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capitalisticveins · 2 years ago

Note

my feelings are still hurt from hearing Milo scream in pain from the bone is his arm literally being crushed in half soo…

Angst headcannons on ANYONE but my baby❤️ because who knows how much I can take??

First request! These are Angst headcanons for nearly everyone...except Milo and Sweetheart (when I say nearly everyone I mean nearly everyone)

Some characters show up more than once, some only show up once, hope you enjoy! [also the format is really weird for some reason and idk how to fix it? im sorry :( ]

Precious is scared to think anything in fear of Regulus listening in.

Huxley and Damien haven’t seen Lovely since Inversion, and haven't seen them return to classes either. To them, Lovely is dead. (well i mean they are dead but y’know what I mean)

Lovely is resentful of Sam for how much of his power he recovered after being turned compared to them, and they hate that they feel that way.

When Elliott heard about Sunshine getting into the crash, he nearly had a panic attack when he heard that they were in critical condition. The person at the front desk could barely understand him when he demanded to see Sunshine.

It took Cutie 2 months to finally pursue therapy, but due to how much the price of therapy skyrocketed in Dahlia after Inversion, they had to look for help outside of town, and is having their friend house sit until they come back.

Both Anton’s and James’ listeners have forgotten what they look like. James’ listener doesn’t even know if he’s okay.

Tank didn’t fully hate Quinn after telling the Department what he did. They were angry, but they didn’t hate him. It wasn’t until he ambushed them and their friend while on a walk did they feel any disdain.

Vincent sees Alexis as a step-sister. The feeling isn’t mutual.

Asher claws at his scars constantly, which creates more scars which he also claws through. It’s a cycle not even Baaabe can end.

Ollie gets tired through all the work assigned to him at Vesta, but he’s never told Babe, or anyone. He just keeps taking the work with a smile and insists on helping people with their work. It’s gotten to the point where he has to slip out of Babe’s arms in their sleep to finish up.

Caelum wishes to have a seat at the double wedding, but he won’t.

Cam’s insomniac listener hasn’t had a visit from him in a while, and it’s gotten harder to fall asleep. Whenever they can’t fall asleep, they simply dim the lights, play calming music, and draw a mysterious man that is stuck in the back of their head, but they can’t recall where they’ve seen him from. They usually do this until 8am, and it messes with the rest of their day.

Guy and Honey have had only 1 major “argument”. Guy was constantly distracting Honey on purpose while they were studying for their finals, something they’ve been stressing over. Eventually they grew angry at him whining outside their door and yelled at him to leave them alone and “pester someone who can tolerate him” before slamming the door and returning to their studies. They didn’t apologize right away, they just both sort of acted casually after a week. It wasn’t until a year after they graduated that the event leaked into Honey’s mind, and they randomly apologized to him. Guy felt that he deserved the reprimand, and they had a talk before they decided to play Mortal Kombat together.

Tank acts tough and violent, but they are petrified of Quinn. They’ve been with him the longest, they know what he’s like, what he can do. They’ve planned out everything they’ll say and do when they encounter him, but if they see him, they’re practically frozen.

Sam has openly refused getting into a car if he sees Lovely in the driver’s seat. He expressed that he’d rather run around the Earth than get into a car with “the second coming of road Satan”. Lovely laughs at the memory but Sam was dead serious.

When they’re not being worked on, or in sleep mode, the Asset sort of just…stares at their hands, and tells anyone questioning that they’re simply recalibrating data. They’re not. They’re reflecting on what happened to them when the obsession code was inserted, and trying to recall what they were like before. They can’t remember.

Freelancer has had MANY “not so nice” thoughts before Caelum revealed himself, and they returned after Inversion.

Angel’s cat died a little while ago. They didn’t tell David, they just drove to Milo’s house under the guise of “going to the store”, and played with Aggro.

Lasko nearly turned down the offer of being a professor at D.A.M.N

The Asset used to go into sleep mode when getting worked on or have upgrades installed. Not anymore. They make sure to keep an eye on the person working on them, and question every code they write, scanning to see if their heart accelerates to catch them in a lie.

Cam has been the only person working at D.U.M.P who questions Warden’s whereabouts.

Fred and Brighteyes haven’t spoken since their argument. Both because Fred can hold a grudge, and because Bright refuses to leave their room if Fred is out there.

Geordi tried talking to Cutie again, but they wouldn’t respond to his texts, or look at them, so he had to visit the house. You can imagine his surprise when someone he remembers seeing from the Pool Party inside their home telling him Cutie is out of town, and you can imagine his surprise when he came back months later and was told the same thing.

Seer Obscura is incredibly superstitious. No walking under ladders, no umbrellas indoors, no stepping on cracks, no going around a pole, none of that. They’re terrified of being killed by some horrible luck

David didn’t consider getting into an official relationship with Angel at first. He thought they wouldn’t last for more than a month. Angel thought otherwise, so while David wasn’t giving it his all for the first few weeks of the relationship, Angel was.

Lasko hasn’t spoken to his mom since he abruptly ran away, and neither of his parents have made an attempt to contact him, despite him trying to contact them.

Warden has grown dependent on Vega in the month they’ve been with him, and becomes distraught when he’s not in the room.

Baaabe is usually hard-headed and speaks with passion, but after Inversion, they grew to be more soft-spoken, especially around Asher.

When Starlight was first released from Hell, they sneezed after about a minute, so Avior was stuck looking at them sneezing super slowly for a month and a half.

(last one isn't angst lmao)

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lostozian · 10 months ago

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I'm not great at keeping my own jealousy under control, but in terms of practical actions, things that pull me back from that brink are usually gratitude and self-love.

Jealousy over someone else's success can frequently diminish your own appreciation for what you have. You have one comment, and they have ten? Be grateful for your one comment!!! You created work that moved a human heart! They said something to you about it!!!! If there's no external validation to be found, be grateful for your own ability to create. Thank the teachers who taught you to write, the friends who taught you to draw, the parent who taught you to sing, the YouTube tutorial who taught you to sculpt or bake or whatever your art is. Thank the Universe for existing in a configuration that allows for art to exist. Carve out the time that you would have spent making yourself sick with how much you wish you had what others have and look at what you DO have with fresh eyes, see how wonderful it is, and say 'thank you.'

The other side is self-love. "They're better than I am" comes with a sinister inversion, "I'm not good enough." That's such a hurtful thought to have inside. Yearning for other's talents or opportunities is a bad way to address it, because it reinforces an idea that there's something they Have that you Lack. No one wants to Lack. Focusing on what you've done, what you can do, and LOVING that you can do those things (even if they aren't what your objects-of-envy can do!) is a key first step toward diminishing that feeling of Lack. It's easier to look at other people's talent when you have certainty of your unique talents.

Again, I don't do the best job of practicing what I preach here, but this is some of the concrete work I've tried to do when the jealousy gets intense enough that I'm considering giving up entirely. ^_^" Mr. Gaiman is completely right, but if the emotions are running too hot "plow your own furrow" might be a bit harder to translate out of metaphor and into advice.

Hi Neil,

Have you ever struggled with jealousy and comparing yourself to other writers? I ask because one of my closest friends is a better writer than me, and sometimes it drives me crazy with envy. She and I both desperately want to be famous for our writing and I hate that she might get that and I might not. I genuinely love her as a person but I'm worried that this jealousy will ruin a wonderful friendship unless I get it under control. Any advice?

Thank you in advance.

If you go that route, comparing yourself to other writers, imagining yourself to be in competition with them, you'll lose. You'll always lose.

The only person as a writer you are in competition with is you. Your job is to write better and more honestly than you did yesterday.

You'll never be any other writers. They will never be you.

Plough your own furrow. Stay in your own lane.

#Writing is hard #writing advice #But anyway what's new with you?

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shoutogepi · 4 years ago

Text

Scream for Me

Kaminari Denki

word count : 5.7k

[ ✘ (nsfw 18+) ]

themes : villain!denki, yandere!denki, implied stalking/obsession, DUBCON, coercion, quirk use… denki has a tongue piercing

bio : It’s been two years since your hero best friend fell off the face of the earth, and since then, he’s resurfaced as a prominent villain. You don’t want anything to do with him. So naturally, he comes to you.

author’s note : this is for bnha bookclub’s bingo event, for which i can now cross off the “hero turned villain” slot ;) once again this fic contains DUBCON so please beware before you continue… also so sorry if denks is OOC in this— i am aware that in canon he does not have a mean bone in his body

side note: this fic is dedicated to @fanfic-me-up , the beautiful bday queen! she deserves the best, so please wish her a happy birthday! also, a great big thanks to @hawks-senseis and @boom-bakugou for beta’ing <3

also available on AO3 here

─── ・°* ﾟ✧:* • ｡ﾟ:*･☽･*: ｡ﾟ•*:✧ ﾟ*°・ ───

🄳eep bass rattles your bones as you step around the glowing dance floor, drunken bodies bumping into your sides carelessly. It’s some electronic song pumping through the speakers and causing your ears to buzz, your tongue sliding over your lip as you make your way back to your tabe. The group you’re with barely even notices your return, your adventure proving victorious as you harbor a sweating glass in each hand. The fruity concoction initially tastes sweet on your tongue, the burn of the alcohol bleeding in afterwards and making your face twist in a bitter scowl. So much for the bartender’s lame attempt at flirting— his promise of “you won’t be able to taste the vodka at all!” falling flat.

Your flavor of the night throws back a shot from the table, the sticky glass clinking loudly as he slams it down. He’s cute enough— your classic type: tall and slender, a sleeve decorating his tan arm with swirls of ink, dark hair hanging over his bright eyes, and pink lip adorned with a silver ring. In your opinion, he’s the hottest of his group, which had joined your pack of girls nearly as soon as you’d entered the threshold.

Yet for some reason, you find yourself restless as he grinds against you, his hands firm atop your hips. Maybe he isn’t as hot as you think… or maybe you’re not trying to score tonight. Ha, as if that could ever be the case. Maybe you’re not drunk enough, or maybe you need to top off with something better than alcohol. Rolling your neck, you place your head on his shoulder, his hands immediately gliding up your torso to pull you closer against him. You can feel his semi through his jeans, and the recognition of it makes you smirk, closing your mascara-framed eyes and allowing him to sway you to the beat.

And you try to enjoy it— you really do.

But still, there’s something off.

There’s this itchy feeling of dread crawling across your skin, spreading over your body and seizing your heart with an icy fist. The poor muscle starts to beat furiously against its sudden confines, your eyes opening and moving to survey your surroundings— feeling like prey about to meet its certain fate.

That’s when you see him.

He’s right by the exit of the club, illuminated by the harsh fluorescent glow of the neon signs on the wall. Physically speaking, you can’t see much of him— he’s all the way across the room in a crowded, dinghy club— barely enough light for you to see his face. And yet, those haunting, golden eyes pierce straight into you. You freeze, bottom lip allowing gravity to take it prisoner, your breath caught midway in your shriveling lungs. The guy you’re dancing with doesn’t seem to notice, only pressing his hips harder into your ass.

It feels like you’re ripping roots from the earth as your feet move on their own accord, first one trembling step— then two. Now that you’re level with him on the main dance floor, he’s swallowed up into the tangling sea of shadowy limbs. You try to push your way over to the exit, but by the time you stumble out of the crowd, he’s nowhere to be found.

Whatever kind of buzz you had previously felt is instantly cut short. Trepidation oozes into your veins, chilling your bones and sending shivers all the way to your toes. On one hand, you want to believe in yourself— you’re sure that you’d seen him— but on the other hand, dismissing the sighting of the man would be much easier to do. And you hadn’t seen him in front of you in two years… the thought makes your chest feel tight, torn and bleeding with discomfort.

You miss him so much.

But even if you could see him again, he’s not the same boy you adored anymore… no, that would be impossible. And he could never be here, in this club, either. It might not be the best part of town, but it’s still a bustling spot in the city night life. There’s no way someone with his level of fame could just show up to a popular club like this on a Friday night, undetected.

So you write it off— take the easy way out. You’re drunk, there’s a lot of people here, and you were probably just looking for a reason to get off that guy at the table. That’s all it can be; your mind playing tricks on you. Of course, you hadn’t seen him.

That would be ridiculous.

Impossible.

It’s no surprise you feel sick to your stomach at the very idea of seeing him. Whether it’s because your stomach is filled to the brim with butterflies, or because your body feels shocked— as if his electricity crawls across your skin and makes your hairs stand on end— you’re not sure. Making your way to the back of the club, you somehow find the hallway void of a bathroom line. Never had you been graced with such a blessing, and you quickly make your way toward the door, giddy to be able to have a moment to yourself.

Once you’re inside the room, you take a moment to examine yourself in the mirror. Your hands planted on the countertop, you lean in close, eyes searching your reflection for anything that could be off. You still just don’t feel right, and you’re not sure why. The walls are colored in a dark turquoise hue, the black marble counter opaque and matching the dark stalls behind you. Fingers fidgeting for something to do, you pluck the lipstick out of your comically small purse, lining your lips before blotting the color with a paper towel.

A low wolf whistle splices the still air of the lavatory, echoing lowly on the tiled walls.

Every cell in your body is frozen, your gaze trained on a pair of yellow, slitted eyes over your shoulder. He’s slipping out of one of the stalls, taking his time as he crosses the room only to turn the lock on the door. Your heart starts to beat again at the realization that he’s really here, and that he’s just sealed the two of you in together.

Escape is the only thing on your mind right now, your eyes darting between the door, the vents on the ceiling, and the window that looks just a bit too small for you to wiggle through. Fear begins to bubble into your bloodstream, burning you with its sheer cold, like dry ice on naked skin.

“Cat got your tongue?”

His voice is just like it was before he disappeared, but all signs of his playful, positive attitude are absent. Instead, he sounds almost bored… and there’s this tone to his inflection that feels like cough syrup— thick and sticky, leaving a rancid taste at the back of your tongue.

Poison.

He keeps his distance from you, content to just watch your gaze in the reflection before you. You can’t help but look at him; too terrified that if you look away, he’ll be gone and then there’s no denying you’re crazy. You’ll have to get checked into an asylum or something, because you’re certified insane— nevermind if you’re imagining him— you can’t help but think he looks good. Really good.

Dressed in black from head to toe, he looks like he’s one with the shadows of the night. Even his hair is black now, raven strands perfectly framing his handsome face. The yellow streak in his hair is in the shape of a lightning bolt, colors inverse of what they used to be, when he was a peppy blonde. But those days are long over now, and the snakebite piercings adorning his full lower lip draw you in, much to your dismay. He looks damn good in his distressed jeans, the leather jacket sitting just right on his shoulders. And just like the last time you’d seen him, a tight, black choker sits perfectly on his throat.

“What, hmm? Nothin’ to say, sunshine?” Oh, that name. The term he had so affectionately coined you when you were still just classmates. When you were his best friend.

It takes a moment for you to think, and another for you to actually force the words out of your mouth. “What are you doing here, Denki?” You sound totally breathless, and it’s partly because you are— you’re completely shocked that he’s here, with you, in some nightclub bathroom. The balls he has to be out in public right now…

“And I thought you’d be happy to see me,” he says, lips curled into a displeased frown, and those big, golden eyes trailing up and down your body, assessing you in the same manner you had him. But he doesn’t stare; he’s already looked at you for plenty long. He’s over just simply looking at you. “It’s so good to hear your voice, Y/N.”

You don’t know what to say to him. After two years of Kaminari Denki dropping off the face of the earth, and more recently appearing on Japan’s ‘Most Wanted’ list instead, he’s come to you out of the blue. How did he know where to find you tonight? Does he have someone watching you? Is he… Does he still have those feelings that he used to pretend didn’t exist?

“Why are you here?” You try again, whispering, like anyone will be able to hear you over the thumping bass outside. But Denki hears you, leisurely stalking over to you.

Whipping around, your trembling fingers grab onto the edge of the countertop. You’ve read the articles, heard the news. You know the things he’s done. The terrible, unspeakable things.

Denki stops a step away from you, tongue glazing over his lip as his eyes rake over your front. A flash of metal between his lips catches your eye, glimmering in the harsh overhead lights before it’s gone.

“To see you, of course.”

He’s close now, and you can see that he’s taller, broader— more muscular than before, even underneath his jacket. His physique distracts you from his words for a moment, softening the devastating blow of fear. Your widening eyes jump up to lock with his, his gaze casting a sinister gleam over your rapidly-heating cheeks.

Denki closes the distance between you, gripping onto the side of the counter and leaning down to hang his face in front of yours. He smells slightly like smoke, stale cologne wafting onto you as his hips gently meet yours, trapping you against the sink behind you. His belt buckle presses onto your stomach, digging into you as he takes a deep breath beside your neck. You’re paralyzed beneath him, sucking in a small gasp as his fingers trace over the bottom of your spine, tingles shooting through you.

“Did you miss me? Because I missed you,” he murmurs against your throat, the cool gold of his earring dragging on your jaw. “So fucking much.”

