#gotta have some variety in life

[illiaccrest]

🐠 ✨ 🌊 🐉💖

[zellkabellk]

Rambling in the tags don't mind me.

[forestryfae]

actually you know what. i still havent tried the airfryer and im hungry a sfucka nd i have a few bags of sweet potato fries so like. if i just clean the drawer thing and i grab some baking sheets and cut them up i could make food

[themostefficientwaywithwater]

veterinary in the pokemon world must be hell on earth like it's already too damn difficult to try to learn the anatomy, ethology, main infectious and parasitic diseases with it's respective symptoms, diagnostic, treatment and profilaxis of dogs/cats and livestock but can you imagine try to learn all this for 1000+ different species

[keferon]

Hellooo I'm loving your fibsh au so much and in love with orca boys but but

A little bit of an idea so

We know Jazz is lonely as hell due to the lifetime of captivity

But consider: Prowl also being incredibly lonely even as a wild mer. Let's say he's always been a "weird one" in his pod, quite awkward in social stuff for an orca, unable to form really strong bonds with others due to being emotionally dense (gotta come up with a reason for that but I'm just spitballing) and being feared by everyone else (oh god scary apex predator, run for your life)

Yes he hunts with his group, he's a very good hunter in fact, great strategies, he follows all the rules to a t but they never really accept him as a friend. More of a coworker. So he's always been sort of by himself, alone in the crowd

And here comes that captive orca mer who has no idea about "proper mer social behavior" and is so happy to be around Prowl and looking to him for guidance. And they're both so very lonely in different ways

Aight that's all, I just think it would be neat, for angst bfdvdf

Oh I kinda love it. You know like those lone male orcas who live mostly alone for variety of reasons?

Prowl would have merpeople around him sure but just like in canon he would probably be quite unpopular.

Then. One time he gets in a fight and ends up being seriously injured and bam. Humans found him bleeding out on a shore and decided to help. But they wouldn't instantly throw him in the same tank with Jazz right.

They would have kept him in some temporary pool that would have been hastily found. It would be awfully crowded and even more lonely.

Then someone at the aquarium would find out about him and come running in like, "Guys! We need that orca!"

And then they would have to sedate him and move him to aquarium and even then he will be placed in a separate pool at first.

....ACTUALLY now when I think about that. Being captured would be such a stressful fucking experience to him. He wouldn't just close his eyes while at the sea and then simply open them in the aquarium....

[archive-professional-jaywalker]

Mildly annoyed at the trend of people... Forgetting that many of the strong experiences one can feel about alterhumanity are historically very very common in otherkin and therianthrope? This is not... Beef toward anyone, in fact this popped up bc I checked in on a non anglophone alt-h server, but god. Like speed round. As a note this is gonna be more therian linguo heavy just bc I'm very tired, a therianthrope, and mostly was in therian spaces so it's what I default to but a lot of those are applicable to otherkin n fictionkin.

"can phantom shifts feel like physically shapeshifting"

-> yeah this was an experience talked about not uncommonly on forums. A lot of therianthropes expressed the feeling of "a pelt under your skin begging to breach out" or feeling limbs push out against their skin as the phantom shift took place. Sure a lot of people also feel very mild phantom shifts. Both exist. But this experience is in fact a phantom shift experience. We called ourselves "weres" for a reason. Seems more common in people who distinctly see themselves as werecreatures, but this is not abnormal for a phantom shift, although preferably you should do a doctor check if you feel pain (also an experience ppl talked about, but it's not usually thought of as "normal" just bc. Well that's kinda bad and may hide an injury or whatever so it's better to check mundane reasons first. But painful shifts seem to exist you should just be very very certain nothing else could be causing it).

"I can't turn off being an animal / I can't stop my instincts at inconvenient times / I don't feel suited for human society"

-> this one always surprises me when it's presented as bizarre for otherkin/therians. That was like... A baseline therian experience. Yeah no a lot of us can't either. Usually the difference is that this feeling is at an all time high when in situations where you are constantly pressured to "human" correctly, socialize and have no breaks to wild it out, which corresponds a lot to The Entire Duration Of School and is therefore a more common complaint amongst teenagers than adults. It gets a bit easier as an adult sometimes if you're lucky to have opportunities that let you manage your life around instincts and such, although sometimes, well, you gotta play by societies rules to survive n it stays hard. Also a commonly reported experience. You do learn! But some people are better at hiding instincts than other, some instincts are easier to hide than other, etc.

"I have shifts I cannot control under very intense emotions"

-> "Berserker shift" is a controversial term due to a variety of reasons that span the usual "that's too weird, don't talk about that", the fact you're still responsible for what you do while shifty, or just bc it sounds kinda... Edgy, from a first glance, but it IS a term from our history and a lot of people do report the experience of going fully animalistic if freaked out enough. Sometimes alongside extremely strong phantom shifts as described in the first point! I've heard of people who had complete verbal shutdown and could neither speak nor understand speech, could not walk on two legs, reacted with growling spitting and biting, just the whole thing. I think this experience is a bit harder to find mostly because it's... Very vulnerable, usually. It tends to require less than pleasant conditions, and tends to be very vilified, so not talked about much, but very much something that is recorded.

Transhumanism, species transition and body mods overall

-> I'm not gonna talk much about this one bc I've said a lot in other posts, but there's a reason trans species and therianthropy are super intertwined and it's... Because a lot of therianthropes did historically attempt to transition or at least modify their body and surroundings to their best capacities. The idea that therianthropes, as a rule, mostly do not attempt to modify their bodies seems to me very incorrect.

"I feel a strong, almost supernatural drive toward nature / I feel in my bones I am nonhuman / I believed I could physically shift during most of my life under the right conditions"

-> This one is going to be a bit hard for me. As a result of having psychosis, I have kind of a mental block over thinking too much about it in regards to myself. It's also I think A Major way ppl seem to be confirming physical nonhumanity, so like, you do you, I'm not Telling you anything about yourself. However I do want to note that these feelings aren't particularly rare amongst nonhumans overall. A reason why so many therianthropes got in toxic groups that promised being able to go back to one's true form was... Because a lot of us are deeply convinced in some way or another that if things align juuuuust right maybe just maybe we'll have our bodies again. It's not hard to. Understand why an entire community defined by being in the wrong body would have this trait. A lot of us felt a strong drive toward nature, a feeling of being displaced amongst humans, a lot of us attempted to physically shift.

"I wish I could have my species's offsprings / I feel dysphoria over my sexual functions / I have sexual drives that align with being weird fetishes in a human society"

-> this one is more getting erased due to puritanism I think but yeah no for a lot of nonhumans it. Does not stop magically under the belt. And it's not a problem unless any theriform animal is involved. Yes even if it's kinda nasty to think about. I will however note for the first point "no theriform animal is involved" kinda still goes, please do not adopt animals, especially exotic animals, under the impression that you can parent them as a theriform animal could? It CAN be possible to raise a theriform animal in a way that would satisfy parental instincts if you're trained for it, but we're not special. We got raised by humans, we don't magically understand our species better than people trained for it. Very imprinted animals commonly make poor parents.

"I remember my past life / I communicate with my animal self spiritually / other spiritual experiences"

-> this one is such a surprise to me to see so uncommon now. Spirituality used to be a cornerstone of otherkin and therian spaces and it's kinda wild to me to see it's so rare now. So yeah no that's very much a thing. I don't think I've seen someone soul search for their "true name" in ages, when that was everywhere on old spirituality inclined forums. I can't speak much on this bc I am not a spiritual therianthrope + point about psychosis made before but I've seen parallel lives, I've seen past lives, I've seen future lives, I've seen misplaced souls, I've seen having a chat with your theriotype as a representation of your soul... Awakening seemed to have a meaning of the... Spiritual event of your soul kinda ripping to reveal your inner self for a while, a singular event in which you start remembering. Was very common on an old french forum over here. Not sure if that was as common in English ones. A lot of people's nonhumanity was not as based on shifts and instincts as on uncovering that hidden self through spiritual means, memories, and such.

Weird Shit Happens Around Me ("I can't digest things a human should digest in accordance to my species, ppl have noted my nonhuman traits as if they could see my invisible limbs, animals react weird to me, etc")

-> noooooted in the past but I think these have always been subject to doubt to be fair. Like you can find records of stuff like that quite easily, but also its very hard to prove in any way, shape or form. So that's a reason it's not in the basics of nonhumanity. But yeah historically a lot of otherkin/therianthropes have claimed Weird Shit Happens. Not rly my case so can't speak on it.

And I think I've mentioned what I had in my brain but this is just to remind ppl like... The therianthrope who wears a mask for fun and is only mildly inconvenienced by their animality is not really a representation of the community historically. Weve always been pretty fucking intense and pretty fucking weird. Chances are, if you are experiencing a very weird thing, it's not particularly a disqualifier of therianthropy or otherkin historically. Not that people might not give you shit about it! Pretty much all the points here, while not uncommon reported experiences, ARE in fact also things I've seen ppl be antagonistic about in the community. Which to be clear is stupid. But yeah it doesn't mean you're wrong, it means they don't realize the extent of our experiences.

[transformers-spike]

"Is this why the Autobots are fond of humanity? To indulge their sweet heat cycles? How many human mates has Optimus taken for himself? It seems as though their motives to protect them were never altruistic, much less noble." PLEASE, PLEASE GIVE US A SUB-STORY WHERE THIS TIME IT'S OPTIMUS AND A HUMAN SO IN THEIR HEAT CYCLE PLEASEEEE

Idk am I creating a humans in heat universe for the TF Fandom? I know people like making the bots go through it but I think the humans being affected is so much funnier. Just begging these massive robots to fuck us lmao

How must it feel to burn from the inside out? Betrayed by your own body, rendered unable to function by the fire in your core. You described it as an aching, an insatiable need to appease the hormones overtaking your nerve endings. A mere touch is enough to worsen the ache, it’s what your body dictates in the throes of a heat cycle.

