#but cause it kinda feed individualism and shit

[tenrose]

People nowadays are so used to get what they want from TV writers that when they are wrong they throw tantrums like toddlers.

[readerthatreadsss]

Requesting more dom!peter 😮‍💨🥵

𝗔/N: Your request is my command! (especially since I've been searching for more dom!Peter fics myself and have been failing so I might as well do it my damn self!) Also, yeah, it's been a damn long time lmao. I planned to finish up and release this like 4 months ago. Then a whole bunch of bad shit happened and I kinda gave up on writing for a little bit (outside of school cause I need that damn Bachelor's degree) BUT I've slowly started reading again and that bled into me opening up my drafts and finding this and spending some time with it. If you couldn't tell I had a shit ton of fun with this one...so feel free to check my newly updated Masterlist and request guidelines and send me more requests! The more I get, the more I'm gonna force myself to actually write them. (If you already sent one just know I’m working on it I promise)

𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗡𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 | 𝗧𝗮𝘀𝗺!𝗣𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗿

(heavily inspired by the song with the same title by Adele.) It came up in my shuffle and when I started listening to the lyrics it was just too perfect.

he's so fucking pretty aghhhh (gif not mine)

𝗣𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴: Tasm!Peter Parker x Vigilante!Fem reader

𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁: 5.6k+ (This is my big comeback so I might as well feed yall)

𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆: You and Peter have been broken up for about 3 years, but when an impromptu visit to your apartment takes a turn...that may no longer be the case...

𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 (𝟭𝟴+ 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗗𝗡𝗜): SMUT!, lil bit of angst at the end (ex to lovers so ofc), minimal use of y/n, P*rn-with-plot, Reader and Peter are FERAL for each other because of their powers (enhanced senses and all that), p in v sex, unprotected sex (wrap your willy before you fuck her silly), a lil possessive Peter, oral (r receiving), fingering, praise kink, Peter using his webs to restrain reader (pre-consented ofc), dom!Peter, sub!Reader (bratty at first tho), pet names (sweetheart, baby, pretty girl, angel), choking, rough sex, brief spanking, other positions, creampie, etc...

The remaining sunlight of the evening bled through your wide studio apartment windows as you finished folding what was left of your newly washed laundry. The plan for the rest of the evening was simple;

Drink two bottles of wine (knowing that your enhanced metabolism would sober the effects), catch up on a few missing assignments to keep your NYU professors off your ass, then jump into your suit and go patrolling.

It was a familiar routine.

Or at least, it had been...since he left.

Your relationship with him ended during your first year of college. To say it hurt like hell would be an immense understatement.

What hurt the most was the fact that you both gave everything you had to make it work...but long distance can be a bitch.

On that warm Saturday night in May, your ex-boyfriend received a call informing him that he had been accepted into a very prestigious engineering program (with a full-ride scholarship attached) all the way in California.

You applied for the very same program, so you knew just how big of an opportunity it would be. And, in good faith, you pushed him to take the offer.

You both insisted, "we'll make it work," and "we'll video chat and text every day. It'll be fine!"

What a load of horseshit.

It took 6 months for you to both arrive at the conclusion that you couldn't juggle your individual academic loads, your nighttime hero personas, AND a long-distance relationship all at the same time. A three-hour time difference didn't help matters either.

It took a while, but you eventually moved on. You kept your grades up, went on a few dates here and there, and even managed to convince yourself that you were doing fine without him.

Until...

*knock knock knock*

Your head peeked out from the fridge to look where you heard the strong yet hesitant knocks on your front door.

Only a handful of people knew where you lived and you weren't expecting to see any of them today.

Assuming it would be a postal worker or someone along those lines, you swung open the door with a polite smile.

"Hi-"

You felt your voice die in your throat as you locked eyes with the deep brown ones you hadn't seen in three years.

"Peter," his name fell from your lips, barely audible.

"Hi, Y/N," he replied with that awkward grin you knew all too well.

His hair was shorter than the last time you saw him, but from the tight fit of his jacket, you could see that was about the only thing about him that shrunk.

You wanted to actually hit yourself in the head for actually imagining yourself doing many things to his large...meaty...biceps- NO, no, no, no get a grip! a voice of logic sounded in your mind.

You hadn't realized how long you stood there silently sizing him up until he spoke again. "Can I...uh...come in, maybe?"

"Umm...sure," you nervously answered, finally taking note of the small cardboard box he was holding.

As you stepped aside to allow him entrance into your apartment, his familiar scent invaded your sensitive senses.

"Oh God," you muttered under your breath, knowing that he heard you, yet unaware that your scent had basically the same effect on him as well.

"You alright?" he turned and asked you in concern trying to hide the tightening of his jeans with the box he brought.

You nodded way too fast, promptly putting some distance between yourself and him. He hadn't been there for longer than 5 seconds and he was already having an effect on you.

"How've you been?" he questioned you, scratching his neck and actively avoiding eye contact. Unbeknownst to you, he was currently repeating every physics law he could remember in his mind to try to quell his growing erection.

It wasn't working very well.

"I've been fine. You?" you quickly spoke, slightly out of breath.

"I-uh-I'm alright," he shook his head with a tight-lipped smile.

He soon found himself just looking at you. It wasn't a blank stare, no, it was the sort of intense look you unintentionally gave someone when trying to commit every single feature to memory as if you weren't certain when you'd get another chance to.

It was a habit of his you noticed a lot when you were dating. And just as it did back then, it sent chills running rampant down your spine. Not to mention your nipples growing obviously hard behind your large shirt with no bra to hide it.

Peter noticed it immediately and fought back a smile, which you glimpsed.

"Why are you here, Peter?" you decided to get down to business before your body betrays you any further.

The brunette let the question hang in the air for a few seconds before actually coming up with an answer. "I wanted to drop these off," he placed the small box on your kitchen counter.

Your eyes immediately narrowed. "You could have mailed it. Or you could've just dropped it at the door and then left. So why are you really here Peter?" you would have felt worse about your tone if you weren't so bothered.

Why the hell did he feel the need to suddenly show up and make you start feeling things you swore you wouldn't feel for him again?

Peter took a deep breath. "Aunt May called me last week. She's not doing too good. So, I came back to help take care of her."

You felt your stomach sink at his words. While you both dated, May grew to be like a second mother to you. You had no idea she was sick.

"Oh shit Peter-I'm so sorry," you crossed the room to engulf him in a hug, despite your initial reaction to his visit.

Peter immediately accepted your hug and found the anxiety in his body dissipating soon after. Your hugs tended to have that effect on him.

He couldn't stop himself from deeply inhaling and drawing in your hair's familiar scent when he wrapped his hands around your clothed waist.

A few seconds passed before you released each other, with you also savoring the feel of his body against you and the way how your skin lit up with goosebumps though there was a thin layer of clothing separating his hands from you.

"I was just cleaning up my old room at May's and I found some of your stuff so I figured I'd drop by and..."

You nodded in understanding and walked over to where he placed the box.

It was mostly filled with old t-shirts, tools, and gadgets from days when you would sleep over at Peter's or stop by to help each other with school projects.

"Thanks," you sent him a smile as you closed the box.

Your smile warmed Peter's heart. It was actually his second favorite thing about you, after your hugs of course. "Yeah, you're welcome," he smiled back, running his hand through his hair. It was a mess by now, but you still wanted to run your hands through it…or maybe even pull on it-

"Sorting through some of this stuff made me realize how much I...missed you," he said, his tone growing more assured.

Thankfully, you were still facing away from him, not giving him the chance to catch the pained expression that briefly crossed your face.

But you could feel him slowly approaching your frozen figure and found your body silently reacting in ways it shouldn't be, yet again. "Do you miss me?" he asked, his voice heavy.

You held back the urge to scream "Yes!" because admitting that out loud would be taking 3 steps backward.

Admitting that you missed him would be undoing all the work and tears you put into moving on from him and the hopes and dreams you had for a life with him.

Admitting that you missed him would mean giving in to the part of you that thought back to your most intimate moments with him when you touched yourself.

And admitting that you missed him would mean letting him back into the four-cornered box you had locked yourself in for the past 3 years.

But, with every step closer that he took, your resolve disappeared that much faster.

"You okay?" he called for your attention.

Your sharp intake of oxygen brought a tense silence over the room when you turned to face him and realized that he stood close enough for your lips to nearly brush his.

"Peter, I-" you tried to form words, but then you saw his lust-filled brown eyes lower to your lips.

And that was all it took for the last of your self-control to disappear.

"Damn it," you mumbled once you realized what was about to happen.

Before Peter could question your outburst, you found yourself latching onto his jacket lapels and pulling him down to meet your lips.

It took mere milliseconds for Peter to react. After all, he had been thinking about doing this since you swung open the door and looked up at him with those eyes of yours.

His large calloused hands took hold of the sides of your face as you clashed in a heap of teeth and tongue. It was desperate and feverish but it was perfect.

It was a language only you and Peter seemed to master, even now after three years apart.

Your lips moved swiftly against his, eager to taste more and more of him with each passing second. You felt him press his growing bulge flush against you, causing a pathetic whine to involuntarily tumble from your lips and a smirk to find its way onto his.

"I did miss you," you softly spoke, "but we can't do this Peter," the logical part of your brain made an appearance, though you kept peppering his lips with kisses.

As his lips moved to your neck, Peter's hands slid down to your ass where he effortlessly lifted your legs off the ground and up around his waist. The feeling of his hands against the bare skin of your thighs garnered yet another moan from you.

"You don't sound so sure angel," you felt him smirk against your heated skin.

You hadn’t heard that nickname in years yet it sent small chills down your spine for the second time that night.

A mumbled curse slipped your lips when he nipped a particular spot below your ear. That was definitely gonna leave a mark.

You soon gathered the strength to pull Peter's hungry lips away from your body, swinging your arms around his neck to hold yourself up.

"We can’t go back from this, you know that right?" you spoke, the both of you panting from the effects of the last minute.

"I don't wanna go back," Peter shook his head, "I wanna fuck you, right here, right now," his lips immediately found yours before his words could fully resonate.

This caught you by surprise which allowed Peter to slip his tongue between your lips.

As his taste continued to flood your senses, you felt yourself grow alarmingly wet.

Peter knew it too because he slowly pulled back and smirked down at you. "I could smell you from the moment I walked in here. Glad to see three years hasn't changed the way your body reacts to me, angel," he accompanied his words with a quick slap to your ass.

His slap and the familiar pet name left you a moaning mess. Just like he knew it would.

A lovely laugh left Peter's mouth before his lips met yours again.

He walked your entangled bodies over to the kitchen counter without breaking the sloppy kiss.

Peter used one hand to blindly clear the counter and place you on it, which sent your box of things flying toward the floor.

Not that either of you cared.

"Too much clothes," you were barely able to say in between kisses.

You followed up by shoving Peter's jacket off his shoulders which fell to your hardwood floors with a thud. He immediately got the message and got rid of his t-shirt as well.

A shameless whimper left your lips at the sight of his very toned muscles. You easily maneuvered Peter's body closer to you and began kissing and sucking his neck and every other available inch of skin just as you had pictured earlier, making sure to leave a few purple bruises in your wake.

“You’re killing me here baby,” Peter harshly swallowed, his eyes sliding closed as you continued to have your way with his chest.

"Wouldn't be a terrible way to die though, right?" you mumbled between lovebites and licks. You felt like an animal in heat but you just couldn't get enough of him, the occasional flex of his muscles with each slither of your tongue and his deep groans only egging you on more.

The taste of his skin alone could've made you cum easily.

But the same could be said for Peter as the feel of your tongue slithering all along his chest had him practically creaming his pants then and there.

Fucking enhanced senses, he cursed inwardly.

“Alright, ease up pretty girl,” he reluctantly grabbed your head, detaching your swollen lips from his body.

“Your turn,” he tugged at the hem of your top.

You quickly pulled off the oversized t-shirt you were wearing to reveal your bare top half to him.

He spared no time in cupping your breasts with his eager hands. "Fuck, I missed you so much," he mumbled.

"Me, or my boobs?" you jokingly raised a brow at him.

"Definitely both," he grinned, bringing his mouth down to your tits.

As his tongue made contact with the soft mounds, you loudly moaned and wrapped your fingers in his unruly tangle of hair.

He switched between nipping and sucking on your nipples, in the way he knew you liked, while his free hand pinched and squeezed the other.

"Just like that Peter fuck-" hearing his name fall from your lips drove Peter insane.

His tongue flicked your sensitive nipples harder, and his eager sucking pleased you to no end.

Peter eventually pried himself away from your supple breasts, remembering the other parts of you he wanted to worship, and brought his hands to rest on the sides of your head. Your lips connected once more in a delicate kiss.

Though you knew what lay ahead for the evening, you were both perfectly content with each other's lips at the moment, just enjoying the constant waves of pleasure from the intimate contact.

But it wasn't long before the kiss grew heated and you tried to take control. Peter, however, wasn't giving you a chance.

"I leave for three years and you think you're hot shit, huh," he smirked.

"Why don't you ask the guy I fucked on this counter last week," you retorted, knowingly riling him up.

"Don't say shit like that, it's not funny," he nearly growled as his grip on your ass grew more forceful.

You secured your grip on his hair before pressing a small kiss on the side of his lips. "Gimme a reason to shut up then," you challenged him.

“Trust me, I will,” Peter grabbed your hands from his hair and forced them to your sides. His movements were swift as he laid you flat on your counter and ripped your thong off your body.

There he is, you smiled to yourself. This is the Peter you wanted to fucking ruin you.

You felt his face ghost your drenched opening as he deeply inhaled your scent. "You smell fucking delicious baby," he praised you, his mouth actually watering at the thought of tasting you.

A genuine smile found its way onto your face but morphed into a gasp when Peter teasingly ran his tongue up your sensitive slit.

"You taste even better," he added, using his strong arms to bring your thighs closer to his head. He wanted to tease you but it was getting harder to resist the urge to dive right into your heat like a man starved.

"Holy shit," you all but screamed as he briefly nipped at your swollen clit before sucking on it to soothe the sting.

His grip on your thighs combined with the ministrations of his tongue was pure bliss.

You attempted to slip your hands in his hair once more, but found that they were suddenly held in place against your counter by two of his webs.

Your eyes briefly widened at the feel of the rough, sticky material against your wrists, not having felt it in a few years. Back then, you expressed to Peter your desire to engage in some bondage, but being the daughter of a super soldier, it was clear that no rope or wire would be able to hold you. Peter's webs became the next best choice.

"That's not fair," you pouted, though it melded into a moan as Peter continued to suck and lick between your glistening folds.

The sounds of Peter devouring you resounded through the small apartment.

"I'm close Pete," you whined, your chest heaving in arousal.

Peter decided to focus his tongue on your eager bundle of nerves while he slowly inserted two fingers into your pussy. He instantly curled the digits causing you to briefly squirm at the sudden pressure against your G-spot.

"More," you begged, and Peter delivered, adding another finger inside of you. He immediately sped up his motion inside of you, making sure his fingers gauged that spongy spot to drive you over the edge with each thrust inside of you.

“That feels so fucking good, Peter, oh my God," you loudly moaned at the feeling of his fingers inside of you, calling forth an orgasm with no warning.

You repeatedly bucked against Peter's face as you came, white-hot pleasure filling your veins. Peter locked onto your stare, still skillfully working his fingers in and out of you, loving the way you constantly clenched around his fingers.

"Jesus fucking Christ," your legs jerked when Peter dove in and drank every ounce of slick you had to give while still fucking you with his fingers.

With his face now damp of your juices, Peter looked up to meet your blissed-out eyes. "Gimme one more, angel," he placed a soft kiss on your thighs, "I know you can do it for me."

You would do anything to keep Peter's mouth between your legs.

So, you eagerly nodded in response before taking a deep breath in preparation for another onslaught.

You didn't have to wait long.