His fingers trail to the back of your hips, palms landing on your dress as he squeezes your waist and pulls you closer to him. Your chests bump together, your cleavage pressing onto his front. Your hands fly up to push his shoulders, hating how your feelings clash against each other, turmoil brewing in your stomach. “Let me go,” you plead, spine stiffening as his fingers knead at you.

Denki chuckles, nipping at your skin and trailing the tip of his tongue along the column on your throat. “That’s not how this works, sunshine.” He pulls back to drop his gaze to your lips before his honeyed eyes swallow yours again. Wicked intent swirls in those caramel irises, tendrils of terror snagging tight around your throat. And yet, some small, sick part of you feels safe, feels comfortable in front of him— as if he’s the same guy who would stay up all night long with you just to play the latest video game, or do something crazy like make cupcakes or drive to the beach at four in the morning. As if you don’t know what he’s done since the last time you’ve seen him.

At the recollection of those unspeakable deeds, you whimper, heavy tears pooling along your lower lashes. “I’ll scream,” you threaten, though it doesn’t come out sounding like much of a threat.

A wide smirk curls the corners of his lips, that tongue jewelry making another brief appearance as he opens his mouth and leans into you. “You think anyone’s gonna hear us?” A dark brow rises on his forehead, amusement washed over his sharp features. “You’ll scream when I tell you to.”

Heat surges through your stomach at his crude suggestion, your body betraying you as his hands slide underneath your dress, his bare palms cupping your ass and distributing a confident squeeze. His fingers inch in between your legs, reaching out to ghost over your pussy through your thin, sheer thong.

The tough girl act proving fruitless, you decide to switch tactics. “Please, Denki, I don’t want to—”

“Why are you so fuckin’ wet, then?” He growls, fingertips pressing against your slit harder. He brings one hand before you, forcing you to look at the strands of slick that stretch between his fingers. Your face heats up, cheeks aflame with embarrassment. How could your body be so turned on right now, and your feelings so conflicted? The tension inside of you only worsens when he dips the fingers into his mouth, making a show of his pierced tongue stroking against them.

Finally his lips crash against yours, desire bursting inside of you and leaking into every corner of your body. You can’t move, can’t think, with his lips on you, moulding and pushing onto yours like waves in the restless sea. There’s passion behind his caress, a motive squandered and swept underneath the rug for far too long. He’s wanted you since high school, and now, he can finally have you.

“Please,” you beg quietly as you pull away, digits curling into the collar of his jacket, your lip trembling and a tear shooting down your face, “Denki, you’re scaring me.”

“Aw, cutie— no need to be scared,” Denki replies, rubbing the soaked front of your underwear as he smothers your neck with the gentlest kisses. “I’m the same old, lovable goof as before. Your Denki, your sparky. Well, one thing has changed… I waited for so long trying to think of something, anything that could make you realize how good I would treat you. I wasted so much time just playing my part as your best friend, a shoulder for you to cry on while your worthless boyfriends would betray you. It took me a while before I figured it out though—” he pauses for dramatic effect, leaning in so your lips brush “—that you love being treated bad.”

You’re speechless as his mouth conquers yours again, his tongue surprisingly sweet as it slides into your mouth with practiced ease. Your body is frozen solid for one whole second before your dignity withers and dies right before your very eyes, your thighs clenching together on either side of his intruding hand. His lips pull into a smirk, rough hands gathering the backs of your thighs before he sets your ass on the edge of the counter. It should be embarrassing how easily he peels your legs apart to stand between them, the heat leaking from his hard, jean-clad cock onto the inside of your thigh.

Noticing your stubborn hesitance, he sighs lowly as he takes his lips from yours, issuing a shockingly pleasant kiss to your cheek. “Don’t worry, sunshine,” he says, hand landing on your jaw to steer your gaze directly into his. For the first time tonight, you feel like you see the faintest glimpse of him. The real him, the one you loved and laughed and cried with. He’s sincere. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I promise. Unless… you’re into that?”

Your hand sails through the air automatically, an ingrained, pre-programmed response to his naughty suggestion. Only it doesn’t quite reach its target, for Denki’s strong grip keeps your wrist from moving any further. With a click of the tongue and a curt, unamused glance, he shoves your wrist back, pinning it against the cold mirror behind you. His other arm wraps tight around your waist, your bodies flush against each other.

“Bad girl. You gonna make me hold you down the whole time? That’s no fun,” he admonishes in your ear, hand scooping your ass through your dress and pressing you up against him. His erection digs into your thigh, hot and hard against your shivering skin, even through his jeans. “C’mon baby, m’gonna make you feel so good.”

You had sobered up at the sight of him, but now a new kind of intoxication sweeps through you, knocking you off your metaphorical feet and throwing you into the deep end of a sticky, ambrosial pool of desire. There’s no way you can say that you’d never thought of Denki ravaging you— you’d thought plenty about it, actually— but you’d never pictured it going quite like this. Even so, you can’t deny that his new look looks especially good in him, and as he’d previously pointed out, your body was more than happy to entertain him.

So you give in.

You only tilt your head back the slightest bit, and Denki’s already descending down onto you, starving tongue greedily slithering down your front. A hand tugs down the front of your dress, his lips wandering over the tops of your tits in your bra. Teeth dragging the silky material down, he groans as your bare chest is exposed, nuzzling a cheek against you as he begins to suck and nip at your flesh. The cool metal of his piercing beside the wet heat of his tongue washing over your nipples makes you moan, your free hand slapping over your mouth in mortification. But Denki only moans back, the lustful noise making your cunt twitch, longing for his attention.

Eager to please, he lets go of your wrist, maneuvering you in his hands so he can easily slide your thong to the side. His thumb dips into your entrance, gathering your abundant slick before it floats north, circling your pulsing clit. He swears against your tits, tongue still tracing your areola diligently as a fingertip begins to prod at your drooling hole. You can’t help but whine aloud, your head knocking back and your spine bending to press yourself into his caress. It’s wrong to be into this, you know this, and yet his tongue, his touch, his kiss— it overpowers all logic, your brain turning a blind eye as your body eats up every ounce of attention he offers.

You’re rewarded for your behavior when a slender finger slides into you, then another. The two digits begin to pump into you, curling as they disappear into your pussy, brushing deep inside of you. Denki trails his mouth back to yours, tongues tangling in a furious mess. Your fingers card through his inky locks, nails scraping his scalp as you grapple onto him. Your legs fold around his waist, hips rolling as he fucks his fingers into you tirelessly.

“Fuck, you’re so hot like this,” he groans, marigold eyes fixed on his digits slipping in and out of your dripping cunt. He sucks in a quick breath when your fingers find his belt, unfastening it and ripping down his fly. “Impatient?�� he teases as you undo his pants, the dark denim falling along with his boxers.

Your mouth waters at the sight of his cock, standing tall and proud as it pops out of its confines. There’s a thatch of blonde hair at the base of him, the very tip glistening with a swollen bead of pre. Hesitation long gone, you bring a hand to your mouth, allowing the thick saliva from the back of your throat to pool in your palm before you guide it back to him. Denki moans as your wet hand wraps around his throbbing length, squeezing just tight enough to feel how hard he really is. Slowly, you jerk him off, both your mouths parted as you pant, eyes boring into each other. His fingers thrust in turn with your fist, the squelching sound bouncing off the tiled walls.

It feels like your body is on fire, every movement of his hand stoking the flames, and you can only watch, helpless, as the inferno grows larger and livelier. There’s a small pressure forming in your stomach, your slick pouring out around him. You can’t contain your moans any longer, your arm curling around his neck to draw him close before your teeth take the skin of his neck hostage. Your noises of pleasure are hushed as they fall onto his throat, your lipstick smearing on the pale expanse of it.

Denki’s hips begin to move in accord with your hand, movements free and effortless as they greet your slippery fist. His cock is hot and swollen on your palm, veins bulging and rubbing against you. It’s only a matter of time before he’s had enough teasing, taking his fingers from you and swatting away your hand. He pants as he lines up the head of his cock with your glistening cunt, breath uneven. And then he’s pushing into you, stretching your silky walls wonderfully, burying himself inside you to the hilt.

You cry out when his hips bump yours, struggling to keep your half-lidded eyes open. Cheeks feeling hotter than ever, you wrap your other arm around his neck, pussy fluttering around his big cock as you adjust to his size. Surprisingly, Denki starts off slow, gently rocking his hips into yours. He sighs as his lips find yours again, the cold jewelry from his piercings foreign but welcome against your heated skin. He distracts you with his tongue as it slides between your lips, reaching out to greet yours. His fingers knead at your tits, your nipple trapped between his thumb and forefinger. The tingling sensations fluster you as his thrusts start to become deeper, harder— each one gracing your sensitive walls with a rub of his thick veins. His tempo begins to hasten, cock pushing into your scorching, dripping heat just as quick as it retreats. The pair of you are moaning, gasping for breath, too lost in each others’ bodies to bother with worrying about being caught.

“Does that feel good? You like it when I stuff you with my cock, sunshine?” Denki purrs, tugging at your nipple between his fingers. His teeth ghost over your bottom lip, hips slapping loudly against yours as he continues his attack on your cunt. He groans loudly when your walls tremble around him, clenching down as he finds a new angle that allows him better access to your most intimate spots. “Fuck, your pussy fits me so perfectly, so wet and tight… Made just for me.”

Even though his sentiment should be concerning, you find yourself more turned on than ever, your submission leaking out and mixing with the lust surging through your body to create a cocktail of desire stronger than anything you’ve ever felt. Unadulterated moans float out of your parted lips, raw pleasure shooting into you as the head of his cock pounds into your g-spot. Your shaking legs spread on their own volition, welcoming him inside as deep as possible. Gasping his name, your hands slip underneath the hem of his shirt, exploring his warm skin and the taut muscles hidden below. “D-Denki! Oh, fuck!”

Denki growls beside your ear, the sound primal and heated. His pace continues, relentless, as he lets his hands fall from your tits, opting to clutch onto a thigh and hold you open for him instead. “You dunno how long— oh, fuck yes— nngh, you dunno how long I’ve been dreaming about this, Y/N. Y-You, moaning my name like the filthy little slut you are. My slut, my girl… My sunshine— shit!”

You whimper as he pulls out of you abruptly, his fingertips digging into the flesh of your thigh. His wet cock jerks against your pussy, which twitches in response, as if calling out for him and begging for his return. You pull at his hips, desperate for him to be inside of you again, wanting— no, needing for him to stretch you full.

He catches his breath pretty quick, letting out a low chuckle at your impatience. “Got a little too close there… this pussy is even better than I thought it’d be,” he explains, gathering you in his arms and placing you on your feet. He turns you around, pushing your back so you lay nearly flat, bent over the counter. Cock gliding against your slick folds, he evens his breathing as his thumbs pull your cunt apart, golden eyes settling on your twitching hole. Playful as always, he rubs the tip of his length over your entrance, not quite pushing hard enough to actually penetrate you. You watch him in the mirror before you, seemingly entranced in his own show.

“D-Denki,” you swallow your pride, restless to be stimulated again. At the sound of his name leaving your wanton lips, his eyes flicker up to meet yours in the reflection, filled with curiosity and mischief. “Please, put it back in… I… I need you, Denki.” You whisper the words, and it’s honestly a miracle that he hears your plea, for the club music still pounds through the thin door. The embarrassment is overwhelming, forcing you to close your eyes. You can’t bear to meet his gaze, shame coursing through you. Here you are, being ravaged by your ex-best friend, now turned villain, in a nightclub bathroom… begging for his cock, like a whore.

The feeling of his length pressing into your dripping heat shakes you from your shameful thoughts, eyes flying open to meet his caramel gaze again. “Don’t worry, sunshine,” Denki coos, leaning down to press a kiss to your cheek, “I need you, too.”

You can’t fathom any response, his thick length filling you to the brim as his hips jostle yours, completely inside. The stretch is superb with this new angle, the veins on his cock so deliciously stimulating your snug, velvet walls. He draws back, only to snap forward quickly, your legs quivering at the bliss that emanates from the wonderful stretch he provides. His words have a sinfully pleasurable effect on you, a shiver spreading over your form, and your spine bending, ass pressing into him even more.

Denki hums as he begins to hasten the tempo, soft smacks filling the stuffy air inside the room. His cock glides into you easily, lubricated by your copious arousal as you pulse around him. Your ass jiggles as he begins to swing his hips harder, drilling into your slobbering cunt with renewed passion. Rough hands clutch onto either of your arms, holding his own arms straight as he uses the new grip on you to further his momentum.

Stars dance before your eyes, his cock hammering into your most sensitive area. The position he has you in provides just the right angle for him to assault your g-spot, your jaw unhinging as a string of high-pitched moans tumbles from your throat. Tears gather at the corners of your eyes, rolling down your face and spattering against the dirty mirror as he continues to pound into you mercilessly. You try to form the words to warn him you’re about to cum, but you can’t think, let alone speak.

But it seems he doesn’t need your warning, for Denki analyzes your lewd expression in the reflection, a smirk pulling at his lips. “Go on, do it. C’mon sunshine, you can do it. Cum for me, fuck, cum with my cock stretching out your sloppy little hole,” he orders, still slamming into you ruthlessly. “I wanna hear you when you cum, lemme hear that pretty voice of yours— scream for me.”

You hate that his filthy words have such power, but that doesn’t deter your cunt from wringing snug around him, the coil in your stomach compressing tighter and tighter until your vision turns white and your body goes rigid. Waves of euphoria crash over you, sucking you into the sea of pleasure. Your lungs burn as you scream out, pure ecstasy zipping through your every limb. Denki has to stop thrusting, his grip digging into your skin as he struggles to keep his own orgasm at bay. Your pussy constricting around him has him losing his breath, teeth descending onto his bottom lip as he tries not to cum.

Finally your cunt stops seizing, your body relaxing onto the countertop. Your mind is totally hazed, filled with an electrifying fog of post-orgasm bliss. But Denki’s quick to snap you out of it, picking up right where he left off and sending his cock surging into your tender heat. Once again you’re thrown into the vicious throes of pleasure, his cock the only thing you’re able to focus on as it drives into your slippery, gummy walls with ease.

His hands flying to latch onto your waist, he holds onto you tightly as his eyes find yours in the mirror, his orbs meeting your barely-open ones. That same spring is gaining pressure in his own stomach, the moans slipping out of him as good an indicator as any that he’s getting close. Fisting your hair, he pulls you upright, his slender fingers slipping from your tresses to lace around your throat. “Mmmm, m’close baby,” he pants, his hot breath fanning against your ear.

He begins to kiss at your jaw, littering it in affectionate nips and licks. Moving one of your legs so your knee rests on the counter, he pistons into you, hand wandering down to press against your stomach, the tips of his fingers just reaching your clit. Your body stiffens at the sudden stimulation, the bundle of nerves having been forgotten since his cock speared into you. Yet he rubs at it attentively now, fingers dipping down to where his cock draws in and out of you to gather excess slick before he continues.

“Ohhhh, fuck,” Denki grunts, his fingers tightening slightly around your neck. You can still breathe, but the feeling of his hand flush against your throat sends heat to your core, your pussy clutching onto his cock in desperation. “Gonna paint the inside of this sweet little cunt white… fill you up with my cum, nice and full.”

Icy fear trickles into your veins at the premise of him unloading into you, nothing to stop his seed from fertilizing you. “N-Not inside, Denki,” you beg hoarsely, your voice meek and mild, still recovering from your screams. But he doesn’t seem to hear you, or at least, he doesn’t acknowledge you— only continuing his ministrations on your clit and the vicious onslaught of his cock sheathing inside of you. “Please,” you whimper, your arms reaching behind your head to touch him, one hand landing in his silky hair and the other on his shoulder.

“Yeah, that’s right. Beg for my cum… Mmm, love it when you say my name like that, sunshine,” he moans, too wrapped up in his own pleasure to heed your words. Or perhaps he chooses to ignore them, his pace morphing into ragged, unmeasured thrusts, and his hips jerking as he loses himself in your tight, wet heat. “Take it, Y/N— every last fucking drop’s for you,” he whispers in your ear, eyes closed and lashes fluttering on your jaw. He groans as his orgasm tears into him, electricity from his quirk bursting through his body. The energy flows into you, shockwaves seizing over your body as the lightning rolls off of him. Somehow, even though he’s howling out in his own ecstasy, he manages to direct the electric current to the fingers that toy with your clit, sending another orgasm hurtling toward you like a bus with no brakes on the freeway. The static zips through you, quivering your bones and making your body melt like ice cream on a hot summer day. Your cunt milks his cock well, your climax making your walls contract and clamp around him. Searing ropes of his sticky seed land deep inside of you, his cock gushing and emptying his load into your tender heat.

Once the overwhelming pleasure has subsided, your body falls slack in his arms, slightly twitching in recoil from the surge of electricity. Denki coos at you as he catches his own breath, nuzzling into your neck and littering your skin with kisses. He whispers sweet nothings to you as you come back to reality, still subdued from the all-consuming ecstasy that had taken hold of you entirely just moments ago. Slowly he slips out of you, careful to slide your panties back in place to catch his load as it starts to leak out of your aching hole. Moving your leg off the countertop, he turns you around, smiling happily as he fixes your smudged makeup and frazzled hair. Your body is too weak to try to fight him, so you let him hold you against his lithe form as he fixes your dress, covering your ravaged body as best as he can. He takes a moment to rub off the lipstick stains from his skin, buckling his belt before those marigold eyes find yours once again.

