlore @noxxytocin @yourpenpaldee @illarian-rambling @autism-purgatory @the-letterbox-archives @theverumproject @gioiaalbanoart

+ Open tag

[circledemptiness]

Praying Mantis

Fandom: Batman (Arkham Knight) Pairing: Edward Nigma (The Riddler) x Reader Rating: Explicit +18 Tags: Touch-starved, finger sucking, masturbation, praise kink, submissive Edward ✦ Read on AO3 – Older work (and it shows)

"Where your name used to sound like an insult in his mouth, right now it is a mantra, a broken moan coming from his agonizing ego."

Two emeralds glowing with disdain and pride, his eyes burning holes in your soul; a forked tongue spewing insulting contempt, when his thin lips aren’t twisted in a condescending grin.

There is so much arrogance on Edward Nigma’s face, so much insolence that it makes your core tremble. It wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t so dirty; there is something immensely infuriating to be blatantly disrespected by a man caked in a miasma of grease and filth, reeking of motor oil, body odor, blood and fuck knows what else. 

The Riddler is loud, so fucking loud when he gloats and reminds you how infinitely superior he is; his ego is blinding, glowing in a shade of toxic green. There’s something undeniably pathetic about him, a man child crying for attention surely.

And the Riddler is even louder when you accidentally brush his shoulder or bump into him. Offended that you touched him, but this time his voice cracks, makes you cock a brow. He’s not annoyed, he’s flustered. That might almost be charming if he wasn’t so aggravating. Instead, it makes you want to touch him more, in a way it’d break him and his aching ego.

You’re glowing, that night. You prepared yourself, performed your own ritual in front of your mirror. Swore you heard a hissing noise somewhere out there as you articulate your body. You look like a praying mantis. Feel like it, too.

All mechanical noises cease when you penetrate his workshop. Two green orbs glare at you, annoyed, impatient and something else, much more miserable, but exquisite to you. The corner of your lips curl almost imperceptibly so, chest raising with anticipation. He furrows his brow and raises from the stool he was sitting on.

“I was not expecting you. However, your presence is not welcome. I am extremely busy working on something of the utmost importance, and I’m afraid you are merely being a distraction here” his words are daggers, meant to hurt, scare you away. You don’t flinch. He’s furious. 

His jaw is clenched, while you walk closer to him. You can see more clearly how messy and greasy his hair is, how filthy his clothes are. Soon, you are close enough to smell him —an acrid scent of sweat, coffee, oil and something else that you don’t care to identify. You stare at his frame. Tall, subtly muscular, threatening. He could easily hurt you, you think to yourself. But he won’t. You know he won’t.

“Did you hear me, or should I take you to the door myself?!” he snarls, throwing a hand in the direction of the exit. And as he’s about to growl some more threats, you put a firm hand on his chest, interrupting him. It feels like it sucked the air out of his chest, and he freezes. Not a word escapes his twisted mouth, you only hear the clanging and clattering noises of the machineries. 

You push forward, invite him to sit back on the stool. His flesh is burning and sweaty under your palm, his chest hair caressing your delicate skin, his heart is frantically beating under your fingertips. His pulse feels like a frail bird who fell on the ground, disoriented and terrified.There’s a faint anger in his eyes still, but it’s mostly fear and panic now.

“What do you think—

“You speak too much, Mister Nigma”

He silently gasps at your words. Appalled, surprised, appreciative; you don’t know which it is. He could easily push you away, force you out. But he won’t. Maybe he’s been secretly wanting it all this time. Yearning for someone to handle him, break him in a way that would feel good. You wonder, when was the last time the poor thing fucked anything else than his hand? The thought amuses you.

Painfully slowly, you remove your hand from his chest and graze your fingertips against his sunken cheek. His stubble tickles you. You trace his bone structure until your digits reach his chapped lips. Your index finger holds his chin while your thumb rubs on his delicate and thin crimson flesh. He naturally parts his trembling lips, allowing you to feel his quickening warm breath as he’s knitting his brow in a worried look, eyes shining with a confused feeling. A silent plea.

“You always. Speak. Too much.”

Pressing your thumb against his slit, your eyes absorbing his own with a feverish sense of control, you swear you heard a soft whimper. Edward slightly opens his mouth, and your digit invades his warm cavity. His tongue feels velvety and wet against the flesh of your extremity. You smile, as you push your knuckle deeper inside of him. He shivers, and there’s a look in his eyes, a mix of fear, shame and lust. New colors appear on his face, beautiful shades of red, carmine, and rose. Edward closes his mouth around your thumb. You feel his teeth wrapped around it, the wetness surrounding it. Oh . It feels good.

You gently thrust your thumb inside his mouth, caress his tongue, rub his gums, feeling your own breathing deepening, and you hear more pathetic whimpers. He then ceases being passively invaded and timidly sucks on your thumb, swirling his tongue around your extremity. Tasting you. You cock a brow, pleasantly surprised, and smile. 

“You’re doing so good, Edward” A whisper, a murmur, a praise that makes him open wide eyes and strangle a soft moan. There’s something intoxicating about the noises he makes, about his vulnerable state. 

His body however remains infuriatingly still. Whether he doesn’t dare to touch you or doesn’t want to is unclear. You’re standing between his spread legs, his hands clawing at his thighs, knuckles turning white. Your free hand crawls on his dirty hair, he flinches. You firmly tug his hair, he loudly moans. Delightful sound. Shameful. Your thumb leaves his mouth in a wet sound, and he almost whimpers, missing its absence. Still gripping his hair, you make him look at you. His eyes are pleading with you, a thin veil of lust softening his usually harsh stare. He looks pathetic, in a beautiful way.