Peter’s tongue went to work on your glistening hole while his fingers fiddled with your overstimulated clit. And, within minutes, your thighs were trapping Peter's head as an even bigger orgasm rocked you again, the borderline pornographic sounds leaving your lips shooting straight to his hardened cock.

Peter seemed perfectly fine with staying between your legs all night, but you had other plans.

"Pete, I need you inside me," you begged, tears of pleasure leaking from your eyes.

He rose from beneath you and climbed up to free your hands from his webs. "I know, baby, I know," he softly replied, pressing a gentle kiss to your lips and using his hands to soothe your reddened wrists. Your own taste on his tongue flooded your senses which made you even more desperate.

Peter obliged, slipping out of his sweatpants and sliding his girth between your folds. He used one hand to hold himself up above you on the counter, and the other to slowly guide his dick into you.

You both shared a long moan as he buried himself to the hilt inside your pussy, your wetness making it way too easy.

He held still for a few seconds, waiting for you to adjust and give the all clear for him to move.

Eagerness guided your words. “Fuck me, please.”

Peter set a brutal pace, knowing you were more than capable of handling it. Satisfied cries left your chest as you dragged your nails along Peter’s back, hard enough to leave trails.

“You can take it, pretty girl, I know you can,” he groaned as he continued to pound into you, trying desperately not to blow his load with the way you were constantly clenching around him and marking his back.

You tried to reply, but all that you could form were sloppy moans and broken syllables.

“Oh look at you, drunk on my cock already?” he teased with a particularly hard slam that prodded your cervix, “I’m nowhere near done with you yet.”

Pleasure-filled cries mingled with words continued to fall from your lips as Peter gently moved a few fallen strands of hair behind your ear with a hand. "-feels so fucking perfect," you muttered, your lips curved into a drunken smile.

Peter reached down and pinched one of your nipples, gaining a loud whimper from you. “I love hearing you make those pretty sounds for me baby,” his strokes grew harder and deeper.

“All for you, Pete, all for you,” you panted as he fucked into you, the delicious smell and sound of sex lingering in the air.

Peter used a hand to wrap around your throat before using the other to reach down and fiddle with your aching clit.

The combination of Peter’s dick hitting that perfect spot, his fingers massaging your clit, and the lack of air from his hand around your neck was making you dizzy and overstimulated.

You fucking loved it.

“God, I missed you,” you spoke breathlessly.

He moved closer to kiss you briefly and tenderly. “I missed you too, baby.”

No amount of time could take away his knowledge on how to please you, how to get you like this with ease, not when you were all he thought about for years on end.

Peter pressed a quick kiss to your forehead then continued to fuck you on your kitchen counter.

"I'm gonna cum again baby, right fucking there," you moaned out.

Peter's grip on your neck grew tighter. "Not yet, don't you cum until I tell you to sweetheart," he commanded you, removing his fingers from your clit.

A frustrated groan rumbled in your chest as you forced yourself to sustain your orgasm.

"Don't pout," he smirked.

And before you could realize it, Peter had pulled out of you and effortlessly flipped you onto your stomach.

A hand soon gripped your hair, yanking you up against his chest and eliciting a pitiful whine from you.

"Tell me what you want,” Peter commanded, using his free hand to strike your ass. Hard.

You whimpered again at the sting of his slap. “I need you inside me. Please,” you pleaded.

He seized your hair harsher and leaned forward for his lips to graze against your ears. “Beg.”

A small whine left your lips at his words. You were so desperate you didn’t even care how embarrassing this would be in retrospect. “I need to cum, Peter. Please baby you're the only one who can make me cum.”

Peter pressed a kiss to your neck, nearly causing you to lose your footing. And he soon complied by ramming himself back into you.

“Oh my Fuck-“ you cried before biting your lip, suddenly aware that you had neighbors.

But Peter pulled his cock from your heat, with just the tip remaining, before roughly slamming into you, his hips slamming against your ass with the motion. “Come on, lemme hear you angel.”

He repeated the action, knocking the air out of your chest, “Peter!” your hands gripped the sides of your counter with such force you were sure you felt it crack under your grasp.

Peter caught wind of this and freed your hair before using his hands to pull your hands behind your back. "You're so perfect baby," he mumbled in your ear, continuing to brutally fuck you from behind, "So fucking beautiful with my cock inside you."

"I can't hold it anymore," you cried, "I need to cum, Peter, please."

With that whiny tone and those overstimulated tears to top it off, Peter couldn't deny you any longer. "Let it all out for me sweetheart. Cum for me," he littered your shoulders with kisses.

Your eyes slammed shut as your walls contracted around his cock, pleasure shooting through you and rocking you on a seemingly cellular level. Your mouth opened in a silent moan, unable to form a sound from the satisfied tremors attacking your nerves. The intensity of your finish is one only brought on when Peter fucked you and it was damn near cosmic.

"Shit," you groaned in relief, your long-awaited climax passing.

Peter slowed his movements inside of you and released your hands. "You did so good for me angel," he pushed your hair aside and kissed your neck, trying to stave off his own orgasm for a little while longer.

Aftershocks rocked your body while Peter continued sporadically moving inside of you, yet you couldn't get enough. Your body was more than ready to keep taking whatever he dished out.

Peter didn't need to read your mind to see that, but he needed to make sure. His lips kept up their onslaught on your neck as he softly spoke, "You wanna keep going?"

"Hell yes," you panted with a grin that he couldn't fully see, "You still haven't cum yet, and my bed is still fully made."

Happy with your response, Peter gave your ass a sharp smack. "That's my girl."

He pulled out of you and turned your body to face him, smiling at the sight of your fucked out face. "Three orgasms and a handful of tears later and you're still the most beautiful girl in the world," he held you by the sides of your face.

His words left you reeling, causing a slight blush to dust your cheeks and butterflies to swirl within your stomach.

Before you could form a response, Peter leaned down to kiss you. He soon hoisted up your legs around his waist, preparing to escort you to your bed as per your own demands.

As he looked around for the bed's location, you took advantage of his momentary distraction and latched your lips onto his neck, reapplying the bruises you left there that were slowly fading already.

Peter was the happiest man on earth as he walked over to your bed, his cock prodding your soaked entrance, and your lips ravaging his neck.

He carefully sat on the edge of your bed, with you now on his lap and your legs still around him. You expected him to ease his length back into you but he slowly brought your head down to meet his intense stare.

You carefully wrapped your hands around his shoulders to keep yourself up, the silence in the room growing deafening.

You could tell from his eyes that he desperately wanted to say something, and you wondered if it was the same thing you had been considering as well.

But you were both aware of what saying those words would mean for your broken relationship and simply settled for smiles instead.

Peter brought a hand up to lay your forehead against his, allowing your breathing to momentarily sync.

"You ready for me?" he questioned you with a hand at the nape of your neck to hold your head against his.

You immediately nodded in response causing his own head to shake in time with yours. A small laugh was shared between you both as your nose continued to brush his own.

"You're adorable," you said before you could stop yourself.

That stupid full-toothed grin that you hadn't seen in a while soon spread across his beautiful face at your words, gaining another laugh from you.

"Last round?” you eventually pleaded with a smile.

"Anything for you," Peter replied, meaning it in every way. Adoration littered his stare as he slowly lowered you onto his length.

A satisfied mewl slipped your lips at the familiar feel of him.

The slow drag of his cock in and out of you, while he rocked your hips back and forth to grind on him, had your bottom lip sucked between your teeth with eyes closed and head thrown back in pleasure.

But Peter wanted to see it all. He wrapped a hand around your neck and forced you to meet his dilated eyes. “Keep your eyes on me, baby.”

His soft yet stern tone caused you to swallow back a moan as you continued to move on his girth.

He then slapped your ass with his free hand, silently urging you to move faster.

You leaned down and quickly kissed his lips before happily obliging, now beginning to bounce in his lap, chasing your next climax.

“There you go angel, just like that,” Peter’s stare never wavered.

Peter furiously fucked up into you, your moans and the constant smack of skin on skin filling the apartment.

His other hand which never left your throat now squeezed it harder. “Fuck!” You were barely able to moan out as your breasts bounced with your every move.

“Shit, you’re gripping me like a vice,” Peter groaned, his crude pace never faltering though his orgasm was closer than ever.

Your bed creaked under the onslaught of your bodies, but neither of you payed it any attention only having one goal in mind.

“One more time,” Peter planted his feet on the ground to get a better angle, "Need you to cum on my cock one more time."

But from the broken pacing of his hips to the strong furrow of his brow, you could tell he was close too. “Together?” You breathlessly suggested, grasping the nape of his neck with your hands.

Peter nodded in agreement before engulfing your chest and back with his arms, pulling you closer to his body.

Your breaths mingled, eyes focused on nothing except each other as his grip on your upper body allowed him to help you ride him even faster.

"Yes, Pete, oh my God-" pleas, curses, and moans tumbled from your lips as your skin buzzed at your incoming release.

"There you go, cum for me," Peter's voice grew strangled as his hips stuttered below you.

"Fuck," you wailed, your finish hitting you like a freight train and your pussy leaking into Peter's length.

The intense clench of your walls around him was all it took for Peter to explode with a groan, his pace faltering with that final pump.

"Holy shit baby," he panted, his cum painting your walls in spurts.

His firm hold on your body brought you collapsing on your bed together, satisfied and smiling.

And, for what felt like hours, you lay there in his arms. But of course, your thoughts began to run rampant.

Peter could damn near hear your thoughts spiraling.

"I don't regret this," he suddenly broke the silence you had elapsed into, "Do you?"

"Peter I-...I don't know," you freed yourself from his hold and sat up to look at him.

His brows furrowed at your response, hurt briefly flashing across his features.

"I loved you," you spoke, "I loved you more than anything."

"I know. I loved you too," Peter nodded with a small smile.

"And I will never blame you for leaving. Ever," you slipped a hand in his own and squeezed briefly.

"But?"

Your eyes stung with tears threatening to fall. "What happened to us, it damn near destroyed me, Peter. And it took so so long to put myself back together."

Peter swallowed harshly at your words.

"And then here you come, waltzing in here, fucking my brains out and making me feel things," you lowered your head, looking away from him.

You heard Peter move closer to you before feeling him lift your chin to face him again. His expression wasn't as disappointed as you'd expected, just confused. "Spit it out. I know you're holding something back."

"Why'd you come back here and-and do all this? Reminding me of what we had when you know you're gonna be gone again in the next few weeks?" you felt your voice shrink to a broken whisper.

Peter used his thumb to wipe away a lone tear that fell from your eye, his previously puzzled look now morphing into a smirk. There was obviously something he wasn't telling you.

You sniffled and lightly hit Peter's shoulder. "Well, now it's your turn bug face, spit out whatever you're hiding!"

You received no answer other than Peter leaning forward and pressing a deep kiss against your lips. You eagerly accepted and returned the spontaneous action but were left even more confused when he pulled away.

"That wasn't an answer," you arched a brow at Peter.

"I'm not going anywhere," he smiled.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I'm moving back to New York, or already moved, technically," he began to explain.

Your mouth opened and closed in shock as your brain fumbled for a response and came up inconclusive.

"I'm gonna finish out the school year online and stay here to take care of Aunt May. I mean it, baby, I'm not going anywhere," he grinned, watching tears of joy fall from your eyes.

"This better not be some sick fucking joke Peter, I swear to God," you pointed a finger at him accusingly.

"Can you shut up and just come here?"

You couldn't help but laugh as you obliged and grabbed Peter's neck before pulling him in for another kiss, your face still wet from tears and a smile almost permanently etched onto your face.

You pulled away but sank into his open arms. You relished how securely he held you. "I'm so happy," you said aloud, truly meaning it for the first time in a long time, though it was only meant to be an inner thought.

Peter kissed your forehead and looked down to meet your eyes, "I'll never stop making you happy, Y/N."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

[menofsweaters]

I've been thinking a lot of deep thoughts about the end of MHA, so I've decided to spit them all out here rather than letting them live in my brain 24/7.

The more time that passes, the more satisfied I am with the ending, particularly with the deaths of the villains. The ending is definitely not what I would write or choose if I had the option, but I think I'm savvy enough these days to recognize the difference between "this is not my preference" and "this is poor writing." I'm also looking in from the perspective of consuming MHA for enjoyment and entertainment, whereas I believe the author was writing this ending in an attempt to make a political/literary statement, not to please the masses.

All of the most sympathetic and tragic members of the League of Villains met grisly ends by the time the manga wrapped up, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Twice, Toga, Dabi, and Shigaraki were all fan favorites with deeply moving backstories, but that didn't save them from dying. You can say they were all doomed by the narrative, but I think these characters were doomed by their own choices at every turn.

All of these characters - to varying extents - had the opportunity to stop their villainy, but were too dedicated to a certain cause or obsession to do so. Dabi is the most obvious example, as he could have returned to his family at literally any time and saved all of the Todorokis a lot of strife, but the others were also offered outs by the heroes they interacted with, and they all chose death and destruction over surrender.

I'm trying to make a point here but it's kinda hard to verbalize.

Basically, I think Horikoshi wanted to show us that it doesn't matter how "good" or "bad" you are as a person, it doesn't matter how moving your story is, it doesn't matter how deeply you believe in your cause, it doesn't matter if you love your comrades - your actions are the things that matter. As beloved and tragic as all of these characters are, they still murdered and maimed many innocent people, they still destroyed cities and hospitals, they still tortured families and loved ones.

Those innocent people are the ones who really suffer in bloody coups. I genuinely do not give a shit about anyone's ideals if they consider everyday people as acceptable canon fodder for the revolution. The LOV's ideals, Stain's ideals, the PLF's ideals, whatever you want to call it, are not worth the abject destruction of society over.

AFO and other power-hungry dictators feed off of people like Twice, Toga, Dabi, and Shigaraki. People who suffer from mental illness, who are estranged from their families, and who are rejected by society. The LOV was used by more powerful forces to commit horrific acts. As engaging as those characters are individually, they still fell prey to a violent ideology that offered nothing for them and everything to the person in power.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's easy for even the best of us to get wrapped up in some "cause" and end up suffering over it, or causing others to suffer. I think Horikoshi was trying to make a statement about who ends up paying the price in war and I'm finally accepting that statement. Those deaths were meant to hurt and they did, and I think that's why some readers hate it so much.

I've got more to say about the whole "they didn't fix hero society!!" stuff, but I'll gather those thoughts later.

[dailycharacteroption]

Roleplaying Races 16: Finale

So… that’s it. No more officially published ancestries for First Edition Pathfinder for me to examine. It’s kinda weird seeing it come to an end, we’ve been doing this so long that the title of the special even uses the older term that was replaced by “Ancestry” when Second Edition rolled around. I figured I shouldn’t change it for recognizability sake, but tried to use the modern terminology as much as possible in the body of these entries and others (or species in the Starfinder equivalent).

The term “ancestry” feels a little… inadequate to describe what they entail, but I understand that it’s a loaded word that not everyone is cool with, so it was a good change.

Moving past that little tangent though, the idea of playing various non-human ancestries goes all the way back to the First Edition of the World’s Oldest Roleplaying game, which isn’t surprising. D&D was, after all, heavily influenced by the works of Tolkien and other fantasy authors, so having non-human beings be a major part of the plot and bringing their differences in both biology and culture to the adventure only made sense.

However, D&D 1E also brought with it a lot of Gygax’s other inspirations and beliefs into it, particularly his bioessentialism, with such things as limiting certain classes to certain ancestries, as well many “enemy” ancestries like orcs and goblins being “inherently evil”.

Now, obviously things loosened up over the years and changing of editions, with classes opening up to any with the aptitude, but the damage had been done with the culture those early years had created. Newer players have no idea of the backlash that allowing half-orcs to be playable characters had in certain areas of the hobby, and even with classes open to everyone, the ancestral ability bonuses and many of the traits of each species continued to feed into the mindset that certain ancestries were only good for certain jobs, and that those that defied that expectation either straight up didn’t exist or were strange deviants. A real planet of the hats situation where almost every half-orc was a barbarian, elves were either wizards or rangers, dwarves were either fighters of clerics, and so on.

