#at least in my experience its you fuckers

[snekdood]

its very funny when someones disingenuous and you know they know you're talking about an intracommunity issue but pretend that you're talking about it in a broader context, like yeah. obviously, the average person doesnt do this. i'm not talking about the average person, though, im asking YOU and ppl like you who's SUPPOSED to know better to BE better, k? just asking you to hold yourself to your own standards, if you're truly a progressive.

[gatorbites-imagines]

Kinktober day 2

ftm yautja oc (Bhankui-ya) x male reader

Can Yautja be FTM? No idea, but this one can. Ive only watched one predator movie, so this is mainly just cooked up from my own imagination and attraction to Yautja, as well as the many fics I read. I used a generator for the name, so if it’s bad, blame the generator.

This is also more just “haha funny relationship between a yautja and his ooman” kinda vibes. very fun to write, i would love to write about Bhan again.

Mixed wording for the yautjas bits.

Kinktober 2024 masterlist

Dating a yautja was an… interesting experience. Bhankui-ya, or as you called him, Bhan, was no exception. But really, dating a scaley 8ft tall alien warrior who could rip your spine out of your body with his pinky really didn’t get any weirder. You were never gonna complain though, except for the times he would sit his entire weight in your lap, and you were left gasping for air. It wasn’t your fault that yautja weigh the same as three men of their size. You loved it though, and you had a feeling Bhan knew that.

How you came to date your partner, mate, as he called it, was another strange set of circumstances. You had a past of your own, and there wasn’t much left to live for. So, you had set out to take down the people who’d harmed you and your loved ones the most with you. Your body was littered with the scars they left on you, and your heart was covered in even more, aching for the siblings they’d taken from you. Be it from their abuse, or your siblings taking their own lives because of them.

It hadn’t truly registered at the time. You didn’t know what a bad blood was, or that Bhan was an enforcer. You just knew that scaley fucker, who was already missing an arm and hissing like a wet feral cat, was trying to take your kill goal from you. Bahn would later tell you, after laying in bed feeling like hed just drained the very life out of you, that you fought more feral than a kiande amedha fighting for its queen.

You still didn’t really know what that was, but you had seen skulls, trophies, Bhan kept of them. Apparently, they were a big deal, and seeing you acting like one got him wet. For some reason. But hey, you got hard seeing him cleaning his knives and spears, who were you to judge that he got heated up seeing you rip a bad bloods mandibles right out their face.

Anyways. In the end you came with him, since you’d “proven yourself” somehow. And having literally nothing and no one on earth, you just followed. You were no warrior or hunter, at least nothing compared to yautja. But you had a “look in your eye” in Bhans words, or rather clicks. The implant to understand him still itched at times. You just “needed to unleash it” whatever that meant.

Turns out the one place you can unleash this so-called power is in the bedroom. Because, where yautja may be the superiors in many ways, it seems in the way of the body humans were still more advanced. Bhan would tell you it was because “Oomans like you are controlled by bodily urges”, you just think he’s jealous you used to fuck a toy before you met him.

You honestly felt like you were on top of the world the first time you used a vibrator on his clits, because apparently his people had three. Seeing him rip holes in his seat and how he would arch, and roar made you feel euphoric, it had to be the same rush Bhan felt on a good kill. But instead, you got it from making him squirt so hard his legs were shaking.

You never got to live on that high for very long. Apparently Bahn liked to “peel you back down again” so you “didn’t get too confident”. Apparently, a confident hunter was a dead hunter, or something like that. It was pretty hard to think about his “lessons” when he was riding you though, his sheer bulk slamming down on your already aching human hips until you were making noises similar to the creatures he hunted when they were dying.

That didn’t stop you from stocking up on toys though. The next time you came to earth, you scrounged up money one way or the other, and immediately entered the best quality shop you could find. Bhankui-ya was off doing whatever he needed to do, and in the meantime you were trying to find out which wand would work on him.

The conversation with the store clerk was embarrassing, to you at least. They seemed quite entertained as you fumbled out that you were trying to find something that would work on your “taller than you can imagine, buff as hell and more dangerous than a tiger on steroids” partner. They were very helpful though, and even gave you some discounts and wished you luck on your way, as you stumbled out of the store with at least two bags on each arm.

It was only experience at this point that helped you remember where the ship was, since it was invisible and all that. But as you got inside you immediately clambered off to the bedroom, where you got to work. Bhankui-ya wouldn’t know what hit him when he got back, you would make sure of that.

Of course, you shouldn’t have been surprised when your mate came back beaten and bloody, but lugging the bad bloods head under his arm. You had gained a fascination with seeing the heads of his kills, alright? So, what if it made you morbid. And Bhan? He just seemed to almost preen as you oohd and aahd over his kill.

Patching him up was a couple’s activity, mainly just because you liked patching him up, and Bhan liked when you did it. He could have easily fixed himself up with the many tools he got as a yautja, but where was the fun in that, when he got to see his little blood thirsty ooman patch him up instead. Bhan did have to stop you from licking his blood up at times, lest he decided to ride you right then and there.

In the end you forgot all about the wide array of toys youd laid out in the bedroom, in the order you planned to use them on him. You sent Bhan on his way, deciding to be a good mate and drag his heavy as fuck armour and weapons off to where they needed to go for cleaning and polishing. It caused aches in your back, but Bhans purrs made it all worth it.

Walking into the bedroom Bhankui-ya got to see your little plan, and if the hunt and your pampering, as well as that flicker of bloodlust in your eyes hadn’t got him wet, then this did. How sweet of you, his little mate, to want to pamper him this way. Had you remembered it was your anniversary? (you hadn’t) how could he not use the gifts you set out.

Walking into the bedroom to see Bhan fucking himself with one of the toys, a vibrator against his clits made you almost pass out. Hed even worked one of the plugs into his other hole, his muscular thighs spread wide open as he purred in your direction, his noise like a siren call that had you stumbling over your own feet, almost making you eat floor.

Bahn had tried to laugh at your stumbling, but you were on his slit like a starved animal. It was only the fact that Bahn let you that you got the vibrator away from his nubs, mainly because he loved your mouth on him. It was just so much nicer to have a human eat him out than a fellow yautja, he had taken lips for granted his entire life.

Having just gotten back from a hunt left him more pliable, and willing to go along with your whims. Which was how you got four of those wired vibrators strapped to his thighs, and up his cunt, set to the highest setting as you fucked into his ass. The wand youd bought was worth all the money as well, as you used it to swap from one bundle of nerves to the other, Bhankui-ya howling loud enough that your ears were ringing. You wouldn’t be shocked if they were bleeding, but did you care? No, no you did not.

The adrenaline from his hunt, your powerful scent of want and hunger, and just the fact that Bhankui-ya didn’t indulge in other mates before you, left him sensitive and so needy, something you gladly abused any chance you got.

The bed needed to be completely replaced afterwards, but that’s how it went every time you got him like this. Never in your dreams did you think you could have someone as powerful and dangerous as Bhan, limp and panting, his entire body shaking and spent. Seeing his mandibles quivering always made your heart lurch, it felt like a symbol that you had done it all right.

Times like this were never about you or getting you off. But you also knew Bhan wouldn’t accept it if you didn’t get to finish too, so you always did it wherever he wanted it most. There was little chance of you two having offspring, mainly because Bhan had an implant that made pregnancy impossible. Because, unsurprisingly, yautja had even better prevention care than humans could ever dream off. You swore you heard him chirping about pups every now and then though, when you had him so wrung out that his eyes kept rolling back, even when you weren’t doing more than petting his torso.

Aftercare was also something Bhankui-ya could appreciate that came from humans. Yautja did care for each other after mating, but it was mainly just to patch each other up if it got bloody, or feeding the other food and water. Being rubbed all over and massaged was enjoyable, so you wouldn’t catch Bhankui-ya complaining.

You both knew you were gonna be the one shaking and limping in a few days though. He couldn’t let you get too confident, now, could he? Maybe hed even show you how some of the weapons he owned could be used in more… fun and creative ways.

[clawsdevour]

tied to you

wc: 1.3k content warning: smut, bondage, slight bdsm, friends w/ benefits, some degradation, slight humiliation, mouth fuck, not proofread, shitty writing, multi-fandom x reader

note: hihi whoevers reading this its kinda like my first time writing something more darkish in terms of smut idk how to explain??? bc i was kinda interested trying my hand at writing bondage and whatnot so um hopefully its at least ok???

*:･ﾟ✧

“Does it hurt if I tighten it like this?” are the words you hear as the red ropes grip around your curves, tightening at every given movement.

“No, it actually feels good.” You always wanted to try this fantasy of yours that you’ve seen on a variety of different medias. It’s a way to stimulate and satisfy you through bondage, essentially meaning being tied up. You thought this way of pleasure was very intriguing at first glance, being able to feel pleasure through being binded tightly by strings. Since you had a friends with benefits relationship, you wanted to experiment this with your partner.

“You look so hot right now, you know that. Can’t move, just tied up for me. Ha.. I can’t help but get hard just by looking at you,” your partner grins. Skin starting to come to a slight bruising the more you move. The tight rope just barely hitting your bare perky rosy nipples, making your tits spill out of the red rope. You grinded yourself on the rope that was right in between your folds, letting out silent moans while soaking the cords with your wet fluids. Your ass is fully exposed with each cheek separated along the lines of the cords. You were currently kneeling on your bed, with the ropes digging into your skin, hands binded behind your back as well as your ankles. He’s standing, watching and observing the ropes tightly against your skin right in front of you. You watch as your partner’s hard on keeps reaching its peak, watching it grow. You want to see it closer and maybe even give him a reward for tying you up so well.

“Take your pants off, I’ll suck you off” confidently you said to him, underestimating what he’s gonna do since you’re in a pretty vulnerable state. He raises an eyebrow, shooting you a look of surprise.

“Anything you want for looking so gorgeous,” shuffling off his pants and sliding down his boxers. The moment his dick popped out and recoiled off his stomach, you start salivating looking at his length and thickness. He steps closer to you and watches as you try to catch it into your mouth. Obviously, you needed his hand to guide you if he wanted you to suck him off! He couldn’t help but laugh at you for wanting to suck his cock so bad in an attempt to humiliate you.

“You’re so silly. If you want it that bad you have to beg for it,” Holding his dick still, he starts smacking you multiple times in the face as he lets out a low chuckle. You can’t help but givehim a dirty look for his tauntings. Fueling your irritation you blurted out at him.

“Just put it in my mouth already dickhead! Fuck you, stop teasing m-” the warm thick dick of his, stuffs your mouth completely hitting the back of your throat. You let out a groan from his sudden thrust. His hands gripped handfuls of your lucious locs as he pushed your head further down. Feeling it prob the back of your throat made you gag, causing him to jerk it back out. Coughing violently, tears started to sting your eyes as your body reacted.

“Well? I did what you said you wanted me to do. What do you wanna do next, hmm?” the sincerity in his low voice made you wanna clock him right there. Obviously, since you’re binded, you can’t. All yo ucould do was be angry. Although he was right, he did give you what you wanted and you can’t prove him wrong. Shit, your brain thought out of all people I chose to try bondage with this fucker?? Well, it’s like you had no other friends with benefits to try this out with. Recovering from his impulsive move, you might as well continue. Well.. you were gonna anyway since you’re quite literally tied up. You let out one big sigh which made him respond with a loud huff.

“I.. I want to…” what you’re about to say, just the thought of saying out loud in front of this guy is enough to make you die of embarrassment. You knew what you wanted to say but couldn’t spit them out. He watched you struggle with your words for a good minute with his eyebrow raised and arms crossed against his toned chest.

“Just say it bitch, I don’t get what you’re picking at here…” he sighs and scratches his head trying to figure out what you’re saying in his thick skull. You can’t help but look down turning a red hue, completely humiliated with what you’re gonna tell him to do.

“I want you to mouth fuck me,” he’s staring at you like you’ve gone mad and turned into a whole different person than he usually has sex with. Your words sent chills up his spine, he wouldn’t expect this even if you’ve never became friends with benefits.

“I.. Uh, are you sure..??” you nod, staring him down making him gulp. Opening your mouth wide for him, he intoxicates your warm plush mouth with his thick cock. His girth making your eyes tear up, his hands reach for the back of your head as he start moving in deeper. As he thrusts your head over and over on his dick, your body moved with him. The squelches sounds squeaked out of your mouth while your bedsheets shuffled. The tension coming from the ropes on your body restrain you from moving even further. You can’t help but moan from the friction the cords produced on your skin and intimate areas, causing a bright red to start fading in. The thin sheen layer of sweat starting to show up on your bare flesh as you took in his cock.

“Shit this feels so good” seductively was heard from above. Looking up at him, he was enjoying himself as much as you were. His tender muscular build mixed in with his musky scent and sweat, as his cock rubs harshly against your gummy mouth.

His rough pace quickens as if your sloppy, swollen lips were now his own personal fleshlight moving at his own rate. Your cheeks hollowing and altering back to normal as you suction on his dick. The moment your eyes rolled back was the moment he started to twitch in your mouth, knowing he’s coming to a close.

“I’m gonna cum.. Do you want it in your mouth, you filthy whore?” you tried hard to shake your head. Gross anything but his cum in your mouth. Feeling your shake, he was at least nice enough to respect your decision. Right as he pulled out leaving you exhausted and gasped with your sore coarse throat. He instantly pumps his cock with his hand, releasing explosions of his thick sticky fluids flying onto your sweaty, tear stained face. 

His essence dripped down onto the rest of your body and the ropes that bruised and turned your skin into different shades. You were beyond exhausted and overstimulated from the rope rubbing against your most sensitive parts. Your partner couldn’t help but stand for a moment, letting him catch his breath, watching you regain your composure. 

“Augh.. shit” you can’t help but cough overwhelmingly after getting your throat fucked severely like that. Droplets were still streaming down as your body reacted to what it’s just been put through. His warm touch swipes your tears off the surfaces of your cheek.

“Sorry. I was a bit harsh with you, wasn’t I?” untying the rope from your body, you collapse in his heated embrace as he reaches for a tissue to wipe his cum off of you.