Adjusting yourself, you straddle Edward and sit on his lap. He gasps in protest and looks away. Too close, too intimate. He doesn’t relax his grip on his dirty pants. Looks painful. As painful as the erection you can guess through the bulge of his pants. The sweat makes his chest look shiny. You think that he’s quite handsome underneath the filth; under other circumstances you’d lick his torso clean. If he wasn’t such a cunt. His breathing is labored, his skin turned crimson, he’s tense. You put your fingertips on one of his hands, he flinches and looks at your invading touch

“Such big hands…” you run your fingers on his, pull on his hand until he lifts it, looking at you quizzically. You lay your palm flat against his, showing him the clear size difference between the two.

“Much bigger than mine… I wonder how they’d feel…” Edward swallows hard, and hums, unable to form any word. Unusual. But he’s shaking, oh, his whole body is shivering in anticipation. Makes you wonder what happened to the so pretentious Riddler. Yeah, doesn’t look so intimidating now, does he? Rock hard from sucking your thumb, panting under your most simple touch. What a mess.

“Would you like to show me?” you whisper, your eyes glowing like two diamonds. In your head, you hear the buzzing hiss of a praying mantis, and you swear you feel the skin of your back cracking, peeling, revealing a pair of wings. You feel fucking beautiful in the reflection of his eye-balls. Green mirrors, distorted with lust and fear. Edward shyly nods, and you put his hand on one of your covered breasts. He whimpers, and gives the soft flesh a light squeeze. His fingers crawl, rub, massage, explore. Edward moans. Shivers. Pants. Your hand caresses his scalp, and you sigh each time his hand moves. Your body is burning, and you want more.

You rock your hips impatiently against his clothed erection. He groans, loudly. 

“Come on, Edward. Give me more…” it’s not quite a plea, not quite an order either. He curses. Lovely. His hand grab the hem of your shirt, lifts it to uncover your breasts. He wraps both of his hands behind your back, fights against the clasp of your bra. He gets impatient, he curses some more, whimpers. He’s shaking. You giggle, run your hand in his hair. Until he succeeds, frees your breasts from the last piece of clothing covering them.

“Good boy…” you praise him, and his eyes sparkle at the validating words, an impossibly big smile on his face. He almost looks cute.

His hands are holding your breasts, thumbs drawing circles over your nipples. A warm touch on your burning skin. Makes you feel dizzy, as you close your eyes and surrender. A light pain shakes you, as he pinches your sensitive nubs. Pulls at them, twists them. They’re fully erect, they look like flushed pistils. 

He sinks in, swallows one of your nipples in his warm mouth. The surprise makes you moan, and you grab his hair, encouraging him. He’s sucking at them as if he’s starving –and he most probably was. He’s moaning as he’s sucking, licking, nibbling on your sensitive nubs. Smearing the filth of his face on your clean and soft skin as he’s eating your breast, stroking your collarbone with his tongue, nibbling and sucking on your flesh in a way that will surely leave marks. 

You don’t even mind his body odor; he feels like a starved dog grinding against you, panting, drooling on your flesh. In fact, his smell is animalistic, and so is his behavior, groping you, groaning, worshipping you. You’re not even sure anymore who is moaning as he’s sinking his teeth in the tender skin of your neck.

You rock your hips, grind against his painfully hard erection, to encourage him. He moans against your neck, lower his head to give your nipple the same passionate treatment while his hands slip the long of your back and cup your ass, accompanying your rocking movement. His touch, his tongue, his body heat make yours rise, needing more. Soon, he grabs the flesh of your ass hard enough to leave marks, making you grind against him frantically. 

Your clit is deliciously stimulated, and God you could fuck him right here, right now, but you don’t want to give in yet. The pressure of his warm clothes shaft rubbing frantically against your swollen folds makes you dizzy.

Where your name used to sound like an insult in his mouth, right now it is a mantra, a broken moan coming from his agonizing ego. 

You firmly push him back, he looks at you with a painful look on his crimson face; eyes deformed by lust, need and shame. You tightly grab his hair, he grunts in pain, and you smash your lips on his. It’s not pleasant, it’s passionate. All teeth and wet flesh. You devour his lips, bite them, suck on them. 

Force his mouth open, slide your tongue inside. You moan in each other’s throat, chins soon covered in drool, desperately trying to deepen the kiss. He tastes like coffee, his touch feels dirty, but in this instant you embrace it all. Your hands slip down his belts; after a short frantic fight you successfully remove them, unzip his pants. Edward pants and curses, until a faint plea escapes his mouth.

“ Please– ” he chokes on his words, then buries his face in your neck. You tug at his hair tightly, force him to look at you.

“Please what ?” you ask, firmly, coldly. Edward grunts, knits his brow. Feels ashamed. His green eyes turn blurry –are those tears? He whimpers, rocking his hips. 

“ Touch me ” Edward whispers, no, sobs. He sobs, and you release your grip. He buries himself back in your neck and shakes. You caresse the back of his neck in a comforting manner, while your other hand lifts his wife-beater to caress his sweaty stomach, tracing along his defined muscles. The touch makes him squirm and gasp miserably. 

You follow the dark hair of his stomach, and slide your hand in his underwear. His cock is so painfully hard and drenched in precum, burning and trembling. He lets out a loud moan and sobs some more as you wrap your hand around his shaft.

You pump him passionately, unceremoniously. The noises he makes are the ones of an animal, a loud mix of groans, grunts, moans. You feel him gripping your waist —some more marks tomorrow. A sharp pain —you feel his teeth sinking in your neck, concealing the unholy noises he makes. His hips moves, fucking himself in your hand, encouraging you. Mercifully so, you pump him faster, your grip tightening against his flushed dick.

You love the way he moans your name, begging you to not stop, drooling on your shoulder. It feels so good, you feel so good.