But… Times change, franchises change hands and new people whose voices were overshadowed before get creative control. D&D wasn’t just a game for white male nerds who wielded memorized Star Wars trivia the way stereotypical jocks do their win/loss record. No, It was a game for all sorts of people who wanted a form of escapism. Women, PoC, Queer folks too, even if they had to put up with some real shit from the rest of the fandom sometimes. And slowly as society and the game changed, they brought their perspectives. It’s been slow-going, but progress has been good, not just in D&D, but other RPGs and Pathfinder as well.

So we don’t call them races anymore, and both editions of Pathfinder, but especially 2E do their best to make ancestral traits and feats a celebration of their physiology and culture rather than a way to pigeonhole them into certain roles. Orcs and goblins have gone from being inherently evil monsters to cultures very different from the human… well I hesitate to say standard… which sometimes brings them into conflict with other cultures, with specific individuals and gods being the cause of evil antagonistic groups first and foremost.

Culture is constantly evolving, and with it, the fiction and games that hold a mirror to it, and despite many oppositional forces, right not it’s on track to keep changing for the better. We’ve come a long way from a thousand and one Frodo, Gimli, and Legolas clones, and while terms may change, I’m still so very delighted to be able to play a game where playing a non-human entity is a possibility and a chance to explore what that means rather than stick to a stereotype. But then maybe that’s just the therian in me.

In any case, I’ve paraphrased a lot of TTRPG history and how it relates to ancestries and similar playable options across systems and the people who play the games, and I hope it made even a little sense. More than that, I hope you’ll continue to join me in the stories that we craft together with these characters.

[blade-that-was-broken]

I’m still stuck on your idea that John Dory is like influential enough to the pop genre of music composition and song writing that his work is analyzed in college level music composition and music theory classes. Cause it’s like one thing if every song he ever wrote is in the top of the charts but it’s another thing to get featured as a person of interest in a music composition class and it feeds so well into my theory that JD spent the 20 years he was traveling on Rhonda and not really working living off of royalties cause he could have been writing textbooks on song writing and shit. He could have been like contacted by colleges and asked to give Ted talks and guest lectures on how to blend multiple voices into a near perfect harmony.

John Dory is like the Lady Gaga of the troll world not in the sense like their music is remotely similar but because they both view music as art and are perfectionists with it. Because they hold their work to the highest standard and make sure it’s the highest possible quality. Which I think is like partially the root behind why JD went so perfectionist with the band in particular. Regardless of why it started and why it ended JD cared deeply that every aspect of their performances were revolutionary, were perfect. People compare jds perfectionism and demands of his brothers to velvets demands of vener and desire for fame. But they really could not be more different in reality because as their songs reveal JD cares about perfection he will not cut corners with his work with his performances. He wants his art to be 100% flawless and be a revolutionary work of art because he is an Artist and performance is his canvas. I don’t think that JD cares about being famous or making money beyond enough to support his family and invest in his art. Velvet is fundamentally different. She doesn’t care about the quality of her and veneirs work, doing any of it herself or her fans at all she just wants to be rich and famous.

Kinda getting off topic here but anyway I think JD would be delighted that people are analyzing his art and being inspired by it because he put hella work into it. Brozone was his passion project that combined his two favorite things his family and his art and he definitely loves his family more than his art and he doesn’t really care too much about hitting the perfect family harmony anymore beyond saving Floyd but I still really do think he is proud of the work he put into brozone despite hating the way it ended and would be so flattered that other are dissecting the meaning and depth behind his word choices and music composition. And I also think if the troll world had like Broadway JD would love musical theatre so much. Anyway this is my official take on why I see jd as a music/art/theater snob.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk

One: I love when people do the whole "thank for coming to my ted talk" it makes me laugh and I love to laugh.

Two: I think it would be so FUNNYYYYY. Even more so if John had absolutely ZERO clue about what was happening. There is SO much he could have done but like, naw, he's just gonna become a perpetual camper/survivalist and have virtually nothing to his name that HE knows of. Like, one of those famous rich hermits except he doesn't know he's famous or rich. I'm sorry, just way too funny.

I love the idea that JD puts so much thought and care and study/hardwork - along with his natural talent - into his music. Like, sure, it probably helps that he's naturally good at it but I think he really tries to do the best he can. And I think Brozone would be very limiting in certain areas. Like, yes, there is his whole blending of individual parts as a whole, harmonies, and group work. But Brozone is probably meant more for entertainment than much else. It's a performance. When he leaves and if he keeps writing, I think he'd expand in the things he does. Or whatever. I've got too many thoughts and feelings haha lol

OOOOHHHH I kinda like that thought. I don't know much about Lady Gaga or really listened to her music but I understand the perfectionism thing. I always used to say practice makes perfect (and more recently, practice makes progress) so I think I can understand the concept alright. I think it's so interesting people compare him to Velvet sometimes when honestly, they seem like polar opposites. Velvet doesn't want to work at all, she doesn't care for her craft, she doesn't want to practice, she has no talent or even tries to work up to having talent. JD on the other hand, worked too much, put everything into his craft and probably practiced too much. He's got the talent, sure, but he also WORKED for it too.

I think a part of him would be delighted because - HOW COOL - and a part of him would be like but... why??? I know people tend to see him as egotistical or whatever but I think he really loved what he did and he put a lot into it. Idk how much his family really cares about their music, especially anymore, but I think JD would still be proud of it and guess what? He should. It was popular and people liked it. He should be proud of what they accomplished, even if nearing the end things got out of control. it couldn't have always been that way.

Agreed. JD loves his family more than anything. I have a feeling he wouldn't have let 20 years pass if he knew they were alive. It's one of the lines in the movies (I found out you were still alive) that really hits me home for that. He was also the only one who came back soooo there is that too. And yeah! He literally straight up FORGOT about the Family Harmony until Floyd told him that was what was needed. And even after twenty years, he still whole heartedly believes in his brothers that they can do it (if we just practice a little) like that sweetie. Running on worry, adrenaline and lack of sleep, that dude just wants to save his brother.

AWWWW JD loving theatre would be so CUTE! Except I would love to see him both go to Broadway things and Children's plays. Like that would be funny! Here is this dude who goes to these serious broadway type shows but then he turns around and the next night he goes to some local kids Seussical or something.

I just love this so much haha

Okay also another thing...

Okay, I do think it would be funny if for those twenty years, what JD did for "work" was just sell the rights to songs he wrote on the road to other artists/trolls he came across. Like, as he is traveling and is writing different types of music, musicians be like dude this song is amazing and just my style and JD be like... I'll sell it/trade it for (insert whatever here). Like how funny? And then the radio is just flooded with songs that JD wrote, many of which people have NO idea he wrote.

Like could you imagine a song comes on the radio and Floyd being all like "I love this song!!"

And JD like oh yeah, I traded that song for a machete and two chickens. Awesome deal, I love my machete. Comes in handy.

Like could you imagine? I don't know why but I find the concept SO FUNNY

[mrs-monaghan]

I just felt like being a lil petty cuz these cultists (Taekookers) get on my last nerve! I remember how they kept screaming when Jk posted that photo of him and Tae when they went to that restaurant and they kept talking about how Jk never posted Jimin, well guess what Jk did not so long after, he deleted his entire instagram feed and only posted photos of himself, meanwhile till today, Jimin is the only member he ever posted a single photo with on his weverse (which he hasn’t deleted) and Jimin is also the ONLY member he has ever posted a birthday video for! Suck it vermin! They were also screaming about the Tiger tattoo Jk had, only for him to cover it up with a tattoo of the sun (which we all know is related to Jimin) sun and moon duo HELLO! They were screaming about Tk outings, talking about TK are always glued together but Jkk don’t even interact with eo, only for Jk to dedicate an entire Live to Jimin (something he has again, NEVER done for anyone else)! You know what, i wanted to be petty but i ended up feeling a lil sorry for the vermin! We do not get to see alot of Jikook these days, but the little we do see, man oh man, blood pressures through the roof! The only thing Tkkrs can proof with TK outings is that they are good friends but can they explain to me why Jk who they claim hates Jimin and doesn’t see or interact with him outside of work, not only does a whole Live for Jimin but sits there giggling, kicking his feet and acting all coy! Man couldn’t keep himself from smiling everytime Jimin did! Say all you want! Compare all you want but nobody acts like that while looking at someone they hate! They claim Jk was forced to do the live to promote Jimin, well i guess he was also schooled on how to smile and act while watching him! I am kinda happy Tkkrs are getting well fed now! The higher the climb the bigger the fall! I cannot wait to see the look on their sorry faces when they see that Tk have always been JUST friends and Jkk have always been the couple! I cannot wait for their karma when they realize that all these years, the hated on, insulted, threatened and tried to destroy Jimin for absolutely nothing when all the poor guy was trying to do was just show his love for his boyfriend! It’s funny that these devils who call themselves human think that after all the hurt they caused Jimin, God, the Universe or whatever they believe in will ever let them win! The karma that is coming for all of them, not only as a group but individually is still doing push ups and the better be ready for it! They think they can sit their sorry asses in their miserable homes and try to ruin the life and peace of someone they don’t even know personally just because of a ship!! Something they aren’t sure is real or not! Like who birthed these villains? Anyways let them laugh now…cuz the pain and disappointment that will come for them later will be no Joke! Mark my words you worthless pieces of shit!!

[creepsmcstuffins]

Daily routine headcanons?

Creeps Daily Routines

You weren't really specific so I did this for individuals...

Slender

Big Boss usually spends his days doing work, attending meeting and general chaos tending

He does like to have dinner with the Creeps on occasion, when he has the time

He's still seen as their "Dad" because at first he treated them as children/proxies

He doesn't really have a sleep schedule, though naps sometimes are welcome, but their not long. Probably somewhere between 10 to 15 minutes

He makes time to play with Sally when she asks (that and he knows she misses him lots)

Masky/Tim

Usually is cleaning up after Toby and (sometimes) Jeff

Can be found in their office or lifting logs/weights in the forest/Mansion (cause their at peak)

In their office most days though

They keeps a constant routine of patrolling around the forests and Slender's domain

He switches between the forests and the domain two every four hours (he's got eyes everywhere, but he can't be too careful)

Hoodie/Brian

These two often switch out every two hours or so

But they keep the same schedule (roughly)

Shower in the morning, gaze into the mirror for 10 mins (affirmations they work), Missy Elliott's "Lose Control", get dressed, favorite hoodie (check), big breakfast (4 cereal bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch), Patrol with Masky/Tim.

After the 1st patrol, things get out of control and the day kinda gets away from them after 1:30 p.m.

Toby

Toby kinda just do

He doesn't really have much of a "daily routine"

He gets up when Tim gets him up (usually for brunch)

He washes his ass after and then will go back to bed, if Tim doesn't have a job for him

But other than that Toby will go about his day, either waiting on whatever job or finding some poor soul to beat the shit outta

Jeff

He wakes up about 3 in the afternoon

He needs his beauty sleep

Will take Smile.Dog on walks (E.J and Seedeater join them)

He and BEN usually take a break to play video games (the break lasts from 4:30 pm to 8:30 pm)

That's when he starts his actual work

Any jobs that are about to hit their deadlines are usually done from 9:30 pm to 2:45 am

Their pushed forward ahead of anything else he has to do.

After finishing paperwork, which is 2:45 am to 3:15 am (he half asses it)

3:15 am is usually bedtime

He's a simple man

Eyeless Jack

E.J doesn't sleep much either (not because of the Demon blood flowing through him, but because of his nightmares)

But he does get rest, he has to be in the Mansion

He's usually up at 3 am when he does rest

Most of his days are spent at any one of Dr.Smiley's facilities

Mostly in the presence of the Doctor himself

He gets home for lunch, he likes when everyone can be home for it

He helps whoever in the kitchen

Mostly will lounge around until it's time for Jeff to walk Smile.Dog, Seedy comes with

After the walk he goes to his room, or to complete whatever jobs he has to finish or start up

He journals after his jobs too, mostly his feelings, and whatever money he makes, and organs he harvests

Jane

She lives in the Overworld, mostly

She does have a room in the Mansion

But typically she'll be hunting poachers or doing her contracted jobs

Jane is quite flexible with her schedule, as she loves alone and doesn't have much responsibility beside feeding herself

She tends to hunt every two weeks, the meat she gets lasts pretty long, and she mostly forages

She takes in injured animals, so if she's got a bird or something like that with her, her energy goes into helping it heal up

She answers any phone calls from any of the other creeps, and will assist them on their jobs

I did these ones cause it wasn't really specific... hope that was ok...

[artyandink]

the art of heresy forged 1984 - prequel

SUMMARY: Modern day, 2022, and you have no clue what’s going on. You knew what you went through. You knew it was real, but why were there people trying to convince you that everything that happened to you wasn’t real? Hell, you called bullshit. But you get your chance to fight back when you get a call at your door.

TW: psychological torture, trauma, angst, smut, slight fluff, drinking, consumption of drugs, smoking, mentions of sex, blood, gore, Ben (cause he’s an individual warning), derogatory remarks, gunfire, murder, killing, lots of it, it’s The Boys so be careful guys, really creepy shit, literal crack

A/N - divider by @chachachannah

A/N pt. 2 - Surprise! Decided to crank this one out, kinda like the pilot, see how everyone reacts to it. Enjoy :)

baby, one last dance

“Well, this is fucking stupid.”

You were pissed off- fuck no, you were ready to load this building with C4 and press the shiny red button. You didn’t ask for a shrink. Or a room loaded with enough of these useless stress busters to open a store. A battlefield with your suit on and your team beside you- well, that would be your ideal stress buster, not this clusterfuck.

“If you would refrain from using that language, Miss, I’m sure you’ll adjust smoothly.” The goddamn lady - Evelyn, or Emily, whatever her dumbass name was - told you in a voice that was so sickly sweet you’d get a cavity, but you wouldn’t fall for it. Not with the cock and bull she was feeding you.

To that, you slumped further back on the sofa, unceremoniously, with one arm behind the sofa. You’d be able to get through this had there not been about fifty guards outside the room ready to barge in and blow your brains out if you attempted to give this woman so much as a love tap. “I’d adjust if you’d stop telling me that you and your organisation didn’t motherfucking torture me for forty years. All those wellness shots? Kept me alive so you could hack into my brain. Shame you couldn’t control me anymore, huh?”

This shrink was typical. A absolute joke. She wore granny-knit sweaters. Grandmas wore granny-knit sweaters. You probably wouldn’t be caught dead in that.

“You woke up from a forty year long coma.” The therapist repeated for the fiftieth time, and you got a very vivid image of snapping that arm in two and stop her pen from flying across the page of her notebook. "Nobody could survive that long. These could be fabricated memories as a trauma response.”

“Oh, fuck you, Granny Smith, I’m not thick.” You shot back, scoffing. “That ain’t no trauma response. Bein’ drugged up with that thing that fucked up my brain- you call that a trauma response?”

She gave a heavy sigh, setting down her pen. “We at Vought are merely trying to help you sort out your overwhelming emotions. Help you keep yourself under control-”

“How many of those Vought officials’ cocks’ve you sucked, huh?” You cut off with a smirk and a low chuckle, then tilted your head. “Your mouth must feel like a goddamn Hoover deluxe.”

That had your shrink swallowing nervously, and that told you everything. “Miss-”

“Oh my god, you have.” You continued, looking her over with a chuckle, taking in her tight bun, square glasses, granny sweater, white blouse and pencil skirt with those weird knee highs and vintage shoes. “Never took you for a little bitch." You waved her off when she got uncomfortable, seeing her swallow and look away, adjusting her glasses. "Oh, don't worry about it, mine was too back in the day. Soldier Boy - Ben, he and I had an arrangement. He gets me off, I get him off, and that was a hell of a lot. God, I’d love to do the horizontal tango with that man again. It’d be good, just fighting, and fucking, more fucking, press cons and after that I’d ride him in a hotel room, and it’s a workout cause his dick’s really fucking big-”

The shrink cleared her throat, checking an imaginary watch. “That’s the end of this session. You’ll be escorted back to your hotel room, and I’m looking forward to our next session.”

