#i know they're not the same but they're on such opposite ends of the spectrum it's so funny

[kazuchuu]

Alternating between TFP and Earthspark episodes is some serious emotional whiplash, especially with Megatron scenes

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

TADC: Thoughts on Jax in Episode 2

Thoughts on Jax after Amazing Digital Circus Episode 2 Dropped.

Massive spoilers below the cut. Just watch the ep before you read.

Amazing Digital Circus had an amazing second episode as we're introduced more to what the adventures are like, and what NPCs are like and ofc the existential horror of being a living AI only created for a source of entertainment.

Also, I love the dream sequence at the beginning, because we actually get some deeper insight into Pomni's thoughts on Ragatha. Feeling like her helpfulness is the guise of like "man, you're not cut out for this like the rest of us" which is typically something a lot of people who have been bullied in highschool perceive genuine acts of kindness and engagement. (which I kind of suspect Pomni might have been, or at least, been a shut-in and didn't have a lot of friends in her human life. )

Jax wasn't really the main focus of the episode, but it wasn't really until the end of the episode I understood his behavior and what this episode is foreshadowing overall.

Since while Jax isn't the focus emotionally, he is definitely the plot device to push things forward. And I mean, a plot device in a very active and quite literal way. He's the one that causes Pomni to clip out of the map, takes advantage of everyone and is just... genuinely an unpleasant person.

I actually really like this.

As, I know the first episode in the digital circus, many people (me included) could perceive or analyze Jax's actions as someone who is "helping" in a roundabout asshole way. Episode Two has none of that here. He just wants Bloodshed, And I love that we're getting additional context on his character.

It's hard to tell how much fan reception Gooseworx saw of episode one before episode two hit production, so I don't know how much of the fandom perception of Jax had an influence on the writing process, but I can't deny that might have been a factor in assuring us "no he's not secretly helpful, he's just an asshole" But I'm just going to assume that this has been part of his characterization from the start and it becomes way more clear as the episode goes on.

But there was something in his behavior throughout this whole episode that seemed off to me. Like Jax was taking up a majority of the B-plot, while Pomni had the A-plot. So I was wondering why Jax seemed to be the protagonist with the B-plot when Pomni was the A-plot when they seemed to be so disconnected with eachother in motivations and telling us things about the characters.

But then it hit me when the episode ended and the two plots merged together.

"who... knows... what could happen..."

And then it hit me.

Pomni finds comfort in an NPC who is going through a similar experience to her and can emphasize, despite their being other humans who have gone through the same thing, due to her self-admitting to being a loner in her human life. Well, she didn't admit it outright, but from how she perceives Ragatha's kindness as an act, or patronizing, it seems like she doesn't have a lot of friends...

Meanwhile... Jax... He treats the adventure like a videogame. Why shouldn't he? He's trapped in a videogame, right? But it really goes beyond that.

The fellow humans that Jax is trapped with, he treats THEM like they're NPCs, while Pomni treats the NPC like they're human.

Jax says to Gangle "Aren't you supposed to be the suggestible one?" Which you wouldn't typically wouldn't say to a person, right? That's something you would say more about a character that you maxed out the dialogue trees in.

He calls Pomni "His Bridge" even.

They're his objects. His tools, his own npcs he's exhausted the dialogue options on.

Jax dehumanizes the players in a way that Pomni humanizes the NPCS.

These are two opposite ends of the spectrum but what really sold it for me was Jax's reaction to the funeral.

And Jax is the one member out of the cast who doesn't even show up to the funeral. (aside from Caine and Bubble but they are AI.)

He does NOT want to think about the Players as real people. And showing that opposite perspective compared to Pomni I think is much as important going forward.

Jax was the plot catalyst of this entire episode, and served the thematic theme of the episode quite well, even if it didn't look like it on first glance.

I absolutely loved this episode and I can't wait for more.

Also... Poor Pomni can't have shit in Detroit

[yawnderu]

hi, i've only discovered your writing recently but i can't even explain how much i love it 😭 it's like that one anon who i think said that it feels very real, like you're getting 4k ultra hd 8d view of the scene lol 🩷

i really like your bimbo reader posts but i also sort of enjoy seeing them from this point of view that's like.... "this is not his gfs """"constant"""" style but he just lets her be in this kind of persona sometimes because it's relaxing to let him do all the work and thinking for her from time to time".

i hope this makes sense 😭 thank you for writing something that's this cute and wholesome i just love it

Thank you so much sweetheart, this is really lovely!! 😭😭😭<3

Yeah!! I totally get where you're coming from!! She's not exactly dumb, it's actually quite the opposite. I'd like to hc her as a girl who managed to get into a very good university and is studying astrophysics simply because she liked watching stars as a child. She's not dumb— just a girl who grew up extremely sheltered and hasn't seen the world through the eyes of someone who has had a difficult life, like Simon.

There's certain naivety that while it can be dangerous, she's been learning more and more about with Simon's help about stranger danger and trusting her instinct, but the girl is always surrounded by people who enjoy seeing her thrive and always teach her the things that her parents didn't.

I'd say in general she has a very good life, and now paired with Simon, someone whose entire soul wants to see her thrive?? She gets to turn off her brain and simply let him take control— he sometimes picks her clothes for her, dressing her up to the best of his capacity even when he's not a fashion guy.

This man has studied all her Instagram pictures because she's mesmerizing and he loves her that much, yet it also gives him the chance to more or less know what combinations she likes to wear. He still remembers the time she looked at him like he grew a second head for trying to make her wear dots and lines— but he never made that same mistake again.

They work surprisingly well together despite basically being on complete opposite sides of a spectrum, and at the end of the day, they work this well because they're both equally in love with the other.

Simon is level-headed and that gives her the chance to simply be herself without worrying about anything, he gives her a sense of security that she's never gotten with anyone else, while bimbo!reader gives Simon the love and affection he never even dared to think about. The main thing is that she looks and treats him like he's worth something how good of a soldier he is. Hell, she doesn't even know he's a soldier, she simply found the most brooding and intimidating guy and fell in love with him before she even knew it.

They both spoil each other a lot. Simon buys her things, treats her with patience and love, and generally treats her like the princess that she is, while she takes care of Simon like no other. She does face masks with him, gives him massages, does his manicure (trimming and cleaning his nails, putting lotion on his calloused hands), and is overall as patient as they come.

They're a pretty wholesome pair and quite honestly I enjoy writing about them a lot, the love they have for each other is fully pure and it makes me happy. :')

Sorry for going off here HJBEFJBHKFEHBKJEFHBJK I wrote too much but God, I love this pair SO fucking much

Bimbo!Reader Masterlist

[lena-thinks-too-much]

Random Batfam Headcanon:

The batkids have different levels of separation for when Bruce is Bruce and when he's batman

Jason has zero separation. For him they are one and the same and it's largely the cause of their issues. He can't separate the vigilante from his dad. He refers to Bruce and batman interchangeably.

Tim is on the opposite side of the spectrum. To him Bruce and batman are completely distinct individuals. Tim viewed robin as almost a job that you clock in and get your hours. There are aspects of tim that are integral to his vigilante work it is not his central identity. While he understands that it's not the same for Bruce and that Batman is more than just a job for him, he still applies a similar mentality towards him. In the mask or while doing anything related to vigilante work he's batman. If he's giving any degree of an emotional display, he's Bruce.

Dick's the most in tune with Bruce's state of mind. It doesn't really matter if he's in uniform or not, his distinction between batman and Bruce is more based on behavior and context. Sometimes he might look like Batman but one of his kids are hurt and the only person he can be is Bruce the dad. Sometimes he's out in civvies in public but every muscle is tense and dick knows he's looking at batman not his dad.

Damian, very much like Jason, struggles to separate Bruce from batman. To him they're one and the same. His Dad is Batman. That's what he was raised to believe and to him Bruce is inherently always Batman. It causes some tension for him too, but not as much as it does Jason.

Cass is similar to Dick but to a lesser degree. She's able to tell when his actions comes from Batman the vigilante versus Bruce the Dad, but, to her, the separation isn't as important as it is to her brothers. Bruce and Batman are both two parts of the same person and to Cass he will always be the combined whole

Steph doesn't really see a difference between Bruce and Batman. But to her them being the same person doesn't really matter. Idk neither Bruce nor Steph really give that much of a shit about each other. They tried to work together, it was a train wreck. They just kinda coexist when they need to and ignore each other's existence when they don't.

Duke is still figuring out where Bruce ends and Batman begins. Ironically he might have the healthiest approach to this. He understands that Bruce and Batman are two identities with a lot of overlap so his separation has less to do with identifying what's going on with Bruce and more just keeping the identities separate for security purposes. In the mask he's Batman because Signal can't be caught calling him Bruce. Any other time he's Bruce because Bruce Wayne is not a superhero, no siree.

Bonus:

For Bruce himself Batman is his true identity. Bruce is only slightly more real than Brucie. I don't remember if it was in a comic or a show, but there is a scene where someone subjects Bruce to a truth serum or something to find out his identity and we find out that even in his inner monologue he thinks of himself as Batman not Bruce. He has his own distinction and is able to compartmentalize his more vulnerable and emotional sides when he needs to. But we all know Bruce isn't great at emotionally removing himself ever.

Conversely, for Alfred, he is always Bruce. Cowl or no cowl, that is the boy he raised and it will always be that way.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Errors, "Errors," and Sci Fi: The Nail Gun Gray Zone

I have more thoughts on errors in sci fi, specifically what does and does not count as an error. So I made a graph.

I'm a firm believer that at some point, your story will just be better if you bend certain rules of reality. A story with 100% realistic gun battles will be impossible for audiences to follow. One with ultra-realistic dialog will be boring and impossible to follow.

HOWEVER. Ice floats in water. Residents of now-Phoenix in the 1700s might've not known that, but it's hard to imagine anyone alive today who hasn't at minimum seen an image of a drink with ice in it. So GI Joe (2009) hinging a major plot point on a block of ice sinking in liquid water is widely regarded as silly and world-breaking. Same goes for The Strangers (2008) making a character unable to use her phone while it's plugged in and charging. Even in 2008, a solid majority of U.S. moviegoers owned cell phones and regularly used them as they were plugged in. Errors. Firmly.

But on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have "errors" that only bug a small subset of your audience with relevant expertise. You can always count on some of that subset to take to Reddit and whine pedantically about a 10-round gun firing 11 rounds, but I doubt those count as errors. My personal example is the lack of a character named Surprise in Inside Out — I've studied and taught Paul Ekman's theories, so to me the fact that they included only 5 of his 6 "universal" affects is always going to look weird. But I know that's less an error than a pet peeve, because there wouldn't be much for the character Surprise to do that isn't taken up by Fear or Joy. (The sequel also has a Surprise-ish and a Contempt-ish character, so there's that.) Same goes for the water main not being pressurized correctly in Batman Begins — I'll take city planners' word for it that Scarecrow's plan wouldn't work, but COME ON. It's a sci fi movie about a furry who makes a living punching aliens. If you want realism, watch a documentary.

That said. There's also that middle zone. What I call the Nail Gun Gray Zone, because it really is hard to tell how much some errors are obscure and piddly, how much they're mainstream and obvious. Because. Nail guns can't shoot nails. They're not projectile weapons. Not unless the story takes the time to show a character modifying the tool to override the fact that it has to be pressed flush against a board before it will fire. BUT. If you told me "99% of modern Americans know that!" I'd believe you. If you told me "only professional contractors know that!" I'd believe you. That poll clarified basically nothing — roughly 25% of respondents had used a nail gun, ~25% didn't know much about them, and ~50% had only seen one used. (I didn't ask "do you know that a nail gun can't be used as a projectile weapon" because then anyone who read the question should by definition answer "yes.")