*.༄ DABI, SHIGARAKI, SUNA RINTARO, OIKAWA TOORU, ATSUMU MIYA, YUJI TERUSHIMA, SAKUSA KIYOOMI, GOJO SATORU, SUKUNA, TOJI FUSHIJURO, KAEYA, CHILDE, TENGEN UZUI, OBANAI IGURO, MUZAN KIBUTSUJI, DOMA

masterlist here

[ryanisasleep]

Im dying for some Nikto x Male Reader :'( There's nothing out there for me. Can I request, Nikto with a Cocky and Arrogant S/O? Can Be SFW or NSFW Thank you ❤️

Nikto x male!reader

(I hope I satisfied it as best as I could <33)

TW: hate sex with feelings and happy ending, insults, brusing.

Ok so if you don't like this, you can block this account and nothing more.

Requests are open if you were wondering :)

Btw I changed a bit the story so it is better in some parts

Ohhhhhhh you made me think of hate sex…god I have a good fucking small story inside my stupid head….raaaaaawwww Gnawing the bars of my enclosure. Btw you are too kind :( there you go ‘boops their head’ you will be 🤍anon.

Hate you…or do I?

NSFW so MDNI - Hate sex, swearing, fighting, blood, sex with hidden feelings

Nikto enjoys seeing your cocky attitude falter as he spits blood on your self esteem and walks over your decisions saying that they are clouded by your arrogant judgment and are not safe to be considered even remotely efficient. . .you thought that being the same rank as him and having relatively the same experiences could be of some help when shaming him all day before crossing eachother’s path and growling at the mere presence of the other.

The situation escalated when he began to push you into any wall anytime he could and bruising your mouth by roughly kissing it with his teeth while digging his nails into your clothed waist. You on the other hand tried doing the same as you weren’t going down without a fight, and managed to dig some bloody cuts on his shoulders. It continued like this; bickering sessions ended up with bruised lips and trembling legs trying to push the other away to regain some dignity.

The hate and tension reached its peak when Nikto ended up pushing you into your bed and digging his teeth into your bottom lip drawing out blood and insults. He ripped off your clothes and you did the same. Some blood and bruises were forming on your bodies but that was a matter for the after.

He wanted to say ‘You did good on the last mission’ instead of ‘You fucker, you failed everything and you couldn’t even do a simple task’ as he scratched forcefully your broad back after pinching the fresh healed wounds on your torso drawing out a silent scream out your mouth. ‘Thanks for your presence and for covering my back- back there’ ‘Shut your virgin ass since you don’t do any better, at least I am a liked person around’, you flipped your positions. Now you were on top of him with your legs pressed between his and you were clamping your teeth down on his neck. It hurt a lot. . .and Nikto couldn’t accept that, his pride was too big and high to let you on him and in a swift move he turned you down on the mattress, ‘You are only good at taking it up the ass! Moron, you should have been a stripper at this point! A failed one because I bet my salary that you wouldn't even grab the attention of a drunken man ahah!’

Spit drooled out his mouth like a carnivore savoring his newly catched prey. He didn’t want to admit it but…he really wanted to see you like that again. He was lost in his own world for a while and got back to his senses after you barked back a cocky:

‘At least I am useful to something, unlike you who can only bark out orders like a certain Colonel I know and be like an angry volcano all the goodamn fucking time!' your voice was restrained as you couldn’t quiet breath since a strong hand was holding you - choking you in the messy bed.

You then yelped out in stinking pain, he sticked his fingers inside you without a warning and without an ounce of lube, such as spit. The stretch was hurtful and you hated how good the pads of his pointer and middle fingers worked around your sensible spot, fucking and overstimutaling it till you were just panting out short breaths and trying to get up on your elbows, to then try to shove the one you looked up the most off. He pushed you down again, this time forcing your neck down and letting breathing become harder, he took away his fingers and pushed your ass up. You could sense his eyes wander to all of your upper and lower back imaging all the thoughts that might be crossing his filthy and rotted brain. You hear his belt unbuckle and the low but intriguing squelches from his fingers taking some of his saliva out the mouth (you really wanted to devour that mouth harshly) and wetting down his cock.

He pushed his length inside without a warning and he grunted out at the sudden enveloping sensation trying his hardest not to bottom out. You wanted to tell him how good it felt, how much you wanted to have his hand prints on your body and how much you wanted your neck to be bruised with his teeth marks and fingers, but only a stream of curses came out of your mouth. He rams into you, mounting you and keeping you close in seemingly fear of you going away, your cock brushing repeatedly the wooly sheets creating a friction that makes you see stars and finish immediately without a warning. After a couple of more seconds he comes into you grunting like an animal, securing you under his crushing weight. He had his eyes closed, his mask long since thrown away in some part of the room and all his features visible.

You saw the burn mark on the right side covering the skin until his eye and the long slash dividing his mouth from the left. You loved him, well love was there but you couldn’t phrase it, you wanted to put your hand under his chin but all you could ever do was to choke him if possible. He feels the same, his heart swells with pain as you twooften brawl but he can't, it's too hard. Nikto wants to try and sew your situationship back to ‘’normality’’ but his voices tell him otherwise, to do anything other than good.

He stays a shameful silent. After some time of not deciding what to do, he rolled to the side and heard the aftermath still inside you and wrapped his arms around your waist.

He knows that now you will get up, clean yourself up and leave while giving him a disgusting look because you have no reason to stay, but that was not what he wanted. His stupid brain couldn’t voice his wants and needs and that resulted in the formation of this vicious cycle of this love-hate relationship. He loved you dearly, but he could only spit out venom because he didn’t know how to phrase what he felt.

Instead of letting his grip loose, he started rubbing small circles on your firm stomach feeling your toned muscle fibers underneath, the veins going under adorned the neatly taken care of hair forming a nice happy trail. You hated not shaving them so they were always short.

He put one of his hands at the center of your chest and passed his fingers between your body hair, sweaty from before, and noticed that your heart rate was very calm, calmer than it should’ve been. He inhaled your scent from the nape of your neck and reopened his eyes as he whispered an almost sad ‘’Don’t leave, please’’.

You shifted, embracing the hand on your lower stomach with your own and sighed. ‘’Why…” you were tired, tired of all of this so you decided to be patient and hear what he had to say.

All he could think of and speak was ‘’Just. . .don’t please.’’ His hands twitched, you knew that sign, he was struggling internally and maybe making some of his thoughts scram away. You took some pity on him and decided to stay as you even had no energy to get up.

A silent strange air hugged you two while he rested, he began to tighten his grip and growl a ‘’Go away, fuck i hate you’’. He was not having this yet you sensed he didn’t really mean it. After he came back, he was different, you found himself many times talking to himself or gripping his forearms in anger so tightly that you swore blood was seeping out of the wounds but as you tried to help him and make him voice what was wrong, the answer you got was ‘’Fuck off’’.

He crawled back like a wounded animal and slipped out many words between voices and strangers taunting him every waking moment of the day. You and Nikto have been first colleagues and then close friends but as he began, over the years, that cycle of insults and unnecessary sparring, you couldn’t do anything else other than fight back.

“Easy there, it’s just us and no one else. you don’t need to do and say anything, remember only things you can touch and feel are real”

It was the mantra you had made him remember like a prayer in case his episodes were becoming too much, but they could only do so little. He repeated them whispering with a broken voice as he breathed heavily.

“Sorry, for everything…” he half cried as he lost the capacity to do so many years ago and sat hiding his eyes in his hands. You turned and looked at him with a sad look, you sat too and put your hand on his back and said “It’s fine”.

With that, you two looked at eachother with knowing looks, he said he loved you but also those parts of him did not, but he did. You said you loved him too and would help him with medications if needed and how to end things up. Being in a relationship was prohibited and could result in both of you being discharged with dishonor so being together was off limits.

The other people on base remained firm in believing that you two hated each other to the bone so you two decided to stick with that routine. Night fell quickly and you found yourself in his arms sleeping the night off. In the morning though, you had to wake up early to not raise suspects.

[targaryenrealnessdarling]

Nova Genesis

Part One

Summary: tensions rise as strangers board the ship and turn Dibs' entire operation on its head to obtain critical evidence. But not everyone feels the same at the prospect of returning to Earth | Word Count: 4.5k~ | Warnings: mentions of Ettore's crimes, swearing, mentions of violence, threatening behaviour, masturbation (m)

A/N: A birthday present for @dreamymoomin @in-a-mountain-pool, my fellow Ettore fucker (affectionate 😘). Have a very happy birthday <3

For the last several days, Dibs was irritable. There was something she wasn't telling them, and none of them had the interest nor the energy to ask. But something had spooked her, and that was never good. She stopped the weekly examinations for the females, and started destroying the samples from the males. Both of which were things she previously cherished as part of her twisted experiment for a child.

The rest simply followed their daily routine as usual, just without the lingering, judgemental glances from Dibs, replaced with a sense of unease and confusion when she’d shut herself in her office for days on end. It was a good and happy coincidence that at least without her help, they knew how to look after themselves. 

Loud alarms startled their otherwise quiet lunch. Some didn’t move an inch and others merely looked around, eyes wide with fear, not knowing what to do with themselves. And the second they felt the ship quite literally jolt, as if something had docked against them, Ettore had a sense of where the situation was headed. No more than fifteen minutes later, the doors where they had boarded the ship, opened once again, revealing quite shockingly a band of official looking people.

Several armed guards stood like pillars beside the army of lawyers and technicians, prepared to both shut down the operation and steer the spacecraft back towards Earth. They held their weapons casually, their gazes insistent that violence would occur should the team be threatened in any way.

“If you all know what's good for you, you'll let them do their work. And you'll all get to go home.”

Ettore watched with a stoic expression, as if uncaring and neutral at the idea of returning. He highly doubted that everyone shared the same opinion about the prospect of returning to Earth, to their prisons, where they all knew too well. 

His eyes watched with a deep interest as the team split off to start their investigation around the prisoners, starting with downloading the encrypted files Dibs had attempted to hide. Each one potential evidence for the twisted doctor's misconduct.

He watches one of the lawyers particularly closely, unable to admit to himself exactly why he finds her interesting to look at. They all wear casual clothes, something he has not seen since leaving Earth in the first place, and now something that seems so undeniably foreign and alien.

Her lanyard displayed both her name and her title. Legal Representation.

She started by organising individual meetings with the prisoners, for them to air their grievances, with evidence of course. Documenting each one regarding their treatment, health and level of punishment. Some were forthcoming and some, predictably, were not. And could she blame them? For so many months, years even, distrust was just another fact of life up here. 

Dibs watched with frustration her life work being dismantled and dissected. At first her attempts at justification were met with cold looks and shakes of their head from the legal team, eventually turning into silence. They were there not to debate ethics but to enforce the law and protect the rights of those who had been under her control.

The little lawyer, Ettore so affectionately named her in his head, was diligent about her work. And when he spotted her next, she was deep into downloading onto an external hard drive the encrypted data on Dibs' computer in the infirmary. He couldn’t deny, it was strange to have other people wandering the ship. The otherwise wide and meandering hallways now felt cramped, with barely two people able to stand side by side while letting another pass. It felt suffocating. And he knew it was only a matter of time before someone snapped. 

His jaw clenched as he watched her from the doorway, attempting to make sense of the software Dibs' had so often fiddled with to make it near impossible to infiltrate. And he wondered with a sense of defensiveness and perhaps immaturity, or naivety, that this woman was pushing change, and he wasn't sure if he liked that.

She let out a pleased sound when she cracked the last layer of security, and Ettore laughed through his nose.

“Suppose she didn't account for someone like you, hm,” he mused dispassionately and somewhat uninterested. A flash of irritation gnawed at him when she didn't look up from her work to address him.

“‘Dr Dibs’ didn't account for a lot of things,” she started, her tone neutral, “nevermind taking accountability.”

His eyes darkened, roving over her form behind. She was easily smaller. If he really really wanted, she wouldn't be able to fight. But did he want her to?

She finally paused and swivelled on her chair to face him, her expression insistent, making his darkened thoughts pause for just a moment.

"You don’t seem too thrilled about the prospect of going back to Earth. Most would be eager to leave this place.”

It wasn't a question, but he could smell that she wanted an answer. And normally, he would have entertained her. But her expression, coupled with her expectancy for him to bend, made him huff and turn away.

“Content with staying here and giving Dibs sperm samples for the rest of your life? Not that I think that's the part you dislike.”

She mumbles that last part under her breath, turning back to the computer to check its download progress. And while her back is turned, something is stoked in his eyes. That was an incredibly dangerous thing for her to say. Especially to him. To someone like him.

He shoves his hands in his scrub pockets, mostly to touch himself.

“And what is there to go back to?” He inquires, watching with interest when she turns back to him halfway. He raises his eyebrows, tone somewhat mocking, “something about the devil you know.”

She gives a breathy laugh, “suppose it's comfort in its own way. Wouldn't you rather live than just survive?”

He narrows his gaze, stubbornness enhancing his disbelief.

“You really believe that it's just step off this ship and poof, everything's fine?”

“I didn't say that.”

“Why would I want to go back to a world that forgot me the second they sent me up here?”

She sighs. “It'll be what you want it to be, if you keep thinking like that.”

He has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. These lawyer human rights fucking types will always cling to some kind of hope, however naive. It was a word long flung out of Ettore’s vocabulary, not that he was usually the hopeful type. She sighed through her nose at his lack of response and turned back around, typing quickly and practised on the keyboard. Her messy, plaited hair fell down her back, and for a brief, fleeting moment, he thought of what it would have been like to grab the end, and twist it over his fist he’d be strong enough to subdue her, that was for sure. Even thinking about it, he ran his tongue over his teeth.

He wondered if she knew what he was here for. Did she know the ins and outs of what the jury said about him? Or what the judge condemned him to? Or was he just another tick box on her list, just another name? Did she either understand the man he was now, or what he was capable of? It both thrilled and unsettled him in equal measure. He watched her slender fingers move across the keyboard, thinking, how would she react when she knew how dangerous he really was. 

Would she still carry that same determination, or would fear finally colour those idealistic eyes?

He smirked slightly, thinking that he had met many women like her that used her indifference as armour over her, shielding her from the darker truths of the world, or perhaps, just the darker truths of his world.

“You’ve read my file, haven’t you.”

His voice was low, almost a growl, daring her to acknowledge the monster many believed him to be. She paused, her fingers halting mid-type, and her lips parted. For a moment he thought she might turn around again, but she wet her lips and continued typing.

There was a firmness in her voice that surprised Ettore. “I've read your file, yes. I know what you've done.”

“And?”

“I’m not giving a glowing review on your crimes.”

He gave a huff of a laugh. “No need to get antsy, sweetheart.”