Cybertronians are forged by Primus Himself, their interfaces exist for recreational pleasure and bonding, but your species is biologically programmed to reproduce, like most of the fauna of your planet. It’s a systemic sacrifice, one rendered obsolete by the sentient status of your species. Drugs have been produced to suppress your heats, or at least lessen the effects. Unfortunately, among a dozen varieties of medication, you are either allergic or completely immune to them, leaving you susceptible to your hormonal whims. He is sorry. You must go through so much pain every few months, but you barely show it, brushing off his concerns with a laugh, saying “it is what it is” and moving on as though your body isn’t on a timer. He admires you for it. In spite of your discomfort, you haven’t given up. Once, you told him: “So what if they don’t work on me? I just gotta roll with the punches and hope for the best, it’s been my M.O. since I got the damn thing.” Meeting them for the first time… was turbulent to say the least, but you’re safe and sound, relocated to Jasper, having adjusted to your new life with the help of Agent Fowler. You’ve told them many times you’re infinitely grateful to be in their lives (barring the near death experience at the servos of an Insecticon). For them it’s a pleasure to ease your burden. You’ve eagerly established your consent, although only Arcee is the right size to properly take care of a human. Digits and glossas can only do so much compared to a spike. He tries not to pry, your privacy is yours to divulge at your leisure, but he cannot ignore the charge building up behind his interface when he sees you with the others. Yes, he is an occasional participant, but he will rather cover shifts and allow them some well-deserved respite in your berth. They deserve it. He dares not imagine Arcee’s spike pumping in and out of you, satiating your aching body, filling you to your limit as you beg for more. 

Your scent lingers in the air, caressing his sensors, a gentle hand tugging him along by the servo, pulling him in your direction. They try to keep it to themselves, but his team is beyond a doubt intoxicated by your presence alone. Thankfully, it has (almost) never impeded their judgment during missions; perhaps it has even served as motivation to make it back to base in one piece. He tries to ignore the gleam in his old friend’s optics after quelling your urges, if only for a night. Or Bumblebee's praises coming to you as a slow stream of beeps while he nuzzles your face. Or Bulkhead cradling you to his chassis like a precious artifact as you discuss what late night movies you should watch. Or catching Arcee kissing you over the mezzanine and pulling back with a smile she hasn’t worn since Cliffjumper’s death. You bring them together in your own special way, even if you blush and sheepishly deny it, claiming you should be thanking them instead  Recent discoveries have yielded an impressive increase in energon and brought forth new opportunities. With unparalleled quantities at their disposal, they can now mass displace. The transformation is no small feat, it exhausts their system and rapidly drains their energon level. But he will not forbid Bumblebee from using it to play with the kids as long as it’s not in excess. Nor to join you during heat cycles. Much like Bulkhead. And Wheeljack. And especially Ratchet. Primus forbid, his old friend has every right to enjoy himself to the fullest after all of his back-breaking work. He’s been meaning to pay you a visit, but he hasn’t found the time until now. In the temporary abode you set up in the base, away from the prying eyes of the kids, you prepare yourself for another heat. Some refurbishing was done to meet your needs (in no small thanks to June Darby and agent Fowler’s financial help); the mattress and the mini fridge was a given, but you’ve added a variety of personal belongings and entertainment; a television, a writing desk, a few “bean bags” here and there, and a pile of old magazines to scrapbook. He wonders if you consider this place your home more than your actual house in Jasper. You greet him while downing a bottle of water, holding up your hand to signal for him to wait. Once emptied, you place it next to the mini fridge, among a wide array of bottled water crates. That would explain the groceries June had brought in with Arcee’s help. As a medical professional she’s especially fretful over your condition, doing her best to prevent the risks of heat cycles, bringing you plenty of calorie dense fuel to combat the massive loss of nutrients. He has not forgotten the fear they experienced when they found you shaking from the deficit, having completely overlooked your hunger in a midst of desperation. In this form, he can appreciate the full extent of your body without fear of hurting you, kneading the supple flesh beneath his digits as you giggle and pull him into you. He does not tower over your reclined form as much as he encases you in a careful hug, hearing the rapid thrum of your human spark directly against his audials; he may sense your pulse rate, but experiencing it is a new wonder of its own. You tell him you missed him and you wish he would let himself go and come out to “obliterate your pussy” more often. He nods and apologizes for his absence even as you shush him and insist he enjoy himself as well. He is… the largest Cybertronian you’ve taken, you remark while adjusting to his size.

“Except maybe Wheeljack,” you add cheekily, already bucking into him. Your composure evaporates as he works you up, not to say that he is much better. He steadies himself over you, charge trickling down his interface as your walls clench around him in a vice-grip. You beg him for more, plead that he frag you until you can’t take it anymore, but he has grown used to your requests and knows when your body has reached its limit. You whimper and claw at his back plates, flush against his frame yet dragging him closer as though to merge your human spark to his.

If only he could.

Slow and steady, he frags you through your overloads, each one adding a new surge of spark down his frame until he comes to his end. You are small and shaking, but in this form he can properly hold you against his chassis and comfort you through the afterglow, bringing you another bottle of water and a Clif bar (chosen for the human scaling a mountain with “If you eat this you can kill God” in big bold letters).

You stir and sit up on shaky knees to accept his offerings. Halfway through your meal, you eye him up and down.

“Are you going to stay some more?” you ask with hopefulness, still chewing on the “ultimate nuts and banana power�� concoction advertised on the packaging.

“I’m afraid not, Ratchet has been hard at work deciphering Decepticon encryptions, I will be taking on his duties for the night,” he tries to break it gently, expecting crushed expectations, not your bemused expression looking up at him.

“So you’re sending him my way?” You give a chuckle. “Wish we could have spent more time together, but work is work. Just…” you crawl into his lap and hug him as tight as you can, head resting against his chassis. “Please come back tomorrow. Or after tomorrow. I miss seeing you this way. I won’t get between you and… whatever you have going on, but please visit me more often. You have no idea how nice it feels to be around you.” His gaze softens, glowing faintly against your hair. “So I’ve been told,” he says, a smile on his lips. “As long as it lightens your burden.”

[whatdoeseverybodywant]

TORN - Chapter 3

Synopsis: One night, that's all it took for Josh and India to fall for each other. One night was all it took for her life to turn upside down. She thought she had found the one. Then he had told her the truth... he had someone waiting for him... someone whom he had betrayed to be with India.

I do NOT give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on here or any other site, even if you give me credit. DO NOT REPOST MY FICS

Reblogs, comments, likes, and feedback ALWAYS appreciated ❤ 

All OC Characters belong to me

Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Warnings: mentions of cheating, emotional abuse, toxic partners.

Atlanta, Georgia

Janae and Trinity sat at the kitchen island, a variety of barbecue sat in front of them, hot off the grill. 

“Wait, so the little girl is six months old?” Trinity asked, still chewing a piece of chicken, her eyebrows raised in surprise.

Janae nodded, wiping her hands on a napkin before leaning back in her chair. “Yeah,” She scoffed. “The mom only told Josh about her three months ago, which is extremely convenient.” Janae lied. 

Trinity arched an eyebrow at Janae. She could tell Janae was lying but decided to let it slide,  for now. There was something about the way Janae's eyes darted around the room that told her there was more to the story, but she wasn’t about to press her. Not yet, anyway. Instead, she took another bite of her food, trying to gauge Janae's mood.

“Did he tell you who the woman is?” 

Janae nodded and grabbed her phone. She unlocked it and handed it over to Trinity. Trinity took the phone and scrolled through the profile. She wasn’t going to lie; the woman was beautiful, and so was the baby she had plastered all over her profile. 

“She’s really pretty,” Trinity said, handing the phone back to Janae. “But y’all had broken up, right? He hadn’t cheadted on you?” 

Janea scoffed at Trinity's comment about India being pretty. “We had an argument, and he stormed out. He said thats the night the fucked so yes, he cheated.” 

Trinity made a face and picked up her fork to continue eating. She could feel Janae getting agitated. This obviously was a sore subject for Janae, but Trinity could tell she was withholding a lot of information. 

“He went to go see them last week,”  Janae said after a minute of silence between the two. 

“Really?” Trinity asked, genuinely surprised. “He didn’t mention it.” 

Janae rolled her eyes and threw her hair over her shoulder. “I’m not surprised. He thinks I’m forcing him. Like, sir, you cheated. The least you can do is try to get custody of the little girl. He already has one other baby mom. Now I gotta deal with another one?” 

“Pause,” Trinity said, holding her hand up. “Custody?” 

“Look,” Janae scoffed. “He had a baby on me. He’s lucky me and Micah are still in this house.” She said with a roll of her eyes. I told him that if he wanted us to stay together, he would need to marry me and get full custody of that little girl.” 

Trinity blinked, her mouth slightly open in shock. "Wait, hold on," she said, leaning in. "You told him what?"

Janae crossed her arms over her chest, clearly trying to defend herself but also looking a little nervous under Trinity's intense gaze. "I told him, if he wanted to stay with me, he had to marry me and get full custody of the baby. I’m not dealing with another baby momma situation, Trinity. I’ve already got Jeremi’s mom, and now I have to share him with another woman? No thanks."

Trinity sat back, her eyes narrowing. “So, you’re saying you put that condition on him? Marry you and get custody of a baby that isn’t even yours?”

Janae shrugged, trying to look unaffected. “Yeah. And I’m not sorry. If he wants to keep his family together, he has to show me he’s serious. I’m not going to play second fiddle to some random chick and her kid.”

“Wow.” Trinity chuckled as she shook her head. “You want him to take away a baby from their mom? Is that not crazy to you?” 

“No.” Janae shrugged and picked up her glass, taking a long sip. Her gaze hardened as she set it down. "I don’t care about India’s feelings. All I want is for her to be gone and out of our lives. This whole situation is just a mess, and I’m not about to sit here and pretend like it’s not affecting me. Josh made this decision, not me. He’s the one who cheated, and now I have to live with this kid and this woman being part of our lives. I’m not dealing with it."

Janae stood from her chair abruptly, her movements sharp, as if the conversation had reached a point where she couldn’t handle any more. Without a word, she turned and walked away, her footsteps heavy but determined, leaving Trinity sitting at the kitchen island, staring after her.

Josh could feel Jon’s gaze on him as he flipped the chicken over on the grill. Josh sighed and closed the lid to the grill before turning to face his twin brother. 

“You tryna feed the homeless too?” Jon tried to joke, pointing to the aluminum pan that was almost overflowing with barbecue chicken. 

“Nah,” Josh muttered, grabbing his beer that was on the ground next to him, “Just not tryna go inside.” 

Jon raised an eyebrow, sensing the tension in Josh’s voice. He leaned against the porch railing, still watching him closely. “This about India or Janae?” 

“Shit…” Josh trailed off, rubbing a hand down his face. “Both, I guess.”  

Jon waited until Josh took the remainder of the chicken off the grill. After Josh set the aluminum pan down. Jon led his brother over to the pool. They both sat on the edge with their feet hanging in the pool. 

Josh let out a long breath, staring at the ripples in the water below them, his mind spinning with everything that had been happening. He wasn’t sure if he was more frustrated with himself or the situation, but either way, he was stuck. “I don’t know what the hell to do anymore,”  Josh finally whispered.  He looked up and looked over to where Jeremi and Micah were playing with Jon’s two kids. He could picture them in a couple of years, playing with Egypt as well. 