Anyway, I think that a lot of online arguments about errors/"errors" in sci fi can be captured by the Nail Gun Gray Zone. Most of us can agree that only pedantic blowhards would say that the lack of Surprise ruins Inside Out, and most of us can agree that it'd be nice if The Strangers had simply broken Kristen's phone. Nail guns? One person's "oh come on, that looks ridiculous!" is another person's "it's called a nail gun, right? so why not use it like a gun?" and I don't think doing more polls will resolve it one way or another.

[netherfeildren]

Kiss, Kiss, Kill, Kill!

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Summary: Joel is a long haul truck driver. One day he finds a pretty girl in a diner and decides he’d like to keep her. 

Murder and sex ensue!

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: No outbreak; Graphic depictions of violence; Murder; Blood; Gore; Threat of SA; Impotence; Unprotected sex; Creampie; Loss of virginity; Virginity kink; Breeding kink; Spit kink; Rough sex; Blood mention; Pussy slapping; Dark!Joel; Mean!Joel (also kinda crazy and pathetic); Obsessive behavior; Possessive behavior; Discussions of suicidal ideations; Unreliable narrators; Alcoholism; Consensual non consent kind of (But not previously discussed - they're both into it tho); Use of misogynistic language; Grief

A/N: Hi :) Another one just bc I have no self control. 

Parts of the narrative read a little disjointed and/or confusing. This is intentional. I was kind of trying something weird out here, I guess.

Word Count: 9.7K

Read on AO3

The first time Joel sees you, it’s a Thursday. His least hated day of the week, but not his favorite, for he doesn’t really have any favorite things anymore. Your eyes’d stunned him at that first look. They sparkled as if dusted with frost – speared him with an intensity that burned. 

But no… that was a lie, and Joel is trying not to be such a liar anymore. He does have one favorite thing now. This middle-of-nowhere diner, this place where’d he’d found you. 

The first time he’d actually talked to you, you’d interrupted his own stubborn, sour silence with a silence of your own. Different, agonizing, compared to your usual persistent fishing for his attention. 

“What’re you doin’ out here in this wasteland, sweetheart?” Because you look sweet as that cherry pie you’re always trying to push on him. 

“Been here my whole life.” It’s verging on evening, the sky gone to melancholy, and there’s a young girl with dark hair weeping on the shoulder of an older woman in the booth over. He wants to snap at her, demand to know what the fuck she could possibly have to cry over? He’s sure she mustn’t have a dead daughter like him, and so there really seems to be no reason for tears. 

“No plans to leave?”

You shake your head, hum a little, set the coffee pot down on the edge of the table to pop a hip out and think on your answer. “Guess you could say I’m a little bit weak or scared, don’t know.”

“Doubt that,” a surprised laugh forced out of him. Entirely improbable, he knows this just by looking at you. “You’ve got eyes that seem as if they’ve never held fear within them in your entire life.” And he makes you laugh at that, head thrown back, throat rippling. The sound like the tolling of the bell indicating the start of the rest of his life. 

When you’re done gifting him your laughter, you ask, “What about you? Why are you here?”

“My daughter died.” Plain. 

Your eyes seem to shutter or flicker, something like a chimera about them, “When?”

“Two years ago.” He watches the crying girl and the old woman get up to go. And then the two of you are alone. You move to sit in the booth across from him. He’d been coming in here to see you for more than half that time since, and now, the first time the two of you are having an actual conversation, and this is what he’s decided to open with. But really, it’s the only story he has to tell anymore. He watches you watch him for a long moment, as though you’re searching for something within him, or mulling over what it is you want to say to him, the shift of your jaw from side to side as you chew on your words. He feels easily frightened now – fragile – and yet vibrantly malignant, at the same time. A juxtaposition on two opposite ends of the spectrum of good and not so good, or perhaps, verging on very, terribly bad, in the grocery store line of human morality. Two Joel’s at the start and end of the queue who could not seem to come to terms with one another. Enemies – they were enemies of each other. A Joel who’d once had a daughter, and a Joel who now did not. A Joel who’d pulled a trigger at his own temple, and one who’d never even considered such a thing. He draws his finger along the line of scar tissue at his temple.

For a long time he’d wanted to tear a hole in his world and escape, but he was no master of inventiveness. On the contrary, he found his attempt rather miserly – had short changed himself at the last moment and flinched. But perhaps, it had been for this reason – for you, to find you. He wishes he could peer inside your mind, crack open your skull and read everything you’re hiding away from him inside there. A violent thought, but you make him feel slightly violent, or – no, that’s not it – for Joel is already a violent man. It’s more that you pull a specific hue of violence out of him, incite it, like he needs to move, to howl, to claw at something, at you, scream and scream and scream to keep your undivided attention on him forever. 

“I’m sorry for your loss,” you say finally, voice quiet. “How old was she?”

His loss. That was a funny way of putting it. It had never felt like a loss. The word was too small. Four letters was not enough to describe what it really was. There was no word for what it felt like. An emaciation of his very self until he simply ceased to exist. Something that had sucked his soul, his heart, his brain out of his body, but they didnt feel lost. They felt destroyed, decimated, or like they had never existed. Sometimes the feeling left him confused, disoriented – this strange purgatory he’d been relegated to, it was like it had never happened in his mind sometimes, or like it had happened to a different man. Like that life with that beautiful little girl with the green eyes who’d had a father who loved her, who’d then died, had happened to someone else. Someone who wasn’t Joel. Like a war that had raged and raged for centuries, and now nothing was left in its wake. Only that terribly fraught reminder of a violence too grotesque for a human mind to conceive. 

How could he miss something, wish for something so, so, so fucking desperately he’d peel his very skin from his body himself to get it back, but also feel like it didn’t belong to him anymore? Like it had never happened to him, like he remembered it out of his own body? A dream that belonged to someone else, and Joel’d only been told of it second hand. His mind was fractured now, he knew this. He wasn't right – broken or glued together the wrong way. His bones didn’t fit in his joints the way they were supposed to anymore. He was all wrong and ugly and fucked. 

“She was twelve.”

“My whole family’s dead,” you say it almost casually, with a half shrug of your shoulders. “Is that why you started driving? To get away?”

He’s been a long haul truck driver for going on two years now. Started just after Sarah – needed to get away, to get lost. He didn’t enjoy it – he does not enjoy it. Not because the work is bad or boring or what have you, but because he doesn’t enjoy anything anymore. But it’s productive and pays well and… well, he does appreciate the solitude. There is that, at least. He’d been on the route from New Mexico to Washington for several months now, and it was fine. Occasionally, he’d head up to the Dakotas – not so fine, longer, harder trek, but he managed it. He preferred this one, preferred the darkness of the north west corner of the country. He never went further south than New Mexico, though. Absolutely never into Texas. He’d never go back there again. 

“Sure… to get away.” He couldn’t be there anymore afterwards, had nothing left. “My neighbor, Anna, she’s got a teenager, Ellie. Sweet kid. Weird kid,” he laughs fondly, remembering the two of them. “The kid was friends with my daughter, Sarah. And after everything– well, after everything, Anna made sure they both stuck around. Didn’t let me shut myself away the way I wanted to,” ill-shaven recluse, confused, fractured, “They’re good people. You’d like them, I think. They’re… they’re my friends.” They were another reason he kept doing the driving, he liked to send money back to Anna and Ellie. He knew they didn’t need it, didn’t want it, but he had to. He needed to feel like he was still taking care of someone, contributing to someone’s well being. It was just part of who he was. 

“I’m sure I would.”

He watches your silent enrapture as you listen to him tell you of his pseudo life. After a while he’d realized that was all he’d started doing, making his way back to you, to this diner where you work. A sad place for ugly men to stop in on a pause from their interminable journeys and lay eyes on an angel. He hadn’t even really realized that’s what he was purposely doing or that it’d become a pattern. He just needed something to see at the end of the tunnel, a light to look towards when he was lost in the darkness. That’s what you are, a single flickering light in the abyss of darkness he exists in now. 

You’re small – tiny compared to Joel’s own hulking size. He thinks he could break you, easily, if he isn’t careful, if he so felt like it. And you were – you are so fucking pretty. He thinks of you so often. Almost as often as he thinks of his dead daughter which might seem wrong or strange, but it’s really nothing more than the two opposite ends of a spectrum of perfect beauty that he’s known within his lifetime that now he cannot reach either end of. Sarah – dead, forever out of reach. And you. Too perfect for consideration, too beautiful and good for these monstrous hands of his. The thing he’s become in his grief is not worthy of a gorgeous creature like you. His existence post Sarah’s death had become some sort of apocalyptic dysphoria where the only monster here was Joel. But he does like to watch, and he does like to think of you. To come to your diner and sit and watch you serve coffee to your customers – the scum that muddles through here isn’t worthy of laying eyes on you – men like him. Sometimes, when he sits here silently, pretending to ignore you and not be entirely beguiled by you, he feels as if he has a purpose again, like the money for Anna and Ellie, getting to inconspicuously watch over you, make sure no one gives you a hard time gives him purpose. And when he goes, even though he never really wants to, he takes you with him in his mind through the long stretches of his hauls. When there are nothing but ghosts to keep him company. When thoughts of Sarah and that dead life become too overwhelming, he calls you to mind, plans his routes to make his way back to you. 

You’re also fucking persistent – not giving him the chance to wallow away in his silence and brooding. He was rude at first, gruff and unresponsive and wouldn’t ever acknowledge your queries of, How’s it going today, and, Oh, back again I see. Sometimes he wanted to snap and just spit the truth at you, ‘course, I’m fuckin’ back, I’m here to see you, I’m obsessed with you. And rounds and rounds of, Can I get you another cup of coffee? The same as usual? You’d memorized his order. Pestered and pestered and pestered for his name until he’d finally ceded it to you, and, How ‘bout some cherry pie this time? After a while you’d gotten sick of his recalcitrant bullshit and just dropped off the piece of pie, slipping it onto the edge of the table and sliding away without a word or a half look back at him. He’d eaten the whole damn thing, savored it, and caught your sassy, little smirk after he’d finished. He’d wanted to bend you over the counter and spank your ass until you cried after that. He bets you’d taste as sweet as that pie, that if he slapped your cunt enough times he could get it red as a cherry. He bets you’d like that – that you’d like it a little rough, a little dirty, a little mean. You might look like an angel, but Joel’s seen the way you look at him, the way you follow him with your eyes, leaning against the counter, chin cupped in your small palm watching him eat his eggs and drink his coffee. 

You want him. 

But Joel is frightened – frightened and cowardly and not right, and as much as you look like an angel, he also worries you might have the ability to entice him into very, very bad things – to provoke him into depravity, even. There is a part of him, large or small given the day and the mood and the weather that he walks in here on, that has the rotten half of his mind whispering at the not-so-rotten half that he wants to defile and debase you, and that he’s pretty sure you’d like it if he did. He wants to fuck you full of his come and then watch it leak out of your used, gaping hole. Then he wants to lick you clean, kiss it all better so that he can do it all over again.