She turned her head, her face calm with an expression that belied any fear in him. “My job isn’t to judge, it's to defend human rights, yours included.”

Ettore's smirk widened, his eyes narrowing as he processed her words. "That's a neat way to put it. Defending human rights, even for someone like me? Must make you feel pretty good, huh?"

Her expression remained unchanged, her resolve as firm as ever. "You think I do this for my health?"

Before Ettore could respond, the sudden clang and shout from the other end of the corridor cut through their conversation. Both turned toward the noise. A group of guards hustled past, their faces tense, moving toward the source of the disturbance.

Ettore's attention briefly flickered to the commotion, then back to her, a victorious smirk on his face. "Looks like not everyone's as cooperative as I am."

She cocked her head, “and you’re being cooperative are you?” she asked firmly, with a harsh rhetorical edge. “Anyway, it’s not about that. It’s about your safety as a whole-”

He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that carried an unmistakable edge. "And what if I wasn't safe? What if I was the one out there causing trouble? Would you defend me then?"

She met his gaze, unflinching. "I defend the rights of all prisoners, no matter their crimes."

"Theoretically, right?" Ettore pushed back, amused.

"Practically."

Their intense exchange was suddenly interrupted by the return of the guards, escorting a handcuffed prisoner between them. The man was shouting, struggling against the restraints, his eyes wild with desperation.

"Fucking assholes! You're all just dressing it up as justice!" he yelled as he was dragged past them.

Ettore watched the scene unfold, his expression unreadable. Once the noise had died down, he turned back to her, his voice low. "Not everyone believes in your justice. Being out here…it changes people, makes them into monsters."

“I don’t believe that.”

Ettore's smirk faded, replaced by a contemplative frown. "Maybe you should. The monsters are real. And sometimes, they're closer than you think."

His words lingered in the air, thick with an ominous undertone, he turned and walked away, his steps deliberate and heavy against the metallic floor. She watched him go, his broad silhouette gradually merging with the shadows of the spacecraft's corridor. It was only when he disappeared from view that she realised she'd been holding her breath, her chest tight with apprehension.

She exhaled slowly, trying to dispel the tension that had coiled inside her during their conversation. The exchange had revealed layers to Ettore she hadn't fully appreciated before, depths of cynicism and a hint of something darker, perhaps a warning or a challenge. His parting words echoed in her mind, a reminder of the complex human narratives woven into the fabric of this mission.

Her eyes lingered on the corner where Ettore had vanished, the unsettling feeling of his presence still palpable in the air. She was left with a profound sense of the weight of her task, not just to administer legal justice but to understand and navigate the human elements at play. The reality of Ettore's warning, that the monsters might indeed be closer than she thought, settled heavy on her shoulders as she turned back to her work.

The mission to dismantle Dr. Dibs' operation continued, but a quieter but equally dangerous plan was brewing among a faction of the prisoners. These were men and women who, for various reasons, fears of retribution on Earth, lost ties, or simply the terror of facing their past crimes, had decided they were better off lost in space. They saw the arrival of she and her team not as a rescue but as a threat to the precarious stability they had found, or rather forged.

Ettore, caught between his newfound interest with his little lawyer and his inherent distrust of returning to a world that had discarded him, found himself pulled into this group’s orbit. Monte led the group, not particularly charismatic but he was seen as trustworthy, had quickly identified Ettore’s influence among the prisoners and sought to leverage it, despite their dislike for each other. There was something in Monte that was also as antsy as Dibs, as if he feared returning to Earth not because of the consequences, but because it meant confronting ghosts he had long buried.

With them, huddled in secret within the confines of the storage room, Mink leaned, arms crossed, as if she were still on the fence and could be persuaded. 

“This ain’t redemption,” Monte started, his eyes firm, “up here we’re forgotten, nothing but fuckin’ dust. Back there, we're monsters on display.”

Ettore scoffed lightly, “and what? Hijack the ship? You think that ends well for any of us?”

“You know Dibs wants ‘em gone too.”

“We’re not killing them,” Mink interjected.

Monte glared at Mink, his frustration evident. "You think I don’t know we can’t kill them? We take control, redirect the course. We can find a place out here where they can't just drag us back to face whatever hell they've cooked up for us on Earth."

“So they’re hostages,” Ettore added bluntly. “They’re not like us. They'll come looking for them."

Monte nodded, his voice steady. "Then we make it too costly to come after us. We send a message back, make it clear we’re not their lab rats anymore, not their spectacle."

Mink shifted uncomfortably, her arms still crossed, her gaze flickering between Monte and Ettore. "Okay, stop measuring dicks for one second. We're talking about potentially starting a war here. What if they send the military after us? We're equipped to handle guards, maybe, but not a fucking assault."

The two men beside her fell quiet, and Ettore glanced down the hallway as if to check they nobody was listening in.

Mink filled the silence, her decision torn in two different directions, “And what about the others? The ones who might want to go back?"

Ettore rolled his eyes slightly. "Sometimes you gotta make the hard choices for people. Look at where trusting Earth got us in the first place." 

His point didn’t at all mean to sound like he was supporting Monte, so he hated the little nod of agreement he gave. The way his eyes lit up.

But Monte caught it, misinterpreting Ettore’s reluctant agreement as support, his own resolve hardening. "We were discarded, forgotten. If we don't take a stand now, when will we ever?" he speaks erratically, as if even now pleading his case, “I killed a man. His family won’t rest until I’m buried. Talking won’t change that.”

Mink and Ettore remained silent. But their expressions could not be any more different.

“It won’t change it for you two either,” Monte added with venom, “You think any of us got a fair shot down there? You really trust this lawyer, these people, to make it right? Open your fucking eyes. She's here to make herself feel better, not to save anyone."

Ettore, who had been following the exchange silently, felt a surge of concern. His thoughts briefly flashed to his little lawyer, her conviction that the law could serve justice, her determination to fight for their rights. It contrasted starkly with the raw survival instinct that drove Monte.

“So that’s it then,” Ettore mused, “you want violence.”

Monte turned on Ettore, his gaze fierce. "If it’s violence they understand, it’s violence they’ll get."

Ettore met Monte’s fiery gaze with a steely resolve of his own. The tight confines of the storage room seemed to shrink further, suffocating under the weight of impending decisions. Decisions that could very well define the fate of everyone on board.

“You want to lead us into a war we can’t win,” he countered, “you’re gonna fuck all this up, and for what?”

Monte's breathing was heavy, his chest heaving with each breath, his fists clenched tightly at his sides. He looked as if he wanted to say more, to argue that his plan was their only chance, but the fight seemed to drain from him second by agonising second. 

“Fine. We’ll see what your lawyer can do. But if it doesn’t work, if they don’t listen...” His voice trailed off, leaving the threat hanging, an unspoken ultimatum that they all understood.

After a week of tireless work aboard the spacecraft, tension simmered under a deceptive calm. She and her team had catalogued countless files and dismantled numerous experiments, yet they were still not close to gathering all the evidence they needed before the planned return to Earth. The ship was suspended in the vast silence of space, a temporary lull in their journey both literally and metaphorically.

Ettore leaned against the doorway, the threshold between their ship and the prisoner's felt so inescapable. The distance between their daily lives aboard the ship was not lost on him, and a cynical remark bubbled to the surface, and he couldn't help but run his eyes over her as she made her way past him to go to her own quarters.

With a sardonic twist to his lips, he approached her, his voice carrying just enough edge to be provocative. "You look tired, sweetheart. Must be tough, being so close yet so far from all the answers you need.”

She merely glared at him sideways, and despite her composed exterior, there was a fatigue in her eyes that spoke volumes about the strain they were all under.

“It's part of the job. And Dibs hasn't exactly made it easy.”

Ettore chuckled softly, the sound more mocking than amused. "Sure, but at the end of the day, you get to retreat to your safe corner of the ship, away from all of us. Sleep better thinking you’re not surrounded by monsters?”

Her face remained impassive, but her eyes hardened slightly, a hint of steel beneath the surface.

He huffs. “Maybe one night you should try sleeping over here, see how dangerous we really are. Maybe then you’d get all your evidence faster.”

There was a moment of silent acknowledgment between them. It was a threat. One meant to hit deep. If she was smart, she'd see the larger threat beneath it.

"Just remember, justice feels different depending on which side of the ship you sleep on.”

She cocked her head at him, but not in question, her eyes remained steadfast and firm. It was as if she merely wanted to see a different angle of him.

“Maybe it’s less about where I sleep,” she muses, “maybe it’s understanding the lay of the land, hm? Knowing where the landmines are buried.”

Ettore’s expression shifted only barely, whether she caught it or not, he couldn’t tell. She had obviously been interviewing all the prisoners. And if he had to guess about who was likely to blab about this plan Monte had cooking, it was most likely Boyse. They’d notoriously disliked each other.

But a subtle smirk rose to his lips. She was trying to prod him, thinking he was the leader in all of this. Where she could not be more wrong.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, sweetheart.”

Her jaw tightened at that. And his warning was cryptic enough and yet clear enough to read the hidden meaning beneath. There were dangers lurking within the ranks. Uprisings. That not only jeopardises the mission, but their lives as well. She felt her heart thud hard in her chest, feeling right now more than ever, that she did not belong here.

With a thick swallow, she sighed, trying to appear calm, “I appreciate your concern for our safety.”

Ettore gave a half-smirk, recognising her diplomatic reply. And though he was tempted to say more, to see how she’d squirm, he pushed off the wall and turned his back to her. He recognised he had shared too much with her, a crucial piece of information, but something that also revealed a concealed trust for her. 

When he turned back to glance at her, he felt a smug pride in his chest, she was still watching him. And her eyes flickered upwards when she felt she had been caught. And the little lawyer scurried away back to her haven, with not another word.

She returned to her quarters, the sound of the door sealing behind her echoing slightly in the compact, utilitarian space that served as her temporary sanctuary. She slipped out of her shoes, feeling the cool metal floor beneath her feet, a small comfort after another long day of navigating the tight corridors and tighter tensions of the spacecraft.

After a long and decompressing shower, she moved to her small desk, where she activated her datapad, to record her nightly entries for the team back on Earth, to update them on the progress.

Day 23.

Looking at herself on the screen, her hair wet over her shoulders, she felt she looked tired and more weary, compared to when she first arrived. And wondered briefly how the prisoners had not yet gone mad. 

“The evidence we need to solidify the case against Dr Dibs is…extensive and…elusive. She’s trying to hide things, which doesn’t help, behind walls of useless other data she thinks we’ll miss. The crew’s morale fluctuates, as expected. They are under immense stress, given that the cooperation of some of the prisoners has been divisive at best.  Boyse’s interviews are particularly interesting. She’s afraid of going back to Earth, seeing as there is little support for her. But she seems rather excited to see Dibs see justice for the horrendous things she's done to them. She made me aware of a former prisoner, Elektra, who died shortly after childbirth due to lack of proper care. The baby... also did not make it. Boyse has made it very clear that the experiments and examinations on the women have both become more frequent and more desperate after this incident. Mink tells a similar story, albeit with some details redacted. Unfortunately, Dibs disposed of the bodies shortly after their deaths, so they won’t be recoverable.  They both heavily dislike most of the men on board, with the exception of Tcherny. He seems keen on returning to Earth. Mostly because he has nobody there to judge him anymore. Monte…has refused interviews. And too refuses interaction with any of us. Ettore. Well, he was cryptic today, as usual. I believe he is the type of person to lure people in just to watch them try and escape him.”

She paused, with a heavy sigh, running her hand through her hair. Stress gnawed at her temples. And something else tugged at her gut. Something she could not mistake as sickness.

“He refuses to say anything outright. But we must tread carefully. It’s clear some, if not most, of the prisoners do not wish to return, fearing retribution and violence, or whoever awaits them who will not share in our opinions of them. I can’t help but…wonder why we are here.”

She couldn’t concentrate after that. Her thoughts involuntarily drifted to Ettore. There was something undeniably compelling, beyond the complexities of his personality. Her racing thoughts could not keep up with her mouth, it felt.

“He’s an enigma. He has strong features but…manages to control them under a mask. And yet, there’s an intensity in his eyes that’s so piercing. The way he looks at me sometimes…it’s unsettling. And yet I can’t find it in myself to look away. And his voice, even when he whispers it’s…”

“The monsters are real. And sometimes, they're closer than you think."

She swallows, her fingers resting on her throat as if to feel her own pulse.

“It carries a weight, one that commands attention. Like a threat but also…like he’s testing me, measuring my reactions…”

“Maybe one night you should try sleeping over here, see how dangerous we really are.”

“...like a predator.”

She paused, clarity rushing back to her like a wave, pulling her under and robbing her of breath. With a quick flick, she turned off the video, taking a moment to really consider her words and her runaway thoughts. Why was she focusing so much on his physical details? She argued perhaps that it was the amount of time she’d spent with all of them. But she shook her head slightly, trying to steer her thoughts back to reality.

After a moment of pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes, the stress and internal conflict caused her to hastily climb into bed, hoping perhaps that the sweet escape of sleep might rid her of these thoughts. As she lay back in her bed, staring up at the ceiling of her quarters, the ship's constant hum a soft backdrop, she couldn't help but replay their interactions. There was an undeniable tension there, something that went beyond the usual professional dynamic. Was it just the stress of the mission making her over analyse, or was there something more, something real and tangible in the way he moved and spoke that kept drawing her thoughts back to him?

Ettore too, lay awake, lost in turbulent emotions. His mind replaying his interactions with her, each moment etched into his memory. The way her eyes narrowed in concentration, the subtle shift in her posture when he spoke of their harsh conditions on the ship before their arrival, and particularly, the flickers of fear when he would tread into dangerous territory with his words alone. Not even having to be near her. He was captivated by those expressions, those nuances, and the challenges they presented. 

In the quiet solitude of his cell, Nansen asleep in the top bunk, he allowed his hand to slide beneath his scrubs, eyes slipping shut as his hand lazily stroked his length to full hardness in no time at all. He indulged in the image of her. Her intelligent, alert eyes seemed to follow each word he said. Always evaluating.  Evaluating him.

And fuck, did it feel good to be picked apart by her. 

He returned to the same recurring thought he’d had every night, that if he pushed her boundaries, how would she react when truly tested? He wanted to see her rough, unguarded. Would she shrink or rise to the challenge? The mere thought of breaking through those defenses to a place where she might react out of sheer instinct, rather than reason, was intoxicating. 