 He looked up and glanced over to where Jeremi and Micah were playing with Jon’s two kids in the backyard. They were laughing, running around in the grass, completely oblivious to the grown-up problems swirling in the air around them.

For a moment, Josh just watched them, the sound of their carefree laughter making him feel like he was a world away from the weight on his shoulders. He could picture them in a couple of years—still together, still laughing, but with Egypt. 

He looked towards the house, where he could see Janae and Trinity throught the sliding glass door. He blinked, and the image transformed. Instead of Janae talking with Trinity, it was India leaning in, laughing at something Trinity had said. The two of them were talking like they’d known each other forever.

“You hear me talkin’ to you?” 

Josh was brought out of his daydream as Jon shoved him a little bit. “Sorry.” He muttered. “Whatchu say?” 

“It don’t even matter.” Jon chuckled. “But uh, I see that rock on Nae’s finger. Y’all finally tying the knot, huh?” 

A deeper scowl was now on Josh’s face as he rubbed his hand across his jaw. “More like she forcing me.” 

“What?” Jon asked. 

Josh let out a sharp sigh, running his hand through his hair as he looked away, clearly agitated. “To marry her,” he said, his words coming out heavier than he meant. “After she found out about Egypt, she basically gave me an ultimatum. Marry her and get custody of Egypt or she’s leaving and taking Micah with her. 

Jon's eyes widened slightly as he processed what Josh had just said. "Wait, what?" he asked again, his voice a little more incredulous this time. "She gave you an ultimatum? That's... that's messed up, uce."

Josh let out another frustrated sigh, shaking his head. "Yeah, I know," he muttered. "It feels like I'm being backed into a corner. After everything with India and Egypt,  she’s acting like the only way we can move forward is if I marry her and get full custody of Egypt. Like, if I don’t, everything falls apart."

Jon watched Josh, his expression turning serious as he took in his brother’s words. “That’s a lot to put on someone. You didn’t even know about Egypt until recently, right?”

“No.” Josh gritted out. He was tired of lying. Tired of putting on a front. “We both found out the day India told me she was pregnant.” 

“Uce -” Jon started, loss for words. 

“Man, look. Janae said some foul ass shit to me. About me, our family, my career, and I was done. I walked out of the house. Fully done with her and her bullshit. India had some type of event here, so I just pulled up. One thing led to another, and next thing I knew, I was in her hotel room.” Josh downed the rest of his beer. “I was done. I was interested in India. Janae and I weren’t even speaking for about 3 weeks, Uce. I thought we were done until she came to me and had some sob story about how she wanted to work on us, and she wasn’t ready to let me go or something.” 

“So why didn’t you just leave? If you were done, why not just go?” 

“I don’t know.” Josh snapped. “My head was a mess. I had fell for India uce, and then, shit” He breathed out. Guilt gnawing at his stomach. “After I told Nae ‘bout India, she threatened to leave and take Micah with her. I couldn’t let her do that, Uce. So I had to cut India off.” 

Jon’s expression softened slightly, but the seriousness never left his gaze. He could see the turmoil eating at Josh, and he could tell this wasn’t just about India or Janae—it was about Josh’s struggle with himself.

“Then when India called and told me she was pregnant.” Josh sniffled as he tried to keep his tears at bay. “I fucked up Uce. I made the decision to not be in India’s or Egypt's life. I thought... I thought it was the right thing to do, Uce. That I had to focus on Janae and Micah and Jeremi.” One tear slid down Josh’s cheek. “I had a family, Uce. I  thought I could just turn the page and forget about India and Egypt, that I could focus on what I had with Janae and the kids... but everyday that shit haunted me. Every day I woke up thinking how India looked carrying my child. Thinking if she would even let me into the delivery room when she gave birth just…” Josh trailed off, wiping his tears away. “I wanted to be there for my daughter. I didn’t want her to grow up without a dad.” 

Jon sat quietly, absorbing Josh’s words, his expression softening with each one. He could see the raw emotion in his brother, the pain of carrying a decision he’d made out of guilt and confusion. He knew Josh was torn between two families—one that had been his for years and the other that had suddenly become a reality in his life.

“I missed the first three months of my daughters life cause I was being a selfish asshole.” Josh’s voice cracked as the words tumbled out, the guilt heavy in his chest. 

Jon moved closer to his twin, pulling him into his arms, letting him cry. “You can’t change what happened, Uce.” Jon’s voice was soft as he talked to his brother. “You’re trying now, and that’s a good thing.” 

 Josh’s body shook with emotion, the weight of his choices, his regrets, and everything he’d been holding back coming to the surface. It felt like the dam had broken, the flood of guilt, frustration, and helplessness pouring out all at once.

“I just don’t want to screw it all up,” Josh murmured, his voice thick with emotion. “I want to be there for Egypt. I don’t want her to grow up thinking I didn’t want her.”

Jon squeezed him tighter, holding him steady. “You’re not screwing it up, Uce. You’re showing up now. That’s what matters. It’s not perfect, but you’re here. You’re trying to make it right.”

Dallas, Texas

“You’re such a pretty girl,” India cooed as she genly rocked Egypt in her arms. Her voice was soft and full of warmth as she smiled down at her daughter.  Egypt's big, curious eyes looked up at her, and India couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of love and responsibility. She had done everything she could to make sure Egypt felt safe and loved, even when everything around her seemed to be falling apart.

She let out a sigh as her phone began to ring. She looked at the time on her watch and groaned. 

“Hello…” She said as Josh’s face popped up on the FaceTime call. She bit her lip as she took him in. He looked extremely tired. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair a little messy, and there was a weight to his expression that made India pause. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, like something was eating at him. But he still made butterflies erupt in her belly. 

He had broken her heart multiple times but, she couldn’t help the love she still felt for him. 

"Hey, India," Josh said, his voice rough and unsure. He ran a hand through his hair, glancing around for a moment before focusing on the screen again. “I was jus’ callin’ to say goodnight to Egypt.” 

India nodded and turned the phone so Egypt and Josh could see each other. Egypt’s eyes lit up as she focused on Josh on the screen. She let out a happy screech, kicking her tiny little feet. 

Josh’s face softened, a mix of tenderness and guilt crossing his features as he watched Egypt react. She was so small, so innocent. She didn’t deserve a father who abandoned her for the first three months of her life.  

“Hey, baby girl,” Josh said, his voice thick with emotion. He leaned in closer, his eyes filled with longing and regret. “I miss you so much.” 

Egypt’s bottom lip started to quiver as she tried to reach out for Josh. Her eyes were wide with confusion, not fully understanding why Josh wasn’t there to hold her but feeling the absence of his presence deeply. A soft, pitiful sound escaped her, the first hint of distress she’d shown since the call started.

“I’m sorry, Mamas.” Josh’s voice cracked as he could only watch through the phone as India tried to console Egypt. 

India had the set the phone up so she could use both hands to rocks and relax Egypt. Josh watched as she rocked Egypt, singing softly as she rubbed her back. In no time, Egypt had dosed off in India’s arms, her tiny snores making Josh chuckle softly. 

“Can I come see her?” 

India nodded as she laid Egypt down in her crib. “You’re her dad, Josh. You can come see her whenever.” She muttered before leaning down and pressing a kiss to Egypt's forehead. 

“Thank you,” Josh muttered, and India shrugged. “I - I don’t wanna miss out anymore. She’s getting so big.” 

“Yeah…” India trailed off as she looked down at her baby girl. “She’s gonna be walking before we know it. She’s trying to crawl already.” 

Josh’s heart clenched painfully in his chest. He was missing so much, and he didn’t know how to make up for it. Every milestone, every laugh, every moment that Egypt had without him. It all felt like a heavy weight pressing down on his chest. He wanted to be there. He wanted to be the dad she deserved. And that started with showing up. 

Author's Note: Whew... this was kinda an emotional one for Josh. Trinity didn't like that custody shit at all. Janae seems like she needs therapy, and India just wants to heal from all of this. 😮‍💨

Reblogs, comments, likes, and feedback ALWAYS appreciated ❤ 

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[tyrantisterror]

A Flight of Dragons, I Command It! A FLIGHT! OF! DRAGONS!

doom DOOM DOOM

Hey fuckers, it's February and my Seasonal Affective Disorder is at its fucking PEAK, so it's gonna get REAL weird around here for a while. Luckily, my old ass has spent the last thirty-some years figuring out how to deal with this particular recurring problem, and one of the many tools and tricks I've learned is an age old classic:

I gotta treat myself.

So, ok, I work at a daycare, and one of the things that's very popular with the kids these days are 3-D printed dragons. They're inexpensive, customizable, and pretty easy to transport and store, so it's no wonder kids like them. But, you know, I'm something of a child at heart myself, and I love dragons, so when I saw my kids bringing all these 3-D printed dragons to the center... well, I got a bit envious. And, well... when you're an adult with disposable income... there's no one STOPPING you from buying a 3-D printed dragon for yourself.

Or two.

Or three.

Or... lots. Lots and lots. Because you're an adult and they don't cost much money and you've always loved having swarms/herds/big families of creatures ever since you were a kid, and because it was January when this idea struck you and looking at the estimated time of arrival on etsy for these things you realized most of them would arrive by February, when you might NEED the serotonin provided by having a big ol' flight of dragons.

So let's go on a journey, fuckers. A journey of excess, a journey into imagination, a journey through the marvelous world of people with 3-D printers making a quick buck on etsy. Let's look at some fucking dragons.

I'm going to go ahead and link the store pages for each dragon I purchased, in case you too are deranged and need some dragons in your life, and because I want to give some form of credit to the artists who made these. Granted, that won't always be possible - while a few of these seemed to be unique to the shops I bought them from, many of them could be found from NUMEROUS sellers, which makes it difficult if not impossible to figure out who originally programmed the project files for them to be 3-D printed from.

Case in point is The Crystal Dragon here, which can be found in SO MANY etsy stores. Most of the 3-D printed dragons my students at the daycare had were of this variety, in fact, so it seems to be a very popular pattern for 3-D printing. It's definitely a cute and pretty little thing, and sort of sets the standard bar for a 3-D printed dragon. I wish the face was a bit more detailed, but the rough, angular nature of it does help convey the idea that this thing is made of crystals.

The second most common design, as far as I can tell anyway, is this Chinese Dragon/Loong (oh hey, they used my favorite English spelling!). I really like the face of this guy, and it seems like an excellent rendition of the standard East Asian dragon design - there's even tiny holes under its nostrils where you could insert a wire or thread to serve as its barbells, though most sellers (including the one I bought from) don't make use of it.