The first few times he’d stopped at your diner, he’d pretended he hadn’t even noticed you, would lie to himself in his mind and tell himself that he had no interest in a little thing like you. He had no interest in women, in making connections, in having conversations. Occasionally… well– no, not occasionally. Twice, it had happened twice now, when the urge had struck, the itch had become too persistent, and his hand not enough, he’d gotten a hooker. The first time he’d shut down completely, lost his hard on and not been able to finish. The second time… he’d finished. He might’ve even made the woman come, he hadn’t bothered to ask, but he thought he might have. Then he’d gone back to his truck and cried great heaving sobs. Like he’d said… not right, he wasn’t right anymore. Couldn’t even fuck a whore without blubbering like a baby. He’d wondered if perhaps his grief had made him impotent. That’d be funny. That type of funny thing that is also a humiliation… you know the sort?

But after a while, the lie had become too much of a farce, even for his own mind. He knew, from that first moment he’d walked in, and you’d spun around, a bright smile and chirpy, little voice telling him to sit anywhere you’d like, be right with you, mister, that he’d taken notice. More than notice. He’d put you in his pocket that day and had carried you with him in some way since. Like a stone chosen off the beach, washed up by the tide and deposited in the sand just for him to come across, or maybe like a fucking infection, like the plague, for he did not want this. He did not want to think of you. He did not want to think of anyone or anything. He wanted to be alone and without anything or anyone for the rest of his life. If he did not have anyone, if he remained alone, then he could never again experience that loss which was not truly a loss, but something much worse and devastating, and even, perhaps, a little hilarious, in that way that a hilarious thing can also sometimes be humiliating and shameful… there it is. A loss that is not a loss for it is a thing so devastating it becomes something else entirely. A humiliation to one’s very existence, a decimation, emaciation, all the things, all the things, and nothing at the same time.

His mind was wont to ramblings, on occasion now. Perhaps, incoherence, was the better word. Anxiety, as well, panic, tears. Couldn’t even fuck a hooker without weeping, howling, a few sobs. 

He had wandered so far, and sometimes he thought, I want to go home, but of course, that home no longer existed. It had been put in the ground two years ago and lost forever. The dissatisfaction of constant ennui. He could, perhaps, return to the geographical place, but nothing familiar would remain. He couldn’t live with the memory, he couldn’t live away from it. It was like it had simply ceased to exist that day that she’d died, and every moment since that moment was just a series of moments filled with a yearning for some place that no longer existed. He didn’t think he’d ever again feel at home anywhere.

And yet…

He turns back to look at you. 

“How did they die? Your family.”

“Home invasion – murdered. He never found me, hid in the boiler closet.”

“Little rabbit.”

“Hmm,” a huff of a laugh, “Maybe. Someone once said I was lucky. Pretty fucked up, no?”

“Do you feel lucky?”

“Never. Angry – that I’d been left behind.”

“Yeah…”

“Alone.”

“Are you alone?”

You turn back to him. Inspect him. He watches the slant of your eyes take in his hair, his face, wrinkled, haggard, his chest, his arms – he feels a flush flare beneath his ribs, then back up to his eyes. He wonders if you’ve ever been fucked before. You’re young – but he can’t imagine how you wouldn’t have been. He thinks he’d do anything in this moment to get between your thighs, but also, he hopes you haven’t, hopes you could be all his, only his, his his. Mine. 

He hopes he won’t cry if he gets the chance. 

“Entirely,” you say finally. 

“I had– have– ” shakes his head, “I have, I guess, a brother. Tommy. But the last time I saw him… I was horrible.” They seldom saw each other now – lie – they never saw each other now. Truth, Joel. We’re telling the truth now. 

You laugh lightly, shrug, “Happens.”

“Sure…”

“What’d you do to him?”

“Ah, just couldn’t get a handle on myself after everything. Things got bad enough eventually, and we fought… a lot. Violently. I was violent. One morning I got out of hand, terrible – one of my biggest regrets. We hurt each other with our words and our fists, and in that way only two people who know each other too well can. He cracked my ribs, gave me half his orange in the evening, afterwards – said our apologies. He was gone the next day. Haven’t heard from him since. I just got to be too much for him,” he says again, needs to reiterate it, make sure you understand that he is too much and too dark, too unmanageable – ugly. That you should not be sat here with him. That he has a violence within him, and that you should probably run as fast and as far as you can, but that he cannot promise he will not follow. “I had…” he is ashamed of this part, surprising for he sometimes wonders if he still possesses the heart to feel shame, “I had a problem with drink for a while – not anymore, though,” he says quickly. “I promise, not anymore.” He should not be promising you anything. “I got control of it – knew it was making it all worse rather than better. Felt like I was trapped underwater with my damn ghosts – that … What's that thing called when – when sick people get like – like trapped inside themselves or somethin’? You ever heard’a that?”

-

“Locked-in syndrome.”

“Yeah– yeah. I read about that once or heard it somewhere – that’s what it felt like when I was drinkin’ – fuckin’ terrible. Let it go after a while… but by that time… Tommy was gone, done with me. I was – dunno… like some sort of demon or somethin’ – somethin’ bad.” He huffs a small, derisive laugh, looks at you with that ridiculously charming, crooked half smile. 

That laugh sparks a kindling of anger inside of you for him. This is a broken, angry, creature of a man, you think. Something fractured – not whole, and he must be handled with care and gentleness. “How could he just leave you?

“Didn't give him a choice. Sometimes people deserve to be left.”

“I wouldn’t have.” That sobers him, wipes the smile right off his handsome face. You think of the invisible giants hurting this man in some unimaginable fashion; of the endless tenderness coiled up inside of him and how the crushing of that tenderness – the death of it – has given way to what may be considered madness. Because after all these months of watching him, of him watching you, you can see it, recognize that tenderness for what it is, but also the madness, for it is impossible to ignore if you’re really looking. Soft marrow at the center of a hard man. 

“I did other things… worse things.”

“Try me.”

“I tried to kill myself.”

You whistle, long and low. You actually had not been expecting that one, at least, not the admittance of it, “You’re just full of truths,” for looking at him – the sort of man he’s built as, the thought that he could be felled by anything, even his own hand, is a little hard to believe. 

“Feels like a sort of confessional in this–”

“Shithole–”

“Diner–”

Your voices overlap. You both laugh. You think you quite like the sound of your voices intermingling one on top of the other. 

“What happened?”

“Flinched–”

“I flinch all the time.”

“Have you ever thought about killing yourself?”

You hum, tilt your head side to side on your neck as if you’re letting the thought slide from ear to ear within your skull. “Perhaps only the peripheral idea of it, but never with much imagination or dedication. I don’t think I have that much to kill myself over, you know?”

“Your family?”

“Not really – it’s sort of become just this… this thing that happened once. I don’t feel much ownership over it anymore. Don’t know why, exactly.”

“Sure, that’s how I feel about it sometimes too. That belongs to a different man now – like– like some actor or a facsimile, and I just look in on it as if from a distance. Enjoy the sight of someone else's suffering…” He shakes his head, “That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, no, I understand. Something to do in the way that a tragedy can be compelling to watch. You can let go, let go of your awareness of yourself and experience it in a way you’d never do so in the present moment.”

“A dissociation.”

“Yes. Why would you want to go and relive the basest parts of yourself all alone, over and over again? Not likely.”

“But it was me.”

“A dissociation,” you repeat, smile. 

“Yeah,” he pauses, turns the coffee cup round and round with the slow spin of his wrist as if to dissolve the remains of the grounds you know the shitty machine has left deposited at the bottom. There is a small dusting of golden brown hair covering his wrist and disappearing up his forearm beneath his flannel. You want to taste it, follow the trail to places unknown. “Not so well adjusted, us two,” And he laughs then. A real laugh. He lets you have a real laugh of his, and it is powerful – special. 

“Well… no.” Of course not. “I don’t think either of us could ever claim that.”

“Bet you’ve never been bad a single day in your life, have you?”

You cock your head, let your eyes slide from him to peer out the dark window. His lonely semi is parked under the single flare of light out there. The evening has sunk into a deep blue, the hue of mourning, of melancholy, and the pavement is wet with evening rainfall.

You'd heard that some trucks had spaces behind the seats where truckers could put a bed, have a place to rest. You wonder if he’ll take you back there and fuck you in his little bunk. And honesty is a fickle thing when discussing a topic like this, isn't it? There’s a depravity about him, and you can’t tell if the truth or the lie would placate him – incite him – more. To be similar in such a way as that which he’s imagining. A little bit of both, then. After all, intent holds weight – imagination, desire, it has a mass to it that can, if enough pressure is exerted upon it, be transformed into something else. 

“Not yet,” you tell him, sliding your gaze back to meet his, “Haven’t had a chance – but there’s still time.”

-

“What would you like to do?” He wants to take a bite out of that soft flesh you’re encased in, draw blood.

“Something depraved?” You’re taunting him – trying to provoke. It makes him slightly angry, but also hard. You should know what it is you’re toying with here. 

He frowns at you, at the lilting song of your words trying to beguile him into doing whatever it is you think you want him to do to you. “What is it that you think you want here? You don’t know what I was, how I lived. Shouldn’t be sat here with me, little girl,” he scoffs. “I was– was not– I don’t fucking know, not a man. I’m not, I’m not. Not a person anymore, just this thing that continues to exist. I should not have been expected to survive. This should mean something to you too. You also have no one. You’re alone too. You’re alone in the world. You know what it feels like to only live in the winter.”

You’re quiet for a long moment, and then you say: “I think I’ve come to quite like the winter.” And at that he knows he’s taking you for himself, whether you agree in the end or not. You’re going to be his. 

But he knows he must also let this roiling anger, this depraved hunger settle before he lays hands on you. Like this, in this state, he’d be too rough, break you, nothing compunctious about him or his jaggedness. He excuses himself for a smoke, your only response simply more of that inciting silence – more thoughts of cracked skulls and a cherry red cunt and tears after failed trysts with someone who doesn’t even know his name. He’s fucking embarrassing. What would Tommy say if he knew Joel couldn’t even get it up for a paid fuck anymore? He’d laugh in his face, never let him live it down. He misses his brother very much. He misses lots of things. 

He’s sucking on his Red under the awning of the diner’s entrance, imagining what it’ll be like to suck on your little clit, when he hears them. 

“She’s usually out about midnight. We’ll snag her then.” Grating, guttural voice.

“But I get to fuck ‘er first. This was my idea so I go first.”

“Yeah, whatever. S’only happenin’ ‘cause of me. Too fuckin’ stupid to see the plan through after all these months of watchin’ ‘er.”

“Fuck off.” Silence, and then almost with giddy elation: “We gonna kill her too?” Something cold and terrifying settles within Joel. 

A beat, “Should we?”

“Dunno, man. Might be fun, huh? Never done it before.”

“She’s fuckin’ pretty,” the voice draws the vowel out in a high pitched, sacharine whine. “Got the face of an angel.” Joel’s angel, his, his, only his.

He’s got his Bowie in a sheath on the back of his belt. Perhaps, this would be a useful exercise in release. After he’s dispelled his excess energy he can come back and touch you, take you. 

“Can’t wait to taste that cunt.” His cunt.

“Seen her tits, man? Fucking round and bouncy. Wanna make ‘em bleed.” And there’s only one avenue of consequence after that. After all, this is not the first time Joel’s done this. 

His most well kept secret.

