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dean-winchester-is-a-warrior · 6 months ago

Text

Temptation and Need

Summary: Can Y/N tempt Dean into what he needs?

Warnings/Explicit 18+: Smut - this is just all smut. Unprotected P in V sex, vaginal fingering, oral (f receiving, very brief m receiving), face-sitting, cum shot, overstimulation, big age gap (21 and 43), dirty talk, dub-con (sort of - the reader not taking no for an answer), masturbation, voyeurism (very brief), use of a vibrator, spanking, (brief), pussy slapping (brief).

Pairings: Dean Winchester x Y/N

Word Count: 3,895

A/N: A million years ago (okay, last December) I got a request from a lovely anon asking this:

hi!! I was wondering if you could maybe write an age gap with dean winchester where the female!reader is like in her 20s and dean's is his 40s :) just some rough smut with like hair pulling where dean asks for her to sit on his face or something like that (if you're comfortable with it) and just dirty talks cause I absolutely love them haha :) I really love your writing btw!!!! thanks a lot <3

It took me about four and a half months to get to this, but it's finally here! Thank you so much for this request, hope you're happy with it Nonnie. And I hope everyone else who reads it enjoys it too. ❤️

Master List || Dean Winchester One Shots || Tag Lists

Y/N had known it would be good - no - amazing. Since the first time she’d laid eyes on Dean Winchester six months earlier, she’d wanted to feel him beneath her, above her, behind her, inside her. She’d wanted him any and every way she could have him.

She simply needed him with the heat of a raging fire that never cooled.

So she’d imagined this moment for more than a hundred nights, and she’d known it would be incredible. But her imagination had been woefully inadequate.

She’d been attempting to seduce Dean the entire time she’d known him. She knew that he knew how much she wanted him, but he’d been reluctant. Every time she sidled up close to him, he’d moved away. Any time she put her hands on him, his heart kicked up so she could feel it pound, and if she got close enough she could feel the hard evidence of his desire press against her. But inevitably he would gently lift her hands off of him and give her a look of warning.

“Stop this, Y/N.” He’d scold with heat pooling quick and fervid in his eyes.

One time he’d given her a look of exasperation and then scowled at her. “I’m too old for you dammit. I could be your father.”

She bit her lip and smiled, full of mischief, as she’d answered. “Well, I’m happy to call you Daddy, if that’s what you want.”

It was true that she was just barely twenty-one and Dean was forty-three, but she didn’t care. In fact, she’d always preferred older men. Men like Dean had experience and stamina, they knew just what to do to pleasure their partner. She’d never slept with anyone less than a decade older than her. Some people might say she had daddy issues (and maybe she did) but she didn’t care what other people thought - she pursued her own pleasure.

Yet in spite of plenty of sexual experiences with older men, despite all her fantasies about Dean, she’d never imagined this level of pleasure.

***

A few hours earlier:

Dean fell onto the library chair, closing his eyes with a groan and dropping his green duffel bag at his feet, just as Y/N walked into the room.

“You’re back!” She called excitedly as she hurried towards him. “How was the hunt? Where’s Sam?”

Dean grunted as she hopped into his lap. His feet were planted on the ground, and he was slightly slouched in the chair creating the perfect seat for her. His long, muscular thighs rippled beneath her, and as she wiggled against him, she felt the telltale sign of his desire as the bulge at the front of his jeans hardened slightly against her thigh.

The muscle in his jaw jumped as he gave her a scolding look. “The hunt was long and bloody, but fine. It's finished anyway. And Sam is with Eileen."

She ran her finger across the small abrasion on his cheek. "Well, at least you're less beaten up than usual." She said with dubious cheer.

Dean snorted. "Yeah, it was a walk in the park. Now get off my lap so I can go take a shower.”

She nodded and slid off so he could stand, but when he moved off towards the showers, she followed. When he arrived at the shower room door, he turned to look at her standing close behind him. He gave a sideways nod towards the door.

“This is as far as you go, sweetheart.” He said with a raised brow; his gaze turned knowing as she pouted.

She tried for her most convincing tone. “But just think of how much more enjoyable it would be if I came in with you.” She could see in his eyes that he was thinking about exactly that scenario.

But he shook his head. “No. It’s late, you shouldn't have waited up for me. Go to sleep.”

She pouted some more and then sighed before giving him a winsome smile and a wink. “Yes, Daddy.”

Dean scowled at her but she just stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek before slowly backing away.

“Goodnight, Dean. I’m glad you’re home. I sleep so much better when you’re here.” She said truthfully.

He gave her a nod and then walked into the shower room. She heard the lock click and she sighed. Another night with nothing but her fantasies to sustain her.

She went to her room and got ready for bed, slipping on the AC/DC t-shirt she’d stolen from Dean. He knew she had it, he’d seen her in it, but he’d never demanded it back.

She crawled into bed and tried to go to sleep. But she was restless, her body aching in a way that wouldn’t end without Dean between her legs.

Her skin was flushed and the soft wool blanket she was covered with irritated her overheated flesh until she threw it off of her. She brought her hands up to cover her face; she knew she wouldn’t get to sleep unless she did something about the longing that had overtaken her body.

So she rolled over and pulled open the bottom drawer of her bedside table, pulling out the modest-sized vibrator she kept hidden in there for nights just like tonight. Since moving into the bunker a few months ago, nights like tonight happened pretty much every night.

She leaned back against her pillows and let her mind drift, allowing images to flash into her mind’s eye. Dean’s face, set in lines of intense desire; his hands, strong and hard, warm and rough, moving over her body.

She slipped her hand past the waistband of her panties, letting her middle finger swirl around her clit, desperately trying to imagine it was Dean’s thick, blunt fingertip pressing against her.

After a few minutes of bringing forth endless hot and decadent images of Dean into her head, she turned on the vibrator and let it press against her clit a moment or two before sliding it through her dripping slick, and pushing it inside.

As she fucked herself with the toy, she kept Dean’s body in mind - his powerful muscles and solid bulk - imagining him hovering above her. She worked at it for a long time, desperately seeking her release.

But though she moved the vibrating silicone cock fast and hard in and out of her quivering cunt, she just couldn’t find it. After half an hour of coming so close, but constantly missing the mark, Y/N was whimpering and more frustrated than she could express.

In desperation, she began to chant quietly, imagining that Dean was there with her and could hear her need. “Dean. Dean. Fuck me, please. Ugh, I need you so badly, I fucking need you.” Her voice crescendoed in a moan of disappointment as her orgasm stayed just beyond her reach. “Dean.” She whined as she bucked her hips desperately.

Suddenly she heard her door squeak open, making her squeal and rip the vibrator out of her body, shock coursing through her, making her heart pound. But then she fell completely silent as she saw Dean standing silhouetted against the hallway light.

For a moment or two neither of them moved. Finally, Y/N turned off her vibrator and silence reigned.

Dean finally spoke, his voice low and rough. “I heard you. Heard you calling my name.”

He took a step inside her room; she could see now that he was dressed for sleep, sweats and no shirt - she gasped softly at the incredible view of his wide chest, his shoulder muscles flexing as his hands balled into fists. She could also make out more of his face; it was set in harsh lines, the muscle in his jaw flexing over and over. He licked his lips and her pussy clenched.

“Why were you calling me?” Dean asked, though he had to know the answer as she still gripped the vibrator, and the scent of her dripping sex perfumed the air.

She could sense that the cord that bound them, that had been pulling them together and apart since the day they met, was about to snap - if she could just say the right words.

She went with the truth.

“I was calling out to you while I fucked myself. I was imagining it was your cock buried deep inside me, imagining your hands on my skin, your lips on my throat.” Dean’s eyes were blazing emeralds with dark onyx pupils spreading across them as she spoke.

“But this thing wasn’t cutting it.” She said, lifting the vibrator and then dropping it on the floor beside the bed. “I need the real thing.”

She pushed her feet into the mattress and opened her knees wide, pushing her hand into her panties once again as she stared at him. “I need you, Dean. Please.”

The cord snapped and Dean charged forward, stopping at the end of her bed and grabbing her ankles to yank her towards him. She gasped as he placed a knee between her legs and rested his weight on his palms as he leaned down to capture her mouth.

His kiss was hard, desperate, almost violent, as he crushed her lips and stabbed his tongue into her mouth. She moaned at the weight of him pressed against her, lifting her hips slightly so she could press her aching cunt against his thick thigh. She groaned harshly into Dean’s mouth as the pressure caused an even hotter fever to rage across her body.

Dean pulled out of the kiss and stood up, taking hold of her hands to pull her into a sitting position. His chest was rising and falling with deep breaths as he grasped the hem of his stolen t-shirt.

His voice was all growl when he spoke. “Do you know how many times I’ve dreamt about ripping this fucking t-shirt from your body? How many mornings I had to sneak away to the shower to jack off like a fucking horny teenager, after seeing you parading around in it? It barely covers your ass, and every time you’d bend, even a little, I could see a glimpse of your little cotton panties, or sometimes, just your bare ass in a thong.”

His voice was slightly dark, a rebuke in his words. “I knew you were doing it on purpose, of course, knew it was your way of trying to tempt me into fucking ruining you.”

He yanked the t-shirt up over her head as a moan escaped her. Dean groaned too as he got his first look at her. “Fuck me.” He said quietly.

He looked her in the eye as he reached out and roughly tugged on her puckered nipple. She cried out, her head dropping back, as she arched her chest forward.

“God damn, baby, you really do want it, don’t you? I thought it might be a game you were playing, but you really do want me to ruin this hot little pussy.” He reached his hand down to rub against her soaked panties. “You want that, baby? Huh? Want me to fuck you sensless? Till you can’t walk? Can’t think?”

Y/N nodded disjointedly. “God yes.” She whispered, grabbing his wrist to try and press his fingers harder against her cunt. “Please. I’ve wanted you for so long.”

Dean knocked her hand away and grabbed both her wrists tightly as he used his body weight to push her back onto the mattress. He stared at her, making her feel like he could see straight through her. Finally he spoke, his voice softer.

“How much experience do you actually have, Y/N?”

She shook her head to dispel any worries. “Enough. I’m no virgin, and I know what I like.”

His mouth lifted slightly at the corner. “And what do you like, baby?”

“I like it rough and hard, but I’ll take some soft wooing too.” She said with a grin. She shrugged. “Basically, I like you - a lot - and whatever you have in mind, I’m down for.”

Dean nodded. “Okay, but give me a safe word, just in case.” He kissed her softly. “I won’t take any chances with you.”

His concern for her made Y/N’s stomach flip in a pleasant way. She smiled. “K, how about ‘shenanigans’?”

Dean chuckled. “Perfect.”

His smile faded as he bent his head to kiss her again, slowly this time, thoroughly, as though he didn’t want to leave an inch of her mouth unexplored. When he pulled away, leaving her gasping for air, he slowly kissed a path down her body, between her breasts, stopping to nip and suck on her nipples, pinching one and then the other, before trailing his lips down over her belly.

When he reached the apex of her thighs, he got off the bed to kneel at the foot of it, pulling her panties down over her legs and tossing them aside. He reached forward to wrap his arms around her thighs, spreading her open and pulling her to his mouth. He made a deep, guttural noise as he sank into her cunt, immediately licking and sucking on her sensitive skin, so that she was writhing beneath him almost instantly. She called out his name in desperation as she sank her fingers into his short hair, tugging slightly when he speared her with his tongue.

He pulled away from her and licked his lips free of her juices. “Fuck, yeah baby, say my name again, just like that.”

He let go of one of her thighs so he could bring his hand between her legs and slap it hard against her pussy. Y/N gasped and then her hips bucked as he did it again.

“You’ve been a naughty girl with this fucking pussy, haven’t you? Pushing this dripping mess against me every chance you got. Fuckin' rubbing on me, and constantly begging me to fuck you.”