His breathing is labored, his body is drenched in sweat, convulsing and jerking under your torture, and it’s all too much for the Riddler. Running your hand through his disheveled hair, the softness of your caress contrasting with the frenetic rhythm of your other hand, you pull his head closer to your neck. Comforting. Soothing.

“Can you come for me, Edward? Can you be good and come for me?” you whisper in his ear, granting you a low sob.

Yes, God yes , he yells. His voice grows louder in a pleasured crescendo until you feel his grip tensing on your waist, his entire body jerking one last time, one last moan, and then a warm sticky liquid spurting, coating your hand and your stomach. And God, there’s just so much of it, you wonder when was the last time he orgasmed.

His drenched forehead still pressed against your neck, his irregular breath, warm against your flesh, you feel him getting softer in your hand. His body relaxes slightly, as he’s miserably and heavily crumbling against you. Your body is burning still, yearning for a touch, some friction, some release. But as you wipe your soiled hand on his pants and caress his hair almost tenderly, you think that this might be all he could offer you tonight.

Perhaps there will be a next time. 

[softchassis]

Re-breaking the Tumblr Ice with a "25 Games To Know Me" post!

Reasons why each game is important to me are under the cut.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 -- I love Sonic in general. I think across the entire history of the franchise I can only really point to two games I dislike, or three if I'm feeling particularly uncharitable. But Sonic 2 was the first game I ever saw at a store and said "I want that one". As for how I feel about Sonic 2 itself, it's actually not my favorite Sonic game or even my favorite classic Sonic game--those distinctions go to Sonic Unleashed and Sonic CD--but without Sonic 2, I may never have given the blue hog a chance.

Spark The Electric Jester 3 -- The most recent game on this list certainly but it deserves to be there. It's so confident and unashamed of what it is. It *knows* it's a Sonic fan game underneath its yellow blorbo skin, but it never winks at the audience about it. You just get to do some really incredible, high speed 3D platforming and mix in some DMC-lite combos in there too. It's good, it's fun, it's sincere, it's beautiful. All the Spark games are.

Cave Story -- Before Cave Story I only had a vague idea of the concept of "single person makes game all by themself". I'd certainly played plenty before, from the Shareware era on DOS and Windows 95, but Cave Story made it feel approachable. Plus, on its own, it's just a great little game.

La Mulana -- Cave Story and La Mulana share the same space in my brain. It may be a little weird to say this, but I typically don't enjoy 2D Metroidvanias. The only ones I've beaten are Super Metroid and most recently Nine Sols. But something about La Mulana just tickles me. It feels like the entire map is one big Rubik's Cube I'm beating my head against, which is more satisfying to me than "I found the thing that lets me do the thing I couldn't do earlier."

DOOM (2016) -- I love the entire Doom franchise but DOOM 2016 is my favorite standalone experience. Otherwise I have played untold hours of classic Doom mods, my favorites being Reelism, Demonsteele, and Doom Infinite.

Sekiro -- A really great experience all around. I enjoy Dark Souls and appreciate its storytelling, but most everything in Dark Souls feels too distant for me to appreciate, whereas in Sekiro, the history both is recent and ongoing, and the Shinto and Buddhist mythology informs the story in real time. And It's just so fun to actually play. You never forget your first Lady Butterfly.

Dynamite Headdy -- Most everyone loves Treasure but to me no game is more Treasure than this one.

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure -- One of the earliest plays on the RPG genre. A typical RPG hero is going around slaying monsters to level up, but that person isn't you. Instead, you go around reuniting the souls of slain monsters to revive them, and learn a lot about the heartfelt and unique world they once inhabited. A really beautiful and important game.

Worms Armageddon -- Still the best 1999

Avernum: Escape From The Pit -- A remake of Spiderweb Software's first game in the "Exile" series. Avernum tells a great fantasy story about an underground cave society, where undesirables are exiled by the empire who scorns them. Instead of laying down and dying in the caves, its new residents name it Avernum and create their own society... and they don't intend to take their punishment laying down. A really fun and atmospheric CRPG with great, Vonnegut-esque writing and a lot of heart.

Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver -- I played this one pretty recently and was shocked at how forward thinking it was for 1999. I played the entire Legacy of Kain series back to back, but Soul Reaver stuck out to me as the best one. If you can't tell by some of the other games on this list, I adore games that feel lonely and isolating but still have a distinct goal and stakes. Soul Reaver is incredible and finally contextualized just why I saw Raziel all over Playstation magazines as a kid--it's because he's fucking cool!

Marathon Infinity -- play the entire marathon series right now stop reading this

Lemmings -- Huh. What's that doing here

Pikmin -- The first Pikmin is the best one in my opinion. I love the time limit, I love the simplicity of the scope compared to the rest of the series, it's a fun game to just pop in once in a while and just blitz through. I also just love microworld settings. And the creature design! And the puzzle design! Ohh Pikmin there's nothing like you.

Klonoa: The Door To Phantomile -- I have a lot of fond memories of this one, but specifically of playing the demo over and over on a Playstation Magazine demo disc with my sister. I wouldn't actually play the full game until much later, on an emulator. I did later rent Klonoa 2 and finish it before that though. Klonoa is good.

Rayman -- I love this game. I love how fucking mean it is while looking so bright and poppy and silly. I first played it when I was like 8 years old and it was a really humbling, eye-opening experience. But jokes aside it's just a really good game. But yeah, it's hard. If you've never played it before and don't want to tear your hair out, you should play Rayman Redemption, a fan remake of it that makes it a bit more approachable. If you ask me though, you should try the original first.

