#but it is plainly not the world we live in

[tanadrin]

#words#can't believe tanadrin reminded me about that#gonna be fuming all day now#is it really so wrong to be miffed#that the average person's mental and verbal sloppiness#deprives humanity of the ability to communicate important things with more accuracy precision and parsimony?

Semantic drift happens in all domains in language, it just tends to follow very specific patterns sometimes. It's still perfectly possible to communicate the idea "I mean this in a literal sense, and not as a generic intensifier"! Fluent speakers of English have lots of strategies for clarifying this sort of thing when it's important, leveraging either specific English constructions or sort of general Gricean-maxim-style universals of human communication.

It's not down to anyone's "verbal or mental sloppiness," either. At least, no one is more sloppy here than you yourself are: the feature of language that causes this kind of semantic drift is intrinsic to how the human brain handles abstract communication in general, and even if how individuals speak did not change over their lifetimes, it would not be possible to transmit language from one generation to the next without some degree of semantic (and phonological and grammatical) change.

But it's also interesting to me what when people level this sort of complaint, there's not actually any fundamental miscommunication in play. Anon is not confused about why people are using words like "unthinkable" in this way, or confused about what they really mean. The act of communication is not being impeded. The reason people actually complain about this sort of thing is generally identity politics. I mean this in the expansive, morally neutral, sociological sense. Because how we use language is an important marker of the social groups we belong to, complaining about how other people use language, or policing language use, is a way to engage in both social differentiation ("I am not like those other people, who use sloppy/crude/pretentious/foreign/etc. language") or as a form of boundary maintenance ("If you want to be considered a member of our social group, one of the cool kids, etc., use language in my/our preferred way").

People levy the same sorts of utterly banal complaints about how other people dress, what other people eat, how other people walk or gesture, etc., etc., but all those behaviors generally have some material component, whereas language carping is utterly immaterial. It literally has zero consequences if someone uses language slightly differently than you would prefer. This doesn't mean you're not allowed to complain about language use. But recognize it for what it is--extremely silly, extremely low-stakes stuff. It's Kids These Days Are On Their Damn Phones All Day bitching and moaning. (And do keep in mind while it is a minimal vice 99% of the time, it's rude to do it to someone's face, and people who really aggressively police other people's language are actual assholes, so be on guard against that sort of thing.)

My contrarian take is I'm just really sick of hearing some disaster be described as "unprecedented" or "unthinkable" when it's entirely thinkable, very well-precedented, and even expected. Maybe worse than in recent memory? Sure. Influenced by serious underlying systematic factors? Sure. But it's only ever "unthinkable" because people choose to ignore obvious risks that have always been there.

intensifiers have a pretty regular lifecycle where they enter common parlance, go through semantic bleaching, and become generic. getting worked up over this is a bit like getting worked up that "very" doesn't mean "literally" or "truly" anymore.

[beanghostprincess]

I mean… wlw content get overshadowed by mlm ships everyday so it is insensitive a little

Not to sound too mean but what do you expect me to do? I get that sapphic ships get overshadowed and underrated all the time in comparison to achillean ones. Believe me. I am a lesbian who is constantly pushing their sapphic ships everywhere.

But you can't expect people to suddenly stop posting about the achillean ships they enjoy just because they're more popular than YOUR favorite ships. Is it bothersome that achillean ships get more attention for the sole reason of being a male pairing while sapphic ships get ignored or not even suggested? Yeah!!!! It's frustrating.

But if you want some change in the amount of content you see then it's YOUR fight only and others should be allowed to post whatever they like. If you want to post only sapphic ships or you're bothered by them being talked in the same light as achillean ones, then it's YOUR choice to make.

Fandom is NOT activism!!! Fandom is meant to be enjoyed in whatever way you want. Fandom is to interpret media in your own way. So, honestly, if I want to make a simple post comparing two ships I like, why should I be trying to defend myself here for that? If people don't like it, then they can just block me, scroll, move on, etc.

To think a post about comparing fictional ships is insensitive is insane to me, tbh.

[puppybotz]

To everybody claiming that luigi mangione really is the guy.

This is the manifesto the cops say they found

“To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

like "ohh yeah we got our guy, he was holding the murder weapon, a manifesto that says "Hey feds! I did that crime and did it with this gun!! this is because the US has the most expensive healthcare but we don't even live as long as some other countries? and its the fault of the american public who I hate!" anne 10 grand! is obvious that this is our guy, and he's just a low down criminal who hates your! the american public"

also if they did find him with that why would he respond to their arrest with immediate legal defense rather than dignified resignation like the manifesto implies.

[felassan]

SAG AFTRA news update:

"SAG-AFTRA Members Who Work on Video Games Go on Strike July 25th A.I. Protections Remain the Sticking Point SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director & Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, acting under the authority delegated by the SAG-AFTRA National Board, and with the unanimous advice and counsel of the Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee, called a strike of the Interactive Media Agreement, effective July 26 at 12:01 a.m. Today’s vote to strike comes after more than a year and a half of negotiations without a deal. The convenience bargaining group with whom SAG-AFTRA is negotiating includes Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc., Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc., Llama Productions LLC, Take 2 Productions Inc., VoiceWorks Productions Inc., and WB Games Inc. Any game looking to employ SAG-AFTRA talent to perform covered work must sign on to the new Tiered-Budget Independent Interactive Media Agreement, the Interim Interactive Media Agreement or the Interim Interactive Localization Agreement. These agreements offer critical A.I. protections for members. Negotiations began in October 2022 and on Sept. 24, 2023, SAG-AFTRA members approved a video game strike authorization with a 98.32% yes vote. Although agreements have been reached on many issues important to SAG-AFTRA members, the employers refuse to plainly affirm, in clear and enforceable language, that they will protect all performers covered by this contract in their A.I. language. “We’re not going to consent to a contract that allows companies to abuse A.I. to the detriment of our members. Enough is enough. When these companies get serious about offering an agreement our members can live — and work — with, we will be here, ready to negotiate,” stated SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher.   “The video game industry generates billions of dollars in profit annually. The driving force behind that success is the creative people who design and create those games. That includes the SAG-AFTRA members who bring memorable and beloved game characters to life, and they deserve and demand the same fundamental protections as performers in film, television, streaming, and music: fair compensation and the right of informed consent for the A.I. use of their faces, voices, and bodies. Frankly, it’s stunning that these video game studios haven’t learned anything from the lessons of last year - that our members can and will stand up and demand fair and equitable treatment with respect to A.I., and the public supports us in that,” said Crabtree-Ireland. “Eighteen months of negotiations have shown us that our employers are not interested in fair, reasonable A.I. protections, but rather flagrant exploitation. We refuse this paradigm – we will not leave any of our members behind, nor will we wait for sufficient protection any longer. We look forward to collaborating with teams on our Interim and Independent contracts, which provide A.I. transparency, consent and compensation to all performers, and to continuing to negotiate in good faith with this bargaining group when they are ready to join us in the world we all deserve." said Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee Chair Sarah Elmaleh.  For more information and to search whether a video game is struck, please visit sagaftra.org/videogamestrike."

[source]

[venmondiese]

(UN)WANTED DESIRES

-ˋˏ| summary: Aemond hasn't consummated his marriage with his wife, and he doesn't plan to.

✧ | Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x wife!Original Female Character

✧ | word count: 2.2k

✧ | Warnings: MDNI 18+, masturbation (m), age gap (aemond is older than his wife), aemond is definitely a perv....

✧ | notes: to the last day of age gap april.... here's my offer to yall... obviously everyone is of age

“YOU MISSED SUPPER” Her words to him are not unfamiliar, Aemond was her spouse after all. He had grown to welcome her presence in his life.

He had a thick book on his lap, as he read in his chmabers mostly alone at this hour. Aemond took no great interest in her, even if he was a dutiful husband. Almost dutiful. 

Younger than him, of only twenty years of life. He wasn’t much older, yet old enough for him to feel strange.  

She was what tales would call a little lady of the tower, living mostly protected by her parents, in a little castle and away from the real world. He even knew her first kiss had been at her wedding with him, giving him a peck rather than a proper kiss for someone her age.

“I apologise” he mutters, his index finger against his lips as he then turns to face her. He was never harsh with her, instead trying his best to be gentle “You ate alone?”

“yes” her tone is soft as she nods. She sometimes hanged around his chambers, sewing sat in the couch or reading a book alongside him.

“Send a servant to remind me” he says reflecting and he adds. “I can lose track of time. I didn't mean to keep you waiting.”

“It was okay, do not trouble yourself…”

The two of them had known each other for… maybe four months. Or five, he couldn’t recall. She was quite the lady, smart and brilliant with people, yet cautious enough. He thought of her as a kitten, or maybe a bunny, but he wasn’t as gentle with animals, or with someone sweet like her.

Aemond leaves the book on the little table nearby, and he stands up, to serve himself more wine and serve his wife some as well. 

“What are you reading?” her tone is lively.

“Something about Oldtown. I doubt it would be of your interest. It is a bit dull to your taste” he says plainly.

When he looks at her, he sees that she was wearing that slightly sheer nightgown. It was more like a robe, but he truly didn’t know of what gowns she owned for the night. He had barely slept by her side, he could count their nights together with his hand. 

“I’ll serve you some wine.” He says softly. “You must be shivering from the cold”

He can hear the soft paddling of the feet against the cold stone of the floor, as she turns to watch him. 

“I…” the words start softly, as if gaining courage. “Husband, we… we have been married for almost three moons” 

He hums, taking another cup, filling it with wine. Then he fills the other, as he hears the stammering. 