“Finally, you’re mine,” he muses, yellow eyes glinting at you under the harsh, fluorescent lighting of the dirty bathroom. He tilts his head as he cups your chin, angling you to look into his intoxicating gaze. “Oh sunshine… what fun we’ll have together.”

─── ・°* ﾟ✧:* • ｡ﾟ:*･☽･*: ｡ﾟ•*:✧ ﾟ*°・ ───

yayyy my first denki fic :D also my first time writing villain/yandere stuff too... so please be sure to lemme know if you enjoyed!

➥ masterlist

➥ BINGO masterlist

#kaminari denki smut #kaminari smut #bnha smut #mha smut #kaminari denki x reader #kaminari x reader #bnha x reader #mha x reader #kaminari denki fic #kaminari fic #bnha fic #mha fic #tw: dubcon #tw: yandere

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pip-n-flinx · 3 years ago

Text

On Creativity

So I’ll probably be updating this a couple of times, but I spent nearly 2 hours with a friend debating the nature or definition of creativity. It’ll be difficult to get all this in text, but I’m going to do my best because I think thinking is so important my lord. I promise, if you follow along you’ll find that some beans, and some beans, is four.

Old Blackadder jokes aside, I recently participated in a survey on creativity. I was so angry about the methods and assumptions that after spending maybe 2-3 minutes on this online survey I ranted at length to one of my best friends.

The Impetus:

The TL;DR for the survey was input 10 nouns, and get a score. The score measures how ‘creative’ you were in thinking of your nouns. It’s a word association game, where the fewer associations the study could draw between the nouns, the higher your score and the more ‘creative’ a participant was judged as being. But see, here’s where I think that breaks down - ignoring the hidden algorithm and apparent data-set of connections the survey claimed when calculating this inverse relationship - I don’t think creativity has anything to do with originality.

What do you think of when you think about creativity? What is creative? What does a creative person do? According to Merriam Webster: the ability to create. Most people might lean more towards the Oxford definition which reads as : the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work. Or perhaps you prefer the dictionary.com version: the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination. Truth be told, I think MW is the closest. And I vehemently disagree with the following two.

Allow me to explain - creativity and productivity are two sides of the same coin. You don’t have to be original or unique to be creative, and anything you do that is purposed or fashioned to aid in your survival - here extended to include any activity that you get paid for - is productive. An artist who carves out time to write a novel they’ll never publish, a musician who wants nothing more than to jam in the basement with a friend, these people are being creative whether or not their work is original. Artists who sell their art or their time or their expertise are not inherently less original, or less artistic. Indeed, they aren’t even necessarily less creative than an artist whose art never earns a penny. They do however, spend time and energy making their art specifically for a market. They have to take time to carve out space in whatever market they inhabit. So they are spending more of their art-time being productive.

Let me be clear here: this isn’t a call against productivity, or art as a means to support oneself, or a condemnation of ‘selling out.’ If you enjoy doing something, I can scarcely fault you for seeking out ways to spend more time doing it. That can be hard when you also have to secure the basic necessities of life. Furthermore, I don’t want to lionize either productivity or creativity. I think wanting to better yourself, or secure food or safety for yourself or a loved one, is a laudable goal. I think this very human urge is the seat of productivity. On the other hand, to do things for no other goal than the pleasure of doing them, the hedonism and joy of simply being, should not be demonized. Surely if were to be purely ascetic we would never know soul food, or barbeque, or sushi, or coffee or tea, beer or wine, cake or pie.... Rarely do we do anything for purely creative or purely productive ends. For as sure as bread brings nourishment it warms the heart.

So when a hipster tells you their favorite artist sold out to the record label, or a critique calls a piece gauche and derivative, they are commenting on a real change in behaviour. Usually, the reasons they give are rationalizations or worse baseless attacks on a stranger’s character. Rarely are we actually upset that our favourite band is releasing music with more time and effort and polish in it’s production or recording, for instance. It’s impossible to pin down, but if you go from being a creative artist to trying to make a career of your art, or even just trying to earn some money freelancing, you are allocating time and energy to the productive part of the process - talking to patrons and commissioners, managing social media, networking, etc. - and that time and energy both must come from somewhere. This doesn’t necessarily mean you spend less time on creative endeavours, but if you aren’t then you must be pulling the time/energy for productivity from other productive behaviours.

This is the shift that I think young artists/musicians/actors struggle most with. ‘Get a job doing what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.’ What a load of BS. You will absolutely be working. And some of the freedom of the creative process will have to be turned over. Transitioning from loving music to studying music in college was one of the most heart-breaking things I ever had to do. The harder my professors pushed me to be better, the more time I spent practicing things I myself didn’t discover, the less I enjoyed my music.

I chose to study Jazz, out of all the fields of music, because I had this sense that jazz improvisation was more creative than playing in an orchestra. That the originality of inventing a melody on the fly was somehow more creative than playing a written part in an orchestra. This is simply not true. They are both acts of creation, of creativity. One takes marginally more originality, and one takes marginally more cooperation and teamwork.

Originality still relies on the constraints of the environment. You can’t break the mold if you can’t recognize it. You can’t bend the rules if you don’t understand the rules. As per the infamous Shakespeare quote “nothing new under the sun.” In any act of originality we still stand on the shoulders of those before us. When I was younger, it was always tempting to conflate originality or inspiration with creativity. I think it’s important now to move beyond that. They are different words, they mean different things, they might even influence one another, but they are not the same.

Take, for example, one of my college roommates. They worked all through highschool and college, trying to help support their family after an ugly divorce and then trying to move out and make their own way in the world. The weight of being constantly productive wore on them, and while they had been an honor student in a college prep program they simply dropped out of college before two years were up. For those formative years between the ages of about 14 and 20, Jess did not have time to be creative. All their energy was spent trying to ensure they had enough money for food or rent or utilities or whatever other mundane cost can be associated with living. I was by all measures a more creative person for 6+ years. Then Jess made time to do things for themself. Cosplay, the convention circuit, nights out at the bar or club. Jess was never less original than I was. Only ever less creative, and only then by force of habit. This does mean that people in marginalized groups are going to - on average - look less creative than those of us with privilege and the advantage of even minor inherited wealth.

Remember that, the next time someone tries to tell you you’re creativity is average.

Oh and fuck that survey it was garbage and what little they disclosed of their methods made fuck-all sense I sincerely hope that was a student project and the creator(s) have a chance to learn to do better later.

#long post #rant #creativity #linguisitics #I'm being pedantic but I swear the way we use and understand language is important

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mooncaps · 4 years ago

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The parallels between Catra and Glimmer keep sticking in my mind. They don't quite mirror each other exactly, visually or thematically, but there's a lot of overlap. They're similar in so many ways, but the inverse of each other in certain ways as well. Their natures are so alike that if their circumstances had been swapped, they'd probably just become each other.

So, I guess I’m picking up my shovel and digging into this. I wanna examine the ways they’re alike, the key ways they differ, what shapes each of them, and why their intersecting journeys are significant. There’s a lot to unpack and this is gonna be a long post, but if the subject matter sounds interesting to you, then read on.

Their parallels are most evident in Season 4, but are also woven throughout the show. I'm thinking back to 1x07 when Adora explains to Bow and Glimmer what being raised by Shadow Weaver was like and Glimmer, without missing a beat, says: "Okay, sure, Mom stuff." Completely nonchalant, with a casual shrug, as if nothing sounded out of place. All of these characters are impacted by being embattled in a militaristic conflict, of course, but Catra and Glimmer are both getting particular parental experiences from their mother-figures, the only parent in either of their lives. Notably, they don't have the same experience. Angella's a much better mother to Glimmer than Shadow Weaver is to Catra. Shadow Weaver is abusive, manipulative, power-hungry, and especially cruel to Catra above all others. Even when Angella is harsh, she's constructive and supportive.

But both of these children end up with a strong desire to prove themselves on the battlefield. Both want their mothers to be proud of them, to recognize them as worthy. Catra spends the early part of her life suppressing the urge to prove herself, pretending not to care about it while secretly being deeply upset when she finds herself overshadowed by Adora. Glimmer, on the other hand, openly thirsts for opportunities to be a great commander and earn recognition for her accomplishments. They both have somewhat of an inferiority complex as well. Catra comes to decide she doesn't want to be the sidekick. Glimmer is insecure about being the princess who has to recharge.

In 1x08, Glimmer's jealousy toward Bow and Perfuma is essentially a microcosm of a key dimension of Catra's arc for the show. But Glimmer is much quicker to learn the lessons and grow. Due to her experiences, Catra's walls are much harder to break down. I'll swing back around to that point later.

As Season 1 draws to its close, Glimmer and Catra both gain a little more independence, though they do it in very different ways. Catra does what Glimmer wanted to do at the beginning of Season 1. She presents valuable tech and a valuable ally to her commanding officer. Glimmer gets closer to her mother and they both start to understand each other better. Catra defeats her mother-figure in combat. Glimmer and Catra both gain favor in their respective armies and get the much-desired chance to prove themselves in the Battle of Bright Moon.

In 2x02, Glimmer and Bow take Catra hostage and the ways in which these two characters differ are really highlighted. Glimmer is tempted more than once to be as ruthless with Catra as Catra would be with her, but Bow talks her down when push comes to shove. "We're not them." Catra doesn't have a person in her life who talks her down. Not anymore. Catra sees the reliance on friendship among the Rebellion as a weakness. "It's why you're never going to win."

With the environment she grew up in, Catra's understanding of concepts like friendship and love are primarily in relation to power and manipulation. She's quick to seize upon the closeness between Glimmer and Bow as a way to force Glimmer to use up her magic. Catra's own love for Adora is, in the early days, selfish. She doesn't want to share Adora, whether with friends in the Horde or friends in the Rebellion. And it's why she believes that Adora doesn't feel the same way. If Adora wouldn’t take things to the same selfish extremes, then she must not feel what Catra’s feeling. This is what Catra believes because her experiences have given her this very specific, and flawed, understanding of love.

Glimmer's relationship to love is different. She comes from a more supportive environment and even in the rare instance when she does trend toward selfish love, she's more able to accept and understand the flaws of it.

But focusing on 2x02: Glimmer and Catra push each other's buttons. Each of them instinctively knows how to hurt the other one, though Catra is more willing to inflict that hurt. They’re both paying attention and learning each other’s vulnerabilities. The one moment where Glimmer touches a nerve with Catra is: "How did Adora take years of this? She didn't run away from the Horde. She ran away from you." And Catra immediately pushes back: "You think she's not going to leave you behind too, Sparkles?"

It's somewhat telling that Catra sees Glimmer as having taken her place in Adora's life. Again, similar, but not the same. The relationship between Adora and Glimmer is different to the relationship between Adora and Catra, but Catra, with her limited and warped understanding of love, can't tell the difference anymore than she could when Adora first befriended Lonnie. Catra sees Glimmer as having the same place in Adora's life that Catra used to have. And as much as Catra wants, at this point, to tell herself she's over Adora, she's still angry.

So we’re kind of flipping between parallels and inversions, but a key factor starts to become clear at this point. What Catra and Glimmer hate in each other is what they fear in themselves. Glimmer hates that Catra took her as a hostage, but she's also frustrated that she can't be just as cruel when she has Catra as a hostage. She wants to be cruel, and yet she hates herself for wanting it. Catra hates seeing Glimmer step into the role of Adora's sidekick and she mocks the Rebellion for "the power of friendship" because she hates how vulnerable she felt after opening her heart to Adora. She wants a loving relationship, and yet she hates herself for wanting it. Catra and Glimmer see their own perceived flaws, weaknesses, and shortcomings in each other, which is why there's so much friction between them. It's really an interesting concept that develops further as the show goes on.

The next minor point of interest is 2x04. Glimmer sees the primary conflict as being between herself and Catra. It’s not much, just a little look into how Glimmer is thinking about things.

Seasons 2 and 3 are paired together in terms of themes in a way that other seasons aren’t. At the end of Season 2, or midway through the story threads, Catra loses her mother-figure. At the end of Season 3, Glimmer loses her mother. Once again, the circumstances differ. Angella is truly gone, but Shadow Weaver has simply switched sides. Glimmer’s arc going forward is very much driven by Angella’s absence, whereas Catra’s arc is driven by Shadow Weaver’s presence...as an enemy combatant.

And Shadow Weaver doesn’t just join the Rebellion, she starts working her way into Glimmer’s life. Her opening pitch that gets Glimmer to free her plays on a familial connection - the fact that she taught Glimmer’s father. They go to the Fright Zone together and of course they run into Catra, who discovers Shadow Weaver quite literally taking Glimmer by the hand.

All of this sets the stage for Season 4, where the Catra and Glimmer parallels are at their strongest. The two of them become much more similar to each other in this season. Glimmer is now receiving guidance and familial connection from the very person who shaped Catra into the person she is.

Both Catra and Glimmer effectively take control of their respective armies. Glimmer literally becomes queen and, in the very same episode, Catra seats herself on Hordak’s throne. Glimmer is reluctant to take the throne, Catra is eager to. At the end of the episode Catra says to Hordak, “I think you and I are going to do great things together.” This line echoes what Shadow Weaver said to young Micah and baby Adora. And of course Glimmer is also stepping into her mother’s role.

From there, the two of them find themselves on similar paths. In 4x02 they both have the same idea to recover Mara’s ship. In 4x04 Glimmer wants to think like Catra and asks Shadow Weaver to teach her. Glimmer ends up in a fight with Catra and Catra marvels at Glimmer’s tactical decision to use Adora as a decoy. Where Glimmer was previously unwilling to be like Catra, now she’s determined to do anything for victory. And of course the idea to use Adora as a distraction came from Shadow Weaver and Catra’s recognizing this change in Glimmer’s tactics without quite realizing why it should feel familiar.

Some things happen at different times for these two, but there’s so much overlap. Glimmer starts the season dealing with boring meetings and itching to be out in the field, jealous of her friends. For Catra, she starts the season in the field, but as her plans advance she finds herself stuck in the Fright Zone while Hordak does the field work.

Both of them are focused on success, no matter the cost. They both become so stubbornly obsessed with winning the war that it fractures their friendships. They reject all counsel and push away the people who care for them. In spite of being hurt by losing the trust of their friends, they both double down on trying to win, expecting total victory to be the thing that brings them peace of mind, the thing that makes everything worth the cost.

There’s a push and pull between the two of them throughout the season. Neither can succeed in their chosen path without destroying the other. And yet they can’t seem to destroy each other without losing themselves. Metaphorically, destroying each other would mean destroying their own shortcomings, and both of them want those weaknesses and doubts erased, but neither of them can manage to strike the final blow.

Catra gains the upper hand in the war by having Double Trouble work the cracks in Glimmer’s friendships. Glimmer gains the upper hand by having Double Trouble drive a decisive wedge between Catra and Hordak. Double Trouble’s duplicitous allegiances and feigning of friendships are key developments on both sides of the battlefield and their services are weaponized by both Catra and Glimmer to target each other. Double Trouble essentially acts as a messenger, sent from both of these two characters to tear the other one down. Catra and Glimmer personify to each other what they fear in themselves and Double Trouble gives voice to the doubts of both characters, acting on behalf of each of them in turn.

Double Trouble gets to Glimmer by suggesting that Adora is undermining the queen’s authority. They work from an understanding of Glimmer’s genuine desire to be a great queen. However, and this is a key point, when Double Trouble confronts Catra, the tactic is completely flipped. “You try so hard to play the big bad villain, but your heart’s never been in it, has it?” They work from the understanding that Catra’s apparent desire to lead the Horde to victory is not genuine. As opposed to Glimmer, whose heart has always been in it; her heart’s so in it that she becomes blind to the risks of her plans.

Part of Double Trouble’s speech to Catra can apply to Glimmer’s insecurities as well. “They didn’t believe in you, didn’t trust you, didn’t need you, left you. But did you ever stop to think, maybe they’re not the problem? It’s you. You drive them away, Wildcat.” Obviously it applies to Catra, but it also describes what Glimmer has just been through with Bow and Adora. Glimmer and Catra have so many overlapping fears and this messenger sent by Glimmer to throw Catra off balance ends up making this statement that labels Glimmer’s recent mistakes just as accurately as it does Catra’s.

The key difference between the two of them comes down to their hearts being in it. For all the similarities between Catra and Glimmer in Season 4, this climactic moment emphasizes that, for Catra, a lot of it is an affectation, a costume.

Which brings me to an element of the visual storytelling. I recently read an interesting post about the thematic significance of Catra’s mask. I also made my own post about the change to her hair in Season 4. The visual storytelling has many facets in this show. This post is about parallels though, so what I’m focusing on now is the fact that Catra and Glimmer both change their costumes in Season 4. The first scene of 4x01 features the reveal of Glimmer’s new look and the last scene of 4x01 features the reveal of Catra’s.

