#especially micro genres

[elsenborn]

Tagged by @sushilabs (i can’t even remember the last time I got tagged in something like this lol)

Rules: shuffle your 'on repeat' playlist and post the first ten tracks, then tag ten people

1. Yes, To Err Is To Human, So Don’t Be One - Will Wood [The first of many 12exe/dexdark leaning songs on this list]

2. All Access - The Garden [On my CSM playlist originally, but its also just a bop]

3. Deeper That Love - Colleen Green [12exe/Dexdark/ednny angst song. But like. Weird angst. The “am I even really a human with real emotions” kind of angst]

4. Waltz in E-Major, Op. 15 “Moon Waltz” - Cojum Dip [just a song I really like. One of the more bizarre experimental songs in my arsenal]

5. Ivy & Gold - Bombay Bicycle Club [Benrook song 💚💙]

6. 134350 Pluto - Cojum Dip [on my Rook and Vash playlists most notibly]

7. Drink To Me - The Pleasantries [On my 12exe playlist and a song I will actually just put on repeat a LOT when making dexdark or 12exe content]

8. Sin Triangle - Sydney Gish [On a handful of playlist. Just a song I really like]

9. Super Rad- The Aquabats! [Just a fun song on my Rook playlist]

10. Satan Is My Motor - CAKE [Kevin Levin anthem lets be real. On my Rook playlist]

Nobody asked for commentary, but you got commentary. I don’t really interact with anyone on tumblr, but if were mutuals go for it ig. Tag me if you do I wanna snoop for music taste.

[e-von-dahl]

Jesus christ I fucking hate the commodification of mental health terms, especially by corporations pretending to be quirky and relatable

I’M AT YOUR WALLS SPOTIFY

[official-saul-goodman]

This is mainly my observation as a non black person watching the reactions of other non black people and especially white people to the show Interview With The Vampire, they are a result of a fundamental misunderstanding regarding the idea of horror.

in a world of white dominated hollywood horror movies that mostly contain gore and white familial tragedy and abuse, none of which ever ever include the concept of race, misogyny and homophobia, racialised misogyny, and racialised homophobia- people cannot digest a horror tv show wherein the main character is a black man who is always and forever a victim of systematic, social, and microaggressive racism. people, specifically white people, have always been uncomfortable with being shown the extent of anti black racism in a way that isnt heavily sanitised or sympathetic to the white cause. to white people, the genre of horror simply does not include race cause they have not experienced the horrors of colonialist genocidal white supremacist anti black racism. and i highlight anti black racism because it is the subject of the show, as well as being a topic that is discussed vaguely by non black people while still being the most perpetuated form of racism from a global standpoint.

to white people especially, as the people who are responsible for the worst crimes committed against black people, anti blackness is just one of life's constants that should not be addressed directly or in detail, so to depict anti black racism so openly as a part of the genre of horror is incomprehensible to them. they dont want to be shown even a smidgen of exactly the kind of shit their ancestors and peers are responsible for, cause horror to them must just be things that they relate to and nothing regarding race at all cause it causes them to confront their comfortable positions. this is the same reason why you see white people saying jordan peele's movies are 'too hard to understand' despite being very easy to understand.

horror to people of colour is a concept that intrinsically includes racialised violence, its a constant presence like a rusted nail hovering near an open wound. and white people reject this. which is why they decided to degrade and miscontrue the purpose of iwtv and call it 'just another self important show thats racist and not worth watching'. cause to them horror is meant to be enjoyable, they want limbs chopped off not the actions of their white ancestors coming back to remind and haunt them. even though horror is a genre that is meant to fill you with... horror. horror to white people does not include the politics of racism, cause they see horror as an apolitical genre (obviously incorrect when everything and the kitchen sink is political naturally).

to the people of color, it is a moment of feeling seen, to see a main character ( a flawed man a pained man) experience the horror of all round racial discrimination, to see the horror of him being dismissed and exploited by the white people around him, the moment of witnessing yourself in the other when you see Louis and Claudia being so utterly sabotaged by so many forces, the way they are pushed to making irreversible devastating decisions cause they think they have no other choice to achieve an escape from a multitude of things they suffer through, the manipulation and abuse they had to become accustomed to. this is the horror, the horror of being immortalised against your will and lack of choices you were given, the horror of being forced to be subjected to racialised misogynistic and homophobic violence for eternity. being forced to live with all these memories and no means of forgetting. all this while enduring the way a white man belittles them for even suggesting that he might be racist while he expresses racist micro agressions (both lestat and daniel). this is real horror that hits home, horror you want to devour as a person of colour cause you want to see more of this story continue, to see what becomes of this living limbo that Louis, Claudia, and eventually Armand have to go through.

and as most white people cannot fathom this, cannot relate, they dismiss this version of horror that focuses on racism as a core element from the perspective of a black man and forever young black girl. they dismiss the show as just being tone deaf colour blind casting cause they didnt even see the trailer or try to understand this show. the white guilt is a shield they use to defend themselves against the frank and honest depiction of anti black racism from the perspective of a black man. they do not want to understand. they want sanitised, digestible depictions of racism so the horror remains fun for them.

even though this show is literally categorised as horror, and has all the hallmarks of classic horror including the camp styling, the blood, the gore, the supernatural, and the violence - the single fact that the show's core theme is based around racism from the perspective of a gay black vampire man is enough for them to declassify as horror in their minds. cause people of colour and especially black gay men must always be shown as having a good time to dissuade the guilt of white people and their responsibility is establishing the systems that oppress gay black men. speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil, and the evil is not there anymore.

i may have more thoughts on this that i'll express later but thats all i have for now.

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Because I've really enjoyed Peaceful Property and contributed to the discourse on here around it, I want to spend some time exploring the thoughtful critiques of the show by @bengiyo, @lurkingshan, @twig-tea, @respectthepetty, @my-rose-tinted-glasses, and @one-of-tankhuns-neurons. I started writing this out but then it got all annoying and academic so imma just list rant with the utmost respect for everyone's thoughts for making me think so much about this show.

1.I wondered about what shows might be examples of class division themes done with an orientation toward the lived experiences of the working class in BL, cuz honestly it's just not super prominent and well-done in much of media anywhere. The Aof series where he takes screenwriting credit seem to be the best representatives: ATOTS and Moonlight Chicken, especially, but he touches on macro and micro economic issues in all his works. Aof's really willing to depict the hardships and compromises required when living with less financial security, and I can def agree that Peaceful Property is not offering that. I just personally feel okay with that, because I see the latter show as doing a more theoretical and symbolic narrative about economics, and overt symbolism seems pretty in-line with the ghost story horror genre its using.

2. To me, I see Peaceful Property's main critique of class issues as being about Marxist alienation. So we've got our first two ghosts being really literal with this, where they have a labor they do and a final product that they don't get to partake in. Builder wants to have a meal in the house he built. Wig maker wants to wear the luxury wig she sewed. Then, with rider, we get a lil more abstract with him wanting him and his delivery to be recognized and build a meaningful relationship with someone. And since then we've been getting more and more abstract about people finding personal meaning and supporting others through their labor. But all of it still connects back to this idea of alienation from their labor, the magician, Chef Hong, and Peach are all prevented from performing the labor that brings them fulfillment by different circumstances.

3. For my reading, the queerness is very much part and parcel of its capitalism critique. Agree with it or not, but man x man loving stories have been used historically to run counter to the competition between men fighting for the top spot encouraged by capitalism. Maurice is a pretty prime example of this, where Maurice, instead of pining upward for Clive, ends up choosing the lower-class Alex and running away to be happy together. Pat and Pran's love in the face of their family's business related feud in Bud Buddy is an even closer example to how I think Peaceful Property is contrasting queer love and capitalistic competition. There's a few signals for me that Peaceful Property plans to explore this a bit more. The Cok Long sign reminds me way too much of the slang of "dick measuring competitions" and I don't think they gave us a character named 'Best,' who has reappeared a couple of times for no reason. With the magician, Pang, and Chef Hong, we also have a repeating motif of lost assistants who made the work meaningful and possible, a socialist emphasis on the value of all workers and the need to connect with others to produce their labors of love, which we see thwarted for the queer story line. The fact that the Thai dancing was two men working together to create the art offers an alternative to a competition between men. And I want to say that I'm just talking about narrative devices here, not the reality of how capitalism works. We're very much in symbolist land, with this take. I'm just a sucker for symbolist land, and it's hard for me to watch horror especially without taking my brain there.