You got up, forcing a smile and wrinkling your nose briefly at that sweater. “Keep up the good work, Hoover.”

“It’s Eleanor.”

You waved her off, turning around and heavily rolling your eyes just as the door opened and some guards took your arms to lead you out of there.

You scoffed, looking at the faceless people. “You know this is fucking stupid, right?”

©️ 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐤 / 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲’𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐨

𝐈 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐝/𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝

TAGLIST: @goldngguk @sweetpeachbombshell @slut-for-stiles @staple-your-mouth @daddyscrimsstuff

@dob-4-life @marcis-mixtapez @nonoreas0n @gabrielasilva1510

@lucyholmes13 @pandadork-blog1 @nicolstancu @malusinhaaaa @dybalabandolero

@a-cup-of-nightshade @tomatoessoup @sh0rtcakee @fall-06 @mckaykay-fandoms

@b3th13

@demonxangelomegaverse @deanwinchestersgirl87 @capailluiscedove @i723l-interrupted2323 @niyomiii

@all-the-fan-fic @eviekinevie8 @sunflowerlover57

@1-800-dean-winchester

@darichvep @idk-usernme @supernaturalmarvel3000 @ega2025 @deanbrainrotwritings

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@4e1h3r @wolfieblue03 @kianaleani @vicky199625 @sassyslut2003

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@a-girl-who-loves-disney @jeneelsworld @deans-spinster-witch @deanspinsterwitchs-readinglist @kayleighwinchester

@cheynovak @manicjk @riah1606

[breakingarrows]

Dirty Laundry: Easy Allies and Last Stand Media

What was originally supposed to be breaking down the recent online drama between Easy Allies and Last Stand Media has devolved into me scouring Twitter and forums to try and nail down what it is that makes Colin Moriarty such a lightning rod for arguments online.

Originally I was attracted to this recent collaboration due to being a former fan of both Easy Allies, made up of former staff of the website GameTrailers, and Colin Moriarty, from his Podcast Beyond and early Kinda Funny days. I use the term former more strongly in regards to Colin as while I was a fan for a long time I eventually grew tired of his shit. I had already begun to wobble on my commitment to Kinda Funny by March 2017, the same month he made his infamous tweet that led to his ousting at the company, was also the release of The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild. In an episode of the Gamescast the quality of the game and games media’s response to it became a subject and Colin had some really out there takes that I detailed in a post at the time. He was shortly afterwards pushed out and started his own Patreon and rarely appeared on my feed mainly when people were dunking on whatever opinion got traction and passed around in screenshots or quote-tweets.

This most recent drama was due to a guest spot on a recent Easy Allies podcast called Frame Trap with guest Dustin Furman of Last Stand Media. The episode is business as usual with nothing outlandish going on. The next day Easy Allies community manager Gabby Montoute posts on the Easy Allies discord this message,

Hi guys, just wanted to quickly address the latest episode of Frame Trap. To first explain our thought process: Brad & Dustin are friends and Dustin is a fan of ours, so Brad wanted to have him on FrameTrap. We unfortunately did not think it through beyond that & that is entirely our fault. Please understand, Brad has known and trusted Dustin for many years, but we hear your concerns and will take more time to discuss & vet new guests before bringing them on. We sincerely apologize for any and all drama this has caused. Thank you so much for understanding and please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or comments!

This seemingly was posted due to individuals reaching out to members of Easy Allies to voice their displeasure that they would associate with someone from Last Stand Media, namely due to its ownership by Colin. A follow up was added afterwards

Guys, read the apology before you jump to any conclusions. No one is apologizing for being friends with Dustin, but there is unfortunately some inherent messiness (to put it lightly) when it comes to LSM that we would rather avoid than participate in. It was a mistake, but let's all please be mature about this. If you want to discuss it again, feel free to message me, but any bad faith conversation about it in this Discord is over.

Additionally Daniel Bloodworth would pin his comment on the episode on YouTube

I want to offer my deepest apologies to everyone for my failures regarding this week's Frame Trap and its aftermath. I tried to address some people's questions in our Discord about bringing Dustin Furman onto Frame Trap, and unintentionally made Brad and Dustin look bad in the process. I failed to properly account for potential reactions, and I failed by rushing out a statement which has harmed one of our guests and biggest fans. There are few things that hurt me as deeply as knowing that I've hurt others. And it's my own mistakes that have led to this absolute turmoil for Dustin, Brad, Gabby, our staff, and our community. This is my responsibility, and I'm sorry. -Daniel Bloodworth

That same day Washington Post reporter and Last Stand Media contributor Gene Park would join the ResetEra thread for Easy Allies defending the reputation of Last Stand Media.

I really want to push back on the idea that LSM, a company I contribute to, is any kind of political show or holds any kind of political or ideological stance. It does not and it is not. My employer, The Washington Post, would not have greenlit my involvement if Last Stand Media was in any way a show about strong political viewpoints. The leadership vetted it. It simply isn’t. Social issues are rarely discussed, and if they are, they’re addressed with some nuance, and Colin has always been very careful in stating his own inherent bias and ignorance on certain issues. However lightly social or political issues are addressed, it is a centrist approach, which is largely aligned with how mainstream media orgs like The Post operates. Literally all the content is about games, the business of games, the culture of games. I would not have gotten involved if that was not the case. But it is. It’s just a gaming media platform. To say otherwise is simply inaccurate and based on hearsay and memes.

Gene’s posts eventually led to a (1) month ban due to, "Dismissive commentary around banned source and transphobia." Last Stand Media would post on October 23 a tweet stating, "“We’ll see about that.” with a photo where a sign states, “Warning Poaching is Strictly Forbidden. Violators will be prosecuted.” stirring speculation on its meaning in regards to the situation between themselves and Easy Allies, namely on if Bradley Ellis would be jumping ship from Easy Allies to Last Stand Media as a result. That same day Last Stand Media would upload the episode Is the Skinsuit Complete? | Sacred Symbols, Episode 277 with timestamp “0:52:24 - The Easy Allies Situation.” During this segment Colin goes off on Easy Allies and his prior conversations with Brandon Jones which he misinterprets as ending by being thrown under the bus. Brandon Jones’ video and posts online at the time were non-committal and bore no condemnation or judgment towards Colin and were simply him becoming wary of the reputation Colin had accrued for himself online. Colin is just so thin-skinned that any pause to contemplate whether there is merit behind why a portion of your audience is saying, “maybe don’t work with this guy,” is equivalent to “being thrown under the bus.” I also find it humorous that Colin felt the need to send a strongly worded email about how the two were done and would never work together again.

Easy Allies should have handled the situation better. To suddenly denounce the guest  you had on shows that no vetting was done beforehand, or the word of Bradley Ellis was held as verification enough. If the latter, to suddenly turn becomes a critique of Brad’s judgment. All of their wording has been vague-posting, meaning you leave everything to speculation and the matter would have been passed over in a short time had it just remained unaddressed. Let the segments of your audience that find Dustin’s guest appearance vilifying to move on, to peter back and forth between condemnation and apologizing just makes into the mess it is today. According to Dustin he is no longer welcome on Easy Allies’ channel and Brad is not allowed to go on Last Stand Media content going forward.

You can’t please anyone, and Easy Allies needs to be smarter about who they are aiming to please. It is often said to ignore a vocal minority, and it might have ended up being the best course of action for Easy Allies. Listening to Brandon’s old Cup of Jones, the one in which he “throws Colin under the bus”, it is clearly apparent that he is desperate to appease all the voices that are coming through the channel’s various platforms: Twitter, their forums, comments, and emails. Appeasing one group means angering a separate one, and teeter-tottering back and forth between them all will eventually shake all the leaves off your tree, namely your Patreon subscriber base. Colin echoes, more harshly, the attitude that dominated the former Easy Allies subreddit in that the company is failing and on a downward spiral that can’t be sustained, and I doubt this recent controversy has helped at all as the terminally online are the ones more likely to be giving you money on Patreon than the casual observer on YouTube who will likely never follow Dustin to his home channel and watch Colin’s rant.

Combing through Colin’s tweets (something I don’t recommend but the fruits of which are listed on my timeline at the bottom of this post) is a confirmation that not much has changed. He has always loved the term “echochamber” and frequently lacks the self awareness that this is what he cultivates for himself. Colin consistently states he loves being challenged and disagreed with but always antagonistically responds to criticism and frequently only engages with the most offensive and weakest responses to his stances on Twitter. His favorite is to pick a random Twitter user who makes claims of racism, sexism, transphobia, etc towards him and then asks for the specific instances and says he’s made plenty of pro-[social issue here] arguments in videos online.

He loves to bring on people such as Filip Miucin, Vince Ingenito, and Kara Lynne not so much as to do any sort of questioning but instead to just let them talk unopposed. Miucin plagiarized throughout his career and is met with weak opposition to his claims. Ingenito who was the subject of a sexual harassment investigation within IGN that was so mishandled it led to the entire staff walking out in protest when it was revealed but was unjustly “excommunicated” by the industry. Colin would write in June 2023 about Vince, “He has one of the greatest critical minds in the history of games media and it's unfair that audiences have been robbed of him for so long. I'm proud that Last Stand is giving him a place to speak. He'll return.” Kara Lynne who was fired from Limited Run Games after a campaign by an admitted internet bully discovered a tweet by Lynne pushing forward the myth that perverts would benefit more from transgender bathroom laws than anyone else. This is a problem I have with the same softball journalism employed by the bane of Colin’s existence, games media. He literally opens the episode with Miucin by saying, “You don’t hear very much from me. I’ll let Filip speak for himself, tell his story to you, and take from it what you will.” Where is the pushback? Where is the spine to confront someone over lies and instead just let them say their side with no inspection? It drives me crazy. People hail him as a “real journalist” because he brings people on and “just lets them speak.” as if that’s journalism. This is the same man who recommended the book Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel as essential reading for anyone wanting to do journalism but seemingly has not learned any of the lessons taught within its text. No journalist would let an interview subject just put forward their narrative with no attempt at verification or skepticism questioning.

Colin really hates games media, not for the reasons I criticize games media, but instead seemingly just because they’re all out to get him, save for the individuals who still engage with him online, they’re okay. Waypoint writes about how Horizon Zero Dawn devs responded to accusations of appropriating imagery and cultural elements from native american tribes and he calls it outrage culture. Kotaku, Polygon, and Waypoint “pedal almost entirely in outrage.” Games media’s real diversity problem isn’t in the color of your skin but instead one of ideologies. Games media is adversarial to game developers, publishers, and PR so of course those same institutions should be adversarial to games media. An article from GameSpot explaining how bra sizes work in response to people freaking out over Tifa’s bust in Final Fantasy VII Remake is mocked as why games media is dying. Games media needs to be dispassionate because they are purposefully ignoring that PAX West dropped my panel and won't refund my fans who are now boycotting the convention in response. “Who do enthusiast outlets write for? It sure doesn't seem like they write for any of us [the REAL gamers].”  Game reviewers who play on easy mode don’t actually like video games (despite the average gamer never actually even finishing a majority of games they play).

Another obsession of Colin is to give the appearance of being a gracious host who just wants to debate people in the common interest of knowledge and progress. He tried to bait Bob Mackey into coming out to see him in person to debate about Bob’s accusations of Colin’s political leanings and actions while working at IGN. He frequently talks about how he would love to have people who disagree with him on his show, as if that would lead to anything other than two people talking at each other with Colin’s fans heralding his great victory and the opposition's cringe loss. Most recently he responded to his friend David Jaffe, himself posting in response to Jeff Grubb screen posting a tweet of Jaffe’s and was offensive because Grubb didn’t “tag” Jaffe(?), “The types of people that do this will never, ever sit and talk to you, just like they won't with me. They're scared. I'd be scared to defend my positions, too, if I spent years flailing around an echochamber. Thankfully, iron sharpens iron and you and I have no such issues. <3”

As I mentioned before, Colin really loves to play the victim. He was able to leverage his Kinda Funny ousting into a very successful Patreon, one whose membership outnumbers the likes of Nextlander, NoClip, Game Makers Toolkit, Jeff Gerstmann, Kinda Funny’s individual patreons, and Retronauts (among many others you can find on the Game Biz sheet I try to keep up to date). He talks about building this successful Patreon despite “Virtually no games PR or publisher goodwill.” though also would tout in 2018 that, “They gave me God of War early, too. Don't let the games media echochamber fool you. Every publisher I've approached has been more than happy to (and often eager to) work with me.” Something changed in 2019 as that same company that gave him Detroit: Become Human and God of War early would blacklist his outlet. “PlayStation has blacklisted Sacred Symbols for reasons entirely unknown, so we won't be getting anything from them moving forward.” Probably the most perfect example of pity party Moriarty comes in this response, “Hundreds? Try thousands. [of people attacking him online] Hit pieces written about me in renowned publications [I’m unable to find anything other than the usual summary of events news stories from the time of his exit]. Thrown away by people I knew for years and treated with respect [This at least checks out from his perspective of events]. Blacklisted [only by Sony as far as his statements have shown]. Defamed and lied about. Intentionally misrepresented [This is likely just the usual twitter posting being referenced]. No. He will never experience 1% of what I did. It's fine. I lived.” It’s quite melodramatic. Colin can cry in his dollar bills though, as he’s tweeted already, he has become much more successful than he ever was before, transforming his tears into financial compensation and playing on people’s apparent need to adulate him with praise.

Lastly, Colin made a big deal of him leaving the GOP in 2016 after Trump’s nomination, as if being a proud Republican for his lifetime prior bore no consequence simply because he was “socially liberal” during it.  His words on there needing to be more diversity of ideas within games media reads as naive in terms of how leftists and liberals are as divided and argumentative amongst themselves as he believes they should be, they just lack a Republican review giving the latest Mario a 9/10. Nobody wanting to debate him nowadays is mostly due to a degradation of tolerance for people who are stymying progress, especially as we grow ever nearer to climate disaster, as the rich hoard more and more wealth as costs go up and wages stay as they are. We’re tired of this shit and don’t have the patience for those who want to present the insidious mask of thoughtful discussion between those who want us dead and those who are dying. As Austin Walker wonderfully put it in Febraury 2017, “While you encourage me to debate a brick wall, I'll be busy trying to keep it from fucking falling on my head.”

Tracking this stuff is exhausting, and I can see why I didn’t really do much with the “Dirty Laundry” series after the first handful of episodes in 2015. There is no shortage of drama, but actually tracking down solid information takes too much time for too little reward. Colin’s fans will read these same tweets and think they’re examples of his strong convictions and character and is correct in his assertions because he’s just so smart. Those like me will find renewed annoyance at his continual whining and bad take posting while he profits and those who actually are the, “greatest critical minds in the history of games media” continue to do so part time and scrape by on Patreon. Shit sucks! Fuck him!

Colin Moriarty: wrote guides and posted them on GameFAQs throughout the 2000s, started guide writing for IGN in 2003, was hired in 2007, jumped from guide writing to editorial in 2009, left IGN to co-found Kinda Funny in January 2015, is ousted from Kinda Funny in March 2017, creates Colin’s Last Stand on Patreon that same month, January 2021 rebrands as Last Stand Media, continues to work there to this day.