“and… we haven’t consummated the marriage, and it makes me wonder…”

“My lady…”

“It is lonely, and…”

“The castle is full of servants, and you have ladies-in-waiting.” He reminds me, not harshly, but somewhat gentle. “And you know you can confide in me with…”

He hears the soft sound the robe makes in the ground as she takes it off. He then learns of the not so innocent intentions. 

He didn’t deem his wife capable of such things, yet here they were. 

“Look, you are a lovely girl…” he sighs, rubbing his forehead slightly, leaving down the two cups of wine next to the jar. “But truly, there is no need for this.”

“There is!” she says in somewhat a loud tone, which makes him blink slightly. 

“I am not a green boy, led by base desires with no control at all.” He starts solemnly, trying not to look at her bare body. “You don’t have to.”

“But I want to” he raises his eyebrows as her tone is slightly more desperate, getting closer to him rather quickly. She was trying every tactic she knew, he was sure.

Aemond isn’t exactly sure how his wife manages to get him sitting on the chair with her atop of him, in his lap. He could notice she was a bit self aware of being naked in front of him, surely because she was not used to it. He had never asked of her anything expected from marriage, barely acknowledging her presence in his life, his young and lively wife; yet she was eager to be his wife, to be truly his wife in the eyes of the Gods, for their marriage to be consummated. 

If the situation wasn’t so serious for him, he’d be amused by the absurdity, rolling his eyes and chuckling. Instead, his eyes wander for a few moments on her body, taking in how soft she looks. She smells kind of nice, so she probably took a bath before coming here. 

“I want you to” she says to him, leaning closer to him as he looks away for a moment, recomposing himself to not give in to the temptations “I am your wife.”

“You are my wife, but you forget that you are a maiden” His tone is not as warm (if it could even name it like that) “I have no intention of defiling you like some common whore.”

“I do not want to be a married maiden. I have a duty, to give your heirs and fulfill your desires… It is my duty before the Gods, for that’s why they invented marriage and…” 

“Enough. Look, when the time comes for us to unite like man and wife, we will do it calmly and take our time. It will not be rushed, you hear me? I have respect for your times, for your innocence and purity. It is not an easy task for women to do what you are asking for…”

He can almost see how the gears turn behind her eyes, trying to understand his words and planning the next move. He wasn’t exactly sure why she was desperate all of the sudden, maybe because of court pressure, because it was dangerous to her position as his wife or even by the questions of his mother, Gods forbid. 

He knew his wife was a pious lady, he had joined her in praying before eating, and how much she read, the Seven pointed Star or any other book. ‘Gods have granted us with the capability of learning and curiosity, and I do love to learn new things’ she had said to his questioning. 

She was quick with movements, or perhaps he is a bit slower due to his exhaustion from the day, and the late hour. She takes his hand, her grip not strong but firm, as she moves his hands quickly to place them in her breasts. 

The sudden touch, the feeling of her skin into his hands, the supple flesh as he could hear her soft sigh. She was, surprisingly, warm, unlike the coldness that the night brought. 

“Don’t you find me desirable?” she begs softly, as she makes sure to press his hands on her flesh “not even a little bit?” 

“Look…”

“Take me” she says, not in a demand, but in a desperate attempt. She moves his hand along with hers, trying to fondle her breasts and he followed the movement for a bit, enjoying how she whimpered slightly“Husband, please” 

“It is not a matter of...” he says, taking his hands away “if I like you or not, it’s a principle. You are not ready.”

“I am! I am an old maiden already”

“You are not old…” he insists. “Go to bed, it will calm…”

“I have a duty to you” she says, taking his hands once again, pressing them against her breasts. “I want this. I am ready.” she says, yet he could see her hesitation.

“No. Enough.” He says, taking his hands away and standing up, grabbing her so she doesn’t fall, and leaving her on her feet. “It is not the moment. We’ll speak about, we’ll do many things before consummating our marriage. You might have a duty, to have my heirs. And it will happen, when I deem ready” 

He leans to grab her robe, and extends it to her, taking a quick peek of her body but ultimately turning his gaze away “I will not repeat myself, go to your chambers. Rest well, wife” he says, not before sitting in his chair in front of the fire once again.

He can see her disappointment, as her face turns into that pout expression that women made involuntarily, as she puts on her robe before walking quickly away, closing the doors of his chambers. 

He sighs, waiting a time or two before allowing himself to react properly. 

He hisses softly, moving his hips slightly. Who would have thought. He thinks, almost amused.

His hand drifted down to the forming bulge on his breeches, as he thinks of how brazen his wife was. Taking off her robe, presenting herself nude to him as if to tempt him…  she was witty, yet she lacked the experience. 

His cock throbbed at the memory, the feeling of her skin against his hands, and how demanding she tried to be. Perhaps she was indeed ready, perhaps not. He has grown fond of her, and he knows how painful bedding could be. He wishes not to harm her in any way. 

He unfastened his breeches with a bit of desperation, freeing his aching cock, already hard and as demanding of attention as his lady wife. He tries not to smirk, thinking how much this was what she wanted to see and feel. The tip was slightly reddish, swollen and getting slicker by the moment. 

He moves his hand to stroke his dick, starting by the base, yet stroking all the length. He groaned, his head falling back at the exquisite sensation he needed so much.

He isn’t particularly fond of thinking of his wife in these moments, yet his mind drifts to her. Her nude body, how she presented herself to him, for his use and delight. He groaned loudly, stroking himself more firmly. It was driving him insane, she was driving him insane.

Even if he ached for it, he knew he could not fuck his wife, not yet. His balls grow heavy to the thought, but he remains firm in his position: not yet. 

But how he wants to. He craves to have her under him and hear the whimpers she would let out. It drives him insane to think about it, because he had not even taken her on their wedding night, he simply discarded the bedding ceremony before it was even proposed, and sent her to sleep. It is a bittersweet feeling, but he knew that when he finally took her, it would be when she was ready, when he deem her capable to understand what the coupling entails. Until then… His hand will have to do. 

“Fuck…” Aemond hisses. His cock jerked in his hand, the burning around the base feels delicious as he moves his hips to thrust softly into his own palm. His other hand wanders lower, grabbing his balls and tugging them just slightly, the way he liked. 

He wondered if his wife would try to pleasure his cock, if she got the chance. He was pretty sure that the idea would surprise her, to use her hands or mouth to do so, but he would teach her about it. And he will die the day she makes her best to please him from her inexperience. It will drive him mad. 

His mouth gapes open, as he mutters a series of ‘fucks’ and other words that he cannot even make sense of them. He groans at the debauched images of his head, his hips rocking forward as he fucked his own fist. 

And more so while remembering the little scene she made, to get his attention. He wondered if she knew what she was asking for, if she knew what the implications of her request were. Maybe she did understand in theory, how it worked and what happened, but he knows it is very different in practice, and sometimes, like himself the first time, one could not be ready even when knowing. 

But it doesn’t stop him from remembering her soft flesh against his fingers, how her body felt pressed against his as she squirmed on his lap for his attention. It drove him insane to know that, that she wanted him too. He remembers the feeling of her breasts, he thinks that perhaps it was an enjoyable, and new, feeling to her.  His hand strokes his length faster, remembering how her nipples stiffened to his touch, at her wanton display of need. 

If she was like this now, how would she be normally? He curses lowly, as his hand strokes him in swifter motions, as he can already feel his balls tighten up in the impending release. 

He knows he won’t last longer, so he simply decides to indulge himself in his primal desires. In the aftermath, it will be shameful, he does know, but yet he will be back at it again. 

He cums hard into his fist, the feeling making him go dizzy as he clenches his jaw in an attempt not to moan too loudly, because the tightness around his balls and base feels delicious, and his cock twitches on its own as it releases rope after rope of cum. 

He leans back against the chair, panting hard after his orgasm. He cleans his hand with whatever he had in hand, and he lets his cock twitch with the last remains of his orgasm. His orgasm was as exquisite as his wife’s visit was. 

He tucks himself into his breeches, as he knows that at least, one day, his fantasies will become a reality that he would explore with his beloved wife.

[weaselandfriends]

Sword Art Online (anime)

Sword Art Online is a Frankenstein monster. Here is every episode of the first arc and how it was adapted:

Episode 1 is from the original web novel, published in 2002.

Episode 2 is from a more detailed rewrite of the story, Sword Art Online Progressive, published in 2012 (only a few months before the anime aired).

Episode 3 is from the second volume of the light novel, published in 2009.

Episode 4 is from a side story published shortly after the original web novel, in either 2002 or 2003.

Episodes 5 and 6 combine a side story published in 2007 and another side story from the eighth volume of the light novel, published in 2011.

Episode 7 is from a side story published shortly after the original web novel, likely in 2003.

Episodes 8, 9, and 10 are from the original web novel, published in 2002.

Episode 11 and 12 are from a side story published in 2003.

Episodes 13 and 14 are from the original web novel, published in 2002.

By stitching together stories written across an entire decade, often with wildly different purposes and goals, the anime is tonally erratic, with glaring plot and character inconsistencies. For example, Episode 3 is a tragic episode in which Kirito brings several low-level players to a high-level floor, leading to their deaths. Kirito is traumatized; he later explains that this incident is why he plays as a solo player, so nobody else will ever get hurt because of him. Episode 4, by contrast, is a lighthearted episode in which Kirito—having learned nothing, because this story was written six years before the previous one—brings a low-level player to a high-level floor as bait for dangerous player-killers. When the low-level player is comedically groped by a tentacle monster and cries out for Kirito to save her, Kirito only shrugs and says, "Come on, it's not that powerful." He's ultimately correct, and this time the player survives, but what happened to his trauma?