Ecco: The Tides of Time -- I also played this one when I was really young and it was also a humbling, eye-opening experience. I just liked dolphins, I wasn't expecting to have rented the hardest game in the entire fucking store. Having revisited the Ecco series many times since then, though, I think Tides of Time is the best one. It's just gorgeous and both versions of the soundtrack are amazing. I prefer the CD one though, except for Moray Abyss and Tubes of Medusa.

Splatterhouse -- Kids love horror and kids love forbidden things, so when I saw a Splatterhouse ROM on a romsite as a kid and was immediately told I wasn't allowed to download it, of course I fucking did when no one was looking. And my brain was altered forever

Earthbound -- I very briefly had a stepbrother who had a SNES and Earthbound and I wasn't able to play it myself (no open save slots) so I just watched, but I was fascinated by it. I would eventually play it myself later on good ol ZSNES. I have nice warm memories of watching the snow on the ZSNES menu while it snowed gently outside, in between bouts of playing Earthbound and Yoshi's Island.

Yakuza -- Okay the PS2 boxart is here as a stand in, I love the entire Yakuza series dearly. I did own Yakuza and Yakuza 2 when they were new, but lost them when our PS2 and all of its games got stolen.

Sonic Robo Blast 2 -- Another Sonic game? But this one's special. I've been playing SRB2 for over half of my life at this point. I've played countless mods for it and have watched it grow from a basic little Doom platformer into a great platform for expression. It's also just fun.

Bomberman 64 -- The 3D bomb-stacking and bouncing stuff in this game is so cool and is the exact kind of finicky, almost-accidental-seeming mechanical depth I love in video games. I can't believe they only made one of these.

Psychonauts -- Kind of a stand-in for Double Fine and LucasArts in general, but definitely the best game still out of both companies. I love 3D platformers and I love what this game does. There's still not much out there like it.

Rayman 2 -- Another Rayman game? Well yeah, I can't say I love 3D platformers and just not put the best 3D platformer ever made on this list. Not an exaggeration!

Final Fantasy XIV -- I get to play as a hot lion woman now. Have you seen her? Well, now you have

[bisexual-horror-fan]

uhh i think this may have been asked before but do you think you could do anything with the Sinclairs for multi may? they just own my heart, soul, an brain.

Well of course you can have this Anon! Since you didn’t give me a prompt, which is fine, I went with one provided by @early20sfailingplenty, sweet Eri baby gave me the idea of a reader who sees Bo in particular being hurt and just fights back for him. It’s a really good idea! Plus a way to do some angsty, hurt, comfort sort of thing! That is important to me because I love Multi-May and I love showing all sides of polyamory, giving it depth and showing it isn’t just about the fucking. Like this piece, it’s also about killing for the killer, you know?

—

Rating. Explicit. Length. 2.7K. Bo Sinclair And Vincent Sinlair And Lester Sinclair X GN! Reader. Poly!Hinge Sinclairs. No Pronouns Specified. Warnings: Angst. Hurt. Comfort. Murder. Kidnapping. Stockholm Syndrome. Violence. Blood. Gore. Reader Is Hopelessly Devoted. Crying Reader. Hard Emotions.

—

Yes I Can.

—

You remember the day that you knew you’d do anything for any of them and that day was after you had been in Ambrose for exactly a month, you were sure by that point that you weren't going to die by their hands. 

Maybe that was ignorant, perhaps downright fucking stupid to think that but you did, some deeply held feeling that clings to you, as if it was bone deep and settling into your marrow, you were thoroughly steeped in the belief that you would be okay with them. You were more than okay honestly, you considered Ambrose your home, it was infinitely better than your old one, you were happy here, you felt shockingly free even considering the fact that you literally were not allowed to leave and still live. 

You never entertained the notion of a polyamorous relationship before them, but how were you meant to choose just one? It wasn’t fair, and all of them gave you different things, that was the beauty of the setup, hardwired into the whole very concept of it, trying to get everything out of one relationship and one person is unrealistic, with them you more than had all your needs met. 

Such a shift took more time to establish, Lester was the first and easiest, he really took to how kind you were, wanting to talk with him, spend time with him, genuinely get to know him. Times where you just sat with him and talked meant more than he thinks he could say, the easy physical affection and that you didn’t lean away from him or when he tried to touch him was huge, the fact you initiated contact just as much as he did was everything. 

Vincent came next because you were so into his art and honestly because you poured a ton of effort into cooking, the three of them frequently got so fucking busy that proper cleaning, care and good food fell by the wayside, but now with you here that was a thing of the past. Having actual good meals, not toaster waffles that were burnt on the outside but somehow still frozen on the inside, did wonders not just for his mood but his creative drive and overall well being. The times you would bring a steaming plate to him and tell him to stop working were the highlights of his days.

Bo had not yet been won over. No matter the sweet things you said, the things you did for him, and no not even as enthusiastically you gave into whatever game he wanted to play or offered yourself up, he wasn’t moved. If anything it made you try harder. You had gotten closer with him, sure, in the physical sense and he wasn’t quite as asshole-ish to you overall, which you took as a plus and that you would get him the rest of the way there with time. You weren’t in a rush, you had all the time in the world, didn’t you? 

You cared a ton about all of them and would do just about anything for them, you thought maybe if you proved that one day to all of them you could be a true equal and really earn your place in Ambrose. 

The idea struck you one day when some people rolled through Ambrose, you did as instructed, stayed out of the way. You didn't let yourself be seen and watched what happened, took in the view as the group of people met the fate that you almost had. 

The trio were all totally brutal, but you knew that when they killed your friends who didn’t survive like you had, still seeing it once more, against this group of strangers, fresh in your mind, it makes you scared. Not for your own life! God no, far from it, you were worried for them. Bo and Vincent and Lester were all very capable and had been doing this for a long time without issue, but what if the day comes where they are not so lucky? Everyone has an off day now and again. It was sweet, you were concerned, it was preventive, you took your new life here very seriously and you would make them see it eventually, no matter what, you’d show them. 