December 13, 2012: Colin Moriarty “I love being challenged, I love people disagreeing with me, giving me a different view. Living in an echochamber must be a lonely existence.” [source]

June 29, 2015: Colin Moriarty “Here's my argument: the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism created by traitors to their country. Pretty simple.” [source]

March 3, 2017: Colin Moriarty “Was his response "I wrote a game about a woman fighting robot dinosaurs, why is everything cause for faux outrage?" That'd be a good answer.” In response to a Waypoint article about the appropriation of native american imagery for the groups within Horizon Zero Dawn. [source]

March 8, 2017: Colin Moriarty “Ah. Peace and quiet. #ADayWithoutAWoman” [source] this quickly led to his departure from Kinda Funny.

September 26, 2017: Colin Moriarty “Asian Americans blow the entire White Supremacy/Racism bit to smithereens. Expect the fringe left to chase ‘em hard over the next few years. Compared to whites, Asian Americans are better educated, make more money, live in more affluent areas, and live longers. Where’s the racism?!” [source]

Also, “To reiterate: If @bobservo wants to have a productive debate, I will fly him to LA, put him up, and donate $2,000 to a charity he chooses.” [source]

October 9, 2017: Colin Moriarty “All of those people are welcome to come record an episode with me should they ever find themselves in LA. Would love to host them.” This is in response to someone on Twitter saying he should have Austin Walker, Patrick Klepek, Danielle Riendeau, Gita Jackson, and Zoe Quinn on his show [source]

November 22, 2017: Brandon Jones responds positively [source] to Colin Moriarty’s invitation [source] to be on his show, there was some pushback for and against this. [source]

November 29, 2017: Colin Moriarty “The illustrious @TrailerJones  joined me for this week's CLS: Fireside Chats! We chat about Easy Allies and Patreon, and open up about our time at GameTrailers/IGN, the good 'ol days at Kinda Funny, and the storm surrounding this podcast happening at all. https://patreon.com/posts/15613489“ [source]

December 3, 2017: Brandon Jones “Last week my words were upsetting to some. I worried anything else I said might make things worse. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately, but not a lot of talking, and that’s rightfully frustrated people I care about in the EZA community. ⅛” [source]

December 5, 2017: Brandon Jones posts a Cup of Jones on Easy Allies patreon, some bit of it includes comments on Colin's situation. [Colin later cites this as an example of not liking Brandon]

April 11, 2018: Colin Moriarty “Games media has a diversity problem, but it's not the one ably written about here. Can you name a single conservative or libertarian writer working at any mainstream games outlet? Just one. I'd like diversity of thought and ideas. Skin deep is just that. https://eurogamer.net/articles/2018-04-11-why-the-games-media-has-a-diversity-problem-this-website-especially. I love and respect IGN for a lot of reasons, but this reason may be paramount: When they brought me on as a freelancer in 2002 (and full time in 2007), they knew damn well I was a passionate, political conservative, and they embraced it. They never tried to shut me up, ever. I'd love to see some of these outlets hire a Trump voter. Hire an evangelical. Hire a libertarian. Hire a social conservative. These people also play and love games. Millions of them. We're so focused on gender and skin color that we've forgotten about, y'know... the mind.” [source]

November 8, 2018: Colin Moriarty “My favorite game of 2018 is STILL Detroit: Become Human. I bid you good day.” [source]

May 10, 2019: Colin Moriarty “I said it during Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and I’ll say it again: Game devs, publishers, and PR have nothing to lose by being adversarial to a games media that is perpetually adversarial to them. Right or wrong, it’s certainly tactically sound.” [source]

May 24, 2019: Colin Moriarty “There's no doubt that YouTube is an Outrage Fest, but websites like Kotaku, Polygon, and Waypoint pedal almost entirely in outrage. No one would care about Kotaku (at all) if not for Jason S. It's safer to call out the YouTubers destroying his media circle than honestly assess.” [source]

June 21, 2019: Colin Moriarty “It’s almost impossible to believe that old guard games media is dying. [photo of a GameSpot article ‘We Need to Talk About How Bra Sizes Work’” [source]

August 1, 2019: Colin’s Last Stand posts: Introducing CLS' First Full-Time Employee: Dustin Furman [source]

August 3, 2019: Colin Moriarty “The lack of coverage is proof, above all else, that games media isn't dispassionate. If you don't have a dispassionate media, why even have a media at all? The lack of coverage doesn't hurt Chris and I. It hurts our ripped-off fans, who the media also doesn't care about.” [source]

September 22, 2019: Colin Moriarty “It’s their prerogative not to invite us! It’s no big deal. We’ll continue to cover everything thoroughly and fairly regardless of the way publisher PR treats Sacred Symbols. We have more than 50,000 people that rely on us, and we’ll always do our best for y’all regardless. <3” [source]

Colin Moriarty “Nah. PR (and CMs/marketers) hold the cards in this regard. We'll continue to keep the lines of communication open with all publishers and they can work with us if they want. Our show will continue to grow and prosper with or without 'em, and we're happy to buy the games we need.”

October 17, 2019: Colin Moriarty “We've been asked a ton, so: No, @ChrisRGun and I don't have Death Stranding. PlayStation has blacklisted Sacred Symbols for reasons entirely unknown, so we won't be getting anything from them moving forward. We're happy to buy any game and treat it fairly, so it's no biggie. <3” [source]

November 8, 2019: Colin Moriarty “This week's all-new episode of Sacred Symbols+ is dedicated to the decaying mainstream games media. In the wake of Deadspin's self-destruction, it's worth asking: Who do enthusiast outlets write for? It sure doesn't seem like they write for any of us.” [source]

February 13, 2020: Colin Moriarty “This is the perfect encapsulation of intersectionality's complete failure. Trans women can be accepted as women. That's great. But they were born men in male bodies, and they're destroying biological women in sports. It's not fair, and it shouldn't be controversial to say so.” [source]

February 20, 2020: Colin Moriarty “With all due respect, Mr. Bloomberg, your debate performance last night was arguably the worst I've ever seen. Trump would absolutely eat you alive. I think you should step aside and let one of your better-equipped competitors take it from here. Fund 'em, if you like! My 2¢.” Directly responding to Mike Bloomberg’s tweet [source]

March 8, 2020: Colin Moriarty “Hundreds? Try thousands. Hit pieces written about me in renowned publications. Thrown away by people I knew for years and treated with respect. Blacklisted. Defamed and lied about. Intentionally misrepresented. No. He will never experience 1% of what I did. It's fine. I lived.” [source]

March 24, 2020: Lillymo Games Inc publishes Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure on PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4 with ports later on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.

May 30, 2020: Colin Moriarty “If you watch the interview (which I suggest), MLK talks extensively about the immoral and intolerable racism the black community faced (and which the community still faces). But he never condoned violence. And he knew it wasn't a useful tool. Peace is the most potent weapon.” [source]

June 2, 2020: Colin Moriarty “I absolutely loved what he had to say, top to bottom. Understanding the results of systemic racism. Holding people to account that perpetrate violence against blacks. Reinforcing your own home instead of burning it down. Planning. Responding. Organizing. Voting. It was perfect.” In response to someone mentioning Killer Mike’s speech. [source]

June 3, 2020: Colin Moriarty “We built this with:✅ Virtually no mainstream games industry support. ✅ Virtually no games PR or publisher goodwill. ✅ Persistent defamation and misrepresentation by games media and their acolytes. But the people have spoken. Thank you so much for that. <3“ [source]

This is seemingly in direct contradiction with an earlier tweet from May 24, 2018: Colin Moriarty “They gave me God of War early, too. Don't let the games media echochamber fool you. Every publisher I've approached has been more than happy to (and often eager to) work with me.” [source]

June 29, 2020: Colin Moriarty “Colin's Last Stand has acquired 49% of @LillymoGames, and I will be its Chief Creative Officer and Lead Writer moving forward. Also: Side Quest will now be a tandem operation between @DustinCanFly and @G27Status Plus: Other things in a letter from me! https://patreon.com/posts/38682170“ [source]

September 1, 2021: Colin Moriarty “I think we can all agree that Kotaku has somehow, some way assembled the Anti-All-Star Team of Games Media.” [source]

September 25, 2021: Colin Moriarty “The types of people that do this will never, ever sit and talk to you, just like they won't with me. They're scared. I'd be scared to defend my positions, too, if I spent years flailing around an echochamber. Thankfully, iron sharpens iron and you and I have no such issues. <3” Response to David Jaffe posting a Jeff Grubb video featuring a Jaffe screen grab and being blocked by Grubb. [source]

July 14, 2021: Colin Moriarty “If you can’t or won’t beat games on anything harder than Easy — and you’re reviewing them from that perspective and not from the perspective of the average player — then your criticism is worthless. Seek out critics who actually like video games. It’s all getting a little trite.” [source] [this in response to Natalie @heartimecia saying she only plays games for reviews on easy after Xbox posted a tweet saying beating a game on easy is still beating the game. Souls-likes, difficulty, accessibility, etc etc etc]

July 19, 2021: Colin Moriarty “The very games media that limply tossed itself head-first into Palestine/Israel (and otherwise goes out of its way to shove every sort of fringe political view down everyone's throat) seems awfully mum about communist China-aligned entities slowly gobbling up our industry.” [source]

January 4, 2022: Sacred Symbols+, Episode 152: The Excommunication of Vince Ingenito [This is the same Vince Ingenito who was laid off by IGN in March 2017, Kallie Plagge came out and shared that Ingenito sexually harassed herself and another female staff member and felt HR’s response was irresponsible. This led to a walk out by IGN staff until management put out a response addressing it. [source]]

April 26, 2022: Gene Park “had a very quick, pleasant chat with Colin about the trajectory of my career and my life. "games media being in its death throes" is colin's view on it but i do talk about how all aspects of media are slowly being overtaken by a creator-led revolution of coverage and distributing information. folks, try not to fight with the journalists in my mentions. i understand their concerns and why they might be upset about this. but as i say in the interview, i see this as Colin giving ME a platform. his audience includes many of my own followers, people who are good. many of you haven't followed my career closely but during my career as an audience engagement editor, i found much success in talking to audiences with an antagonistic view of the press. on reddit, i talked with fervent Trump supporters who HATE us all the time. even in Hawaii, i held in person meetings with groups of people who have every reason to hate the media. this is just how i've always operated, but it's something i passionately care about. this isn't about "validation" it's about reaching out to audiences.” [source [end of thread post]]

January 25, 2023: Last Stand Media has Kara Lynne on their Sacred Symbols+ podcast, she was fired from Limited Run Games after Twitter user Purple Tinker [source] [someone who in June 2020 posted a five page apology for being an internet bully within the brony fandom of which they were a founder of bronycon] found an old tweet [archived version] where Lynne said, “If you think the # of trans crying about using a bathroom is higher than the perves using the excuse, you are what is wrong with this world.” as well as following various conservative people on Twitter.

April 29, 2023: Colin Moriarty “Waypoint's collapse is the most recent reminder that games media is largely finished. But it's important the void fills with passionate, knowledgeable people who care about games. Not people who didn't know there would be a third Horizon. Sacred Symbols x Defining Duke is live.” [source]

May 11, 2023: Last Stand Media YouTube uploads Kingdom Hearts Anniversary Retrospective feat. Brad Ellis | Sacred Symbols+, Episode 291

May 16, 2023: Last Stand Media launches Punching Up: A Nintendo Podcast [we need to talk about co opting that term] and also announce Gene Park as a regular member.

June 28, 2023: Colin Moriarty “It was awesome having Vince on the show to talk deeply about games. He has one of the greatest critical minds in the history of games media and it's unfair that audiences have been robbed of him for so long. I'm proud that Last Stand is giving him a place to speak. He'll return.“ [source] 

October 12, 2023: Easy Allies YouTube uploads Everything Going Crazy - Frame Trap Episode 195 with Bradley Ellis, Daniel Bloodworth, Michael Huber, Michael Damiani, and guest Dustin Furman of Last Stand Media.

October 13, 2023: Easy Allies staff member Gabby posts in their Discord, “Hi guys, just wanted to quickly address the latest episode of Frame Trap. To first explain our thought process: Brad & Dustin are friends and Dustin is a fan of ours, so Brad wanted to have him on FrameTrap. We unfortunately did not think it through beyond that & that is entirely our fault. Please understand, Brad has known and trusted Dustin for many years, but we hear your concerns and will take more time to discuss & vet new guests before bringing them on. We sincerely apologize for any and all drama this has caused. Thank you so much for understanding and please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or comments!

...

Guys, read the apology before you jump to any conclusions. No one is apologizing for being friends with Dustin, but there is unfortunately some inherent messiness (to put it lightly) when it comes to LSM that we would rather avoid than participate in. It was a mistake, but let's all please be mature about this. If you want to discuss it again, feel free to message me, but any bad faith conversation about it in this Discord is over.“ [source]

October 15, 2023: Pinned comment on Everything Going Crazy - Frame Trap Episode 195: I want to offer my deepest apologies to everyone for my failures regarding this week's Frame Trap and its aftermath. I tried to address some people's questions in our Discord about bringing Dustin Furman onto Frame Trap, and unintentionally made Brad and Dustin look bad in the process. I failed to properly account for potential reactions, and I failed by rushing out a statement which has harmed one of our guests and biggest fans. There are few things that hurt me as deeply as knowing that I've hurt others. And it's my own mistakes that have led to this absolute turmoil for Dustin, Brad, Gabby, our staff, and our community. This is my responsibility, and I'm sorry. -Daniel Bloodworth

October 15-16, 2023: Gene Park joins ResetEra thread on Easy Allies to talk about Last Stand Media (Gene Park has been banned from ResetEra for “ User Banned (1 Month): Dismissive commentary around banned source and transphobia”) [source]

October 23, 2023: Last Stand Media Twitter posts “We’ll see about that.” with a photo where a sign states, “Warning Poaching is Strictly Forbidden. Violators will be prosecuted.” [source]

October 23, 2023: Last Stand Media YouTube uploads Is the Skinsuit Complete? | Sacred Symbols, Episode 277 with timestamp “0:52:24 - The Easy Allies Situation”

October 24, 2023: Easy Allies Patreon 5,973 members, $1 lowest tier membership

Last Stand Media 15,895 members, $1 lowest tier membership

[whiteprairieroses]

♡ ♡ ♡

[anticonspiracist]

Hi,

I would come of anon, cause I like an open dialogue, but I’m kinda afraid I’m going to get harassed because of my ask… so anon it is. I’m a Larrie, have been for a while now. I came across your blog and I’m kinda interested in your reasons for not believing in Larry. I couldn’t find those easily. Do you just not see what we see in their bodylanguage, the way they were different from all the other boys? And if it is because of Louis’s denials, do you not believe in closeting in general or just not for Louis and Harry?

First of all, thank you for the questions. If anything I write here needs more clarification for you, feel free to come off anon and send me a DM.

I’ve answered all of these questions multiple times before, but since my first anti-conspiracist blog, shit-larries-say, got nuked, a lot of my answers to these questions are gone as well so I’ll answer them again without hesitation. 

I entered fandom in early April of 2016 by clicking on the Buzzfeed picspam called “There’s A Wild Conspiracy Theory That Louis Tomlinson’s Baby Is Fake.” Much of that picspam was incomprehensible to me as far as evidence goes – when I’m instructed to look at what’s circled, or to read the text added by a larrie pointing out what they believe to be an obvious tell, I’m just not seeing what they expect me to see. Initially I thought this was just because I didn’t know the “players,” but it’s been six years now and I know the actual reason: it genuinely doesn’t mean anything.

When I say that I entered fandom through reading this picspam, I’ve left out why I even clicked on the link that showed up on my Twitter timeline as a retweet from someone I met at a baseball game the previous spring. I’ve been a political junkie on and off my entire life (okay, from the time I was 6) and at around that same time it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Trump was going to win the Republican nomination for President. Only about a month later he’d be named the presumptive nominee. I’d noticed a rise in political conspiracy theories that paired with his rise in influence, and people I thought I knew from my life were posting more and more unhinged screeds on Facebook. I was alarmed and trying to figure out what the fuck was happening. When that link made it to my Twitter feed, I saw an opportunity for myself to figure it out. Something I knew already from my first forays into reading the literature was that regardless of the subject of a conspiracy theory, people who believed in them followed the same thought patterns. Lower stakes than the future of American democracy was this boyband baby situation, so it would be less infuriating to dig into and understand. And if I could understand why someone believed in this absurdity, I could formulate possible procedures for convincing them not to believe in it, and then that could be applied to other, more pressing conspiracy theories and their believers.