4. And then there's the way queerness alienates one from the accepted 'normal,' which has emerged as a dominant theme in the last few episodes. But if we take this theme and apply it back on previous episodes, we can see traces of it throughout the characters. Home's statements have been the most explicit in illustrating an internalized homophobia with his desire to be part of a 'normal family.' And the tensions with his family about whether he deserved to inherit the properties has queer connotations about queer people's inclusion in their families and the legal and financial repercussions of that (What Did You Eat Yesterday is the top tier of detailed impacts of queer rights in that vein). Peach's social anxieties and depressive behaviors, ostensibly related to his close call with death and ability to see ghosts, parallels queer experiences, too, and we see how it shapes his and his sister's financial predicaments. (Aside: I wonder, regarding some of the complaints about their behavior in the context of poverty, if we might better read the two of them as broke middle class characters. We don't have much context about their childhoods, but their behavior has never really presented as people familiar with getting by on a dime.) Queerness and the threats of financial insecurity have been articulated as interrelated by the series.

5. Home's redemption? We'll know more as things get revealed, but it seems that we're meant to see Home's biggest failing as the negligence that allowed him to hit Peace and his cowardice in not standing up to his family and taking responsibility for the harm he caused. If that is his chief issue, in my view of a restorative process (and thank you so much @respectthepetty for naming this aspect of the show!), the necessary amends are...

facing up to his family (partial check)

admitting his mistakes and seeking forgiveness from Peach (he was in the process of doing so in the latest ep)

addressing the distraction that led to his negligence so that he can attend to Peach and people like Peach so it does not occur again (hmmm...)

That last point is key because we still don't know why it was significant that he was on his busy ignoring the call of girlfriend number 32 or whatever. But I'm suspecting it will connect to Home's internalized homophobia (and @heretherebedork has done some great writing about that subtext). That would give the accident a significance regarding horizontal violence between gay men that the privileged can then run away from while others who can't escape have to suffer the consequences. There's lots of ways queer men can and have done this to one another in everyday life and hook-ups but at the most extreme historically we have the the AIDS crisis, where someone's negligence regarding sexual health inspired by the psychological fear induced by being in the closet could truly be a life-or-death matter with major financial ramifications. For Home to truly own his mistake he is going to have to risk his own financial security in standing up to his family, and he's going to have to stop hiding from himself so he can develop compassion for others in the world. And the last scene in which we see him in the same predicament as Home I saw less as a cop out so Peach and the audience would feel bad for him and forgive him and more as a representation of his ability now to truly understand what Peach has gone through.

6. Do I think this series is going to solve capitalism? This show is about the spiritual dimensions capitalism robs from people, and I think it has real answers about disrupting capitalism through reconnection with our relationships to our work and to other human beings. I'm not religious, but I respect religion's ability to help people find and emphasize a deeper meaning in life, and I think that that doesn't necessarily but can challenge capitalist practices. Peaceful Property is working to show how caring about spiritual well-being breaks up the automaticity of capitalism and has never let go of that thread. To discuss Peaceful Property's takes on class division without speaking about its religious elements seems disingenuous to its greater purpose and a bit disrespectful to the Thai culture the series is so infused with. I'm intrigued about how Kan's plot will play out with the Vimarnsukmun family and it's impact on their finances. What would actually disappoint me and run counter to the show's themes is if the gang somehow inherited the family's wealth or properties other than the ramshackle Cok Long Cocktail Lounge. In Aof's work and in Maurice, the endings involve a disinheritance to represent that life is about connection not financial gain, which contrasts philosophically with the upward fantasies of capitalism. So in ATOTS, Tian moves to the village, in Moonlight Chicken, Jim trades out his diner for a smaller food truck, etc. To find the true meaning of home, Home will need to release himself from his attachment to his inheritance of financial privilege. Of course, being dead might be an option for that lol, but we'll see how the rest of the series plays out.

[thus-wrote-mrs-zeppeli]

Love your work 😍 tell me what are your headcanons for Johnny, Gyro, Hot Pants, and Diego in a scenario where they learn that their partner has actually been working for Valentine the whole time and some time later sacrificed themselves to atone for their betrayal

Thank you!! Very Sweet (heh) of you to say!

Intriguing request, it gave me some thoughts immediately and we love angst here so yeah~enjoy~

When you say sacrifice themselves I immediately assume you mean reader dies to atone, so that is what we’re going with (with variation of this for Hot Pants and Diego)

-

Genre: Angst

Content, Plz read: reader death, religious (and regular) guilt and themes, canon typical violence, Diego kills reader in his part

Style: micro fic/fic outline, different lengths

Characters: Johnny Joestar, Gyro Zeppeli, Hot Pants, and Diego Brando in:

��My darling, if I hurt you, I’m sorry

Forgive me, and please, say you are mine”

All this time…you’ve been working for the enemy, all this time.

Johnny Joestar: You had Intended in the beginning to obey your simple directive. Retrieve whatever corpse parts Johnny Joestar and Gyro Zeppeli had acquired, and eliminate them if possible. The method was up to you, and as wary as they were of you, there was no way they could know of your true nature. All you had to do was wait for their guard to drop enough for you to make your move.

Getting close to Johnny was all part of the act, initially. Though the admiration you felt for his resolve was genuine…and so was the eventual real affection you found yourself feeling for him in the quiet moments you spent with him during your short periods of rest at night. You told yourself (and the President, in your infrequent status updates) that you’d wait just a little longer before making your move under the pretense that you were aiming to procure more corpse parts. If you waited longer, maybe they’d find more. You’re sure your consistent inaction is what prompted Valentine to call off your mission, and order you return to his side (since Clearly you needed a reminder of your place in all this, and you performed your tasks more successfully when you felt the inherent threat of his presence.)

You had wished Johnny had just shot you right then and there when you obeyed Valentine’s command like the lapdog you were, shamefully returning to him, unwilling to murmur your apologies given how entirely dishonest and empty it would sound now that you’ve thoroughly betrayed him.

Why didn’t he just shoot you…he knew you were the enemy now. You knew Johnny had the resolve to do it. So why didn’t he just kill you himself?

It made your hands quiver with guilt, even more so when it dawned on you why.

He had doubt.

If you were truly his enemy, you had plenty of opportunities where you could have killed him and Gyro in the middle of the night and taken the corpse parts, or taken advantage of an enemy stand attack to quickly dispatch them, or the myriad of other opportunities you had to complete your mission. But you chose not to.

And that is why he hesitated.

You had to atone. You thought about it carefully, with lots of time to consider how you should, since the President also no longer trusted you and kept you on a tight leash by not even giving you anymore tasks to perform. You knew he was just observing you. Waiting for the inevitable betrayal you were planning, but keeping you alive as a potential human shield should Johnny still harbor any affection for you.

You settled on a phrase. A quick string of words you prayed you could say faster than the President could react to. Nothing sappy or sentimental about how you regretted betraying Johnny or that you really loved him and wished the best for him…something practical.

You knew you wouldn’t be capable of harming Valentine physically in your position, not with how powerful his stand was, and especially not with how carefully he was watching you.

So you’d give Johnny a hint. A vital piece of the puzzle. Johnny was smart, even if he couldn’t fully understand the meaning of your words immediately you knew he could still use them. Valentine’s hasty decision to keep you alive and close to him had backfired quite miraculously, because you had come to comprehend (at least to an extent) the new ability the holy corpse blessed him with.

The President had brought you along on that damn train, and so many had pursued.

And as soon as the opportunity presented itself, the moment Johnny was right in front of you, even though you knew you would be slaughtered immediately, you had resolved in your heart to warn Johnny about Love Train.

“The holy corpse redirects misfortune!”

It’s so…vague. Is it too vague? But that’s what it does, that’s the only way you could think to put it. The clearest and only way.

The bullets from Valentine’s revolver tore through your body as soon as the words left your mouth. You wondered why he had to shoot you so many times? He really was “Funny” Valentine…surely only one or two shots from that close would’ve been enough, this was just overkill.

How could you make jokes to yourself at a time like this…?

Because you had already accepted your death? Is it really possible to face something without fear just because you knew it was coming? That couldn’t be it. But maybe it was, for some things, and depending on who you are.

It was all so vague, so unsatisfying, your consciousness, your life, it was all fading so fast but at least you got to see Johnny again. Your vision was blurry and your mind fading but…even when he was looking at the scene unfolding before him with horror and agony, you could still see the subtle, quiet, but ever persistent resolve as even in all the chaos he was trying to piece together the meaning of your words so he would not need to hesitate anymore and waste even a second of your sacrifice.

You had said that for a reason. Willingly sacrificed whatever minuscule chance of survival you might’ve had if you just stayed quiet, to give him the slightest, vaguest advantage in this fight.

…

You too. One more name added to the list of so many people who left him behind. It’s bitter, it’s cold, there’s no silver lining in his mind, not a real one anyways. Did you have to die for Valentine to be defeated? Maybe not. If things had gone a bit differently, maybe you, and Gyro would still be alive right now.

But he can’t keep looking back. Even if all he can do is thank you both for the ways you’ve supported him and helped him grow, and make sure you were returned to your homes and properly buried, he would do all he could to make sure you were given the respect you both deserve. That was the highest way to honor you both. To keep living, since it was your lives that touched his and strengthened his resolve, a crucial push, a guiding hand, a light along his path. To honor you would be to move forward.