You approach Lester to try and make what you had in mind happen. He had just come back from his usual daily work out at the pit, it was afternoon, it was hot as hell but you were downwind and didn’t have to contend with the smell, thank God. You loved Lester but post pit he smelt awful, especially during the summer months. 

“Hiya Les!” You greet enthusiastically and his head jerks up, a smile spreading across his face, he says your name in kind and in greeting before asking, “How ya doin’?”

“Oh just fine, wanted to check in on you.” It was honest, and he said, “Ain’t that sweet of ya?” 

You came over and he pressed a kiss to your cheek that made you smile, “You want some lunch?”

“I’d love some. Back to the house?” He asks and you nod your head, “Mmhm, either way you gotta get washed up first.” 

He holds up his hands, smeared with dirt and God knows what else, “You’re right, s’ prolly best.” 

You start your walk back up to the house, you already made lunch earlier on, and you start the conversation you wanted to have along the way, “So I wanted to ask maybe a small favour.”

“A favour, huh?” He asks but the tone is still light as air and you say, “Yeah, you think that might be okay?”

“Ain’t illegal to ask but doesn’t mean I’ll answer.” He teases and you laugh, “True, alright, so I was thinking the other day and I was wondering if maybe you wouldn’t mind teaching me some uh, self defence skills?”

He laughs, “Self defence skills? What? You don’t trust all a’ us to look after ya?” He asks, his shoulder nudging yours and you roll your eyes in amused exasperation, “No, it’s not that, it’s more the opposite.”

“Tha opposite?” He inquires and you affirm, “Yeah, I wanna do my part, you know? What if some asshole gets the drop on you or Vin or Bo and I’m near enough to do something about it but don’t have the know how. I dunno if I could ever forgive myself.” 

He stops, his hands are on your shoulders, effectively stopping you as well and making you turn to face him, you are both in front of the house at this point as he asks, “Ya wanna protect us?”

You avert your gaze and nod, the admission is small yet heartfelt, “Yeah, I do.”

“So why are you comin’ to me?” He asks and you fire back with a shrug, “Why not?”

“Pffft, Iunno, Bo’s and Vincent are bigger than me, pretty tough an’ strong, going to them makes sense.” You cross your arms and assert, eyes still on the ground, “You make sense too! Especially for what I want-”

“An what do you want?” He asks and you finally meet his gaze again, “Help me with learning some knife skills?”

He laughed, his hand fell away and he turned and started up the steps. You rush after him, confused, “What’s so funny?” 

A look over his shoulder and he sighed, “You. Yer too much.”

“Why? Why am I too much?” You ask as you catch up with him as he opens the screen door, “Cuz you think I’d willingly give ya a knife? If Bo finds out? Shit, taint worth thinkin’ about.” 

“Lesterrrr, c’mon! Why not? I won’t do anything to any of you! I want to help you all!” You argued and you were both striding through the living room now, “An’ how do I know that? Could be all kindsa pretty talk till I hand it over and than whoops I’m stabbed and you run off-”

Your breath catches and you stop. He hears it, the small sniff, he turns in the doorway to the kitchen to see you stopped a few feet away, you say softly and apparently on the verge of tears, “I’d never do that to you. Any of you.” 

He groans, hat off, back of his hand wipes over his forehead and smears more dirt, he replaces it back onto his head and comes forward, “Don’ cry.”

You wipe at your eyes, you know Lester likes it when you cry, just not in this particular context, it wasn’t fun for him and made HIM feel bad more than anything positive. “M’ sorry, I know you don’t li-like when I do, I can’t help it though. I just love you all so much and I’m worried.” 

Your shoulders were still shuddering and he cursed before asking, “I know, I know ya love us. Just…You mean it? You won’t do nothin’ less absolutely necessary?”

A nod as you wipe at your eyes, breathing starting to even out, a deep inhale as you try to compose yourself and he says, “Alright but keep it quiet! I mean it, if Bo finds out he’ll-”

“I won’t say anything! It’ll be our secret, and I won’t do anything unless absolutely necessary.” You plead, repeating his exact words back and he says, “Aight. M’ trustin’ you. Don’ make me regret it.” 

“I won’t! Thank you Les! You won’t!” You throw your arms around him into a big hug and he laughs, “Fine, we can go over some stuff but first, lunch.”

“Yes, lunch.” You agree and soon you are in the kitchen, he washes up and you both eat, conversation on lighter things, and afterwards he did just as he said he would. You go back to his space and he shows you the knives he had countless times before and instructed you how to use them the most effectively.

“Now you can’t stab someone too hard, ya hear? You just gotta put your all into it, an’ go for it. Try for the throat if you can but if not the gut ain’t bad neither, you get it deep enough and reef it up an’ it’ll stop just about anyone.”

You listen with rapt attention, trying to absorb absolutely everything he said and after all that, he gifted you one that you could safely keep on your person at all times. You thanked him and tried not to cry for the second time that afternoon, at least this time the tears that threatened to spill over were happy ones. You told him you were going to treasure it always and assured him, you’d never use it on him or Bo or Vincent. 

“Ya better not, cuz if ya try I might just have to turn it back on you.” He teased but you could hear the edge undercutting it and you nodded, “I’d expect nothing less.” 

That wasn’t all of it, you made sure to watch whenever Vincent used those twin knives, really tried to focus on the brutality he displayed as well as the technique. You just hoped that you would never have to actually put the decently sized folding knife concealed on your person to actual use. 