(Spoiler alert: I now know that while it is possible to turn a person away from their conspiratorial beliefs, it is not possible to do so on a wider scale than the individual, so basically we’re fucked there.)

Okay, so that’s my background of how I came to be here, which actually answers most of your questions neatly: I don’t believe in Larry because I don’t believe in conspiracy theories generally. There isn’t anything special about Larry that, to someone who recognizes the inherent harm in the conspiracy mindset, is any different from QAnon, or people who believe JFK wasn’t assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, or Flat Earth, or David Icke’s lizard overlords, or any of Alex Jones’s host of conspiratorial beliefs. Simply, “They” are hiding the truth because “They” don’t want us to know it, and “They” are evil for this while “we” are enlightened and on the “right” side and in time the world will know that “we” were right. And all of this relies on underlying antisemitic canards. NOT GOOD. [If you find yourself wanting to say to me, "But some conspiracy theories turn out to be true!" don't bother. I know. But I am also aware that mathematically it's nearly impossible for this one to be true.

Outside of that, I’m a high school teacher. I’ve taught ages 12-19 in my career and this coming school year will be my 10th at the HS level. Every day at work I interact with teenage boys the same age that 1D were when they were thrown together. What you see as irrefutable proof that two teenage boys are in a committed romantic and sexual relationship is what I see on a daily basis: boys being boys. In my summer life I travel overseas and teach this same age group about leadership. I have seen boys from different continents and cultures, five minutes after meeting, wear a sweatshirt together (yes, imagine how that happened) because they were both cold and only one was prepared. This means nothing about their sexualities.

Furthermore, regarding your point that Harry and Louis’s body language toward each other was different from the other boys? No, it wasn’t. It will seem that way to you because of confirmation bias – you’ll see what you want to see – and because there’s simply not as many slowed-down gifs of all the other boys interacting with each other. There isn’t as much lore about these alternate pairings packaged and passed down from “dinosaur larries” to new recruits. 

Regarding closeting, I know it exists but I also know it has not ever existed the way larries claim it does and require it to in order for your conspiracy theory to “work.” For instance, Lance Bass is brought up by larries all the time and my friend and co-host and Lance superfan @back-to-louis will always push back on it. Lance did have girlfriends in his past, whom he loved, and who did not know he was gay. His bandmates did not know he was gay. He was not required by a contract to keep his sexuality a secret. He made that choice himself due to the political and social climate of the time. Furthermore, coming out was not his choice although he outed himself. He had a very limited amount of time to take control of his story before it was out of his hands and he wanted his family to know from him and not from scurrilous gossip on the internet. 

If larries want to point to Lance Bass as an example that proves their conspiracy theory, they also have to ask themselves why they continue to engage in this kind of gossip which would wrench Harry and Louis’s control of their own narratives from their hands. If the larrie conspiracy theory were reality, larries are not the good guys. Look up Ian Thorpe and his contentious relationship with the Australian press regarding his sexuality. Did he previously deny being gay before eventually coming out? Certainly. He came out when he was ready. The only thing you can do, as a fan of Louis and/or Harry, is to respect what they’ve said regarding their sexuality, until and unless they tell you something else. Louis has said he’s straight. He hasn’t ever contradicted that. A good fan and person accepts that as his truth. Harry has been intentionally non-committal about his own sexuality while maintaining romantic relationships with women. Proceeding to label him with one or another is disrespectful. Until and unless he says something else, it’s your responsibility not only as a fan but as a good person to respect what he’s said. Will Harry ever see your blog? No. But there are plenty of queer people reading it, I’m sure, and when a queer person reads a larrie’s blog what they see is that their own words are to be ignored. It’s awful.

Judy Garland wasn’t paid to beard, neither were the women who loved Elton John and Freddie Mercury. There were no contracts involved. These were true love stories, or a friend doing a favor for a friend. THAT is what “bearding” is, not this convoluted contractual process that larries believe it is. And here’s another bone to pick: If the larrie belief of beard contracts were true, why the hell aren’t Harry or Louis EVER blamed for this harmful practice? Why is it only, in effect, their employee who gets the brunt of the internet hate from largely other women? How could you believe in this practice and just excuse Harry and Louis? Don’t you see that they’d be perpetuating a harmful practice? I can hear the defense now – “Oh, but it’s not their choice! They have to do this!” Well, bullshit. They are white millionaires with complete control over their lives. They hire their managers. No one is forcing them to sign contracts they don’t want to sign.

To sum up: I don’t believe in Larry because it is a conspiracy theory (this is not a pejorative use: it definitively checks all the boxes of a conspiracy theory) and I do not engage in conspiracism for multiple reasons, chief among them being that all conspiracy theories which rely on a shadowy sinister force hiding the “truth” are inherently antisemitic. I don’t fuck with that. Larrie belief isn’t a fandom, it’s conspiracism. Conspiracism is harmful to the fabric of our human society, the proof of which is out there for your perusal and embodied in the Trump Administration and also COVID denial at large. All conspiracy theorists rely on the same flawed thought processes, and so claiming that larry is just about “two boys in love” and therefore harmless is bullshit.

Again, feel free to DM me if you have any further questions.

[acewithapaintbrush]

I made a little 'Making of/Tutorial' post about my Perler Casita for anyone interested. It was certainly a ride with some ups and downs...

First of, I section big projects into smaller parts that I then add together later. It's easier that way and I don't have enough plates to do it all at once anyway.

Casita is made out of 4 individual parts. The app I use is pretty great as I can zoom in until I see the colors clearly. The closest I can zoom is to a 5x5 cutout so that is the steps I take. Always a cutout of 5x5 and then the next and so on.

The four parts are 100x80 beads. Which looked something like this:

You might have noticed something if you are familiar with perler beads. If I were to iron it like this, the image would be mirrored. If I wanted to iron it on the plates I would have had to mirror the image before feeding it into the app.

But I NEVER EVER iron on the plates. That's a recipe for disaster. The plates are still plastic, just like the beads. They warp super quickly and if you are not careful you meld the spikes too which makes them useless and ready for the trash.

What I do instead is I take some painters tape and tape it all up like this

And then I do a little flip! That can be tricky but as long as you are quick and pay attention it's OK. But you definitely need a big cardboard to help. The tape is just painters tape, it's not strong enough to hold the whole thing together if you just try to lift it or something.

I actually made a video of the flip but Tumblr won't let me upload. Just imagine me putting this between two cardboards, pressing them together between my arms, counting to three, and really quickly flipping them over. Once that is done you have this and can remove the plates

That's how you do all four parts and put them together. If you do it right, no problem. If you are an idiot like me and jump one row without realizing it, something like this happens:

Do you see that shit??? Oh I was cursing up a storm because this meant that I had to find the row that I have missed, cut the section APART at that point and insert the row. That's the problem with a picture like this, you couldn't really tell that I had missed something until I put them next to each other. With a portrait or something it's obvious when an eye or nose is missing. The cutting was super stressful cause the beads were wiggling loose on either side of the cut so no pictures of that but yeah... After sweating and cursing I managed and now you can't tell anymore. Puh.

So at the end of this you hopefully have something like this, ready for ironing:

The ironing is the hardest part, so much can (AND DID!) go wrong, so no pictures of that either. You have to iron the whole thing in one go or it will warp and not fit together in the end. I don't know how to describe it, but just imagine ironing on one side and seeing some beads go up into the air at the opposite corner. When you see that you have to act quick. It's nervewrecking to be honest. ALSO, and I can't stress that enough, never apply pressure! It is tempting, oh so tempting, to push down on that iron and get the beads to meld a little faster but guess what? You push down too hard and the beads deform on the side that you actually want to display to the world and it's never pretty. A little pressure is fine, but it's a fine line! Slow and steady wins the race which is why ironing this thing took me far over two hours.

Yep, I was crying at the end of it, thanks for asking.

Gotta remind you, everything I'm telling you applies mainly to big pieces. Smaller stuff is way easier. Don't wanna make perler beads out to be some kind of extreme hobby where you'll die of an heartattack if you are not careful.

But yeah, mistakes have been made. This one is kinda cute, cause I have no idea how and when this happened:

Oh well. You do you, little bead. You do you.

When you are done ironing you flip it again (lots of flipping involved, so make sure you have a big cardboard to help) and then you sloooooooooooowly peel off the miles and miles of painters tape and hope it all worked out and you don't have single beads sticking to the tape cause you missed them during the ironing part

And now.... Figure out what you actually want to do with such a big piece.

I for one put them on canvas. I use structure paste for that which can go either way tbh. Glue is just not strong enough because this many beads are actually quite heavy. You gotta take care not to apply it too thick though, cause then it will squeeze all the way right through the beads which is just... a mess.

So, there you have it. If you were careful and patient you'll have a really big perler bead artwork and you will ask yourself why you did this cause now you have no idea where to put the big thing cause all of your walls are full already (What? Just me? OK then)

Calling myself out here cause I'm all for transparency: if you zoom in on the left upper side you'll see what happens if you don't pay attention and put too much pressure on the iron

[tressasinterlude]

𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐓 #𝟑: Female Public Figures Dating Men with Questionable Views That Contradict Their Image & Alleged Politics

𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗜𝗠𝗘𝗥: These rant blog posts are really just reflective of my thoughts at the time that I make them and are posted here because I need an outlet to release all of this shit I have going on my busy ass mind. That’s it and that’s all. Now let’s get into it..

This rant was greatly inspired by none other than Ms. Robyn Rihanna “Tell Your Faves To Pull Up [in regards to social injustices directly affecting black people]” Fenty and her openly colorist boyfriend, A$AP Rocky. Aside from the fact that Rihanna tends to slip under the radar and is never held accountable for her problematic ways due to her conventional beauty (i.e. Her heavy usage of anti-Asian slurs, particularly targeted towards Chris Brown’s ex gf, Karrueche), it’s very alarming that a woman who has an entire makeup brand with a campaign based around the inclusivity of ALL black women is publicly flaunting a beau who once said that DSBW do not look good with red lipstick.

And yes, I’m very much aware that Rakim said this tasteless comment over 8 years ago but from the looks of it, not much has really changed with him. Don’t @ me about it neither because I don’t care.

Also peep how he compares a hypothetical darkskinned woman to a man (Wesley Snipes) while trying to explain how his antiblackness isn’t wrong because he said something about white women as well. Gaslighting at its finest. Don’t you just love it! 😀

Furthermore, you would think that somebody of Rihanna’s level of stature would know not to associate themselves with someone as messy as A$AP Rocky but... Stupid is what stupid does, I guess! I can’t even begin to place the blame on him anymore because he’s revealed his true colors and we all have made the deliberate choice to either accept it or don’t and have discontinued all support for him. Unfortunately, misogynoir is never the dealbreaker for most people and the hatred for [dark-skinned] black women is so engrained in society that it’s frowned upon when we publicly speak out against it. Very ass backwards if you ask me but that’s society for you. Now, enough about that. Let’s focus back on Ms. Vita La Coco.

As a woman who claims to be a girl’s girl and is always presenting herself to be someone who is the epitome of a pro-black feminist bad ass, it just makes her alleged activism come off so disingenuous when she’s also laying down with the same man that actively attacks the demographic she’s supposed to be standing in solidarity with. It’s “Black Lives Matter” on the IG posts but your vagina is getting moist for a man who openly stated he doesn’t relate to what goes on in Ferguson because he lives in Soho & Beverly Hills. Ferguson being the exact place where a 17-year-old black boy’s lifeless corpse laid on the hot concrete for FOUR hours after he was murdered by a police officer. He couldn’t 'relate' to the fate of so many black men, women, and children who are murdered or seriously injured from state-sanctioned violence because they’re poor and he is not or so he thought.

But then again, what can I really expect from a woman who identified as being “biracial” until as recent as roughly 6 years ago? What can I really expect from a woman who called Rachel Dolezal a ‘hero’ for cosplaying as a black woman? I’d be lying if I said my expectations for her were high in this regard because sis has always shown us she was lacking in this department. And just for the record, this is not a personal attack on Rihanna at all for the die-hard Navy stans in the back. I admire her latest fashions and bop my head to her music just like the next person but she’s getting the side-eye from me on this one.

Trust and believe me though, she’s not the only woman who I can call out for being a hypocrite. Of course not! This stone can be cast at a few others. So without further ado, why don’t we bring Ms. Kehlani Parrish to the front of the congregation? Prior to Kehlani’s recent declaration of identifying as a lesbian, her last public relationship with a man was with YG. Yes, the same YG who felt it was necessary to say him & Nipsey had ‘pretty light-skinned’ daughters to raise in the middle of his deceased friend’s memorial. By the way, Nipsey’s daughter is not even light (or at least not in my book anyways.) She’s a very deep caramel tone just like her father which makes what he said even more moronic. Yes, the same YG who thought it was clever idea to use slavery as an aesthetic for a music video to a diss track about 6ix9ine. And yes, also the same YG who has derogatory lyrics targeted at bisexual women. Just to end up sweating the red carpets with one. I swear the jokes just continue to write themselves.

This raises the question once more; How high of a pedestal can I really put a multiracial woman who has a song titled ‘N*ggas’ and when received backlash for the song in question, she used the ultimate ‘I’m mixed’ copout while not having a visibly black parent in sight?

It’s also kind of suspicious to me that many were not privy to Kehlani’s secret romance with Victoria Monét (pictured bottom right) until Victoria did an interview with Gay Times revealing she fell in love with a girl but they subsequently broke up because Victoria had a boyfriend and that girl was pregnant in a polyamorous relationship. Fans began to speculate because both Victoria & Kehlani previously candidly spoke about their sexual orientations, Kehlani had just had Adeya and they both were seemingly close. Their short-lived fling would later be confirmed when Victoria released the song ‘Touch Me’ on her last project and Kehlani hopped on the remix. Meanwhile, Kehlani’s relationship with Shaina (pictured bottom left) was very overt and all over her Instagram feed from my recollection. And as you can see, Shaina looks absolutely nothing like Victoria. They look like the complete opposite of eachother in every aspect which is kind of alarming(?) to say the least because why is it that the women she proudly claims as her partners tend to have a very racially ambiguous look such as herself but her ‘sneaky links’ on the other hand are undoubtedly black women? Again, it could just be me jumping conclusions. You know, I’m kinda good for that however something tells me I’m not. Y’all be the judge of the material though.

Last but not least, I’d like to touch on Ms. Raven Tracy very briefly. I was very weary about even including in this segment and if I should just put her in a entirely separate blog post with other women who openly date abusers despite their checkered past (alongside Nicki Minaj & her r*pist murderer of a husband, India Love & Sheck Wes etc.) being this particular blog post was based around the theme of lightskinned/mixed women dating men with extremely problematic views about DSBW. Raven obviously isn’t lightskinned or mixed however I refused to ignore how contradictory her [former] relationship with an alleged (I used this word very loosely and mainly for legality purposes.) serial r*pist while promoting a brand that is all about feminism & body positivity. This also traces back to A$AP Rocky by default being that Ian Connor is his very close friend and he came to Connor’s defense when several women came forward detailing accounts of Connor allegedly s*xually assaulting them. (I wish I could place the actual video of what A$AP Rocky said verbatim but Tumblr only allows one video per blog post. 🙄)

Back in June of this year, Ian & Raven had a back & forth on Twitter after Ian tweeted about Raven “fucking everybody” behind his back. I can only assume that he was alluding to Tori Brixx posting a video of her ex, Rich the Kid & Raven kissing on her story. Disgusted is not even the word to describe my feeling when she admitted she stuck by Ian despite of his many allegations of s*xual abuse because she loved him and her being a empath causes her to want to help everybody. Imagine aiding and abetting a predator and even paying for his bail & legal fees just to turn around and expect sympathy because this same individual cheated on you and exploited you all over Twitter for the public to see. The same man that you would get back with not even a WEEK after the fact & turn off your IG comments because it isn’t our “business” after making it our business...