Sometimes, when the itch cannot be eased, abated, by his hand or a fuck or a drink or any of the other readily available vices, he turns to this. Only when the straits were dire. Only when he saw no other recourse. Only after his daughter was dead and in the ground and his brother gone away from him

. 

But sometimes… sometimes it’s just fun. Sometimes it’s useful for a man to do that thing that he really feels he wants to do, if only to enjoy himself, if only to let go of some of that suffocating tension. If only to keep vermin like this away from an angel like you. 

“We’ll chill in the woods for a while, wait the little thing out, yeah?” Joel edges his way towards the edge of the building closer to them, peeks a lone eye around the corner. Two men, middle aged. Not a problem. Not for a man like him. 

He waits for them to make their way to the edge of the tree-line, watches them disappear into the gloom. He looks back into the diner through the murky windows. The warm glow of the overhead lamps washing you in a hue of golden light that brings out all the warm goodness in you he’ll take for himself once he’s snuffed out this issue. 

No one’s going to touch you but him. No one’s going to hurt you but him. 

As he rounds the corner of the diner there’s a piece of metal pipe propped up against the building by the dumpsters. Very nice. 

He goes after them. 

At the edge of the tree-line, under a swaying, low hanging branch, there is a tiny unfledged bird, helplessly twitching its way towards death in a puddle. He pauses to watch its struggle, gathers his skin about him, tightens his seams – prepares to gorge. He watches the inch by inch pilgrimage towards its last breath, then stillness. He feels so much older than his years, like he’s lived a thousand terrible years, watched a thousand terrible deaths. But there is a buoyancy about him, as well. Filled with a saccharine sweet fizz of sticky anticipation. He’s going to taste your cunt after this is done.

 He moves into the gloom. He’s going to kill them for you, and his cock is hard at the thought.

Stepping beneath the canopy of the trees, into that cold, damp darkness, he sees the absolute truth of the world. On the heels of two men who’d do you harm, he knows that he’d failed to save someone he cared about once, he’d not be bested by failure a second time. Darkness implacable, the crushing black vacuum of their overheard words buzzing in his head like flies, of the harm they’d do you. Two hunted animals moving away from a creature much darker than they could even imagine, scurrying on borrowed time. What most moves him is that the things they’d do to you are not so dissimilar to the things he plans to do to you, as well. The only difference being that after he’s done defiling you, he’ll keep you for himself, with all the care and gentleness a little thing like you so deserves. 

-

You press your ear to the cracked open door leading to the back of the building. It’s not the first time those two’ve talked their filth regarding you. The murdering is new, though. You’d not thought they were smart or inventive enough to come up with an actual kill plot. Rape enough of a hardball for minds as shallow and small as those two’ve got. 

You’d never really considered them much of a threat. Or maybe you’d just never really cared enough to pay them much attention. But as you watch the broad, rippling expanse of Joel’s muscled back stalk after them, his pause at the tree-line to look down at something on the ground, you think he must be more in the vein of taking a stupid man’s shit talk to heart than you’ve ever been. 

He has a thick, forearms-length of steel pipe gripped in his huge fist, and there’s a wicked looking knife strapped to his belt on the back of his hip. 

Interesting. 

You look back at the empty diner, the lonely parking lot beyond the glass of the windows, only Joel’s semi still taking up residence on the wet pavement. You turn back to follow after the three men. 

One you want, two you’re interested to see what fate awaits them.

For some reason, when you step outside, you’re expecting there to be snow on the ground, but there is none.  

You move across the pavement towards the forest-line, and the pilgrimage towards the verdant darkness feels very much like your one-way ticket out of this forlornness you’ve been trapped in your whole life. You’ve been stuck in this small town for so long, for too long. One man had already tried to forcibly evict you, had taken your entire family with him, maybe this one, maybe Joel, would do so in a way you’d more likely enjoy. 

There’s been a steady, faint drizzle all day long, and the puddles of rain look like holes in the dark pavement, apertures into some other realm that glide past underground. You wonder if you stepped through if you’d disappear below into some other place. You wonder if he’d be able to find you even in that unknown other. 

You cross the line into darkness. 

The familiar terror of silence – you don’t seem to find it here. There is only the sound of your rushing blood, the cadence of his voice rumbling through your psyche, firing your neurons up into a frenzy. There is a twisting heat low in your pelvis, dampness between your thighs. What’s he going to do? Why’s he going to do it?Is it for me? Is it for me? It’s for you.

You let out a low whistle between your teeth and move beyond the trees. There is a giddiness about the darkness of the wood – the motley of shadows, the aroma of mushroom rot. 

The familiar terror of silence. Perhaps, that is what they are experiencing now. The great horror of being set upon by a beast more terrifying than anything they could have ever conjured up on their own. 

That infinite tenderness from before, that acute madness – it coalesces in the gap in the trees as you come upon the three men. 

Joel has already started on the first. He murders almost tenderly. With great care, but infused with an aroma of agitated frenzy that seems flavored in the same notes of erotic buzzing that hums beneath your own skin. There is blood and viscera splattered on his face and clothes, in his hair. That great hunting knife embedded in the throat of the first man. The body lays facing you now, eyes open, shocked at his own death. Funny. Perhaps, that’s how they would have liked you to have ended up once they were through with you. 

Oh, how the tune changes when the monster is on your side. 

What are you? Be a creature. Be a creature. Be a creature!

You take Joel in. Thick, massive frame. You love his hair, it was one of the first things you’d noticed, thick dark curls streaked with the silver veins of his age and experience. Something that promised of care and knowledge and patience. His patchy beard with the heart shaped gap in it, you’re going to write your name into that space. His powerful arms, muscles coiled tight, his shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders as he brings the steel pipe up above his head, pauses to look down at his next victim. 

“We won’t bother her anymore, never again – p– please, please, I swear,” the man on the ground begs and cries. There are tears and snot bubbling down his ruddy, pocketed face. 

Joel is silent and terrifying and glorious above him, and then a small nod: “That’s alright… I believe you.” The metal comes down in a whistling arc, makes contact. 

Flesh and blood splatter, the sound of it is pulpy and wet and vindicating. He starts with the man’s knees, then his head, caved in like the shell of an egg, the yolk spilling out like vermilion drool. 

He heaves silently above the man that would have done you harm. Makes the threat go away. 

You step forward, cunt pulsing and wet and eager for him. When he’s gotten his fill of bludgeoning he turns slowly back towards you, as if he’d known the entire time that you’d been stood there watching. 

And the look on his face, it makes something electrifying and sticky buzz up your spine and ooze down your veins. You shift back on your heels

He shakes his head, his eyes are huge, pupils blown wide. “Don’t run,” he says slowly. If you hadn’t just watched him murder two men in cold blood – no, in your defense, he saved you, he protected you, fizzy heart full of satisfaction – you’d say he almost looks a little doe eyed. 

A hollow pounding begins in his heart, as if it had remained silent for the past two years and was only now taking notice of its own silence. His cock, hard enough to burst, angry and throbbing beneath the confines of his blood soaked jeans. Fuck this scum laying on the ground beside him, look at what he has infront of him. Nothing else matters but you. A goddamned angel. Damned for he’s found you now and nothing good can come of this. He takes a step towards you, and you match him with one backwards, away from him, his blood starts to howl in his veins. Different to the humming frenzy that had filled him as he did his murdering. This is hot and viscous and ravenous, and he knows he’ll get to keep his catch once he’s gorged himself on it. He knows he’ll get to keep you once he’s caught you. 

You take two more nervous little, quick steps away from him. Your eyes are slightly manic, face flushed, frame jittery, excited. A rabbit that knows it’s about to be caught. He watches the pause of your limbs as they fill with coiled energy, getting ready to make the bound and leap towards escape. He lunges, goes in for the kill, teeth bared, talons  brandished. 

Faster than you can even comprehend, he lunges, takes you to the ground with one massive, powerful shoulder to the vulnerable, soft of your belly, one huge paw cradled at the back of your skull to protect you from the hard ground. Your spine hits the cold, wet earth, the breath knocked out of you. You think you let out an animal noise, high pitched and supplicant. A thing that knows it’s been caught and is soon to be devoured. Your limbs scramble against the dirt, heels digging into the ground for purchase, you feel the loss of one of your shoes, as you try to get away or to crawl closer, who can be sure. A spider caught in the web or a larger, hungrier arachnid. He sets the huge heaviness of his muscular weight over your much smaller frame, one strong hand caged around the column of your throat, the other pushing your chest into the earth as he shoves his hips into the cradle of your own, forcing your thighs apart and your skirt to pool at your waist. You feel the stretch of the center plaque of your tights as his wide breadth settles between your legs, making room to take you for himself. You bring your own hands up to the wrist holding your throat and dig your nails into the skin there. You can feel the light smattering of hair covering his forearm beneath your soft palms, the cold, wet dirt beneath you, the searing stretch of the inner muscles of your thighs spread wide for him, the damp of the air surrounding the two of you. He leans forwards, pressing you down into the ground, and you have the fleeting thought that you want to transfuse yourself into the earth, into him. 

He pauses then to look down at you, appreciating the gloriousness of his catch. “Caught ya.” And he’s filled with an exuberance, a sort of victory. Look at what he’s snared – all for himself. 

You try and struggle again, if only to see the flare of annoyance in his eyes. It makes your cunt tight and achy. Even more than it already is. There’s a part of you that thinks you want him slightly angry – rough or mean. That you might like it even more if it hurts. Be kind enough to be cruel about it, you want to beg him. He leans forward to press his nose to your cheek, drags the cold vermillioned flush of it along your jaw, down the line of your throat, bites harsh and painful at your collarbone then over the peak of your breast. 

“Are you a virgin?” He whispers into your skin. It sounds very much like a threat. 

“Yes.”

“Saved this cunt all for me.” And it is not a question. Yes, you moan anyways. Let him know. Let him know that this defiling is a gift you’re granting him. He sits up on his haunches between your thighs, his hands sliding down to press on your lower belly and digs his fingers into the center of your tights and pulls, ripping a hold in them for his pillaging. You try and press your knees shut at the feel of the frigid air on your sensitive inner thighs, dig your nails into the ground above your head to try and drag yourself away from him. 

He digs his own fingers harshly into your flesh, his nails biting painfully into the soft skin of your thighs and ass and brings you back towards him. There’ll be streaks of pain left in his wake after this. Bad little rabbit. He smacks the inside of your thigh, watches the smooth flesh ripple for him. You let out a warbled, angry screech, little nails still trying to claw yourself away from him. He laughs then, a little mean, condescending. “Fight harder, little baby. This is pretty pathetic.” He rips your thighs apart, keep your fuckin’ legs open for me, his hands slick with the blood of his victims slide up the back of your thighs, anchoring his palms beneath the damp creases of your knees to press you open and wide for him, slaps your cunt, hard, over the soaking gusset of your panties. 

“Who the fuck’re you wearin’ this tiny little thong for?” he growls. It’s white lace, with a sweet, little pink bow adorning the front. “Me? Wrapped yourself up all nice and pretty for me?” Your little foot sneaks up under his armpit and tries to push with, what he’s sure is all your valiant might, at his chest, trying to unseat him from his conquering position above you, but he takes your ankle in a vice like grip, bites harshly into the meat of your calf so that an animal squeal of pain is clawed out of your throat at the same time that he slots his fingers under the damp center of your panties. “Sing as loud as you want, sweetheart. No one’s gonna hear you out here.” He can feel the soaking wet seam of your cunt against the backs of his knuckles, and he rips them clean off you. The sound of the last remaining barrier of protection of your cunt against his ravaging being decimated has you going shock still – prey that knows it’s caught and has decided to give up. Good, this is how he wants you. Your big, wet eyes look up at him as he flings the lace towards the still steaming dead bodies. That’s all they’ll get of you. The rest is only his. Mine, mine, fucking mine. 