He smacked her a third time and Y/N felt her cunt throb with a deep ache. “Fuck, Dean yes! I’ve wanted you to fuck me, wanted you to take me apart for so fucking long. Please, please! Bury yourself so deep in me.”

She screamed in pleasure as he rammed two fingers into her, knuckle deep. As he crooked them forward inside of her, he leaned down to flick his tongue against her clit, making her rear up off the bed. She was so close now. She could feel the tension in her body just on the verge of snapping, when he suddenly pulled back from her, removing his fingers and causing her to wail and plead.

“No, please, Dean. More.” She whimpered pathetically as he stood up.

But then he pushed down his sweats and she caught sight of his cock for the first time. It was long and thick, just as she’d known it would be - everything about Dean screamed, “Big Dick Energy”. It was absolutely beautiful, red-tipped and standing at attention.

She sat up and reached for him, wrapping her hand around the base and sliding her tongue through his slit, licking up the pre-cum that beaded there. Dean stood rigidly, letting her lick at him like a lollipop for a couple minutes more before he pulled her hand away.

“That’s enough for now, sweetheart.”

She pouted at him, but he just leaned down to grasp her waist, lifting her slightly and tossing her further up the bed. She gasped at the pleasure of being manhandled like a rag doll. He was on his knees as he moved towards her. He grabbed hold of her calves and flipped her over onto her stomach before smacking her ass once and then twice.

She moaned and instinctively lifted her hips, pushing her ass towards him for more.

He slapped her again, and then ordered her, “Get on your knees, and lean forward to hold on to the headboard.”

She did as he said, grabbing on to the rails of her headboard tightly. He pushed her thighs apart before turning to lay on his back underneath her, pushing her knees open even further with his wide shoulders.

Y/N was surprised; she’d thought he was getting her into position so he could take her from behind; instead she looked down to see his beautiful face positioned directly below her dripping cunt.

“Sit on my face, baby. Fuck yourself on my tongue. Ride me.”

Y/N moaned as he lifted his head slightly so he could lick up through her folds. He dropped his head back to the mattress, though, and his voice was hard when he spoke.

“Now.”

Despite all of her experience, Y/N had never been ordered to sit on a man’s face, and had never had oral sex this way. At first she was worried that she could hurt him, so she just lightly gyrated her hips against his mouth. But after a minute or so Dean grabbed onto her thighs and spoke angrily.

“I said sit, not float.” His hands pulled her down, forcing her to rest heavily against his face, so that she was truly sitting on it. His nose rubbed against her clit and Y/N couldn’t help grinding down against his mouth. His tongue delved deeply into her cunt, stabbing in and out of her entrance.

Very soon Y/N was truly fucking herself on his face, using the strength of his jaw and the slide of his lips to create otherworldly sensations. Every once in a while she’d lift herself slightly to check that Dean was okay, but he’d always growl and pull her back down.

Finally she could feel her orgasm growing inside her, felt the coil low in her stomach tightening almost to the point of pain, but then it burst open and she screamed as she rocked her hips and slammed herself down against Dean’s eager mouth as he slurped up everything she gushed onto him.

Aftershocks of her climax along with Dean’s probing tongue and plump, sucking lips, brought on two more mind-blowing orgasms. It felt as though she’d been edging herself for months and was now finally free to let go; her whole body trembled as Dean finally pushed her back and then rolled her under him.

Dean wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he looked down into Y/N’s face; she knew she must look strung out, and she could feel unconsciousness creeping in. Dean must have seen it too because he shook his head and swiftly shoved three fingers into her cunt making her come alive again with a shout.

“No way, baby. You didn’t spend all these months begging me to fuck you, just to get off with coming a couple times and falling asleep. I want you fucked out completely. I want you stupid and useless beneath me. I want to fuck you so long that you’re just a boneless, lump of cock slut laid out on the bed.”

As he finished speaking he pressed his middle finger against her clit and that pressure, combined with his filthy words, was all it took to have her shouting out her ecstasy once again.

As she was coming down, Dean slammed himself into her, forcing her clenching walls open so her cunt could squeeze him tight as he sheathed himself inside. He pushed her knees wide open, keeping her feet in the air as he jackhammered into her. He slammed so hard and so deep, she knew he’d leave marks.

And she knew she’d never experienced anything like it, nothing in her past, or even in her fantasies had prepared her for this level of raw passion and need.

She came two more times as he fucked up into her; he changed up his rhythm, going from hard and driving to slow and sensual as the mood suited him. By the time he flipped her onto her stomach Y/N did indeed feel boneless and stupid with pleasure.

“Please Dean.” She begged softly, not actually aware what she was asking for.

“Come on baby, I didn’t say we were done, don’t give out on me now.” Dean said harshly as he lifted her hips. Her knees rubbed against the sheet, but really she was being held in place with Dean’s strength.

“I’m gonna make sure you’re seeing stars.” He told her before slamming her back onto his cock, drilling even deeper inside than he had before.

Y/N gasped, her pussy was so overly sensitive after being fucked for so long, but she couldn’t escape the intense rush of pleasure that came as Dean slammed his cock against her sweet spot deep inside her.

“Fuck, yes.” She mumbled into the pillow where her face was buried.

“Yeah, that’s right baby.” Dean rammed into the spot again, making her scream, her throat raw from all her screams of pleasure. “Take every fucking inch. This is what you’ve wanted for months, isn’t it? Spent every minute I’ve known you trying to get us right here, haven’t you?”

He dropped one of her hips so he could spank her right cheek hard, watching it jiggle. “Answer me!” He demanded as he spanked her again before grabbing a fistful of her hair and yanking her head up and back. “Tell me how much you’ve wanted this, little slut. Admit to prancing around this bunker, desperate for me to pin you down and fuck you just like this.”

“Yes!” Y/N gasped as he pounded into her over and over, never losing rhythm or strength. “Yes, fuck, yes.” It was all she could get out. She was truly exhausted, but she still chased the high he was raising within her with every thrust.

He spanked her again and then reached his hand around so that he could push against her throbbing clit. It took only a few circles with his finger, and a few more hammering thrusts before she shattered into a million pieces, seeming to shake and shiver forever.

As she came back to earth slightly, she could feel Dean pulling out of her. “I’m gonna come baby. Can I come on your ass?” She nodded and mumbled out a “yes.”

She heard him grunt obscenely, and despite her liquefied bones, her pussy still clenched at the sound, before she felt his sticky seed spurting across her ass, and lower back. He bucked forward, his thighs slapping against her ass as he shot another load, warm and wet, onto her skin.

Finally he fell to the side, and Y/N let her knees give out beneath her as she fell onto her stomach in complete exhaustion and immediate unconsciousness. She woke some time later to feel Dean wiping her clean with a warm cloth and pressing kisses up her spine.

When he saw her eyes flutter open, he tossed away the cloth and laid down beside her, kissing her nose and her cheek before pressing his mouth gently to hers.

“You were so fucking perfect, Y/N. Everything I’ve dreamed about night after night.” He shook his head. “No, you were even more perfect than I imagined, so much more.”

She smiled softly and raised an eyebrow. “So you agree? You were an idiot and we should have done this so much sooner?”

He scoffed. “N’ah, it was perfect this way, at this time. But it’s gonna be even more perfect next time.”

Y/N grinned at him and tried not to be too obvious about how thrilled she was that there was going to be a next time.

“I don’t know.” She teased. “You’re gonna have to try hard to do better than this.”

Dean grinned wickedly. “Challenge accepted.”

Jensen RPF and Any/All Characters:

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Dean Fics Only:

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Any/All Fics Regardless of Character or Fandom:

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Everything Incl. Fan Edits:

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#dean winchester #dean x y/n #dean winchester smut #dean x reader #dean winchester one shot #dean winchester fan fic

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lunastrophe · 2 months ago

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Hey! I'm writing a Minthara thingy about her past; since you're the drow expert of experts, do you have a timeline of her life or a theory of who her mother is maybe? Thank you!

Heh, I am really humbled by your words, I certainly do not consider myself the drow expert of experts 😳Thank you!

I am working on a detailed post about Minthara's past and her family, with (estimated) dates and other such details. I hope that I will find some time to finish it and publish sometime during the weekend. It is already half-baked, but... ugh, I really need more time for writing 😩

In the meantime, here are some fragments:

🕷️ Age - Minthara is over 200 years old, since she remembers Viconia DeVir disgracing her house and escaping the city ("I was young enough that it left an impression on me").

She was born in Menzoberranzan, probably at least a decade before 1292 DR, and she lived in House Baenre compound on Qu'ellarz'orl plateau.

Minthara recalls that she survived her first assassination attempt while she still suckled at her mother's breast. Her mother saved her life by covering her body with her own.

🕷️️Career - like other noble drow females from Menzoberranzan, Minthara most likely enrolled into Arach-Tinilith when she was 25 (she could be also older, since around 13th century DR, females started their education at the age of 40).

She finished her eduaction after 50 years, being between 75 and 90 years old, and most likely participated in the (in)famous drow graduation ceremony.

Minthara mentions that her mother tried to kill her when she came of age, making it a test of sorts. But aside from that, Minthara surely participated also in the Blooding - a drow coming-of-age ritual, usually completed during a surface raid (a young drow must kill an intelligent or dangerous surface creature, preferably an elf). It probably took place shortly after graduation.

🕷️️Oath - unlike the majority of noble females, Minthara was trained to be not a "pure" cleric, but a soldier in the service of Lolth. At some point, probably still at the early stage of her career, she took the oath of "bloody vengeance against any who defied Lolth".

She was fulfilling her oath, hunting heretics and apostates. She was also performing interrogations. At some point, she was entrusted with leadership - she was commanding drow warriors and probably also organizing and leading night raids to the surface.

🕷️️Relationships - Minthara mentions that being a noble (and Baenre), she lived in luxury.

Her first lover, most likely met during her years in the Academy, was a high priestess of House Vandree: "Beautiful, elegant, ruthless. I adored her, and had been sharing her bed for some time when the order came that she must die. I stayed with her while the poison did its work, and whispered words of comfort as she slipped away."

Minthara says that she had "a thousand suitors" and many lovers - they mostly wanted only her status or her body, though. The more they pursued her, the less she desired them, ultimately becoming tired of them all.

Unsurprisingly, she does not have high opinion on men in general - based on her experience with Menzoberranzan males: "half the men of Menzoberranzan are pleasure-servants. Weaklings, whose beauty is their only redeeming quality."

🕷️ Mother - Minthara's mother was a noble from House Baenre. We also know that she was visiting surface cities during her "grand tours of the surface world" and at some point, she visited also Baldur's Gate. She told Minthara about it.

She was certainly a female of high station, but considering the already existing drow lore, she was probably not one of the most famous daughters of Matron Yvonnel Baenre mentioned in the novels.

My guess: Minthara's mother could be some less known daughter of Yvonnel Baenre. Matron Yvonnel Baenre had fifteen daughters or so, and all of them were high priestesses (and alive around 1297 DR) - Minthara's mother could be one of them.

That would make Minthara a niece of Quenthel Baenre and other famous children of Matron Yvonnel Baenre (Gromph, Jarlaxle, Triel, Sos'Umptu etc.).

Hope you will find this information helpful 😊

#drow #minthara baenre #minthara #bg3 drow #lolth sworn drow #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #drow lore #drow culture #dark elves

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thesublemon · 7 months ago

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best picture

For the first time in a long time, I watched all of the movies nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars this year. Partly on a whim, partly for a piece I’ve been working on for a while about what is going wrong in contemporary artmarking. I cannot say that the experience made me feel any better or worse about contemporary movies than I already felt, which was pretty bad. But sometimes to write about a hot stove, you gotta put your hand on one. So. The nominees for coldest stove are:

Poor Things. Did not like enough to finish. I always want to like something that is making an effort at originality, strangeness, or style. Unfortunately, the execution of those things in this movie felt somehow dull and thin. Hard to explain how. Maybe the movie’s motif of things mashed together (baby-woman, duck-dog, etc) is representative. People have been mashing things together since griffins, medleys, Avatar the Last Airbender’s animals, Nickelodeon’s Catdog, etc. Thing + thing is elementary-level weird. And while there’s nothing wrong with a simple, or well-worn premise, there is a greater burden on an artist to do something interesting with it, if they go that route. And Poor Things does not. Its themes are obvious and belabored (the difficulty of self-actualization in a world that violently infantilizes you) and do not elevate the premise. There’s a fine line between the archetypal and the hackish, and this movie falls on the wrong side of it. It made me miss Crimes of the Future (2022), a recent Cronenberg that was authentically original and strange, with the execution to match.