Gyro Zeppeli: A spy of the President, sent to observe him, try to figure out everything about him…Everything…age, height, weight, occupation, place of origin, motivation to join the race, real name, abilities, notable personality traits, etc…Most Importantly, you were to look for weaknesses. And if you couldn’t determine any, make one.

He feels so STUPID when he overheard you secretly speaking to someone over the telephone, concluding the call with a very clear “understood, Mr. President”.

He should’ve known better. Of course someone like you wasn’t actually interested in him, he had fallen so easily for your little guise as a spectator to the race. The story had sounded believable enough, but he accepted it quickly because you were skilled at flattering and buttering him up. Of course he wasn’t going to question you, not with how you praised his performance in the race, marveled at his talents, and shyly confessed you found him roguishly charming~

He bought you drinks at checkpoints when he could, and you would smile and ask him “shouldn’t you be resting?” and he’d say yes, but that he didn’t mind sacrificing an hour or so of downtime so he could spend it with you instead.

Well. If he insisted…you wouldn’t object~

It sounded so genuine when you gently placed your hand on his arm and asked him questions about himself.

He liked you a lot, asking you about yourself in turn and kissing you goodbye when it was time for him to leave. He still maintained his guard though, in a manner that implied he had been raised to keep certain things secret no matter what. But even his unwillingness to open up about certain things was information you could use to draw some conclusions.

You had been told Gyro was some dangerous threat, some bad man that you had to do everything in your power to stop. And maybe you had never been the best judge of character given you worked for Funny Valentine, but from your observance of Gyro…he wasn’t some evil force at all.

Your confidence was wavering, and with the way he was already talking eagerly about taking you back with him to his home country, for the first time in your life you were beginning to wonder if the path you were walking was really the right one.

You had intended that telephone conversation to be your last one, only making it because if you didn’t then someone would be sent to check on you. You had meant to come clean, confess to Gyro and Johnny, and try to make amends.

You had never expected when you were given this order directly from the President that you’d be chasing Gyro down and anxiously begging him to hear you out, because you feared losing the man you grew to love.

You know he’s stubborn. And he didn’t listen when he was really upset about something.

He finally looks at you when you actually step in front of him.

You had seen him angry before, but you felt the true weight of that intensity when it was actually fully directed at you.

It’s much worse to hear Gyro loudly tell you to get out of his way, and that he never wanted to see you again. It’s different when he’s yelling at you. You can’t think of anything to say, you have no defense…you tricked him, took advantage of his affection for you, all in the name of literally one of the evilest men currently alive.

Gyro deserved to be furious with you, so you stepped out of his way, your head lowered in shame. You wouldn’t be seeing him again anytime soon, if at all.

But you would attempt to assist him, in any small ways you could. Feeding false information to their enemies, and even silently taking out a few of the President’s hired assassins. You had intended to never run into Gyro again, to respect his wish of never seeing you, but it didn’t take long for the President to catch on to your betrayal. The reports he gave to you became vaguer and vaguer, until all you knew was that there was another stand user assassin waiting in Philadelphia.

True, and an effective trap for you. He could kill Many birds with one stone if he could get rid of you along with everyone else he planned on disposing of.

With no other knowledge of what you were looking for, you were a little late in finding the assassin. D-I-S-C-O was already fighting Gyro, but the silver lining was that he was so preoccupied with Gyro he didn’t notice you sneaking up behind him.

Despite how tough he liked to talk, you saw the momentary relief in Gyro’s eyes at the sight of you still alive.

“I thought I told you I didn’t want to see you again,” he huffs, but he didn’t have the same fire in his tone like when he was actually upset at you.

“I just saved your life,” you point out, trying to suppress the urge to melt right into his arms on the spot.

“I had it under control.”

“You’re welcome~”

He gave you a handsome smirk: “I still don’t trust you.”

Now that part is true, even if he’s smiling in the moment he’s not going to just move past what you had done so easily.

Before you could even respond, a flicker of movement behind him caught your eye. Whatever it was, you had only a moment to react, and all you could do was shove Gyro out of the way before it hit him.

So it hits you instead.

Another enemy…that you had missed. Gyro quickly dispatches whoever it was, but the damage from the attack was undoubtedly fatal. A poison, deep in your system and targeting your vital organs. Gyro carried you off to safety, but as soon as he had a chance to properly examine you, he’d know it was too late. Despite never telling you, your observations had led you to conclude Gyro had an expansive medical knowledge. You were too far gone, and he’d see it immediately.

He sets you down as gently as he can muster, propping your back up against the wall of a building.

He places his index and middle finger onto the pulse of your neck, and then places his palm against your forehead, a bit forcefully in his urgency.

He mutters a curse in italian under his breath. Not even the miraculous powers of Gyro Zeppeli can stop an inevitable death.

“Trust me now?” you ask, your strength failing you as you try to reach a hand up to touch his jaw.

“Shut up,” he counters, weaker than you’ve ever heard from him. His shoulders are shaking, his hand clutching yours tightly as he frantically searches for an answer. Medical knowledge couldn’t solve something like this on its own, and he couldn’t even identify what kind of poison you were inflicted by. Some doctor he turned out to be…

He’s just denying that the poison is unique to the stand. Even if he had studied every single poison in the world, he would not be able to identify and treat this one. He couldn’t even expel it with the spin if he didn’t know what it was.

“Maybe there’s a…hospital around here…” he suggests, reaching to pick you up again, his breathing intensifying not from the recent enemy encounters, but from the anxiety shaking his core. To not be able to save someone, especially someone he cares about…it was a type of fear even he couldn’t bear, despite the way he was raised.

“You know better than anyone that it’s too late,” you point out quietly. The feeling of your own body shutting down…it was frightening, but somehow you didn’t feel as scared as you thought you should be.

He’s shushing you again, trying to pick you up. Despite his trembling, Gyro’s hands were still steady when he reached for you.

You use the last bit of your strength to take his hands in yours.

“Huh…” you murmur. “So even you can be gentle sometimes.”

“Course I can.” He musters a smile, squeezing your hand slightly. It soothes you. You like to believe he’s pretty good at being a doctor.

“I feel so calm, even though I know I’m going to die.”

“Might be a symptom of the poison…sedative properties that are making you feel more relaxed…”

“Ha…that’s kinda nice for me…”

“Where is your family?” he changes the subject.

“My family?”

“Yeah. I’ll make sure you make it home.”

You don’t have much time left, stammering out where your family is, and muttering your thank yous as your body gives out.

He catches you, laying your body down gently and placing his cape over you. A temporary arrangement until the situation calms and he can come back for your body.

Just wait on him a moment, he’ll come back for you. He promises.

Hot Pants: Your lover was a guarded woman, but something about your charisma somehow dropped those defenses just enough for even someone like her to open up. At least a bit. Really you’re just using your stand ability: Heart of Glass. It heightens emotions, targeting deep-seated ones. Great for inciting violence, or loosening lips…making you one of President Valentine’s favorite stand users at his disposal. Hot Pants was much too mysterious for his liking, so you were sent to investigate. A worthwhile assignment…even though it took you a good while to learn anything, the discovery that she certainly had a stand was Very Valuable.

You were her companion, a partner to keep the freezing nights a little warmer, and her time in the race less lonely. But despite being the closest person to her, she didn’t open up easily. You really had to work your stand to worm your way into her heart and get past that stoic, distant politeness she used even with you.

It took time, but you got through.

One starry night, as you sat by her side in another comfortable but quiet moment, you finally got it. Like the clicking of a lock when the code has finally been cracked, you had gotten through the barrier of her heart, and you were FINALLY going to get SOMETHING to report back to F.V. He was getting real impatient with your meager reports.

You weren’t used to Hot Pants touching you first, usually it was you initiating any sort of affection. But tonight, she asked your permission to put her head on your shoulder, and you said yes, of course.

Her hair is soft, you intertwine your hand with hers and she actually squeezes your hand, unusual for her.

“I don’t know what it is about tonight…” she sighs. A good sign for you, she doesn’t realize you have a stand. “But…would you let me confess something to you?”

“I’ll always be willing to listen to you,” you smile.

Finally, she opens up. Just about why she has chosen the path of a nun, but it is enough.

Guilt. Guilt. A woman entirely weighed down by soul crushing guilt.

And she expresses how even though she doesn’t show it or say it, your companionship has been a source of comfort for her. She’s distant with you because she has not been absolved of her great sin, it weighs so heavily on her that she cannot allow herself to get too close. It would not be fair, because she can’t give you the attention you deserve while this guilt consumes her.

And now your own guilt is weighing on your mind. You release her heart from the chains of your stand, and she exhales heavily, leaning against you a little more. It must’ve been exhausting, fighting a silent battle with your stand for so long and not even knowing.

“Feeling like a weight has been lifted?” you ask quietly.

She replies with a quick hum. “Somehow…yes. Thank you. For listening.”