You let your arms go limp above your head, soft and pliant and ready for ravaging, melting into the earth.

He presses your knees back and up, letting the red blossom of your wet cunt bloom for him. It’s slick and swollen, and he knows when he shoves his cock inside it’ll be burning hot. “Look at this gorgeous virgin pussy, baby. All for me. Only for me…” he murmurs, hypnotized, mesmerized. He drags the back of his knuckles over your slit, uses his thumbs to spread your lips apart, admires the swollen nub of your clit. You’re just as hungry for him as he is for you. Messy, eager little whore. He moves to undo his belt and free his aching length. Huge and brutish, thick veins pulsing just beneath the thin skin. He’s going to split you in half, break you, mold you in his image. 

He spits right onto your soaked folds, watches the thick glob of saliva slide down to mingle with your own leaking slick. He’s not even going to make you come first. Little virgin cunt and he’s not going to even bother getting you ready – just gonna shove the whole, unforgiving length of himself inside of you. Force you to take it. He fists his thick fist around himself, jacks his cock once, twice, squeezing at the bulbous head so that a trickle of precum seeps out of the slit. He presses his head to your clit, slides down to give you a small threat of pressure at your opening. When he looks back up at your face your eyes flutter shut, a look of pure contented submission washing over the gorgeous planes of you. 

“Not gonna be gentle, baby. Don’t got it in me.” He notches the fat head at the slick mouth of your entrance and crams his cock inside of you in one go, meets that thin barrier that says you still belong to yourself and rips through it. Mine now. No reprieve, no respite. And God, the feel of it, cleaved in half, scorching hot, filled to the brim and never deep enough. He is a rabid, snarling beast of a man as he hits the very end of you, grinds his cockhead at the mouth of your womb. You let out a warbled, pained moan, little fingers coming up to claw at his throat and chest with kitten-strength, down to dig into his thick thighs as he pins you down, and you tilt your hips to let him in deeper or escape him, he doesn't know. He doesn't care. He pulls his hips back and forces himself back in, too thick cock wedged into the too tight space. “Christ, goddamn tight fuckin’ pussy – made for me,” he grits through bared teeth.

He fucks you raw and cruel, and he needs you to just lay limp and still and take it.

And you do. And he does not cry this time. 

He sets a brutal pace, throbs deep in your belly at every pause as he grinds at your cervix. It must be painful for you, perhaps, but the flush in your cheeks, the fever in your eyes, the ripple of your cunt around his driving length tells him you also like it. “What a good girl, taking my big cock,” he coos. You preen, tilt your hips this time in supplication he’s sure, hitch your feet higher along his sides. There are tears running back down your temples and into your hairline. His cock makes you cry. If he could, he’d split your throat and drink, he would. But he cannot, so he’ll split your cunt instead. He thrusts into the hilt, complete negligence for care, for gentleness lost in the dark wood, for the desperate necessity of feeling your virgins blood coating his cock. Your protestations lost to the louder song for more, for harder, for deeper

Joel, Joel, Joel. 

He’s going to listen to you sing his name for the rest of his life. 

He feels unhinged, a thread picked at too many times, spun loose, unraveled and frayed. That edge that separates good and evil – his bloody fingers clamp down hard on the edge of your jaw, forces you to open for him, and he spits into your mouth – direct, dirty … warm. “Lemme see…” he rumbles, and you stick your tongue out for his inspection. Once he nods, pleased and smug and conquering, you close and rub the slick of his saliva onto the roof of your mouth with your tongue, savor the taste of him. This was the taste that you’d longed for… that which teaches you what that professed edge really is. Is he good, is he evil – he’d just killed two men, you’d watched him, cunt wet at the sight of it. Albeit to protect you… sure – but does it even matter? You swallow his spit down. Probably not. 

He is huge and life altering inside of you. Your virginity scoured away on his invading length. 

He leans forward, hand clamped around your jaw to pierce you with his manic gaze, like his cock pierces your cunt. He smells like the forest and sweat and power. “Little fuckin’ tease,” he grits, “Bringing me cherry pie like that all the time – fuckin’ provoking me. You just wanted me to pop your cherry for you. Didn’t you, little girl?” All you can do is nod dumbly and take what he gives you. He hooks one of your knees over his elbow, the other propped over his shoulder, foot bobbing limply at each slam of his hips. He has you bent entirely in half, cunt splayed wide open for him to fuck down into the deep, devastating end of you. Your vision goes blurry, black stars streaking across the back of your eyelids. All you see is him. Perhaps he’s all that exists now. Maybe you’re just as dead as the two bodies laying beside the two of you. You wonder peripherally what the sight of the four of you must look like. Joel’s hulking form fucking you like an animal into the dirt. You open your eyes to look up at him, there’s blood splatter across his face, in his hair. His skin is burning hot against yours. You think that perhaps you’ll have scorch marks in the shape of his fingers in your skin after he’s done with you. Two dead, brutalized bodies cooling beside the place where the two of you are fucking. 

“Can feel ya tightening up, baby. Gonna come all over my cock.”

He does something to change the angle, and it fucking hurts. “Too much,” you beg, try to push him back weakly, but your cunt pulls sharp and tight, and then your muscles are rippling around him, womb contracting painfully as your orgasms blinds you with its sudden intensity. 

“Don’t care,” he growls back. “Do not fucking push me away.” No, he must not care. Prey doesn’t decide how it’s felled, after all. 

He pulls out and back then, suddenly, slaps your cunt harshly, once, twice. You mewl, high and shocked, writhing around in the dirt. He grabs you by the hips and flips you so fast you’re left disoriented, pulling your ass up, up, up. 

“Fuck, you’re so fuckin’ pretty,” he croons, bends to bite down on the meat of your asscheek, and then notches back at your gaping, fluttering hole, orgasm still running through you, and pushes back in. You’re soaking wet, slick and fucked open by him and the taking is much easier this time. You feel his thumb press down on your asshole, “Gonna take this too. Gonna have every part of you, every piece. Gonna swallow you whole.” All you do is arch your back further, cheek smushed into the dirt, fingers digging into the cool earth for purchase, for salvation.

The sight of you stretched around his thick base, so slick he feels you dripping down his balls and further below, into the bloody earth. There’s a red tinge of your own blood coating his skin, and he’s going to come. He’s going to fill you up with his spend and fuck it deep into you until it takes. Until no matter how far you want to run, he’ll be with you, always. He lets his head fall back on his neck and stares up at the dark canopy of the trees, groans low and deep.“You’re gonna be my little hole now,” he promises, presses one large palm into the small of your back to deepen the angle and fuck down into you. “Gonna take you with me and fill you up whenever I feel like it. My gorgeous little cumslut.” The ramming of his hips starts to grow sloppy and stuttered, close to the edge now. Victory is so, so near. 

You start to claw at the dirt and wiggle again. Little knees chafed raw and scrambling against the hard ground trying to get away. He slaps your ass hard, hopes there’ll be the print of his hand to appreciate later. 

“Not inside, not inside – not – no birth control,” you stutter, beg.

“I’m not fuckin’ pulling out.” He twists a cruel and unyielding hand into the back of your hair and presses your face harshly into the ground. Your eyes pinch and tears seep and mingle into the blood and dirt beneath you. “Gonna pump you raw and full. You don’t gotta worry about anythin’ anymore, baby. Gonna take care of you,” he grits and you press yourself harder back into him. There is an existential seesaw inside of you – a volleying of your wants – you want him to hurt you, to force you, to take care of you and keep you, all at the same time.

“Promise – promise me you won’t leave me,” you cry and beg because really, that’s all you want. All you’ve ever wanted. For someone to stay, for someone to never leave, no matter what.

“I promise – fuckin’ swear.” And you go loose and passive again at that – his to do with as he will. Nothing else really matters after all that.

He senses the change. The loosening of your muscles into capitulation. He stops his thrusting and grinds, strums at your clit. “Oh fuck, you want me to fill you up? And what happens if I do? What happens if it takes? Want me to get you fuckin’ pregnant?” Starts to fuck into you again, “I think you do.”

Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care.

“You’re mine. Fucking mine.” He says it again and again and again, yes, yes, yes, lets himself fall forward, anchored above you with one strong arm as he presses as deep as he can physically go and starts to fill your pulsing cunt with his come, the heat of his spend inciting you to roll into one more throbbing orgasm. He brings his face down close to yours, open your eyes, little thing, lemme see you. The fluttering of your lashes, sweaty, dirt-streaked face, and you are seraphic, the wet crimson heat of your blood pounding beneath the delicate membrane of your skin. Gorgeous, perfect, conquered and his. 

“Fucked full’a me now,” he whispers, presses a soft kiss to the tender skin of your eyelid. You nuzzle into him, and then look up at him with the warmest, most vibrant gaze he’s ever seen. Fucking pleased and sated. 

“They wanted me, but only you get to have me now,” you whisper. “How does that make you feel?” Provoking, provoking again. 

“Like I fucking own you.” He grinds his still spitting cock further, feels the pull of your muscles milk him deeper. 

He lets his weight fall partially over you, too heavy for the full mass of himself. You are, after all, a delicate thing, and he must remember to handle you with care, occasionally. He feels the pulsing and quivering of your cunt around his softening cock, and the two of you settle to lay there in the dirt, bodies still dead, virginity scoured and stolen, and stare at each other. 

“Have you ever been in love?” you whisper, dragging the tip of one little finger, whisper soft, over the arch of his brow, the slope of his nose.

“I feel a little in love with ya right now,” he confesses, and you press that finger against the seam of his mouth, begging for entrance, and then inside, against the flat of his tongue to inspect the wet gleam of it. It’ll be inside of you soon enough, you should take a look at that which you’ll be writhing against in due time. 

“Good. That was my plan all along.” Smug, conniving little creature. 

-

Once it’s full dark, he packs you into his truck, buckles your seatbelt for you, tucks a blanket around your dirty knees and drives off as if he hadn’t just murdered two men and taken your virginity with their blood still hot on his skin. He goes for miles and miles, eventually finds a dark, secluded spot to park the truck for the night. He takes you into the back bunk and fucks you like you’d wanted him to, on your side, one leg slung over his shoulder, hand gripping the lush of your ass to pull you onto his impaling cock, watches your ass bounce against his thrusts. A demanded play with it, lemme see ya push it back in, as he watches himself drip out of your messy hole. Eats your cunt until you cry. Afterwards, the two of you lay, naked and damp, facing each other, tracing the lines of one another in the quiet dark. 

Sometimes he’s worried he’s blood hungry – or pain hungry. Starving for something he doesn’t have a name for. But he thinks that, perhaps, he can use your name to fill in the blank space now. He’d always felt as if his devotion was a punishment to the receiver. After all, everyone Joel has ever loved has left him. But as he looks at you, there’s something in your eyes that tells him that perhaps, you’ll remain. Perhaps, he can compel you to, force you to. Perhaps, he can anchor you to himself, and in turn, give you everything. 

“Are you a ghost?” he asks.

“No. Are you?”