While most of the dragons I bought are "realistic," there were some cartoony/more stylized ones for sale that I decided to partake in. This little guy is one such dragon, and I think he's probably the best one to get if you're buying for a kid - the smoother body and smaller, nubbier horns makes it less likely to break, and just a bit more fun to play with in your hands. These things are often marketed as fidgets, after all, so the tactile feel of them is something to take into account.

While on the surface just a variation of the fidgets we've seen so far, this dragon has one particularly clever feat of engineering: because of the way the spikes on its neck are set up, you can get its head in a nice "snake rearing up to strike" position, which, combined with its distinctive short-snouted face, goes a long way to giving it an extra bit of character among the 3-D printed dragons.

While most of the dragons I found seemed to have the same simple color options to choose from, a few sellers seemed to have their own custom ones that were unique to their shop. This mix of bronze and olive greens was unique to this particular dragon, which, along with its painted eyes, really helps its stand out! I will note that the joints of this dragon tend to stick a bit more than my other dragons - perhaps a result of using different plastic colors than is standard? - but if you let gravity do its work they'll sort themselves out, and it's worth it to have such a striking little fellow.

Since this particular style of toy really suits serpentine creatures better than all else, I decided to look for some explicitly marine dragons to add to the group. I really like this sea serpent I found, which comes is very basic crayola-ish plain colors, but has just enough personality in its sculpt (and eyes and teeth in different colors) to stand out.

If you're looking for sea dragons on etsy, though, you're much more likely to encounter this fellow, which almost every store selling it calls Jormungandr and/or the Midgard Serpent. It's got these vaguely Nordic runes carved into it, as well as grooves in its tail designed to fit its prominent fangs so it can make an ouroboros, which makes the Jormungandr connection feel pretty intentional. It's a really distinct design, but I do think it's a little funny that it's far from the beefiest of my dragons. I wonder if there's a shop that sells an upsized model...

While not notable in terms of engineering, paint work, or plastic color options, this dragon IS notable in having heads based on a statue of Quetzalcoatl, who is in turn one of my favorite mythological figures, so I had to get it.

Of course, I also wanted a Quetzalcoatl-style feathered serpent that had the classic "winged snake" look, and this one fit the bill well enough. It originally came with little hair clips attached to its underside, allowing it to cling to your head and/or clothes, which I thought was really clever... but I also didn't like the clips sticking out from under the little thing so I took them off. A lovely little dragon either way, though.

So, ok, I'd been going relatively cheap at this point, but as I shopped I was struck with a sort of passing fancy, an idle thought... what was the most elaborate, fanciest 3-D printed dragon I could get? It's not this one, mind you, but this was very much the start of that rabbit hole. While mechanically it's not significantly different than the dragons we've seen till now, the amount of colors it's printed in immediately make it stand out as a higher quality dragon.

The same store that sold the dragon above also sold this fellow, which may well be my favorite of the many East Asian dragons I found on this little quest. Just look at that wonderfully monstrous face! And he's got a pearl, the little devil!

While the color of the plastic and the engineering of this sea dragon may not seem particularly notable, what has to be taken into account here is the sheer SIZE of this lass. This is one of the biggest dragons of my lot, not only in length but in sheer girth and weight of its joints. The Midgar Serpent needs to move over, this is the REAL leviathan of my 3-D printed dragon collection.

Of course, if you know me, you know I'm a basic bitch who loves the European "four legs and two wings" style of dragon the most of all, so my search for fancy 3-D printed dragons started to focus on finding some that fit this description. I can't actually find the store page for this guy anymore (it's not in my past purchases on etsy for some reason), but it's a pretty solid low budget take on the concept. But we can do better - and we will...

But first, a detour to some wyverns! This little guy is really cute, with a head based on the Peter Jackson Herbit movie's design for Smaug, and a feathery little body that makes it looks like a fantastical archeopteryx.

The same shop makes a more reptile-ish dragon, with leathery wings and scaly skin, which I got in a larger size because, well, you know my preferences. It's like the perfect size to perch on your shoulder, though I'd want something to hold it in place because I'm pretty sure falling off from that height onto a hardwood floor would be the end of it.

There's no shop link for this one or the next because it was a freebie - which is to say I didn't actually order this dragon, but found it in one of my packages as a free gift from the seller. That's the nice thing about shopping on places like etsy and ebay - sometimes the people on the other side of the screen are really solid and decide to give you an extra little treat. This is clearly a Games of Throne-style wyvern specifically, based on the proportions and the shape of the head, and that's pretty cool. The dragons are one of the only things that made it out of that show still looking cool.

The second freebie dragons I got were these little toys of Toothless and Girl Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon. Look at them, they're so cute!

But now... now it's time for the answer to the question:

What

Is the most Deluxe 3-D Printed Dragon

I can get?

The Bronze Medal goes to this marvelous dragon here, which feels like it flew right off of some medieval coat of arms and into my own flesh and blood ones. It's solid, beautifully sculpted, and full of articulation points. However, the method in which it's articulated makes it a bit frustrating to pose, as some of these joints end up bending and twisting in ways you don't want them too. Still an excellent dragon, mind you, but outdone by the next two...

The Silver Medal goes to this marvelous wyvern, which has much tighter joints that are a lot less frustrating to pose. Its wings are a mixture of cloth and plastic, allowing them to flex and bend into a variety of poses (though admittedly the weight of the wings keeps them from holding most of those poses very well). Also, look at that regal face, that sleek sculpt, and those elegant proportions! It's almost a perfect dragon for me. Almost.

My one and only gripe with the previous dragon is that, well, I'm a basic bitch who likes dragons with four legs and two wings the best! And what do you know, they made one of those too! And god, does this dragon look magnificent in person, sporting all of the elegance of the dragon above but with magnificent grasping hands! HANDS! Hands that you'll have to be careful with because the joints are a little loose and like to pop off when you play with them, but still, HANDS!

This is a high enough point to end off on, but there's one more 3-D printed gift I'd like to cover here. My favorite one.

Well, ones I guess. This all started with my students, and well, some of them noted my interest in the 3-D printed dragons they were bringing to school. And a couple of them actually ended up getting 3-D printers of their own (well, their parents' own, ayway) and decided to print off a dragon and a crocodile for me - smaller than all the other dragons here (except the Toothless keycains), but no less dear for it. I guess one of the pros about taking an active interest in the things your students like and letting them gush about it is that they might give you a 3-D printed dragon or crocodile out of the kindness in their little hearts.

[reidmotif]

my fic + author recs!

i have been suuuper disgruntled by the fic community recently and how casually and thoughtlessly some fic writers/readers seem to be indirectly insulting people’s work. this community and its fics are so varied, and i think they deserve to be appreciated. which is why im reccing a bunch of my fav fics!! please give these writers sooo much love!!

(about all of my recs are nsfw, but some authors mentioned do have sfw fics. please explore and follow the warnings outlined for each fic!!)

“i know your wife and she wouldn’t mind” by @stairain

gotta start out with stairain. i would pretty much credit my whole desire to write fanfics to the fact that i religiously read their whole masterlist a summer ago. they are a fantastic writer, and i love how they captured spencer here. take a look!

“i want you” by @smurphyse

i HEAVILY recommend smurphyse as an author. their series, room 405 is probably one of my most reread fics ever. their threesome and foursome fics are beyond supreme. i love this one shot they’ve written, and i hope you guys do too!

“loverboy” by @sundrop-writes

while i dont think this person writes for cm anymore, their fics for it were fantastic. i love how they captured sub spencer, and i think this is one of my most reread fics ever.

“puppy eyes” by @misserabella

i am in looove with the way this person writes. while i dont have a link to it, “sick love” changed my brain chemistry. sub spencer save me sub spencer save me.

“summer of sin” by @mercy-burning

hoooly shit. if you know me, you’ll know i probably reccomend this fic to everyone i know. i just genuinely can’t say anything besides telling you with my whole heart to check it out. awesome way to close out your summer honestly.

i would love to write blurbs about my love for these fics for everyone, but i fear the post would become too longwinded. here are some links and authors i recommend just as enthusiastically as i did the others above.

@reiderwriter

@foxy-eva

@fortheloveofwonderland

@incognit0slut

@beelmons

@imagining-in-the-margins

@criminalmindzjunkie

@andiebeaword

@reidsrambles

@eideticmemory

@sinfulspencer

@wheelsup

@beautifulbrainrot

@moon-light-jukebox

@gubsbuubs

@minswriting

@golden1u5t

@ginkgo-phyta

@gubler-me-up

@reidbae

@crypticreid

“who’s counting” by @samuel-de-champagne-problems

“behave back there” by @writingmar

“mile high club” by @littlexdeaths

“next to you” by @zombiefiilm

“testing the limits” by @reidsdimples

“follow my lead” by @mismatched-sockss

“welcome home” by @spencerreidenjoyer

“incentive” by @reidslibrarybook

“the very first night” by @writer-in-theory

this request from @donald4spiderman

“malicious compliance” by @aliteralsemicolon

“all zipped up” by @ipseitydelrey

this request from @thedancingcostumeyoungadult

this request from @astrophileous

“scream for you” by @hornyhornyhimbos

“thin walls” by @byersbootyshorts

“just my type” by @reidgraygubler

welcome to the small blurb after where i say something that’s been bugging me. i think it’s corny to indirectly insult people’s work on here. i think it’s corny to imply a “correct” way to write a character, especially in terms of writing about a characters sex life, a sex life that has no canonical basis to it! (i am talking about spencer here, if it is not obvious). i think it’s thoughtless, arrogant and all around odd to engage with that type of behavior. the variety of fanfiction that exists here is such an awesome thing, and i think itd be so incredibly boring if we all thought the same thing and wrote the same thing about the same characters over and over again.

if you’re a writer and you’ve felt that your work has been unappreciated or rejected, or have read something that left you feeling off about your own work, i am very sorry. every contributor to this fandom is awesome. you deserve every flower ever. 🌷🌷🌷

and if you’re reading this and feel called out.. examine that! i make this post off of a general vibe i have examined in the past few weeks. there is no level of entitlement you hold that allows you to dictate how and what people should write.

i say these words with little malice. id like to hope everyone is capable of being a little better everyday, and i hope any amount of reflection can lead to that.

anyway, that’s all ❤️ baiiii enjoy reading!!!!!

[maxwell-grant]

There's a trend people have pointed out in superhero stories over the past 20 or so years that is the death of "regular" supporting casts, an increasing absence of un-powered sidekicks or people involved who aren't in the thick of the action or in the hero's secret. Everyone who interacts with superheroes is a couple issues away from becoming one, every story involves a supervillain encounter or several dozen, every hero's gotta have a lunchbox-ready "superhero family" made from these characters, and every side character that doesn't join them is either going to die or become a supervillain.