Your turn to experience the weight of guilt. This whole time…you’ve been playing her for a fool. You were a liar, and you hadn’t even felt bad about it til right now. If she was a sinner, then you were the devil.

“May I confess something in turn?” you ask.

She’s tired from the impact of your stand, but she nods, responding with a firm: “of course,” and for once you don’t feel like a near invincible retainer to the President, and instead you’re nothing more than a deceptive snake.

“I owe the President a great debt,” you mutter as calmly as you can. But she immediately stiffens and pulls away from you, despite her tiredness her senses sharpen immediately, her hand going to that strange weapon by her side.

Her hand hovered over it, her gaze wary, the trust you had built immediately cracking, one wrong word away from shattering, but she would permit you to speak. “He took me in when I had no one, granted me a new life. I would be free from my debt after…” the words taste bitter on your tongue, but they are accurate: “…this last job.”

Just a job. She was just another job for you to dissect and send back to the President.

She is quiet, back to that stoic visage, but the slight narrowing of her eyebrows gave away how much you have shaken her.

She turns away, staring off at nothing in the distance, but you wouldn’t be able to break through this new guard.

“Then you’d best report back, before your President begins to wonder where you are.”

Her voice is cold, and she cannot disguise how upset she is right now.

You want to confess you’ve even used your stand on her. But it’s better if you just leave. Right now is not the time for words.

…

How long did not matter, this was a fitting punishment for someone like you. The manifestation of your guilt circled around you, unable to reach you from where you had stationed yourself on a pile of discarded items, but waiting for you, eternally.

Hot Pants stood in the entryway of the garbage dump with the appearance of a church.

You had killed Axl RO in your attempt to save Hot Pants, despite knowing to an extent how Civil War functioned.

With the entirety of the specters’ attention on you, Johnny, Gyro, and Hot Pants could leave. Three lives at the cost of yours…that was a sacrifice you were willing to make.

“Go,” is all you said, as firmly as you could, despite the nearly uncontrollable urge to beg her to not leave you like this. This was…terrifying. You wanted to cry and scream and beg her to find some way to save you. But she felt like this every night when she had to relive the cause of her own guilt in her nightmares. If she could act unaffected, then you could too.

From her spot in the doorway, she shuts her eyes, bows her head, and intertwines her fingers. Her lips move. You are too far away to hear what she’s saying, but you know it’s a prayer.

When she opens her eyes, gives you a firm nod, a few stray tears trailing down her face betraying her mask of stoicism. You nod in turn.

She lingers a moment, and you watch her too, having one last silent exchange. One more heart to heart.

She’s forgiven you, but really, she didn’t hate you for your initial betrayal in the first place.

Though she wished you hadn’t been so hasty to pay for your sins. Now she was going to feel even more guilt, leaving you behind like this, but there was no changing your mind on this. And if this eased the weight of your sins, she’d be a hypocrite to try and take that away from you.

It’s hard to be strong when she turns away, so you don’t even try, giving in and burying your mouth in your hands and muffling your own screams for anyone to save you from this hell of your own making. But this is what you chose, and if it gave her another chance at finding what she wanted, you’d do it again.

Diego Brando: He had been Quite furious when you finally told him the President had offered you a very generous sum of money for all the information you had on Diego. Who could blame him for getting mad at you, after all, you could’ve gotten so much more if you had played your cards right! Why betray him if you couldn’t get more out of it? That’s what Really irks him about the mess you’ve made for him.

But it’s okay now. All is about to be forgiven. Your head rests on his lap and your skin loses its color due to the immense amount of blood you were losing from a massive gash from the middle of your chest all the way down to your stomach.

Of course Diego had used your guilt against you, even though you had planned to try and redeem yourself anyways.

You had told him literally everything you had observed during your employment under Funny Valentine, even the details you thought weren’t important; a genius like Dio could use literally anything that you say.

And after having you get on your knees and groveling for his forgiveness for a bit, you have officially exhausted both your usefulness and entertainment value.

Sure, he liked you a lot when you were sweethearts. And SURE he also would’ve betrayed you if there was a worthwhile reward on the line, but the fact of the matter is YOU betrayed HIM. It’s a shame really. He might’ve liked putting a ring on your finger and spoiling you rotten with the money he was going to win from the race. But you had to go and throw it allll away.

Still. He didn’t love the feeling of ripping you apart. Even though he had told himself you were nothing more than a pigeon, apparently all the time he had spent with you actually affected him. He stroked your cheek with a surprising amount of gentleness for what he had just done, watching you die, observing how your lips move…trying to say something to him, even now? Looked like you were trying to say his name, but he couldn’t tell if you were cursing his name or singing his praises in your final moments.

“Hm? I can’t quite understand you,” he sighs, and your eyes tear up and you try again but no sound will come out and for the first time in his life he finds himself looking away as someone dies right in front of him.

It’s so…frustrating. He thought it’d feel satisfying to tie up loose ends by getting rid of you. Instead it’s just a sort of hollow, dull feeling thrumming in his chest. Ugh. That same, disgusting feeling he got in the rare moments he made a mistake.

Mistakes felt terrible, but what he really hated was the regret that came with it.

He could shove it down for now, but he’d regret it later if he just left you like this, so he uses his influence to make sure you’re properly buried somewhere nice. And THEN he shoves it down. You can haunt him later. Right now he had a race to win and a President to defy at every turn.

-

Author’s note: I can’t believe you’ve been secretly working for the President, smh.

The title comes from the song: Return to Me

[absolutebl]

I just finished Triage and was pretty impressed with the plot. Altho I mostly love love-centered BLs/QLs, it made me realize I really like plot-heavy ones (especially action/thriller/mystery) if they're done well. Can you look through what I've seen and let me know if I'm missing any good ones?

Ones I thought succeeded to varying extents: Triage, Not Me, Manner of Death, 3 Will Be Free, The Eclipse, Pit Babe, The Sign

Ones I thought fell short plot-wise (but still kinda appreciated for trying): KinnPorsche, Playboyy, Laws of Attraction

(And I've seen others with actiony/mystery plots but I consider the romantic plot to be more dominant so I don't think of them the same way: Long Time No See, Candy Colored Paradox, Kiseki Dear to Me, Never Let Me Go etc...hope that makes my ask clearer....)

Thanks! Appreciate you!

I live for this shit!

Plot heavy (driven) BL/QL

(external motivation)

Liked:

Triage *

Not Me *

Manner of Death *

3 Will Be Free *

The Eclipse

Pit Babe

The Sign

The ones I put an * by are ones that I barely consider BL because they are so very plot heavy.

It's Okay:

KinnPorsche

Playboyy

Laws of Attraction

Also seen, but more romance

Long Time No See

Candy Colored Paradox

Kiseki Dear to Me

Never Let Me Go

Hum, difficult, because I see very little difference between Pit Babe and KP and Kiseki. So I'm gonna spitball a bunch of BL that edges into gay romantic suspense (or in some cases horror / PNR) and see if any hit. These will mostly be Thailand, only Taiwan also dabbles in this sub-genre, and rarely (because of the expense).

He's Coming to Me

Dear Doctor, I'm Coming for Your Soul (similar team as Triage so def worth trying, it's PNR tho)

Great Men Academy (an odd pick but I think it might work for you)

HIStory 3: Trapped (the first one I thought of after reading your ask)

Golden Blood

To Sir, With Love (more of a soap opera)

Because of You

Ghost Host Ghost House (more horror than suspense)

Chinese stuff:

My Esports Genius Brother (it's WILD)

Word of Honor (censored)

The Untamed (censored)

Guardian (censored)

SCI Mysteries (censored)

Advance Bravely (censored)

Legend of Long Yang: Rebirth

This is one of the few times I'll rec this because this is kinda China's BL speciality and one of the many reasons the censorship is so annoying. Their product is quality... sigh. Bummer it also has to be evil.

Not as much suspense + action but stil external motivation + complex plot (earned romantic threads)

AKA Korea can play, too.

Color Rush

Until We Meet Again

Love For Love's Sake

I Feel You Linger in the Air

La Pluie

Unintentional Love Story

Tinted With You

Vice Versa

My Dear Gangster Oppa

DNA Says Love You

Be My Favorite

Stay By My Side

Two Worlds

The End Of The World, With You AKA Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu

First Love Again

Twins

Oh! My Sunshine Night

Cupid's Last Wish

Absolute Zero

So Much In Love (PULP warning)

(These tend to be my personal favorite style of BL. Although some are much less successful than others, in order with best ones at the top.)

[therentyoupay]

Which of your last five works is your favorite/extra special to you?

you will make me choose between my own CHILDREN??? 🤣🤣🤣😭😭😭 💕💕💕💕💕 seriously, thank you for always asking such thoughtful and interesting questions to play with 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🙏

here are my last five works, from most recent (1) to least recent (5).