One of the first things I noticed about Catra’s outfit is that her new black sleeve and shoulder armor are covering the area that was damaged in the portal reality. At a guess, I’d say she wants to guard against feeling whatever that felt like again. Again though, my focus is on parallels. Let’s have a look at their outfits side by side.

Glimmer’s is essentially an evolution. She’s growing more into herself. She now has both shoulders covered. Hard to say if these shoulder pads are decorative or could serve a protective function. They kind of look metallic. Her legs are newly covered; her neck and chest are newly exposed. There are a few changes to Glimmer’s outfit, but not a lot that’s truly new to her.

For Catra, there are a few new elements in her outfit. The single sleeve, the fingerless gloves, and at the shoulders she seems to have upgraded from fabric to something that looks more like it could be armor. Her legs are more covered than they were in her previous outfit, but there are still small exposed gaps. Her feet were never covered before, but now there’s a partial covering. And there’s also what fandom has dubbed the “boob window,” though this show isn’t one that gives focus to things like cleavage. The new elements for Catra bring her outfit a little bit closer to Glimmer’s.

I’ll be interpreting exposed skin as representing vulnerabilities. Of particular interest to me is the fact that they both wear single sleeves now, one white, one black, and they cover opposite arms. Glimmer has no mask on her face; Catra has no cape covering her back. Glimmer’s boots seem especially enforced at the heel and toe. Catra’s heels and toes are exposed. You know how I’ve been saying that they see their own shortcomings in each other? Now Catra is visibly vulnerable where Glimmer is guarded and vice-versa. The particular asymmetry of the sleeves brings to mind ideas of imbalance, both internally and between them.

Catra’s sleeve looks durable; Glimmer’s sleeve looks decorative. Glimmer’s sleeve leaves a gap of skin exposed below the shoulder pad; Catra’s sleeve covers the full length of her arm. On Glimmer’s unsleeved arm, the glove barely covers her hand; Catra’s glove covers a portion of her forearm. Remember 1x08, that point I said I’d come back to? Glimmer’s quicker to learn the lessons. Catra’s walls are harder to break down. Now it’s visually represented in their outfits.

I’ll reference the visuals as I go on, but let’s get back to thematic analysis. As the Season 4 finale draws to a close, Catra and Glimmer end up together and both have been brought low. Double Trouble has just seen through all of Catra’s walls and read her for absolute filth. Glimmer has to reckon with the fact that her own hubris nearly got everyone she’s been fighting for destroyed. Both have come closer to total victory and closer to total defeat than they’ve ever been. Coming off a string of mistakes and pushing away the people who care about them, they end up together.

Glimmer has the chance to attack a willingly defenseless Catra, but spares her. Moments later, Glimmer is threatened by Horde Prime, but Catra’s intervention saves her. It’s a layered action from Catra, certainly not altruistic, but it saves Glimmer nonetheless. I think something in each of them feels hesitant to see this person, in whom they see their own flaws reflected back at them, destroyed.

And now they’re stuck with each other, quite literally cut off from everyone else. They’re each wrestling with the weight of their own failures and shortcomings, so of course they’re both trapped with the metaphorical representation of everything they never wanted to face in themselves.

They’re together, and yet they’re separated. A barrier stands between them. Catra is at liberty to move about the ship, but there’s nowhere to go and no escaping the watchful gaze of Horde Prime. She’s frustrated by this illusory liberty: “If I’m a prisoner, you might as well make it official.” Glimmer, on the other hand, is in a cell and she wants out, even though there’s nowhere to go. For a brief moment, the barrier is taken down when Catra and Glimmer are invited to dine with Horde Prime. One very effective way to bring people together is to give them a common enemy. They’re only physically together when they’re united in defending themselves against him.

Horde Prime understands the similarities between the two of them and breaks through both of their walls at the same time with the same tactic. “You Etherians are all alike. Such strong connections to one another. It’s what makes you weak.” It’s the unguarded vulnerabilities in Glimmer that poke holes in Catra’s plan of “parsing out information like a bargaining chip.” Though Catra and Glimmer have a common enemy now, they’re not yet coordinated and working with each other.

So we return now to the scene from 5x03 at the top of this post. Even the way it’s framed is significant. The scene could presumably have been presented from the other side, but seeing it from this angle allows me to infer some things about what’s being communicated.

They start out facing each other and we see their sleeved arms. Neither is quite ready to trust the other, so their walls are up. When they stand face-to-face with what they fear in themselves, they put their guards up. They’re both more-or-less equally guarded and equally vulnerable, but the guarded side is what the show’s creators are showing the audience, as well as what Catra and Glimmer are showing to each other in this moment.

The scenery around the two of them shows a stark contrast. Glimmer’s cell is brightly lit with simple architecture. Much of the space around Catra is dark and complicated.

As they open up to each other emotionally, they turn back-to-back and we’re shown their unsleeved arms. When they look away from what they fear in themselves, they let their guards down. Both of them lay a hand on their unsleeved arms, almost as if they’re subconsciously worried that they might need their walls at any moment to defend these vulnerabilities.

Their body language relaxes, though only fractionally in Catra’s case. Glimmer is a little more at ease, but Catra won’t let herself be quite as open and unguarded. Her fingers remain on that unsleeved arm, alert and ready to defend at a moment’s notice.

I’ve talked a bit about walls and defensiveness, but the way these two came to construct their walls is also important. Glimmer and Catra have both experienced hardships in their lives. Both of them grew up with only one close friend. They both felt pressure and a desire to prove themselves and they’ve both endured great tragedy in their young lives. Glimmer has developed more of the emotional tools to work through her pain and begin to heal. Catra is only at the beginning of the healing process and her pain comes from a very different source.

Glimmer spent the majority of her young life believing her father had been killed and then she lost her mother as well. Catra was either given up or orphaned and then taken in by an abusive family. Both experiences were surely traumatic. Catra’s walls are tougher for a reason though. A few reasons. The primary reason is that the source of her fear and pain was also her mother-figure.

Being traumatized by someone who should be on your side is different than other sources of trauma. And because Shadow Weaver is her parent, Catra also bonds with her and wants her approval. This is emotionally confusing and compounds Catra’s issues. Wanting love from Shadow Weaver is one of the reasons Catra hates herself for wanting love at all.

Not only is Catra traumatized by her parent, she also lacks any other parental guidance to help her process her trauma. Glimmer, even after losing her father, still had her mother. It’s after losing her mother that Glimmer really starts to lose balance emotionally. Though Catra had Adora, that kind of comfort is not the same as having the calming influence of a supportive parent to help a child cope with their trauma and assure the child that things will be okay. Further to that are the wedges that Shadow Weaver (and later Light Hope) employed to ensure that Catra and Adora would doubt each other. Then finally, Adora left the Horde and whatever comfort Catra had received from her turned poisonous. This was the thing that threw Catra’s sense of safety into chaos and unraveled any semblance of emotional balance. For much of the show, wanting love from Adora is one of the reasons Catra hates herself for wanting love at all.

This is all a roundabout way of explaining why Catra’s walls are so much thicker than Glimmer’s and why everything around her is dark and complicated. Glimmer has her own walls and coping mechanisms, but they’re constructed differently. Catra is largely driven by defensive panic responses. Glimmer is reactive and even reckless at times, especially after losing Angella, but she’s generally more able to slow down and sort through her feelings. Glimmer’s walls are constructed in such a way that they don’t impede her ability to grow and heal. Glimmer’s walls don’t keep as many things away, but her capacity to let the right people in is the trait that serves her best. The contrast between these two characters speaks volumes.

Season 5 is where Catra and Glimmer begin to learn from each other. They get past the initial reaction of simply being disgusted by seeing what they fear in themselves. They both make some appeals to each other for information and help. The barrier between them comes down again and Catra enters Glimmer’s space.

The audience is shown both sleeved arms. Walls are up. Catra uses both hands and takes Glimmer by the sleeved arm. The cake is in her unsleeved hand; it was an appeal to her vulnerable side. The full appeal from Catra that acknowledges Glimmer’s walls is the one that actually reaches her and gets Catra the information she wanted. It’s an appeal so strong that it can reach Glimmer through her walls, not just some simple ploy to prey on her softer side.

“You can’t tell him.” Glimmer uses both hands and takes Catra by the unsleeved arm. This is an appeal to Catra’s vulnerable side. And it echoes something that has previously frustrated Catra. “It’s always the same with you, Adora. I have to do this. Oh-oh, we have to do that.” This appeal to her softer side isn’t enough.

“Do one good thing in your life.” Glimmer uses both hands and takes Catra by the sleeved arm. The audience is shown both of their unsleeved arms. They’re both vulnerable here. It’s this appeal, which acknowledges Catra’s walls, that reaches her. Catra still reacts in fear, a response pattern that runs deep with her, but the message reaches her through her walls.

After processing some of her emotions, Catra returns, offering Glimmer her unsleeved arm. This is a vulnerable action from Catra.

Glimmer takes Catra’s hand with her sleeved arm.

This is the turning point. They represent each other’s insecurities, each vulnerable where the other defends. Glimmer has the tools to balance out Catra’s vulnerabilities. Glimmer’s sleeved arm meeting Catra’s unsleeved arm is like saying: “I’ve got your back.” If they’re confrontational to each other, or if they ignore each other, they’re both equally defended and equally vulnerable. But if they stand side by side...

...they can compensate for each other’s vulnerabilities. They embrace and understand the insecurities they were afraid of and together they have the tools to present a balanced front that can protect them both. Neither one of them was going to be able to succeed alone, but together they can accomplish more.

Catra knew where the teleporter was and could have escaped on her own, but that would not be success. As Glimmer pointed out, even if Catra runs away it won’t matter when Horde Prime destroys the universe. As Catra pointed out, Adora would still come to rescue Glimmer. It’s their combined knowledge that leads to the solution.

Getting Glimmer out is the key, but Glimmer is unable to do this alone. Catra has the knowledge of the teleporter, Catra has the knowledge as well as the physical combat skills necessary to overpower the clones, and Catra has to be the one to take down the barrier that divides the two of them. Only Catra is in a position to achieve this. In terms of emotional metaphors, Glimmer is ready to let Catra in, but that fact alone isn’t enough. Catra has to be willing as well.

And the plan succeeds. It’s Catra’s most vulnerable action yet and she stands willing to sacrifice herself. Catra sends Glimmer, this metaphorical representation of her own insecurities, to Adora. This action is the very thing that ultimately saves Catra. She’s stuck with Horde Prime and her defenses are all ripped away, but it’s this show of vulnerability that affords Adora and company the opportunity to come in prepared and save this defenseless cat. Glimmer’s willingness to forgive Catra is significant for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that Catra is the party most responsible for the conditions that led to Angella’s sacrifice, and Glimmer cites Catra sacrificing herself on Horde Prime’s ship as the reason she’s willing to help Adora go back and save Catra.

And once she’s saved, when Catra next gets the liberty to determine her own outfit, as she treads a path of vulnerability and learning to follow her heart...

...the sleeve and fingerless gloves are gone. The costume she put on when she took her seat on Hordak’s throne has fallen away. That’s not who she wants to be anymore. Now she’s ready to start on the path of growing more into herself.

The push and pull contentious relationship between Catra and Glimmer has reached its conclusion, but there are still a few moments of interest. In 5x08, there are several instances where Catra questions what seem to be tactically unsound decisions from the Rebellion and they shrug off the concerns. Near the end of the episode, it’s Glimmer who questions the tactics and Catra who shrugs it off. This shows that they’re both getting more comfortable with each other and also both getting more comfortable with the parts in themselves that make them similar to each other.

In 5x10, when Catra finds herself in trouble, trapped and confronted with rising water, she calls Glimmer, knowing now that Glimmer is someone she can trust when she comes up against the limits of her own vulnerabilities.

In 5x12, Catra goes to Bow and Glimmer, looking for Adora. Glimmer informs Catra that Adora left them behind. Catra says: “Of course she’s gone. That’s what she does, isn’t it?” Glimmer was caught off guard by this, but Catra has recognized this vulnerability in Glimmer since Season 2. “You think she’s not going to leave you behind too, Sparkles.” This time Catra’s not just here criticize; she’s here to help. She warns Bow and Glimmer about Horde Prime’s plans and volunteers herself to take over helping Adora. Glimmer comes up against the limit of her vulnerabilities, but she can tag in Catra to help her now.

In the literal sense, this shows the value of letting other people in. In the metaphorical sense, it shows the value of accepting oneself. Learning from others, finding the common ground, gives us a fuller understanding than we can achieve on our own. No one can do everything alone, but working with people who are skilled where we come up short, guarded where we are vulnerable, and open where we are closed off is what unlocks the potential to accomplish things that would have otherwise been impossible.

I love that message, but I also love the metaphorical message. Glimmer and Catra have repeatedly seen in each other the things they were afraid of in themselves. Hating each other is tantamount to hating themselves and their acceptance of each other is tantamount to accepting themselves, which makes both of them more well-rounded and helps them to move forward.

And those lessons, to me, are among the most significant things about their intersecting journeys. They accept the differences in each other, they recognize the similarities in each other, and they come together to build each other up. It’s at once a journey of learning to accept others and a journey of learning to accept themselves. They learn that greeting their shortcomings with anger is ultimately self-destructive, ignoring these vulnerabilities is perilous, and it’s only through acceptance that they can begin to understand themselves, compensate for their limitations, and better themselves.

They each look into a mirror, see their own insecurities staring back at them, then decide to give that person a hug and say: “I’ve got your back.”

#SPoP #Catra #Glimmer #long post

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introverting-rn · 11 months ago

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THE ESSAY IS HERE

fell first fell harder

first thing is to define this trope. i remember reading a very good tumblr post explaining it which i can no longer find, so i’ll just give my own summary of it: character A fell in love, and it was something constant and growing. they have felt that love every day and held onto it, to the point where it has become almost a background noise - it’s just part of who they are. character B has known and loved them for years, but it hasn’t been a realised, romantic love, until one day they get punched in the nose with it and are suddenly head-over-heels and proposing marriage immediately.

i’ve seen this go both ways in narumitsu but the larger consensus seems to be that phoenix fell first, and i’m here to argue against it with a random deep dive into their childhoods

the thing about phoenix wright is that he makes families. everywhere he goes he finds people (or they find him) and they just stick together until they become a finely gelled unit, and phoenix has always worked as the backbone of these families. i believe this is because he didn’t have a particularly close family as a kid - whether he lost parents, faced neglect, or got caught between a split in the family, i don’t know, but i don’t think home was ever really HIS safe space even when it was safe.

for little phoenix, those family units came through his drawings. he used to sit at his bedroom window and look out at the people and try to sketch them, tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth and eyebrows furrowing. sometimes he’d sit in comic book stores and try to make the characters or experiment with style, and sometimes he’d stare at whatever came on tv and try to figure out what shapes and frames things were made of. through all this he found some people he liked the best, and he redrew and redrew and redrew them until they became his close companions in life.

he says in the flashback to the school trial that he’d never felt truly alone until that moment, and i believe him! he’d never really had people-friends, but he always had those friends in his drawings, and was never isolated from all others until the fateful lunch money was stolen. then, not only did he feel alone for the first time, but when he was saved he also had those stars in his eyes of family family family and he made sure they all stuck together.

but do i believe that he fell for miles? no, i don’t really. i’m absolutely ready to concede a crush, but that was never the important thing for phoenix - the important thing was that he now had a unit, and he would hold onto them with white knuckles and bleeding fingers.

and, well, he tried. he really did. he sent letters and letters as often as he could, and drew for miles those same characters that had once been his only refuge. but at some point, he must have thought that miles was done with him, and as he grew up he also moved on, keeping miles as a promise of family in his heart.