Anatomy of a Fall. Solid, but not stunning. The baseline level of what a ‘good’ movie should be. It was written coherently and economically, despite its length. It told a story that drew you along. I wanted to know what happened, which is the least you can ask from storytelling. It had some compelling scenes that required a command of character and drama to write—particularly the big argument scene. The cinematography was not interesting, but it was not annoying either. It did its job. This was not, however, a transcendent movie.

Oppenheimer. Did not like enough to finish. But later forced myself to, just so no one could accuse me of not knowing what I was talking about when I said I disliked it. I felt like I was being pranked. The Marvel idea of what a prestige biopic should be. Like Poor Things, it telegraphed its artsiness and themes and has raked in accolades for its trouble. But obviousness is not the same as goodness and this movie is not good. The imagery is painfully literal. A character mentions something? Cut to a shot of it! No irony or nuance added by such images—just the artistry of a book report. The dialogue pathologically tells instead of shows. It constantly, cutely references things you might have heard of, the kind of desperate audience fellation you see in soulless franchise movies. Which is a particularly jarring choice given the movie’s subject matter. ‘Why didn’t you get Einstein for the Manhattan project’ Strauss asks, as if he’s saying ‘Why didn’t you get Superman for the Avengers?’ If any of this referentiality was an attempt to say something about mythologization, it failed—badly. The movie is stuffed with famous and talented actors, but it might as well not have been, given how fake every word out of their mouths sounded. Every scene felt like it had been written to sound good in a trailer, rather than to tell a damn story. All climax and no cattle.

Barbie. Did not like enough to finish. It had slightly more solidity in its execution than I was afraid it would have, so I will give it that. If people want this to be their entertainment I will let them have it. But if they want this to be their high cinema I will have to kill myself. Barbie being on this list reminds me of the midcentury decades of annual movie musical nominations for Best Picture. Sometimes deservingly. Other times, less so. The Music Man is great, but it’s not better than 8 1/2 or The Great Escape, neither of which were nominated in 1963. Musicals tend to appeal to more popular emotions, which ticket-buyers and award-givers tend to like, and critics tend to dislike. I remember how much Pauline Kael and Joan Didion hated The Sound of Music (which won in 1966), and have to ask myself if in twenty years I’ll think of my reaction to Barbie the same way that I think of those reviews: justified, but perhaps beside the point of other merits. Thing is. Say what you want about musicals, but that genre was alive back then. It was vital. Bursting with creativity. For all Kael’s bile, even she acknowledged that The Sound of Music was “well done for what it is.” [1] Contemporary cinema lacks such vitality, and Barbie is laden with symptoms of the malaise. It repeatedly falls back on references to past aesthetic successes (2001: A Space Odyssey, Singin’ in the Rain, etc) in order to have aesthetic heft. It has a car commercial in the middle. It’s about a toy from 60 years ago and politics from 10 years ago. It tries to wring some energy and meaning from all of that but not enough to cover the stench of death. I’d prefer an old musical any day.

American Fiction. Was okay. It tried to be clever about politics, but ended up being clomping about politics. At the end of the day, it just wasn’t any more interesting than any other ‘intellectual has a mid-life crisis’ story, even with the ‘twist’ of it being from a black American perspective. Even with it being somewhat self-aware of this. But it could have been a worse mid-life crisis story. The cinematography was terrible. It was shot like a sitcom. Much of the dialogue was sitcom-y too. I liked the soundtrack, what I could hear of it. The attempts at style and meta (the characters coming to life, the multiple endings) felt underdeveloped. Mostly because they were only used a couple times. In all, it felt like a first draft of a potentially more interesting movie.

The Zone of Interest.Wanted to like it more than I did. Unfortunately, you get the point within about five minutes. If you’ve seen the promotional image of the people in the garden, backgrounded by the walls of Auschwitz, then you’ve already seen the movie. Which means that all the rest of the movie ends up feeling like pretentious excess instead of moving elaboration. It seemed very aware of itself as an Important Movie and rested on those laurels, cinematically speaking, in a frustrating way. It reminded me of video art. I felt like I had stepped through a black velvet drape into the side room of a gallery, wondering at what point the video started over. And video art has its place, but it is a different medium. Moreover video art at its best, like a movie at its best, takes only the time it needs to say what it needs to say.

Past Lives. I’m a human being, and I respond to romance. I appreciate the pathos of sweet yearning and missed chances. And I understand how the romance in this movie is a synecdoche for ambivalent feelings about many kinds of life choices, particularly the choice to be an immigrant and choose one culture over another. The immigrant experience framing literalizes the way any choice can make one foreign to a past version of oneself, or the people one used to know, even if in another sense one is still the same person. So, I appreciate the emotional core of what (I believe) this movie was going for, and do think it succeeded in some respects. And yet…I was very irritated by most of its artistic choices. I found the three principal characters bland and therefore difficult to care about, sketched with only basic traits besides things like Striving and Being In Love. Why care who they’d be in another life if they have no personalities in this one? It’s fine to make characters symbols instead of humans if the symbolic tapestry of a movie is interesting and rich, but the symbolic tapestry of this movie was quite simple and straightforward. Not that that last sentence even matters much, since the movie clearly wanted you to feel for the characters as human beings, not just symbols. Visually, the cinematography was dull and diffuse, with composition that was either boring or as subtle as a hammer to the head.

Maestro. Did not like enough to finish. Something strange and wrong about this movie. It attempts to perform aesthetic mimicry with impressive precision—age makeup, accents, period cinematography—but this does not make the movie a better movie. At most it creates spectacle, at worst it creates uncanny valleys. It puts one on the lookout for irregularities, instead of allowing one to disappear into whatever the movie is doing. Something amateurishly pretentious in the execution. And not in the fun, respectable way, like a good student film. (My go-to example for a movie that has an art-school vibe in a pleasant way is The Reflecting Skin). There’s something desperate about it instead. It has the same disease as Oppenheimer, of attempting to do a biopic in a ‘stylish’ way without working on the basics first. Fat Man and Little Boy is a less overtly stylish rendition of the same subject as Oppenheimer, but far more cinematically successful to me, because it understands those basics. I would prefer to see the Fat Man and Little Boy of Leonard Bernstein’s life unless a filmmaker proves that they can do something with style beyond mimicry and flash.

The Holdovers. Did not like enough to finish. It tries to be vintage, but outside of a few moments, it does not succeed either at capturing what was good about the aesthetic it references, or at using the aesthetic in some other interesting way. The cinematography apes the tropes of movies and TV from the story’s time period, but doesn't have interesting composition in its own right. It lacks the solidity that comes from original seeing. (Contrast with something like Planet Terror, in which joyous pastiche complements the original elements.) The acting is badly directed. Too much actorliness is permitted. Much fakeness in general between the acting, writing, and visual language. If a movie with this same premise was made in the UK in the 60’s or 70's it would probably be good. As-is the movie just serves to make me sad that the ability to make such movies is apparently lost and can only be hollowly gestured at. That said, the woman who won best supporting actress did a good job. She was the only one who seemed to be actually acting.

Killers of the Flower Moon. The only possible winner. It is not my favorite of Scorsese’s movies, but compared to the rest of the lineup it wins simply by virtue of being a movie at all. How to define ‘being a movie’? Lots of things I could say that Killers of the Flower Moon has and does would also be superficially true of other movies in this cohort. Things like: it tells a story, with developed characters who drive that story. Or: it uses its medium (visuals, sound) to support its story and its themes. The difference comes down to richness, specificity, control, and a je ne sais quois that is beyond me to describe at the moment. Compare the way Killers of the Flower Moon uses a bygone cinematic style (the silent movie) to the way that Maestro and The Holdovers do. Killers of the Flower Moon uses a newsreel in its opening briefly and specifically. The sequence sets the scene historically, and gives you the necessary background with the added panache of confident cuts and music. It’s useful to the story and it’s satisfying to watch. Basics. But the movie doesn’t limit itself to that, because it’s a good movie. The sequence also sets up ideas that will be continuously developed over the course of the movie.* And here’s the kicker—the movie doesn’t linger on this sequence. You get the idea, and it moves on to even more ideas. Also compare this kind of ideating to American Fiction’s. When I said that American Fiction’s moments of style felt underdeveloped, I was thinking of movies like Killers of the Flower Moon, which weave and evolve their stylistic ideas throughout the entire runtime.

*(Visually, it places the Osage within a historical medium that the audience probably does not associate with Native Americans, or the Osage in particular. Which has a couple of different effects. First, it acts as a continuation of the gushing oil from the previous scene. It’s an interruption. A false promise. Seeming belonging and power, but framed all the while by a foreign culture. Meanwhile potentially from the perspective of that culture, it’s an intrusion on ‘their’ medium. And of course, this promise quickly decays into tragedy and death. The energy of the sequence isn’t just for its own sake—it sets up a contrast. But on a second, meta level it establishes the movie’s complicated relationship to media and storytelling. Newsreels, photos, myths, histories, police interviews, and a radio play all occur over the course of the movie. And there’s the movie Killers of the Flower Moon itself. Other people’s frames are contrasted with Mollie’s narration. There’s a repeated tension between communication as a method of knowing others and a method of controlling them—or the narrative of them—which plays out in both history and personal relationships.)

Or here’s another example: When Mollie and Ernest meet and he drives her home for the first time, we see their conversation via the car’s rearview mirrors. This is a bit of cinematic language that has its origins in mystery and paranoia. You see it in things like Hitchcock or The X-Files or film noir. By framing the scene with this convention, the movie turns what is superficially a romantic meet-cute (to quote a friend) into something bubbling with uneasiness and dread. This is not nostalgia—this is just using visuals to create effects. It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen anything that uses the convention before, although knowing the pedigree might add to your enjoyment. The watchfulness suggested by the mirrors and Ernest’s cut-off face will still add an ominous effect. It works for the same reason it works in those other things. Like the newsreel, it is a specific and concise stylistic choice, and it results in a scene that is doing more than just one thing.

In general, the common thread I noticed as I watched these nominees, was the tendency to have the ‘idea’ of theme or style, and then stop there. It’s not that the movies had nothing in them. There were ideas, there was use of the medium, there was meaning to extract. There were lots of individually good moments. But they tended to feel singular, or repetitive, or tacked on. Meanwhile contemporary viewers are apparently so impressed by the mere existence of theme or style, that being able to identify it in a movie is enough to convince many that the movie is also good at those things. The problem with this tendency—in both artists and audiences—is that theme and style are not actually some extra, remarkable, inherently rarifying property of art. Theme emerges naturally from a story with any kind of coherence or perspective. And style emerges naturally from any kind of artistic attitude. They are as native as script, or narrative, or character. A movie’s theme and style might not be interesting, just like its story or dialogue might not be interesting, but if the movie is at all decent, they should exist. What makes a movie good or bad, then, is how it executes its component parts—including theme and style—in service of the whole. When theme is well-executed it is well-developed. Contemporary movies, unfortunately, seem to have confused ‘well-developed’ with ‘screamingly obvious.’ A theme does not become well-developed by repetition. It becomes well-developed by iterationand integration. Theme is like a melody. Simply repeating a single melody over and over does not result in the song becoming more interesting or entertaining. It becomes tedious. However, if you modify the melody each time you play it, or diverge from the melody and then return to it, that can get exciting. It results in different angles on the same idea, such that the idea becomes more complex over time, instead of simply louder.