As the days bled to weeks and turned to months you started to relax, you felt like maybe you were being silly, that your fears were unfounded. People would come to town and they would fall with minimal issue, life kept on going and you thought everything would be just fine as it always had been.

One day some more people came into town and you went about your regular routine, as you always did, made yourself scarce. You knew the safe areas you needed to keep to and where to avoid, during times like this you didn’t do much, hold up in your locked room and usually read a book. It wasn’t unusual to hear some sounds, some screams, some scuffle, it was natural, easy to tune out and you stopped getting so nervous as you used to. 

Tonight was different. It was loud, unbearably loud, more than you had ever heard previously. You did something you shouldn’t have, you peeked out your upstairs room window and gasped at what you saw. Bo, mid-scuffle with some guy and currently taking what looked like a terrible punch to the jaw, made him unbalanced and then, someone else was sneaking up behind him that he was clearly not aware of. You did what you definitely never, ever should do and that was, break one of the biggest rules, you got involved. You busted out of your room, you ran down the hall and the stairs were taken two at a time until you were coming out the front door, knife in hand and it wasn’t until Lester was shaking your shoulders that you came back to yourself. 

“What?” You ask and Lester repeats himself, “I said are you alright? You hurt?” 

You look up at him, brows furrowed and you ask, “Why would I be hurt?” 

“Cuz you’re covered in blood?” He sounded just as confused as you did and that is when you looked down and holy shit, yes you were. It all hit at once, you were sticky, a complete mess, gripping the knife in your hand so hard that your knuckles were aching, you felt sore but overall fine. 

“I guess I am.” You admit still dazed, you are in the kitchen of the house, you don’t know when you got from the outside back into here but you were now and you see Vincent working on patching up a pretty rough looking Bo. You were in a chair and Lester was crouched in front of you, “What happened?”

You think hard, you remember seeing the fight, Bo getting hurt, and someone else about to jump him, you remember running out to him and then the rest comes into focus.

You took out the knife from the waistband of your shorts and you tackled the person who had wrestled Bo’s shotgun from him, driving the knife right under their ribs as you did so. You crashed to the ground, landing on top of them, the force of the action causes the blade to go deeper still, you are pretty sure by the way they wheezed you punctured a lung. Blood pours from around the embedded blade and you sit up quickly, ripping out the knife, your fingers on your opposite are tangled in sweat soaked hair and you slam their head back onto the concrete with a wet sounded crack. 

They weren’t moving any longer. You let them go. You are heaving when you get up and turn to see the other person staring you down, your hands are coated with blood as well as it soaking into your shirt and smearing down your legs. The other person who punched Bo looked terrified and you didn’t waste time, you took them down in a similar fashion, that one ended with you also getting a pretty bad punch but with the other body below you with his throat slashed open. After you were sure neither were getting up you stayed next to Bo and the next thing you really remember is this, now, being in the kitchen with them.

You tell them, “They hurt Bo and I just…Had to do something.”

To say they were all shocked was an understatement. Bo got up, and Lester got out of the way, he was staring you down, a hand on his bandaged ribs and he said, “You were pretty sadistic back there.”

You almost waited for him to scold you, but that didn’t happen, “You really did that for me?”

A nod, nervous as you admit, “Yeah…Told you, I love you, all of you, don’t want anything bad to happen to any of you.”

“Seems you really do belong here. And maybe it’s the delirium talkin’ but, M’ feeling so generous that I won’t even ask where you got the knife.” You feel happy, you smile and ask, “So I did good?”

“Very good. It was stupid as all hell and risky but shit if you didn’t do it well.” That had to be one of the nicest things he has said to you so far. You feel nearly giddy and hold your arms out and ask, “Can I uhm…Have a hug?”  

He laughs, a shake of his head, “Well if you haven’t earned it by doin’ this then you never will.” 

“Not just you but uh…All of you? Please?” 

Vincent saunters up, a sign of, “I think we can manage it.”

Still blood soaked and sweaty, shaking and sore you are wrapped up in three sets of arms and you feel more at home than you ever have. 

[quinnkdev]

"Ants From Up There" - Analysis

The tragedy of pouring from an empty heart

Music by Black Country, New Road. Essay by Quinn K.

[I made this little text because I felt like writing something about this album, since I still think about it and listen to it a lot, to this day. Hope you enjoy.]

cw: toxic relationship dynamics, blood, weight-loss mention, drowning mention, cancer mention

To a lot of people, there's an undeniable pull to giving. The idea of committing to something - or somebody - greater than one's self is alluring to many. And in commitment of that kind, to give is normal; giving money, giving time, giving attention, giving possessions.

When we truly believe in something - or somebody - and want the object of our adoration to thrive, we'll give our hearts' contents away.

...To a lot of people, there's an undeniable pull to receiving gifts.

The contradiction is obvious, as is the problem - giving is finite, and receiving is infinite.

Black Country, New Road's sophomore effort "Ants From Up There" tells of a doomed situation like that. The Concorde Fallacy, named after the multinational Concorde agreement (more commonly known as the sunk cost fallacy) is primarily used in economics, but slots perfectly into place with the mental and physical drain of a painful, struggling relationship that flies using only one insidious fuel: Commitment.

Human beings can be addicting; when their favour is hard-won, it's all the sweeter when you do get it. It doesn't matter if the person you loved has categorically ignored you when you asked for their attention, belittled you and your boundaries, taken what you had until you were lacking, hurt you - If they smile at you, it's worth it. If they compliment you, suddenly, it's worth it. If they fuck you, it's worth it.

And you don't even see the tear-stained pillowcases in the wash; you don't notice your health declining, the weight you lose; you don't understand your friends telling you that the relationship is bad for you, because surely, “who I put this much care into must care too, right - right!?” All these warnings dissolve into an ambient buzz, background radiation; they become a hurt so familiar it grows unquestioned.