With a stuttered moan, and coming hard into his hand with a jerk of his hips, the challenge was set, and Ettore was eager to see it through, to discover just how deep the layers of his little lawyer went.

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[mariacallous]

"I'm so much happier now that I'm dead." If the details of the Scott Peterson case sound familiar to you, and if you (somehow) missed them the first time around, you're probably thinking of the 2012 book-slash-movie-slash-quote-on-everyone's-Tumblr-dashboard, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.

In Flynn's novel, the dead wife in question, Amy Dunne, is a survivor gifted with charismatic sociopathy, a knack for elaborate event planning - Laci's Martha Stewart fandom is seemingly the one personality trait to have survived her fictionalization - and a sadistic rage-on for her bumbling, cheating husband, Nick. (Played in the David Fincher adaptation, obviously, by Ben Affleck; some coincidences are too good to waste.) After discovering his infidelity, Amy manages to fake her own death, frame Nick for murder, and skip town.

"I'm going to hide out long enough to watch Lance Nicholas Dunne become a worldwide pariah, to watch Nick be arrested, tried, marched off to prison, bewildered in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs," she tells us. Then, she'll drown herself: "My body may never be discovered, or it may resurface weeks, months later, eroded to the point that my death can't be time-stamped - and I will provide a last bit of evidence to make sure Nick is marched to the padded cross, the prison table where he'll be pumped with poison and die."

Well, ah, yeah. You can quibble with the taste level here. (Do we really need to see the dead woman in a domestic violence case as the villain?) But, like Lucy Westenra avenging poor, meek Mercy Brown, there's a kind of justice in seeing these "good" victimized girls come back to us in fiction as inconvenient, frightening, monstrous women.

And Amy's sociopathy does have a clear precedent - not in life, but in fiction: "She was clever, of course....Damnably clever," Maxim de Winter says of his dead wife. "No one would guess meeting her that she was not the kindest, most generous, most gifted person in the world. She knew exactly what to say to different people, how to match her mood to theirs." He could be describing Amazing Amy.

There is something eerie in reading Amy's description of her own battered, drowned body - "I've actually felt sad for myself, picturing my slim, naked, pale body, floating just beneath the current...my waterlogged flesh peeling off in soft streaks, me slowly disappearing into the current like a watercolor until just the bones are left" - as if all those thrown-away girls in the water were speaking to us, delivering their own eulogies. But Amy's monologue is also a literary wish-fulfillment fantasy; a way to retell Rebecca with its most interesting character still onstage.

"Nick must be taught a lesson," Amy tells us. "He's never been taught a lesson! He glides through life with that charming-Nicky grin, his beloved-child entitlement, his fibs and shirkings, his shortcomings and selfishness, and no one calls him on anything. I think this experience will make him a better person. Or at least a sorrier one. Fucker."

Gone Girl sold by the truckload, in part because Flynn did not try to sanitize the brutality of Amy's resentment. If you've been through enough, the difference between making a man better and making him sorrier can be tough to figure out. In fact, it may not matter. If the book's success is any indication, that kind of rage bubbles underneath the surface of many "normal" marriages, and behind the smiles of many seemingly "happy" women. Gone Girl gave women a way to vent their daily indignities and unspeakable anger safely and without consequence; let us have our wedding cake and poison it, too; it was an opportunity to save the wife and punish her husband for killing her at the same time.

Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Feminine Power by Jude Doyle

[toxictigertonic]

Glad to see that my mad ramblings are entertaining this corner of the outlast community, I will continue to talk until I've juiced the smooth ball of gum I call a brain of all its flavor. Pspsps Franco fans hiiii tell me what I should draw him doing/wearing pleaaaase.

Today's headcanons are: How are the prime assets when it comes to board/card games?

COYLE

- Do not play games with this man unless you want to have the least fun of your life.

- He has the rule book out on the table as you're playing so he can read them off at any point.

- In fact I know that fucker memorizes game rules and starts fighting people if they don't play by them.

- "WE GOT LAWS AROUND HERE! WE GOT FUCKING LAWS!" "Leland calm down we're playing uno..."

- If he catches someone cheating he's hopping the table, there's a crime in progress and he's about to be SUCH a good cop.

- Play monopoly with him to experience The Thrill of being tased over fake money.

- If you use a +4 on this man in Uno he will scream until you show him your hand to make SURE you're not lying about not having any other cards to use. He'll also pout about you using it in general.

- The sorest loser ever, genuinely. Somehow worse than Franco. And Franco is a baby man with a gun.

- It should be a rule that he's not allowed to play cards with Franco but Phyllis is stubborn and wants them to get along. It never ends well.

- Gets far too giddy playing Mousetrap.

MOTHER GOOSEBERRY

- Forces Leland and Franco into game nights. They can't say no or they'll upset her, thereby upsetting Futterman, thereby risking their lives to The Goose.

- Has a massive collection of card games and board games, take your pick.

- And she knows how to play all of them, mind you. She has the rules memorized as well but doesn't have an electric stick up her ass like somebody we know.

- LOVES Candyland and Parcheesi. The brighter and more colorful the board the more she finds it adorable.

- Futterman eats pieces when Phyllis is losing. Don't turn around he's a hungry little guy.

- He got caught eating pieces once and had to wear the Bag of Shame for multiple game nights afterwards.

- Futterman also is allowed to play the games, somehow always wins in the end. Leland is suspicious of him cheating (but isn't willing to face drill wrath to investigate)

- Have I mentioned that Futterman will call both Franco and Leland awful names when he's losing? Because he does. Has made both of them cry before. Game night had to end early and Phyllis felt very bad.

- Not a sore loser per se, but will ask to play again until she wins. Futterman will stare whoever down until they agree to another round.

- If you don't help her put away the board or cards she's holding a grudge. And if pieces are missing you BETTER help find them, even if it means shaking them out of Futterman's mouth.

FRANCO

- Play silly games, win silly prizes. I'm saying if you try to beat him at cards (and you're not a fellow prime asset or someone whose lap he wants access to) you're getting shot in the foot.

- He's required to turn in Lupara at the beginning of game nights now after he tried to take Coyle's shin off. He only gives Lupara up bc Phyllis asks so nicely (and because he's a simp lol).

- Really good at cards, but still cheats. Mainly to fuck with Coyle. He'll take any opportunity to piss that man off.

- Sometimes wants to play solitaire like an adult, other times he's playing candyland with Phyllis having the time of his life.

- If it's a game with unique pieces you BETTER let him pick his piece first or he's throwing a tantrum.

- If Leland's winning he'll kick him under the table then say he was imagining things. Leland is THIS 👌 close to starting a fight.

- He lets Phyllis win to get on her good side. Doesn't matter the game, he'll let her win. Gets pissy when she wins naturally though.

- He always tries to gamble when they play anything. Coyle does not approve of gambling. Have I mentioned these two want each other dead?

- Phyllis complimented him on being really good at shuffling a deck of cards and he rode that high for weeks.

- Very good at convincing the others that it's his turn if they've lost track of who goes next. Doesn't matter if he just went, he will get to go again.

- Likes to play card matching games by himself when he doesn't wanna think about the game too hard. Phyllis sometimes sits with him and plays too. Futterman calls them both stupid if they fuck up.

I love how much Franco and Leland hate each other I want them to fist fight ❤️. Lock them in a room together and whoever crawls out at the end wins. No weapons just two bald bastards.

[gingerjolover]

I need jb riding my strap for Valentine’s Day 🫠❤️💗

OOOOOH BABY

this one is SO highly requested, and ive got some opinions

shall we take a blurb-esque journey together?

RPF smut under da cut, minors gtfo<3

there was no specification for reader but i think this could be soft!gf reader or even masc!reader bc realistically i think you're getting treated like a princess on valentines day

i do think jules has certain feelings about v-day like maybe the capitalistic affects on holidays riddled with consumerism

but she also will use ANY excuse to spoil you

so vday could be a day where jb literally just does whatever you want, like you wanna go to the aquarium? you bet your ass she's taking you to the aquarium. movie marathon? oh babe, she's on it and has snacks and drinks and the living room all cozy and decked out

depending on how long your relationship has been going on for or even if its relatively new but maybe it' your first vday together, its clear that jb is a GIVER

like she would literally rip the moon from the sky and give it to you kneeling down holding it on a silver platter for your taking

but the one thing that you really want is to give back to her

and there are plenty of things that you can do for jules, she strikes me as a "just wanna be in the same room and breathe the same air" kind of lover

like after a long day you washing her hair, giving her tense muscles a massage, rubbing cuticle oil on her nails and giving her hands a massage with some nice lotion, "coloring" in her tattoos, or even just giving her a long hug or cuddling and pressing kisses to her skin are all acceptable physical means of compensation for what she does for you

but she doesn't ask for things, especially during sex

she strikes me as someone who isn't quite stone, but maybe somewhere adjacent where like yes of course she wants to get off but she finds SO much pleasure in making you feel good that sometimes she doesn't NEED to

but you want to spoil her so after a really nice dinner or maybe a fun day at home, you're both snuggled up and on the couch or the bed and i think the approach might be a little different

soft!gf is definitely more timid when initiating sex, not like timid like shy but more passive? like jb knows your body better than you do practically and she knows by the way you squirm that you want her to fuck you

regardless, i think jb's perfect starting point is her being able to make you cum at least once with her mouth/fingers OR a combo

like thats a starting point, it can only build up from there but to her that is the best way for her to gauge where you're at and its a good spot for her to be (girlie LOVES to be between your thighs, she eats like she's never eaten before i will die on this hill)

and jb will usually kiss up your body afterwards, her wet chin and lips smacking kisses on every part of your skin

the little fucker loves to press her lips to yours, mumbling against your mouth, usually along the lines of "tastes good, hm?", moving away from your lips and pressing kisses on your face, her brown eyes twinkling mischievously

and usually your hands in her hair as she makes her way down, tongue and teeth teasing a nipple, sucking hickeys into your chest but tonight you tug on her hair gently

she looks up, lips all puffy and pink, baby cow eyes blown out with lust, "what're ya rushin' me for?" or something comes out of her mouth, her lil southern twang making an appearance

and you're like, "the strap," and she's smirking, thinking you're being needy and she tries to dive back in, "be patient..."

"no i- i wanna use it on you," tumbles out of your mouth, confidence skyrocketing from your first orgasm

and she looks like a deer in headlights being like, "huh- w-what?"

and all it really takes is you whining a please, before she's helping you adjust it on your body

i feel like soft!gf has very little experience actually wearing the strap, maybe masc!gf has more experience despite jb being the giver in the relationship

either way jb is sitting lowkey awkwardly, her cheeks are a pink mess or she's doing that eye thing where it's kinda giving side eye

"we don't- i don't have to do this jay, i can just use my mouth," you say, making sure she knows she has full control

and she's stammering like, "what?! no i just-"

"what baby?" you ask her so sweetly, running a hand through her hair, and she's shaking like a fucking leaf

"if you keep looking at me like that with that, thing, on you i'm gonna cum," she says quickly, hella embarrassed that just you kneeling on the bed with it is doing something to her

it's honestly a blur but next thing you know jb is on top, riding the strap, your hands on her hips

and she talks about you being whiny.... biiiiitch she is the WHINIEST mf ever on the strap okay

she literally can't form coherent words, her forehead is glued to your shoulder, her breathing heavy as her hands press on the bed next to your head

you have to encourage her to keep going, truthfully she doesn't have a ton of rhythm, like the way she moves her hips is sloppy because she's feeling more than just the base of the strap on her clit like she would normally feel

i think you'd adjust slightly, pushing her up gently and thrusting upwards and she would damn near shriek

it takes a lot to get her worked up sexually, she's the dirty talker when she's domming you but she has no words, just little mumbles and whines and whimpers and they sound so pretty you can't help but patronize her just a bit because she does the same to you but a million times worse casually

"doing so good jay," you'd breathe out and she's about to lose it

poor jb's literally leaking all over the base of the strap like she can't help it

and when she cums she literally squeals and you have to stifle a giggle because her face is buried into your neck

she moves in to overstim territory pretty quickly so you kinda move her off of it and pull out which she does not like and she kinda huffs when you do

and then you pull out all the stops

lots of kisses, warm cloth, ice water through a silicon straw (she likes to bite them this is my hc another hill i will die on), words of affirmation and praise and then a nice soak in the tub

i wouldn't say she's in subspace but she is kind of in a haze until she's laying with her back against your front in the tub and its almost like she sobers up

"you're in my spot," she grumbles, the grumpiness in her voice a result of absolute vulnerability

you just giggle, pushing her hair out of her face and kissing her cheeks

"we can switch" before she's scoffing like of course you were going to switch

there is definitely a debrief about how she felt, i think she can't quite articulate how much she likes it but its not going to be an everyday thing because as much as it felt good she feels more pleasure getting you off

*insert cheesy "happy valentine's day" exchange here* which julien engages in with an eye roll and a small smile before going into the history of western consumer driven holidays

and of course when engaging in pillowtalk, she does spitball some "new positions" that you could try if "you ever want to ya know, wear the strap again," and you're like.... "so you liked it?" with a smirk, and she's kinda playing it off before being like, "maybe for my birthday we could..."

[tyrantisterror]

Wife Goals: Hexadecimal

Hey fuckers. It's February, my Seasonal Affective Disorder is at its peak, and romance is on my mind whether I like it or not. So I'm going to ramble/gush about some of my favorite female characters in fiction, in a painfully honest and deeply cringe way, because fuck you that's why. We live in a post-Muncher society, you can't fucking stop me.

We're beginning with Hexadecimal from the 90's early CGI cartoon Reboot. I feel like most of tumblr's userbase was too young to watch that show. A lot of you were probably born after it aired. God I'm old. I'm so old and alone. Fuck.

Anyway, the premise of Reboot was that there was an entire world within your computer, with every program and file being people who lived inside the big city that makes up the computer itself. The city everything takes place in is called Mainframe, the main character was a security program, most of the citizens were shaped like 1's and 0's (binary code, get it?), everyone talked about things taking nanoseconds because one of the other conceits is that the people inside the computer experience time differently than humans, etc.