(while i’m here, i want to mention larry - i read the fic “christmas with the wrights” by stardustsolitude on ao3, highly recommend, and really enjoyed what they wrote about him in chapter 3: “Larry Butz was kind of an unreliable guy… but Phoenix knew better than that. They had been friends since he was in elementary school, and Larry had been loyal to him and stuck by him through some tough times… That, and Phoenix understood why Larry was the way he was. He’d come from a very unstable background. Even now, he often had to bail his mother out of jail, and his father was an alcoholic who hardly remembered what day it was. When one considered that, it made sense that Larry had turned out a bit flaky and reckless himself. He’d lacked the structure and safety that most kids grew up with and took for granted.” banger fic and rly nice characterisation, 10/10.)

miles’ life was the inverse of nick’s. as a kid, he already had that family unit in gregory edgeworth, and he’d never needed anything else for a family. however, he quietly wanted friends closer to his age, despite not knowing how to relate with them because he’d never wanted to talk to anyone but his dad before he hit primary school.

then came phoenix, and when he saw the stars of family in phoenix’s eyes, he latched on in the same way. he took the opportunity with both hands and whenever he looked over to see phoenix do the same, his kiddy crush got bigger and bigger.

but i’m not going to act like seven year olds are capable of falling in love, because that’s just weird. no, the love didn’t come until later - not until he had nothing else.

gregory died, and miles lived in total isolation. fransiska showed moments of sweetness and childhood and miles adored her when he could, but von karma pitted them against each other to such an extent that he could find no true family in her (yet). thinking about gregory brought back memories of the elevator, the gunshot, that horrible scream, and so instead he held on to phoenix with the same white knuckles and bleeding fingers.

von karma only let him read phoenix’s letters when he performed better than fransiska, and when he saw the spark of rebellious spirit this grew in mikes, karma burnt all of them and said he’d stopped writing. the only solace that miles had was the memories from their short time together. miles cradled them close to his heart as he grew, and somewhere along the line fell slowly in love with the boy who had stars in his eyes and light in his smile and warmth in his easily given hugs.

then more time passed. in this time, each of them became to the other a representation of justice and good: phoenix meant the joy of a job well done and a person saved, and miles meant that fervour of belief and hope. also in this period came dahlia, another reason why i don’t believe phoenix fell first - he would never date someone if his thoughts circled back to another whenever they were near.

phoenix made another family unit in mia, this time not with stars in his eyes but with determination to become a lawyer.

then they met again.

and they were both cruelly let down. fighting against the person who means justice will do that to you, especially when phoenix no longer had stars but stone in his eyes, and miles seemed to have turned away from what he himself said was right.

then miles started to see everything he had once believed of phoenix, and as much as he fought against himself, he fell back into love without any choice.

phoenix was still just trying to save his friend, to rebuilt their family unit. he started to learn what had happened, to see why miles had changed, and started to see the ways in which he continued to change. he admired miles deeply as he began to focus not on the change, but on the incredible ways that he managed the remain - just like cinderella, he survived.

everything miles went through drove him into a panic and a need to get away. he deserves better than me, he thought, and in doing so almost proved it fact. but he returned, because as he grew this time in maturity rather than age, he could only love more and more hopelessly. he could do nothing except come back, and he did.

of course, phoenix was going through a similar shitshow throughout all this, and i don’t think i need to explain why. it was only at the end of it all, when he’d learnt the truth of dahlia and misty and mia and godot and everything was together, he held one hand each of pearl and maya and looked across the room and saw stars in miles’ eyes, and for the first time in so long felt the same stars in his own, and he smiled so largely that it stretched his face, and he fell head over heels in love.

thank you for listening <3

hottest take i have at the minute: when it comes to narumitsu, edgeworth fell first and phoenix fell harder, not the other way around.

#also #here’s my take on how the confession goes down #all of dinner #phoenixs eyes keep returning to miles #they keep returning to everyone - he looks at maya and smiles and squeezes her hand and kisses her forehead and holds her close #he looks at pearls and feels sorrow for what she has been through at so young an age #and takes it upon himself to be family and to help plug up those holes #he looks at gumshoe and feels ridiculously glad for how they’ve become allies #he looks at larry and rolls his eyes and smiled fondly and pokes fun at him #because after so many years he’s still the same loyal idiot #he looks at fransiska and traces her gaze toward maya and smirks and elbows her #and maya kicks him under the table and nods towards edgeworth #and phoenix looks at miles. of course he does. he hasn’t stopped looking at miles.#and at the end of dinner when miles turns down gumshoes lift and begins to walk home #phoenix looks at him #and maya tells him to go #(and when phoenix asks if she’s comfortable getting home safe gumshoe screeches up to them and gives her and pearls a lift)#and phoenix goes to miles and grabs his hands and tells him #“you are one of the most incredible people i know. your love and faith overwhelm me even when they are hard to see.#you are beautiful and passionate and so so loved #and you’d have to be stupid to think you don’t have a home here.#i truly love you with all that i have and all that i am.#side note: are you into guys #why won’t the tags give me a closing speech mark this is so sad yo #ace attorney #phoenix wright #miles edgeworth #narumitsu #LOOK WHEN I SAID I HAD AN ESSAY I MEANT IT #God bless!!! hope you have a wonderful day everyone aha

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purificr · 3 years ago

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"Mikagi..." Shiba greets his Composer as he sits there, his hands clenched together. His eyes are staring at them, duller—the spark of life he always seemed to have has dimmed significantly. Is he having some kind of migraine? It seemed like it, with how distracted he seems.

"I have been thinking about what happened with Shinjuku. I have remembered some of what was lost when you exorcised Kubo. Did you know what he was going to do? That he was going to descend and promise me things?" It was Shiba's own fault for accepting the gifts of Kubo, for wanting more at all. That was always going to be Shiba's fault, desperate for validation, willing to do anything just so long as someone told him he was special.

"Do you even know what he told me? He told me that I was going to make Shinjuku a better place. He told me that the Conductor was inhibited Shinjuku's growth, that I was going to be helping the city, blazing away the rot so the trees could grow. It wasn't true at all, was it? Conductor Matsunae was the one holding the city together. And I was just a puppet dancing on strings."

Shiba laughs now, but it isn't a happy one. His hand goes to cover his eyes and he leans back heavily in the chair. He drags it down and splits his fingers apart so he can peer up at the ceiling. He didn't know why he was telling Mikagi this to begin with. They didn't care. They couldn't care.

"And now Shinjuku is back. Shinjuku is back, and barely hanging on. Most of our Reapers have fizzled out, relations with Shibuya are a joke, and we're right back where we started, but things are much harder to hold together. So, Mikagi, I really do have to ask—"

Burnt orange eyes turn to Mikagi, his mouth forming a thin line. "Was it worth it?" / @akashicmuses

Shiba’s voice draws Hazuki’s attention first, and it’s an immediate warning that something is up ; they lift their gaze to greet Shiba’s, only to be met with a look they haven’t seen before. The fire in his eyes is nearly gone, or clouded over with some emotion Haz fails to recognise. They tell themself to steel themself for anything Shiba might say or do, and yet still are not ready for the hurt – tempered words he throws at them.

Haz cannot deny the truth in those words, but they also can’t help but wonder just who Shiba is trying to punish with them, here.

They look at Shiba, waiting patiently until he’s finished, wishing their insides felt more like ivory than glass. No matter—as long as they remain opaque on the surface, no cracks in their armour, they can take this.

Hazuki sighs, facing Shiba with unhappy, uncharitable eyes. “ What do you want me to say, Shiba? If I tell you yes, that makes me cruel and callous—and if I tell you no, it wasn’t, then what was—is—all the suffering caused by my choices for? There’s no answer here that will make you happy or satisfied, so why do you ask? ” To hurt them? To hurt him? It will change nothing, only leave one or both of them bleeding and raw with cuts that might not close again.

“ You say that Matsunae was holding Shinjuku together. I say he was holding onto a Shinjuku that was no longer serving its purpose—that’s why I called upon the Higher Plane and requested their aid in getting rid of him and Shinjuku both. ” At this, the glass inside Hazuki turns sharp—they don’t know why, they’re only telling the truth——

“ —Did I know the specifics of what the Executor would do? No. All I needed was for him to put the Inversion in motion, to act where my hands as Composer were tied. How Kubo was going to go about it exactly was his business. ”

They close their eyes, though that does nothing to shield them from this ; another mess finely made. Was it worth it? It had to be. To make Shinjuku a better place.

“ Did you think it was going to be easy? Bringing Shinjuku back from nothing? ” When Composer Mikagi opens their eyes, there’s nothing behind them, just a cold, empty look supported upturned lips. “ You sound unhappy, Conductor Miyakaze. But may I remind you that you yourself chose to come back? ”

#akashicmuses #in character.#v: main.#gjfddoigj they. responded more cruelly than i initially anticipated.

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digimon-digital-adventures · 4 years ago

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Roles, Minmaxing, and Party Synergy; a mechanics ramble

So this is something that’s been a bit of a long time coming in general but a recent signup for a raid in the main server has brought up some concerns with how people may be playing.

This will be under a read more tag but before we even dive in I do want to say there’s still no outright wrong way to play DDA. You can build however you want and if you’re having fun that’s what matters in the end. This is more about party synergy and pulling the most out of the system that you can and really bringing things together.

Either way click to see my incomprehensible ramblings about building for DDA

So we should probably start at the beginning, at character creation. Your starting stats give a good idea of what your build can do, and Bonus DP can be talked about later. But the major thing that should be done is discuss with your group what everyone is playing. Talk to each other, make sure redundancies are taken care of, make sure that nobody’s build feels like they’re being walked over because someone else has the same Qualities. A big one I see a lot of is people taking the same Effect tags over and over; a wide range of Effects is much, much better for a party because it not only makes everyone feel important as their Effects won’t be overridden, but it also mechanically makes the party stronger as that lets most Effects stack (bar some like Poison and Burn which are explicitly made to not stack). Personally I recommend leaving Exploit and Fury to Effect Warriors then discussing what else everyone else can take, but this is something for your party to speak on.

Additionally, I’ve seen a few scenarios where one role is popular and then everyone plays that role. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that but it can make things hard to balance when the whole party is made of tanks who rely on retaliation damage to hit.

People also seem to have missed that having high stats have increasingly diminishing returns; to use an example from the current raid being ran on the Discord server; a boss at Ultra level with the party at 35 bonus DP will probably have average stats of 20-30 give or take. This makes having insane armor stats of 40+ redundant at a certain point, because even if the boss rolls amazingly well odds are that you’re only taking 1-3 damage at most unless it pulls out a Tankbuster. Those stat points after that would be better spent elsewhere, especially if you have any buffers in the party that can boost armor. And remember, no matter how high your armor is you will always take damage if you’re hit and the attack has a damage tag; you are still vulnerable to a death by a thousand cuts if you lack dodge.

But perhaps more importantly something I see is that people have seemed to miss that your defensive stats directly impact how effective the rest of your party can be.

To explain; your Health directly impacts how high your White Mage’s Accuracy can be before they’ll struggle buffing; meaning if you have a White Mage in a party of low-health allies, you’ve effectively made a scenario where they can only single-target buff because they have to keep refreshing their buffs, or they can’t attack because they have to have as low accuracy as possible to hit everyone with AoE’s. Your Dodge directly impacts how high the Tank’s Dodge can be; if your Tank’s taunt does not make you notably harder to hit while at least in neutral stance if not offensive stance, they have to spend time Interceding and they can’t increase their dodge; making them increasingly vulnerable to Effects. And if you’re running a dodge tank, they don’t want to Intercede as often as they usually have less armor than other tanks, and if their goal is to not be hit while drawing aggro off of you, they still need to be theoretically easier to hit than you are. And Tanks with low dodge means the White Mage has to keep spending actions to Cleanse any Effects they get hit with instead of buffing, healing, or attacking. Similar things can be said of Armor; if you have low Armor and people need to keep taking hits for you to survive it only hurts the party as they’re using their actions to keep you alive instead of doing their main job. That can quickly end with people feeling frustrated, and that they’re not getting the most out of their build.

So what does this have to do with starting stats?

RKD has laid out a great guideline for high/low stats. Starting at Rookie each stage has average stats they should generally be at once they’re done; 3-4 for Rookie, 5-6 for Champion, 7-8 for Ultimate, 9-10 for Mega, then 11-12 for Ultra. If you have a stat that’s more than 3 points above or below the average, you’ve got a spiked stat spread. I would personally consider any starting stat, especially a defensive stat, that is higher or lower than your Stage Bonus in comparison to the starting averages is probably such a big swing that you’ve begun to outright hurt the rest of your party’s effectiveness to what I would consider a selfish degree. Effectively; having a Dodge, Armor, or Health stat that’s below 2 at Rookie, 3 at Champion, 4 at Ultimate, 5 at Mega, and 6 at Ultra, is probably doing far more harm to your party than it’s doing good for your build, and inversely having a starting stat above 5/8/11/14/17 is going to have increasingly diminishing returns. You could probably still have Accuracy and Damage above that level but that’s at least a bit more build dependent and won’t hurt party synergy quite as hard if you’ve got the right build.

Now for Bonus DP: I like to think in frames of blocks of 10 Bonus DP; it’s easy to visualize and break down and see exactly what you need per chunk. It also works well with most games that implement DP caps because those tend to also work in numbers divisible by 10. But no matter your build, you really should put at least 1 point into every stat for every 10 Bonus DP. I also generally consider Dodge and Accuracy to be stats you want to keep even to get the most out of stances, so most builds should want to add 2 to each of them per 10 Bonus. The following are examples for general builds but for every 10 Bonus I would consider the following stat increases normal, but they could always be adjusted as you see fit (for example a White Mage could potentially have a slightly different Accuracy/Damage or an Armor Tank slightly different Dodge): Strikers: +1 Health, +2 Accuracy, +2 Damage, +2 Dodge, +1 Armor Armor Tanks: +2 Health, +2 Accuracy, +1 Damage, +1 Dodge, +2 Armor White Mages: +2 Health, +2 Accuracy, +1 Damage, +2 Dodge, +1 Armor Black Mages: +1 Health, +2 Accuracy, +1 Damage, +2 Dodge, +1 Armor Dodge Tanks: +1 Health, +2 Accuracy, +1 Damage, +2 Dodge, +1 Armor Each of these spreads should still leave you a few points to buy Qualities you need to round out your build, or to increase other stats per block of 10 Bonus DP, keep your role distinct, and still make sure the rest of your party can do their jobs without having to babysit you.

So now that we’ve gotten a good ramble about stats and at what point they really just spike too hard. What does this mean for each role?

Strikers: don’t neglect your defenses. Having good Health, Armor, and Dodge lets your Tanks and White Mages do their job without having to babysit you. Instead of entirely neglecting your Dodge; try to aim for 4/6/8/10/12 and use your Stances to get the most out of your Accuracy and Dodge instead. Try to make sure your Armor and Health are at least at 3/5/7/9/11 so you can take a solid hit, meaning the Tank won’t have to keep wasting actions to Intercede. And if you plan to dip into a bit of support; take a look at what the White Mages and Black Mages took. They’re likely to have better Spec Values than you, so it’s just a good courtesy to take Effects that they don’t have instead of taking ones they do. Focus on progressing your Accuracy and Damage, but don’t neglect your defenses. When playing; use Stances to your advantage. Offensive is likely your go-to Stance but don’t stick in it if you see yourself getting hit soon. And keep your Health high; a White Mage’s buffs being reliable and long-lasting on you only lets you do your job better. By having low Health you’re only hurting yourself and your White Mage. Armor Tanks: don’t neglect your dodge. You want to be easier to hit than the rest of the party, but all you need to be is around 3 to 6 points of dodge easier to hit than your allies after Taunting and Offensive Stances. Consider this; if a Striker at Champion has 3 Dodge while in Offensive Stance, and you have 2 CPU which can be used to Taunt 4. This means you really should consider 3 or 4 Dodge as low as you should go because any lower and you’ll be incredibly vulnerable to effects, meaning the White Mages have to continually spend time healing you. But you can still justify 5 or 6 Dodge just fine as long as the Strikers have about average Dodge themselves; that’s the power of Taunting! And don’t neglect your offenses; other than just being easier to hit one of the best ways to keep aggro is to actually be an offensive threat over a big brick wall. Keep your Accuracy and Damage at about your average and you’ll be fine. White Mages: consider how strong your buffs are. If you aren’t attacking, your buffs should generally be something that makes up for you not attacking. You however are in an inherently synergetic role and thus won’t have to worry too much about stepping on any toes; just make sure you can reliably get off your buffs whether it’s by using single target buffs, being in Defensive Stance, or whatever it is you need. And don’t neglect your defenses just like the other builds. You’re probably one of the few builds that can somewhat neglect their offenses if you know the playstyle very well, but remember that Accuracy boosts your BIT too and System Boost BIT can only go so far now, and having too low of a Body score can make you vulnerable to being grappled. But remember the key thing about how math works: you add your buff values after Stances are calculated. This means that your buffs can make up for allies in Offensive Stance by buffing their Dodge to a value more comparable to Neutral Stance if not better. This means that Dodge-buffing Effects aren’t just worse than Fury, as while they don’t directly buff offense they buff it indirectly by letting your allies more safely stay in Offensive Stance. This is why despite me saying I consider Fury/Exploit to be one of the best Effect tags upfront, there are no outright bad Effects either.

Black Mages: see what I said about Strikers and White Mages: don’t neglect your defenses. Accuracy is your best stat and you want to be in Offensive Stance, but you don’t want stats that are so low that a light breeze kills you. And remember your debuffs stack with a White Mage’s buffs for the same stat counterparts; this means that combined you can create massive swings for certain combinations. At Mega, Fury 6 combined with Exploit 6 makes a whopping net 12 Accuracy 12 Damage swing in practice, and that’s an absolutely massive swing in the party’s favor.

Dodge Tanks: don’t neglect your Health and Armor. Just because you focus on not being hit doesn’t mean you won’t ever have to Intercede, and it doesn’t mean you won’t ever just get unlucky. And having good Health means the White Mage can buff you, which is always helpful.

In short; keep your stats at least somewhat balanced and talk to your party. A massive issue I’ve seen has been a complete lack of communication and people all wanting to play the same role which just becomes redundant at a certain point. The more you communicate, the more you make sure nobody’s build is redundant or struggling, the better the game will be for everyone.