These inconsistencies, combined with Sword Art Online's massive popularity, made it the favorite target of the fledgling anime video essay community circa 2014 to 2017. Though it's possible to do a longform video poring over every single plot hole for almost anything, Sword Art Online made it easy; half of its "plot" was never intended to be arranged in this way, and even when there was intent, it was the intent of an amateur author writing their first-ever story. You couldn't generate a work more perfect for endless nitpicking and angry rants in a lab.

But if the show is blatantly incompetent, what made it so popular?

It's tempting to ascribe its popularity to "right place, right time." By 2012, the year Sword Art Online came out, the internet had changed the primary way people interacted socially. Rather than being bound by family, proximity, race, creed, religion, or so on, people grouped together by hobby. "Gamer" was now a community-binding identity, an attribute that distinguished a person and their niche online space from the othered outside. And the Gamers craved legitimacy. They craved the approval and recognition of mainstream culture. They craved representation, that feeling of seeing yourself reflected in the world around you.

The world refused them. The mood of the entrenched pop cultural elite was best encapsulated by Roger Ebert, famous film critic, who had been waging a years-long crusade against video games as an artistic medium. In 2005, in response to the live-action Doom movie, Ebert said, "Video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized[,] and empathetic." He reiterated this claim in statements and essays in 2006 and 2010, and in March 2012, on the eve of Sword Art Online's airing, described Dark Souls—Dark Souls!—as a "soul-deadening experience." "Video games can never be art," he asserted plainly later that year.

In this milieu, it makes sense why Gamers glommed onto Sword Art Online. If nothing else, Sword Art Online takes video games seriously, more seriously than any non-video game media before it (asterisk; excepting .hack). This seriousness manifests in a consistent theme, a singular perpetually present thread that lingers even as plot, character, and tone skew wildly, stated by Kirito to Klein in Episode 1:

"This may be a virtual world, but I feel more alive here than I do in the real world."

This statement defines Asuna, who stops seeing her time trapped in the game as years stolen from her life, and instead learns to live each moment as if it were truly real. It defines Silica, mourning her dead Neopet and willing to risk her actual life to revive it. It defines Lisbeth, hurtling a million miles into the air but still for a moment enraptured by the beauty of a digital sun shining over a digital land. It defines Griselda, murdered by her husband Grimlock for motives he can only confusingly explain as related to how she "changed" in the game, how she became more confident, more self-realized, while he sank into despair (he was not a Gamer. He lacked the Gamer spirit). It defines Yui, the sentient NPC whom Kirito and Asuna adopt as part of a pantomimed marriage that the show's nauseatingly boring second arc is about protecting against an outside world that does not acknowledge it. And it defines Akihiko Kayaba, the game's creator, who when confronted at the end over why he trapped 10,000 people in this death game, can only say that he no longer remembers, before rhapsodizing about the "castle in the sky" he so achingly desired to bring to life. Unstated is that, to make it truly alive, he needed to make it—and the people inside it—capable of death. This logic is twisted, even more bizarre than Grimlock's murder confession, but neither the scene's wistfully poignant tone nor Kirito's responses reject it.

As the video essayists have done, it's pathetically easy to pick apart Kayaba's rationale. But to mire oneself in the story's logic is a mistake; Sword Art Online is not a story guided by logic. What matters is that Kayaba's illogical words are consistent with the ethos that underlies the narrative: The virtual world is as important as, or even more important than, the real world.

The anime's production values reflect this ethos, too. Sword Art Online looks strikingly cheap for its level of popularity. In almost every fight, still images with blur lines vibrate in tacky simulation of animation. There is no dynamism in the camerawork, and sword duels are often depicted in shot-reverse shot so only one participant is on screen at a time. Nobody interacts with their environment; every battle occurs on a flat, empty plane. Some of the monsters are CGI and look awful. The character designs are bland and generic. Even the music, by the otherwise-excellent Yuki Kajiura, sounds like phoned-in B-sides from her work on Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011) and its sequel film, Rebellion (2013).

But what the show does expend effort on is its backgrounds, which are both visually inventive—floating islands, towering columns that hold up the sky—and depicted with glimmering post-processing effects to bathe them in sunsets, sunrises, rainbows, and starry nights. First and foremost, Sword Art Online sells its virtual world to the viewer, makes them believe in that world the way the characters in the story do.

And in having that world sold to them, in expressing its legitimacy and the legitimacy of those (hero or villain) who believe in it, the Gamers had their rallying cry, the work of media that finally said: You are seen.

But was it really Gamers that Sword Art Online saw?

While Sword Art Online is invested in selling its virtual world, it is not invested in selling its virtual game. The in-universe Sword Art Online is primarily defined by its lack of gameplay mechanics, rather than those it actually has. In Episode 1, Klein explains that the game lacks a magic system, which he describes as a "bold choice." In Episode 2, members of the raid party state that the game also lacks a job or class system. There is no long-ranged weaponry; everyone uses melee weapons, usually swords. The only strategy during raids is human wave tactics, where armies of players charge in and attack at once. The only cooperative maneuver is "Switch," a mechanic that is never explicitly explained but seems to involve a player who has already charged in backing off so another player can charge in their place.

Compared to even basic single-player RPGs, these mechanics are primitive; for an MMORPG, they're antediluvian. The point isn't whether a game with these mechanics would be fun or not (in many ways, it's similar to Dark Souls, where the basic core gameplay of dodge-and-hit is rendered meaningful by the consequences for failure), but rather that the game's mechanics have little importance within the story.

They're so unimportant that it's never explained why Kirito is so good at the game, what he's doing differently from everyone else. He's not even a grinder. He spends most of the first half of the story slumming on floors far beneath his level. It's no-nonsense Asuna who grinds hard, who tries to exploit the game mechanics, like when she proposes using NPCs to lure a boss. The plan makes logical sense, but logic is absent from Sword Art Online's ethos; Kirito rejects it, not on the grounds it wouldn't work, but because the NPCs would be killed. He prioritizes respecting the game world, while Asuna—at least initially—prioritizes respecting the game mechanics. Kirito's philosophy is ultimately proven right when he and Asuna adopt an NPC daughter who turns out to be sentient.

Meanwhile, Kirito's most impressive feat involves him ignoring the game's rules entirely. The one mechanic described in detail is that if you die in the game, you die in real life; when Kirito dies, though, he wills himself back alive to defeat the final boss.

The game, the experience of gaming, being a Gamer—none of these are part of the underlying ethos that guides the narrative decisions of Sword Art Online. Kirito didn't tell Klein, "I feel more alive playing this game." He said, "I feel more alive in this virtual world." Asuna didn't find happiness by exploiting the game, but by learning to live in it as though it were her real life. Kayaba didn't design Sword Art Online because he loves games, but because he wanted to make his world real.

This isn't a story about Gamers. It's a story about a virtual world. It's a story about the internet. It's a story about online community.

In his introduction to Speaker for the Dead (1986), Orson Scott Card describes the heroes of most science fiction novels as "perpetual adolescents": "He belongs to no community; he is wandering from place to place, doing good (as he sees it), but then moving on. This is the life of the adolescent, full of passion, intensity, magic, and infinite possibility; but lacking responsibility, rarely expecting to have to stay and bear the consequences of error […] Who but the adolescent is free to have the adventures that most of us are looking for when we turn to storytellers to satisfy our hunger? And yet to me, at least, the most important stories are the ones that teach us how to be civilized: the stories about children and adults, about responsibility and dependency."

Card, of course, wrote Gamer fiction long before anyone craved it. Ender's Game (1985) is obsessed with the mechanical minutiae of its titular game in a way Sword Art Online is not; its protagonist is successful in the mold of Asuna, able to understand and exploit game mechanics better than anyone else. But in this quote, Card describes Kirito perfectly. Kirito is, of course, an actual adolescent, emphasized by his character design and Columbine trench coat ("Don't show up to the GameStop tomorrow," you can almost hear him say), but his character is also adolescent in terms of Card's model. He spends the first half of the story as a solo player, wandering from floor to floor, doing good (usually), moving on. He lacks—or rather, avoids—responsibility. While Asuna is second-in-command of a top guild organizing high-level raids, Kirito is off on his own reviving some girl's Neopet.

When viewed from this perspective, Sword Art Online actually does have a coherent and comprehensible character arc for its otherwise inconsistent protagonist. Kirito develops as a result of his relationship with Asuna, finding through his marriage to her the responsibility that he previously forsook. When Kirito's error causes Sachi to die in Episode 3, he moves on, immediately abandons even his own trauma by Episode 4; Sachi is never mentioned again. (Of course not, since her story was one of the last ones written.) He feels no lasting responsibility for his actions. But later, Kirito realizes he could not brush off the trauma if the same thing happened to Asuna. It is through his responsibility to her that he joins the final raid and thus bears, shoulder to shoulder with everyone else, the cooperative responsibility of the entire virtual community of Sword Art Online. He has become an adult, with wife and child. He has become "more cultured, civilized[,] and empathetic," as Ebert would put it.

(And isn't that what Ebert is really saying, when he criticizes video games? That they are adolescent, childish, playthings?)

Through Kirito's character arc, and its underlying ethos about virtual worlds, Sword Art Online depicts online community via the language of marriage and responsibility that is traditionally ascribed to real-life community. This too resonated with its audience. After all, it wasn't just Gamers who craved recognition. Teenagers in 2012 had lived their entire conscious life in a world defined by the internet, and yet the "real world" considered online relationships and communities to be a joke. Sword Art Online, rather than legitimizing Gamers, legitimizes the virtual world, the internet.

But does it really even do that?