The villains of Reboot, at least initially, were computer viruses. One, the primary antagonist, was Megabyte, an evil overlord who wanted to take control of Mainframe by force - sort of the picture of a Lawful Evil villain, in D&D terms. The other, his sister, was Hexadecimal, the self-professed Queen of Chaos, who is more of a wicked witch (get it? Hex-adecimal!) that existed to cause mischief and mayhem for the sake of it. The Chaotic Evil to Megabyte's Lawful Evil, if you will - though as the series went on, calling Hex "evil" became more and more inaccurate.

Reboot was one of the first fully CGI cartoons, and it used the limitations of that early technology as a jumping off point to get creative with its setting and character concepts. Hexadecimal is very much a case in point for that - rigging face animations, especially on a humanoid face, is complicated and time-consuming, which is why there were very few humanoid characters in the first season of Reboot (and hence most of the case being made of 1's and 0's). For Hex, they decided to get around this by giving her a gimmick: Hexadecimal doesn't have a true face of her own, but rather dozens upon dozens of masks that she switches between with a wave of her hand. The result is that 1. the animators didn't need to work on in-between frames for her change in facial expression, saving a good bit of time and money and 2. Hexadecimal's mood changes are really, REALLY weird and unsettling to witness, selling her as some sort of supernatural monstrosity. She is magical in a dark, spooky way, even when just expressing feelings, and the result is a visual that really sticks with you - one that never would have been done if not for the limitations of that early CGI.

Of course, one of the other reasons Hexadecimal might have stuck out is that she was, uh... well, sexualized qutie a bit. Look, I'm not going to mince terms, there were some horny bastards working at Mainframe Entertainment (the company that made Reboot). These are the same animators who reportedly based Blackarachnia's design in Beast Wars after a stripper they saw while going out after work one night. In the first season of this show Hexadecimal full-figured and prone to walking in a very sultry way. When the show got dropped by ABC and picked up by another network, they put her in a full-on dominatrix outfit. Hex was always intended to be sexy.

And, like, ten-year old me didn't fully understand that when watching this show. But I do think that it was at least part of why my pre-adolescent brain because very obsessed with Hexadecimal, moreso than any of the other Reboot characters. She was interesting, for a lot of reasons, some of which I understood (funny scary monster villain lady) and some that I didn't understand but, like, vibed with intensely in ways that were formative and probably life-ruining.

Thankfully Hexadecimal was also just a very well-written character, perhaps the best in all of Reboot. Her first episode establishes the base components of her characterization that the rest of the show would build upon. Hex unleashes a computer bug using code from a paint program, which turns everyone who encounters it to stone. She specifically unleashes it by hiding it in a package and pretending to guard it, which makes her brother/rival villain, Megabyte, think it's some important mcguffin that he should steal. He does, and ends up the first victim of the medusa bug, which then spreads through all his minions, and then through all the different ways he has to sneak into the heart of Mainframe city, eventually infecting almost every citizen.

Already we establish several things about Hex: first, her schemes aren't about conquering people, but causing mayhem and havoc for the sake of it. Second, despite her chaotic nature, she's smart enough to make proper evil schemes. Third, she's a good judge of character in her way, as she figured the easiest way to get Megabyte to take the bait was to pretend she had something valuable for him to steal. Fourth, despite also being "evil," she's not on good terms with her brother/rival villain, and in fact wants to take him out first before anyone else. Fifth, holy shit she is SO much more powerful than the main bad guy, it's her first episode and she already almost won!

Almost. Of course, Bob, our hero security program, goes to Hexadecimal to try and stop her, at which point we find out Hex has something of a manic crush on Bob (as she articulates later in the series, "Oh Bob, I don't know whether to kiss you OR KILL YOU!"), and is actually willing to hear him out when he comes in doing his hero routine. Luckily, Bob is clever too, and decides to beat Hex the same way she beat Megabyte - he tells her that she should be proud of how orderly she made Mainframe. After all, with everyone turned to stone, nothing will change - it'll all be the same forever, quiet, calm, peaceful, and boring. Hexadecimal, the self-professed Queen of Chaos, immediately realizes she's made a nightmare for herself, and undoes her evil scheme with a wave of her hand before letting Bob go out of gratitude for keeping her from making a horrible mistake.

Which is the most important thing we've learned about Hexadecimal in her debut: she values freedom. Oh, she calls it chaos, yes, but Hexadecimal's biggest belief is that people should have the freedom to make their own choices, no matter how violent and destructive they may be. She's an anarchist first and foremost, and she values freedom so much that she'd gladly admit she was wrong and undo a successful scheme if someone correctly points out that said scheme goes against her ideals.

Especially if that someone is the guy she likes.

Hexadecimal is a supremely powerful villain who can't really be overpowered, but can be reached and defeated emotionally. As the show goes on, dealing with Hex increasingly becomes focused on building a relationship with her, and for most of the runtime Bob is the only person who is both brave and compassionate enough to try and give it a shot. While he doesn't share Hexadecimal's romantic feelings, he nonetheless feels there is something good buried deep beneath her mania, and that she is worth reaching out to.

And we in turn see that is is 100% correct. For all her supervillain antics, her ranting and raving, her violent outbursts and maniacal schemes, Hexadecimal is at her core an intensely lonely person, someone who craves affection but drives off almost everyone who gets close because of her psychological instability. She deeply wants people to love - she dotes on her little cat-like follower, Scuzzy, and she's also kind to nulls, creatures made from broken programs in the computer world that most people regard as vermin. And there are so many times when Hexadecimal's latest scheme is something Bob just... talks her out of.

Given the nature of serialized storytelling, Hexadecimal's vast strength did not stay insurmountable, and there were several times where she was humbled to show how great the new threat in the story was. Perhaps the most important was when Megabyte finally managed to get one over on her, literally shackling her with a control collar like she was a rabid dog and forcing her to be a living power source for his weaponry. Eventually Hex broke free (as she says, "Chaos will always triumph over order! It is the way of things!"), but at the cost of breaking herself further, which is visually represented by a crack forming on her mask. Bob, who'd been away for some time at this point (watch the show to know why), finds her and helps her fix her map - and this act of kindness, of care, of healing allows Hex to express emotions without swapping her mask for the first time, and, in the process, express herself with more self control. The children's cartoon show equivalent of finally getting this poor woman the meds she needs.

Unfortunately, most of the other characters weren't willing to forgive Hex for her past actions, and she spent the final season regarded with suspicion and coldness by all the other people of Mainframe even as she tried to turn over a new leaf. And while Bob cared about her, he didn't love her, a fact she had trouble accepting. The tragedy of this came to a head when the main threat of the fourth season, a new virus named Daemon whose plot was even more apocalyptic than anything Hex came up with in her villainous prime, unleashed a doomsday infection that could only be stopped by another virus - and even then, that virus would be sacrificing their life to pull it off. Hexadecimal willingly chooses to do it, happily even, with a smile on her face - because while she was going to die, the people she cared about would live, and perhaps think a little better of viruses like her as a result.

I think that is what made Hexadecimal stick with me more than anything - more than the cool mask, the awesome villain antics, or the 90's cartoon age-inappropriate sexy character design. Hexadecimal, more than anything else, is defined by her love for others and her desire for them to be free to live their lives as they choose. That means they can choose not to love her, not to forgive her, not to include her. They're free, that's their choice, just as it's her choice whether or not to love them in spite of it, and her choice to die for their freedom and happiness. She loved so, so deeply, and the thing that sticks with me, the thing that broke my heart as a kid and breaks it now, is that no one ever loved her back.

Yeah, she was creepy and maniacal and almost killed a bunch of people a lot of times, but she was also so full of love, and all she really needed was for it to be reciprocated! She needed people who were willing to care for her, even just a little bit - and she deserved people who cared a lot more than that, because if she was willing to do so much good for so little, imagine what good she could have done if someone loved her as much as she loved them.

Anyway, while I had many precocious crushes before Hexadecimal, I'm pretty sure she's the reason why my "type" seems to be "women who are made entirely out of Red Flags." And maybe that's ok.

...

no it's not ok why am I like this

[beauty-and-passion]

TMA - Chapters 91-100: Criminals, weirdos and one (1) wet cat

I said we were back and here we are, back again with ten more episodes.

This season started with a bang and I can’t wait to learn more, so let’s not waste too much time and jump right into it.

<< Main Masterlist <- Previous post

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MAG 91 - The Coming Storm

It’s Michael time! I mean, Michael Crew time! And he wants to talk about stuff! But only after dissing Jon too, because dissing Jon is apparently a hobby among these supernatural shits.

So I was right regarding Michael’s past: he’s the child struck by lightning and that event helped him “connect” to The Vast. And I love how he talked about it. Actually, I really like all the times humans talk about their connection with the supernatural entities: there’s always a mix of longing and reverence in their stories, they are always searching for that connection and, when they get it, they experience freedom and a deep sense of liberation. Michael literally searched among all the cursed Leitners to find the right one and get the exact kind of liberation he wanted.

And while doing it, he offers us more names! The Filth (which I don’t remember if I already saw before - and if I did, please help me remember), and the one he calls his “tormentor”: an “arcing branch of the Twisting Deceit”. What a fucking cool name <3

I also really like how Michael talks about this entity as a tormentor or a figure “chasing him”. It’s as if, after “marking” Michael with that scar, the entity kept searching him for years - and Michael chased the entity too, trying to find a way to bind it to the book.

Actually, that’s the part I don’t really understand. Why did Michael “bound his tormentor to the book”? What does that mean? Didn’t he bind “the tormentor” to himself? Jude told us that, if you kill yourself, you get closer to your god - and that’s what Michael did, right? But the book played a role too? Maybe I’m missing something.

So: Daisy woke up, went to the bar and ordered a coffee with a spoon of extra violence and a side dish of hitting Jon, because this season is apparently the “let’s beat Jon up” season. Thank god Basira was there to save his ass again, otherwise he would be a mush on the floor by now.

Shit, Daisy, calm your tits: it’s not Jon’s fault, and I’m not saying it because I’m biased. Can’t you see this man? He radiates the strongest wet cat energy ever, he's not the criminal mastermind here.

Elias, on the other hand…

Wait, what? What do you mean by “grab a spade”? Did you kill Michael, Daisy? My man Michael Crew just died?! What the fuck, Daisy, you can’t just kill characters like that! What about The Vast, now? Also, are we sure he really died? You know, there’s always a chance these little fuckers pop back alive and well.

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MAG 92 - Nothing Beside Remains

HOLY SHIT THAT WAS INSANE

*

Growing up means loving Elias

This MAG taught me something very important: that growing up means accepting and understanding what someone does right and even more what they do wrong. And this is why Elias is my favorite character now.

Look at him. Just look at this smug bastard. First, he calls the police because he knows Daisy is coming - and of course he knows, since he’s The Eye or its high priest or whatever. And once he gets his ass covered, he makes a statement (because it’s always feeding time for Mr. Eye), and casually comments it, by talking to Jon.

And here we can see Elias casually telling us that Jonah Magnus was also an Archivist or a servant of The Eye at least. Good to know that supernatural shit kept lurking around for centuries.

Look at this little shit. He’s The Eye (more or less) and he’s so satisfied because, for the first time, he experienced the influence of his own power on himself.

And you know what? I get the appeal. If I were a supernatural know-it-all who can compel others to talk, I would be curious to try that power on myself as well. Also, it works for the kind of supernatural god it is: since The Eye is characterized by endless love and search for knowledge, wanting to know how its own power feels sounds right up its alley.

Not only Elias is a smug bastard, but he’s relatable now. I am in love.

So:

Elias casually reconfirms he’s The Eye, since he’s the heart of the Institute and the institute is inextricably tied with The Eye.

That basically explains why Tim cannot leave. Since he became part of this “organism”, trying to leave would be like cutting an arm off: the organism survives, but the cut arm cannot. It dies. And that’s why Tim had to come back. I LOVE that there’s such a great explanation.

Elias fucked up everyone, all while hiring more people to work for him.

Elias fucked Daisy too and saved his ass exactly as he planned.

Elias is an insane bastard and I love him.

"Our master” what? You are The Eye, you little shit. Or maybe, since you’re, like, its embodiment on this planet, you are not exactly The Eye but like… a representation of it?

*

Melanie is my spirit animal

Melanie’s comments throughout the whole MAG have been peak. I loved everything, from her casually commenting “Uh… good?” after Jon told everyone Elias is going to confess his crimes, to her “Bloody hell!”, to her constant sense of confusion about everything.

I love her. So. Much. She just wanted a job and first she got weirdos as colleagues, then her boss admits he killed some people, then she finds out she’s stuck in that weird place because of some supernatural shit, then a police lady draws out a gun and all Melanie wanted was to just have a normal day and come back home all in one piece.

*

The Unknowing!

And now Elias gives us some answers! Okay, now I completely forgive him for killing Leitner. It was a dick move but hey, everyone has flaws and Elias is a clever, smug bastard, so he gets extra points and a free pass on a couple of killings.

So, the Unknowing is a ritual and it’s a way for The Stranger to change reality enough to make it closer to the place where it is.

You know what? That’s FUCKING COOL and I wish to see it. It would be insane and maybe destroy life in the universe, but it sounds so incredible!

Also, it kinda answers one of my previous thoughts, when I wondered about how those entities feel regarding our universe. Well, apparently one of them (aka The Stranger) likes it enough to try and make it its own. Now I wonder if we’ll get to know what other entities think about our world too.

*

Elias is everything

Oooh, so the war is between known and unknown. Well, that explains the two sides of the battle a little more: I get why one side is made of beings like The Dark, The Vast (aka part of the Twisted Deceit), The Distortion, the creepy dolls and so on. They’re all beings that thrive and are associated with the hidden and the unknown.

And now I get it why The Eye is on another side. But still don’t know who is could be on its side among the ones we know: maybe the Spider Gang? And what about the Lukas family? Do they stick around because of the connection between their ancestors and Jonah Magnus?

I am so excited, there are a ton of things I still need to know.

How could I even hate this man? He confessed he killed two people and yet, he got everything he wanted, he got new people attached to the Institute, he got his ass covered, he got his Archivist back and made him work on saving the world from the Unknowing. All of this in the span of 30 minutes more or less. What an icon.

And in the end, he casually tells Jon that hey, there’s no problem with form and notes, he will get everything covered in no time ;)

Also, “I have work to be getting on with”: oh, Elias, we all know it’s not true because you don’t work. You sit on your lazy ass all the time <3

I apologize for all the bad things I said about him in the past: I was young and naive and still didn’t know Elias is a little bitch. Now my eyes have been opened and all I can say is that I stan him and his insanity <3

_______________________________

MAG 93 - Contaminant

So, the statement can be resumed as “Mouldy Entity took over Greg Russell” and I have no idea what the Mouldy Entity is - even though it reminds me of The Filth mentioned by Michael Crew, so… maybe they’re parts of the same?