The defining example people use for this is Spider-Man's supporting cast, with every Spider-Man cast member short of Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson getting some kind of powered upgrade or symbiote, and I'm gonna say Amanda Waller is an excellent case study of how this kind of thing happens, and I think it helps to explain why Amanda Waller has been, Like That, for the past 30 years.

She’s wearing a grey shirt underneath a blue blazer and it’s tucked into a similarly blue skirt that stops at mid calf. She reminds me of the neighbourhood aunties I used to see leaving for church every Sunday morning.

My mom used to say that you are the company you keep. So what kind of person does it take to keep a variety of bruised, battered, and dangerous personalities in check? - Amanda Waller: DC's Most Terrifying Woman

To those of you who haven't read John Ostrander and Kim Yale's Suicide Squad, there once was a time where Amanda Waller was something more than a powerful antagonistic force able to butt heads with the biggest superheroes, and something other than a heartless establishment face out to make superheroes miserable for ill-defined reasons. Structurally speaking, Suicide Squad is a comic about marginal DCU characters forced to deal with actual real life problems, and it's central character is a marginalized person forced to deal with DCU problems and characters. The members of the Squad are a rolling parade of costumed misfits and maniacs assigned to go around the globe to fight and kill and die on dirty missions to deal with dirty laundry and stop war zones from erupting, while Amanda Waller is forced to shuffle around her cadre of D-list supervillains and disgraced superheroes and get into stand-offs with secret spy societies, living nukes, voodoo cartels, and Batman.

Amanda Waller neither looks nor acts like the kind of character that stars in a superhero comic, and she is the central character throughout the 66 issues of the run and we follow her character arc from beginning to end as she's forced to spin plates to accomplish her goals and prevent bad situations from getting worse. She is the most fully realized character in the run and everything rests on her shoulders. We spend a lot of time inside her head, her team, her associates, she is the center holding together an extremely chaotic book with no two characters on the same page. She is, and has to be, an extremely powerful person, someone who stands her ground no matter what, an unbeatable force of will because that is the only way she's going to survive the situations she's in, the only way she can be "The Wall", the kind of person who can repel Batman, command a platoon of monsters, talk her way out of Deadshot's contract, someone who can stare at Darkseid and credibly threaten the President into letting her live.

That's the part that everyone is more or less familiar. But there is, or at least used to be, much more to Amanda Waller than just being The Wall, not in the least because being The Wall is also hampering her effectiveness as well as straight up killing her.

"Amanda's toughness has taken her a long way" "It's taken her as far as it can. But it can't take her no further. It's actually starting to drag her down. I'm scared for my baby sister, rev - scared that the anger in her is congealing into hate." - Suicide Squad #31

We get to know her backstory, her plans, her points of contention with the system, her relationships with people around her, and how deeply she cares about things and people even as she sends them to the meatgrinder. From the start we learn that Waller staffs her team with people she's prone to getting into disagreements with, like Simon LaGrieve and Rick Flag, specifically so they can cover her moral blind spots and pick up the slack in emotional intelligence she's lacking, be the heroes that she can't afford to be. It is unspeakably crucial that the Squad is led by Rick Flag as well as Bronze Tiger, a fallen hero who owes Waller for his recovery who eventually takes Flag's baton. Waller stands up for her team, gets into fights with her superiors when they decide to terminate them, and takes the fall for them when necessary. Waller is a person who does Bad Things - but she is not a Bad Person.

The book in no uncertain terms frames the Suicide Squad's existence as monstrous in a scale Waller doesn't understand until the very end, and it digs deep into the unethical things Waller has to allow for and perpetrate in order to keep it running no matter how many lives it saves, and she spends the first half of the book on a downward spiral. But then there's the 2nd half of the book:

In the first 39 issues, Amanda’s flaws are her undoing. As she pushes away the people she hired to act as a balance, she grasped tighter and tighter to her uncompromised vision of the Suicide Squad despite the constant changes and derailment. Her choices had consequences: the death of Rick Flag, her demotion, employees quitting, and finally, the disbandment of the team.

The last 27 issues have Amanda rising up from the ashes after a year in jail. She’s less in her own way – she communicates, her anger isn’t driving her, she’s more receptive of alternative perspective and recognizes when she’s wrong in real time – but she’s still just as scary.

Waller rebuilds her relationships with the people she drove away, takes a different tack to how the team works, and starts going out into the frontlines with the Squad. She brings Oracle (who actually made her debut in this comic) into the fold, saves her life and plays a big role in Barbara making progress in overcoming her Joker trauma. She genuinely puts in the work to improve as a person and do things a better way than before, even if there is an inescapable immorality to the very existence of the Squad and what they do. That immorality never goes away, and it only further horrifies her when learning how badly her project has gone. In fact, it's that very inescapable immorality that ends her arc.

She learns that the CIA has started using a new Suicide Squad to support a brutal regime in South America, and when faced with the full extent of her complicity in Western imperialism? She decides right then and there to end the Suicide Squad for good after they liberate the population of said regime from said Squad. She is the only person who gives a shit about the country enough to start the assignment for free once she knows about it, force the Squad along, lead the mission in field, and personally (and even gently) usher the villain to his death at the end, to end what began with her.

She does bad things, and she does good things. She cares about people, and she uses people. Her decisions ruin as well as save the world. She spins a million plates to match wills and wits with the strongest, wickedest, most cunning humans and superhumans alike, and she still has superiors to answer to and people close to her she hires to judge her for what she does. She endured racism and misogyny and poverty for decades and rode whatever she could to attain as much power over her own life as someone like her could possibly attain, and to have it, she must be a willing tool of the state and bend the knee to Ronald Reagan, the man she derides for what he did to her community, hating every minute of it.

She lost her family to sexual and racial violence, and now she wrangles a penal battalion comprised of some of the worst people on the planet to inflict violence on her orders. She has saved and redeemed people, and she's haunted by the corpses she's left in her wake. She is oppressed and oppressor, someone who could only escape the ravages of American imperialism by becoming one of it's chief enforcers, and still she rebuilds herself into a better person from it upon confronting and challenging her role in it. She is not a bad person, she is not a good person either, she is just afforded a degree of agency and complexity unpowered characters in superhero books simply don't get.

Okay cool, now what is she up to these days?

That, I guess. That is what a strong but unpowered person who does not allow themselves to be bossed around by superheroes or supervillains looks like now. Everytime there's a call for a military bad guy, Waller gets tagged in to be DC's Henry Gyrich. There was a point where Waller was made to contrast the likes of Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling, someone who butted heads with them because she was a well-meaning person working for and committing evil as often as she attempted to stop it. These days, the most consistent beat with her is that she is the most dangerous person alive and worse than the villains she wrangles into working for her. She is a thing to be overcome, a hypocrite to be exposed, a challenge to the natural order of the universe, and she is too terrific at it to be shuffled off quietly. She is a Bad Person and so everything she says and does is Bad (and thus can be ignored).

Integral to Suicide Squad's structure was the fact that Waller was the center holding everything together, the ultimate third party: spinning plates working with, for and against all of the others so she can bend rules and be bent by them. Bent, but never broken, because The Wall doesn't break, others break first. Waller was a one-of-a-kind character, and that broke her, because beating Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling at their own game means replacing Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling. Waller doesn't look like them, she doesn't look like the superheroes either, and so she can't be one of them. She can't even look like herself a lot of the time, they try to slim her up everytime they think they can get away with it.

Suicide Squad was preoccupied with exploring a perspective from a world outside the superhero worldview, but we no longer have her perspective or that of people around her, we only know her through the superheroes she inherently defies and has had an adversarial relationship against from day one. She is someone with a viewpoint that is charitable to neither superheroes nor institutions, and thus, the universe is increasingly less sympathetic to her, the less utility she has to the grander narrative where everyone has to pick between one of two options. If she wasn't powerful and assertive, she'd be another Leslie Thompkins, another Jiminy Cricket the heroes passively ignore. But because she is powerful and doing morally compromised things without asking Batman's permission, she must have a personal grudge. She must be a government monster. She must attack the superheroes for no reason, no ideology, no motive.

So now she's just The Wall 24/7, the mean icy establishment boot who is strong and clever and cruel and hates superheroes and wants to destroy superheroes and rule the world from the shadows. Everything she does is a fuck-up she refuses to take responsability for, everyone is right to hate and distrust mean old Waller, and now everyone gets to look good by dunking on her. They couldn't make her a superhero, so they made her a generic supervillain instead. And now that she's a bad guy, she no longer has to believe anything, she doesn't really have to mean anything, they don't have to write stories about something other than superheroes and supervillains, and they don't have to let a fat woman of color take up space and screentime they could be giving to Harley Quinn and Slade Wilson instead.

Even by the time of Waller's debut on the tail end of the 80s, her career opportunities were on their way to extinction

Days Of Future Past marks the triumph of the superhero comic that's pretty much concerned with no-one but superheroes. Where Ditko and Lee's Spider-Man featured a single costumed crimefighter in the context of a commonplace existence, the X-Men of the 80s focused on a huge cast of mutants who had little if any lasting involvement in the everyday world.

By the 21st century, the corporate superhero comic would largely - if not exclusively - concern itself with little beyond a large class of superhumans and their fantastical existence. I suspect there's a significant correlation between that and the continuing cultural  peripherilisation of the superhero comic - Colin Smith

Amanda Waller is one of the strongest characters in all of comics, she was as powerful as an non-superpowered character given center stage could possibly be, a perfectly designed character from which an entire corner of a shared universe was developed out of with her as the center making it work, but as the room for civilian casts and unpowered protagonists got smaller and smaller, so did Waller's options. If she was a Spider-Man character and somehow didn't get killed or made into a villain, they would have slimmed her up and given her a symbiote, because you're nobody unless you're web-swinging. Characters didn't look or act like Amanda Waller, and unfortunately, they still don't. It's just instead of making more characters like her, they gutted Waller to be more like the rest. If she couldn't make it, who else even could.

Keep your eyes peeled for this summer when she'll team up with two meaningless robot baddies to burn down the Justice League and I guess the universe for the next reboot or something.

[eternal-sunflowers]

Sunbaked

AO3 | written for @steddiebingo hop into spring mini event | prompt: sunshine | rating: t | wc: 2.6k | cw: language, minor child abandonment allusions | tags: established relationship, platonic soulmates stobin

“Hey! No running, shitheads. I’m really not in the mood to go to the hospital today.” Steve’s got one hand gripping the door frame, the other on his hip, as he yells at the gaggle of teenagers absolutely ignoring him as they run around his pool. Well, his parents’ pool, but they haven’t been here in, like, 2 or 4 years or whatever, so it’s Steve’s, and they just told him as much on the phone, said a bunch of paperwork would be over in the morning,along with a big injection to his bank account with a promise of steady flow for the foreseeable future.