The song “Concorde” says it a little like this: You wouldn't even notice the relationship was killing you if it was a cancerous growth, diagnosed by a doctor. 

Human inertia dictates to keep doing what you've been doing. To keep worshiping at their altar, and, in the small gestures that are oh-so meaningful to you, be rewarded.

"Ants From Up There" showcases this short-circuit in the human mind with an arresting amount of immediacy, intimacy and nuance. It even acknowledges the most horrible part of it all: 

You do it to yourself. 

People can only walk over your boundaries if they’re violent - or - if you let them; and having trusted somebody who, at the time, you thought you had every reason to trust, can feel like your own mistake.

The muddiness of emotional truth is hard to divide apart - “Ants From Up There” doesn’t try to do so, but instead, pits one side of the relationship - the giver - entirely against himself. The album’s protagonist, Isaac (whose story, while likely autobiographical, I’ll treat as fictional so as to not analyse real people) is filled with self-loathing both over perceived personal inadequacies, chambered in a gun’s barrel pointed at himself, and a clear belief that his commitment to the other person - who’s nicknamed “Concorde” throughout the album - gives his impossible soul some kind of purpose, elevates him by virtue of his servitude of her ghastly better-ness.

When you treat a human being as better, as an object of worship, you're likely to be seen as an object in return: As useful, and disposable. The song “Good Will Hunting” examines this most closely, with a short parable of a hull breach on a starship, with “Concorde” taking the only escape-pod and filling it with things most important to her - leaving Isaac, the disposable, behind.

Isaac also believes that he, himself, is helpless - and to an extent, he becomes it, as he spends all energy he used to spare for self-care on caring for his relationship instead. In “The Place Where He Inserted The Blade”, Isaac not only fails to understand how to cook a simple meal after a recipe out of his interdependency on his partner’s approval and praise, but, on the metaphorical side, where and how he was hurt, what actually happened. 

“Good morning - Show me the place where he inserted the blade!”

Notably, he speaks of a “he”, rather than a “she”. Until the very final moments of the album, Isaac is incapable of conceiving that “Concorde” was capable of hurting him; he instead seeks the blame within.

—

Sometimes, I wonder if people on the final flight of the Concorde were sad. About the end of an era, or the end of a peace-project between several nations; the end of a commitment. In retrospect, I assume they probably weren’t - it was just a flight like any other, standard procedure. And after all, they were just passengers. Bystanders.

Maybe, the flight would have been more notable if it had ended with a crash.

Many relationships like the one portrayed in this album exist. They’re a dime-a-dozen, many people take too much, and many people give more than they can; and in some way, “Ants From Up There” seems painfully aware of this. It balances it out through this intense specificity and an emotional rawness that few - maybe no - other albums released in 2022 can match. And through being specific while simultaneously aware of the commonness of its story - interspersing more direct allusions to Isaac and “Concorde’s” relationship with abstract pieces about similarly-shaped situations between unnamed characters - it invites the listener in. It allows them to examine themselves in relation to that hurt.

There isn’t much to learn from “Ants From Up There”; it’s a tragedy. Though written in present tense, it’s been played, recorded, and pressed to physical media; it’s a done affair. Isaac’s life was forever changed by “Concorde”, and though he comes to the realisation of the magnitude of this hurt in the closing minutes of the finale “Basketball Shoes”, and purports some small manner of internal healing earlier in that song, for us, there’s nothing to do but feel for Isaac, and, in the way that his struggles mirror our own, be cleansed.

“Oh, your generous loan to me - Your crippling interest!”

Isaac screams this, tears pouring down his face, closing the album. To the last moment, even knowing his hurt, he feels he has taken from her, not that he was exploited. The name Isaac means “the one who laughs” in Hebrew; an irony like that is stronger than fiction.

If a lesson must be extrapolated for all this hurt to be worth something, I suppose it’s this:

No matter the heights of your altruistic love, no matter the depths of your self-loathing, eventually, you have to stop pouring from an empty heart, or drown in your own blood.

[jo-harrington]

Jo, give me something fucked up about teeth. Dealers choice.

Oh my love, ask and ye shall receive.

This could be any of our boys...but I think you know exactly who this is. Happy Birthday Meg, my love, my life, my cheeseburger.

Pairing: Some specific actor with (allegedly) fake teeth who shall not be named x Fem!Reader

Warnings: RPF, smut (P in V), teasing, power play, oral fixation, and obviously TEETH.

"Take them off."

"Excuse me?"

"Your teeth." You panted heavily. "Off."

He couldn't believe what he was hearing right now.

You were both in your underwear, playing your little drawn out striptease foreplay to see who could make the other cum first--or beg first, it really didn't matter--without letting it really get to the main attraction. Truth be told, neither of you had time for this kind of game, but you always made the time.

This wasn't a relationship; one could barely even call it an affair.

It was...a fling, a hookup, an every-so-often occurrence that happened at a hotel whenever the two of you were in the same city on business or "coincidentally" had long-enough "layovers" at the same airport.

What began as drinks and conversation shared in some overrated, overcrowded airport lounge turned into the bearing of the soul to another familiar face that lived and died by their travel itinerary, and then the bearing of each others bodies.

And although he might have told you about his...hang-up about his teeth before, he never considered that you'd put two and two together on your own and realize it was a way for him to...tame the beast, so to speak.

Or agitate it, if the right buttons were pushed.

"Take. Them. Off," you repeated again. You stopped and sat back on his thighs and crossed your arms over your chest. "If we're gonna kiss, I don't want to cut my tongue on the bridge of your false teeth."

"We don't have to kiss to have a good time," he pouted and put his hands on your thighs, hoping to tempt you closer and back into a delicious rhythmic friction against him.