What’s truly important here is the umpteenth mention of Breekon & Hope, our favorite delivery boys. And apparently, Jon is asking the same questions I am asking myself: are they part of The Stranger or a third, neutral party that just loves going around and moving stuff? Are they the Uber drivers of the supernatural entities?

But what really matters here is the conversation with Georgie, which can be resumed as follows:

Elias, by being the wonderful bitch he is, took the first people he found and gave them random roles they were not qualified for, just because they had the perfect psychological profile for his deeds.

Jon proved he knows nothing about his job and its requirements. But don’t worry, apparently no one does. The Magnus Archives are run by a bunch of desperates who have no idea what they’re doing and I love it.

Jon’s resume of the situation is: there are weird gods outside our universe and they push through in the form of monsters. And they choose people as avatars, who gain super abilities, but lose their own self. Yep, pretty accurate.

These gods are considered patrons by their avatars/servants. Again, pretty accurate, considering they are seen and described as entities who help, support, and give freedom to the people they choose.

The Stranger's servants want to perform a ritual meant to remake the world, by bringing it closer to their master. And since Jon has to stop it, he’s literally trying to save the world. Jon is our hero… and it’s because the bad guy gave him this role. Or is Elias a good guy now? Are there even “good” or “bad” guys? I love it when a story plays so much with common roles and concepts like good and bad.

What happened with The End? What did Death/The End ever do? Did it do something bad to Georgie? Please no, she seems such a sweetheart.

_______________________________

MAG 94 - Dead Woman Walking

Clearly the dead woman was an avatar of The End or a smaller servant or whatever. And it’s really interesting how it affected Georgie: the idea that there’s no difference between present and future and everything is destined to end reminds me of the philosophy of presentism, a theory according to which the only existing events/objects are those that exist in the present. And yes, the importance, the weight of realizing how everything is destined to an end truly seems to hint at the importance and power of an entity that is literally called The End.

I also really like how this realization didn’t just affect Georgie in the short term: she got influenced by it, she recovered, but the effects are still here, in the form of an inability to fear anything anymore.

Understandable: once you realize that everything is destined to an end, there is no eternity after, the end is already here and it will always be part of everything... well, it makes said everything much less intimidating.

And yes, Georgie is right when she says she feels as if fear was stolen from her. Because can you really live and experience life, if you don’t feel any fear anymore?

_______________________________

MAG 95 - Absent Without Leave

O-oh, a statement about an Italian guy! And he’s from Teramo, so he’s close to my city too! That’s cool :D

But even if the guy is close to me geographically, we’re separated by an abyss when it’s language time: “Sono andanti marcio” is exactly the kind of terrible, wannabe Italian only a shitty computer translator can produce XD

Mr. Sims, ask me next time: as it is now, this sentence means “They going rot”, which almost makes sense in English, but it makes zero sense in Italian :P A much better translation would be:

“Stanno marcendo” (they are still going rotten)

“Sono marciti” (they are already rotten)

Bad translation aside, this statement reminds me of something else, especially the introductory part, which seems to refer to the song “La guerra di Pietro” by Fabrizio De Andrè. This song is a beautiful poem and, even though it's hard to convey the same depth and beautiful musicality in another language, this translation on Genius.com is quite accurate. I also suggest listening to the original song here on YouTube, just to get an idea of why this is still one of the most beloved songs and why De Andrè is one of the greatest Italian artists (and one of my personal favorites).

Basira is productively spending her time! Is she a prisoner in the institute? No problem, the situation will change in the future, so it's much better to spend time gathering more info and doing something, rather than whining and protesting. Great mentality, I really like her.

_______________________________

MAG 96 - Return to Sender

As soon as I heard the name “Alfred Breekon” I jolted: o-oh, will we listen to a statement from the boss of Breekon & Hope Deliveries? I’m ready for it.

Okay, despite being not particularly important, this statement was still quite interesting: first, we found out Hope isn’t a real person, but another name put on by the original owner of the company. Then, that our two favorite delivery boys were never hired. They just followed this plan:

appear one day

scare the shit out of Mr. Breekon

steal his name and truck

start delivering stuff everywhere

???

Profit, somehow

Cherry on top, this statement has been left for Jon by Elias, whose job is now to anticipate Jon’s next steps. What a bitch, I love him.

Okay, so now Jon and Daisy are a dynamic duo that goes around, beating the shit out of the avatars/servants (and occasionally killing them), to stop The Stranger and the Unknowing? I didn’t know I needed this in my life but it turns out I need this a lot. Please, more of Daisy radiating killing energy and Jon radiating wet cat energy together.

One last thing, as a personal reminder: one of the ingredients of this ritual is the oldest piece of taxidermy in the world, aka gorilla skin from Carthage. I hope to get all of these ingredients, I’m curious to see if I can deduce what happens during the Unknowing just by knowing them.

_______________________________

MAG 97 - We All Ignore the Pit

I like that this statement’s title is an advice. The people who survived the most in this series are the ones who ignore everything, so yes, I will gladly ignore the pit with… whoever you are.

And so did Mr. Ellis. And he survived, thus proving my point: ignore the weird shit happening around you and you will come out alive. Unless the weird shit grows interest in you. In that case, you’re fucked.

The statement per se is weird and mysterious. I have no idea about this pit, even though the constant “earthy movements” reminded me of the supernatural meat. Also, who are the old lady and the guy with deep blue eyes? Are they important? Is Gertrude and someone else? No idea, but I’ll try to remember them.

Glad to know I’m not the only clueless one: Jon has no idea about what this statement means too. At least we’re together in this. Now, if only Elias would be so kind to give us more clues, it would be great.

But he’s also having so much fun, throwing bits of info… oh, I can’t stay mad at him, he can do as he pleases <3

OMG Nikola Orsinov paid Jon a visit! And she’s adorable, creepy and adorably creepy! I loved the aghast “No!” when Jon asked her if she wanted to kill him, only to be followed by “I mean, yes”. Ah, good old supernatural shits, always trying to kill Jon. Seriously, this season is the “Jon keeps asking if others want to kill him” season: that’s what he says most of the time!

Soooo… the gorilla skin is basically a ball dress? That’s hilarious. And Nikola wants to wear it when she “dances the world new”. The implications are beautifully terrifying and it keeps reminding me of Azathoth at the center of the universe, surrounded by endless dance and music.

_______________________________

MAG 98 - Lights Out

Oh, some time with the other characters! Tim, it’s been an eternity since I saw you!

AAAnd this is why you're still great. I love Tim.

Sure, he’s 300% done and every time he appears, he’s more done than the last. And yes, he has “DEAD” written all over his face. But since he’s still alive for now, I will enjoy every second of him.

I love the meta of sentences like this, because I know Martin is talking to the recorder and, indirectly, to The Eye. But we can also see it as Martin scolding us, the listeners. We are like The Eye, hungrily listening to every private conversation these people have.

The statement per se is okay: we have another story regarding Maxwell Rayner, the ex avatar of The Dark. And we also get some sort of… physical form of The Dark, I suppose: a long, thin figure with an open mouth from which pours down an endless amount of black sand. Pretty cool, I like it - especially the sand detail and the associated sound. I can almost hear this soft hiss of the falling sand.

And then, just like every other woman in this series, Melanie too decides to wake up and choose violence. However, her violence comes with a side dish of stupid, so she decides to poison Elias. The magical know-it-all.

Bless her clumsy attempt, she's too precious <3 Even Elias knows it and forgives her: Melanie must be protected at all costs.

_______________________________

MAG 99 - Dust to Dust

The statement per se is kinda useless: a weirdly magical sand associated maybe with the Spiral and Gertrude talking about The Hunt, The Buried and Jan Kilbride. No idea what those things are, but whatever.

What’s important is that Jon is sure Gertrude’s assistant is Michael. Okay, but which one? Micheal the Good Boyo or Michael Crew? I suppose Michael the Good Boyo, even though I cannot be sure - I suck at recognizing voices. Anyway, something happened to her assistant and he became an avatar. And Jon is clearly afraid something similar is gonna happen to his assistants too.

That’s very fascinating. Will they become avatars too? Elias is one already and Jon feels he’s becoming one too. But what about the others? Will Martin become an avatar? And Melanie? And Tim? Maybe I had the wrong impression about him and he won’t die, but become an avatar? Or maybe I was right, since you have to die to become an avatar.

This also explains Jon’s fears and why he’s trying so hard to escape from everyone else. Once again, his psychology and actions make sense, thanks to a clear, logic explanation.

And since Jon is a well-written character and he’s a clever guy not an idiot, he realizes what he's doing is wrong, he accepts Georgie’s advice and says he will try to stick with the others and help with “Elias’ new management style”.

The laugh I gave when I read this. The utter laugh. What does “new management style” even mean? Hiring random people was his old management style, so what's the new one? Actually doing something for once, instead of sitting on his ass 24/7? I love Elias, I want him as my boss too.

Holy shit the ending! Breekon and Hope literally kidnapped Jon, to bring him to the creepy puppet lady. And this reconfirms:

This is truly the “let’s beat up Jon” season

Jon is even more of a wet cat than ever

All the supernatural shits want to kill Jon

The puppet lady will come back in all of her creepiness and I can’t wait for it

_______________________________

MAG 100 - I Guess You Had to be There

So that’s “Elias’ new management style”? Making everyone record statements? Well… why not? He hired these bunch of people not because they knew how to do their job - actually, no one knows how to run this place, not even the Head Archivist.

So, being the thoughtful boss he is, Elias decided that:

They should do the only job that matters, which is feeding time for Mr. Eye the archivist’s job

Everyone should do it, because that’s the most chaotically evil thing ever - and it makes me laugh

Everyone is being efficient all day, so Elias can sit on his ass and do nothing as always

The more time passes, the more I stan Elias.

So, let’s see these wonderful people who came to the Archives with their totally real stories:

*

Lynne, aka The MoneyGrabber: she went to the Institute just to get some money. The ghost story is probably just some stupid shit she dreamt and decided that hey, why not try and give it to these people? She can make easy money for that!

The idea could’ve worked, unfortunately the Magnus Archives is not the kind of agency she hoped for and all she got from her story was something like 20 cents for a coffee.

*

Mr. Smith, aka The Conspiracy Theorist: when he said the Government kidnapped his friend, I died on the spot and came back alive, just to laugh more.

I can bet my ass the true story was something like: Mr. Smith & partner tried to steal something, then his friend got rightfully arrested or got lost somewhere because they’re clearly a couple of idiots, so now he thinks it’s the Government’s fault, it’s “they”, it’s the New World Order, it's whatever, what’s important is that they’re hiding something from us, wake up people!

Unfortunately for Mr. Smith, the agency that could’ve helped him wasn’t the Magnus Institute, but a mental hospital.

*

Robin, aka The One Who Wants To Get Killed: Basira got tested and she got severely tested, because if I were her, I would’ve sent this guy away right after he started to ramble the first time.

He clearly has some death wish and his story was an attempt to get killed by Basira. Unfortunately for him, she didn't fall for that - even though the temptation was very strong. So she just sent him away to bore someone else to death.

*

Brian, aka The Fucked Up: but not because The Web & Spider Gang attacked him, oh no. It’s because there’s another goddamn Lukas, who did something weird to him.

And, wait, is he the same Peter Lukas mentioned long ago? Let me check.

*one check later*

Yes, he was mentioned in MAG 33, in the story about the supernatural fog! Wait, is the distorted sound associated with the same fog? Is that what he did with Brian? Did he stick this guy in the supernatural fog or something similar?

Also, I know the Lukas family is creepy, but I like this guy: he introduces himself with such a happy tone, he gives funny vibes. And he’s searching for Elias because I suppose they’re pals, so I hope he will be a funny guy - albeit creepy and scary and associated with some other supernatural shit.

_______________________________

In conclusion

The more statements I read, the more this series becomes funnier.

The characters are amazing. I love every one of them, from Nikola Orsinov in all her creepiness, to this Peter Lukas filled with happy vibes. I want to know more, I want to see The Stranger and the Unknowing - and I want to know about Peter Lukas too. Is it finally time to learn more about this creepy family and the supernatural fog? Will we also learn more about Michael? Will Jon escape? Or will his friends come to save him? Will Elias ever stop being a chaotic bastard?

I hope not for the last one.

-> Next post

(How about a coffee? ☕)

_______________________________

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[mentalhomosexual]

𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙨𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙨𝙩 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚-☆ ˢᵏᶻ ᵛᵉʳ

𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻☆-

he would secretly be trying so hard to get you to squirt every time you guys have sex.

the moment he found out you've never done it before he was determined to get it out of you

when it actually happens he's so fucking happy omg

he would praise you through it....🪦

"Mhm~ that's right baby squirt all over my fucking cock like a good girl" me next

He would love it so much and would have his mind set to at least make you squirt once when you guys are going at it

PRASIE PRAISE PRAISEEEEEEEEEEE (i'm sorry)

he would see how surprised and thrown off you were and he would be such a sweetheart and tell you how amazing you were

"Next time I want some in my mouth yeah~?"

𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗵𝗼☆-

would be such a meany about it 🤕

honestly it would take him by surprise at first because you've never done it but it would raise his ego sm.

"Did i make you feel that good baby?~"

smirking like a meany while you whine through it

but don't worry he's not that mean.... ☠️

he'll still comfort you after and clean you up (🥹)

"you should do that for me often"

he'll tease you about it though-

𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗯𝗶𝗻☆-

Honestly I feel like he would be so in love with the idea of him making you squirt

He's always known about what it was but you've never done it and he just thought that he wasn't doing something right (😕)

UNTILLLLL that fateful day where he was fucking you from behind with your leg propped up.

you both were so into each other you didn't even realize at first until he noticed a big stain on the sheets and then it clicked.

would so overjoyed that he was wrong about not fucking you right 😭

would literally flip you over and lick whatever is left off your pussy

I feel he'd be a praiser as wellllllll~ 🧎🏽‍♀️🤲🏽

𝗛𝘆𝘂𝗻𝗷𝗶𝗻☆-

WOULD THINK ITS SO SEXY.

omg please help me

He loves to eat you out.

he loves to see you while he works his tongue and mouth on you

so when you squirt in his mouth/ on his face a bit

he loses his fucking mind

" that was so sexy baby, fuck"

would probably cum just from the view

"can you give me one more~"

y'all go at it all day just because he's so worked up from you squirting for the first time.

pussy drunk on another level

𝗝𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗻𝗴☆-

PUSSY DRUNK CANDIDATE # 2

you and jisung have sex so much, like i feel he has a high sex drive and he also just can't get enough of you

maybe on your 3rd or 4th round and he's using his mouth AND fingers on you

you come undone and he kisses you afterward to make you taste yourself on his lips

would overstimulate the fuck out of you because he thinks you look so hot when you squirt for him

would reward you by fucking you all night 🤩

D i r t y t a l k

becomes even more addicted to your pussy after that night

𝗙𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘅☆-

This nasty little fucker.