🌟 updated aug. 24 (today, lol): more than you know the first collab i've ever done with CO-AUTHORING!! i've done writing+art collabs before, like for not in so many words, which was our KRIS+XRIS super fun soulmate!au, but mtyk is my very first author-author collab (+AND ART/PRODUCTION lmao) and this would literally only be possible with a twin flame like @callimara, i literally could not imagine trying to take on (let alone accomplish!!) a project of this caliber with anyone else!! 😂😭✨ so, this one is extra special, for sure 💕

posted aug. 21st: only honor a very quick ficlet that i did not expect to write, and love, about dragonmother!elsa and astrid in a brotp!alliance ❄️🔥😂

🌟 posted aug. 17th: two homes a full-length one-shot that i REALLY did not expect to write, to answer the question of "how might elsa fall first, before jack?" this one is also so so special to me because it's been like, a solid 9 years since i sat down and wrote something like that all in one sitting, in a true, good, ol'-fashioned one-shot 🤣🌟

🌟updated. aug. 7th: snow globe i love this modern au that i created out of the prompt, "just say it," because i feel like it really represents the kind of genre that i'm most interested in reading at this stage in my life! i feel like each of my stories is, in so many ways, a time capsule of who i was as a person, and so i'm really especially loving this story on an emotional, intellectual, and creative level 💕 so that's extra special, too 🥺💕🌟

posted jun. 19th: uninvited another prompt-based ficlet, based on "Jelsa + office/workplace AU for 3 sentence fic please?" that i really loved writing!! 😭💕 writing quick little ficlets and micro-fic for askbox prompts can be so soothing and refreshing 😭💕💕

[theresattrpgforthat]

Got anything that lets you play as monsters (vampires/monsters/etc) in the modern world in the vein of VTM? Ideally something in the PBTA/FITD area of system, but open to others for sure (: Thanks as always for your recs!!

THEME: Urban Monsters

Friend, the difficulty with this post isn’t that I don’t have recommendations for it - it’s that I’m trying to find recommendations that I haven’t talked about ad nauseam to this point. So I hope you don’t mind a fairly extensive “Past Recommendations” at the bottom of this post, because most of the PbtA games I know of are going to be there. I have limited experience with Vampire: the Masquerade, but I’m a big fan of Changeling: the Lost and other World of Darkness games, so I’m going off of general knowledge rather than specifics.

Bubblegum Vampires / Bubblegum Wizards 2, by Gormengeist.

You're a vampire in an infinite urban cauldron of muck and rot, of psionics and wizards, of danger and shadows. Though you are surely terrible, great, horrifying, (etc.), half the day is an enemy to your people; so set forth through the night to make your coin, secure your dwellings, and vanquish your infinite enemies.

You're a wizard who chews bubblegum and collects trading cards. That is to say, cards with the trapped souls of items and enemies within, obviously. An insignificant wizard in an infinite city has lots to prove and you've got to get help somehow. Break heads, steal money, drive stupid, chew gum, trap souls. Simple as.

Neon-Bright art and d6-based rolls, that’s what’s common across both of these games. This is the same world, but you’re living in two different spheres of it, depending on which game you play. As wizards, you collect spell cards that hold the souls of creatures you’ve vanquished, and use them to get yourself out of sticky situations. As vampires, you accrue vampiric powers through blood sacrifice, and your opponents are usually folks with especially tantalizing veins. Both games have various factions that have different goals than you, so if what you like about Vampire: the Masquerade is the amount of different ideologies that have the ability to fuck you up, you might like this game. Thematically, it looks a little more upbeat and pulpy than your typical V:tM game, but if you like one, you have another game in the same system ready to go.

The Hidden, by Dragons Are Real.

As children our parents read us fairy tales, ghost stories and recounted local myths. We’ve always assumed these stories are told to entertain or scare….what if these aren't just stories….everything you have been told is true. 

The creatures from fairy tales, mythology and folklore all exist.  Have you ever thought you saw something strange out of the corner of your eye but when you look again all looks normal. These creatures live in plain sight, unseen by the majority of people, only those who know they exist see them in their true form. Every culture has a name for these creatures but we know them simply as The Hidden.

The Hidden is a modern urban fantasy game powered by the Breathless RPG. It is inspired by such media as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Constantine and The Dresden Files.

Another pulpy sort of game, the Breathless system that powers The Hidden is great for replicating diminishing resources, putting your characters in more and more difficult situations every time they pause to take a breath. This makes this game great for horror-style stories, and World of Darkness games firmly find a home in the horror genre. If you want something that’s fast-paced and can cover a lot of ground in a short session, The Hidden might be for you.

Tween Wolf, by Ibi Deficit Orbis.

Tween Wolf is a micro-RPG about middle schoolers experiencing both the fantasy of being exceptional, and the fear of being humiliated. As these kids come to terms with their awkwardly developing human bodies, they will also be faced with lycanthropy. And in the process they will experience supernatural heroism and intense shame—and learn to manage both.

It is designed to be played with a bent towards exploring the unforgiving social cruelty of middle school, self-image, and dysphoria. It requires one Game Master, 1 to 4 additional players, a few hours, one six sided die for each player, and two additional six sided dice for the table to share.

This is a very short game, with very few rules and a big focus on trying to keep your wild side under wraps. If what you like about WoD games is the struggle between the monstrous and the human, this might be the game for you. There’s not nearly as many big moral quandaries as there are in typical WoD games - you’re middle schoolers, not eons-old bloodsuckers - but to a middle-schooler, your problems are massive. I feel like the movie Seeing Red might be a good touchstone for this game.

Glamour of Our Youth, by Yuri Runnel.

Glamour of Our Youth is a roleplaying game based on the Forged in the Dark system. Drawing inspiration from media like Riverdale, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina among others, it works to tell stories of supernatural teenage adventures.

Building on the FitD framework, Glamour serves to tell exciting stories with high stakes, putting the youths through their paces as they try to make their way through a strange and hostile world, struggling with conflicts both internal and external, arcane and mundane. 

This game doesn’t cast your characters as specific supernatural beings, but the character options certainly make it possible. You cobble your character together from two different halves: Archetypes and Arcana. Your Archetype hails from classic high school cliques, such as Rebel, Outcast, Socialite and Athlete, while your Arcana details your supernatural ability, including Shapeshifter (which might translate to werewolf), Oceancaller (which you could turn into a selkie) or Shadow (which feels rather ghost-like to me). There’s also plenty of ways to play a teenage mage.

This game is in playtest, but it’s considerably far a long, with recent updates that indicate that the crew is hard at work refining the final product.

Protect the Child, by MintRabbit (that’s me!)

Humans have always been protective of their young, sometimes overly so. Humans have also always feared that which might make their young strange or different, and so insist that only humans can raise their own young. Monsters cannot raise human young. This is known. You have a human baby. You cannot find its parents. What is even worse, is that this child has powers, powers that others covet, and so everyone wants it. If you want to prove that you’re not the heartless monster that everyone says you are, that means you’ll have to raise it, at least until you find someone who is better suited to it than you.  You are creatures of fur, scales and fangs. You have claws that can rend flesh, faces that can crack mirrors, howls that can cause ears to bleed.  And your charge wants a blankie.

Protect the Child is a Forged in the Dark game about monsters caring for a young human, a human who contains strange and mystical powers that make them a valuable asset in any monster crew. The setting and factions present in this game are flexible: you might be aliens in a far-flung future galaxy, fantasy monsters from rival kingdoms, or even everyday wild animals that fear human society. 

So I’ve only just started play testing this game, which means that it’s very much in barely-playable mode. This game is also setting-agnostic, meaning that you can decide exactly when and where your game takes place - including as modern-day monsters trying to take care of a human baby with magical powers. The game is very specific in the themes of the story you’ll be telling - that is, themes about monstrosity, parenthood and responsibility, but if you all want to play different kinds of vampires, you can absolutely do that!

BloodLite, by ruan8000.

BloodLite is a role-playing game (RPG) designed to be played solo, but can be played in a group. In this game, you will create a Vampire following the rules and you will also create the world that this vampire interacts with, as well as the conflicts and obstacles that he will face. The world in BloodLite is like ours, but a little darker and more dangerous, full of supernatural creatures.

This game has no ties to PbtA or FitD, but it cites Vampire: the Masquerade as a direct inspiration, and you can see it in the Bloodline options available at character creation. You have a supernatural gift that give you advantages and also trigger your Hunger, which is your character’s thirst for blood. The goals of the game are represented through an Oath track, which fills when you fight enemies, overcome obstacles, and solve problems. This a fairly stripped-down game, but if you’re familiar with V:tM, then you probably won’t have a problem filling the world with factions, back-alley deals, and political wars.

Hearts of Yokai, by Lowell Francis.

So, this game isn’t out yet. But I can’t stop myself from talking about it a little bit. It’s the product of a Changeling:The Lost PbtA hack that Lowell has been working on for a very long time. I’ve been a bit fan of Changeling: the Lost and I also love PbtA games so I’m really excited to see more of this.