That being said, I just genuinely want to know: Why do these women completely go against what they stand for in regards to these men? Maybe it was never genuine from jump street and if that’s the case, why jump on the bandwagon of performative activism? Is it because it’s profitable right now? Is it because disrespecting black women is not an immediate death sentence to your careers and more often than not actually helps you advance even further? I guess that’s the billion dollar question that’ll never truly be answered. I just want the world to stop using black women as their stepping stool to get to where they need to go and then discarding of us when we’re no longer beneficial. Support us all the way or don’t support us at all. We deal with enough disrespect as is so we’d appreciate if y’all would stop straddling the fence and partake in your misogynoir out loud if that’s what you choose to do. We have no use for fake allyship and quite frankly, it’s doing more harm for us than good. Please and thank you!

Sincerely,

- 𝙼𝙸𝚂𝚂 𝙴𝙳𝙶𝙰𝚁 𝙰𝙻𝙻𝙴𝙽 𝙷𝙾𝙴. 💋

[theramseyloft]

7/30/21

Waiting for the call from UGA to get Khou.

Doing the most urgent loft work in the meantime.

Just finished mucking nest boxes.

The time has come to employ the loft's little tower fan.

As well insulated as it is, it's still a metal building and the AC unit just cannot complete.

Blowing at full strength, you can't feel it more than 6 in from the vent.

Good gawd, I started at 7:30am, and it is SO humid that in an hour of work, I'm dripping, and have developed the tell-tale muscle aches, nausea, and lip-tingling of heat exhaustion.  Came in to cool back down after setting up the tower fan.

Patron: "A fan in the window would help"

"The easiest way to keep a space as cool as possible is to create a path of airflow"

Thank you

Ok!

Breakfast eaten, water get, time to resume!

I laid this fucking brick out to hose down yesterday...

The Fire Nation used it as scaffolding to build a nursery and fill it with larva that quickly.

This is why I have to be so aggressive about treating them, and why my loft help just turning the bricks and weight stones shit side down is so dangerous.

Patron: "Holy shit! Fire ants are insane."

Patron: "They are an aggressive species from the Amazon, of course they're aggressive and quick lol"

Patron: "Oh! They are not native to the US? I never knew that! I just remember learning very quickly when we moved to the south from Canada that they are mean little bastards"

They are not!  

They are adapted to the river banks and survive the frequent flooding by clinging together in living rafts.  

An individual can hold her breath up to 14 days, allowing the rafts to survive until they make landfall again.  

They really love the American south because the high humidity keeps soil moist enough to build mounds in very quickly without the disruption of floods to cause breaks in reproduction.

Patron: "That explains so much"

They are able to remain in constant larva factory mode, and with all US populations only coming from a few accidentally imported queens, they are closely enough related not to see any other US fire ant colony as a rival.

So the entire US population of fire ants is a single massive supercolony with neither predators nor competition.

Patron: "That is super disturbing"

"But also very informative."

Yeah, they are monsters here that absolutely will hunt and eat you if they get the opportunity.

My husband and I used to have our bed against the wall.

The little bitches swarmed in by hundreds through a hole in the insulation one night in the second year we were married, infested the blankets, and woke us up by stinging us en mass.

Patron: "i cant imagine how fucking horrifying that was to wake up to"

I still have nightmares.  

I can't fall asleep by laying there with my eyes closed.  

You know how there are always after images when you close your eyes? Usually just meaningless, wandering patches of light and dark?  

That's what the swarm on my skin looked like in the dark, and instead of just being patches of light and dark, my asshole brain highlights their segments, legs, and animates their attack behavior of clamp on with jaws, sting until prey stops moving, or ant is crushed or otherwise pried off.  

I get the most ungody adrenaline spike if I'm not too physically exhausted to notice the visual.

It makes trying to fall asleep a real bitch for me.

Got an update call about Khou.

They don't have a specific time for him to get his CT scan done, beyond that it will happen today.

If it happens late enough in the day that he won't be fully recovered from sedation by the time they close, we'll have to wait until tomorrow to come get him.

Patron: "How far is it to Athens from where you are? You said you took him to UGA right?"

Two hour drive.

Patron: "Hang in there. Fingers crossed they can do it early today"

Thank you.

Neither I, nor my husband are really ok with out him.

The house feels wrong...

Had to come back in for the permethrine.

The fire nation is trying a different foraging approach into the loft and fuck no.

Threshold treated.

Komodore asked Patch to smooch-feed her

Farthing tread Luxie.

Then he crouched to be tread and she, then Alex, tread him.

I think I was wrong about Mote.

Wukong looks lighter than he is because of his chest fluff.

Close inspection of their wings shows Mote to have the same pattern as Wukong, obscured by the deeper Dirty pigmentation of babies under 4 months.

Arco has been doing the best job helping Passenger set her Fegg.

Leela is quite insistently crouching for Nobu, but her foob kinda over balances her when he's on top, causing her to stumble into a tilted run under him to keep from faceplanting.

He hangs on with the brazen tenacity of a bull rider, and has managed to finish three times today.

It is exactly as hilarious as it sounds, and I'll try to catch it on video, if I can.

Look at Arco on his practice egg <3

Patron: "a grown boy!"

Just got an update from UGA.

khou just finished his CT, but they close at 5pm, and he's unlikely to have recovered enough to be discharged in two hours, even if I left right now.

The projected discharge is between 9 and 10am.

His little heart stopped.

(Pretty much every Patron sent their condolences)

Cousins: "We're on the way, Dani, I'm sorry!  30-40 minutes i think ..."

Can't wait.

We can go say goodbye, if we leave now and fold space.

Husband: "The vets are trying one more time to get his heart to start back up.  We are on the road now."

We got to UGA.  

No word on if the last effort succeeded.

Waiting for his Dr to come see us.

Husband: "He didn't make it."

Husband: "He had lesions in his lungs.  The sedation was too much for his damaged lungs to handle."

Patron: "im so sorry. is there any idea what the lesions are from?"

Husband: "Not yet.  They have not gotten all the results back from his tests yet."

"The vet took a clay imprint of his feet with his name on it."

Patron: "sending all the love to both of you"

Husband: "Thank you.  We both are recovering."

Thank you so much to all of my patrons for the outpouring of loving condolences.

[phoenixyfriend]

Thoughts on “Auntie Soka and Little Leia” now that I’ve actually got it posted:

Call it a director’s cut! The process of actually writing the thing, and also jokes made along the way. Link to the actual fic.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the energy for image descriptions, even the text screenshots. Might come back that later. Most of this was DMs with @atagotiak​.

This was an entire thing before I even started writing:

Before I decided on ages and stuff Ahsoka, to Jango, who has had zero contact with Kaminoans: Okay I know I'm a Jedi kid so you hate me but this toddler is your clone from the future. Jango, tired: What the FUCK are you talking about. Rex, barely able to talk: Don't you dare leave me with him, Commander! Ahsoka: I'm not going to leave you I just--I'm so tired I'm so fucking tired I haven't slept in five days and someone tried to kidnap Leia two days ago I am so fucking tired I need help

Ben: [twenty years of depression followed by a 'now I'm safe' breakdown over the course of weeks] Sokari: [whatever the FUCK this mess is]

When Ahsoka mentions there only being three other Jedi at the time of her death,  I was thinking Kanan, Yoda, and Obi-Wan (Leia told her about the latter two living past her). She's not counting anyone that received training after the Temple fell, and she didn’t know about Cal.

When Leia says  “I was adopted and raised by one of the founders of the rebellion, a movement built on the desire to instate freedom and democracy in a galaxy that had lost even the pretense.”

Depa: I'm no therapist but I diagnose you with "incredibly fucked up." Ahsoka: yeah, that’s fair

"Why did you pick Depa for--" She's pretty and I'm gay. Also because of the Kanan thing But mostly I'm gay "It's not a visual medi--" GAY

Empty of context beyond general post-fic AU: "Hey Sokari, we need to engage in psychological warfare against this individual and--" "I'm going to break into his office and leave a threatening note on his desk and leave no other sign that I was there. He'll see that his security is nothing and the only reason he isn't dead is because I'm too nice to kill him." "...okay, not what we were planning, but that works. Why is that your first choice?" "I really like breaking and entering, it's soothing." Ben just standing there with a bland smile like This Is Normal.

"We need someone to infiltrate a highly guarded facility in hostile territory." "So we're sending the Torrent kids?" [sigh] "We're sending the Torrent kids."

Rex and Sokari insist on both going by "Torrent" even though Rex could be a Fett. Jango really wants him to be a Fett. Rex has too many grudges to agree to being a Fett for... a while.

I really hope it's blatantly obvious that Ahsoka's not a reliable narrator for some things Ahsoka: Fett could care less if I died Jango: jfc even if you are older than me I can see you're fucked up. Drink your hot chocolate. Hells. She's got good reason to expect him to hate her as a Jedi! BUT. THAT IS NOT REFLECTIVE OF REALITY

We don’t get a lot of actual characterization for Jango, but the way I played him out here is he has never really parsed that Jedi are people before all this. It's a lot harder to treat them as a monolith when the traumatized former child soldier is having regular breakdowns in your shitty little kitchen

Fett: I respect you Ahsoka: No, don't do that

Ahsoka’s vigilantism is something that, in my mind, she's associating heavily with Zygerria and then the clones.

I figured that she never bothered to learn Quinlan’s teacher’s name but in the process of looking up some basic facts (whether he had a surname), I found that Wookiepedia was forced to give us a VERY wide range of possible death in Legends.

Please take a moment to imagine Quinlan's FACE when Ahsoka initially dismisses him. Quinlan has put a lot of effort into being rogueishly charming! It's very useful for his line of work! He knows to expect either irritation or a return flirtation when he acts like this with people his own age! Ahsoka is not flustered OR rolling her eyes and insulting him, she's just ignoring him and it's a bit of a blow to the ego

This just makes me really happy:

This was the initial comment I made, as a joke What if Maul is just. There. On one of the planets they make a pitstop at. What if Maul exists as the walking problem he is, but fifteen, and Ahsoka immediately tries to kick his ass and drag him back to Coruscant. I do not have room for this plot but What If

Despite not having room for this plot, I proceeded to write this plot.

Maul is kidnapped and it’s the best thing that ever happened to him HE'S FIFTEEN HE'S DUMB AS SHIT AND HAS A BAD ATTITUDE AND YEAH HE'S A DARKSIDER BUT HE'S FIFTEEN

Ahsoka: I sense... Maul [takes off sprinting] Rex: [immediately takes Jango's blaster and runs after her] Jango: Wait who Tholme: Who Quinlan: Who Jango: [looks at Leia] Leia: I don't know who that is either! Ahsoka, already wrestling a teenager to the ground: Oh no, you're a child, REX STUN HIM AND GRAB THE CUFFS, I'M SURE FETT OR THOLME HAS SOME

Fighting him isn't even legal, they have NO evidence of criminal wrongdoing, so first she needs to yell until he admits to something she can fight him about

Ahsoka: When I see Maul, it's on SIGHT Maul: WHO ARE YOU

Ahsoka: The Force didn't give me hands just to NOT throw them when I run into That Crafty Son Of A Bitch

Ben, when they arrive, after the tearful reunion: You... you brought Maul. Ahsoka: Well, yeah, he's fifteen and kinda dumb. I figured we could drag him here and force him into therapy, see what happens. Ben: I can't quite tell through the gag, but I think he's threatening to feed you your own spleen. Ahsoka: Lol, yeah.

Ben is absolutely on team "get Maul therapy" and will fight the Council on rehabilitating the baby Sith But also it's like. Here's your daughter! And your niece! And your daughter's QPP! Also your best friend, but baby, and his teacher, and the biological origin of a number of people you cared for deeply! AND ALSO THE GUY WHO SPENT LITERAL DECADES CRAVING YOUR DEATH, FOR SOME REASON

I just really want Ahsoka lovingly bullying Maul She gives him noogies and the horns don't protect him because girl has reinforced gloves

Maul's only allowed a low-power training saber and his fights with Sokari involve Much Taunting by her and Eventual Screaming by him, and everyone pops by to see: 1. Sokari doing the most absurd flips, for fun. 2. The bullshit that is ataru-shien reverse-grip jar'kai in the hands of someone who makes it work 3. What a Sith lightsaber form looks like 4. Just the general nonsense that is the way these two fight

Tia said “Wrt ridiculous flips. I'm remembering that time she beheaded four Kryst'ad at once.” and I just Rex brings up the quadruple beheading at one point to get someone to stop asking questions and the awkward, horrified silence almost makes him regret it. And then Sokari just snorts and makes a joke about how Rex once speared a slaver point-blank and everyone's just like hello??? "are you two okay" "no"

Maul absolutely starts crushing on Sokari after a 'sword under chin' moment and she's just very "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh you're fifteen, bye" GO MAKE PUPPY EYES AT OBI-WAN OR SOMETHING

The crushes are the worst part of everything, really, she's an attractive young woman that can kick a lot of ass, and a lot of people are into that! Unfortunately, most of those people are a decade younger than she is, mentally, because all the people her actual age look at her and see a child on account of the 17yo body.

It’s almost a good thing she’s in no place mentally for a relationship.

I just want Ahsoka to wear beskar.... I think that would be Nice........

This AU is also what caused this post.

I'm deeply enamored by the idea that Ahsoka can win fights against "older" padawans pretty much unilaterally, even when they team up 2v1 And then she offers to fight 5v1 "But only if I have permission to fight dirty." Ben approves it, a horror show full of "I fought many wars and will scream in your face or kick you in the balls if that's what it takes" follows She wins. There are no permanent injuries, but her reputation certainly gets weirder. Nobody under the rank of Knight agrees to let her fight dirty again. She just lets that stand because, well, she's not actually a padawan, she's thirty-three.

I’m not going to write this but my brain was EVIL and suggested it:

IT WOULD BE REALLY SAD IDK maybe 9yo Anakin has nightmares about what's happening to baby Ahsoka because bullshit about time-traveling force bonds IDK ANYWAY he cries to Sokari about the nightmares and she's like "oh shit" and it's time to go rescue herself from motherfucker unlimited

It's either that or she's like, expecting to welcome mini-me aaaany day now, for like, several months, before she realizes Something Went Wrong. Anakin’s dreams could even start right as she’s starting to realize something’s off.

Obi-Wan has never had a padawan that doesn't at some point bite Even Luke will, when pushed

OH also once the twins get Baby's First Lightsaber (training sabers, not real kyber), Sokari begs to borrow them for a dumb joke and tells Rex to get on her shoulders for a "Grievous Greeting" and they do The Thing

Jango and Ahsoka wrt Quinlan is just “Do I need to beat him up for you” “You realize I’ve beaten up sith lords before?”

JANGO'S TRYING He's just. "Can we be friends? Can I--can I be the guy that just noticeably gets in the way of a creep on the subway so you can be more comfortable without someone making a scene? I'm fucking trying here, give me a hint."

We didn’t actually figure out Jango’s age until this point. The only reason Fett's age matters is for Quinlan making a Wild Oats quip after Jango says he didn't know about Rex until a few weeks ago, and Fett going "How old do you think I am? And how old do you think the kid is?" and Quinlan getting Very Awkward as he does the math. Rex overhears and lets Quinlan sweat for a bit before saying "I'm a genetically-modified clone someone grew in a tube, he didn't know or have reason to know until he saw me with Sokari." Which is like. Eight additional layers of WTF, obviously, but at least Jango gets to avoid awkward wild oats jokes

Like, you’d expect the rebuttal to be ‘he’s my brother just with a biiig age gap’ or ‘he’s my nephew’

I find it very unfortunate for Quinlan that I've decided his defining characteristic in this context is going to be repeatedly putting his foot in his mouth

He’s trying so hard but "That sounds like a cool thing, maybe I'll ask ab--and it's another fucking trauma."