Turns out, life’s a lot more interesting outside of Hawkins. Who’d have thought? 

“Fuckin’ hell.” He mutters to himself, drags a hand down his face before stepping outside, shutting the door behind him. He walks down the patio, over to where a laughing Jonathan is working the grill, chatting away with Argyle, making their lunch. “Hey, man.”

Jonathan smiles up at him, turning from his conversation. “How’s it goin’, dude?”

Steve shrugs. “The usual.”

Jonathan nods, a somehow stoic smile plastered on his face. “Ah, yes, the usual. A very clear way to be goin’.”

“Fuck off, Jon.” Steve chuckles. “You know what I mean. Just, usual bullshit.”

Jonathan squints at him. “Like, usual bullshit as in parental bullshit or usual bullshit as in you’re too deep in your head bullshit?”

Steve ducks his head. “Both, I guess. Mostly the first.”

Jonathan hums, clicks his tongs. 

“‘S no big deal. I just–”

One of the kids screams then, Steve’s head jerking immediately to the sound to see Mike where he’s splayed on the concrete.

“Shit, Mike! Are you okay?”

Mike waves him off as he stands up, brushing his hands down his swim trunks. “I’m fine.” He then takes off running after Lucas, a big smile on his face. 

Steve scrubs his hands down his face and groans. “Jesus christ. These kids are going to put me in an early grave, I swear. Watching them running around the pool makes me want to scream.”

“Those lifeguard instincts kicking in, huh?” Jonathan nudges him.

“Somethin’ like that.” Steve chuckles.

Argyle nods. “I got you, man. Shit’s dangerous.” He turns then, cups his palms around his face, and, before Steve can stop him, raises his voice. “Hey, lil dudes and dudettes! Chill the running out, alright?”

The kids, surprisingly, stop and look at Argyle, sheepish smiles on their faces, call out a variety of sorry, Argyle’s as they shift to a walk. Some of them sit instead, their laughter and conversations picking right back up.

Argyle nods, drops his hands as he turns back to Steve and Jonathan. “There you go, my man.”

Steve’s mouth is slightly agape as he stares back. “Yeah, uh, thanks, Argyle. ‘Preciate it.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Jonathan knocks his shoulder, gestures with his tongs to where Eddie is laid back in a pool lounger, talking animatedly with Robin. “Go relax, man. We’ll smoke you three out after food’s done, alright?”

Steve smiles, pulls Jonathan into a one-armed hug. “Thanks, Jon.” He turns and hugs Argyle. “You too, Argyle.”

“Of course, my dude. We gotta take care of each other.” Argyle nods, pats Steve on the back.

“Yeah, we do.” Steve smiles, pulls back. “Let me know if you need any help with the food.” He’s got one hand shoved in the pocket of his swim trunks, the other gesturing to the house. “Or need anything–”

Jonathan shoves him back slightly, tongs pointed at his face. “I know where everything is, and if I don’t, Robin or Eddie does.” He snaps his tongs. “Go chill.”

Steve laughs, holds his hands up. “Alright, alright, I’m going.”

He turns then, walks over to where his boyfriend and his best friend are curled up in their loungers, talking a mile a minute. 

“Hi, sunshine.” Eddie smiles, immediately makes grabby hands at Steve, to which the latter chuckles and acquiesces, sits on the side of Eddie’s lounger, lends back against his propped up knees. 

“Hi, dingus. Took you long enough.” Robin grins at him. 

“Yeah, sorry. It’s been a day.” Steve sighs, offers an apologetic smile.

Robin’s eyes quirk up, a million questions floating through them as she scans Steve’s own expression. She must find what she’s looking for, because her eyes soften. “Your parents called.”

Eddie leans up, whispers out a quiet, “Oh, shit.”

“I don’t really wanna talk about it.” 

Eddie snakes his hand to grab Steve’s own. “You sure, sweetheart?”

Steve squeezes Eddie’s hand. “Yeah, I just–” He sighs, rakes his free hand through his hair. “I’ve been done with their bullshit for ages, so it doesn’t really matter anymore. Just always throws me a little off when they make their quarterly phone call or whatever.” 

Robin sits up, swings her legs over the side of her own lounger so they’re pressed up against Steve’s. Steve smiles at her, grateful for the contact. It’s grounding, in a way, to be surrounded by the people he loves most, their physical proximity soothing the aching fissures inside of him. “Any…developments?”

“Robbie. I just said–”

“I know, I know. But, like, this isn’t the usual time for their call, and we both know that, so don’t try to even dodge that point.”

Steve grimaces, drops his head, because yeah, she’s right. 

She carries on, seemingly unfazed. “So, that must mean something’s changed, and it’s clearly bothering you. Are they, like, starting a corporate cult? Or moving to Norway?” She snaps her fingers. “OH! Maybe they’re–”

“They’re giving me the house.” Steve sputters out, stares at their knees knocking together. He drops his voice. “They’re…they’re actually done with it.”

Eddie shifts behind him, gently props Steve forward as he swings himself so his legs are curled around Steve’s body, his chest pressed against Steve’s back. Eddie snakes his arms around Steve’s chest and leans forward, cheek pressed to Steve’s shoulder as he presses a soft kiss there and squeezes tight. Steve wraps one of his own arms atop Eddie’s, laces his fingers through one of his boyfriend’s hands. 

“Steve?” Robin reaches out for his free hand, which he easily lets her have. He nods to her, presses his finger once to the back of her hand. 

“Just give me a minute, yeah?” 

She nods back, starts rubbing tiny designs into his palm.

Steve thinks about the phone call with his parents, about everything that is being thrown into his lap now. He’s not really upset about it in the way people would expect him to be. He’s not upset that he’s not going to see his parents anymore, or that they won’t come back to Hawkins. He’s not upset that he’s now going to be a homeowner at the ripe age of 21, and will have to deal with all the management that comes with it – though, at least his parents said they’d be sending a couple lawyers and other officials over, so Steve assumes they’ll just be putting his name on all the contracts for the people who manage everything. 

Steve’s always felt really fucking weird about having people constantly in and out of the house to clean and primp it. He didn’t really see much of a need considering he was the only one who was ever there, and he cleaned after himself well enough.

Like, do they really need someone to cut the lawn twice a week? It doesn’t even grow that much. 

All the workers were always kind to Steve, and for that he’s incredibly grateful. They were some of the only real human interaction he had for years, after all. He decides maybe he doesn’t need to sign all of the worker contracts. He’ll talk to them and give them fucking massive leaving bonuses for dealing with his family’s bullshit for years. He’ll offer up himself as a reference and put in calls to make sure they get other jobs if they need him. As much as he despises it, the Harrington name holds a lot of weight. Might as well use it to help people, unlike his parents.

Steve shakes his head, earning a look from Robin, but he just presses his finger to her hand again, so she keeps her mouth shut for now. He does the same to Eddie, squeezes his hand to let him know everything’s okay. 

Steve’s mostly upset that his parents took this long to do it. That they danced around not coming back here, always talking about business trips and mergers and corporate bullshit. Steve could’ve dealt without the years of aching for his parents to return, the hope always kind of there. The ache settled and dissipated after meeting everyone here, but that last bit of hope only died the second he hung up the phone, like, 20 minutes ago.

But, now Steve owns this place. Or, well, he will tomorrow. He doesn’t have to tiptoe around anymore. He doesn’t have to keep up the god awful decor. His parents made it clear they’d send people to pack up what belongings they wanted, and the rest Steve could do with what he sees fit. God, is he excited to actually make the house feel like a home. To make it feel lived in.

He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, feels some of the last dregs of his parents’ bullshit come flying out with it. 

“I’m fine, really. Just – I actually, like, have this house now. I’ll own it come tomorrow.” Steve lifts his head to look at Robin, her face impassive as she scrutinizes his own. “I’ll have this house and will be able to do whatever the hell I want with it.” He laughs. “Holy shit, we can cover up the wallpaper now. I never have to see that plaid again.”

Steve feels Eddie’s laughter deep in his chest. “Oh, that’s absolutely the first thing we’re doing, Stevie. I’ve been itching to tear it down since I first stepped foot in your room.

“Me too. It’s atrocious.” Robin shudders. She squeezes his hand, offers him a kind smile. “You sure you’re really okay with this, though?”

Steve nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Like, I’m a bit pissed, but mostly relieved? Excited?” He turns to look at the kids who’ve now migrated into the pool, splashing around and laughing. He looks up at Jonathan and Argyle, a laughing Nancy now with them. He smiles as he continues. “It’ll be mine and then I can really make it a space for everyone, you know?” He turns back, squeezes both hands he’s holding, levels Robin with a hopeful look. “I can make this our home.”

Robin’s eyes widen. “Steve?”

“I’m being serious, Robin. You’re practically living out of that room anyway. I can actually give it to you now. If you want it, that is.”

“Are you – if I want it? Dingus, I have been dying to move out since the second I graduated from the hellpit of Hawkins High. Of course I’ll move in.” She launches herself forward, arms clumsily wrapped around him and Eddie, the latter of which chuckles again. 

The laughter, and double hugs, and the sun, and the everything around him in that moment fills the pit in his chest that’s now no longer holding on to that tiny sliver of hope that his parents cared enough to come be parents – that pit fills with warmth and love, swirls around and coats every surface it can reach. 

Eddie lifts his head off Steve’s shoulder. “As much as I’m happy for you, Buck, and really, I am – I can’t help but be a bit offended, though not entirely surprised, that my beautiful, amazing, wonderful boyfriend here asked you to officially move in before me.” 

“Oh, screw off, Munson. You live here already.” Robin pulls back, plops down onto her lounger again, knees bracketing Steve’s as she leans forward.

“And so do you! But not officially, since our beautiful Stevie here was trying to be respectful of his shit parents and not cross that bridge yet.”

Steve squeezes Eddie’s hand. “Sorry, babe, but, you know–” He gestures with his free hand to Robin, then back to him, then back to Robin, back to him.

Eddie chuckles, disentangles himself, moves to sit beside Steve to better access the conversation. He reaches over and grabs the hand Steve is gesturing with, links their fingers together. “I know, I know, platonic soulmates before romantic soulmates.”

Steve blushes, knocks his shoulder against Eddie’s. “Will you officially move in with me, Eddie?”

He’s met with his favorite, blinding grin of Eddie’s. “I thought you’d never ask, sunshine.” Eddie leans in and kisses him, ignores the gagging sound Robin makes in response, before he turns to face her, his grin turning manic. “Now, we have so much to discuss, Buck. First being, what should cover the currently – sorry, sweetheart – atrocious walls of my new shared bedroom?”