While your riding him, babbling the nastiest things as he's hitting all the right spots you can't help but give into the tight sensation in your stomach

you squirt all over his pelvis and just feeling you cum around him makes him cum.

pussy drunk as well tbh-

He kisses you all over as he begs you to let him fuck you one more time so he can experience the whole ordeal again

"you feel so fucking good~ let me fuck you one more time baby, I need to feel you again~"

𝗦𝗲𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗺𝗶𝗻 ☆-

you knew he was trying to get you to squirt, you both have talked about it...

mostly just you telling him that you want him to make you squirt

at first he wouldn't quite understand what he has to do differently and honestly...neither do you 🤩

but you just tell him to go a little deeper and maybe a little slower, he agrees and the next time you fuck he's a totally different person

he would be fucking you so good omg. occasionally  asking you how you feel and if he's deep enough

half way through fucking you he places a vibrater on your clit and you fucking lose it

you squirt everywhere with the sluttiest moan

he would immediately make you suck all your juices off his cock as a reward to him for making you squirt

now hear me out. praise mixed with degradation w/ Seungmin. (im evaporating 🫠)

"My dirty little slut did such a good job didn't she?, taking me so fucking deep" he spits out as he guides your head up and down his cock, holding your hair up in a ponytail

he's so turned on from getting you to squirt so much

𝗝𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻 ☆-

He's so gentle with you 🥹

but he is also ruthless-

You love when he fucks you with his fingers and boy so does he~

as he works you open with his fingers, he talks you through it

I feel like he would always talk you through when you two are intimate because he wants you to feel safe and relaxed with him

"are you gonna cum for me babe? are you gonna cum all over my fingers like a good girl~ "

and you love that from him. It makes you squirt so much and so hard that he's almost taken aback by it

" You did so well love, let me get a towel to clean you up" he'd say as he tenderly kisses you

CUDDLES AFTERWARDS 🗣️❕

[box-dwelling]

My Dumb sexuality head canons for bg3. Ignoring the player sexualness

Wyll: beloved bi king. I am pretty sure he even has a line about it

Lae'zel: OK this is complicated because like, I genuinely think being a gith in the material realm means that she is just not comprehending the gender of the people around her in the question of attractiveness. It's the classic monster fucker thing where you stop caring about gender. And sex within gith culture is complicated anyway due to how they reproduce so she's probably omnisexual.

Shadowheart: She's definitely sapphic. There is nothing heterosexual about her and laezel and honestly her and Nocturne too. As for if she's into men. I'm not sure but I want to say no just because I know she's the go to romanced companion by straight men

Karlach: Listen Karlach X Wyll shippers. I see you. I understand you. I love you. You're so valid. Its not my ship but i do get the vision. I cannot see that woman ever dating a man. If it's any consolation I do think Wyll has a weird relationship with gender so, that could probably still work out.

Gale: He's definitely into women. I honestly switch on if I think he's into men or not. This will probably be subject to change after I do a romance run with him

Halsin: Pan and poly. 100% and I love him so much for it

Jaheira: OK ok OK. Hear me out. Aspec. Khalid and her had like a genuinely great relationship even though her feelings towards it were probably more platonic than she was willing to acknowledge but after he died she had no interest in ever having anything again because she could kinda check it off her mental list of things she is supposed to experience.

Minsc: I swear it is not intentional that I'm saying this for the non romancable compaions but I also think ace. I think he like thinks he's straight. He will sleep with women because he socially thinks that's what hes ment to do but his heart is never in it and boo is desperately trying to explain to him that he can just not do that if he doesn't want to.

Astarion: left for last because I think this is my biggest hot take. You cannot convince me he is into women at all. That is a gay man. Basically, every line that I'm aware of where he talks about romantic or sexual desire is with men. Like it's Astarion so his relationship with sex is complicated and you can maybe convince me of homoromantic bisexual though i personally think he doesnt consider his own desires at all during sex at least at the beginning of the game, so he doesn't mind sleeping with women because sex is just the thing he thinks he has to be doing but beyond that I cannot see it.

[varilien]

(character uses they/it) i keep wanting to start posting my ocs over here again and then Just Not Doing It so uhhhh !!! some stuff from february, had a dream about knives that made me think of a plant oc with a constant power output so extreme that it generates a deadly radiation field around them. because of that they've been living alone this whole time, avoiding contact with other living things, and over the years they've learned how to suppress that output for short spans of time or "safely" pour out the excess in order to be safe to be around, though they ultimately prefer their solitude due to a history of bad experiences with humans. they're very blunt, spiteful, and curious

@whatever-you-can-give-me suggested lr would make good friends for them since they are 🤝 about being extremely hard to hurt lol

also! wrote like 2k about they and razlo's first meeting below the cut if anyone's interested in some good ol violence + gore :3

that was a fr content warning btw read at ur own discretion:

Chance encounters with violent strangers out in the open desert are nothing new to LR, even when Livio purposefully had tried to find the quietest possible route to travel.  It’s not even necessarily surprising to run into someone a little to the left of human, someone a bit bigger or stronger or more durable than they really have any right to be.  The Eye aren’t the only ones designing freaks on this planet, that much is obvious, evidenced sufficiently by the odder fights LR have ever gotten in.  

And this one is shaping up to be one of their oddest fights yet.

Livio hadn’t seen the fucker coming, occupied as he was with the slow realization of why this stretch of road doesn’t see much use anymore: a creeping heat across his nerve endings unrelated to the overcast, evening suns, the taste of metal in his mouth, and a deep-rooted nausea twisting up his guts.  Radiation sickness.  He’s dealt with it before, and as unpleasant as it is, it’s hardly enough to slow him down too bad.  

It’s damn distracting, though.  A good enough excuse for not noticing them hiding up along the rockface above his head.  Not a good enough excuse to keep Razlo from tagging in, especially after something’s pierced straight through the back of his neck, nearly taking his head clean off.  

Razlo rolls for cover with a strangled sound, blood gushing from his forced-out throat and foaming at his lips.  Even with his senses jarred and his vision blurred, it'd take more than a near-decapitation for his instincts to be overridden.  He's slinging out a Punisher before he even knows what he's up against.  

There's a blur of motion to his right as soon as his sights are raised.  They're probably surprised Razlo's still standing, but so was everyone else who's gotten a lucky shot at him.

He can track their motion by sound alone.  They're sloppy.  Feet hitting the cracked earth in hard thumps, every one a warning that Razlo can aim a spray of bullets at.  And by now Razlo's healed enough to notice and wonder why the hell his head is still so fucked up.

At least now he can mostly see them when he turns, hanging back a ways, out of Razlo's reach.  Shorter than him by a head and a half, covered toe to tip in layers of sun-bleached rags, save for their face.  That's hidden behind a tall, curved mask, shaped in a way that looks an awful lot like a tomas' crest, with the false eye markings to match.  Even the glass for the lenses is opaque.  The only part of them that’s exposed is their left hand, extended delicately aside to keep Razlo’s blood dripping off it from getting on their clothes.

Razlo physically tries to shake out the buzzing in his skull that only gets worse by the second, only to notice the foul smell of burning meat and risk an instinctive glance down at his arm, where his flesh has started to bubble and steam seemingly on its own.  He looks between his arm and his opponent, the way their body tenses and head begins to tip, shaking hard, simultaneous with his skin boiling that much more fiercely.  

Something clicks in his brain.  There’s no way.

And no time to find out.  This time when they dart in he’s expecting it; he takes a swing at their head, and they dodge right into his follow-through, slamming his Punisher into their skull with a crunch and a wet sound from their throat.  They drop, like he’d expect them to, like anyone would.  And like no one does, they just roll out of the way and onto their back, braced to spring back up again.  Razlo puts his boot through their ribcage before they get the chance to.  That should be the end of it, too, but the fucker just keeps kicking, trying to get away, the only sound they make being the gurgle of their lungs filling with blood, and they keep kicking.

At this point Razlo doesn’t even have a plan anymore.  Needless to say, he doesn’t go up against an awful lot of guys who match him in the department of being a pain in the ass to take down.  Razlo's just starting to come up with a new idea when those long arms swing up, claws digging into and making ribbons of his right leg.

Razlo curses and tries to pull away, which only makes them hold on even tighter.  He's staring that four-eyed glare down when that burning feeling across his whole body raises in pitch again, and it's the sight of his flesh starting to disintegrate around their fingers that finally makes him back off.

Razlo rather gracelessly falls on his ass in trying to take a step back, not expecting his right leg to simply break off halfway down his thigh.  He scrambles back a ways, ready to keep going, missing limb or no, but— they aren't following him.  They're collapsed in the sand, limbs akimbo as they fight to draw a full breath.  Razlo watches with morbid curiosity as his severed leg dissolves into nothing more than an off-colored patch of sand beside them.

All that angry tension has gone out of their body, leaving them limp and motionless except for the stutter of their chest, and Razlo can hear the damp gasps muffled behind their mask.  By all rights, it should look like more of a struggle.  They should be dead, really, but from where Razlo is sitting, it looks a lot more like they’re just taking a rest.  He feels more sure of that when they roll their shoulders back a bit, arms braced in the dirt as they delicately arch their spine.  There’s some sharp popping sounds, and a little exhale from them; setting their ribs, Razlo figures.  He’s had to do the same thing before.  Once they can move their arms more effectively, they start to gather themself up into a seated position, bones and joints still crackling like popcorn here and there as they go, til they’re all the way up, with their hands resting in their lap, looking far too fucking comfortable for the fight they’d just had.

"You're not dead."

Their voice startles Razlo despite being as soft as it is, and his gaze flicks up to that mask, just slightly tilted to the side, orange lenses glinting in the harsh sunlight.  They don't move at all that Razlo can see.  Even their breathing has evened out enough to have become imperceptible under their heavy shroud; if they're in any pain still, Razlo sure can't tell.

"Nope," is all he says, or can manage to say.

He scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand, blinking hard a couple times to scrunch up his face in the hopes his nerves might start feeling right again soon.

Another wave of nausea hits him, but his stomach was empty before the fight even started, so he leans forward to put his head between his knees and dry heave for a while.

The whole time, he's aware of his little opponent continuing to sit in silence, watching and eerily unmoving, even when Razlo manages to sit up again and wipe his mouth with his wrist.

"The fuck's yer deal, anyways?"  Razlo asks.

"'Deal'...?"  They echo.

"Couldn't exactly kill you, either."

He wasn't expecting them to spill their life story or something, but he was thinking he'd get something more of a response than their head tilting back the opposite way.  There's not a lot to work with here in trying to get a read on them, but Razlo feels it's safe to hazard they're probably just pretty damn confused, the same as him.

"You kinda smell like a Plant.  M'not an expert, but I've met two others."

Now that gets something out of them.  A tiny wiggle of their head that makes the pieces in their mask rattle.

"I wouldn't know.  I've only met me."

“Huh.”  

Whether it’s a confirmation or rebuttal hardly matters at this point.  He’s feeling sure enough that his assumption was correct, now, anyways.

"You, uh…"  Razlo has to pause for breath.  Unlike the thing across from him, he's having a hell of a time getting his back.  "You're the one making this radiation field?"

"Yes."

"Any way you could turn it down?"

They say nothing, though Razlo feels suddenly that he's being studied very intently.  And shortly after, slowly, slowly the fire in his cells begins to go out, and he can spit the worst of the sourness off his tongue.  Eventually he can't feel any radiation left at all, though his body's had a rough enough time from the dose he got, he'll be getting the sickness out of his system for a while yet.

Regardless, Razlo’s fingers twitch against the triggers when he hears that mask rattle again, and his eyes are on it in an instant.

"You didn't answer my first question," Razlo reminds, cautiously.

More silence, for a while.

"You wanted to hurt me."

There's no malice in the statement, at least that Razlo can tell.  Just the simple facts.  Still, he narrows his eyes.

"You started it.  Figured it was mutual."

"That's true."

Razlo grins.

"So, what now?  Regrow my leg, and get back to not killing each other?"

"If you'd like to."

That gets a laugh out of him.

"Nah, I think I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you.”

“It is.”

That much is obvious.  They stay put, seeming transfixed on watching Razlo’s leg grow back, only a little more slowly than any of his other injuries, now that he doesn’t have the radiation to slow him down.  It leaves him feeling itchy and achy all over, and he’s got a bad hunch that right ankle doesn’t have the best chances of coming back right.  Once there’s enough of it to fuss about, he gets his foot in his hands and starts experimentally rolling it on its hinge, checking that the range of motion is right.

And still, those orange lenses glint at him curiously.  They don’t flinch or look away when Razlo considers them in return; he guesses they don’t know it’s not polite to stare.

“What's yer name?"  Razlo asks.

"My name?"

"Don't tell me you ain't got one."

The silence that follows is pretty self-explanatory.

“I’m Razlo.”

He can just make out the sound of them mumbling his name under their breath, like they’re not sure how it’s going to come out.  Almost warmly, almost shyly, they manage to say: “hello, Razlo.”

[livwritesstuff]

Mid-bath, I realised that Eddie and Steve had daughters during Lush’s peak popularity with the bathbombs and bubble bars, the themed releases (especially for Halloween). How did that go?

omg as a mid-2010s adolescent who *loved* watching lush hauls (Zoella's specifically and that's someone I hadn't thought about in a bazillion years), I cannot believe I didn't think of this sooner

Okay, but I see your Lush, and I raise you this:

The mall closest to their town in Massachusetts (the epic Natick Mall for any fellow New Englanders) just so happens to separate the Lush and the Bath and Body Works by just two (2) stores.