Immediately, Sword Art Online rejects the notion of online identity. Kayaba's first move upon trapping everyone inside the game is to force them all to look like their real-world selves. As per Sword Art Online's anti-logic ethos, he does not explain why he does this. Shortly afterward, Kirito looks at his real-world finger, which received a paper cut before he entered the game; he imagines it bleeding profusely, before saying, "It's not a game. It's real." By enforcing real-world identity within the game world, Kayaba possibly intends players to see the world as more real too, the way Kirito does. This fits the monomaniacal focus of Kayaba, and Sword Art Online as a story, on the importance of virtual space over any other aspect of virtual experience, and it's not surprising that Kirito tacitly agrees with Kayaba's decision when he and Klein tell each other they look better as their real selves than as their avatars. But it also alienates Sword Art Online from its connection to the reality of the internet, where personal identity is far more fluid.

Furthermore, despite his character arc, Kirito ultimately stands apart from his online community. At the end of the story, everyone lies on the ground paralyzed as he alone is given the privilege to duel the final boss, one-on-one. At this climactic moment, Kirito returns to being a solo player, while every other member of the community lacks agency, including Asuna. Especially Asuna. Shortly before the final battle, Asuna claims she'll commit suicide if Kirito dies, which is already an unhealthily adolescent view of marriage (as seen in Romeo & Juliet). Then, before the duel, when Asuna is paralyzed, Kirito demands that Kayaba "fix it so Asuna can't kill herself." Not only has Kayaba, the villain, stolen Asuna's agency over her own body, but now her husband is requesting he steal even more of it.

This, too, is part of Sword Art Online's ethos. Though the game has 10,000 people, nobody except Kirito actually matters. He is a "Solo Player" in the sense of Solo Leveling, the most popular airing anime, which has a mistranslated title; it should be "Only I Level Up." The implication of the real title is clear: Only the protagonist has agency. Kirito is the same. Only he plays the game, in any meaningful sense. The game—reality—bends to him; none of its rules, even death, constrain him.

It is total self-centeredness, a complete rejection of the responsibility to society that Card describes. This ethos pervades the show. Kirito is never wrong, even when he obviously is, like when he rejects Asuna's proposal to use NPCs as bait. The entire reason he realizes Heathcliff is Kayaba is because, during an earlier duel, Heathcliff beat him; Kirito (correctly) posits that someone who beat him must have been cheating. Everyone who likes Kirito is good, everyone who dislikes him is evil; Kuradeel, who chafes with Kirito initially over bureaucratic guild regulations, eventually unmasks himself as a sadistic serial killer. Every girl is in love with him, a harem rendered vestigial because Kirito is married to Asuna and expresses zero interest in Silica or Lisbeth or his sister or the second season's Carne Asada; but it's not about whether Kirito wants a harem, it's about the prestige of his ability to command one.

This is where the true face of Sword Art Online shows itself, what truly made it so popular, and where the core of its long-lasting influence remains.

Only the virtual world matters. Not the game, not the online community, not online identity. Only a different world, one that isn't the real world. And in this world, only Kirito matters. Sure, he'll fight to protect other people. Exactly like he'll fight to protect NPCs. In this world, real people are worth the same as NPCs, compared to Kirito. His wife is a real person; his daughter is not. But really, both his marriage and his child are a form of playacting, pretending at adulthood. When convenient, they are disregarded and trampled upon. Asuna spends the next two arcs of Sword Art Online sidelined—even viciously sexually assaulted—so Kirito can hang out with girls he doesn't even like, just because they're shiny and new; Yui is almost completely forgotten after the second arc, like a discarded toy.

This is an ethos of pure, distilled escapism. It is an escape from the real world to a false one, where every conceivable selfish fantasy is rendered real, where every desire can be granted and then disposed of when no longer wanted. It is an ethos without responsibility, without consequence.

And without shame. Sword Art Online is remarkably devoid of self-consciousness. It treats as real its virtual world, but doesn't feel the need to justify that world with logic. It doesn't feel the need to justify anything with logic; what it says is so, self-evidently.

In my Kill la Kill essay, I mentioned Sword Art Online's vast influence, and someone wrote (and sadly deleted) a well-reasoned response that explained how the aesthetics and tropes of modern isekai are much more heavily influenced by Japanese webfic that predate Sword Art Online, like GATE or Overlord or Re:Zero. That's true; I'd add that modern Gamer fiction, which is often obsessively concerned with the rules and statistics underlying game logic, is also not very similar to Sword Art Online on a superficial level. But Sword Art Online's ethos transcends genre. It can be found in isekai, Gamer lit, or even genres popular long before Sword Art Online, like battle shounen. Sword Art Online created the web fiction to light novel to anime pipeline, and in doing so popularized amateur literature and its decidedly adolescent mentality of shameless and solipsistic self-indulgence. "Only I Play the Game."

[nagitosstolenhand]

i don't like the growing opinion that people are being 'too hard' on deku for his failing to save shigaraki.

i've seen quite a few people complaining that a lot of the bnha-critical crowd are being too mean to deku for getting tomura killed, arguing that it isn't really his fault, and that hes a 16 year old child soldier who's been failed by almost every adult in his life, why should we be putting all of this on his shoulders? hes just a kid after all?

and the truth is, they're right. deku IS a 16 year old boy whos had the fate of the world thrust on his shoulders. but the story itself just plainly refuses to acknowledge this.

the narrative doesn't acknowledge how fucked up having a school that trains literal children how to be combo cop-celebrities is. it only tentatively acknowledges the fact that a universe having combo cop-celebrities is fucked up, and even then the only people who ever point this out are antagonists, who are portrayed and treated in-universe as untrustworthy. the narrative doesn't care how fucked up dekus circumstances are. the narrative treats deku like hes a fucking messiah here to touch the hearts of the evil depressed villains with his magical empathetic heart of gold before they get blown up or just sent to fucking superhell for daring to challenge the status quote.

deku isn't a person. he's barely even a fucking character at this point. he's a plot device, and a mouth piece for the objectively shitty themes bnha is trying to spout. the themes that tell you that if you're mistreated by society and want to do something about it, you're a villain. that disrupting the status quote and refusing to repent to some random teenage boy spouting empty platitudes at you means you deserve to get sent to fucking superhell. the themes that portray people fighting for civil change as mass murdering supervillains. the themes that look the audience dead in the eye and can call deku the greatest hero to ever live.

deku, who barely spared a second thought to lady nagant telling him the truth about the hero commission. who spouts meaningless platitudes about heroism and morality at nagant, and aoyama, and toga and shigaraki, when even the thought that he should question the world around him comes up. who's constantly talked about as this truly kind, empathetic person, but hasn't spared an empathetic thought to literally anyone who is classified as a villain. who listened to every authority figure around him except the ones who asked him to question his worldview. who saw la bravas tears, shigarakis various breakdowns, himikos plead for understanding, chisakis catatonic state, lady nagants truth, and barley batted a fucking eye. deku, who killed tomura shigaraki.

people don't criticize deku for failing shigaraki because they just hate deku. people criticize deku because of what he represents. because hes a mouthpiece for the atrocious morals and themes of this ideologically rotten manga. because any character he had was chopped up to bits in favor of the incomplete husk we have now. people criticize deku because hes the main character of my hero academia. theres nothing more damning then that.

[starstruckmiraclekitty]

“I think we should break up.” Simons words were like a ton of bricks, nearly taking the wind out of you. He stated it so plainly, without any hesitation that it had your entire world spinning.

“Wait, what?” You asked, struggling to blink away the hot tears that were threatening to fall. “Simon, you don’t mean that.”

“I do.” His eyes landed anywhere but you, a trick you knew he had in order to keep his composure. There was something more he wasn’t telling you.

“But why? What’s changed?” Your voice was quivering now, praying the man you loved so dearly would just look at you. “Simon, what’s going on?”

Simon said nothing, his eyes glued to the floor as he tried to steady his breathing. He couldn’t look at you. He knew if he did, he’d go back on his word.

“Simon Riley, you answer me right now.” Tears were flowing freely down your cheeks now as you were no longer able to keep your composure. “Simon!”

“I don’t deserve you alright?” Simon finally looked up at you, the harshness in his tone causing you to flinch. “For fuck sakes, I don’t. You are everything I’m not. You’re gentle, you’re kind. You care about everyone so selflessly, and you deserve someone who can be on that level with you.”

“Si.”

“No.” Simon cut you off before you could speak, his eyes flickering back to the floor. “I’m a broken shell of a man, Y/N. You deserve someone who can take you on dates. Someone who can bring you home to their family. Someone who you’re not waiting months on end for, wondering if they are even alive. You deserve anyone but me.”

You choked back a sob, the words of your lover causing your heart to shatter. Is this truly how he felt? Had you failed as a partner to make him feel that he is worthy of love?

“I got my family killed. My best friend died because I wasn’t there fast enough. Everywhere I go, death follows me.” Simon continued. “I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you.

“Look at me.” You spoke, your voice stern as you blinked away some of the tears. “Simon, look at me.”

Simon’s gaze lifted, and the sight of him caused your tears to flow down your cheeks once more. He was crying. His cheeks were blotched red, something you’d never once seen on him in the years you’d been together.

You took a step forward, slowly moving your hand to cup his cheek, breathing a sigh of relief when he didn’t pull away. “I don’t want, nor need anyone that’s not you.”

Simon blinked, clearing his throat to speak, but you cut him off. “You are the man that I want. You think you’re a broken shell of a man, but every single person on this planet is broken, in their own way. I want every part of you.

I want the late night phone calls when you’re on the other side of the world. I want the reunions when you come home, the feeling that I’ve finally got you back. I want the corny at home movie dates. I want the burnt dinners, the late night fast food runs. I want the man who so deeply cares about everyone but tries so hard to deny it. I want the man that would put his life on the line for anyone who he considers a friend. I want the dry humor, I want the witty remarks. Simon, I want you. Always.”