Oppenheimer wasprobably the worst offender in this regard. Just repeat your water drops, crescendoing noise, or a line about ‘destroying the world’, and that’s the same as nuance, right? Split scenes into color and black and white and that’s the same as structure, right? That’s the same as actually conveying a difference between objectivity and interiority (or another dichotomy) via the drama or visual composition contained in the scenes, right? When I watched many of these movies, I kept thinking of a behind-the-scenes story from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The story goes that Joss Whedon was directing Sarah Michelle Gellar in some scene, and when the take was over he told her how great she was, and that he could see right where the music would come in. And Gellar replied that if he was thinking about the music, he clearly wasn’t getting enough from her acting alone. This conversation then supposedly informed Whedon’s approach to “The Body,” a depiction of the immediate aftermath of death that is considered one of the best episodes of television ever made, and which has no non-diegetic music whatsoever. Not to imply that music is necessarily a crutch, or to pretend that “The Body” is lacking in other forms of stylization (it is a very style-ish episode). But more to illustrate the way that it is easy to forget to make the most of all aspects of a medium, particularly the most fundamental ones, once one has gotten used to what a final product is supposed to feel like.

And that’s why most of these movies don’t feel like movies. They create the gestalt of a movie or a ‘cinematic’ moment—often literally through direct vintage imitation—without a sense of the first principles. Or demonstrating a sense of them, anyway. Who needs AI when the supposedly highest level of human filmmakers are already cannibalistically cargo-culting the medium just fine.

[1] “The Sound of Money (The Sound of Music and The Singing Nun).” The Pauline Kael Reader. (This book contains the full text of the original review, rather than the abbreviated review that I linked earlier.)

#posts: art #movies #am rusty at blogging and don't have all the virtuous nuance i would like in this but we will go with it

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itsclydebitches · 11 months ago

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It's weird to think Vol 10 of RWBY just straight up might never happen. much less further volumes. No matter how bad it got I would still have loved some form of ending but Barabas comments don't paint a hopeful picture. Alas fics of RWBY will go until the end of time.

It's very weird. Most shows I come across have either already concluded, or give their audience an estimate of when things will wrap up ('We're planning another two seasons and each takes us about two years to film, so...'). I have shows that unexpectedly get more content after providing an ambiguous, but still satisfying ending (Alice in Borderland), shows where each season is self-contained so it can end whenever without issue (Bake Off), shows that were cut short and had to scramble to wrap up (Sense8), and of course there are always shows that are straight up cancelled and can't do a thing to mitigate that... but RWBY feels almost, almost unique in this combination. It's a webseries rather than a traditional TV show. It's gone on for a decade with absolutely no indication of where it's heading. Each season feels threatened to the point where the fandom can no longer differentiate between a real cancellation concern and Internet exaggeration. The story has hit what's arguably its most important narrative peak - the team has traversed an alternate world, Ruby has "overcome" drinking the tea, Summer finally appears on screen - only for news of the story's future to remain frustratingly vague. Not only have we never had a sense of when RWBY's story will end, now we don't even have confirmation of whether it will end. That's such a frustrating way to approach storytelling given that your audience relies on some level of commitment to remain engaged.

I too want RWBY to finish up because I am not immune to the Sunk Cost Fallacy: I put this much time into the series and it needs to satisfy me with a conclusion, even if the conclusion itself will inevitably be unsatisfying. Outside of any normal disappointment with a story you love getting the ax, I generally don't mind embracing unfinished works. I read abandoned fics, watch cancelled shows, browse barely started comics, because getting a taste of the world is always worth it if it's compelling to me. I never regret meeting characters whose stories go untold because as a writer myself I can at least imagine that on my own terms. But RWBY? Losing it now would be a real kick in the teeth. I personally don't think the story is salvageable at this point, but at the very least fans deserve a conclusion: one that will likely please a lot of devoted viewers and allow critical fans to put a satisfying tick mark on the box in our heads labeled "RWBY."

Given its popularity I wouldn't be surprised if RWBY wound up cancelled and then concluded in a comics run, or a one-off movie. Beyond the fact that this would no doubt mess up the writing even more (now you have to iron out this mess of a plot on a time limit, in a new medium, with new authors!) it would, unfortunately, be kind of hilarious too:

[generic tour guide voice] "Hello. Welcome to RWBY. Our fandom is known for having copious side stories connected to the canon in confusing ways. Some are incidental to the main series. Some outright contradict it. Some are crucial to your understanding of the primary plot and must be engaged with in a timely manner. These texts range from comic runs to random bits of information in abandoned mobile games. Please note that this corpus did not grow naturally across decades of storytelling, as is the case with fandoms like Star Trek and Star Wars, but was rather cobbled together by RT in an attempt to 'fix' numerous, ongoing issues with the webseries. Our latest addition? The ending. Yes, if you would like to finish RWBY please refer to this index of sources that together provide a semi-cohesive conclusion to a ten year show. Now, on your left you'll see the ongoing brawl as fans attempt to determine whether this index is canonical or not. Please watch your step..."

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

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physalian · 5 months ago

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On Establishing Authorial Intent vs Character Voice (Specifically, in tragic queer characters)

Coming in hot with another controversial topic.

There is probably a better way to phrase that so what I mean is this: Your book’s message and your characters’ decisions don’t have to match, and if they don’t match, and your protagonist has a very polarizing personality or makes very controversial choices, unless you state otherwise, your readers are going to assume that your character is your mouthpiece.

In other words: If I write, say… a gay man, as a cis, female, queer author, and I write him suffering during the AIDS epidemic, and I write this gay man fitting every single harmful stereotype possible. I write this character that is everything Fox News wants you to believe about gay men and AIDS.

But in the last ¾ of the book, the man has an epiphany with Therapy Speech where I, the author, reveal that I’m not actually a homophobe out to punish my protagonist and perpetuate these stereotypes, and my agenda is not, in fact, to bring the queer community back decades because people are stupid and won’t get to the end of my book to realize that…. Whoo boy, I have f*cked up as an author.

��

Have I dropped enough heavy-handed hints that I read a book that did exactly this? Not a gay man in the 80s, but a queer character nonetheless. Now this was a book that I had to finish. If I didn’t have to read it, I would have quit about ten different times throughout for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being very stiff writing that wasn’t engaging. The actions and thought processes and arc of this queer character were so insulting, so harmful, so off the mark, it was horrifying.

I stopped reading for a day and I’d already drawn all my conclusions and was not very nice in my feedback, but I had to finish it so I did, and the book addressed all my criticisms within the last 100 pages, out of 367.

Meaning: Anyone else would have actually quit and taken away from the book exactly what I did—that this was homophobic propaganda. “Oh but if you just make it to the end-”

Nope, not good enough. I read for entertainment and the book did not hold my attention. I need no more excuse to drop it for something better than being bored, and yet I held on through some nightmarish representation.

So.

How not to do this:

You are completely free and welcome to write unhealthy representations of any minority (why you would if you’re not that minority and not out to make a mess of things baffles me). Not every character has to be smart and well educated on proper representation. They don’t have to be a perfect Mary Sue that makes no mistakes and has no controversial opinions and does absolutely nothing that could hint at being problematic. That’s not what I’m saying at all.

Rather, that character can go ham, but you, as the author, must establish as quickly as possible that all of that is the character talking, not you. Whether it’s a queer character or POC or heck just a woman.

Have a dissenting voice (I like to call them harbinger characters) that serve as the author mouthpiece and is ignored and dismissed by the Problem Character. Harbinger says what the audience is thinking through the flavor and color of a character (so it doesn’t read as super preachy), trying to warn the character about the path they're taking, and Problem Character very cleary doesn’t give a damn about what they think. Critically, the narrative makes sure you know that the Harbinger is correct, and PC is wrong.

Have the PC acknowledge early on that what they’re doing is wrong, minimize it, argue against it, and attempt to justify their own behavior anyway. They know they’re the villain, essentially, and they just don’t give a damn.

Have an equal and opposite healthy character to counterbalance all of PC’s terrible choices. Different from the Harbinger in that they’re less obvious about their place in the story and just living life as that positive representation.

Give the PC a “descent into madness” where they start out a healthy person and through dramatic, understandable, tragic circumstances, they’re forced into this role that they’d never thought they’d succumb to.

Have the PC horrified at their own state of being but too hopeless to think they can escape from it. Have the PC know exactly how harmful they are, to themselves, to other people, and just convince themselves that it won’t get better, that they’re too weak or too afraid or too selfish, whatever.

Because I just rewatched these movies and they’re fresh on my mind, I’m going to use Caesar from the Andy Serkis Planet of the Apes movies. Caesar is your Jesus/Moses archetype: The Martyr. This is the paragon good guy leading his people out from oppression into the blessed lands of freedom. This is the guy with unshakable morals and a compass that points unfailingly North. He is the inspiration to the rest of the cast on how to act and how to be a good, healthy, moral, respectable person. He alone takes on the punishment meant for the group and is literally crucified, he could not be a more obvious paragon and Jesus figure of goodness and purity.

Until he isn’t.

Caesar’s “descent into madness” comes after humans murder his wife and older son, amidst an ongoing war that’s taking a toll on the ape community and his own psyche as they continue to lose numbers and ground and apes defect to the human side because of the villain Koba—Caesar’s foil.

He becomes everything he sought to destroy and his friend points out that he’s become Koba in all but name and his actions inevitably lead to his death because he is so consumed with revenge that he doesn’t escape the climax of the movie when he has the chance, and suffers a fatal injury. Caesar acknowledges this and basically says, “I know what I’ve become. I have to do it anyway. I can’t escape my own rage.”

All of this is believable and understandable and tragic. He was realistically pushed to these horrible ends by the story and we saw what it did to him.

The book I read had the Problem Character flip a switch because they were horny and thought another character was hot.

—

But once again I was faced with an author taking on far more than they were qualified to write, having a protagonist who identifies as a minority that already suffers enough prejudice and misunderstanding—a minority that the author themselves is not part of.

So once again because this keeps happening: You can and should write minority characters. You should not write the suffering of these minorities if you did not live it, because their suffering is not yours to profit off of and you will almost inevitably do it wrong.

#writing advice #writing resources #writing #writing a book #writing tools #writing tips #writeblr #character development #character design #queer characters #queer representation #lgbt characters #lgbt representation #descent into madness

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egrets-not-regrets · 9 months ago

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Finally Found You. (You Survived.)

Erriox finds the voice in the darkness: Erriox (Iron Warrior OC) meets Lenora (OC) again. From Erriox’s perspective.

Author’s note: I finally finished this! There’s another piece for Erriox and Lenora that I have written and I really wanted to post, but I really needed to get this piece done first since it makes more sense to follow behind Lenora’s perspective of this encounter. Just for fun, here’s the music I listened to while writing this: Yoriichi’s theme from Demon Slayer by Samuel Kim, Middle of the Night by Elley Duhé, and Lend Me Your Voice from the movie, Belle.

Also, dialogue spoken in the Gothic language is in italics.

Tagged: @kit-williams @bleedingichorhearts Anyone also interested in being tagged for these stories, please let me know in messages or your comments.

While he was in recovery, Erriox learned many things about this world he ended up in. This was Terra, ancient Terra. He was currently in what the humans called a hospital. His injuries were extensive enough such that he was sent to another facility farther away which was better equipped to handle his wounds. It would only take longer for him to heal enough before so that his body can take care of the rest. Their own body system still worked the same as before and while they still had superhuman recovery from injuries and diseases compared to normal mortals, it’s just that the medical technology at this time was a mix of ancient and modern technology. Diagnoses and treatments for injured Astartes as well as information on Astartes biology were still in development. Interestingly enough, apothecaries from different legions worked alongside each other and their human companions at these hospitals, observing and learning from each other.