Eddie and Robin launch into a conversation as Steve turns, tosses his shirt off to the side, lays back in the lounger to finally relax. Feeling the warmth of the sun seep deep into his bones, blanketing over the lingering coldness left by his parents, filling the marrow with a burning ache that makes Steve sigh in contentment. He’s always favored summer, and now he gets to enjoy it, gets to let it bake into his skin without the biggest stress of his life looming over him. 

Steve vaguely picks up on the conversation beside him, but he’s not particularly up for joining it, and he’s grateful that they understand that – that they’ll let him rest or tune out when he needs it and will pull him in only when it’s necessary, mostly. Eddie shifts sideways a bit, then lays his hand on Steve’s thigh, starts tracing soothing patterns up and down his leg. 

Steve melts into the lounger a bit more, some of the lingering tension leaving his body at the gentle touch. He smiles lazily up at Eddie, watches the expressions crossing his face as he talks to Robin. The words romantic soulmate float back through Steve’s head. He really thinks about it for a second, thinks some sort of panic should come with it, but all he’s met with is a tingling warmth radiating through every nerve ending in his body. His heart thumps a bit faster. 

Eddie turns, smiles at Steve and squeezes his thigh, before turning back to his conversation with Robin. Steve blinks once, twice, as a realization floods his body, hotter than anything the Indiana summer sun can offer. 

He wants to marry Eddie. 

Holy shit.

Or, at least as close as they can get here, which he guesses is really just living together, having that conversation and committing to each other, maybe a small service in front of their family, just as a showing of their love for each other. Maybe they could even exchange rings, or some token to symbolize all of it. Steve swallows hard, feels a bit of anxiety – okay,  a lot of anxiety – bubbling up inside of him, but it feels good? It feels right?

Fuck, he’s going to propose to Eddie. 

The feeling washes over him, exploding beneath his skin, everything turning prickly, vibrating in intensity. The biggest, most bone-deep happiness radiates throughout his body as a massive smile takes over his face.

“You alright, sunshine?” Eddie squints down at him. “You getting too much sun?”

Steve laughs. “It’s been, like, 10 minutes. I need at least another 3 hours before you can ask me that.”

“3 hours?” Eddie shakes his head. “Your ability to bake in this sun is unnatural.”

He grabs Eddie’s hand, runs his fingers over the rings that never leave it. He thinks about what kind of ring he’d buy for Eddie, where Eddie would wear it if he said yes. Would he wear it on his ring finger? Would he switch off his current rings and only leave that one? Would he alternate rings around the one Steve gave?

“Better get used to it, roomie.” Steve smiles, soft and fond. Eddie matches it, a fierce intensity bubbling in the current of his gaze. 

And it’s there, with the summer sun baking down on him, with the laughter of the family he built ringing out, with the smell of grilled meat and veggies carrying on the air, with the touch pressed against him of the two most important people in his life, that Steve knows he’s going to be okay.

That his life can finally move forward.

Tags (open): @sunshine-daydreams0809

Divider credit: @saradika-graphics

just let me know if you'd like to be added to my permanent taglist :) thank you for reading <3

[lxvvie]

Couples shit with Simon Riley, Modern Harefare edition:

I've talked about Simon with Pup (the dog) and Spectre (the cat), but what if the family pet was... a rabbit?

Meet Thumper, the cutest, most adorable Lop... that Simon wasn't expecting. At all. When you said you were getting a Lop, he didn't think it'd be a... a bloody rabbit. And thus a war in your home was started, one of epically adorable proportions.

Simon is convinced Thumper wants him dead. For a variety of reasons. Reasons that include waking him up at the ass-crack of dawn by sprinting across the bed and catching him mid-snore when Thumper hits his head. Yeah, luv, the bloody rabbit wants him dead.

It's that and catching Thumper nibbling on his clothes with no remorse. Because he wants him dead.

And it's also Thumper... thumping his way through life, throwing adorable tantrums because "I just gave you some lettuce, Thumps," or, "Can't eat my biscuit, mate." It's fuckin' psychological warfare, the things Thumper does to him, luv. What's so bloody funny?

Perhaps you've noticed that whenever Simon is scrolling on his yee-yee ass phone, Thumper jumps on him and knocks the phone out of his hand. With no remorse. Because he wants Simon dead. Alright, mate, if it's a bloody war you want, it's a bloody war you get.

Simon retaliating in kind, responding with psychological warfare of his own. "Gotta disarm my opponent," is what your soldier says, as he gives Thumper his favorite treat: a banana. All to throw Thumper off his game. Know what else Simon does?

Clean Thump's hutch when it's his turn. He makes it nice and comfortable again all so his bunny child can rage and thump and... mess it up in rebellion. Again. Simon can't help but be amused and chuckle. The tide's turning in his favor, sweetheart.

Whenever Thumper jumps on him, Simon... pets him. To throw him off his game of course. No thumping formed against him shall prosper. Sometimes. And when Thumper does thump in rebellion, Simon gently admonishes him like the honey bunny dad that he is. No, Simon, you're absolutely not laughing at him giving your pet rabbit a whole-ass lecture.

Bond with Distract Thumper with the game on the telly. Goes good for Simon 'cause it puts his thumping to good use whenever they miss a goal. Yeah, he feels the same way, Thumps. Now Johnny has bragging rights for the next couple of days or so until his team inevitably lets him down again.

Let Thumper follow him throughout the house for the most part. You have to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, luv.

And you know the most effective war tactic Simon has at his disposal? Cuddles. Because Thumper loves his cuddles and how Simon picks him up and nestles him in his arms. Better yet, it's when he lightly scratches Thump's head, lulling him into a false sense of security... and sleep. "Think I've won this war, sweetheart," Simon says as Thumper rests comfortably in his arms. Yeah, Simon, you sure did. And when you suggest putting your bunny baby down so he can nap some more, Simon looks at you as if you had two heads.

[elexuscal]

Want to be a better writer? Read

Read Widely

An oft-repeated bit of advice for writers is "you gotta read". That said, I pretty often see people confused about what this means-- or arguing about a narrow set of what "counts" as reading for that advice.

This is my attempt to wrangle with my own perspective on how to execute on that advice, according to my own attempts over the last few years to live up to that. (And indeed, while this is primarily aimed at fiction writers, this'll probably be broadly applicable to writers across a wide variety of genres, formats, and even mediums. just move things a little to the left if they don't apply)

If you want to get better at writing, what should you read? More or less, everything. But to give some guidelines:

1. Read Widely Within Your Genre

Genres are more or less conversations composed of stories. They are built upon break out hits, popular tropes, emerging trends, current concerns, stylistic flourishes. You can't be part of the conversation if you don't know what's already been discussed. You don't want to bumble your way into a genre you barely know, talk a big game about "revolutionizing it", and end up writing a trite replication of a 50-year-old pillar of the genre.

2. Read Widely OUTSIDE Your Genre

At their best, genres are conversations. At their worst, they are the bland copying of other peoples' homework. You need to bring new conversational partners in (or, to mix metaphors, new DNA) to keep things fresh. I'm a spec fic person first and foremost, but I make sure I mix that diet up with other genres, from "literary" fiction, mysteries, romance, etc, because they'll teach you the elements your own preferred genre(s) might be missing.

3. Read Non-Fiction

Non-fiction are stories too, just stories about true facts. (Some of those stories are truer than others; some are more convincing; the two aren't necessarily the same). Learning how those narratives are built is vital. Not to mention, the information itself can inspire you— real life science, history, sociology, economics, etc, are fertile beds for world-building, characterization, and plot.

4. Read From Other Backgrounds and Cultures Besides Your Own

I'm hardly the first person to say that the publishing industry, like so many industries, primarily elevates certain voices— white, western, male, often privileged— over others. This is gonna give you a bit of a narrow perspective of how the world works. It is also likely to give you a narrow perspective of how stories are constructed. There are a LOT of pieces of writing advice that's treated like universal (the Three Act structure, the Hero's Journey, etc) that are really just extremely common in Western literature, and looking at pieces from outside it will expand your ideas of how to create stories.

5. Read From Other Time Periods

Honestly, this is sort of just a different take on the last one ('The Past Is A Different Country', or so they say), but it's different enough that I want to clarify it. Tropes and trends and story convention change over time. Read stories from 50 years ago; 200; 500; 2000. Plays, fairy tales, ballads, poems. Seriously, ancient mythological epics are SO cool to read because you truly feel connected to a storytelling tradition stretching back generations.

6. Read Books for Kids and Youth

The best kids books have stunning clarity of purpose. They have to be REALLY good at communicating their information. Learn from that.

7. Consume Other Mediums

I wish we had a better word for this, because 'consumption' does bring to mind someone just ploughing through food endlessly without thought or discernment, but we don't have another word for the breadth of ways we enjoy media. Watch television and movies and short films (and consider how those formats differ). Listen to podcasts and radio plays. Watch stage plays. Read the scripts of all the above. Read comics and graphic novels. Play video games. Watch the news. Listen to music. Go to art museums and galleries of all stripes. All of these have different strengths and weaknesses, different pacing, different styles. Learn from them.

8. Pay Attention to the Media You Might Not Even Think About As Media

Yes, we're taking the last one even further. I'm talking about the media often overlooked, either because it's often denigrated by society, or because frankly, it just blends in the background. In the first category, that's stuff like reality TV and social media posts and graffiti. In the second we have things like Facebook Marketplace posts or the backs of cereal boxes or the technical manual for your new air conditioner. (Advertisements live somewhere in the Venn diagram overlap between the two.) These all also have their own structure, styles, and merits.

9. Read Bad (and Simply Mediocre) Media

Recommendation lists will usually be filled with examples of good stories, because, well, they're good. But if you're reading in part to learn how to write, there's a lot to be gleamed by pieces that just... miss the mark. Whether it's clocks or cars or electronics, when things break you can gleam insights into how they're supposed to work; much is the same with the not-so-great media.

10. Read Indie Stuff

Pretty much every medium's industry has formal publishers who help distribute art, and in theory, vet for quality. They are, broadly, successful at that... but as I've discussed before, those same publishers can often act as gatekeepers, with an overly narrow view of what counts as "quality". Across mediums, the indie space is often where you'll find the most unique, experimental, and boundary-pushing art. It can be harder to navigate, but oh, is it worth it.

11. Read Fanfic

I'm sharing this on Tumblr, so I suspect I'm mostly preaching to the choir here, but nonetheless. In addition to the aforementioned benefits of indie media, fanfiction is capable of teaching you how to write transformative works. I'd argue transformative works have always been the bedrock of human storytelling, and that has not changed at all in the modern day. Mainstream media is choc-a-block with remakes, reboots, and adaptations, most of it bad. Why? Because they don't know what makes for a good transformative work. So open up AO3, my children, and read!