Simon’s tears now flowed freely down his cheeks, his lips quivering as he struggled with what to say. His arms wrapped around your torso, holding you tightly to him as a sob wracked his body. “I fucking love you, Y/N. I don’t deserve you but gods I’ll fucking try to.”

Little did he know, he never had to. You’ve loved him from the moment you met him.

[suratan-zir]

Unpopular opinions incoming

I think they won, at the end of the day. People are talking about personalities, about attires, about whose balls are bigger. The whole "a man without a suit vs. a suit without a man" argument. It's cute, sure. It's catchy. It's a pro-Ukrainian position, so it's infinitely better than nothing. But it's not the point.

Zelenskyy is not a hero. He was elected to speak for the thousands of heroes who risk their lives at the frontline every day, suffering through unimaginable hardships to protect all of us. Zelenskyy is not Ukraine. He represents Ukraine, yes, but our country - this war - is so much more than personalities.

That's also why I don't talk much about putin on this blog. The "putin's war" narrative holds no more truth than "Zelenskyy's war." It's not. Seeking out politicians to admire, creating heroes out of ordinary flawed men, shifting all responsibility for the nation's actions to one person - that's what got us into this mess in the first place. That's why trump was able to gain a cult following.

Why talk about who's wearing a suit when you can talk about very real atrocities committed by russians in Ukraine? Why talk about who was the "bigger adult" in the room when the world order as we know it is on the brink of collapse? When your president openly threatens other democracies, plainly suggests starting new wars, while appeasing a terrorist state?

This is not, by any means, a criticism of the people saying these things. Heck, I'm guilty of it too. We're only human. What I'm saying is - it's their goal, in a way. We're focused on superficial, insignificant things while they are killing our future in real time.

If you want to support Ukraine - support our brave soldiers and volunteers. If you're against russian aggression, you're not just against putin. It's much more than that. If you're disgusted by trump and vance, you should also be disgusted by every single man who claps at their speeches, who lets them get away with anything, who praises them for their crimes, who simply does nothing and covers their eyes.

While Zelenskyy's approval rating is quite high (and getting higher thanks to trump), and the majority of Ukrainians are against elections during the war (because only russia benefits from that), we don't see him as some larger-than-life hero with balls of steel. We thank our soldiers - not an individual politician who may or may not disappoint us in the future.

Stick to the real ones. Don't play the games these corrupt fascists want you to play. See through it.

Sorry it's so messy - I'm not good at getting my point across today. Or any day.

[hazel2468]

I have already seen a post CELEBRATING that tomorrow is October 7th. The one year anniversary of the day that over a thousand people were slaughtered, many more wounded and tormented. The day that people- MY people- were taken hostage.

I am going to put this as plainly as I can. If you in any way support what Hamas did on October 7th. You are a monster. If you in any way excuse what Hamas did on October 7th of last year, you are not worth the fucking air you breathe. We have not had a chance to mourn because the SECOND our blood was spilled, people started cheering for more, and instead of having the time to process and grieve all those we lost. Jews around the world had to turn and defend ourselves, justify our existence over and over again.

No more. I will not justify my right to live, to exist, to be Jewish.

We will dance again. Am Yisrael Chai.

[toorumlk]

the importance of art and safety.

(in this period of descent into fascism)

If you're a liberal/left-leaning person like me, you have been voraciously keeping up with local, provincial/state and federal politics, and with the world news, using all avenues available to you to try and make sense of the tumultuous time were living through. And thus, with each passing day, you've probably been inundated with the F-word more and more from the news/political commentators you follow, from the images attached in the articles you read, and the academics and journalists you trust. Fascism. With the recent ruling from the UK Supreme Court saying that the legal definition of a woman is solely going to be rooted in biology and seeing the jubilant celebration surrounding it, I can’t help but feel like we just took one more monumental step in the global death march towards fascism.

I’m scared and very worried.

Of course, this isn’t really about my own personal feelings of fear because overall, I will be quite alright. I’m a bisexual, leftist woman and arts and culture person living in Canada, in a dependably liberal-to-progressive riding and city. Yes, my country has a federal election coming up and there is a chance we might (strong emphasis on ‘might’) elect a right-wing reactionary buffoon of our own in the form of Pierre Poilievre, but center and left-of-center Canadians were given a hail Mary in the new liberal party leader Mark Carney, who’s performing better in the early polls everyday. So, we might not have to worry that much at all. Yes, the cost of living is still abysmal (as my friends and I keep saying: girl, the tariffs), and going through life’s very human struggles is still excruciating but ultimately, bearable. Spring, the best season, is well on its way and the days are getting longer and you see that your neighbour’s tulip bulbs are peaking out from the soil and you’re able to go home and give your cat a big kiss on the cheek as they reward you with an annoyed and disgruntled meow.

And so you feel emotionally regulated enough to then go on your daily news binge and find that another university student in the US got black-bagged for expressing pro-Palestine views, you see images of the destruction of Gaza and the concentration prison/camps in El Salvador, and then that the boomer British lady who authored the books that have been bringing so much joy and fulfillment to your art practice donated 70 000 euros to a feminist organization that was the plaintiff fighting to disenfranchise an already marginalized minority group. And you’re left feeling quite… dirty and doom-ridden and powerless while standing in the middle of the cushy imperial core.

Your cat who was annoyed you picked them up earlier has forgiven you now, though, and is headbutting you for some catnip.

But this isn’t about me, not in the slightest. I/we know how these things go. I’m not a history buff by any means (though I really want to be) but I have a basic enough understanding of world history to know we’re already in the throes of fascism: with the targeting and scapegoating of vulnerable minorities like the trans community or the complete hatred and want for disposal of migrants – I feel a deep and suffocating grief for my fellow comrades.

This pain, I believe, is all our duties as human beings with the gift and responsibility of empathy, to feel.

I’m also hyperaware that with the downward fall into fascism comes the defunding and eventual erasure and censorship of art. Now I’m not saying my art is worthy or important enough to be censored. But I am saying we need art; we need as much of it as there can be for our emotional needs which is imperative for our survival. I don’t mean to say this in a hyperproduction/hyper consuming way, of course, we just need human artists, humane art (whatever that means to you) now more than ever.

I’m a political person, and my leftist and feminist principles and values I think show up quite plainly in my work but again, I don’t think I’m making anything radical here – my art I think is just one small piece in a greater human need to make and experience art. Therefore, I’d be remiss to say it wasn’t important. I know my work is important in that I know it means something to people. This community here for instance, or on twitter/x, Instagram or tiktok, which I feel like the luckiest person alive to have somehow conjured, that means something to me, and I’d be glaringly obtuse if I didn’t acknowledge it. So, I sincerely want you to know my art exists not only as the physical manifestation of this vocation of mine, but also as a source of safety and comfort for your senses, if you need it to be.

As much as I want to be, I’m not an activist, I’m just an artist. And my art is the one (I hope) iron-clad thing I can give to the world and the beautiful, worthy of lives of dignity, people within it. Joy and comfort aren’t a solid political program on its own and I know art consumption alone is not going to lead us to liberation, self-determination and lives of dignity. But, my god, do we still need joy, comfort and safety in the form of art to get through each day.

To my nonbinary and trans friends and siblings, I am so, so fucking sorry powers greater than us are using you as pawns for political theatre, and that so many restless people are using you as political punching bags. The world we’re living through is incredibly unfair and unjust at the moment. Your pain is our pain, none of us are free until all of us are free. So, I want you to know that my little pictures and I are here, fighting alongside you.

I know Harry Potter, the IP and the storyworld with its characters, isn’t what’s causing our dissent into fascism. And I know, realistically, I’m not the devil’s spawn for still liking it, for making cute artwork of the titular main character’s best friends for its fandom. I can’t explain in words why I feel such an affinity to this story, this very entry-level story about fighting fascism, with its anti-social megalomaniac villain and its painfully liberal/reformist politics. My pull towards it is deep, abstract, and almost spiritual, and if I could succinctly put these feelings and magnetism into words, I probably wouldn’t be making this much art like my life depended on it. And the awful truth of it is, I’ve never been more artistically fulfilled. I’m so happy while making this work and my cup becomes fuller after each drawing, I selfishly don’t want to stop. Does that make me awful?

A lot of my peers, fellow fanartists, have been considering leaving the fandom altogether and it’s left me feeling a kind of panic because, quite frankly, I don’t want to. Not until the creative reserve (which is rooted in my love and other abstract feelings for the story) within me has run dry, which it hasn’t. And after I realized this, I felt a little ashamed that I wasn’t feeling what others are also feeling, but I think the knee-jerk reaction to leave and disavow this community because of the cartoonishly mean-spirited author (who ironically made this story about love, friendship and fighting fascism) also feels hasty and reactionary. I understand the impulse, I really do. I recognize I have a vested interest in saying this, but I sincerely think we need art now more than ever, if any of my peers are reading this: your art. Thoughtful art, art that is an exercise in empathy. I’m also saying this because I feel a deep sense of responsibility to my friends (majority of whom are also queer and trans) I’ve made through our shared love of this story, to fellow fans and the people I’ve been privileged enough to have touched with my art.

This discomfort of still harboring love for this flawed but ultimately lovable and beloved story during this time of political unrest and chaos, and continuing to express my love for it by creating artwork for it… is something I will just have to live with until it’s run its course. I don’t think this is a righteous grief by any means – I think the mundanity of it is what’s making it especially annoying.