It was also in this hospital where he started to gain a basic understanding of the English language, the language mostly spoken in the current region he was in. He was thankful that one of the apothecaries suggested that. It gave him something to do while in the hospital and a kind medical worker gave him some materials to get started. He managed to get the mere basic grasp of the language. It wasn’t easy to say the least, but it was enough to somewhat communicate with the mortals he encountered.

Astartes warriors from different factions and legions started appearing in this world many terran decades ago. The circumstances of how each warrior got there differed, but the feeling that this was some fevered dream that they haven’t woken up from seemed common across the board. The Thousand Sons of Magnus and Lorgar’s Word-Bearers suspected that warp magic was involved and were delving deeply to research this phenomenon. He wondered if this also happened to any of his battle brothers as well. Not that he was particularly enthused about meeting some of them any time soon.

Many of the Astartes were also bonded to mortals of this world as evidenced by the humans passing through the halls of hospital, some accompanied by their bonded Astartes warrior. Unsurprisingly, a number of apothecaries were bonded to human medical workers there as well. Erriox noticed more occurrences of bonded Astartes warriors as he started his journey to find his human once he was discharged. It was a strange phenomenon, something they had very little control over. The Iron Warrior suspected that the owner of that gentle voice that he kept repeating in his mind was his bonded one. He wasn’t sure if it was a true bond with a mortal or rather some obsession that he hung onto in order to mentally move forward during his recovery, but he strongly felt it was the former rather than latter. It was as if instinct was drawing him to where he needed to go. Otherwise, there was little reason why he would attempt to find this voice in the darkness after he recovered. Despite his doubts, Erriox hoped his human would be receptive to their bond once he found them.

Erriox had joined several roaming warbands as he passed through their territories in his travels. Some Astartes of the same legion or chapter tend to group together, forming their own bases. However, because of the strange circumstances and with how randomly the locations each space marine were transported to, it was more common than not that different Astartes of different legions, Chaos and Loyalist, created warbands and worked together. He was slightly concerned about the chaos-tainted Astartes being among the ranks, but outside of the occasional posturing or disagreements, they tend to stick to themselves and cooperate when needed.

It was in the dimming sunset that he finally came across his human’s home. He wasn’t sure what led him there, but he had an inkling that he was at the correct location. A canid came running from the back to the front of the house, growling and barking loudly at him. He continued towards the house unworried, as he knew there was little the canid could do to stop him. It stood its ground, not stopping the incessant barking. That canid had quite the gumption and Erriox approved of the iron that little creature had. Then the door opened and she came out. It was her. Her voice was the one that called to him in the darkness of his unconsciousness. It was her, his bonded one. He knew at that moment, she was his human. In the depths of his beating hearts, his soul roared out to complete the bond. Iron called for it. Iron demanded for its completion.

Erriox watched with some amusement as his human commanded the reluctant canid to go into the house, leaving her vulnerable against him. Somewhat foolish, but brave, he’ll give her that. Not that she needed to fear any harm from him nor worry about being unprotected anymore now that he was here. Three strides was all it took to get close to his human and with a hiss and click, his helmet came off. He watched her eyes widen with recognition. Not giving her a chance to run, Erriox unceremoniously dropped to one knee and roughly pulled her into his arms. He felt her stiffen, and for a brief moment, he thought she would try to leave. She relaxed and pulled back slightly, smiling at him as if welcoming an old friend, bringing up a hand to gently stroke the scars at the side of his face. Erriox closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. He couldn’t even remember when was the last time he received such warmth. She let out a contented sigh and wrapped her arms around his neck, fully relaxing into his embrace. Something felt complete then, like two parts of their bond finally clicking into place.

He pulled her tightly to himself, saying fervently in Gothic not caring if she understood or not, “It is you, my Iron. When I was lost and weak, it was you who kept away the rust. I finally found you.”

His expression softened when he felt her nuzzle back, catching the words “you” and “survived” in her murmur.

She patted his cheek gently with a quiet laugh, “You came just in time. Would you like to have dinner?”

Erriox started, staring at her in surprise. Did she just speak Gothic?

She laughed again, gesturing to follow her into her (their) home, “Come have dinner.”

The Iron Warrior got up, huffed in amusement, and followed her in. He wondered how much of the Gothic language she understood. What a clever human he had!

#space marine husbandry #space marine husbandry sentience #oc: lenora #oc: erriox #iron warrior #my writing

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saltwaterandstars · 2 months ago

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I while ago I saw @doctornerdington recommend the book Body Work by Melissa Febos. I recently bought it and I'm about halfway through reading it. So far I think it's excellent and I'm finding it helpful, but it's stirring up lots of thoughts and feelings and so I've decided to write some notes about that to keep a record of how I'm responding to it. So, under the cut it a personal essay of sorts. It's not a statement about what I think anyone else is experiencing or should do, it's just a record of my own experiences, thoughts and feelings about which are being evoked as I read this book. If you do read what I've written and want to comment, I'd welcome that, but it is quite long and I'm imagining not many people will read it. If you are going to have a read though, please note the content warning tags. I wasn't sure really what it needed tagging for, so if you do read it, let me know if you think it should be tagged differently.

Body Work is a series of essays by Melissa Febos. On one level it’s a book about writing memoirs—writing about personal experience. But the book is about much more than that. She talks a lot about the scripts we have taken in from society, from the patriarchy, scripts that we unconsciously write from, but also the same scripts that we shape our selves and our lives around. I’ve just finished the essay Mind Fuck, which is ostensibly about writing sex scenes. But in exploring what goes on when go to write about sex, especially when that we includes people disenfranchised and brutalised by the patriarchy, she’s really exploring what it is to be an embodied person; what it is to understand our physical and sexual realities, to live them, to make conscious choices in relation to them, and to write about them. She talks about the importance of identifying and getting beyond the narrative threads that were previously sewn into me by sources of varying nefariousness or innocuity.

I’m finding reading the book personally very helpful but, of course, it’s only helpful to the extent that it’s disturbing me, that it’s leading me to bump into and acknowledge the scripts—body-related, sexual, and otherwise—that I’m still living in accordance with. It’s interesting that this process feels to me so desperately uncomfortable, terrifyingly unsettling, actually, and yet, at the same time, it also feels like such a compassionate thing to be doing for myself.

I’m a white woman in my late 50s. I come from a poor, working class background, but through education and profession I am clearly middle-class now (and class is still a big deal in the UK, even if it’s not as explicit as it used to be). I look and sound middle-class and have the privileges that come with that. I’m bisexual but have been in a monogamous relationship with a man for 25 years, so pretty much everyone who knows me or interacts with me sees me as straight. To a very large extent, for the first four decades of my life, I tried very hard to live within the straitjacket placed on me by the patriarchy, especially in relation to my body. I spent many years trying not to gain weight, trying to be conventionally, heteronormatively attractive and so on. And like many women, I was fully aware of where those scripts, those rules, were coming from and the harm they were doing me, but I was just too scared to even attempt to let go of them in any kind of meaningful way.

There were ways in which I did live beyond the patriarchy’s imposed limitations. For example, I had a successful career in a male-dominated profession. But in my 20s and 30s especially, I attempted to do that while still trying to be seen as attractive and well-behaved and unthreatening (which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so heart-breaking��I was threatening just by existing in those spaces—I couldn’t be there and be successful and not be a threat.)

I also had a sex life where, at least some of the time, I experienced myself as having agency and freedom. But I lived that part of my life pretty much secretly. I wasn’t ashamed of my sexual behaviour; I just didn’t trust that society—including many of the people in my day-to-day life—would value and respect me if I allowed myself as a sexual being to be more fully seen. So I hid myself from view—not an uncommon coping strategy for me.

In my 20s to 40s, I was frequently fearful and anxious. Whenever I did something that challenged the scripts, the rules, I was very scared. I am not a feisty, up-for-a-fight kind of person. I find breaking rules difficult, and being a ‘difficult person,’ challenging other people, even just disagreeing with other people, feels disturbing to me (this can’t possibly have its roots in my childhood—surely not?!) So when I did do political things, feminist things, when I stood up for colleagues, said no to unreasonable demands, just disagreed with people, even, I felt real, like I had acted authentically and in accordance with my values, but I also frequently felt like the world was about to end. At the very least, I was often just waiting to be punished and expelled from the pack. It’s a hard way to live.

My 50s have brought me—through the menopause and the development of a life-changing chronic illness, and the death of people I love—some dreadful challenges, but also, through the exact same experiences, a real increase in freedom. For one thing, I am no longer attractive in a stereotypical heteronormative way. I’m just not. My body just can’t be that anymore. And while I’ve had grief and fear around that, I do also have an ever-increasing sense of freedom because of these changes, too. And because I’ve been so ill and my poor body has had (and continues to have) such a difficult time, my whole way of relating to myself as an embodied person has had to change. I’ve had to cultivate great oceans of kindness and patience to be in this struggling body, and it turns out, kindness and patience with my body are also antidotes to the poison of the patriarchal rules I swallowed in when I was young. Who knew?!

And I have to say, the less invested I am in being seen as attractive and pleasant and reasonable, the more my fears around the imagined consequences of being authentically myself subside. In the last couple of years in work before I retired, for example, I was pretty much immune to the attempts by my (mostly younger male) colleagues to pressure or bulldoze or embarrass or emotionally blackmail me into doing what they wanted. I wouldn’t say I became fearless because I didn’t, but alongside the fear was a kind of gleeful, arms folded across my chest sense of oh this is going to be interesting.

The death of loved ones has been an immensely painful experience, but it has also functioned as rocket fuel to help launch me out of my state of fear-based inertia. I’m not going to go into details, but basically everyone else in my immediate family died young, so I’m a chronically ill woman approaching old age with a truly awful genetic inheritance in terms of family longevity. I hope I live till I’m 90, but maybe I won’t. Maybe if there are changes I need to make to be more alive and present and free in my life, I might want to get on with that. So the questions I’ve asked myself again and again in different forms over the last few years are: How many more years am I going to spend living by these shitty rules? How many more years am I going to waste not allowing myself to explore who I actually am? To be who I am? Oh, and when I die, do I want them to put something like She was always so well-behaved—on my headstone? Is that how I want to live the rest of my life? Et cetera, et cetera.

Over the last few years, in ways small and large, I’ve managed to shrug off bits of the straitjacket. The biggest change is that I’ve completely stepped away from a pretty successful but personally damaging career. I’ve also allowed myself to finally get to know my pagan self and to be that self more publicly. And regularly in day-to-day situations I’m managing to catch myself about to act in accordance with Febos’ narrative threads that were previously sewn into me. Sometimes I manage to step out of automatic pilot and to make a conscious choice to do something different, to be more authentically myself in that moment, even when that feels scary and exposing.

Which all sounds great—and it is! But if that was the end of the story, then reading Body Work would not be proving so unsettling for me. Turns out, the really difficult explorations and changes I’ve already made were actually the easier stuff. Could it be that I’ve managed to avoid the extremely difficult work by focussing on the really difficult work?! As I’m reading the book, it’s becoming clear that what still remains to be examined and unpicked is the tough stuff. So here I am again today, asking myself the questions:

Who is it serving to keep myself, my needs, my wants, my interests, my values, hidden from view and not enacted in the world?

And how is doing all that serving me, too?

And how many more of my precious remaining years do I intend to spend in this understandable but deeply unsatisfying holding pattern?

#personal #cw: death #cw: body image #cw: ageing

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sineala · 1 year ago

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is there any fic of yours that you hold dear and that went under the radar a bit? ❤️

Ooh! Interesting question! (Also I have a bunch of your fic bookmarked and have not yet read it; I am looking forward to getting around to it but also my brain has decided that it hasn't wanted to read or write much of anything since early 2020 and I am very slowly regaining the willpower to read and write fiction but apparently reading is taking longer than writing. So I apologize to you and anyone else has who has written fic since then. It's not you; it's me?)