12. Read Other Writers' Thoughts About The Writing Process

Well, since you've gotten to the twelfth point, you've succeeded there.

Okay, but seriously, I put this so low on the list because I do think it can sometimes be overstated; it is very easy to get lost in the weeds of theory over simply just writing. But it is good to process and reflect on all the things you've been reading, and this is a good way to do so.

And above all else, as you explore the wide wealth of pieces people throughout time and cultures have created, to paraphrase my friend Artemis: be curious about it. Curiosity is where the cool things happen.

[aishabellasbigblogofeverything]

Every Black anime that I see trending online is either something creepy and dark-looking or a gritty battle shonen or a mixture of the two. Always so fucking male-oriented. Like where’s the variety. Black men aren’t the only Black people who watch anime! Where is my cute girls doing cute things anime series but with Black girls. Where is my glittery pink magical girl anime but with Black girls. Where is my schoolgirl Yuri slice of life romance but with Black girls. Like COME ON. Everything out here gotta look like some fucking Soul Eater-type shit and I’m tired of it! But then again it is mainly Black men making these animes. So I suppose that the solution is for more Black women to make animes about us. I’m so happy that Adorned by Chi, I Don’t Wanna Be a Magical Girl, and Sleepless Domain exist, I wish Adorned by Chi and Sleepless Domain would get fucking anime adaptations already because I need something that is tailored to a more feminine audience. PLEASE GIVE ME MORE OF THIS!!! If you have any Black anime-inspired cartoons like this to recommend me then please do so, I’d be honored to give it a watch!

[arimiadev]

spooky indie visual novels you've never heard of for spooky season

since it's October I thought I'd put together a list of spooky indie visual novels (horror, Halloween, creepy, dark comedy, anything in the spirit of the season goes) that you've probably never heard of but can play right now on itchio!

model employee

Model Employee is a corporate horror visual novel. Just discharged from the hospital and massively in debt for their life-saving cybernetics, the player-character must adapt to the “extreme” work-life balance of a Tethys Team Member- but they have help. Penny, the artificial personality that controls all security, waste disposal, and employee surveillance in the facility, specializes in reinforcing an especially cutthroat variety  of workplace culture- and she’s taken an interest in you.  If you want to get ahead in your career, you gotta be willing to take some risks.

model employee is such a tightly structured visual novel for being made in just one month for a game jam, making full use of everything while surprising you at every corner. every part of this game was so well planned and thought out- dystopian corporate satire isn’t my cup of tea (we’re living it) but the way they present everything in this game makes it feel so much more intense.

beary the hatchet

It’s Halloween 199X, and you killed someone during your morning shift. Honestly it’s inconvenient. This job was imperfect, sure, but you got to wear a mask with no questions asked and the pay was livable. But now you’ll have to keep the body in the backrooms till your shift is done. Bummer. “You’re… the absolutely WICKED and AWESOME Bearwater Grizzly Killer, aren’t you?!” …and now enters the dreaded true crime fan.

beary the hatchet is such a uniquely lovely game to look at, even if the subject matter is grim. I love the color palette and tones in this, I love the 2.5D graphics, I love how expressive all of the designs are. it’s a game oozing with style.

WE KNOW THE DEVIL

Anyone can kill the devil; that’s why they always make teens the vampire slayers, the magical girls. But some kids can’t even get that right; and that’s why meangirl Neptune, tomboy Jupiter, and shy shy Venus have to endure one more week of summer camp and each other, singing boring songs about jesus, doing busywork for adults, and hoping god’s radio can’t hear them. Before they can leave the summer scouts, they’ve got to spend twelve hours in the loneliest cabin in the woods and wait for the devil to come and live through the night–or not. You know.

it’s a visceral experience, something that feels foreign and familiar at the same time. I love the direction for it, the sketchy monochrome sprites against the colored photos- parts when there aren’t any characters on screen feel that much more real, like you’re watching found footage because of how tense everything is.

disconnect

Late at night, a phone call from a friend keeps disconnecting from you… On and off, on and off, constantly… …What would you do if you realized your friend wasn’t who you thought they were? And how would you react when the truth was finally revealed? (“̷̢̑W̸̨̊o̸̫͊u̷̱͝ḽ̸͛d̴͉̐ ̵̚ͅy̵̜̽o̸̥͗u̷̮̎ ̷̜̏s̶̤̄t̸̥͐i̴̻̕l̸̰͝l̸͉̓ ̷͕́ȁ̸̩c̸̡̓t̵̜̊ ̵͓̈t̶̙̄h̶̦͂e̸̩͠ ̸̩̅s̶̘̏a̷̪͛m̵̮͒e̴͖͑ ̸̭́w̷̨̚á̴̱y̵̯̑?̶͎̌"̷͈̆) Find out what happened to our scaredy-cat protagonist, Indie－a famous horror storyteller on the H-T-M (Horror, Tales, and Mystery) forum. What would she do when she unintentionally uncovered a mystery hidden deep within her own home?

I love the style of disconnect and the unorthodox way of getting to the truth of the matter. I’m not normally one to play furry VNs, but the designs are adorable and I love the presentation of the game, it has a lot of animation in it. there’s also one moment not too far in on this screen that made me scream…

curse of the juniper tree

Curse of the Juniper tree is a tale of two siblings, a cursed tree and an isolated village. It is a short kinetic visual novel featuring 2d exploration. Walk around the snowy village and talk to its inhabitants! Story is loosely based off the fairytale called The Juniper Tree by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm’s Fairy Tales in 1812.

this is a lovely and short story about two siblings living in a frozen land together. it’s a very atmospheric story with so many beautiful blues and detailed character designs. the controls were a bit hard to figure out at times but it’s worth your time.

reaplaced

Grea Perrim is a reaper of souls, and it’s her duty to bring the deceased to the other side. But in the world of reapers, death isn’t any kind of equalizer. The value of a soul is directly tied to the peculiarity of its death. Grea’s supernatural senses bring her to a Halloween house party with three costumed guests. She soon finds the most valuable kind of soul: the victim of a locked-room murder. In order to reap the soul, Grea must unravel the identity of its killer and explain its death in full. Is this the work of a human? A witch? Or something else entirely…?

reaplaced is a fun little whodunnit set on Halloween about a grim reaper out on the hunt who finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery. it’s much more indepth than I was expecting and the soundtrack is wonderful—there’s a lot of small touches to it that make it great.

Silver Thread

An exorcist that doubts the existence of ghost might sound contradictory but to Alicia Wilkershire, this is the right way to get closer to the truth. Her latest job sounded like another run-of-the-mill case and she greeted her client with her usual pessimism but is it, really?

Silver Thread is a spooky and short RPGM game about a skeptical exorcist trying to help a guy with his problems. the style is lovely and if you also like this kind of style, the developer has several other RPGM games like this!

Elevator Hitch

Elevator Hitchis a short 2.5D surreal horror/escape room visual novel with point-and-click and puzzle elements following the story of two co-workers suddenly finding themselves stuck together in a "Perfectly Normal" 70s office elevator.  They must explore each liminal-looking floor and find a way to get off the elevator to their actual destinations.

like a few others on this list, Elevator Hitch was made in just a month for the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam and was my favorite game from the year it came out (2022). it's more of an adventure style game than pure visual novel, so expect puzzles and a lot of bad ends! this developer also has a lot of other similar style adventure visual novels.

The Case of the Serialized Killer

When a popular illustrator is found dead, disgraced demonologist Harold Ludicael is hired to summon her ghost. Ghosts are the one thing he can't summon, but with sharp insight, perhaps he can solve the mystery, and resurrect the most important thing: His career.

this visual novel is an absolute feast on the eyes as all of the art is done by traditionally painted watercolor artworks! the characters are all unique and the world feels very lived in. if you like murder mysteries then check it out.

Stillwater

"𝕊𝕖𝕖𝕚𝕟𝕘 ���𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕒𝕥 𝕒 𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕔𝕖…" A woman arrives with a mysterious letter in hand addressed to her grandfather. Etched in crimson is a foreboding message, a warning—a promise made from a time forgotten. Private Investigator Hugo Laurent and his assistants must solve this bizarre case before an old family's curse befalls them all.

Stillwater is a lovely looking game - I love everything about the art direction for it. it's not overly scary but very atmospheric with several endings to find.

Who is the Red Queen?

Alice falls down the rabbit hole into a Wonderland not quite right. Meeting an eclectic collection of people, animals, and some things in between, she sets out on an adventure in this odd new place to find the missing Red Queen. Or, more specifically, to find the pieces of the dismembered queen whose body has been strewn across the land.

a familiar but new take on Alice in Wonderland, now with a lot more yuri. like a lot of the VNs I've recommended, this was originally made in just 1 month. this one in particular has a lot of dead ends, mention of gore & dismemberment, and other content warnings.

okay now that you've made it this far I'm going to promote my gay horror / Halloween visual novels

Asphodelium

Hazel is an ex-adventurer who's settled down with some of his previous guildmates after the adventure of a lifetime—taking down a doomsday cult that tried to end the world, but at the cost of killing their former guild leader who turned against them. Despite their adventure still haunting him months later, he's tried to move on. —That is until a man with the same face as their guild leader approaches him. This is a story about cults and killing and killing cults. And being in love.

Asphodelium is a melancholic dark boys love visual novel that I made solo in about 3 months. it's entirely in NVL mode (I love you NVL) and around 3 hours long and my personal favorite game I've made so far.

Dahlia

a vampire has snuck into your room while you were sleeping. the only question is - are you next on her menu? Dahlia is a very short sapphic visual novel made in under 36 hours for the Velox Formido game jam, a jam for shortform visual novels. survive being trapped with a lovely little vampire, or don't.

also NVL mode because I love NVL mode. this is a short and sweet vampire visual novel I made solo in a weekend for a game jam that has several different endings.

Witch You Want

With a rather sparkly magical paper, you find a job listing for a local witch needing an assistant with making potions before the town festival that weekend. You sign up, unsure exactly what to expect...... A pompous and questionably excellent witch runs a local apothecary in town but finds that if she wants to make enough potions before the festival that weekend to sell (and keep her ongoing potion shop afloat) she'll need some assistance. After a dubious help wanted ad, she gains you as an assistant. Will the two of you see through to the festival? Will you be able to make a single potion? Will this girlfailure capture your heart?!

this is my latest visual novel that released just a few days ago! I directed & programmed this short cutesy game for a game jam at our studio. it's pretty fluffy romcom with a potion minigame in it. please help our girlfailure make potions, she needs all the help she can get.