“Sometimes I think I am.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re like a fuckin’ angel or somethin’. What were you doin’ out here in this wasteland?” He asks you again.

“Maybe I was waiting for you.” This answer he likes.

He’s quiet for a long time after that – taking you in, cataloging you, memorizing you. His fingers ghosting over your face, your hair, strumming the fan of your lashes. Later he asks: How do you remember the memory of someone else? How do you keep them when they’ve gone somewhere entirely unreachable?

“Because you love them,” you tell him.

“That’s enough?”

“Of course. Will you ever forget that you loved her?”

“Never.”

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

[celaenaeiln]

Hey! I just wanted to say that I’m a big fan of your blog and I love your posts about Dick Grayson <3

I must warn that english is not my first lenguage, therefore I apologize for any mistakes that I make.

I’ve seen some posts were you mention some things that I find very interesting, and I would love to have a longer analysis on them. For example, the dynamic between Slade/Deathstroke and Dick/Nightwing, how complex their relationship truly is and some similarities it has with Bruce’s and Dick’s relationship. I would love to read a longer post analyzing this and going into more detail about it, mainly because I’m also kind of new to getting to know much of their story (I’m also kind of new to the whole fandom in general hahah). I also found very interesting something you mentioned in one of your latest posts about Superman’s relationship with Dick, and how you found it a bit more complex than the one he has with Bruce, I would love to read more about that as well! Of course only if you have the time and actually want to do it, I don’t want it to sound as if I’m making any demands hahahah.

Thank you for your time! This is actually my first time asking anything to a blog, so I hope I did alright haha

Hello and THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I would love to talk more about all of this with you!!!

For example, the dynamic between Slade/Deathstroke and Dick/Nightwing, how complex their relationship truly is and some similarities it has with Bruce’s and Dick’s relationship.

Anon's ask is based off this post where I discussed some similarities between Slade and Bruce in terms to their relationship with Dick but it wasn't really in depth.

In some ways I think Dick sees Bruce in Slade. I really don't know if Dick has made the connection between them but I think Dick is drawn to certain traits in Slade's and it subconscious at the least from his dealings with bruce. Meaning, Slade and Bruce have the same relationship with Dick as Dick has with the other. It's veiled because they're on opposite sides of the spectrum, but Dick and Slade's relationship have parallels with Dick and Bruce. We should really break this down lol.

I think the overarching component and similarity to each of their relationships with Dick, is that they see his potential to do better - to be better.

What do I mean by this - I mean that Slade and Bruce are similar in that they both see his potential and try to mold him into someone greater, but in different ways. The end result is that Bruce tests Dick's responsibility and pushes him further but still manipulative, while Slade's approach is more negatively manipulative and he tests Dick’s resilience and ethical boundaries.

So that's the first similarity - the praise and mentorship

Take a look at Slade's interactions with Dick and how he talks to him-

Tales of the Teen Titans Issue #43

He's effusive with his praise -

"You're not a fool, Grayson. Why are you pretending to be?'"

"Tricky brat...gotta admire him though. Took one chance in a million and he got away."

"Funny. Of all the titans, the one without powers proved the hardest."

The way they are to Dick, they are his consciousness. Slade is Dick's evil conscience and Bruce is his angelic conscience. (Their New Titans comics ally-ship was peak)

Deathstroke the Terminator Annual_1

Nightwing (1996) Issue #114

The New Titans (1988) Issue #86

They're nemesis, obviously, but Slade his this kind of tough love teaching going on with Dick. They're on opposite sides but he still makes him better. Dick, the hero he is now, is a consequence of the underlying teaching he learned from Slade. He's as supportive to Dick as he is ready to fight him with makes for a weird combo.

This kind of - I'll let you get your feelings out and then make you settle down - type of mentorship reminds me EXACTLY of Bruce's reaction to the Blockbuster event.

I think Dick is hooked to this type of relationship mainly because of his issues. Dick has canonical abandonment issues -

Now everyone's heard the term but what are abandonment issues?

sounds reallyyyy familiar doesn't it?

Gotham Knights Issue #14

It's very definition is basically the entirety of Dick's monologue in Gotham Knights Issue 14.

Because of his abandonment issues, Dick is a huge people pleaser. There's a comic issue which I can't remember from where he's talking to i think Kori and Kori's like 'you've done enough. you're always there for everyone, it's more than enough. Why can't you be satisfied with that.' and Dick responds along the lines of 'It's ever enough.'

So Dick on a basal level is attracted to figures of authority. He feels both the need to earn praise from them yet this desire wars with his own need to be free of them. He has control issues on top of abandonment issues. There's a comic that I forgot the name of but Dick teams up with members of the Justice League and they trapeze through a jungle under the orders of this corrupt military general. He teams up with Arthur and automatically starts commanding people to which Aquaman tells him off, saying this isn't the Titans. Dick is genuinely sorry and backs off. For a minute. But immediately goes right back into command mode but Arthur lets it go, realizing that Dick's not conscious of it and that his behaviour is automatic. "Too many leaders" he calls the situation in his head.

He's wants his freedom and control and to be acknowledged for that freedom and control just as much as he wants to be acknowledged for following orders/being a good boy.

it's fucked up.

And this all ties back into Dick's relationship with Slade paralleling Dick's relationship with Bruce.

With Bruce, this thought process is very clear and it's okay for him to think about (because he'll never admit it out loud) it because it's his mentor/best friend/father.

Dick can not think this way about Slade because he is not supposed to. Slade is his enemy. But his actions talk more than this words which is why whenever Dick allies Slade, he acts like he does with Bruce. Or atleast, he feels that way.

The Titans (1999) Issue #10

This is the time when their Dick's relationship with Bruce parallelling his with Slade is explicitly written. It's so obvious that even Roy picks up on it. Well, I shouldn't say 'even Roy' because Roy is pretty perceptive actually but the point still stands - it's obvious.

So in brief summary, Bruce and Slade's 'mentorship', if you can call Slade's as much, have parallels in their behavior and attitude towards Dick. And Dick, as a result of his issues, reacts the same way he does to Slade as he does to Bruce. Now this was all Dick's perspective of the situation, but the thing is, Bruce and Slade know Dick. They know him very well which leads to my third point.

The freaking parallel manipulation

It's so crazy how they act towards him. They both try to manipulate him -

Nightwing (2016) Issue #75

Nightwing (1996) Issue #112

But you what's really messed up in their similarity between these two scenes?

It's the fact that both Slade and Bruce are trying to manipulate Dick into coming back or staying with them.

Bruce using using Alfred's death and appealing to Dick's sense of guilt over staying separated from the family in order to coerce dick into coming back into Bruce's fold. This is what Dick means when he says he's sick of the mind games.

Slade, on the other hand, is appealing to Dick's sense of justice and moral righteousness. He's using his daughter in order bring Dick to his side by teasing Dick's need to do good for others. He's coercing Dick by hanging his daughter as bait on a hook and saying 'look. The naive daughter of an evil mercenary. Don't you want to save her?' He's targeting Dick's hero complex and need to protect the vulnerable.

This makes the parallels even more disturbing because both men are well aware of how to play Dick's emotional strings to pull Dick into their sphere and gain control over him.

In summary, there are three overarching components that make Dick and Slade's relationship eerily similar to Dick and Bruce's and vice versa.

With Bruce's relationship, his mentoring is rooted in emotional support but it often borders on manipulation. He sees Dick's potential and pushes him, sometimes excessively. Because of this push-pull relationship with bruce, Dick usually feels torn between adhering to loyalty and fighting for independence. His mindset is just perpetually caught in the middle which makes it so easy for Slade to exploit because Dick’s abandonment and control issues make him crave Bruce's approval while simultaneously feeling stifled by the overbearing nature of their bond.

Slade's relationship with Dick is darker, more manipulative, and rooted in exploitation. Although Slade is sometimes mentor-like, his intentions are really not. But the confusing thing is that's not always true. Sometimes he wants the best for dick and other times he's the worst enemy. He sees Dick's potential and uses it to manipulate him for his own purposes. While Bruce appeals to Dick's guilt, Slade appeals to Dick's sense of justice and heroism.

They both share a deep understanding of Dick’s potential and vulnerabilities. They know exactly how to manipulate him emotionally—Bruce through guilt and family ties, and Slade through exploiting Dick’s need to help others. Just like how both Slade and Bruce act the same way to Dick, Dick reacts the same way to both of them because he needs what they're selling.

Both Slade and Bruce see Dick as a tool to achieve their goals - Bruce shaping him to be a protector and leader, while Slade views him as a weapon in his own fight. Dick’s response to both figures is a reflection of his deep-seated need for approval and his desire for autonomy. This makes his relationships with Bruce and Slade sooo much fun to explore. Treating your enemy like you treat your friend? Hahaha!

I'll answer the Dick and Clark question in another post because I'll definitely exceed the image count per post if I try to answer it in this one.

And thank you again, anon!! you were perfect (*^ ‿ <*)♡

[rollinouttahere-writes]

Which op yan do you think would be the most annoying texter in a modern au?? I think sanji would drive me insane, I know he'd be texting nonstop. I also think buggy would ask his romantic interest if they'd still love him as a worm. Many times.

Sanji would be so excessive. You have to put your phone on do not disturb just to have a moment's peace. It literally never ends.

Sanji: Good morning, my love! It's another beautiful day of being able to call you mine 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

*pic attached*

Sanji: Here's the breakfast I'm making you! I'll bring it over as soon as it's done 😋😘

-

*sends a pic of any two things next to each other*

Sanji: This is literally us 🥺

-

Sanji: I just wanted to say again how much I love you💞❤️🩷💕💞💓🩷💕💞 (he says this even though he saw you in person three minutes ago and said the exact same thing then)

-

Sanji: Where did you go???? Are you mad at me??????? Have you been kidnapped?????????

Sanji: Oh wait never mind I see you now

Sanji: I'm calling your name why are you running the other way?

Buggy is someone who needs constant reassurance, and he uses having your phone number as a means to constantly get that from you. But like he's also very dramatic about it.

Buggy: do u hate me now? say it to my face at least

You: literally what are you talking about?

Buggy: I asked you a question and you ignored me!

You: I was gone for like 2 minutes????

Buggy: AND???? Why were you gone???

You: I was ordering some food for us but nvm I'm gonna go home and eat it all myself 😒

Buggy: ...

Buggy: I'm sorry please don't hate me for real now 🥺🥺🥺 I love you so much baby please don't leave me 😭😭😭

Zoro is on the opposite end of the spectrum because he doesn't text excessively, but you are lucky to get more than a one word response out of him. You could send him a several paragraph long text spilling your guts to him and all you'll get from him is a "k" or "alright" or "👍". If you send more than two texts in a row, he'll tell you to just call him if you're going to yap that much.

Luffy doesn't text, he sends voice memos. Not only does he send an absurd amount of them, but they're also all stupidly long because he gets distracted and rambles to his heart's content. What was supposed to be a simple voice memo asking if his jacket is at your place comes to you with a 31:46 time on it because he saw a cool looking beetle outside and just had to tell you about it in the memo. Half the time he forgets that he isn't actually on the phone with you and will ask a question several times before he remembers.

Doflamingo sends a lot of texts, but all of them are voice to text and are almost entirely unintelligible. The voice to text function wasn't designed to interpret his weird inflections and maniacal laughter. He also has a tendency to talk to other people in the middle of sending a text to you, so you have a whole ass random conversation smack in the middle of the text. He then has the audacity to have an attitude with you when you didn't catch the important thing he told you.