The link in the title leads to the current google spreadsheets that detail the current content of the game and the associated playbooks. The link for Lowell is to a blog post he wrote about the game, talking about the history, the changes he’s made, and the ideas behind what the current iteration is. What really intrigues me is how it incorporates "the actions of the Gentry through the lens of colonialism.” I’m really eager to follow the progress of this game.

Games I’ve Recommended in the Past

Urban Shadows 1e, by Magpie Games.

Bite Marks, by Black Armada Games.

Monsterhearts 2e, by Buried Without Ceremony.

Strays, by kumada1.

Eldritch Investigative Drama Rec Post

[s-che]

The Dream Library: Apocalypse World 2

The Dream Library had our second Apocalypse World one-shot earlier this week, ending out the end of a month of talking about D. Vincent and Meguey Baker’s game of high octane apocalyptica. Next month, we'll be continuing our semester of PBTA one-shots and book-club discussions with two excellent historical games: Night Witches and Sagas of the Icelanders.

If you'd like to get in on the discussion and maybe even sign up for a one-shot, shoot me a message -- we'd love to have you.

As with the last play report, I want to open by making two things absolutely clear:

Apocalypse World is a sicknasty game that deserves to get played way more often than it does, especially by people who are working and playing in a design lineage which has been forever altered by Meg and Vincent’s work.

Apocalypse World is a game done absolutely dirty by short-term play, a fact which came out way harder in this session than it did the first time round. We had a ton of fun, of course — but the fact that our play was capped at the 3-hour mark meant we barely scratched the surface of what this game can do. 

This time, I ran the game following Vincent Baker’s advice on running Apocalypse World in a con slot, which helped a lot — and still didn’t scratch the itch I have to play this game and only this game for the next hundred or so years. Most notably, we ended up dividing play into two micro-sessions — meaning we got to turn our bio-break into a narrative breather as well and flex some of the game’s “long-term” rules. I’ve broken my thoughts up here by session, which felt appropriate.

Session 1: A Desert Landscape

I had no idea where the session was going to start when we settled down to play — beyond the fact that I was going to open in media res with someone (the answer ended up being my first volunteer, @tormentedbyvisions) in a very bad spot. Details came quickly when we looked for them — a collapsing office tower and glimpses of a desert landscape out the broken windows, dotted with more towers in the distance. Goldman (The Savvyhead, any pronouns), an elderly survivor who, as it turned out, loved nothing more than telling people lies about the world as it was, is cornered on the second floor as a gang headed by a warlord named Dremmer picked their way through the rubble below. Cut forward a few seconds and we have Goldman leaping from a hole in the wall to land on the dune below as Dremmer’s gang fire wildly at a phantom drawn from the psychic maelstrom.

Meanwhile James (The Driver, he/him) and October (The Skinner, they/them) raced along the desert highway looking for their friend. A bad role lead to an ambush, a flipped car, and a surprisingly civil conversation with a would-be raider named Jackabacka — who James enlisted to get the car unstuck and then left unconscious in a ditch. Meeting back up with Goldman — a little battered from his fall from the building, but mostly fine — the game headed back to their home: the outskirts of an oil-refining city which sprang into existence at the moment we needed it, and never before. We wrapped on our first microsession by developing character Hx and nailing down who all these people were to each other.

What did we learn? For one, Apocalypse World is a great game to make shit up in. I talked at length in my last session write-up about the instruction to “barf forth apocalyptica” and how good getting really in the juice of a genre feels, but there’s more than just that happening here. Apocalypse World has a deeper philosophy of storytelling and play (one related, I think, to what I called “fluid mapmaking” in a recent article) which really relishes in moments of hesitation and consideration. There’s an approach to play which some games and players take where “good improv” is ultimately about maximal flexibility — where the ultimate end is to hide the fact that you’re “making things up” at all, and make the game world seem as fully realized as possible. Improv is just a way to get there — since we cannot possibly have prepped for every occasion, improv fills in the gaps. The hyper-performative role of the GM is never permitted to ask for a second to think or talk through some ideas out loud (in the way a non-GM player might) — their role is a kind of computer-referee (a “stable,” as opposed to fluid, mapmaker) who presents only the truth.

Apocalypse World bucks this trend in several ways: in the way moves prompt big narrative swings, in the suggestion you spend session one just following the characters around and seeing what happens, in the MC philosophy (to “always say what your prep demands,” yes, but also to “barf forth apocalyptica,” to “ask provocative questions and build on the answers,” and to “sometimes, disclaim decision-making), and also (and perhaps most importantly) in the “umms” and “hmms” which permeate the play examples. Apocalypse World is a game which is invested in modeling collaborative — really collaborative — play and which, as a result, never felt like a burden or a trap. It felt like my players and I were all together mapping and remapping a world with the tools and toys the Bakers had given us (and what lovely tools and toys they are) but never restricted by the thing we were trying to make. It felt like we were playing. 

On another note about the first session — and this isn’t textual to Apocalypse Worlds, but to Vincent’s con-running method, but — the practice of giving players something to do (in this case, filling out the details of their character sheets) while the narrative spotlight is on others is one of those design ideas that, once you’re exposed to it, you’ll never forget. This is something I’ve seen others to — most recently (and extensively) @jdragsky's Seven Part Pact is a game that does this over and over and over again — but it really hit me in this session what a lifesaver it is. Especially in online games, where losing focus and energy is so easy, giving people something to do which keeps them invested in the game (in the way, in person, just being in a space together might) is the kind of thing I’m going to start putting in all my games. 

Session 2: Lord Terry’s Gasland Refinery

Back from a brief break, I introduced the players to the threat map I’d designed while they were away. It was populated, mostly, by people we’d already talked a little bit about — the refinery where they lived, Dremmer’s Gang in the north, the landscape of the desert highway all around them — plus a couple of strange details thrown in for good measure (at the last minute, I decided to add the Red Priory, the setting of the last oneshot I ran, on the map in the far east — a fact which I could talk about for hours. People need to play Apocalypse World with me west marches style PLEASE). 

Jumping back into the swing of play wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped — the result, I think, of breaking up the session like we did meant we needed to do the usual beginning of session dipping our toes in the water again, but this time with a much sharper awareness of the ticking clock. Still, we got somewhere — thanks in no small part to the fun of just bopping around with these characters. It’s rare that you get to say “okay, now it’s a week later. What has that week looked like?” especially in the context of a oneshot. The cost of starting a session to the players — okay, what has your life looked like? how much barter are you losing to afford that? — quickly transformed what had been a pretty generic setting into a place that had some teeth. Barfing forth apocalyptica — and some yes-anding with the players — gave us Lord Terry, a feudal tyrant whose authority rests (shakily) on the loyalty of his retained soldiers and the terror of the serfs (including our players). 

Truthfully, we didn’t get particularly far in this session: some tinkering in Goldman’s workshop, an argument with Terry, a scouting mission which ended in a tense standoff with Jackabacka, and then a race back home as October washed Jackabacka’s blood off their knife and James bled out in the backseat. I don’t think the “plottiness” of the session got anywhere — but that has also maybe never felt like less of the point. The joy of our second session was absolutely frontloaded — in the moments of thinking about the community to which we (tangentially) belonged and the powers that be, there. 

Apocalypse World tells you it is best played in a long campaign — and I think this was the moment it was most clearly right. I would love to tell you what happens next to James, or whether Lord Terry is going to be dethroned, or if Dremmer’s really the threat he seems to be. None of those are questions I thought I’d be asking, going into this session — they’re questions the game gave me over the course of play. We had some hiccups, of course (combat is brutal when you don’t have a medic, and I wish, in retrospect, that I’d pushed players to read people more often), but on the whole Apocalypse World is a marvelous engine for generating a really collaborative story.

Which makes me ask, like I did last time — what the fuck happened? People talk a lot about PBTA as a philosophy and not just a mechanic — but I think at some point in history that philosophy seems to have fallen out and gotten slimmed down to "PBTA is when 2d6+"

This isn't to say there aren't good PBTA games being written now — we'll be playing some of them in this unit — but, GOD. There is shit in this game that, hearing it from downstream, you would never know about. People should know about it! You, right now, should know about it! Go and play Apocalypse World right now! and also forever!!

[thewhumpyprintingpress]

The Whumpy Printing Press

The Whumpy Printing Press (WPP) is a small press dedicated to publishing the stories of the whump community. Founder and Editor-In-Chief Kay @whumpy-writings

If you appreciate our work, you can support us on ko-fi And if you want to stay up to date with all things WPP, you can subscribe to our newsletter here.

Current Projects:

High Stakes and Bloody Business: anthology, submissions open, expected publication October 2025

12 Months of Whump: novellas, submissions closed, expected publication 2025

2026 Whumpy Books: novelettes, novellas, novels, short story collections, and graphic novels, submissions open, expected publication 2026

Calls for Submissions:

For all submissions, we ask for nonexclusive, worldwide, English language publication rights for ebook and paperback.