Anyway! I am sorting my fic by reverse kudos order. It looks like my least popular work either has sad endings, is super short, or just hasn't had as much time to accumulate kudos as something I wrote a decade ago, which is fair. Like, I feel like at some point people will come read Tabula Rasa because eventually they will be unable to resist the lure of 40,000 words of fluff about one guy who used to be in an iceberg and another guy who used to be a sad brain in a jar, but it's only been a year. And I think people will come read Cold Front after I eventually finish writing the series and can deliver on a happy ending, though this is clearly going to take me years. I have so many depressing books about some combination of being gay, the 80s, and NYC to read as research. Also actual canon, lol.

So once you exclude that kind of thing, I think the stuff I am proud of that didn't get as much traction tends to be stuff like remixes. And I also get why people skip remixes, but I have several that I have done that I think hold up on their own, which possibly means I don't understand how to write remixes, but whatever:

Armistice (The Nothing Else Matters Remix) is a DreamVision/Inception fusion of what was originally a MCU story. I moved it to Noir/616. Noir Tony has to get inside Steve's mind to wake him up, except... this guy isn't the Steve he knows. A 616 Civil War fix-it.

Breaking Point (The Abort, Retry, Fail Remix) is actually super fucking sad because it's a remix of a story of Kiyaar's where Steve murders Tony during Avengers #29. At least, he thinks he does. Tony ends up in a coma and then with amnesia. The original was Tony's POV but I kept wondering what the hell was going through Steve's head this entire time so I wrote this. I got out a lot of words about my feelings about Steve's characterization in Hickmanvengers, though.

Hour of Greatest Need (The Left to His Own Devices Remix) is another POV swap remix of a Steve POV story about that What If where Doom strands Tony in Camelot. I wrote the Tony POV; it was fun to write a character who has presumably read a bunch of science fiction and is trying to game out time travel.

If You Want to Live (The Historical Present Remix) is a time-travel 616 Civil War fix-it (yeah, we all have favorite genres) that was originally a MCU story where Bucky attempts to time-travel and murder Tony. This was not what I turned it into.

See You at the Bitter End (The Rest of the Rainbow Remix) is a 616 Civil War fix-it that I swear has a happy ending but also I think I killed Steve four times first.

Wonders of the World (The Keep Me Safe from Harm Remix) is an early v4 PWP which I read Secret Avengers and Fraction IM in order to write, which was when I discovered that Steve really hates black-ops, which was not something fandom had expressed to me. So it's a PWP about how much Commander Rogers hates his job. Weirdly, this is not the only story I have that I would describe as this.

I have more remixes than this, but I think these are the ones that probably hold up on their own.

Thank you for the question, though! This was fun.

#replies #soliloquent-stark

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toaarcan · 6 months ago

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Ian Flynn's Eggman

I have a funny perspective on the way Ian Flynn writes Eggman.

Because in practice, I hate it. It's born out of a still-bubbling resentment for the last big arc of the preboot, and how he was handled as the villain for that (Arcan Grumbles About Mecha Sally: Part 2 will be about the villains, so I'll go into more detail there), and how it echoed both his earlier appearances from Issue 175-177, and how he's still characterised in IDW sometimes.

Flynn writes Eggman as this incredibly weird mix of a hypercompetent genius and a bumbling fuckup that averages out to a mostly-invincible villain who is usually only defeated by himself.

This is a bit like the game version that he's trying to base this character on, as I'll elaborate further down, but it's missing a few pieces, like the part where Eggman's downfall is usually because Sonic legitimately beats him. In the games where Eggman is finished off by a greater threat, it's normally after Sonic has already broken his final weapon. Contrast the Metal Virus arc in IDW, where Eggman's defeat is entirely because he screwed up, and if he hadn't deployed the Metal Virus as soon as the first test worked, and instead refined it into something he could control, he would've won, as Sonic was losing more and more ground to the infection, and the heroes needed the assistance of Eggman, Metal Sonic, and Starline's Warp Topaz to actually win the day.

Both Archie and IDW have moments where it's established that Eggman at least believes that he can win entirely at any moment of his choosing. IDW Eggman claims it, Archie Eggman proves it, and I have to say, I view this as one of the worst villain tropes ever.

If the only thing stopping the villain from wiping the hero off the board permanently is the villain's own unwillingness to do so, then the hero is a failure and the villain is an idiot. Congrats, you've fucked over your entire series

But what makes this unique is that, if you listen to Flynn talk about Eggman behind the scenes, it's clear that he really does understand the character at a core level.

Because here's the thing: Flynn is absolutely right about Eggman being a fuckup. I know some people really hate the idea that Eggman is not the ultimate BBEG of the Sonic universe, that he gets usurped by other villains so much in the 1998-2009 games (and now again in Frontiers) , but "Eggman unleashes something he can't control" was used for more than a decade of straight releases, at this point it's not a writing failure, it's characterisation.

Eggman is a mechanical genius. He builds fantastic robots, massive flying battleships, incredible weapons, giant mech suits, the works. But some of these machines he comes up with are very obviously the first-draft versions. He's deployed the Egg Dragoon twice in canon, and has never fixed the giant glowing weak spots. He's used the "swinging ball on a chain below the Eggmobile" design at least four times (three of them as himself, once at the hands of Mecha Sonic), and the only refinement he's made to it after all these failed attempts is replacing the ball with a sawblade for the fifth attempt.

His strategy usually boils down to "Bum-rush the objective with an army of robots" or "Make a big show of force with a new superweapon and demand everyone surrender" or "Throw something massive and destructive at his target to create free real estate." He's had some clever plans before, but only a handful.

And his propensity to unleash ancient evils that he cannot possibly control is, at this point, well-established. Because his most fatal flaw is his ego. His arrogance. He believes himself to be superior to everyone else, including ancient monsters and artificial gods and sentient superweapons. And Sonic. And he's wrong. He thinks he can make something more powerful than Perfect Chaos, he's wrong. He thinks Shadow is working for him, he's wrong. He thinks there are no consequences for upgrading Metal Sonic over and over and over again, he's wrong. He thinks he can control a Gizoid, he's wrong. He thinks if he builds a Gizoid of his own, that'll fix the problem, he's wrong.

He thinks he can beat Sonic, he's wrong.

Like, for all Eggman's self-aggrandizing boasts about being the greatest scientific genius in the world, he's not even right about that. SEGA themselves have established that. They gave Eggman an IQ of 300 (and yes, I know, IQ doesn't work that way), and then gave Tails an IQ of 400. By SEGA's own logic, Tails is smarter than Eggman.

And I think I get what Flynn is aiming for. He's trying to write a version of Eggman who is the grand villain of the series, who is the greatest threat to Sonic and friends, and is the antagonist who makes Sonic sweat the most. He also wants to sprinkle some SatAM Robotnik in there too, because well, guy is a SatAM fan (and hey, I really can't hold that against him, I am too), and that results in this hypercompetent, sadistic, borderline invincible Eggman. But he also wants to be true to the SEGA version, who isn't really any of that. So we get the bumbling self-sabotage thrown in, except this time they're the singular flaws in Eggman's armour, and he ends up mostly defeating himself, which is just frustrating for me to read.

So yeah, contrary to where other people who don't like Flynn's Eggman, I'm taking the stance that his take on Sonic's most persistent enemy actually isn't enough of a fuckup.

#Sonic #Sonic the Hedgehog #Eggman #Dr. Eggman #Ian Flynn #Dr. Robotnik #Archie Sonic #IDW Sonic

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directdogman · 2 years ago

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Heya, been watching Mr bean lately and thought I'd ask you if there's anything I should know about the bean lore

i deadass almost responded 'why are you watching mr bean' on its own, but hey. it's not every day i get an ask like this. it's actually a common fan misconception that I like Mr Bean all that much, but I'll still attempt to answer this question in good faith. first question to ask is, animated or live action?

for the live action show, I could talk about it for quite a long time, but long story short, it was created by the same creative team as Blackadder's first season (more or less), with Rowan Atkinson starring, Atkinson and Richard Curtis co-writing and Howard Goodall scoring the show. The famous chorale arrangement of the Mr Bean theme is actually real Latin too. Something people forget about Rowan Atkinson is incredibly well educated. In fact, him, Richard Curtis and Howard Goodall all met in Oxford college iirc.

The first line of the live action series theme literally translates as 'behold the man who is bean'. Beyond that, the only real surface level live action lore I can really think of, off the top of my head, is that Mr Bean has co-acted with Willem Dafoe, has destroyed priceless artwork, has been driven around downtown LA while flipping the bird at people he passed, was almost briefly named 'mr cauliflower', etc. Oh, also, Mr Bean isn't fully mute in the live action series, like in the pilot, where he speaks at length before sitting for a university math examination that he isn't prepared to take. So, yes, Mr Bean has canonically attended a university.

I do have a pretty big theory that alleges that Doug Walker's relationship with the Nostalgia Critic is more or less the same as Rowan Atkinson's with Mr Bean, but I refuse to explain Mr Bean lore if I feel it may come up later on in a trial or contribute to me ending up in a padded cell somewhere, so you'll just have to sit and wonder, I'm afraid.

OKAY, onto the cartoon series. The important thing to remember about the cartoon series is that it had two iterations. The run of the Mr Bean cartoon was aired in the early 2000's. Rowan Atkinson was apparently in the writer's room for it, and Mr Bean, like in official media, is semi-mute in it. He often just emotes using various grunts, but can utter short sentences. The animation is very fluid and the characters frequently go off model in order to appear more expressive. The episode plots were also pretty off the wall in comparison to the second iteration. You know the Citadel of Ricks in Rick and Morty, where Rick meets a whole space ship full of identical clones of himself? Yeah, it's canon to Mr Bean too, but y'know. It's the Citadel of Beans, I guess.

youtube

In case the embedded timestamp doesn't automatically work, jump to 9:02 and watch until at least 9:13. Or don't watch any of it at all. Your call. Also no, it's not a dream sequence or anything like that, it's fully canon and really happening. It also implies that Mr Bean remembers that he's an alien for the rest of the series. The scene even ends with the direct implication that the fan theory that live action Mr Bean is an alien IS correct. (Some have speculated that he was perhaps a fallen angel too.) By the way, I'm linking to a shitty fan reupload so this Mr Bean clip instead of any of the readily available public resources because fuck YOU Mr Bean, I refuse to give you your now undeserved 10th of a cent in ad revenue after your DISGRACEFUL NFT line. More on that later.

After they finished up with the early 2000's cartoon series, the show went off the air for a literal decade and then they brought it back, out of nowhere, with rigid (and decidedly cheaper to produce) digital animation. You could compare the change in animation to, say, The Simpsons or Family Guy, where the art style remains the same for every design/background that's borrowed from the older seasons, but now everything moves stiffly/robotically. Newer one-off character designs are also way flatter and less cartoonish, as if the creative juices that went into the original cartoon series are... gone.

I have to say, I haven't seen all of these episodes because they're really not very good. The writing is a lot worse. Mr Bean just constantly talks for some reason, which feels like a pretty stark abandonment of the core tenets of the character imo. Come to think of it, the other recurring characters (like his landlord, Mrs Wicket) is also strangely out of character. Long story short, they just don't care anymore.

The funny thing about the baffling Mr Bean NFT line is that, well, there's basically 4 'eras' of Mr Bean... at least, according to how I group it. Era 1 is the live action series, era 2 is made up of the 2 feature length Mr Bean movies (I group them together, despite them coming out over a decade apart as they don't really connect directly to the main Mr Bean lore and take place outside of London), era 3 is the early 2000's run of the cartoon, and the era 4 is the 2010's cartoon reboot.