Quivering in the face of good art is I think one of the best feelings in the world, and though I sincerely believe the HP story to be good and adequate in its political and class commentary, this squirming isn’t exactly that. I’m immensely (and selfishly) resentful to JKR for being the mean-spirited bully/troll that she is, not only do I wish she weren’t a right-wing reactionary, I wish her tomfoolery didn’t make me squirm uncomfortably (the word I’m looking for here is ‘cringe’) while still genuinely enjoying this work. Nonetheless, I’m confident in my ability to engage with this story intelligently and I hope to continue to share my thoughts and love for this narrative through posts and meta/cultural analyses and many, many drawings of Ron and Hermione kissing. I am also steadfast in my political convictions, which are so much older than the just-over-a-year-old love I have for these books. My political convictions which have always been and will always continue to be pro-trans, feminist, anticapitalist and grounded in my love and empathy for people.

I don’t have all the answers to how and why we are so drawn to certain stories and characters and tribes (because fandom in a fundamental way acts like a tribe), and why we so profoundly need to keep making and keep experiencing art. Or how to even best live with the contradictions that exist within and outside of us. I’m just a young artist, still in the infancy of my career in many ways, but something in my bones is telling me this is important work, and I should keep doing it – with all its squirming discomfort, and its wonderful, beautiful fulfillment.

Again, we are living through incredibly difficult times, but we must make it through, and we will. I will keep making work that I hope is thoughtful and politically principled, and I hope you’re able to find some joy and comfort in them as I do while making them.

- nus :)

[lovebugism]

hello sweetheart, i read your prompt list and saw this one "hug?” “clingy, much?……” but hugs them anyway and my heart melted, i don't know if you already did this, but can we have something like that with our sweet but grumpy eddie? 🤍

ty for requesting! — eddie doesn't know why you're avoiding him (fluff, ditzy!reader, 0.9k)

Eddie lost sight of you ten minutes ago. 

You were squished between Robin and Steve on the loveseat last he saw you, giggling into your solo cup while they belted Total Eclipse of the Heart to you — at you — over the music and in their best Muppet impressions. 

He only remembers it so vividly ‘cause he was jealous. Not jealous because you were subjected to Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum’s drunken antics, of course, but jealous because you were with them. And so, so far away. 

Now you’re gone, and he misses you like a stray dog — aggressive and hungry and hurt. He walks up to Steve in the kitchen just the same. Hair wild. Button eyes glittering. Slightly reluctant. 

“Where’d she go?!” he shouts over the music, half-muffled into his drink. He uses the plastic cup like a shield ‘cause he doesn’t want people to know he’s missing you. The metalhead freak from the wrong side of town isn’t supposed to need the ball of sunshine from the suburbs. 

But alas.

“Uh, I don’t know,” Steve slurs, half-distracted as he pours himself a drink. He doesn’t need Eddie to tell him who she is. There’s only one person in the whole world he’d go looking for. “She went outside with Robin, I think—”

Eddie spins on the worn heel of his sneaker before the words can properly leave his mouth. He ducks through the bustling, drunken crowd and finds you sitting lonesome on the porch outside. Prettier than the full moon and all the stars in the velvet black sky combined. 

He walks to stand beside you, shoes thunking heavy on the wooden deck. You tilt your chin to smile brightly up at him while he slips a cig into his mouth. He cups the stick as he lights it. Pretends that’s what he came out here for. Not to see you, of course. 

Definitely not.

“What are you doing out here by yourself?” he mumbles beneath the cigarette in his mouth.

“Robin just left,” you answer plainly, half-shy.

“Why didn’t you come find me?” he asks with an air of nonchalance, still trying to play it cool. ‘Cause there’s nothing less metal than yearning.

You shrug. “‘Cause you were busy?”

It’s easier than telling him that you thought he wanted the space. Or that you actually spent the whole night aching to hang on his side — too scared of embarrassing him in front of all his friends to act on it. 

You know who you are just like you know who he is. Bubblegum pink doesn’t always go well with black. It gets in your hair. Makes everything go all sticky. It’s an acquired taste you know Eddie’s still getting used to — too much of it, and his stomach will start to hurt. So you figure it’s best to keep your distance.

You just didn’t think he was as grieved by it all as you were.

Eddie scoffs. I’m never too busy for you, he wants to say. He might’ve if he wasn’t such a coward. Instead, he blows smoke from his lungs and jokes, “I wouldn’t call keeping Argyle from crowd-surfing in the living room busy, sweetheart.”

A laugh tumbles from his plush lips. The golden sound falls over your skin like stars. You smile absentmindedly back at him as you rise from the creaking rocking chair. You plant your feet ahead of his and smooth your palms beneath his leather jacket, over his warm sides.

Eddie meets your twinkling eyes with narrowed chocolate ones. “What?”

“Hug?” you ask in a mousy voice.

The boy laughs like he’s too cool for affection, though he’d be lying if he said your offer doesn’t have his chest sparkling something fierce. He flicks the cig to the ground — sheepish gaze going with it — before snuffing it out beneath his sneaker.

“Clingy much?” he scoffs.

You nod with a proud smile. 

Eddie’s chest swirls with an unfamiliar feeling. You’re strangely brave about all this — affection and love and all things sweet enough to make him gag. 

It makes him feel like he can feel brave, too.

He wraps his arms around your shoulders and holds you with all the intensity of someone wanting to swallow you whole. You hug him back just the same. “I missed you,” you murmur with your cheek squished against his chest.

“Then what’re you avoidin’ me for, huh?” he teases, chin bobbing against your head.

You pull slightly back to squint at him. “I’m not avoiding you.”

“You’ve been hangin’ out with Steve and Robin the whole night,” he grieves, hiding his sincerity behind boyish theatrics. With a feigned pout that feels totally real, he says, “And you didn’t even sit next to me when we played Never Have I Ever.”

“I thought you wanted the space,” you confess in a hushed voice.

His face screws up like he’s tasted something sour. “Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know…” you shrug. “You always talk about how much you like being alone and stuff, so—”

“Well, yeah! I like my space— just not from you!”

It’s likely the least metal thing he’s ever said.

“Oh,” you hum, mouth contorting into a sheepish beam. “Well… Sorry.”

“Yeah. You should be,” he scoffs, mostly joking. He pouts softly and pulls you back into him again, nosing at your hair until his chapped lips brush your temple. “Just don’t let it happen again, alright?”

[thatneoncrisis]

ok so im not going to directly reblog that john post with my rebuttal because it is. very long. but i will link to that post for context

here are all the reasons people feel very strongly about john being a shithead, and while reducing him to merely Flat Out On Purpose Evil flattens him as he is an incredibly complex character, the man does cartoonishly evil shit on the daily. it cannot be more obvious, in fact. and if he did all of this with good intentions, we cannot forget what the road to hell is paved with. john has been hurting people for ten thousand years

i cant entirely tell if this is a legitimate defense of him, but im going to treat it as such and offer a good faith rebuttal

"they were already going to die" is not a defense of his actions. it is an excuse. a very poor one in fact. i can recognize the amount of stress he was under, but killing every living person on the planet in the pursuit of revenge- because thats what this is about to him, revenge- is not something you can handwave away. would it be fair if someones entire family was gunned down because they happened to be in the same building as a very bad man? john has a very extremist way of thinking, and often conflates his sense of morality with the only way that is correct

you can recognize that he wants to be good, but wanting to be good and doing good are two entirely separate things. plenty of actual evil is committed in the name of "protecting children," however we can plainly see many cases of bigotry and abuse happen under the umbrella of that supposed cause. if john says he wants to protect the earth and saves humanity, and is directly the thing that kills them, not only with nukes but by snapping the necks of everyone the bombs didnt kill first, is that not antithetical to his entire mission? he killed the entire solar system just to fail to even kill his targets

additionally, he was granted great power by alecto. we see that not only can he prevent the rot of bodies and puppet them among other things, such as curing cancer and other illnesses, he grows roses for his friends wedding. he can manipulate plant matter. he could solve the food shortage if he wanted. he could do any number of constructive things, but instead the only thing he could keep his attention on was what bad people were doing, and how to hurt them the most.

later on in the timeline, we are plainly shown the world hes made when hes left to his own devices. hes crafted a feudalistic system powered by the death of his own people. his armies employ child soldiers, some as young as 11. there is a severe population crisis, many people suffer from furtility issues, the sixth house has to keep close records of their geneology just to prevent too much inbreeding. as a reminder, john has a stash of the dead from earth he kept tucked away, and gave some to harrow when she asked him to renew her house. he could fix this problem at any time, but he doesnt

planets outside the nine houses are routinely killed just so his necromantic soldiers have more fuel for this power. this is is shown to have devestating ecological consequences- every plant, animal and microorganism sentenced to death because necromancy eats through it so quickly. this also results in any people living on those planets to have to relocate quickly, or face starvation or any other number of horrors from one mans actions. oh, and speaking of the people

corona mentions in nona the ninth that she finds it odd that john does not integrate any of the non house people or their resources into their empire. it has been ten thousand years. BOE has guns, cars, televised announcements. our main characters grew up in a world where paper and real wood were expensive novelties because john keeps killing everything that can sustain a renewable resource. in the john chapters of nona the ninth, he makes a glib joke about how him destroying the internet was a good thing, but isnt it strange that in a world with spaceships capable of travel between planets in a matter of hours, no one in the in houses has found a way to wirelessly transfer digitized information? they still have to send letters on shuttles to communicate from planet to planet

with BOE mentioned, his treatment of them is particularly vile. they are a small, disorganized resistance group trying to unclench the fist that has been choking non house people for ten thousand years. the ones we meet on a personal level (mostly wake and pash) are vicious and uncompromising in their methodology- namely reducing necromancers and those who collaborate with them to non people, zombies, but the fact of the matter is they have to be. there is no polite way to resist fascism. there is no asking John to pretty please stop killing planets and illegally occupying our settlements to declare his authority that is only recognized bc he has the history and manpower to back it up. they are fighting an enemy that literally gets stronger the more of them they kill. they are fighting someone who can puppet the corpse of your friend and use it to attack you, or even blow you up. their extremism doesn't exist in a vacuum, and johns dislike of persists because they 1. undermine his authority and 2. are, in the haziest sense of the word, possibly kind of connected to the trillionaires he was mad at a myriad ago. people who are literally fucking dust. their wealth was not passed down to their descendants, their wealth means absolutely jack in the current situation. John is literally the rich powerhungry self preserving asshole he was pissed at when earth was alive. speaking of earth