This was fun for both of you, why did it need to stop?

" I like kissing and this is my hotel room," you reminded him, barely budging. "And I can make it all worth while for you if you just do as I say, Joseph."

The force behind his name made him twitch.

It was a battle of the wills.

It always was, actually.

He could play important celebrity card, with his managers and pr reps and publicists and thousands of fans that screamed his name no matter how dead it made him inside.

He didn't have to fit you in.

But you also had your cards to play, with your conference calls and pitch meetings and a job that was infinitely more impactful and probably more profitable than his could ever be.

So you could honestly say the same.

But you'd let him win last time, so it was your turn now. Wasn't it?

Still he hesitated as he tongued along the metal bar that lined the backs of his incisors.

This wasn't you playing to his oral fixation; this wasn't you painting the taste of yourself over his lips with the tips of your fingers or stuffing your panties in his mouth because he was in your room and your boss had the next room over. This was you peeling back his defenses and seeing the heart of him, shining a light into the deep and twisted corners of his mind.

Did he want you to stick your tongue in the gaps between his incisors and his molars? Yes. Did he want to bite you hard enough to leave a mark and then see the break in the imprint on your skin? Also yes.

But he also didn't want you to have to see the chip in his armor, one that he'd been made fun of before time and again. The thing that made his first ever stylist cringe when he posed and smiled for a photoshoot.

He'd gone to the dentist with the check from that ad campaign and gotten the fake teeth fitted.

"Don't do that," they told him, words that echoed in his head as he had the impression tray in his mouth. "Don't smile so big. Don't smile at all. You're handsome enough; no one wants to see that."

But now you wanted to see it, you wanted to see him and know him and fuck the him that was imperfect. Consume the part of him that no one wanted. The one that got erased by a careful crafted facade and sometimes an AI filter...by both friends and fans alike.

You both had confessed to one another, after the second or third time you'd "run into each other" that...family and close friends aside...it was hard to travel to all these places and be a name, a job, a reputation...and not yourself.

So he wanted you to see him.

He hungered for it.

And against his better judgement, he forced his tongue against the metal to push the bridge out of his mouth. He tried to be quick to throw it onto the bedside table, but your hand shot forward and you grabbed his wrist.

"I thought you wanted to kiss," he mocked you now. He pressed his tongue flat against the roof of his mouth and felt the familiar comfort that came with fiddling with the gaps. "Needed a kiss so badly."

"I do," you nodded, your eyes locked with the metal and porcelain. "And we will."

"But..."

Your grip on him loosened once you knew he wouldn't wrench his hand away. Your fingers danced up his arm, then over his fingers, until you plucked the bridge from his grasp to inspect it.

He watched, entranced, as you tilted your head and analyzed the dental device.

His hand stayed frozen in the air...until you shifted forward once again and ground down onto his cock, your slickness already soaked through your panties and the Dior boxer briefs that he was obligated to wear, creating a sticky drag that caused him to groan.

You bucked, over and over until he felt like he was about to reach the precipice. Both of you moaned, the truth silent and thick in the air that you were truly just using him to chase your own pleasure, all the while doing all of the little things that made him weaker than you. Made him lose himself before you could.

Your rhythm stuttered purposefully, dragging your clit over his sensitive head, over and over. Rolled your hips up and forward so the softness of your ass rubbed against him, cradled all of him just so.

And the kicker was you did all this by instinct, muscle memory as you pointedly ignored him, ignored his want for your eyes locked with his as you challenged one another, so you could overanalyze the contraption that made him perfect in the eyes of his fans. The lie.

And then you stopped. Right as he was panting and whining and begging without words.

You moved the false teeth to one of your arms and ran the perfect ridges along your skin.

"You know in all the times we've done this, you've never bitten me before," you told him matter-of-factly.

"I...wha--" He was at a loss for words.

"Bitten me," you repeated. You had to repeat yourself a lot tonight. "I thought you would have done it by now."

"Why would I?" he questioned.

"Why wouldn't you?" you retorted. "I think we get into it enough sometimes that...spur of the moment, lack of judgement...just a little nibble."

"First you want a kiss," he huffed in laughter. "Now you want a hickey. Getting needy now, aren't you, love?"

You narrowed your eyes at him, and in a move most unexpected, you shoved the teeth in your mouth. Clenched between your teeth, his bite pattern obviously not a match for yours, but it made for a morbid set of vampire fangs. His cuspids clenched between your incisors.

You then shifted and peeled his underwear back to squeeze his shaft, skin to skin, hot and spit and slick. And it made him see stars, he was close, closer now that you did...all of this.

For the briefest second as you peeled your own panties to the side and sunk down onto him, he questioned everything, questioned his life as the warmth engulfed him and he saw God.

Why would you do this? What had changed? When had two lonely souls sharing drinks and stale bagels and secrets and sex turned into...you sucking on his teeth while you rode him to oblivion.

Then again...he had always been into some wild things. Things that he knew he had to give up since he became a household name. Was this just...did something inside him immediately recognize a kindred soul...slightly lost...slightly yearning for the life they left behind when an immense expectation became too much to bear.

He had wanted you to consume him. Maybe this was the two of you consuming each other...

You grabbed his hand and maneuvered him to pleasure you, to rub and play with you, to get you to the edge that you'd so successfully gotten him to so you could launch yourself into wanton irresponsibility together.

As he moved his fingers, as you shifted your hips, his mouth moved in a similar fashion. Teeth clenching, tongue flicking, silent oh's and ah's that sparked a wicked idea inside of you.

You shifted forward, leaned your head closer to his, breathed heavily through the bridge clenched in your teeth...swiveled your hips, once twice...then you kissed him.

And he came.