Of ALL of the 4 possible places they could pull content from, only ONE iteration of Mr Bean contained digital, pre-cropped assets... The cartoon reboot, which the production company that owns the rights to the character (Tiger Aspect Productions) obviously had, leading to this really strange revisionism (more or less gaslighting) from the Mr Bean brand, like "hey, remember Mr Bean? Remember him? He has an NFT line now! Remember Mr Bean? BUY BUY BUY" Which is funny, because statistically, of all of the four eras, the shitty cartoon reboot is the only era that does not contain anything that interesting to talk about, and is the only one that doesn't contain memorable Mr Bean media, arguably.

Some people 100% remember the time Mr Bean put an armchair on TOP of his car and drove it around in the live action series. Some people remember watching the movies in the theater as a kid and some people remember the zany episodes of the early cartoon series, which aired on Nickelodeon owned channels in the early 2000's... Nobody remembers the time Mr Bean set up a pizza place called 'pizza bean'. Seriously, there's several episodes in the new animated series where the guy just starts up a get rich quick scheme, which falls apart by the end of the episode. It's like Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, except instead of the Ed boys, you're stuck in an elevator alone with an our of character Mr Bean.

So, yeah, the company REALLY milked the final seasons of the cartoon, despite it being the worst Mr Bean content, because that way, they could produce easy content that didn't require any more work. They don't even get Rowan Atkinson in for voices most of the time they make 'new material', just using recycled clips from a Mr Bean soundboard. The entire NFT line, by the way, is just random frames from the cartoon reboot placed against re-used backgrounds from the show, or just in front of a gradient/solid colour. Pretty cheeky given that they minted these NFTS for, get this, over $100 each. I personally wouldn't even accept someone else's money in exchange for having to own a Mr Bean NFT, so I can't imagine who'd actually spend their hard earned money on such a thing.

I could keep going, but sooner or later, an Al-Qaeda sniper is gonna take me out if I keep typing, so best quit while I'm ahead. You were a FOOL to have read this

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lizhly-writes · 5 months ago

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if i 1) ever wrote chronologically 2) had a hard commitment to finish this story, this would kind of be considered spoilers for my weird little chen liwei/wu youxuan offshoot au. since i 1) write wildly out-of-order 2) have never finished a single goddamn story in my entire life -- up to you if you read this, i guess lol

Once Wu Youxuan got over the shock of seeing his ex-boyfriend for the first time in... ever, it was almost nostalgic. It reminded him of the day they had met. Back then, Chen Liwei wanted to kill him. Right now, Chen Liwei also wanted to kill him.

This wasn't hard to guess. Chen Liwei was smiling, but it was the professional, customer-service smile of someone who deeply wanted to commit murder. Every now and then, Wu Youxuan would glance away from the boss's speech only to find Chen Liwei glaring at him.

Wu Youxuan wondered if Chen Liwei could actually kill him now. As teenagers, it was no question; Chen Liwei had been bigger, stronger, and more experienced. If Chen Liwei wanted Wu Youxuan dead, Wu Youxuan would be dead. Now... well, Wu Youxuan was a little more difficult to kill now.

The moment the meeting was over, Chen Liwei stalked towards him, teeth bared. "If I could have a moment of Wu-xiansheng's time," he said. It was not a question. Chen Liwei was going to have a moment of Wu-xiansheng's time, consequences of antagonizing another company's representative be damned.

"I'm a little busy," Wu Youxuan blurted out, and then cursed himself for it. He knew better by now. There were ways to speak without making it sound like he wanted to run away. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to run away in the first place.

Chen Liwei's lips thinned. "This won't take long."

Somehow, Wu Youxuan ended up getting bullied into an empty office. Chen Liwei shut the door behind them, smile dropping favor of pure hostility.

Wu Youxuan had, when he was younger, fantasized about meeting Chen Liwei again. He'd been... unhappy... so, in lieu of any actual joy in his life, he'd concocted some sugar-filled confection of a reunion in a pathetic attempt to make himself feel better. He had shoved every stupid fluffy romance trope he'd ever seen into his imagination. Flowers, chocolates, dramatic declarations of love, six hours in bed to make up for lost time.

It was stupid and sentimental, but at eighteen years old, he'd still been stupid and sentimental about Chen Liwei. After a year or so, Wu Youxuan had lost the desire to dream about this kind of thing, but if he was asked, he'd have to admit that he liked the thought that Chen Liwei would at least be happy to see him.

Suffice to say, Chen Liwei was not happy to see him.

"Where have you been," Chen Liwei hissed, fisting his hand in Wu Youxuan's collar and pulling, just like the violent thug he'd been as a teenager. He looked respectable now -- well-groomed, hair neatly slicked back, clothes decent quality and wrinkle-free. Wu Youxuan had never really imagined him in a suit, but it worked. With a face like that, Chen Liwei could make a lot of things work.

After all these years, Chen Liwei was still very beautiful. Was, quite possibly, even more beautiful than before.

"Well," Wu Youxuan said diplomatically, and stopped there. He'd never really thought he'd had to explain himself -- he never thought he'd see Chen Liwei again -- so he'd never come up with a script for the occasion. His mind, at the moment, was curiously blank.

"It has been over a decade," Chen Liwei said, each word pronounced with an astounding amount of vitriol. "Where did you go?"

Wu Youxuan thought, over the years, he'd become quite good at improvisation. It was becoming apparent that he was very wrong about this. Confronted with Chen Liwei, he couldn't think of anything better to say than, 'I joined a gang', which, while true, was something he wasn't exactly supposed to admit.

"I was occupied," Wu Youxuan said delicately.

Chen Liwei sneered. "So occupied you couldn't even say you were fucking leaving?"

"It was a surprise--"

"Yeah I was surprised --"

"There was something I had to handle --"

"And you couldn't call? You couldn't write? Not even once in ten goddamn years?"

... It was accurate to say that Wu Youxuan couldn't call. It was also accurate to say that Wu Youxuan hadn't wanted to call. Early on, he had thought about it, but... even if he had, what could he say to Chen Liwei that would have helped? "Sorry, I'm now part of the criminal underground, don't look for me?"

What good would that have done anyone?

"I," Chen Liwei said, and abruptly lowered his head. "I thought you were dead."

#my writing #chen liwei #wu youxuan

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feathers-feathers · 1 year ago

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Bug Fables' deep lore is engaging in open warfare with my mental helath i swear to GOD I CAnt figure this tHE FUCK OUT IM GOING INSANE

Context: I'm trying to make a timeline. Bug fables took this personally.

The big question here that got me to break is what the fuck is the deal with Flower Gods? So I was writing an essay of sorts to try and figure it out as I go, then clean it up and post it when I came to a few satisfying conclusions, and maybe make a poll to see what others would prefer.

I have now lost at least a decade of my lifespan, and will be seeking reparations in the court of law. I'll post what I wrote below the cut, just be aware that it's not finished, will not be finished if I have a gun to my head, and jumps places every now and then because that's just how I roll in the drafting stage.

I hope to all the gods above that some of you can find sense where I have failed.

Beware: Here be dragons. (Also, it's quite long.)

BEGIN

Currently doing timeline shenanigans with Bug Fables. I learned something in the lore that will have a major impact in how that timeline manifests. The problem is that this lore detail isn't exactly straight-forward, and has multiple interpretations. I'd like to see some other thoughts on this matter before I make a decision. The lore in question is regarding the creation of the Flower Gods.

A reminder: There is a secret room in Snakemouth Den that displays information regarding the 3 Flower Gods. Prior to seeing this room, most I think didn't even know there were 3 - only knowing of Venus at the time. The other two are Mars and Pluto. These displays tell us a few things. Some information on the gods themselves: Venus is

Guardian: M-001 "Mars" Age: 361 Status: Stable

Guardian: V-012 "Venus" Age: 358 Status: Stable

Guardian: P-183 "Pluto" Age: 34 Status: Stable

This secret asks a whole bunch of questions and answers exactly none of them.

The first thought I see many people go to is that this, of course, confirms that the Roaches created them. However, there is dialogue from Venus herself stating "Ah, it still feels like it was yesterday when they were scurrying around the land trying to get stuff together!" Which doesn't say much, but sort of implies that she was around while the Roaches were still figuring things out.

But what about those designations, what do they mean? For something like this - and considering they all start with the first letter of the Guardian's name - I think it's, like, a version number.

If they were all created by the Roaches, then… wtf? So with Mars, they got it right on their very first try - congratulations, a fucking GOD is born - but their next Guardian took 12 attempts? What? And then Pluto took 183 attempts. And the time discrepancy is just…. weird. Wtf does this mean? The Roaches started off as the best scientists ever, getting everything correct on their first go, then suddenly dropping the ball off the face of the Earth and getting nothing right? For centuries? And after all of that, they consider the Sapling to be their greatest creation. Not any of the Actual Deities they supposedly made. And then they place two of these gods in… just… entirely different territories. Mars is in the Eastern lands. Lord knows where Pluto is, but not Bugaria, that's for sure. I do find this rather unpalatable.

If they weren't created by the Roaches - they were just studying them, trying to replicate their power - I think that fits some of this better. Especially that above quote by Venus. If she was around before the Roaches developed what they have now - the Roaches being the first bugs to awaken - then did she awaken before even them? If she - and, perhaps, Mars - were the first to awaken, then was the Day of Awakening only around 370 years ago? That would probably be the best case scenario for developing a timeline. It'd be the only True Date that can be nailed down, and make it a lot easier to place other dates around it by comparison.

But still… what's the deal with the version numbers? Perhaps the Guardians do not have true immortality, but ressurrective immortality? That would sort imply that Pluto might in fact be the first, and he's on his 183'd life. It would also mean that Mars would actually be the youngest of the gods. Despite being the oldest current version, he is still only on his First version - no deaths, no resurrections. This would also mean that Pluto died around the time the Roaches vanished. But also - if Pluto died 182 times prior to his current iteration… what the fuck kind of life is this guy living? Is he stuck in a death loop, wtf?

This is honestly just another discrepancy, to me. Lets be as conservative as possible and say that most of Pluto's lives were all around 30 years in length. This is so conservative as to be ridiculous, but let's just ignore that. 183 x 30 = 5490. That's Fucking Old - and I'm gonna say, just as ridiculous. Why, then, would the other two gods only have a few years of an age gap? This feels like a strong point towards the idea that the Roaches created them??? that the designations are version numbers before deployment and not ressurrective iterations???

Oh My God. What the fuck am I supposed to believe?

BREAK

This is where I officially gave up. I hate all of these ideas none of them are satisfactory. Bug Fables why do you hate me so muchae dsafsafgfghrdsgrdfeignbreoiatghnbfrabgifrhdfhdfghdfsghdfizghsregtbdfsgfcuigh

#bug fables #dear god help me figure this out #i havent slept for weeks #i missed so many calls #what year is it?#is silksong out yet?#long post #unfinished essay

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megacross-ground-zero-rated-r · 3 months ago

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Okay, how can you be just a little notes blog???

Your thoughts, your descriptions, your analyses... they are priceless

I was tired AF and hurt in my bed, and I was swirling around in tumblr, searching something new about my favorite private detective and I fall on your blog

And I see you barely have notes

Such a waste

Anyway no I didn't read a lot of your stuff because right now I was searching if you have an Ao3 account or something

Because you have to... you have to have write fanfiction, yeah? Please?

Anywah, now you are stuck with me as a fan

Hey, glad to hear you like everything. Sorry to hear about the pain you're in.

I wouldn't call it a waste. Sure, I haven't gotten the attention I wanted, but it's still been a fun ride.

As for publishing anything...

I've been writing fic for nearly a decade and a lot of it has been just playing with characters like dolls for the hell of it. I published one thing years ago and took it down about a month after. I don't know if I'll actually publish fic online again but if I do, I want at least five fics done before I die. Might be one-shots, might be multi-chapter, not sure yet.

I'm trying my damnedest to get on T but money's fuckin' tight right now, that goal definitely takes precedent over finishing a story.

I'm very curious to know what specific thing about Nick Valentine and/or Conrad Kellogg I posted hooked your interest.