Add a Yankee Candle to that shit and you’ve got a brand new circle of hell – that’s Eddie’s opinion anyways, and he’d be the one to know given how Steve pulls the migraine card every time the girls lobby for a trip to the mall.

Like most adolescent girls in the mid-2010s, Moe, Robbie, and Hazel love Lush and they love Bath and Body works, so it’s a given that they’ll be building time for both into their mall adventure.

For Eddie, it’s his least favorite part of an already not-so-enjoyable experience, because, yeah, one of those bath bombs or whatever might smell nice on its own, but a hundred thousand of the fuckers crammed into a store with less square footage than the entryway of his and Steve’s house…that’s gotta be some form of prison torture (and if it’s not, it should be).

Eventually, Eddie just sets them loose for that portion of their shopping trip, which Steve might not necessarily approve of (but what Steve doesn’t know can’t hurt him, and those two stores back to back definitely would hurt Eddie).

“Do not lose Hazel,” he tells Robbie and Moe, deadly serious even though Hazel is almost ten and the risk of losing her in a real way is getting slimmer and slimmer, “If you are not walking into the bookstore in exactly thirty minutes, I will send a mall cop in to bring you to me the long way. Through the food court where all the kids from your school will be. Capiche?”

The system works – the girls get to spend their dads’ money on over-scented garbage and Eddie gets to retain his sense of smell and his sanity – but it’s only half the battle. The second half takes place at home, in the upstairs bathroom that all three girls share.

“Hazel!,” they hear Moe yell, “That one was mine!”

Steve shoots Eddie a look, as if to say that’s all you, man.

“C’mon, Stevie,” he protests, “I broke up the last one about the stupid hand sanitizers.”

“Nope. You facilitated buying them that shit. You can deal with it.”

Right on cue, they hear Hazel upstairs start to cry. Eddie groans, gets to his feet, and heads upstairs.

Indeed, Hazel is sobbing, because she almost always is these days (Steve and Eddie secretly joke that she’d never cried as a baby because she was stock-piling it all for her elementary-school days), and wrapped in an elephant towel (there’s a hood with ears and everything; it’s very cute). Moe is holding a half-dissolved bath bomb that she’d clearly just fished out of the bathtub and wearing an unreasonably irate expression for what is ultimately just a glorified ball of baking soda and citric acid (Eddie looked it up).

“Dad – Hazel’s using my bath bomb.”

“It’s not yours!” Hazel hiccups.

Eddie squints at the deformed mess fizzing in Moe’s hand.

“I gotta side with Hazy here, Moe. I mean – c’mon. Did you actually want a Santa Claus-shaped bath bomb? Really?”

“Yeah,” she insists, “It’s limited edition, Dad. For the holiday collection.”

Eddie lets out a long sigh.

“Okay,” he says, “You guys are keeping this shit in your own rooms. Starting now.”

[popthebop]

Actual opinions on GCPD and the rest of the cast in the GCPD (can’t say this in the dc discord I fear)

they are not good people all of them have at least committed 7 acts of police brutality, there’s a reason why Batman is a vigilante in Gotham.

A lot of the copagnda in Batman is that these acts of brutality and violence and manipulation and coercion, are deemed “good for the many” while in fact they keep fucking beating kids half to death or selling evidence for a profit or misplacing evidence or planting evidence or any of the many other things. (Uhhh in Gotham central that happens more times then I can count) (in the main comics I actually cannot count, fuck Harvey bullock biggest Harvey hater)

They run and have always run on the “guilty til proven innocent” narrative and it wants to you sit down and just accept it along with everything else.

(Some of the rouges are just literally guys who are poor, I will not even lie. killer croc is poor and disparaged due to his skin condition and the years of abuses and exploitations. or Mr freeze especially who worked on a teacher’s salary and couldn’t afford his wife’s medical bills and maybe if he had the money before she her cancer got worse perhaps he never would have been so desperate to save Nora perhaps the gothcorp incident that made him Mr freeze would have never happened. I find it very funny and frustrating that almost all the rouges became rouges due to wealth disparity and the abuses of the Gotham foster and healthcare system. The cops and the racism and the everything. But it’s never explored beyond “Mr freeze is evil” or whatever sorry I am a Mr freeze apologist)

The GCPD aren’t good people, in essence they can never Be “GOOD” that’s who they are they are the foil to Batman, the “law” he never follows or disregards.

(I have alot of fucking opinions with copaganda Batman, I have so many opinions on starlings treatment of Jason, I have so many opinions so so fucking many there have been times where I was seething. Fucking hell why do that do this to Batman. PLEASE 🙏 LET THE FUCKER BE ACAB PLEASE FOR ONCE IN HIS DAMNED LIFE. LET MY MAN;S HAVE TO GO UNDERCOVER AND JUST EXPERIENCE TRULY HOW BAD THE STUPID SYSTEMS ARE LET HIM BE KIND AGAIN I FUCKING MISS THAT BATMAN.)

When he (Batman) despite his many flaws lets due process happen and trust in the legal system. As seen by paying for all his rouges’s legal expenses.

(I still think it’s actually so incredibly heartwarming that he pays for the best lawyers he can get for his rouges they should explore that more)

In the above picture is an example of this fucking BULLSHIT, ughhhh way are the cops lives in Gotham valued more than any civilian “criminal” or not!!! FUCKING SHUT UP DRIVER.

the whole line of “if he was just a street punk, he’d be on death row right now” JUST INFURIATES ME THE MOTHERFUCKER IS THINKING OF THOSE KIDS FROM BEFORE. HATE YOU DRIVER HATE YOU. I HOPE THE JOKER BLASTS YOUR HEAD OFF UGHHGKSJVKHSJKVHJSKHVJSKVJHSKHVJ

The GCPD love to waive or coerce the human rights of its citizens, and seen in not only Gotham city year one but many many other stories. the corruption within the ranks of the GCPD is rife. They are not the good guys, no matter what the writers have tried to establish. 

Despite their efforts despite what we think of them, they are the ones contributing most of the bad in Gotham. Off screen and in between the pages are the stories of a history of long racial and ethnic disparities. Old Gotham and the narrows and park row/crime alley are where all the “criminals” live. When in essence it’s just the poor and homeless the poor and disabled.

In no man’s land, in cataclysm, in contagion, in all these things again and again the disparity of the lower classes and the disabled are felt heavily. In one no man;s land comic it’s supposed to be seen as this “oh the evil is in the streets only the police can clean it up” when it’s just desperate, desperate people who have been abandoned not only by the world but by the very people who wore sworn to protect them. Renee’s comment strikes hard because that IS what these cops truly think, they are judge jury and executioner.

This whole scene just makes me fucking angry, like FUCK YOU MONTOYA THAT IS LITERALLY YOUR COUSIN AND YOUR FIRST THOUGHT IS NOT

“oh SHIT I SHOULD GO WITH AND MAKE SURE HE’S OKAY”

IT’S “he’s a fucking criminal now” LIKE FUCK YOU OKAY WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL ARE YOU ON ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT LITERALLY ANAXED GOTHAM AND YOUR THOUGHTS ARE NOT THAT EVERYONE HAS LOST EVERYTHING AND ARE QUITE LITERALLY ALL REFUGEES NOW AND HAVE LOST EVERYTHING THEIR FAMILIES THEIR HIMES THEY HAVE NOTHING BUT THEIR LIVES AND THE CLOTHES ON THEIR BACK LIKE THE FUCK MAN.

and like in essence is Harvey dent even wrong for thinking that they were corrupt pieces of shit? Is his morality tied closer to fate even that bad compared to them?

(this is what makes him so incredibly interesting to me that despite everything he still is a DA at heart, despite everything he wants due process and justice. He also is a murderer who decides the fate of peoples lives on the flip of a coin. It’s super fun to see this duality with Renee and him seeing as they have a lot of beef i’m not getting into rn please I need more ACAB twoface and Renee finally realizing she’s the worst copaganda has to offer please please)

Like we see, so much incorrect procedure. Even if it’s for drama the fact that we see the utter disarray of the evidence holding the stolen evidence and all of this. Is it truly a good system one that can be “fixed” by these “good cops”?

there isn’t any, to begin with.

the GCPD is such incredibly interesting copaganda because it tries to sell you the only way through the soaring crime rate in Gotham-

(which the city has 30-27 million people at most times it’s like 5+ people a block)

is through the brutality and violence that the GCPD preaches, Harvey bullock, Jim Gordon, Renee and more they aren’t except from the law, but they keep just doing these things. Because there’s no one left to stop them. Except for Batman lol or huntress or twoface or any of the other vigilantes that live there.

I have pictures somewhere of the GCPD coworicing and beating the shit out of just all the random rouges lol, but I’ll have to find them.

but TRUST ME THERES A FUCKING LOT OF IT

Anyway that’s my thoughts

gotham central is fun but also it makes me wanna scream, I am reading purely for the rouges and such and lesbian Renee lol.

I hate the fact I love some of the characters, and the writing is amazing. Like DRIVER WHEN. I GET YOU DRIVER AND HARVEY BULLCK OHHHH I HOPE HE STAYS OUT OF EVERYTHING HATE SEETHING HATE OHHH FUCK HARVEY BULLOCK.

[rise-my-angel]

I blame the idea of the spectacle for the downfall in the franchise. Don't get me wrong, big moments can be great, but the constant striving for it to keep the audience addicted to adrenaline is what has caused the really shallow writing in my opinion. It takes a really self aware person to realise they are getting nothing but CGI keys jangled in their face as if they were a baby.

I think that's what the earlier seasons achieved, the perfect mix of much quieter moments with effective use of dialogue, writing and set to get their money's worth, and the big dramatic moments for the later parts, where they save their best for last and bring EVERYTHING to the table. It's all about having money to fund the big moments, vs having barely enough money to cover everything.

You have no idea how thrilled I am that you said everything I was thinking. The thing I hate about reviews of HOTD so far is how good things look. The dragon fight in episode four, oh but it looked so spectacular. But that's the thing, their effort was put all into making that fight look as wonderful as possible so that it avoided the simple fact that the story, characters, and action were all poor.

My best example, is actually probably unpopular beacuse I know people really liked the Battle of the Bastards. And I did too, the action cinematography, the chaos, one of my favorite shots of the show where the camera does a long take just following Jon through the chaos as he experiences it. It also looks good, they clearly made a great effort to make the battle as cinematic as possible.

But here's the thing. Hardhome is better. Hardhome does NOT look as good as the Battle of the Bastards. It is very chaotic, it is disorienting, fast paced, a lot of cuts and its very loud and there are so many bodies in the scene that it feels hard to keep track of how many people are even dying around them. But that's the point.

Hardhome takes you on a journey of chaos.

It's like a 20 minute sequence with an amazing build up. The meeting with the elders, it's a dark room of people standing around a fire. It doesn't look good, now it doesn't look bad it just isn't a cinematically pleasing shot. But it's over six minutes long of mostly Jon giving everything he has into convincing these people that he's being genuine. It's his passion and his raw honesty that Jon looks his enemy in the eye and tells them that they deserve to survive and that he wants to protect them. How when they ask how Mance Rayder died, Jon does not give himself an out. He is honest and says he shot an arrow in his heart, and how he stands there firm and not afraid when they start to threaten him, only to have Tormund put a stop to it and give context. Looking these parents and grandparents in the eye and telling them that if they don't let him protect them, their children won't even survive long enough to have children of their own. And pleading that even with all of them it may not be enough but "At least we'll give the fuckers a fight."

It is a fantastic scene filled with hope, that sets the stage for whats about to happen.

There's no dwelling on shots. The moment Longclaw clashes with the weapon of the Walker, Jon realizing whats happened and actually killing it occurs really fast in a manner of seconds. What it dwells on, is the aftermath of Jon so overwhelmed by what happened he falls to his knees, the snow misting around him that blurs anyone else from view. Even the moment where the Walker raises his arms and the dead rise, is not a dwelled on, cinematic shot. It is very raw, and rough and what it focuses on, is that close up of Jons face. And the realization in him of shock turning to a desperate despair that he could've gotten all of the Free Folk out of there and it still wouldn't be enough. It focuses on his face, beacuse the intensity and emotions are about him. Not the shots.

You remember the visuals of it, but really, the visuals aren't what gives you the emotions. Hardhome was not shot to be visually appealing, it was by design, extremely chaotic and overwhelming because not a single person in that fight had a chance to get the upper hand.

Battle of the Bastards on the other hand, is a cinematically amazing battle with a terrible story. The stakes mean nothing, because the story to get there was inconsistent, nonsensical, some people acting completely out of character and is won because of a deus ex machina. The story and characters surrounding it are completely not worth the quality of the battle itself. It's shallow. It's remembered as good because it looked good, not beacuse it was good.

That to me, is the House of the Dragon problem. Such a focus on making it look good, sweeping shots and amazing cinematic focus especially on the dragons, but it runs hollow. Because what do you have beyond the good looking shots? It's rare I ever feel the emotions of whats happening more then I do what the spectacle is showing me is happening.

The worth of a lot of these scenes, are rooted in a desperation to make a visually appealing story. When Game of Thrones was at it's best when it was people standing or sitting around a room and talking. It was the dialogue, the mystery, the intrigue. We never needed beautiful visuals for our eyes to feast upon because the spectacle was always in service of what the actual emotions of the scene was portraying. Not the stand out part in and of itself.

There's nothing wrong with spectacle alone, but House of the Dragon is relying on it to push through it's worst parts and hoping that the nice images and pretty colors is distracting enough that you forgive the poor story. Yeah the story and characters and writing is bad, but boy those dragons, look at them.

General audiences will fall for spectacle beacuse we appreciate good visuals, but general audiences didn't need spectacle to get them through season one of Game of Thrones. They were confident enough in what they already had, that they did not need to pad out the visual fluff to feast the eyes rather then the writing feasting the brain.

Audiences are smarter then to value visuals over writing, but House of the Dragon fans are relying on the visuals to get them through the bad writing because they have nothing left, and really, they deserve better.

I do not need spectacle to be impressed by the immense scale of a scene. Hardhome is a fast paced, confusing and chaotic sequence that has never left me since the day I watched it air live. Not a single one of these grand moments in either season of House of the Dragon, despite having more chances to use it's visuals to enhance it's storytelling, has come anywhere near as smart as Hardhome was.

Visuals do not impress me. Using the visuals to enhance the story you already are telling, is what impresses me.

Not using your visuals as a crutch to power through bad storytelling.