High Stakes and Bloody Business

Bring out your vampires! For WPP's fourth anthology, we’re looking for stories that involve vampires. Your vampire(s) can be the whumpee, whumper, and/or caretaker. We will also consider stories about vampire-adjacent creatures such as dhampirs, succubi, etc.

Word Count: Up to 17,500 words

For this anthology, we are looking for stories in the following categories:

Micro-fiction: 250 words or less

Flash fiction: 251-1,000 words

Short Story: 1,001-7,499 words

Novelette: 7,500-17,500 words 

Each author can submit one story per category. So for example, you can submit a short story and a micro fiction but you can’t submit two micro fictions. 

Compensation: ebook contributor’s copy, one free paperback OR $10 USD, and discounts on additional paperbacks

50% of proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Bat Conservation International.

Submissions Open: November 1, 2024

Submissions Close: July 31, 2025

Expected Publication Date: October 2025

Submit here!

2026 Whumpy Books

The Whumpy Printing Press is now open to novelette, novella, novel, short story collection, and graphic novel submissions! We’re looking for standalone stories as well as series, and are happy to work with both new and established authors. 

Your story should clearly fall into the whump genre (i.e. a character needs to be hurt). We’re looking for strong stories with a balance between whump and plot. We are especially fond of sci-fi/fantasy settings, but will consider any story as long as it gives us whumperflies!   

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[ace-s-fav-dp-posts]

If you're sick of the current popular trope/story prompt in the Phandom or DPxDC fandom you just need to ignore it

I feel like the fans in the Phandom and DPxDC minifandom that's popped up, who are really grossed/creeped out by the genre of fic popular right now.

Where the set up is some variation of Outsider POV and the plot is based around the assumption that Vlad SAed Danny in order to create Dan and Danielle, are people who haven't been around that long.

Especially when they try to whine about none of it being based in canon. And how they don't like the shipping of Vlad and Danny (even though the people who write these kinds of fics are very obviously not shipping Vlad and Danny in them).

Because the Phandom has historically gone through phases much more gruesome and horrifying than that.

Especially when in this current micro-genre, all of the SA and grooming and other kinds of abuse are implied only, and within the fics themselves the assumed abuse never actually happened. As the plot is based on over heard or misinterpreted fragments of information that doesn't give the POV character the full picture of the situation that's actually going on.

There's the infamous vivisection fics, in which the child main character is brutally cut open and tortured by his own parents in the name of their biased views of science. Who in canon, both happily accept him no matter what every time a reveal is happens and never so much as rejects Danny emotionally.

Then there's the variation on the traditional vivisection fic in which Danny isn't emotionally rejected and stripped of his humanity by his own parents. But instead captured and stripped of his human rights by the government, either by his parents unknowing actions which they stay oblivious to. Or in spite of his parent's acceptance of him, and with them helpless to rescue or protect him from the government's torturous "research".

There's the already existing variation of grooming and SA fics, where Vlad grooms and or assaults Danny. Which have been popping up for years now, but in which all of this type of horrible abuse actually happens in the story, instead of it being an Outside POV misunderstanding what's happen like the current micro genre of fic.

There's the fics where the Fentons have just been abusive or just negligent parents Danny and Jazz's entire lives. And them hurting Danny, emotionally or physically, intentionally or accidentally, is just an extension of their already unacceptable parenting habits.

There's the edritch/body horror genre of fics where becoming half-ghost (or sometimes something else) involves at the very least the partial loss of Danny (or Vlad)'s humanity.

Hell there's one fic that's stuck with me for ages, that I read years ago, back in my teens, written from the POV of a Maddie who murdered Danny to prevent him from becoming Dan. Which is stated in that fic to be inevitable.

It's also heavily implied that Maddie had incestuous feelings for Danny the entire fic. And that she also possibly raped him in the midst of her extremely violent* vivisection murder of him. But that if she didn't rape him, at the very least, ripping him open to see his insides while he was awake and struggling got her off anyways.

So yeah, I don't know what other explanation there is to all these people who seem confused and freaked out by the various fics popping up where there's assumed SA/grooming, but actually nothing outside of canon actually happened to Danny, and the whole thing is just a misunderstanding.

Other than them being extremely new to Danny Phantom fics in general and therefore unaware of just how dark (and potentially triggering) they can be.

When there's been fics for years about SA and grooming, some of which is explicit, some of which is all implied and talked around and just as gut wrenching, and some of which is actually painted in that cringe forbidden love sort of way, for more than a literal decade now.

If you don't like it, if it makes you uncomfortable, you're just going to have to ignore or block those people, like everyone else in the Phandom who feels the way you do has done for more than a decade now.

Don't make comments to those authors that you don't like that trope, or that it makes you uncomfortable, or anything similar. Just ignore them or block them if it really bothers you that much. Because if you don't like their stuff, then rather obviously you are not their intended audience, so you need to ignore their posts and fics and keep scrolling if you're not going to block them.

*Also yes I must state it was a violent vivisection murder. Because it is clearly stated in the fic, that Vlad finds Maddie sitting outside on the porch covered in Danny's blood and viscera, and that the room she killed him in is in a similar state.

I wanna say the fic got deleted during the old Fanfiction.net purge of more adult content, even though all of the sexual abuse/incest parts of the fic where all implied and not explicit, along with the violent vivisectoin murder taking place off screen.

Though I could be wrong, and it's still out there somewhere, and possibly not exactly as I remember it. I read it more than 5 years ago now, so there's almost certainly some memory drift by this point.

[chaifootsteps]

Welp, Chai, I rewatched the entire Hazbin Hotel pilot on the night of the 18th. It's been well over a year since I even watched it. Now onto my thoughts...

The Good 😊

The Animation: I know a lot of us complained about Viv's style of animation. But compared to the current HH animation style, it's a lot more pleasing in my eyes. I especially love the smear frames in the pilot (often referred to as "cursed images") as they really make the animation very dynamic.

The Voice Acting: I still absolutely adored the voice acting in the Hazbin Hotel pilot. Jill, Monica, Michael, Edward, Mick, etc. really brought their A-Game and really brought these characters to life. Frankly, I should've been way more upset when they were replaced back in December 2021.

Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow: Man, I have forgotten how much of a banger this song is. I don't know how to describe the genre/genres of this song, but I view it as a strange yet effective mixture of a piano ballad, pop rock, and speed metal. I actually headbanged pretty hard during the song, something I can't say about the new Hazbin songs.

Vaggie: Still love that little grey moth sinner with an unfortunate name. I view her as the most rational (if not the only rational) character in HH. I still enjoy the scene where she explains to Angel Dust the legend of Alastor, very reminiscent of a Hey Arnold urban legend scene.

The One Scene between Angel Dust and Alastor: I don't know why, but the scene where Angel Dust offers a dick sucking to Alastor and then Alastor bluntly rejected him still makes me chuckle to this day. That's probably the only sex related joke I laughed at in my recent rewatch.

The Bad 😡

Seeing Red: This is a complaint nearly all of us had with the pilot: Too... much... RED! I don't know why didn't bother me years ago, yet it bothers me now. Granted, compared to the current series, the pilot has a little more variety of colors, even though it's still red dominated.

The Humor: Unfortunately, aside from the Angel/Alastor exchange, a lot of the jokes in HH fell flat with me during my recent rewatch. It just makes me wonder how I thought HH was funny back then. Maybe Viv's rose-tinted fog really clouded my judgement.

Vaggie's Treatment: One thing I still dislike about the pilot, even back when I was a fan, was how Vaggie was treated. Despite being the most/only rational character, Vaggie was treated quite poorly. From being ignored by Charlie, to being insulted by Angel, to being slapped in the ass by Alastor. *sigh* Why do cartoons have to torture characters with a hint of rationality?!

Too Many Characters, Not Enough Time: Not sure if this is nitpicky or not, but I feel the pilot "introduced" far too many characters in a 30-minute video. Yeah, I put quotes around "introduced" as many of them got only a few seconds of screen-time or were only there in portraits. Even "main" characters like Husk and Niffty got the short end of the stick in terms of screen-time. It also took me long to realize that Viv really favors her male characters over her female ones. Female led show, my ass!

The Ugly 🤢

The Wasted Potential: This is the only ugly thing, but the wasted potential of HH is so ugly that the Ugly Barnacle would die. Under Viv's rose-tinted fog, I foolishly grew emotionally attached and had high hopes for this show. Unfortunately, thanks to Vivienne Medrano's micro zepto-management, she pissed all the great potential away. *sigh* It could've been great... 😔

Well, that was a load-off. Now I feel like I've made some closure. 😇

-Metallica Anon 🤘

Thank you for reminding me just how Gerald Urban Tale-esque Vaggie's Alastor exposition was...between that and the constant little sound effects, the whole thing felt like a Nicktoon, and I know that's part of what I loved about it.