For years now I've had the idea of Nick and Kellogg’s ghost learning to share Nick's skull peacefully once Kellogg proves he's not an active threat, not out for revenge, just not ready to leave yet because he's unsure of the state of his mortal soul. He doesn't know what's going to happen to him if they attempt to delete him, so he begs Nick to let him stay, and the two become friends and/or lovers from there.

No disrespect to people who like Possessed Nick stories where Kellogg is actively aggressive or trying to take over, I just lost interest in those pretty quick and wanted to see how it would work out if they agree he has to stay hidden from other people in Nick’s life, but Kellogg will ONLY possess Nick and hurt him if he tries to purge the ghost before he's ready to go. Always acting in self defense and demanding respect as his own person within their shared body / mind.

In Megacross: Ground Zero specifically Kellogg / Conrad Cereal falls into obsessive love with Nick, as the only thing he could cling to to stay alive, and Toon!Nick falls to his worst human impulses, anger and jealousy and his insistence that he has everything under control. He Has To Have Everything Under His Control. He backslides into repressive ideals surrounded by a "Pre-War" ((read: late 40's early 50's)) society and becomes obsessed with Kellogg / Conrad ruining his reputation.

Which may or may not result in him being chased by a horrific representation of his fear of his own Id. His human, needy, embarrassing desires.

Further complicated by the fact Toon!Nick doesn't remember any of their time living together.

#whatever the case I'm glad to have you here #I'm going on a Springtrap / variants of William Afton kick at the moment #nick valentine #conrad cereal #conrad kellogg #I LOVE LOVE LOVE robots and the question of what it means to be in control

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batsplat · 4 months ago

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your negative takes on recent tennis rivalries pleaseeee🙏🙏🙏

ps. you’re a treasure

okay so I'll do the copy paste thing from what I did just cut from the initial post, which was my polite 'I'm attempting to write a reasonably neutral post' approach

so, this may come as a shock, but obviously I'm a bit of a fan of rivalries. we do have some bangers in tennis history, rich narrative texts, but... well. the landscape out there hasn't been great for the past decade or so. sometimes you can get invested in match-ups between specific players that are fun to watch and interesting tennis-wise, but it's all very much about the sport rather than the personal relationships between the different players. I enjoy matches between all three or ryba, sabs and iga!! but also. they are coworkers. you do kindaaaa get the sense sabs and iga aren't particularly fond of each of other, but it's all perfectly cordial. again, the tennis is great, I support them in all their endeavours, but it's very much the tennis itself you need to look for for the drama (also they don't play each other as much as I'd like, but that's a conversation for a different day)

you do still sometimes get some fun beef but it's very much isolated dumb stuff like the fritz/rinderknech "have a nice flight home" thing. this isn't going anywhere story-wise but it's fun in the moment

speaking of men. obviously the most important rivalries for the last however many years have been between various big three/four members, and federer/nadal specifically is extremely popular. tennis-wise, I still think federer/djokovic was the most fun match-up, and at least there was a little tension there because federer used to hate djokovic. they've played a lot of matches that are worth watching!! also they've finally mostly retired so it's not super relevant any more, but well tennis fans as a collective are very big three-pilled so you'll hear a lot about these blokes

and now there's alcaraz/sinner. they've only really had one match that was good start to finish (uso 2022), but definitely some fun ones (miami 2023 and wimbledon 2022 are probably the other ones that stand out, their most recent match was very much in the 'long does not equal good' category). plus, they're quite good at producing highlight reel content, like this one point everyone remembers (shown here from every angle... tennistv produces longer videos for single points than the wta releases for most finals). it's an interpersonally warm rivalry between two young guys who are both very successful and will presumably win everything for the next decade. again, I'd suggest trying to become a fan of one of those two

this was the polite way of phrasing it!! everything below here is quite rude and negative, peace and love to all

okay, let's ditch the thin veneer of neutrality, here's what I actually think: it is completely baffling to me how popular quite a few of these rivalries are, I don't get it, I have never understood it, I will never understand it. tennis went 'what if we had rivalries without narrative tension' and everyone just kinda rolled with that? mind you federer/nadal early confrontations were happening at the same time as clijsters/henin, who were like?? dude it got so bad henin said she had never been friends with clijsters so nothing clijsters and her father said could hurt her ("nothing was broken between us because there was nothing to break" ???? ffs). which is obviously not true!! but it's so... she denied the friendship ever existed and called it all pr like that's so SAD! look, this is beside the point, I'm not talking about henin/clijsters here, I do understand why people aren't that into a rivalry that was at its peak like two decades ago and federer/nadal were still playing slam finals in 2k17 (a dark dark time for some fans, federer had already HAD his decline and then he was suddenly winning slams again like tf). and to some extent I go 'well clearly people will just be into anything if you have two successful blokes' but there's clearly quite a lot of genuine passion there? like I'm not denying the passion EXISTS, people do clearly care about these guys, it's not all a psyop by Big Fedal who have suckered people into caring for these two dudes. and I'm not denying the tennis is great! I still personally prefer the match-ups that involve djokovic, and also the match-ups that involve none of those three, but fundamentally I have been watching these matches for like!! so many years! it's part of my childhood, I have enjoyed plenty of these matches, the tennis is obviously otherworldly. I have hot takes on a bunch of their matches, I can have the goat debate with you, I can give you the rundown on surface-specific match-ups and how long since nadal won a set on hard court against djokovic and federer's peak year domination rate and what they all did at madrid and blue clay and yec and golden masters and all that shit, of course it's part of my dna as a tennis viewer too!! I did usually have a slight order of preference in my head when I was watching big three match ups to have someone to root for (it's different now but back when I was a kid it was djokovic > nadal > federer, these days federer's redeemed himself a little bit in my eyes by having the decency to retire and I was radicalised against nadal). but like!! what's the narrative hook! I need somebody to explain to me what the story here is. these guys are all very good at tennis and they are racking up their titles and it's so!! whatever!! no tension no arc no real interpersonal development once federer stopped being so bitchy about djokovic. twenty plus slams who CARES, what are they doing this for! it's all so?? ugh

anyway now that I've taken a potshot at the most popular rivalry in men's tennis, I should quickly back it up by saying I feel almost the exact same way about the second most popular one (at least on tumblr) and also feel nothing for alcaraz/sinner. that one was still like... vaguely palpable? when alcaraz was clearly a way better player but struggled in that match up and also was way more invested in the rivalry than sinner was. but well, sinner is world number one now so THAT'S been ruined. again, sit me down and explain to me what the narrative stakes here are. like, if sinner wins that roland garros match, he'll be fine? alcaraz will be fine? everyone will be fine? their relationship is basically 'friendly coworkers', zero chance of anything more substantial developing there. now, don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna pretend like I'm massively into the current state of the women's game when it comes to rivalries either, but at least I have a base level of fondness there for the top players and am ideologically inclined to hype up any rivalries there whenever they come along. also, quite frankly, it DOES matter viscerally more to them!! iga spends a lot of her time kinda like,,, on the edge, the way she was in tears when getting physio after the naomi match, united cup last year, a bunch of her 2021 matches, like she's so intense and so tightly strung on the court that you do really get the sense that a loss could just cause her to have an existential crisis. there's so many unanswered questions about her ultimate potential off clay, I'm still proper curious about her story develops. and then with aryna, she's obviously ALSO so intense but in a different way, and she feels every single emotion so completely and entirely and iga has beaten her in one of those infamous semifinal chokes and it's kinda... you know, aryna also feels like she has something to prove, and you can tell they both really really want to beat each other. there's something there!! it's something real! I'm always seated whenever we actually get to see them play

that being said, yes, obviously I do think we're not exactly peak rivalry potential in either gender. the men's is more egregious because the way the game has shaken out since like,,,, 2004, is incredible top level domination by just a few guys. and now, yes, I'm aware I'm a fan of another sport where this was also incredibly true. but. the key difference is that the aliens had the decency to not be so fucking boring about it. sure on paper they were as a PACK winning everything, but good lord were they screaming crying throwing up whenever things went mildly wrong for them. like!! they despised each other and they needed to beat each other, which makes ME care!! I'm not saying I NEED rivals to hate each other, though it sure does help for my investment levels, but I need a narrative hook! borg/mcenroe had a narrative hook, evert/navratilova had a narrative hook (unfortunately that narrative hook these days is 'being united in transphobia'), agassi/sampras had one HELL of a narrative hook. noughties wta tennis about fifty million narrative hooks!! when I watch alcaraz/sinner, I just try and enjoy the tennis (though their roland garros match was mid as shit so what's that all about) but like... I don't care? or I care because one of them has pissed me off recently. I do fundamentally watch most of men's tennis as a hater, and admittedly this is accumulated bitterness over way too many years, but I do also think it's frustrating! tennis gets in its own way with this whole gentleman's sport business, the amount of wanking people do over federer/nadal in particular is truly insufferable... this is a sport filled with millionaire tax evaders and they'll have you believe that smashing a racquet is not only not fun (obviously it is) but also some kind of arbiter of morality. congrats to nadal for not smashing a racquet in his career!! could we please get his thoughts on gender equality in prize money? oh... okay. hm. this isn't supposed to be some gotcha, these guys all suck. but ultimately I would prefer not to engage with this sanitising and pearl clutching, given they do all suck, over shit that fundamentally does not matter while giving them a pass over all the stuff that DOES and instead maybe just have some fun. maybe you need to be single-minded and kind of dull to be good at men's tennis these days, maybe it's inevitable, doesn't mean I don't find them boring and pointless. there's some people who just enjoy like,,, watching greatness, endlessly racking up numbers and reaching the pinnacle of the sport or whatever, that's not me, I need there to be a story

thing is, right, obviously I'll still watch these matches (though I have massively turned it down this year, especially on the men's side - I did have a kind of breaking point this january where I was like 'wow I don't think I can ever care about anything any more?' and broadly speaking this has proved to be correct). I've tried hard to like a lot of these men because, god knows, it'd be a way more pleasant experience if I could trick my brain into it, but I can't! I think they're dull! fundamentally I'm too embedded in this world to ever be able to leave it. but I think it's funny when fans go 'oh people who are into drama don't appreciate the actual sport' like buddy I can basically guarantee I know more about the sport than you do. I Just Think that actually interpersonal relationships do also enhance the actual sports, like this shit is a conversation right,,, it has its history, it's a development over time in terms of your tactics and your knowledge of your opponent's tactics and so on, your expectations going into every match. when you have an interesting interpersonal dynamic, the sport also becomes more interesting... it's actually pretty straightforward lol. a lot of tennis is in the head, rivalries are also in the head, you're playing the other guy (gender neutral) as much as you are the actual ball. I get super annoyed by fans who are too busy being nostalgic to actually enjoy the players we have now, and I really don't like it when people call iga boring for instance, but I do also have a little bit of that. love the game, hate a lot of the players, simple as. bring back agassi calling his pet parrot more interesting than sampras in his autobiography, we used to be a proper sport

#an exciting post because any potential readers either a) don't know what tf I'm on about or b) hate most of what they just read #I just googled like. rankings of tennis rivalries out of curiosity #and I just found one that had murray/djokovic above the williams sisters which... no? obviously not?#how do NONE of these have clijsters/henin like come on. you people all suck #if feminism were real they would have fifty million fics on ao3 #agassi's 1995 had more narrative juice than most of these fuckers can manage in a lifetime #//#batsplat responds #gonna do the other tennis asks tomorrow because I did realise I wanted to add. one or two things to those too #this is still the toned down version like some of my messages include some proper nasty rants but that's. not going public #this is obviously NOT going in the main tennis tag... eh. I'll come up with my own at some point #my most toxic tumblr trait is following a bunch of people for motorsports purposes #and then having a 'one strike and you're out' policy for any tennis I see from anyone who isn't a mutual #get that shit OFF my dash I do NOT want to see it #well I suppose I wouldn't unfollow for women's tennis but I never see that now do I

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