I'm doing Ahsoka&Jango t w i c e (there’s another fic where I’m doing it)

It’s just a fun dynamic! So much resentful respect.

Like she's twenty seconds away from calling him a bitch at any given time and he's just there like "I don't like you but I do see you move like you're about to tell an entire building to get on their knees with their hands in the air and I can respect that" Also she's probably much less judgmental about using blasters than Obi-Wan is The Maul subplot actually started with me daydreaming about Ahsoka grabbing a blaster for Reasons

I like the idea of Jango just deciding the most Useful thing he can do is help teach the Smol how to fight. He's AWKWARD around Rex and Soka because he doesn't know if there's anything he CAN teach them.

I didn’t actually plan for Tholme to figure out the age thing, he just SAID it and I had to sit there like Wait.

Ahsoka, Rex & Leia: ahhh, children Tholme: you say that like you aren’t children

I liked getting to write Rex's little "I have worked with all of them, and they're all Terrible" He loves them But They once got stranded on a planet that didn’t exist and Ahsoka died and Anakin killed a god.

There was research and discussion as to whether Ahsoka could win against Tholme but seeing as she held her own against Vader, and fought Grievous at that physical age without dying, etc.... yeah, the only thing holding her back was her body not being what she was used to, and she’s had a few weeks go adjust.

“I miss being able to just jump off skyscrapers” is such a jedi thing

Jango: I'll take the gun back if he tries to leave, they can't get far before--WHAT THE FUCK He knows Jedi are scary but he’s still not really used to just how over the top ridiculous they are He knows how to deal with Jedi in battle, not Whatever The Fuck These People Are Doing

Rex isn't even a Jedi, he's just so used to working with them. “Oh yes time for free-falling without a parachute again, same shit as always.”

Tia: I’m imagining Jango freaking out and Quinlan and Tholme being like. Concerned but mostly exasperated Clearly if they’re jumping off buildings it must be serious? But jfc they could’ve maybe communicated a bit more?

Leia: I want to finish my juice Tholme: Quin, stay with her while we go figure out what those two are doing. Quinlan: Wait what

Jango: Oh now he’s jumping off a building too??? Tholme: Sokari, you are not registered! You can't legally jump out windows yet! Jango: What the hell is going on? Is this normal?

We don’t necessarily know how often Ahsoka and Maul ran into each other after Mandalore. There was the later thing on Malachor, but other than that I'm just going with the idea that they ran into each other every year or two and just went for the eyes like feral cats

Ahsoka: I need to kick ass and you're coming with me. Rex: Yeah, okay. [several minutes later] Rex: Whose ass are we kicking?

Ahsoka and Rex

Neloms aren’t a SW fruit to the best of my knowledge, I just wanted to mess around with lemons/melons

Jango: you didn’t think any of this through, did you? Rex: you were there, you know we didn’t "When the Jedi says to jump out a window, I jump out a window."

Tholme’s real composed about stalking the ancient nigh-mythical enemy of his people, very “Life is already so goddamn weird”

This fic has been so heavy on the trauma but then I introduce Maul and suddenly it's the worst kind of comedy Nobody is competent, everyone's a little dumb, the bad guy is just grocery shopping

My propensity for banter has turned this into a six-person buddy cop comedy about Maul buying grapes They spend a significant amount to time ineffectually stalking Maul before Quin suggests the sensible option Quinlan just "You remember this is my literal job and specialty right"

Ahsoka sees Maul and all her brain cells go out the window except "Fight good" Usually she doesn’t need to worry about doing things legally. Maybe she needs to worry about someone seeing her do illegal things but she spent the past 15 yrs in a place where her existing was illegal

I feel like he’s also maybe kinda wanting to reassert that yes he is competent. Bc like. Ahsoka’s been kinda condescending this whole time and also can beat everyone up so. It's not his fault that he's actually the youngest person there, but.

Jango is finding this whole being friendly to Jedi thing a lot more overwhelming than he thought it would be. And overwhelming in different ways.

Maul usually signifies things getting worse and more horrifyingly tragic but he's just a dumb teen that they needed to arrest for his own good.

Quinlan: Look, I'm useful! Ahsoka: I've been through hell, wanna hear? Quinlan: NO. I DON'T. WHY.

Quinlan: I understand the concept of joking about your traumas, I do it sometimes myself! But sith hells that’s a lot of trauma.

Quinlan just wanted her to treat him as a Competent Individual, and here she is whipping out stories about Dying and Gods and the Force insists it's the truth and he just???? And apparently emo darksider over there is a Sith. And just, sure. Why not

A lot of people’s interactions with the time travelling disaster lineage is just

Tholme and Fett arguing and  Ahsoka's just waiting for a moment to pop in with "Hey, when's the last time either of you worked with the other's culture before this mess? Yeah, that's what I thought."

Much like Leia and Ahsoka hurting each other earlier, and Tholme figuring out the de-aging, we ALSO have Fett’s confrontation with Ahsoka being something the characters just did, rather than something I planned.

FTR the only time I managed to trigger myself while writing this fic was the “your behavior isn’t actually acceptable and we’ve all been trying really hard to give you room to recover but you have to at least make an effort to not be a bitch”

Writing about people having PTSD and symptoms of such: Yay! Writing about people having PTSD and engaging in toxic behavior to cope: Shit Ahsoka had... basically my exact reaction. It's "remind yourself that you're in the wrong, that they have a point, and then be overly formal in the apology because fuck if you accidentally make them feel sorry for you when they're the injured party"

Quinlan: Can we be friends? I mean, you're an asshole, but you're really cool. Let's be friends. (He MIGHT be nursing a crush) (Neat mysterious girl who can beat him up.)

Also he realises she's probably nicer when not having a slow-motion breakdown He's like "Huh, you'll probably be less of an asshole once you've gotten therapy."

...also, she pretty and got Nice Biceps

I love writing a good mental breakdown

I was so close to including a "he tried to kill me" just early enough for Jango to wildly misinterpret as her thinking Quinlan tried to kill her. He'd have been very confused, considering Quinlan's the one that called them down in a panic and currently has Ahsoka having her massive breakdown in his lap But

Tia:  I could see Jango interpreting it as idk, Quin resembling someone or for a moment acting like someone who tried to kill her and she had a flashback or something like that

There's absolutely room for a couple reasonable interpretations there And "trapped in a flashback about someone who tried to kill her" is absolutely what's happening! Just. You know. For a different reason. Jango probably wouldn’t assume Quin would hurt her, for one thing he seems to like her, for another even if he did he’s smart enough to pick a way that wouldn’t be so likely to get him caught

I had to step back and actually say “Also I'm just. Wow. I'm really just shoveling QPP Rex&Ahsoka at full speed”

Me, a few weeks ago, joking: Two halves of the same idiot black ops specialist Me, now, entirely seriously: Two halves of the same idiot black ops specialist

Me, belatedly: Oh, Ahsoka being joyfully mean to people was a form of mania she was unconsciously using to build a barrier between herself and her impending meltdown

She went from "just died" to "in charge of Rex and Leia" in like. Two minutes.

Confession: I've been delighting in the mental image of this whole Mess leading Jango to try to retake Mandalore, and Ahsoka loans him a saber for a 1v1 to get the darksaber.

“Can’t I just fight him barehanded? That’s how I did it on Galidraan.” "But the drama, Fett!"

Probably Rex has learned how to use a saber as well, because you never know when you have to borrow a weapon

I later changed my mind to Jango asking her to help, rather than her just sneak-teaching him, but it was funny.

Background nonsense to all this is Ahsoka and Rex, despite Rex being as force-sensitive as a lump of coal, having developed a process where she can extend her sensitivity to him mind-to-mind for weird symbiotic battle trance that scares everyone around them. It’s very similar to Battle meditation.

CONTEXT FOR LEIA BEING WORRIED ABOUT THOLME HIDING THINGS: Tholme is hiding the fact that the Council reached out and told him that the people he picked up might be connected to Ben and Luke, who showed up after the Depa thing but a solid week and change before Jango's ship makes it to the Temple. They asked that he not share that information to avoid getting anyone's hopes up in case the two situations aren't related. Ben and Luke haven't shared enough information for anyone to really be sure if the other three are connected Because the info Tholme has isn't quite the info Jango has, etc. And they can't just say Ben is a future Obi-Wan over comms

I just have a lot of feelings about people trying to do something right and just. Nobody's at fault! Not really! It's just complicated!

Tia: I like how when Ahsoka isn’t doing maladaptive trauma response stuff she’s very mature. And of course she’s had to be but it’s a good like, contrast. Where when she slows down to think about things she’s very sensible

Jango just spends most of this story lowkey wanting Ahsoka to Be His Friend but there's too much baggage that he's only metaphysically responsible for

Local aroace(?) has a squish

Ahsoka: He just wants to get on my good side because of Rex. Jango: I'm pretty sure you could kill an entire army without trying but you wouldn't because you have actual morals and stuff... and when I met you it was because you were killing yourself trying to keep (what appeared to be) children safe... you seem cool please be my friend.......

Ahsoka’s #1 weakness: mountains of trauma Ahsoka’s #2 weakness: she just doesn’t get why so many people think she’s cool and want her to be their (girl)friend

Jango, a 27yo massacre survivor who's killed Jedi masters with his bare hands: [gets lectured on various government structures by a tiny girl that's missing several teeth and needs to sit on books to see the table properly]

Ahsoka was raised in a religious meritocracy but developed all her opinions during a galactic war and then became a vigilante spy, Rex comes from a military cult, Leia is from an inherited monarchy that participates in democracy, Quinlan was originally from what appears to be a dynastic dictatorship, and IDK about Tholme other than that he is also from the religious meritocracy. And in legends Quinlan came to the religious meritocracy after his aunt sacrificed his parents to a vampire cult and then forced him to experience the psychometric echoes of that. There's just. A lot going on.

Leia at least has knowledge about structure and admin in theory that isn't based in either the military or populations under 10k

Jango: I want to be your friend. Ahsoka: Sounds fake.

I am unfairly fond of "Rex destroys a conversation by bringing up his own horrifying childhood and calling it a cult"

"Why does Sokari call you 'Rex'ika'?" "Because she's older than me." "...can I--?" "No."

Nickname privileges are extended ONLY to Ahsoka and older clones. There are no more older clones, so it's just Ahsoka.

Me joking about Star Wars AUs: Would you like a crackship? Me writing actual Star Wars fic: My favorite character type is apparently “too traumatized to have a relationship” so this is at least 90% gen.

I had to pull a scene opening at one point because Ahsoka's skill with not getting shot is actually much less useful than Tholme's clearance levels.

Now I really want a team-up of Ahsoka, Rex, and Jango where they do have to get in a dogfight of the "she flies, we shoot" variety and Fett just has to scream because the speeder thing to catch Maul was one thing, but this....

Ahsoka, before TCW: I know all the traffic rules but I'm not that great at flying! Ahsoka, after TCW: I'm great at flying but if you let me behind the wheel we are absolutely getting arrested.

She went from "knows the rules but doesn't have the skills" to "has the skills but primarily in the form of not getting shot" which! Is delightful! "Bet I can get us through that alley--" "DO NOT"

Jango and Ahsoka are both just very "Is this friendship? Is this camaraderie? My heart's been fried on platonic love by so many murders that I'm not sure anymore." "I've lost a lot of friends. I kind of forgot how to make those."

I have no idea if "hasn't been closer than Alderaan except that one trip to Chandrila" is canon-compliant but ehhhhhhhh It feels plausible enough?

Belatedly realized that I could just explain my optimal Rex&Ahsoka dynamic as just... drift compatible. It's vague enough on the specifics while still digging into the meat of what they mean to each other and how they work together. The terminology is already in existence. I can just use it.

Romantic? Platonic? Familial? Doesn't matter! They're drift compatible.

They are important to each other and that is what matters

I really like the Leia&Quinlan thing. He's just like "This small child needs a friend that isn't super depressed," and decided he's going to be her friend. I keep trying to toss in "Quinlan volunteers to 'baby'sit." She's not much older and she has a Baby Brain, it works out

There's a running bet as to whether Leia will leave the Order the second she turns thirteen, or if she'll let Sokari "train" her for a few years first. And... that’s how I came up with Leia Antilles, Senator of Serenno.

They'll be bullshitting Ben as her new master to "finish out the padawanship" since they can't tell everyone she's really in her thirties and he's conveniently there and already knows everything and was half her master anyway. Like Ben was planning on taking on Luke, but Luke is "six" and even he can't swing that as old enough to be a Padawan, and it's not like Sokari will take more than a handful of years to justify knighthood, sooooooooo

[incarnateirony]

God someone just set off my salty cynical historian side. Weird romanticization of US war history. Like, am I glad the US fought the nazis, obv. Do I think we did it bc we were haplessly attacked then stood up to a Bad Guy? bro the news at the time kept going THE ECONOMY

I'm not even kidding. The in-era news barely mentioned like, fighting the nazis or why the nazis were bad. America's investment wasn't in any moral standing at the time, not simply because it was RIGHT. Even THEN the news was like "THE ECONOMY IS BOOMING!! fight nazis ig"

Obviously it's good we. yknow. fought the nazis. but witnessing the in-era news feed at the Vulcan monument completely knocked the fucking taste out of my mouth. Even then, the US had ignoble, selfish focus. And that was hard to chew on.

It was like witnessing the birth of what's become the modern war machine economy we have today. All those news clips, I think I heard something along the lines of "nazis are bad" like once. But MUH ECONOMY just kept going on and on. It's literally why Birmingham AL EXISTS.

Seeing that became clear. Attacked or not, the US simply wouldn't have gotten involved if they didn't see profit out of it. The news barely reported on the racism and genocide. Just enough to rile people and cause fear response, not enough to really honor the lives being lost. But lots about the economy. Most soldiers did it for the right reasons. But the nation? No.

Like--individuals. Individual people, that were angry about hitler, and what he was doing to people, they had their hearts in the right place fighting back. But the vulcan monument is like a standing tribute to the ignoble US war machine's actual interests. Money. Fucking. Money.

I seriously feel like I took psychic damage that left permanent scars when I watched those in-era news clips. It was goddamn devastating. Any idea of the US like. Fighting back because, you know, hitler was killing lots of people and being a generally bad dude just. Just went down the goddamn toilet bowl. Birmingham had already ramped up an entire steel & iron industry for war before we got attacked, and as soon as that shot flew, they were yodeling about the economy of iron city from the rooftops.

Bonus round, this is all while hitler's immediate relatives that had fled any responsibility were hiding in Birmingham under the name Gruber, instead of Schicklgruber. Don't ask why I know this. I just do. And a large amount of unrecorded personal memorabilia of hitler's still sits in an unsuspecting place in Birmingham area TO THIS DAY. (unless it got moved east during their recent legal drama with the Gambles. Yes, those Gambles.)

Spoiler: the owner voted for trump

This idea that we were actually tentative to step in is. Weird. No we didn't step in until we got attacked, technically. But we didn't just jump into it heavily armed on magic. We just didn't start getting *ready* to be involved until somebody. Saw. Fucking. Money.

I don't know if I'll ever, really, recover from realizing that was the US' motivation even back then. That they were just brazenly pumping "war is good for the US economy" into US homes on the news at the time, while barely muttering off to the side about nazis being kinda bad or something. I literally feel like I incurred some sort of mental trauma trying to process that.

Individuals--people--again, were in it for the right reasons. People that went beyond basic pipeline news and dug deeper realized that yeah, nazis are really bad and shit. And those people protested and signed up to fight. But the US, like, as a nation, a government? Big fucking monetary yikes.