John has been hoarding the planet earth for ten thousand years. obviously we never saw much of it due to everyone on the first in Gideon the ninth being confined to Canaan House, but it appears hospitable to life. no extreme temperatures, no food shortage, cythereas sitting under a tree outside so there appears to be no issue with vegetation growing. at any point, John could stop having his long suffering populace living in holes on Pluto and space stations next to the sun move to earth and live out more humane lives and he just doesn't. he keeps it as a holy ground. a place he himself doesn't even live on. he hoards it, this innate object, its soul kept trapped in a body it hates billions of miles away, and we can't even say why. given everything else he's done, im not inclined to believe he has a good reason for this, or even a particularly rational one. some people just like squirreling away their favorite things where no one else can touch

the handwaving of johns treatment of the cavaliers leapt out to me as very strange. it is that very lie that condemns him to death in Augustine and mercymorns eyes, his oldest and closest friends besides g1deon (who was dead at that part of the grand reveal, who knows how he would hav reacted). its not just a lie, it is The lie, a lie that exposes how expendable he sees the people around him. based on harrow the ninth alone, its pretty clear John is a terrible friend and mentor. his advice to harrow having a months long break in her sanity is to tell her to get a hobby and some rest. he is interested in the idea of her, but puts no effort into materially helping her (does his empire even have antipsychotics?) she is left alone and terrified for ten months, everyone around her assuming shell die in the conflict with the ressurection beast and he makes it all the worse with g1deon. not only telling him to kill her, but denying any involvement to her face

as for his other new Lyctor, he all but neglects Ianthe, abandoning her to augustines clear contempt. as vile and weird as Ianthe is, she has also experienced a pretty severe trauma. she has no clue where her sister is, is losing her sense of self after the consumption of her cavalier causes him to slowly start integrate into her personality (again, her own fault, but I imagine it feels weird) and she had her arm cut off by a woman who was driven half mad by johns apathy towards any of his lyctors suffering. he may claim to care for his friends, but it is entirely possible he just resurrected them to have some people from his old life to talk to, or to have powerful soldiers to fight his battles, or to have some scientists on hand help him workshop the early days of necromancy. we can never be sure, but what we can see is that he allowed seven people to be killed and eaten when he knew he had achieved the same result in a way that preserved both souls, and told none of them. its possible he thought he was doing this for their own good, whatever that means in this circumstance, but they were all adults, and should have been given all information possible before making their choice

even the way he treats his daughter is very. earnestly misguided. he immediately appoints her to be a soldier and sends her off on the front lines to fight the soul infecting devils crawling up form hell. he(allegedly, kirionas words) also tells her to open the tomb and kill Alecto, thus making her her fathers new cavalier. we have seen extensive treatment of cavaliers in this series- pack mules, batteries, body guards, even partners, but it is usually understood that the life of the necromancy is prioritized even at the cost of the cavalier. it is the foundation upon which lyctorhood is built, why Gideon killed herself in the first place. if he was serious about making her his cavalier, he's allowing his daughter to enter a very dangerous and potentially fatal position for no particular reason. he of course can resurrect her, but using your own kid as a regenerating meat shield is what some may consider scummy. on the other end, there is the possibility he was lying, he just wanted Gideon to open the tomb and face the very real possibility of Alecto killing her on sight. which there is a good chance of- johns power is borrowed from her, we have no clue what she can really do.

so three options here, two John is endangering his long lost daughter, one she was lying about what he said or if they even talked about it and just wanted a go at Alecto. while I do find the third option to be the most incharacter for Kiriona at this point, we've already seen he's named her and ianthe his tower princes and basically have them act as his proxies. he really really doesn't seem to care about actually protecting her

overall. John is certainly a guy who talks about doing things the right way, about caring for people and the world. and in every instance where he was given the chance to, he immediately hard pivots into the most destructive, manipulative route possible. everyone who has ever been close to him is either dead or has attempted to kill him or both. he committed an extinction event on a scale that is unheard of in human history. he gaslit and lied to harrow when he was the only authority she could appeal to, while being hunted by a man John told to kill her. he took the soul of a planet, wrapped it in the skin of some random childhood object, and shut her off and packed her away on a cold dark distant planet to be forgotten about until the end of time because she was too inhuman to control. he's declared a never ending war against people who died thousands of years ago, the now living people who have grown up only knowing the horror of undead soldiers and planets dying under their feet. he's cultivated a culture that disrespects the dead, that cannibalizes it, that uses the bones of its people for free labor

people are harsh on John because John does harsh things, and thats putting it lightly. he IS a deeply complex character, and I think the odd time I see someone trying to reduce what he's doing to basic heteronormative white supremacist ideals is uh. tone deaf. lets not call him a white guy just because he sucks thats insane. but many of the points you make in your post either take what he says about his motivations at face value, when he is a known liar, or presume good will on his behalf.

or the whole "they would have died anyway" defense which is uniquely terrible. you can say that about anyone, were all dying all the time. is it cool if someone kills the elderly or a cancer patient because they were already going to die and the rich people hoarding the resources such as affordable healthcare and housing are really to blame because it could have bought them more time? no. you stabbed a guy, thats murder. John killed ten billion people, most of whom are either stuck in a permanent sleep until he decides to defrost them so his empire can have more people, or who's souls are literally trapped because as htn and ntn heavily imply/straight up show, something is wrong with the river. this is an objectively bad and his motivations for his actions will never outweigh the ten billion he sacrificed while blinded by his own rage. this makes him an interesting character, not a good person

[the-most-humble-blog]

🧘‍♀️🪞Between Boundaries: Revisiting the Underappreciated Anatomy (Pt. 2)

You weren’t lied to about taxes. Or calories. Or even the clitoris.

You were lied to about the region between.

That discreet stretch of skin. That unclaimed corridor. That humble terrain between exit and entrance.

Let’s speak plainly:

Everyone has a perineum. Yes — everyone. No matter what configuration you’re working with.

And the fact that culture quietly ignores this shared landmark? That’s not modesty.

That’s erasure.

🧠 What Is It, Technically?

Clinical Name: Perineum

Colloquialisms: – The Bridge – The Neutral Zone – The Buffer Strip – “You know… that spot.”

It lives between your genitals and your backside. It’s real. It’s under-washed. And it’s under-celebrated.

🤫 Why Don’t We Talk About It?

Because it’s not glamorous.

You can’t brand it. You can’t airbrush it. It doesn’t feature in marketing campaigns.

It’s not sacred. It’s not sexual. It’s not symmetrical.

It just... is.

And in a world obsessed with labels, curves, performance, and aesthetics— that kind of existence is invisible.

💡 Let’s Level the Field:

This isn’t about vulgarity. This is about completeness. You take care of your skin, your face, your limbs.

So why not this final frontier of hygiene?

Let’s call it what it is: A bridge. Between vulnerability and privacy. Between identity and function. Between where you begin and where it all exits.

📚 Equal Opportunity Terminology:

Whether you’re shaped like a sculpture or a mystery—

Consider renaming your perineum with:

The Quiet Strip™

Neutral Valley

Purgatory Patch

Intermission Zone

The Pause Button

The Final Yield Sign™

🧼 Hygiene Matters:

That area deserves attention.

It’s:

A sweat magnet

A pressure point

A fragrance factory

A place that deserves dignified maintenance

No gender exemptions. No cultural disclaimers.

Just soap, water, and self-respect.

🔍 The Psychological Power of Naming

To name a thing is to reclaim it.

You don’t need to sensationalize it. You don’t need to joke about it.

You just need to acknowledge:

It’s real. It’s yours. It’s shared.

And that alone undoes years of subconscious modesty-based erasure.

🧘 If You’re Still Unsure…

Ask yourself:

Have you ever washed that spot with intention?

Have you ever even considered that someone else has one too?

Have you named it? Or ignored it?

Because the moment you own it — you collapse the shame.

And that is freedom.

🌀 TL;DR

The perineum exists.

It’s for everyone.

It deserves respect.

You’re allowed to laugh, wash, rename, and reclaim.

This isn’t crude. This is clinical liberation with a smile.

🧼 CALL TO ACTION:

🔁 Reblog before this one quietly “fails to meet promotion guidelines.” (You know how Tumblr gets when you teach anatomy too clearly.) 🫧 Save if your self-care routine is missing a location 🍃 Send to a friend whose leggings conceal a forgotten country 💬 Comment with your new name for it. (We vote: “The Neutral Valley.”)

⚖️ LEGAL + LITERARY DISCLAIMER:

This post is cultural commentary, anatomical literacy, body-positivity satire, and gender-neutral myth correction.

No shame. No filth. Just clarity — with a towel.

If you're uncomfortable, that’s okay.

Clarity always feels like rebellion in a world addicted to branding.

And this?

This isn’t branding.

This is balance.

[unitedwestandts]

An Open Letter to Family Influencers

This quote from The New York Times article ‘A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men’ should chill every person posting a photo or video of a child on the internet to the bone.