Before I end this essay of a post I want to once more lay out this is not saying this is the only way to play DDA; however this is what myself and other members of the community have found to be a way to play that enhances the fun for everyone involved by making everyone feel important and letting them do what they want to do.

Thanks for reading, now go out there and roll some dice!

#digimon #Digimon: Digital Adventures

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dateamonster · 4 years ago

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sorry if this is a lil too deep for the monster blog, but you are the only monster content blog i know- do you know/have any observations on how to avoid writing monsters parallel to race? obviously i dont mean like "oops i accidentally wrote a racist stereotype!", i mean how do you write a story that is about monster oppression without pointing towards humanity as a reference point? i like anything that analysizes the potential human-monster relationship without being just depressing

first i wanna say i absolutely think these are things we should be talking about and this being a mostly lighthearted blog doesnt mean i think otherwise, because i love discussing tropes and i think part of wanting to appreciate/make good monster content is talking about the things that dont work as well as the things that do.

second, im a white person and i think its important to ackowledge that any analysis of this subject coming from me is unavoidably gonna be affected by my limited perspective.

i think the best thing we can do for this sort of trope is look at where its done well and where its done not so well. as always, intent is a big factor, as is authorship/the position the authors writing from. the shape of water is a great example of a monster character being written as a parallel to real life oppression but with tact. guillermo del toro has been very open that tsow is intended as an inverse of hollywoods history of monster movies in which the monster was a metaphor for the Other, a force to be feared and hated. guillermo del toro is also a mexican man; his work comes from a place of understanding that experience of being Other in america and from a more intimate understanding of the implicit racism of a lot of the classic monster movies he was inspired by.

some trope breakdown below the cut

some of the biggest (and most spot-on) grievances ive seen with metaphors and messages of oppression particularly in fantasy content are

treating a fantasy species as an overt, overly direct parallel to a specific real life racial group (think detroit become human, bright, etc)

having a monstrous or overall powerful species be feared for their destructive capability, and treating that fear as equal to systemic oppression (think the predator vs prey dynamics in media like zootopia)

having a monster character represent a specific minority group while excluding actual human characters from that group from the rest of the narrative

some possible ways to avoid/address these problems

work within your experience, drawing from your own feelings about being othered rather than appropriating from a movement you dont have a personal connection to (assuming that you dont. again, im writing from my own experiences/practices here) the fear of being treated as an outsider is fairly universal in one way or another and you can draw from that feeling without making a statement about a specific real life issue

you can have a big scary monster who still feels at a disadvantage among humanity by isolating them. keeping with the theme of fishpeople, i recently read a book called our bloody pearl, in which humans and sirens have been at odds for ages in a bloody feud, but the book avoids turning it into an oppression narrative by emphasizing that each group poses an equal danger to the other, just in different ways. if a lone monster of your choosing can take out an army of humans alone, theyre not going to be a believable underdog and its going to be harder to empathize with their plight

this ones the big one! have a diverse cast of humans! if the only character in your cast who has experiences with being ostracized for their appearance/culture/etc is also a horrifying inhuman monster, not only is that probably going to make for a boring unsubstantial relationship between them and human character(s), it sends a really uncomfortable message

not to go back to praising tsow, but one of the main reasons the creature and elisa have such a rich relationship is because she feels that, as a disabled woman who exclusively speaks asl, he understands her in a way many people dont. this is also reflected in her friendships. people who have experienced systemic ostracism are more likely to gravitate towards each other, even if their personal experiences are widely different. celebrate that!

this stuff doesnt have to be depressing. finding someone who sees you no matter who you are or the depths of your differences is a magical thing. you may not be able to entirely cut out human experience as a point of reference, if only because its presumably going to be humans receiving and responding to your work, and we tend to project. but thats not a bad thing!

and like as always consume media, analyze what works and what doesnt, get critique where youre unsure, and keep going with the understanding that it might take a few passes before you find a narrative that really hits.

#ask #hope this helps! i tend to get a little all over the place when the topic of tropes in monster media comes up #meta #what makes it a monster #Anonymous

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chainofbeing · 4 years ago

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Adam is forced to re-evaluate his intentions Epicurosa: Laura Rodgers Harpy: Maxwell James Ginn ([email protected]) Surveyor: Lance Chapman, Nerys Howell, Mary-anne Stanek and Jesus r Carbo Ovig Nadal: Glyn Pritchard Score: Bethany Porter Lewis Sound design, Writing, and Adam Delta 5: Cai Gwilym Pritchard An Extra Special thanks to our patrons Theresa Shiban Anthony Hyde Zachary Fortais-Gomm email us at [email protected] follow the podcast on twitter @chainofbeing Subscribe to the patreon for exclusive content and rewards! 170119_hydrophone_river_3.wav by Leonsptvx

We stand on a great and sweeping mountain, a strange fog covers the landscape and movements of large obscured creatures and just about be made out. The wind shrieks in my ears, as if ordering me to leave this place, no oxygen, no protection from the harsh radiation of the sun, If I weren’t in the shadow of the tall eight armed god, Epicruosa, I imagine I would be having a much harder time standing here. Epicurosa puts on the onyx skull of a crow of some kind, decorated in banded white silver. They place a large hand on my back and push me toward the large circular chasm that lays open in front of us. It drops down, I lean over and see no bottom. They gesture toward it. “You want me to jump in?” I ask

[with each new mask epicurosas voice changes, the crow has a similar but more exaggerated quality to adams, and there is a hypnotic tone underneath that winds and and down as she speaks]

“What’s the issue? You’ll survive,”

“Yea but will I be intact?”

“I did not funnel myself into a physical form and bring you all the way out here just to watch you splatter at the bottom of a vast abyss. If I wished to do that I would have just thrown you from the top of that mesa where I rescued you from that... infected woman,”

“Oh fuck, I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I shuffle toward the edge and turn before jumping off “What’s down there?” I’ve never seen Epicurosa’s face without a mask, I see her gray textured skin, glowing yellow eyes and black teeth. Completely unobscured I imagine the sight of her bare face would destroy some part of me. Despite the skull mask I can see her frustration. “Think of the universe as a body, mortals live their entire life on the skin, maybe they’ll cut through the epidermis every so often but that,” she gestures to the open maw of the mountain “Is a place where the skin has been pierced and reaches the flesh and bone,”

“Oh,” I turn back to the chasm “And why do you want me to-”

Epicurosa sighs angrily and shoves me over the edge and I get the sense that something watches me fall, the stone sides of the huge hole that start as rough, natural looking stone soon gives way an impossibly smooth and flawless texture, too smooth even to seem mortal made, something approaches and I hit a layer of water, I sink through for a second, carried by my momentum, before I pass and continue falling, strangely though, it seems as if I am falling up, a circle or orange light approaches and I sail up into the air and back down again, landing on my feet on a wide square, white stone platform. The space is incredibly vast, there is a roof and sides to it, made of the same white stone of the pyramid, the sides go straight up for miles and then begin to slope inwards until they reach the wide flat ceiling which so far away that I can only just make it out through the atmosphere that sits, trapped in this impossible place. Huge pillars are carved into the walls that stretch high above me. Multiple balconies protrude out from the sides on which stand colossal figures, obscured by robe and fire, they look down upon me, vigilant guards holding flaming golden spears. The roof leads to an open octagonal hole through which a warm light shines through, thin trails of sand cascade down and land in a large garden whose borders are entirely defined by where the light falls. Four huge walls stretch the whole height of this space evenly around the octagon, partially barring my full vision of the garden, and even the whole space as the walls prevent me from seeing the side directly opposite. This place I’m stood in is so incredibly huge that the minimal light just barely illuminates the vast cavern. The floor at the bottom of the pyramid is covered in a variety of landscapes: rocky heaths, tors, promontories, and various other rock formations that jut into the air, forming long bridges, platforms and canyons, far off in the distance I see pools of some molten substance of various sizes dotted sporadically here and there, with long thin rivulets trailing around the landscape. At the bottom of the long staircase that trails along the side of the pyramid I see that the rock is actually something akin to glass, unrefined and opaque but still clearly glass. I look up at the angels in their flaming shrouds, their gaze still fixed on me. From Behind a pillar of glass a creature of some kind swiftly rushes up into the air, rising into the air far, far above me. I watch it sail out of sight toward the ceiling, and begin to walk, heading for the garden at the center. I take a step and hear something rushing toward me from above, I look up and see the creature headed straight for me, I draw my sword and ready myself, it moves so quickly that I can just barely discern its form. It descends in a blur of glistening black feather, and pale skeletal claw. It deftly avoids my blade and tears a gash in my arm. The thing lands on the sloping wall of the inverse pyramid behind my and skitters around. A thick oily substance drips from its feathers which stand in a show of active hostility, it turns it’s head toward me and I get a look at it’s face. For that is what it possesses. I can call it nothing but human in nature. A genderless and sickly face the black sludge oozes from it’s pale eyes and seeps from its snarling teeth. It’s features are sharp and cruel.

[the harpy’s voice is harsh and gravelly]

“This is a place of knowledge and discovery, you sully the ground on which you walk, what say you, intruder?”

“Epicurosa, she sent me here,” The beast shivers as I say their name, as it speaks globules of the black liquid splatter and drip from its thin sickly lips

“If you were indeed placed here, and you didn’t intrude where you should not, as you are known to do, then you have been placed here to die!” the creature pushes away from the pyramid wall and spins as it goes for another attack. I hold my sword up in a defensive stance, it grabs the sword with its bone-like claws and shatters the metal. I go to grab it but the oil that soaks it’s feathers causes it to slip from my grasp. “All you know is to destroy! Even in your non-violent pursuits, you hurt those around you,”

“You think I don't know?” I say, gesturing toward the bird which hovers in the air with my shattered sword “do you not think the thought crosses my mind everyday?”

“And what have you done to atone? Promises to ‘be better’? The damage has been done, the collapse of Eden is your burden, the death of the others is on you, your plan to simply not repeat your crimes is meaningless,” I gesture around me, my clothes soaked in black sludge and my arm bleeding freely “what do you think this is? My immortality, letting myself get dragged around by gods and bureaucrats and fucking fascists. Being thrown into bottomless pits, pursuing incomprehensible extra universal entities. Why do you think I do this?”

“You pursue Ovig Nadal in the hopes that you will understand the information that was forced into your mind, do not posture about duty and morals, your pursuits were as selfish as they ever were. Understanding what it is you have in your mind will not bring Eve back, it will not uncorrupt your realm in Eden,”

“Do not presume to know me, why can it not be both? Why can I not stop Ovig Nadal for the benefit of the universe and its inhabitants and for my own ‘selfish’ justification? Why must I ignore my own needs? I am all I have in this world, I am the only one who is there to help me,” I ready my firearm and raise it to the creature, whose face is almost entirely covered in the black oily sheen

“And that is why you shall fail” it says as it explodes in a fountain of black oil. I look down at my now shattered sword, the shards lay scattered around me, some submerged in the black sludge, “What the fuck?” The sludge reeks of spent electrics and leaking batteries. I check the clip in my Sub-machine gun. 18 rounds. Thank the stars for high capacity magazines. I affix it to my hip and start to navigate the maze of glass pillars and strange formations. My arm starts to sting, I didn’t have enough time to restock on bandages, my last two got used up patching the wound created by the Rolder. I go through a small thin trench constantly adjusting my way to try and head in the direction of the garden at the centre of this strange vast place. I look at my reflection in the sheen of the dark glass wall, covered in blood and filth, “something has turned it’s benevolent gaze upon you,” I usually don’t think too hard into what the gods say, their words often hold more meaning than I could ever hope to know. That, combined with the fact that language and communication are based on experience, and the experience of a god is so infinitely different to any non-divine that they have to, essentially, dumb it down and feed it through the filter of what they know to be the non-divine experience means I tend let the general malaise of meaning and intent wash over me, but those words stuck out, they feel so out of place coming from the mouth of a god, usually so impassive and calculating. The trench begins to widen and the ground beneath my feet gradually changes from hard opaque glass to a coarse grey sand which stretches ahead of me shifting to a deep rich brown earth. The trench widens out further and I realise I have reached the centre. I turn and look behind me, the landscape now entirely different. The trench has been replaced with a short sloping escarpment, the pyramid on which I arrived now absent, however the resplendent golden glow of the ever observant angels, now mere spots illuminating the balconies on which they stand, remains consistent. I have no doubt that they watch me now through their shrouds aflame, I begin to march over the rough sand, headed towards the illuminated garden, before I hear a muffled voice. “Hey!” I stop in my tracks and my hand goes to my gun, “Woah” the voice responds to my initial act of hostility “Do you always pull a gun to calls for help?”

“Sorry,” I say to the general area, unsure of who I am addressing, “Recently everything I’ve come across has tried to kill me, or absorb me,”

“Yeah but every star emits light, you don’t see planets orbiting a lightbulb do you?”

“Huh?”

“A sun emits light, a lightbulb also emits light, but a lightbulb is not a star. In the same way, there are things here that will try to kill you, I am a thing that is here, but I do not want to kill you. You gotta take each interaction case by case man. I get it, you’re human, you like to see patterns, it’s in your nature,”

“Who am I speaking to?”

“Aw man, this is gonna take forever,” a second voice chimes in

“Bah, ça fait aussi une éternité qu'on attend, hein” a third voice says in an old human tongue

“No we haven’t! we’ve only been here a few weeks,”

“the clock says 9567 years 3 months and 5 days,”

a fourth voice points out

“Oh yeah because time totally acts like normal down here doesn’t it?”

“Hey!” I say, “at least let me know what direction to look in when I’m talking to you,”

“Turn left, bit more, bit more. Right, now forward a bit, look down,”

I look down and see what I had subconsciously registered as a rock buried in the sand surrounded by many others, the worn metal holds a remarkably similar colour to the glass rocks that peek out of the coarse sand,

“You might need to do a bit of digging to get to us,” I begin to scrape and dig around and reveal a glowing blue eye of some kind

“Oh mon dieu, il a une sale tronche!”

“Tell me about it- what's up with the horns?”

I sigh, “It’s a long story,”

“Looks kinda like the landscape of this place,”

“It’s not lost on me,” I say as I excavate the side of what becomes increasingly clear to be a space probe of human design. And an old one. After a few minutes I finally manage to get a good portion of the body of this thing exposed. I lean against the side of the small crater I’ve dug out, foot resting against the probe itself.

“Better?” I ask

“Much, so what brings you to this angel infested hellhole?,”

“I was going to ask you the same thing actually, I was brought here by a god, got pushed down a big hole in a mountain and then I ended up here. She said this was a place where she could ‘find out some things about me’,”

“How deliciously vague,”

“My name is Adam, by the way. As in, like the Adam. The first human. Just feel like I should let you know,”

The eye stares at me in what I assume to be disbelieving silence

“I mean is it as crazy as anything else you’ve seen here? You obviously have accepted the existence of the angels,”

“You make a good point, how much have we missed?”

“Aw man, I’m guessing you were sent from earth?”

“Yeah,”

“Right so, that’s gone,”

“Was it what I think it was?,”

“I don’t know what you think it was but probably, they put up a good fight if it’s any consolation, launched a bunch of conservation stations, made some good preparations. Wasn’t quite enough in the end but you know, at least they tried,”

[an awkward silence]

“so uh… what’s your deal?”

“We are Surveyor 14,”

“How did you get here?” I ask

“On faisait partie d'une mission pour découvrir à quoi ressemble/ressemblait l'intérieur d'un trou noir. On est équipés d'une technologie très puissante qui nous permet d'échapper à l'attraction gravitationnelle, avec les données toujours intactes, et rentrer au bercail, (bah...)dans un chassis détruit, c'est vrai, mais bon. Bon, le fait est qu'on a été envoyés en mission, puis qu'on a été absorbés et qu'on s'est retrouvés... ici. Pour une raison qui m'échappe, on s'est divisés en quatre personnalités différentes... et voilà où on en est,”

[adam pauses] “ah… I see”

“We’ve had a lot of time to think here, or maybe we haven’t, it’s kind of hard to tell,”

“Hey, I’m not really sure what I’m doing here so if you need someone to bounce ideas off of,”

The AI turns it’s one glowing eye toward me and focuses. “Are we alone in the universe adam?”

“You mean are there aliens? I probably should have mentioned this, so there’s this council-”

“Not aliens, we mean, do you stand alone? An Island surrounded by multitudes of other Islands, or are we all intrinsically one collective? A continent that lessens with each death and grows with each birth,”

“I don’t know,”

“In the hundreds of thousands of years you’ve had to be alive, you’re telling me you haven’t thought of it once?”

“I feel empathy, if that’s what you’re asking, I feel the need to help others. If that drive comes from a place of real altruism (if such a thing truly exists) or some kind of need to atone for all the wrong I’ve done I cannot say,”

“(Bah) ça, c'est pas ce qu'on a demandé”

“My actions have an effect, as much as I wish they didn’t, I still am a part of the collective, I still am a cog in the great cosmic machine. At the most minute level I displace the air around me, my feet shake the ground ever so slightly with each step. Butterfly wings and typhoons. At the same time, it’s hard for me to feel a part of a population whose experience is so totally different to mine,"

“You think you’ve got a monopoly on isolation? On guilt?”