With Ace, you're going to feel like you're communicating via hieroglyphics because of how many of his messages to you are just memes/reaction images. He won't elaborate and lets you figure out what they mean. Did he just find that meme funny, or is there a hidden message in it? Who knows.

And then you have all of the old men (Sengoku, Garp, Whitebeard, etc) who can't text for shit and will send a series of unintelligible and confused texts before sending a very defeated "please call me"

[thatnonameuser]

What do you think the general reaction would be towards a darling who is very relaxed and apathetic? Doesn't have strong reactions to things, doesn't get attached, doesn't worry. Even when faced with pain or suffering she simply accepts it and smiles. Completely detached from everything and everyone. Treats everyone the same, polite but distant. No fear of anything.

I could see sadistic yanderes like Jade getting frustrated because there's no way to truly distress her, but I'm curious about what you think he and the others would think.

An apathetic MC has to be the strongest darling out of all of them.

Indifferent to everything, even the yanderes. Uncaring about every little thing.

Let me explain how everyone would react.

Jade, our sadistic yandere responds to your apathy with his scariest expression. A calm smile. On the outside, he's as calm as ever, but on the inside, his mind would give seasoned war vets nightmares. Jade sees your apathy as a challenge. He's both angry and excited at your seemingly unbreakable nonchalance. Angry, because he can't seem to affect you no matter how hard he tries. And excited, because this means whatever finally causes you to snap will give him a once-in-a-lifetime kind of satisfaction. You know the saying....There's nothing like making a strong person cry, and he looks forward to that day with baited breath.

As for the others.........

They hate it. They love you, but they hate it. They know that what they're doing isn't the most ideal, but they do everything they do out of love. So please just say something! Say that you love them or hate them, they don't care what. Smile, laugh, cry, just do something! React!

Your lack of a response drives them up a wall. They have you and are happy about that. It's just that you don't ever acknowledge them, and all they crave is your attention and affection. That bleeding wound in their hearts is never full when you’re like this.

So please, they're begging you, just smile, say that you love them, or do anything! They'll give you whatever you want, just don't look at them like they're a stranger. The yanderes that are affected by it are Riddle, Ace, Deuce, Trey, Cater, Jack, Ruggie, Azul, Kalim, Vil, Epel, Idia, Malleus, Silver, Sebek.

Doesn't care, Leona is the King of not giving a shit, and while he is annoyed that you refuse to show him any affection of any kind, he doesn't really care about it as much as the others do.

The big thing is that he doesn't really care about how you feel about this. As a true possessive, he only really cares that you're all his and his alone. He's not one of those weak herbivores that desperately need your love and affection to survive. You being here is enough. And you’re staying whether you like it or not.

(I have an idea in my head that Leona and the darling MC are one of those married couples that look like they just barely tolerate each other, Leona still loves her but he’s not very loving in his behavior, so in this case he doesn't care if you're smiling or crying all he does care about is that you're his)

Floyd, like the others, hates your apathy, but he's very angry about it. With a normal MC, Floyd enjoys watching you react. Watching the fear and panic fill your eyes is fun to him. His shrimpy being boring and not reacting is boring. And he, like Jade, will try to force a reaction out of you. It doesn't work he'll keep trying till he gets one. He doesn't see that as hurting you, but as showing you how he loves you.

Jamil's UM gives him a win here, because he can force you to act affectionate with it. But the blank-eyed stare remains despite how hard he tries. And then he hates your apathy even more, because deep down he knows that it’s fake. Just like the rest of your 'acceptance'. Like the others, all he wants is for you to love him. And even you being brainwashed can't make him feel better.

Rook on the complete opposite end of the spectrum finds your dismissal of his acts ad endearing. No matter what you say or do, Rook finds you as his most important person, and that will never change been , no matter what yo do or say, he'll always be completely obsessed with you. And your lack of a reaction is equally infatuating to him. He wants to know why you're like this and wants to push the boundaries of what you can take. No matter what, he will always be obsessed with you, and he'll never push you to change because he loves your apathy too.

Platonic yanderes, Grim + Staff, don't mind your behaviour unless it affects them. Besides your apathy hurts the yanderes that want to force their tongues down your throat so they couldn't care less about your apathy. If it does affect them, then and only then, will they push you to change.

Ortho and Lilia on the other hand have a problem with it. One of the things they care about is seeing you be with your yandere And that yandere being happy. So like Jade and Floyd they'll try to force you to change the way you act.

Ortho is nicer about it because, he cares about you like his brother does. Lilia isn't, because he wants you to stop this childish phase and just accept what you're given with a genuine smile on your face.

But really, the only winner here is you. Even if you're stuck with them, isn't it worth it to make them suffer too?

[porcupine-girl]

I realize that I am preaching to the choir here, given that I actually have NOT seen any of this going around on Tumblr. But just in case it's here and I've just missed it:

DO NOT MAKE FUCKING CAT-EATING MEMES. I KNOW YOU THINK YOU'RE MAKING FUN OF TRUMP, BUT YOU'RE NOT.

The thing is, 90% of the memes and jokes I've seen about this don't specify in any way whatsoever that they are making fun of Trump/Vance/people who believe that it's happening. They're just "haha eating cats funny" - which, guess who else would make that exact same joke? People who believe that immigrants are eating cats and are making fun of the immigrants for it!

Almost all of the memes I've seen shared by people on the left, I have to wonder if they were originally made by people on the right. I hear people talk about wearing "cat-eating shirts" to the polls since they can't wear Harris/Walz shirts, and I'm like... won't the other side do that too? Do you not see how the exact same thing is funny to them, but for completely opposite reasons? Vance even outright said he wants to see more memes, whether or not it's true.

And if you share these memes, they will assume you agree with them. Have you ever wondered how MAGAs could possibly believe that over half the country agrees with them? Well, when it looks for all the world like everyone else is also laughing at those stupid immigrants who steal people's pets, it's not hard for them to assume that those people laughing at immigrants are on their side.

This isn't the first time this has happened, either. Right after Epstein's suicide, some guy was being interviewed on the news about something unrelated and right at the end threw in something like "Epstein didn't kill himself" or something, and people on the left thought it was hilarious and amazing and shared it all over the place.

Except. That guy? He thought CLINTON killed Epstein, not Trump. THAT was his point, THAT was the joke he was making. But the left caused his video to rack up the views and shares, so now he thinks everyone else also thinks Clinton did it. And the same for all the other Epstein jokes that didn't specify who you thought actually had him killed. I definitely saw ones that got used by both sides unironically.

Please think a little bit when it comes to political humor. Could someone on the opposite end of the spectrum from you look at the joke or meme you're posting and think that it's aimed at them? Like, no matter how obvious you think it is who the real target is intended to be, could someone possibly misconstrue the target to be someone on your side?

[between-the-pages-ofa-book]

Why don't we ever talk about how Steve is actually a pretty good judge of character?

He meets Sam, jokes around with him for 5 minutes, and decides he's going to trust the man with his life which turns out to be one of the best decisions he ever made and he entrusts the Captain America title with him.

He meets Natasha in Avengers and doesn't hesitate to take her word for anything during that movie. All it took was one head nod from Natasha vouching for Clint and he's suiting up beside him, ready to go into battle. His trust wavers a bit in The Winter Soldier because, due to her experience as a super spy, Natasha still holds things close to her chest but when it counts, Steve knows who she is and knows he can trust her to have his back. It's why it hurt so much to see her on the opposite side in Civil War, but even then, he never loses trust in her. I could gush about how important those two are to each other all day so we're just going to move on.

It was pretty clear to me that Steve never actually trusted SHIELD that much and went there because of Peggy's legacy and because that's where he felt like he would get the most fulfillment. He always kept people at SHIELD and Nick Fury at arm's length, actively arguing with Fury about Project Insight when he found out about it. He didn't hesitate to knock the whole thing down once he found out about Hydra.

Steve always butts heads with Tony because they're too different, but at the end of the day, Steve knows Tony is going to do what's right, even if he's misguided on the way there.

He took Wanda at her word that Ultron's values were the same as Tony's, even if they were on completely opposite ends of the spectrum and Tony wanted to protect the world while Ultron wanted to destroy it. Wanda goes onto become an Avenger.

While Steve was motivated by his friendship to Bucky in saving Bucky, he was never wrong that the person he knew--the good man--was still there and that Bucky was worth saving. It took just a few moments where Bucky hesitates in killing him to prove that to him, even while everyone else around him was telling him that Bucky was no longer there. Steve wasn't wrong about this one, either.

In summation, if Steve Rogers doesn't trust someone, I'm not either.

[fdelopera]

JVP Explained

So, I've been seeing WAY too many gentiles ignorantly uplifting an American "Jewish" group called JVP this past month.

Members of JVP have been very loud this past month, pretending that they speak for Jewish people. They do not.

As a Jew, I'm here to help you understand who this group is, why they act in the blatantly antisemitic ways they do, and why they are dangerous to Jewish people around the world.

And, as an ACTUAL Jewish voice, I am here to tell gentiles to STOP uplifting them.

If you have never heard of "Jewish Voice for Peace" (JVP), or even if you have, I want to give you an analogy that will help you understand this group:

JVP are to Jewish people what Blaire White, Kalvin Garrah, and Caitlyn Jenner are to trans people.

And it's worse, because JVP have gentiles (non-Jews) in their membership. (At least Blaire, Kalvin, and Caitlyn are actually trans.) So for JVP to even call themselves a "Jewish voice" is a lie.

Like Blaire, Kalvin, and Caitlyn, JVP's Jewish membership desperately want to be seen as "the good ones" by bigots, and they are willing to throw vulnerable people in their own community under the bus just for a chance to be accepted by those bigots.

JVP has been called out REPEATEDLY by the Anti-Defamation League for harassing observant Jews at synagogue, harassing queer observant Jews, invoking the antisemitic blood libel canard against Jewish people, and most recently, cheering on and uplifting Hamas after their pogrom on October 7. Among many, many other antisemitic offenses.

There are LEGITIMATE and VALID ways to protest the atrocities and war crimes of the Israeli government.

Let me say that again.

There are LEGITIMATE and VALID ways to protest the atrocities and war crimes of the Israeli government!

But JVP doesn't do that.

Instead, JVP chooses to amplify Neo-Nazi dogwhistles, harass American Jewish people at shul, and uplift Hamas — an antisemitic terrorist organization.

You DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT!! get to call yourself a "Jewish voice for peace" and then use BLOOD LIBEL, UPLIFTING ANTISEMITIC TERRORISTS, and HARASSING OBSERVANT JEWS as a way to "criticize" the Israeli government.

You are not a "freedom fighter." You are just a Jew who is a self-loathing, Jew-hating antisemite.

Now, if you're queer like me (nonbinary, genderfluid Jew here, hi!), you're likely aware of how Blaire, Kalvin, and Caitlyn have harassed countless other trans people, especially nonbinary people, for not being trans in the "right way." They do this because they are desperate for approval from right-wingers. Why? Because they, and trans people like them, have a deep sense of self-loathing, shame, and guilt about being trans. They think that if they harass other trans people, right-wingers will accept them. All they want is for right-wingers to tell them, "It's okay, we know you're not like those cringy trans people over there. You're some of the good ones."