This was a bittersweet walk down memory lane just reading it, but I'm glad you got your closure, Metallica Anon. It really could have been so great.

[cedarbookhs]

One of my favourite micro-genres, especially growing up, was books about kids or teens running away from home and living in unusual places. Some of these are more serious and involve leaving abusive homes. Others, the home life and excuse for leaving is entirely perfunctory and the adventure is the point. The common theme is that the kid leaves voluntarily (isn’t stranded somewhere, but goes there specifically) and then ends up living independently in some unique setting that gives the story a large part of its identity.

My Side of the Mountain — inside a tree in the Catskills

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler — the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art

Maniac Magee — inside a buffalo house in the zoo, in a baseball stadium, and more

The Invention of Hugo Cabret — a grand Parisian train station

notabookbut The Kings of Summer — a homemade shanty in the Ohio woods

Last Sam’s Cage — the Calgary Zoo

The Boxcar Children — a freight car

Suggest more if you can think of any, I know there are lots of other examples.

[djinnandtea]

so I got some interest on this post where I tossed out that I wanted to talk more about monster romance and race and gender. it's been really nice to see a few folks are also wanting to hear/talk about it! I'm not prepared to say anything at length [eta: this turned out to be kind of a lie] with any certainty or research to back me up, but I thought I could post a rough outline of sorts of what I'd want to research and explore further, just as a starting point for myself but also a jumping off point if anyone else has any thoughts or resources.

I guess I'll start with gender first. I'm new to the romance genre generally, but I don't think it's a surprise that the genre has always been dominated by discourse around who reads romance and the kind of gender dynamics presented in a lot of conventional romance books (which are generally heterosexual/heteronormative in a lot of problematic ways). I'm thinking of the harlequin romances my mom and grandma used to read, but also of the discussions around colleen hoover's work and then the dark romance sub-genre too.

this means that there's the obvi discussion to be had about content vs. context. who is writing the romance, what informs their writing, what messaging comes through via choices made by the author, as well as by the context the author is writing in. I'm sure if you've been reading romance--even fanfic--for a while, you're well versed in some of these conversations, even if just in a casual way.

after considering romance on a macro level, I think you'd then have to look at some of those more micro sub-genres. where are gender norms accentuated and exaggerated, and to what end? why is dark romance a thing, why do (usually) straight white women want to fantasize about being in that kind of relationship? what's the purpose being met? (this is all asked non-judgmentally, btw, as I also enjoy dark romance.)

and maybe there are folks who would dislike my comparing of monster romance to dark romance, but I do think the two are related, especially based on a lot of posts I've seen since joining this corner of tumblr. I think there's a lot of interest in exploring ideas around control and dominance that dark romance and monster romance provide contained space for. if you watched my YouTube video, I touch on this a little bit more at the end as well.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot re: gender (like all the stories being told about lgbtq+ MCs), but this is just some initial thoughts at the fore of my brain.

as for race...........well. lol.

there's the very surface level question around what percentage of monster romance FMCs are white. I genuinely don't have this answer, and I know there are a lot of nonwhite FMCs too! but I'd be really curious to know the actual numbers here. why? well, bc diversity matters. but also because of the decades long narratives around white women as victims of men of color, and how that narrative has been used to weaponize whiteness and demonize blackness specifically, and non-whiteness more generally.

I am def not saying that all monster MMCs = depictions of non-whiteness, I'm just thinking about the connections between equating non-white people/bodies with monstrosity. I'm thinking of the historical framing of non-white people and communities as sub-human, as savages, as beastly. inhumane. monsters have kinda always been a metaphor for the other, including the non-white other, and I think it'd be naive of us to assume that vestiges of that brand of racism (which is still alive and well) never inform the ways creators engage with monster romance and monsterfucking, consciously AND unconsciously.

I'm also thinking about orientalism. I'm thinking of the exotification and classification of the east. the way westerners invaded the eastern world and began treating the people there like specimens. I'm thinking about how othering and abjecting and exotifying a culture or community or person can create a power-informed version of sexualizing that culture or community or person. like, othering/abjecting/exotifying can lead to creating a perverted sort of desiring. I have a special interest here because I'm arab, so this stuff feels particularly personal, but yeah. it makes my wheels turn.

there's also a dehumanizing element of turning an othered body into a piece of sexual meat. I'm thinking about the way monsters in these books are always excessive, the way their penises are always massive. we can't pretend that doesn't seem a little familiar to the degrading ways white people have also discussed black bodies, too. like. I'm not saying wanting our monsters to have big dicks is racist, I'm just saying there are some aspects of the genre that I think deserve to be ~unpacked~ and considered in a wider context that takes this kind of stuff into account. not as a confirmed given, but as an avenue worth approaching with curiosity, if only to point out the ways in which it's NOT a product of racism/anti-blackness.

obvi this post is not backed up at present with a single source because I'm just thinking out loud based on stuff I've read previously over the years that I definitely would need to revisit, so I totally get if you read this and think I'm being ridiculous. but if you saw my first post and were kinda wondering what I had in mind when making it, this is it.

[theriverbeyond]

☕️saw you were reading Annihilation, so I want to know if you have opinions on the horror genre (I don't know why this ask is yelling and I don't know how to make it stop)

no worries thanks for the ask

I think the horror genre is really cool! I love how it is such a broad genre, I really love how it can be used to explore really personal/micro level fears in addition to more universal experiences. I like how creative a lot of it is, I like how it is inherently more resistant to attempts at sanitization and censorship (tho of course not entierly immune and people try etc etc).

I also really like how different artists can harness the specific storytelling format they are using to maximize the experience, like junji ito's page turn or horror games that really take advantage of YOU being a person IRL who has to press a button that you know might make a scary thing happen.

however I'm like, a massive dweeb and can't handle 99% of video-format horror, and only some audio formats. Like.... normal audiobook is fine, but spooky sounds are too much. Some level of scary stuff and etc is okay like I could watch Super 8, but I hate jumpscares and also like, high-fidelity gore/body horror. I also couldn't watch the newest cartoon harley quinn tv show because it had too much cartoon blood and violence so like, take that as you will! i also hate feeling afraid which does throws a real wrench into my whole "horror is super cool and I love it" statement above, but we contain multitudes.

My favorite ways to experience horror are hobbyist level short stories (like what people post on reddit nosleep), written and comic format horror (like TLT, blood on the tracks etc), longform youtube analysis (and other types of written essays especially on horror media I am too scared to actually experience myself), and finally wikepedia summaries

ask game (send me ☕️ + topic and i will Share Opinions)

[pookiebearmick]

weekly tag wednesday (on wednesday this time!)

thank you dear @spookygingerr and @mickeym4ndy for tagging me 😍🥺

Name: Deck

Age: 25

Location: I'm out and about 🌈✨

What is your DJ name? God knows lol, I would not be a good DJ

If you were a genre of music, what would it be? I feel like I would be some kind of goofy folksy music? Something with banjo, accordion, oboe, viola - that kind of shit

What would you title your biography? My cousin once said they would name theirs "?" and I think mine might be "!"

What are the first three things you'd do if you were invisible? Like @mickeym4ndy I am SO nosy, I would def be snooping LOL; also might steal some things, groceries are EXPENSIVE

What subject do you wish was taught in every school? I feel like some kind of finance class could be beneficial, but it would have to be a finance class that actually taught the important things? I took a finance class in high school and it was just worksheets of bullshit that didn't help at all in the long run. Teach me how to file my taxes and create effective budgets, please 👏

When was the last time you tried something for the first time and what was it? Omg I had my first fresh peach ever this past weekend and let me tell you, INCREDIBLE

What is the most underrated city you have ever visited? I don't travel often, I'm kind of a home body? But there is a really cute little town up north by my grandparents called Stockholm - it's got little local shops and lots of art studios, even a pie and ice cream shop. It's truly so cute 🥺

What day in your life would you like to relive?

If you could eliminate one thing from your daily routine, what would it be and why? Honestly, it would be so nice to have things cooked for me? I think my diet would be so much better if I didn't have to do the task of making the food. I truly love fruits and veggies, but I don't have much energy when I get home from work so I don't feel like making an elaborate meal, and often times it ends up being something super quick and easy

How long would you last in a zombie apocalypse? I would actually do so terrible in a zombie apocalypse my GOD. I'd probs be gone within the first few hours, def lucky if I lasted a couple of days lol

What would be the most surprising scientific discovery imaginable? I don't know how surprising it would be to me that there's other life in the universe somewhere, but I definitely think it would be cool to discover different species from different planets

If you could have any view out your office window, what would you choose? It would def have to be some kind of garden/greenery for me. Maybe like a micro prairie or a big prairie? Flowers and trees and shrubs and all the green please 💗

if you haven't done it yet and want to, here's your tag @thepupperino @twinklyylights @especially-fuk-u @onthepyre 🥰