“Hé! Redescends un peu!”

“You’re not the only one who feels guilt for what they’ve done, it’s an age-old feeling, and yes, there are certain circumstances of your life that are specific to you, but your experience is not as unique as you may think. You yourself admit you are part of the ‘comic machine’ as you put it. You are not the mouse to the man, You are the elder that tries to relate to their grandchild, the child speaks as a child, the elder speaks as an elder, and yet there is no sense of lost community within the tribe. So why not you? Even if you cannot find common experience in your past life, can you not find commonality in being in a harsh and uncaring universe? Are you so detached, that you relate more to gods than mortals? There are threats beyond even divine comprehension at play, and yet you still manage to separate yourself from the rest,”

“Wait, how do you know about-”

“Deep down I believe you truly care for others, but until you believe that you are a part of the continent, you cannot truly enact a beneficial change in any meaningful way.”

I lean back against the side of the crater and look up the ceiling obscured by distance and darkness,

“So, uh, you know how to get out of here?”

“I was hoping you’d know actually, you’ve been here longer than me, have you seen anyone or anything else enter and leave this place?”

“Occasionally the angels will blink out and then return, but other than that it’s been pretty quiet here,”

“I’m thinking we should at least head into the light, now I don’t think I’ll be able to carry you, is there a data core or something I could remove?”

“Data core?”

“Wouh, regardez s'il est chic celui-là avec ses data cores!,”

“We’ve got a hard drive, just pop open the chassis and then have a root around,”

I pry open a door on the outside of the probe and start searching for a harddrive amongst the instruments and circuits, I feel something with a handle on it

“Is this it?” I ask

“How the fuck am I supposed to know? If I squeezed your liver would you be able to tell me if I’d got the right organ?”

“It’s not quite the same but I see your point,” I grab a hold of the handle “See you on the other side,” I unlock the hard drive and pull it out from the machine. The glowing eye goes dim and I hold up the hard drive to the light coming from the octagonal opening in the ceiling to this place. I scramble out of the hole and dust myself off with one hand, the hard drive is heavy but I still manage to carry it in one hand toward the edge of the light, the gap between the two huge walls on either side of me is wide and sits perfectly at the barrier between the golden light and the dark. I stand at the edge and peer into the garden, twisting old trees bearing fruit, both alien and yet painfully familiar, thin leafed bushes and pale grass, the sand that tumbles down doesn’t seem to drown the garden and instead pushes outwards to the rest of this place. At this distance I’m finally able to clearly see what's on the inside of the walls. All along an intricate diagram is embossed in gold, strange shapes and symbols stretch the entire length of each wall. No words, not in any language a non-divine could comprehend, each wall is different. Perhaps they display, perhaps they praise. Maybe a bit of both. They display a scale of some kind, from what I can discern it represents a gradation, all flowing from a single source, each wall represents a different aspect or group of aspects and how they relate to said source. I pass the barrier between the dim cold of the glass fields and enter the warm garden. The light soaks through my skin. Ragged and bleeding I stand for a moment in the resplendent light.

[he simply breathes for a few seconds]

“Alright let’s get the fuck of here,” The garden rises ever so slightly, a shrine sits atop this small hill, smooth white stone, it encircles a hexagonal basin, golden light plays off of the surfaces like sunlight off of water. It’s perfectly geometric, angles and simple shapes fused with each other in 3 dimensional symmetry, spiralling and tumbling down, too complex to be aesthetically pleasing but it’s not there for me. I approach the wide basin, at least my height in width, I kneel at it’s edge and peer into the golden liquid, it’s thin and only carries a slight luster and it’s deep, the edges on the outside curve inward down maybe half a metre, but looking into the deep liquid it seems to go outwards and much further down, some bright light dances around down there.

“Now what?” I say to the silent hard drive that leans against the side of the basin. I stand and brush myself off.

Suddenly, as if they had been stood there this entire time behind some curtain which now, upon my being here is dropped to reveal their presence, I see several angels, one hovers above the shrine it’s wings of golden shards extended outward, I take a step back, with the hard drive of surveyor-14 still in hand, it floats to the ground It has in its hand a long spear of gold, at the tip of the blade a small fire blazes white hot. It lowers the spear to my chest, and slowly pushes it into my heart, not with any malice or intent to damage, but with a conviction akin to a sculptor using a chisel or a carpenter using a plane. The world, or at least my perception of it, begins to wobble and convulse as if seen through weeping eyes. This effect recedes and I see the world through the eyes of something else, through a veil of golden fire and white robe I watch a battle between two forces, one I recognise, the form of Ovig Nadal, who causes such an entropic effect on the universe and one I do not, the common form of a god, for sure, but not one that has deigned to make its presence known to me. Beyond this physical interpretation I get the sense something much grander takes place between vast formless things and that this display is simply the tip of the iceberg poking out from the great depths of the cosmic ocean, my perception of these events begins to wobble again as Ovig Nadal grabs the angel whose vision I borrow and brings it close to his face. He peers into its eyes, his multitudes of teeth thick with the molten glass that fills the angels and his pale eyeless head bleeding that polychrome matter, damaged and cut all over. I can only assume this is a form he manifested or grew from some pre-existing entity he possessed. He holds the angel close to him and says “You watch one step toward a better universe Adam, a step forward in the progression of this universe to a state in which it never will have been as it is now,” and as his opponent readies another attack, Ovig Nadal crushes the angel and the vision finally begins to falter too much for me to see anything clearly.

I arise and pull back from the golden spear that intersects with my heart, I look up to see it now being wielded by Epicurosa wearing a wolf skull on her hooded head.

“We have deemed you ready, I will send you to the aftermath of that battle and-,”

“I still don’t understand, why me? Not why me. Why not you? You are the most powerful thing I have ever seen, you formed humanity and the Veatorians from nothing. You Shift cosmic forces with no effort or exertion. Why are you, or any of your peers unable to do this? I want to, I really do, it used to be that I wanted to understand what it is I learned, to make what I did worth it, but I have realised that it is not about making it worth it but is instead atoning, the intent has changed but my action remains the same. But I must know, why?”

She exchanges her wolf skull for that of some kind of large fish, not an animal I have ever seen.

“I could force your understanding, I could initiate a vision. It would torment you, as it does Might-Upon-Serenity, unable to convey or sufficiently re-create in your memory. Instead I will try to explain, in language. Gods are not physical beings, I believe a Veatorian philosopher once referred to us as “concepts with will” and while ‘concept’ carries certain connotations she had the right idea. Ovig Nadal is unlike anything this universe has ever seen, I do not know his origins, I simply know he is other and that we cannot affect him, you saw through that angel's eyes, there was nothing that Aratheau could do to destroy him. Our common forms can cause harm to each other: matter touches matter, but celestially, we cannot influence him, but he can us. I believe that you will be able to do affect him in a significant way, and the fact that there is something beyond even divinity that surrounds you and guides us to help you, proves that I am right,”

[with relief]

“Thank you,”

“I am going to send you to that place within the vision, follow him. And whatever he intends to do, stop him,”

“I know his intentions, Might upon serenity, in a moment of clarity as we shared a vision corrupted by Ovig Nadal, she told me he seeks Eden,”

Epicurosas whole demeanour shifts, if I were to assign emotions to a divine being of pure though I would have called it… fear

“If that is indeed the case, then our situation is far more dire than previously anticipated. Let us hope you will be able to stop him before this happens”

A portal manifests behind me. “Could I ask something of you?”

“You may ask,” I hold up the hard drive

“Would you construct a body for them? Make them whole please, they’ve helped me on my journey, I think they deserve it,”

“That I can do,” she takes it from me and I walk through the portal, leaving behind the divine setting of glass landscapes and perfect stone, I step through into my new setting, a collapsed city aflame...

#audio drama #audiodrama #podcast #transcript #podcast transcript #scifi #sci-fi

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cline564 · 4 years ago

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Women of ABC News 'Lean In,' Share the Best Career Advice Ever Received

presentation: Sheryl Sandberg is the female force behind the best individual to single correspondence site on the planet. As Facebook's head working position, Sandberg has bound obstacles in Silicon Valley, yet has seen far less women rising the conditions close to her barbara fedida .

That is the drive behind her new book, "Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead," which hits stores today and has starting late opened up a trade on women in the workplace. Sandberg, moreover a top of the Walt Disney Company, parent of ABC News, urges women to "lean in" and to take an action to show up at their moderate cutoff and the most raised inspiration driving their motivations driving living.

In the spirit of Sandberg's "Lean In" campaign, we proposed the female specialists from ABC News to "lean in," likewise, and to share the best work counsel they have gotten. Take a gander at to see what our ABC News secures, include authors, and producers in the foundation need to state.

quicklist: 1 referring to: title: Robin Roberts url: media: 18434237 substance: "I got back home from calling day in center school. I told my mom that I would have been a real ed teacher and ball direct. My mom was a reliable educator, so I thought she'd be substance with my decision. She advanced toward me for what veritable legitimization I had picked this calling way. My response: Because at work day I was instructed that is the essential occupation for a youthful grown-up wanting to remain related with sports. Luckily, my mom let me know never to let someone else pick what I could or couldn't do ... there's nothing more to it. I continued understanding my dream and changed into the basic ethnic minority sports maker/broadcaster at ESPN."

quicklist: 2 class: title: Barbara Walters url: media: 18334949 substance: "Don't be destroyed; by far most of us don't find our satisfaction. Never fear, your satisfaction will find you. I went confronting confusion when I changed into the central female news co-anchor on a gigantic association. I was a level out lemon, yet my nonattendance of accomplishment in that experience moved me to work all the harder in my various endeavors. If you have a mishandle, you will rise; you will be fine; you will work your way back. As opposed to sinking, keep above water whether it handles keeping above water for a piece. You will show up at shore."

quicklist: 3 class: title: Martha Raddatz url: media: 18686714 substance: "When I started my calling as a TV writer ages earlier, I was picked to get the boundlessly open sections that my 'family' editorialists were getting. No youthful grown-up shows for me. If they were covering police strikes, I was other than. If they were covering City Hall, I was furthermore.

"This was not exclusively to show a point. This is what I found spellbinding and testing, so certainly I could do it!

"Notwithstanding, one brilliant explicit reporter offered me everything considered spectacular bearing as I tried to walk my way to deal with oversee regulate direct progress: 'You ought to have a sharp proclivity.' really I by and large had rebuked myself and chuckled at unequivocal conditions where I ended up as a woman, yet I was convinced if I did that in a specialist atmosphere I wouldn't be set up on. An astounding talk.

"If you can relate to your additional items and those you cover as a persuading yet ensured solitary, I think it is far less extraordinary to be essential for a work environment and overwhelm."

- Martha Raddatz, ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent

quicklist: 4 class: title: Bianna Golodryga media: 18686677 substance: "Undoubtedly the best suggestion I've gotten relating to my business came from one of my first accomplices, Maria Bartiromo. Maria is a certifiable pioneer in the field of money related news-envisioning. She was the central woman to report from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, truly crossing the unbalanced need that for a gigantic long time cleared females dependent on what was seen as one of the last male posts.

"Maria once depicted a dash of the disturbing, brutish, and greatly stun treatment she endured energetically in her start of checking. Obviously various men didn't require her there and were attempting to send her a message through their standard disturbing. In any case, she before long regarded that her best inverse delivery would come from an ensured about response.

"'Never let them see you cry, Bianna,' she let me know.

"Hold your head up high, and look past your doubters was the message. She never let them see her cry.

"I loosened up this to set up that, while women are persistently noticed (and perceived) for their compassion, it should never be confused with need."

- Bianna Golodryga, co-anchor of "Good Morning America's" weekend translation, ABC News' Business Correspondent

quicklist: 5 class: title: Juju Chang url: media: 18686784 substance:

"Totally when I was an energetic, single youth at ABC News, I spent a mid year making a few political pieces with one of the greats, Cokie Roberts. As editorialists going creation the rounds reliably do, we started sharing anecdotes about our own lives. She let me think of her as days canning peaches and being a homemaker while her life extra worked. Besides, I revealed to her my darling wasn't suggesting that I get hitched and that I harmed for being a mother soon. I gave up with the 'working mother' title. She uncovered to me something that I've told limitless women all through the total length. She passed on, 'Juju, you CAN have it all, yet you can't everything considered have it all the while.' Sometimes one requires to give.

"Conflictingly, I figure my head will explode. The fight is general and the allure I'd layer on top of what Cokie said is that nobody yet YOU can depict what 'having it all' takes after. In addition, nobody notwithstanding YOU can draw that line among give and take."

- Juju Chang, ABC News Correspondent

quicklist: 6 depiction: title: Lara Spencer media:18688461 text: "Face challenges and don't be reluctant to have a go at something new. In the occasion that you're not unnerved, that isn't joking."

- Lara Spencer, "Striking Morning America" anchor

quicklist: 7 depiction: title: Christiane Amanpour media: 15519353 substance: "Encountering pubescence in Iran, I went to a riding school run by a past Iranian facilitated power experts official. ... This changed into my game. ... Beginning when I was just five years old, I would be put on a goliath horse, not a little pony, which expediently set the bar high for what I was depended on to do, how I was needed to deal with a titanic test. ... I used to tumble off the horse consistently, yet there was no deficiency of leaving, or concerning stress or completing the improvement midway. My educator would walk around, pat my cheek, and lift me straight back on. Dismissing the course that, by then, I motivation driving conviction didn't get mental demand, it was an early exercise concerning it. Each time you fall, get yourself, dust yourself off and push ahead. As it wrapped up, the activities I controlled vanquishing spread a strong foundation for the unprecedented calling of living and working in battle zones and various dissatisfactions that I've taken on."

- Christiane Amanpour, Global Affairs Anchor for ABC News, excerpted from "The Person Who Changed My Life"

quicklist: 8 class: title: Elizabeth Vargas url: media: 18686892 substance: "The best business drawing in I ever got was from a redesign and it was misleadingly key. I was feeling paralyzed and truly hurt to talk reality concerning a twister of introduction and quality that established another upgrade who had beginning late been picked. I had never gotten that much thought myself, and it was hard not to consider the higher viewpoint from a certified point of view and not to progress toward pushed for what substantial clarification I showed up, plainly, to guarantee about unnoticed.

"Right when I yielded my necessities to an ornamentation, he completed me, and honestly, 'Unsurprising positions continually succeed finally.' He held guiding me to focus in on my work, and said that all that hullaballoo around that new select would in a brief timeframe decrease. He was right. It did. I have industriously investigated how short or how tremendous that charm was, or what the conceivable increment of doing your closest to perfect when all else misfires, is around the end, the significant concern we own."

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rovvboat · 5 years ago

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Young Love from the Old Times - Colossus/Piotr Rasputin x Reader

A/N: A Series of Smut Fics to Enjoy :) I do have a ~plot~ for this so if you enjoyed this part, lemme know! <3

Warnings: N S F W

Part 1

Being a fresh-faced, up-and-coming X-Man was exhausting work. But doing it alongside Piotr had made things smoother, and much more bearable. The both of you were of the same age – 19 – though you were conferred into the X-Men a few months later than Piotr.

You had heard from rumours and hallway talk that him and Kitty – another young X-Man – had a thing for one another. But, apparently, Piotr had reservations about it all – seeing as she was 6 years his junior – and hadn’t pursued much.

And that’s when you came in.

You had an appointment with the Professor – it was your first time at the mansion, and the first person you laid eye upon was Piotr – still in his pyjamas (You’d never forget: a large black T-shirt paired with loose fitting blue and grey stripped pyjama pants) – from having your presence at the doorway many hours before sunrise – 3am to be exact.

Your eyes were caught onto his large stature, his dashing blue eyes being a point of intrigue – as he stood there next to the door, rubbing away the fatigue from his eyes. You stand there, taking in the sight of this absolutely stunning person, when his groggy voice picks up.

‘’May I help you? It is 3am. Not the best time for visit… or any activity for that matter.’’ He sighs, pushing some of his hair back from his face. A mischievous smile crosses your face.

It didn’t take long for the both of you to become friends – more specifically, of the benefits type.

It began with your first day on the training grounds, when you proved to be a force to reckoned with on the battle field. Your teleportation prowess – unrivaled.

Until Colossus grabbed hold of you in the middle of a sparring session.

Your only weakness was weight. You could only port inversely proportional to your weight (that’s to say, the heavier you are, the harder it becomes) – and that included anything that touched you.

He was gargantuan – and you’ve ported with a 100kg barbell before; which really said something of his density; though not completely unexpected.

By the end of it, the both of you were left breathless and soaked – the baby hairs on your head sticking close to your forehead; his hair similarly slick with sweat – as the sparring session had persisted far too long – neither of you giving up the fight; And it was only until the professor signaled for you to end the session that the both of you ceased one-upping each other.