I want to be upfront from the start that this letter is not meant to shame or criticize. I only hope it will raise questions and concerns for the welfare of the children we’re raising in this chaotic technological era where there are no enforceable rules or regulations, protections or safeguards for anyone involved in sharing their personal lives on social media. The internet is truly the Wild West right now and we all have to do better. 

We are raising children in possibly one of the most dangerous times. Yes, we have more resources at our disposal than ever before to monitor our children’s health and safety but the foundation of many of those resources, the internet, is a vast ocean of uncertainty when it comes to how the information we’re putting into it on a day-to-day basis is being used and by whom.

Several documentaries have come out recently, Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke and Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing to name some, that not only highlight the deeply troubling realities behind family vlogging but also how unprotected and vulnerable the children of today are the minute we post anything about them on social media. There is no way to control who is consuming anything on the internet and this has created a breeding ground for sexual predators and pedophiles to roam freely amongst innocent viewers watching lighthearted videos of childhood. 

Many families turn to family vlogging for monetary reasons and I understand that incentive. In this increasingly unstable and high-cost economic world we’re living in, posting a few videos every day about the ups and downs of family life that generate anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars seems like a magical answer to the very real financial hardships so many people struggle with today. 

But the fact is, you don’t know who’s watching. Doesn’t that scare you?

I used to regularly consume family vlogger content on Instagram and Facebook. Who doesn’t want to watch beautiful families go through the same things you are in a funny, lighthearted, real way that makes your potentially invisible struggles and joys seem somehow seen and heard. You laugh and cry with these content creators and their kids, you purchase things they recommend because maybe they’ll help your child through the same developmental leap or help you stay comfortable or awake for the long days at home or at work. It’s a potentially flawless system for stay-at-home parents to contribute to their household income without the burdensome cost and uncertainty of child care. 

Except it’s not flawless, it opens up your family and your children to so many unspoken safety risks that we all seem to be willing to turn a blind eye to for the sake of enjoyable content that takes a little bit of tension or stress out of our daily lives. 

I think people don’t realize how much of our personal information is out there for people to find if they do a slightly in depth google search or pay as little as $15 a month for access to anyone’s public record information. My profession has nothing to do with investigation or background researching. I have the average number of tech skills someone raised in the age of the internet would have. And still, with someone’s name and general known location or just a phone number, I could find out where you live, any addresses or phone numbers associated with you, any potential relatives or associates and their information, any minor or major criminal charges, social media profiles, automobile type and license plate number, all listed out plainly on one internet page for my perusal.

Note: I do not write the following comments to specific family influencers with any sort of menace or threat, only to point out the incredibly dangerous situations they are putting themselves and their families in.

K.D., it is admirable that you and your family have listened to the wishes of your eldest child and not filmed or posted any content of him or her on your social media. However, you have mentioned his or her first name in posts several times, not a common name, and people know your previously married name. You’ve also posted about the type of activity he or she participates in. It takes one google search of those two names put together with your name attached and immediately a post came up that contains information about the exact location of where that activity is practiced. Doesn’t that worry you that anyone who really wanted to know could so easily find one of your children?

H.N.A, your antics and daily journey with your child are lovely and adorable. But you’ve made it known where you and your family live, that your partner works while you stay at home, and you regularly post timestamp videos about your routine with your child. Does this not invite someone to know exactly when you are home alone with your child? I only have to look up your name, age, and location on one of these inexpensive information websites to have your exact address. Doesn’t this concern you for the safety of yourself and your family? 

It has become commonplace online for family vloggers to post Amazon Wishlists where people—i.e. strangers—can you send you gifts. It is a wonderful thing to help others, that instinct should not be discouraged. But as highlighted in the Bad Influence documentary, how do you know who those gifts are coming from? In the documentary, a pre-teen girl was receiving gifts from ‘Megan’ who turned out to be an adult man, a sexual predator as we find out. Do you really want your toddler playing with a toy or your teen wearing an article of clothing that came from a pedophile?

I think there are two main questions family influencers should ask themselves. 

The first is: How far will you go? You start out filming your babies and toddlers, how far into their childhood are you going to post content of their lives? 5? 10? 13? 16? When they say they don’t want to keep smiling for the camera but you’re relying on that YouTube, Instagram, Amazon, ect. generated income, are you actually going to listen to them or are you going to persuade them into 'just one more video'? Which of their experiences and reactions are you going to post? Crying? Tantrums? Injuries? Their first period? Where does the line get drawn? 

The second question is: Will it be worth it? Will the money be worth your child eventually knowing you potentially put them in harm’s way? That you shared their childhoods, their vulnerable moments with complete strangers without their consent? Do you want to risk their faith and trust in you as a parent, the person they implicitly believed would protect them against the world? 

What will your child think of all this in the future? 

I am not here to blame or fault people who turn to family vlogging. The age of the internet has turned how we engage and interact with each other on its head and we’re all navigating this together, doing the best we can. While I believe social media did mainly start from a place of good intention in regards to helping people connect with one another, it has unfortunately morphed into a sort of money-hungry chimera that no one really knows how to control or regulate. 

The monetization of these platforms that we use daily only benefits the few people controlling them and hurts the rest of us by preying on our stress and shame. They make it seem like they’re here to help you if you can just crack the code on how to make a tiny slice of the monetary pie they’re making. Post content, advertise yourself and your family and you will be rich and successful for essentially just living. But, as much as we want it to be, life is never that simple. Taking the easy route almost always proves to be the wrong path in the long run.

I am a parent of a young child, a parent that does not post any personal information or photos of my child. This was a mutual decision between my partner and I, although it was my partner who insisted on doing this before our child was born. While I was reluctant at the time, I am now so grateful that I agreed. 

We have to collectively do better. I don’t know what the solution is to keep our children safe but I think that until we have one, the solution is to keep children off the internet. At least until they’re prepared to give informed consent regarding the use of their image and information. I don’t know what age that is, I don’t know what fully informed consent would be considered. I just know it is our responsibility as parents and people engaging with social media to keep the children of this world safe when we know of a specific threat. And the internet in its current state is a threat to them. Private profiles can be hacked, fake accounts created. There is no privacy on the internet. And as tools like the Way Back Machine and others have proven, the internet is written in permanent marker.

How are we going to continue writing its future with our children at stake?

[hello-gloomy]

Relax Cadet

Stanley Snyder x Fem!Reader

--------------------------

Description: Out in the woods, you and your lover Stanley take on some basic firearm training.

Warnings: Gun usage, lots of touching, raunchy kissing and groping, mild angst. SPOILERS FOR THE MANGA, DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT IT RUINED FOR YOU.

A/N: I've only watched the first few episodes of season 4, so his personality might be a bit OOC. Forgive me; I will continue to work on it. Also, I decided to release this while I work on two other asks. Currently, it seems they will take longer than I originally planned.

Words: 643

--------------------------

Gloved hands enveloped yours, steadying the tremors that coursed through your fingers as they gripped the cold surface of the gun. You felt Stanley's presence looming over you, his warmth radiating against your back. He leaned in, his breath a mix of tobacco and something metallic, his mouth brushing against the shell of your ear.

"Shhh, relax, you got this," Stanley murmured in a low, soothing voice, his tone relaxing the tension in the air. Following your line of sight, the both of you studied the array of targets positioned before you. Breathing quietly, trying not to get excited at his closeness, you let him reposition the whole of you into the correct firing stance before he trailed his hands back up your body right back to your hands.

"Keep your eyes ahead." He murmured while steadying your hands again.

"That's what I'm doing." Snipped at him, heat rose to your cheeks as you tried to take this seriously. He chuckled and instructed you on how to fire the gun before backing away and letting you take the first shot. You let out one more shaky breath before pulling the trigger. A wish of air rang out, and metal hitting an object echoed into silence. You looked at the target in slight joy before getting disappointed; you sighed before looking back at Stanley again with puppy eyes, hoping your shoddy aim would make him drop the matter entirely.

"Why are you making me do this again?" You pout as you ask him. He drags on his cigarette, comes closer, and rubs his hand over your shoulder.

"Just because we live in a stone world and are advancing quickly doesn't mean we won't encounter future troubles," he states plainly while holding your chin between his fingers. You grumble at him being right, batting your lashing and hoping for mercy.

He decides instead to continue your impromptu training. He hands you the gun again and spins you around to reface the targets; before you can complain, he kisses you and brushes his hands down you again, backing off and letting you aim once again. You aim and let the second shot ring out, and when you glance at the targets, you drop the gun and spin around, hugging Stanley in pure joy at your accomplishment. He chuckles while spinning the both of you around; he lets you down and holds you close to him, wiping the previous lipstick mark he left on you affectionately. You wrapped your arms around his neck and rose onto your tiptoes for a genuine kiss as a reward. He allowed you to have your way, pressing his lips against yours and smudging the purple around your lips. Gripping your hair in his hands, you sigh softly at his rough touch. You both stop for a breath, mainly for you. He seemed to breathe easily compared to your excitement.

"I'm training you for when I'm not here." He wipes at your lips a bit to make the leftover purple look more even, then says, "If I'm not here," before patting you on the butt. You lean into his hands. "I hope you know we're not done here." You felt like crying; this might as well be torture at this point.

"Aim, Cadet; you'll be almost as good as me by the time we're done." He chuckles while you get into position, readying for the next shot, but before you can fire off the shot again, he comes and whispers into your ear.

"And if you satisfy me with your results, I might even reward you." You almost drop the gun and side-eye him with large eyes. You breathe quietly through your mouth before making the next few shots with little error. You practically preen under his proud gaze, and he hoists you into the air, making due on his previous promise.