He met you half way on the field that day, hand extended out in a gesture of sportsmanship.

‘’You were a formidable opponent. Truly someone with great control and spirit.’’

‘’That’s one way to get on my good side, handsome.’’ You give him a suggestive smirk, held tilted to the side, before meeting him in a solid handshake.

His eyes lifted in timid fashion. ‘’I– ‘’

But you were already making your way towards the showers.

You hear him enter the shared locker room; a towel draped over his left shoulder. He acknowledges you with a smile, which you return more than willingly.

Something about him made you feel… excitement, in the pit of your stomach. You supposed that being that much of an attractive and well-mannered person would do that to anyone, but the fact that the both of you had almost synergistic characters made it that much more thrilling and stimulating to be around him.

Of course, you had to keep your cool – one of the more defining aspects of your personality.

You grab your toiletries and head to the showers – and halfway through your mildly therapeutic washdown, you hear Piotr entering the showers 2 cubicles away from yours.

What a gentleman.

But it was also minutes after that that you realized you missed one important thing –

you forgot to bring your towel in with you.

You smack your forehead in annoyance – ‘’for fucks sake’’ – instinctively clicking your tongue against the roof of your mouth; tsk.

Two showers away, the sound of spraying water stops with a squeak, as Piotrs’ voice perks up – ‘’Is something the matter?’’

‘’Yeah well, this is kind of embarrassing but… do you have a spare towel I could borrow?’’

You could hear him chuckle – as his laugh reverberates against the walls of the small space. ‘’Of course. Give me a moment.’’

You hear the rails shilling as he opens the shower curtains, as he walks over to get fetch his extra towel. You hear his footsteps get louder until they stop near your shower. He clears his throat, ‘’I will cover my eyes, you can come out to take the towel.’’

You peer over the curtain to make sure – not that you doubted him for a moment – but the scene of Piotr covering his eyes with his hands felt much too precious to miss.

You take your time to admire his colossal form – clothed only in a white towel fastened on his waist. His porcelain skin still glistening from the droplets of water that he clearly missed as he rushed to your aid – one of the drops break the surface tension, before gliding over his chest and disappears on the tight ridges of his abs. You dare not look any lower, though the outline of him was screaming ‘’well-endowed’’ at you.

His left hand was held tight against his eyes, fingers squared diligently, as his other hand held out a thick pink towel.

You couldn’t help but grin at him, and just as you take a step forward,

you lose your footing against the wet floor, and with the tell-tale sound of feet slipping on tile, you’re

falling onto the ground. You try to reach for the ledge, but miss – causing the shampoo and soap bottles to topple onto the floor with you.

Alarmed, Piotr rushes into the shower, eyes wide in concern as he lowers himself to pick you up. You instinctively cover your chest, before letting Piotr pull you up from the floor.

‘’Are you alright? You should be more careful. The shower is wet and you could have –‘’

It takes him a minute to realise that now wasn’t really the time for a lecture on bathroom safety, and when he does, you could see the heat rising into his cheeks. (In his defense, he was only ever looking into your eyes until you shifted an arm to cover yourself)

‘’I..’’ – he clears his throat, ‘’ – uh, I should– I should leave,’’ he turns in his heels, moving to part the shower curtains.

But before he could, you yank him back by the arm, and in the passing moment that his face was close to yours, you take him in your hands – eyes closed and pulling him into a kiss.

When you pull away, you’re slightly embarrassed by your forthcoming – and Piotr was rendered stunned; like he didn’t believe what just happened.

‘’I’m sorry, I– I wasn’t thinking and–‘’

Piotr steps forward, cupping both hands onto your cheeks as he pulls your face gently towards him, pressing his lips to yours.

It doesn’t take long for the both of you to be completely taken into it – him craning down to deepen the kiss. Your hands rest over his neck, feeling the smoothness of his baby soft skin with sweet caresses; over his ear, down his neck, tracing up to his jawline. His massive frame pushes against yours, guiding you to the adjacent wall, and as you try to readjust, you accidentally flip on the shower – sending a spray of water onto you.

It gets a little harder to breathe – between the kiss and the downpour of water over the both of you – but Piotr senses your loss of air, and pushes you further against the wall, away from the steaming spray of the shower head – his crotch subtly grinding against you, wedging you between him and the wall.

You feel the shooting pangs of desire – jolting you into a more hyperaware state.

Between his painfully mild-mannered grinding, and deep, distracted kissing, you feel a need to switch into a more compromising position; if only to appease your own desires.

You trace your foot up his leg – the action alone causing a hitch in Piotr once heavy breathes – only stopping when you reach his waist – a gentle push into the inevitable.

You leg hooks onto his waist, with only his towel separating him from you.

You cling onto him, drawing him closer to you, intensifying the feel of his growing member on your cunt. The towel does nothing to subdue the sensations – and does quite much the opposite.

He mouths a low rumbling whisper of Russian, ‘’ty svodish' menya s uma…’’

‘’hmm?’’

‘’You are… driving me crazy…’’ He breathes deeply against your neck.

‘’I can do a lot more than that,’’ you retort back in a sultry whisper, your words hot against his ears.

You feel his big, purposeful hand inching down your back – passing over your ass with a gentle squeeze, before lightly running over the back of your thigh – pulling ever so slightly under your knee, propping up your other leg; and you – ever so willing – now have both your legs wrapped around his waist, at the mercy of his exasperatingly leisured pace.

You up the ante a little – taking matters into your own hands – as you buckle up and down his length. The friction of the fabric mounting onto your pleasure.

He takes the hint – pushing you further into the wall – the full length of his cock now in absolute contact with your cunt; rubbing with an intense slowness that keeps your orgasm right on edge – but never pushing you over it.

He grabs a fistful of your ass, pulsing his stiff, tight member against you – exhaling your name in a labored breathes, hot against your ears, as his teeth gently graze down over your collar; nipping at your most sensitive areas.

The sensations threaten your sanity – as you thumb aggressively at his towel; hungry for more than just a feel of him through the friction on his fabric.

He lifts his body a little off of you, and that concession is all you needed to yank it off of him, throwing the towel over the curtain rod – his cock now exposed in all its girth.

He pushes hard against you again – running over and over between your folds.

The sheer unadulterated feel of him drives you wild – bucking and moaning as you go; the tension building inside your core begging for a release other than your mouth. You let out whine as Piotr quickens his pace, your breathing matching his, as you feel the first stirring of your orgasm inching closer into your thighs. You snake your arms tighter around his neck, eyes taking in the sight of Piotr, breathless and sweating; his spiky hair slicked wet and stuck to his forehead, his cheeks a shade not far from red.

Piotr pinches your chin, lifting it up towards him as his lips hasten to meet yours, his tongue finding yours with an urgency – his thrusts intensifying into speedy bursts of pleasure as he moans into your kiss, his grip on your waist tightening to hold you down against his cock, as your legs writhe from the shaking orgasm that left you gasping for air – holding him tight against your body as you both come together; a sticky wetness running down your thighs not even moments later.

He slows down his movements, heaving close to your neck with his mouth slightly agape, as you pant over his drooping head.

Suddenly, the clicking of a door reverberates through the shower room.

Footsteps echo onto the pin-drop silence – (a stark opposition to the noises of you and Piotr against the humid shower)

You catch the air in your lungs in a sharp breath, struggling not to make any noise against the silent suspense that surrounded the both of you.

Piotrs’ hand masks over your mouth instantly, eyes staring fiercely into your own wide-eyed shock.

‘’Is anyone here?’’

‘’Da. I am just about finishing up my shower.’’ He answers matter-of-factly; his head turned towards the voice of the intruder.

‘’Oh Colossus, it’s you. Have you seen Y/N around? I’ve got something I’d like to discuss–‘’

‘’Nyet. I have not,’’ he lies, watching your face turn into a smirk under his palm. He playfully brings up his other hand, a finger to his smiling lips to signal you to keep you quiet.

‘’Well, okay, let me know if you do.’’

When the coast was clear, and the door clicked behind the intruder, Piotr slowly brought down his hand, freeing your lips from the sweltering nightmare of heat.

‘’That was… something.’’ You remark, bringing your leg down from his waist, arms still looped over his neck. ‘’We should do this again some time.’’

Piotr huffs a laugh, his face giving you a sheepish smile.

(And with 3 words, he would kickstart a mutual beneficial relationship.)

‘’Maybe we should.’’

***

Taglist!

@emma-frxst @marvel-forever-17 @fluffymadamina

((Shoot me an ask if you wanna be tagged! <3))

#colossus x reader #deadpool fanfiction #deadpool 2 #marvel fanfiction #Piotr Rasputin #colossus #piotr rasputin x reader #cable #colossus imagine #Young Love from the Old Times

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fetoras475 · 4 years ago

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How To Make a Kitchen Knife

Stage 1: Designing, Steel Cutting

Before you do whatever else, you should think of a plan for your blade. I based my plan off of a few kitchen blades I previously had. I made a few changed like the rakish part by the tip rather than a smooth bend, and Im utilizing an African rosewood called bubinga rather than the dark wood/plastic for the handle piece. Something else, its essentially a similar blade: 1/8 inch thick sharp edge, 5.5 inch handle, 6 inch edge. My first sketch was half-scale on a designing cushion, and afterward I did a full scale one to ensure the size felt right, and so forth As should be obvious, it took me a few attempts to get the handle shape right.

There are additionally a few contrasts in the metal itself. Most importantly I'm utilizing 0-1 device steel, and different blades are spotless, however different blades additionally have some metal rib things at the front of the handle, an element that is difficult to make on the off chance that you are simply utilizing a bit of level bar stock as I did.

When you have your plan, you should arrange or obtain your steel and wood. I purchased my steel from Mcmastercarr.com (I love that site). I got 2" x 1/8" bar stock that was a foot and a half (18") long, I think whenever was $35. I had some piece bubinga (the wood I utilized for the handle) laying around so I utilized that. Additionally, in light of the fact that language is cool, the wood pieces for the handle are actually called scales, recollect that. For the metal handle pins I utilized around 1/4" mellow steel dowel (you can get this at any nice home improvement shop).

Utilizing estimations from my full scale drawing, I scribed my blade diagram onto the steel with a sharpie. Notice how I got steel that was actually the correct size so I didn't need to make numerous cuts. NOTE: If you just have one "valid" straight edge in your steel that you can utilize, make this straight edge the edge, not the spine (the spine = level top edge of blade where you can push down with your hand while slashing watermelon). At the point when you get around to honing, you will perceive any reason why you need as straight an edge as workable for the cutting edge.

Stage 2: Belt Sander Rig, Cleaning Up the Rough Cut

The following stage is to tidy up the cuts, and remove the material right to the sharpie layout. After this progression we will have our last blade shape.

To tidy up the front of the cutting edge (the bend on the edge and the two point cuts on the top by the spine) I utilized a belt sander which I flipped over and zip tied and braced to the work seat. I dont have a genuine belt sander like this one, so I needed to extemporize. I utilized 80 coarseness sand paper for this.

You will get extremely acquainted with this apparatus when you make your blade edge too, so on the off chance that you choose to utilize this rearranged belt sander technique I recommend making it tough.

To tidy up the handle and the back edge of the edge I utilized a drum sander bit on a drill press, a sanding drum on the dremel, and a seat top processor.

Stage 3: Making the Edge

The edge of the blade is the base segment of the cutting edge (the piece of the blade that isn't the handle). Pretty simple, I know, I simply need to be certain all the language is straight. All things considered, since we are grinding away, I'm simply going to list the language:

Handle = part that you snatch

Edge = everything except for the handle

Edge = base piece of the edge, its sharp

Spine = top piece of the edge, inverse the edge

Scales = wood pieces that sandwich the metal in the handle and give the handle some meat to clutch

Pins = the metal dowels that experience the scales and look cool (for this blade they give no auxiliary significance)

Alright since that is cleared up, its opportunity to begin making your edge. The ideal activity here is to eliminate material on the sharp edge so it begins 1/8 inch thick by the spine, and tightens directly with the goal that the width goes to zero at the edge. Duh, isn't that so? As a matter of fact, its harder then it sounds. Props to you in the event that you accomplish this! Mine wound up being around 1/8 inch thick till mostly down, an inch from the spine, THEN it began tightening to an edge. Also, the shape wasn't even direct (straight line from start of tighten to edge), it bended. I didn't stress over it to much until I completed it and took a stab at cutting things like onions and apples. Since the sharp edge gets thick very soon in the cut, as connected to gradually getting thicker as the cut advances, you need to push a ton of the thing you are removing as you cut. This makes it so the cut requires a ton more weight then it should. Thus, in the event that you can, get that tighten quite straight, and make it take up the all out hight of the sharp edge.

In any case, first I denoted the centerline of the edge so I realized where to sand to. In the event that you can copyist it directly in the metal that is better, at that point what I did. I just utilized a bit of tape that ran down the whole edge. On the off chance that you dont put some centerline marker and simply attempt to figure, your edge will presumably wind up screwy and not level. Like, when you put the edge on the cutting board there will be holes, a.k.a. you won't carve completely through certain pieces of the stuff you're cutting. Hitting that centerline on either side with the shape is vital! All things considered, you dont need to go right to the centerline. I left around 1/64" on either side, which gave a 1/32" level area directly at the edge. In the event that you hone right to a fresh sharp edge, it will be demolished when you heat treat your blade, and afterward you should sand it down and restart.

When utilizing the belt sander to eliminate material, consistently point the edge against the heading of the sanding belt. It sounds somewhat strange, yet this is the best approach to do it. To emphasize, you need each bit of sand paper that passes by to initially sand the edge, and afterward the spine.

Stage 4: Making the Scales

I had some extra bubinga from a past task, so I chose to utilize that for the wood scales. Most blades have handles that are .75 ish inches thick, which is 48/64". The metal in the handle is 1/8", so 48/64 less 8/64 is 40/64" of wood. This is partitioned into two scales so each scale should be 20/64" thick. I cut mine around 1/8" or so to enormous so I had some squirm room. Its simple to remove material, its difficult to add it. Continuously blunder on the enormous side! The bit of wood I began with was to enormous so I tore it down on the band saw. I chose two areas which had decent patters and were level on one side (this is significant with regards to sticking the scales to the metal, if the outside of the wood isn't level, the paste won't bond too and you will have less surface zone holding your scales to your blade). At that point I followed the state of the handle onto the bits of wood, and cut and sanded them so they were close. Once more, blunder on the greater side, dont attempt to coordinate the layout of the scales to the metal at this time. In the event that you stand by till they are stuck with the wood hanging out over the metal, its simple to sand down the wood straight up to the metal, it takes into account a very flush, professional looking completion.

When I had the unpleasant handle shape in the scales, I bored 1/4" openings where I needed the pins (I'm utilizing 1/4" metal dowel for the pins). For the interim however, I utilized transitory wood dowels to hold the scales together. I continued to penetrate out the openings in the metal as well. I began with a little pilot touch, and moved to a larger than usual opening so I would have some space to play with when it came to adjusting the scales and sticking. On the off chance that you have a feeling that you definitely know precisely how you need to adjust the scales on the metal, don't hesitate to utilize the best possible size boring tool for the 1/4" pins.

Stage 6: Heat Treating the Blade

Like I stated, the metal I began with is B95, and we need something between a C55-C60. This is a decent hardness for a utility kitchen blade. Hard enough that it keeps an edge, however not to hard that it snaps under tension, it will simply curve and flex a bit. As an examination, blades are commonly too hard and overly fragile with a higher rockwell tackle. You never need to hone them cause they keep an edge perpetually, however they chip without any problem. Then again, excoriating blades are a lot milder and in this manner super bendy, however require successive honing.

Due to the compound structure of steel, you can just dependably solidify steel to its greatest saddle. Along these lines, what you need to do is solidify the blade however much as could reasonably be expected, which makes it about a C65 on the rockwell scale, and afterward you relax it by treating it. Its a lot simpler to dependably temper to various outfits then it is to solidify it to various hardnesses.

To solidify the steel you should initially warm it up to around 1500 degrees F and afterward rapidly chill it off. At the point when you heat it, you are changing the translucent structure inside the steel, and when you cool it rapidly you "lock" that structure set up. On the off chance that you let the hot metal cool gradually (by, state, simply forgetting about it at room temperature), at that point the structure you have made by warming it up will gradually change once again into its underlying structure: a lot gentler structure. By rapidly lowering the hot steel into something with a great deal of warm mass, similar to room temperature oil, the steel will cool [almost] to the touch in a few seconds. This "extinguishing", as its called, keeps that translucent structure from changing once again into what it was previously, it secures it as it were.

To temper the steel you need to warm it up to around 500 F, let it 'splash' at that temperature for 20 or so minutes, at that point let it cool gradually. This low-temperature measure gives you considerably more command over how much the compound structure of the steel changes once more into that gentler arrangement, on the grounds that the steel changes much more slow at lower temperatures. Typically one 'douse' at 500 F for 20 minutes is sufficient to bring the hardness down from a C65 to a C55 or C60 for full information Visit here.

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