Right-wingers then benefit from this "relationship" because they can deny that they are transphobic bigots. Right-wingers can say things like, "I don't hate all trans people. I watched a couple of Blaire White's YouTube videos, and she's alright." So by seeking out right-wing approval, people like Blaire are making it more difficult for other trans people to fight back against anti-trans bigotry. But Blaire doesn't care, so long as Republicans will pat her on the head and tell her she's "one of the good ones."

JVP are very similar to this, except that they are seeking approval from extreme left-wing groups. Jews in JVP may be on the opposite end of the political spectrum, but they are behaving in the exact same way as Blaire, Kalvin, and Caitlyn. They are members of a marginalized group who are seeking approval from bigots, and they're throwing their community under the bus in the process.

JVP's Jewish membership desperately want to be seen as "Good Jews."

(JVP's gentile membership, of course, are just leftist antisemites and are there to harass Jewish people they deem to be "Bad Jews.")

Why? Why do Jews in JVP want to be seen as "the good ones"?

Because Jews in JVP have a deep feeling of self-loathing, shame, and guilt about being Jewish, and they think if leftist groups tell them, "It's okay, you're some of the good ones," that this will somehow assuage their guilt for being Jewish.

This self-loathing, shame, and guilt goes far beyond the current Israel/Palestine conflict. That's just how it is manifesting right now. There have always been Jews who have wanted to assimilate into gentile spaces and be told that they're "the good ones." There have always been Jews who are ashamed of being Jewish.

Jews in JVP consider spreading antisemitic Neo-Nazi conspiracy theories, uplifting Hamas, and further marginalizing other Jewish people to be a small price to pay if it means that they are provisionally "accepted" by certain antisemitic gentiles. Even though these antisemitic gentiles will discard the Jews in JVP as soon as it is expedient to do so.

And of course, just like Blaire, Kalvin, and Caitlyn do with right-wingers, the Jews in JVP sanction left-wing antisemites to say: "I don't hate all Jews. I'm not antisemitic. I just hate Israeli Jews 'Bad Jews.' I just want those 7 million Israeli Jews 'Bad Jews' to be exterminated."

Sure, Jan. Sure, you're not antisemitic. You just want 7 million Jews mass murdered. In case you didn't know, you absolute ghoul, that's the very definition of antisemitic.

Oh, and Gentiles, many of you have gone mask-off enough with your Jew-hatred this month for us Jews to know that when you say "Israelis," "Zionists," "Zios," "Zio scum," "Zio rats," and every other permutation of those words, you really mean "those dirty Jews I'm allowed to hate publicly now."

But the Jews in JVP haven't studied their Holocaust history. The Jews in JVP don't care to remember that the Nazis, too, rounded us up into groups of "Bad Jews" and "Good Jews" — or, really, "Bad Jews" and "Useful Jews." Then the Nazis used the "Useful Jews" to attack the "Bad Jews." Finally, they shoved ALL the Jews that they could get their hands on into the gas chambers and tried to kill every last one of us.

And what I know from studying Holocaust history is that as soon as Jews start getting sorted into camps of "Good Jews" and "Bad Jews," you had better say, "Fuck no, I'm not being a Good Jew!"

You had better get into the "BAD JEW" camp as FAST as you can and start SPEAKING OUT, and uplifting the Jewish community, and supporting as many other Jews as you can.

If you try to be a "Good Jew," antisemites will just use you as a useful idiot and a pawn against other Jews. Then within a short period of time, you will find that EVERY Jew is lumped into the "Bad Jew" camp. And EVERY Jew is now in danger. Including you, O "Good Jew" who tried so hard to convince antisemites that you were "one of the good ones."

If JVP studied Holocaust history, they would see that they are being useful idiots for Neo-Nazis, Hamas, and other antisemitic groups that want Jews around the world to be eradicated. (You should read Hamas' excruciatingly antisemitic charter sometime. I have. The group is literally founded on Jew-hatred.)

But the Jews in JVP do not study Jewish history, or Holocaust history.

The Jews in JVP don't want to acknowledge the truth:

In siding with the Neo-Nazis, the Hamas supporters, and the other antisemitic groups that are co-opting the Free Palestine movement and turning it into a movement of Jew-hatred, the Jews in JVP are signing their own death warrant, too.

It's only a matter of time, O "Good Jews," before you are rounded up with us "Bad Jews." Because to antisemites, we're all just "dirty Jews who deserve to die."

[icedragonlizard]

I might get torn apart for posting this, but imo it must be said.

To make it crystal clear, I don't excuse Susie's actions in Planet Robobot. But I don't excuse Taranza's actions in Triple Deluxe either.

I think people in the Kirby fandom infantilize Taranza way too much.

I am not joking when I say that I've seen people go as far as to say that he was "never a villain in the first place". That he's "innocent".

I'm sorry, but that's just flat out wrong. He was objectively the villain during Triple Deluxe. "He was just following orders!" is not proof of innocence when he was following the orders of a dictator. Taranza was a dictator-enabler. A dictator's right-hand man. That's not innocent. He lowkey kidnapped people in the name of this dictator.

Who knows what he could've done off-screen during the game while dragging Dedede around with him... probably could've tormented a lot of unshown Floralians while Kirby was trying to stop the takeover.

I also believe that Taranza loved playing the villain. He looks incredibly smug while dragging Dedede around and provoking bosses into fighting Kirby. Not to mention the very things that he says in his monologue right before he uses Dedede like a puppet to fight Kirby.

.... So much for the claims of "never a villain in the first place".

I very much believe he's reformed (Susie too, tbh) but I wish people would stop totally erasing his actions and pretending he did no bad.

This is not meant to demonize Taranza in any way. It's just... I absolutely hate that people treat him like a poor little innocent baby while simultaneously treating Susie like an irredeemable, unforgivable monster. They committed very similar crimes, but somehow get treated like they're opposite ends of the spectrum morality-wise.

Now, when comparing them, Susie is indeed the worse of the two overall, because her actions were done on multiple planets vs. one country. But that doesn't change the fact that it's still hypocritical to treat one of them like they're innocent while demonizing the other.

Regardless of the different scales of their crimes, they're both ultimately just second-in-commands to corrupt higher-ups that then helped give Kirby something to fight the final boss when it mattered.

I like to think that Taranza and Susie are both rather morally grey people with good and bad qualities. To me, they're friends with Kirby now, but they still have flaws despite not being as bad as they were before. I'd put Magolor on the same boat alongside with them too.

Taranza can both have grief and still have flaws. And I think Susie 100% has had grief for her dad too, even if she's less open about it.

One of the reasons why Susie discourse is so aggravating is because people simultaneously downplay and infantilize other villains, especially Taranza. People are hypocrites. I bet people wouldn't give a crap if Taranza or Magolor were to turn Meta Knight into a robot.

I get why the colonization and capitalism themes for both Susie and Planet Robobot as a whole can strike a nerve to some people and elicit discomfort, but I don't really think that warrants a massive and unfair discrepancy to how she gets treated compared to the others.

While I can get why those themes can make some people not like her as much as others, I don't think it makes it fair to treat her like an unforgivable demon because her villainy happens to be more real.

Just because the others are less real doesn't mean they're innocent.

The double standards suck.

[atty-goldstein]

Thinking about the Wrong Kids and the implications

Ragh taking the Seacaster eyepatch which makes the user immune to fear, when during the sophomore year quest, he'd been plagued with the threat to his mom's life. Ragh possibly carrying so much guilt because he himself had been possessed in the Nightmare Forest to attack his own friends. The very friends who were the first to accept him and treat him like family when he came out. Because we don't know if the Bad Kids died before they were able to snap their hirelings out of the mind control

Same goes for Tracker. But if it happened before Kristen resurrected herself, that's what would make it a lot more tragic for her. Cuz we know that Kristen discovered how Sol, Helio, and Galicaea were all just in kahoots with each other after the Nightmare King killed her. So they could have promised Tracker revenge on the Nightmare King if she worked for Helio instead. And it's because Kristen doesn't get to tell her about the influences behind those gods.

Speaking of, people are saying Tracker wore silver bracers to make herself stronger, but listen. What if she's wearing them also as a callback to the handcuffs she and Kristen used to use

And god, both Tracker and Zelda taking on physical reminders of their lost loved ones. Tracker still having the tattoos even if she's covered it up, Zelda with the white streak. I guess that's yet another thing Kristen and Gorgug have in common besides dying on the first day of school.

But also, it's like Tracker and Zelda are on the opposite ends of the same spectrum. Tracker became someone Kristen avoided becoming, while Zelda became what Gorgug wanted to be

Wrong Kid Zelda intrigued me so much cuz it could be interpreted that she's behind the Wilma and Digby automatons, but we don't know if she made them because they also died or if they pissed her off somehow she decided to just change or replace them. I'm inclined to think it's the former, and that Zelda also picked up artificing from them cuz they would have grieved together and chances are, the Thistlesprings also treated her like she's one of their own

And goddamn, considering they did get the livestream for the Nightmare King battle set up, then that means she and Gorgug literally just made up. They literally just said they loved each other. They didn't even get the chance to see each other again in person after that cuz the next time he contacted her, she watched him die. If she'd been told Gorgug was alive in Fig's timeline, would she also have switched sides?

But another question about Wrong Kid Zelda tho. What happened to the Seven then, if she teamed up with the other Wrong Kids instead?

And yeah, Penny makes more sense to take Riz's place instead of Zayn, but maybe it's because Penny is Becca's character now

Meanwhile, Aelwyn would have literally just turned against the Abernants, for Adaine. They were supposed to start being sisters. And she loses her. Aelwyn, who used the last of her strength to save Adaine from their father, whose magic is about protection, not being able to protect and save Adaine in the battle with the Nightmare King

Also, what do we think happened? Did she get her lycanthropy from Tracker because they're on the same team now? Or did she get it from Jawbone? Did Jawbone give her lycanthropy to aid in her quest for vengeance, or did she make him give it to her?

Most of Wrong Kid Ayda's deal was explained, I think. But I'm then curious about what happened to her relationship to Arthur in that timeline. He's probably not dead cuz Gorgug's dead a second time, but Ayda probably lashed out at him even more because he was the one who sent the Bad Kids on that quest in the first place

But my biggest question is, why was it so tragic for the Bad Kids to die in that battle? Fig would've still been an Archdevil, so wouldn't she just be in hell then? Wouldn't Fabian just be reunited with his father and they go on adventures together? Wouldn't Riz also be reunited with his father again and start being a full-time agent for heaven? Wouldn't Gorgug end up in heaven too, since Gorthalax fixed that thing where he went to hell? Kristen would probably still be fighting the gods, she probably would even punch Helio again for trying to recruit Tracker. Maybe even pull off what Arthur Aguefort did and knock some gods out and posed as them. And Adaine could maybe reach out beyond the grave to the next Elven Oracle, like the previous one did to her.

Also, we know there are other clerics powerful enough to bring them back from the dead, cuz of Yolanda and Lucy being brought back even after being dead for a while. Surely, Arthur also has more connections to make that happen, especially if Ayda's that angry with him and he wants to fix things with her still.

[vidavalor]

Stars Crashing Down

For @tickety-bippity-boo and @thavron, who wanted thoughts on why the same musical cues play when Death spreads its wings as during the Jesus scene and the 2.06 kiss.

The questions posed to me were: What's the deal with Crowley and Death? Is Crowley Death? and the answer is... well, um... kinda... just read it and you'll see what I mean. 😉

You have sought The Black Knight, foolish one, but you have found...

...your death.

So, you do not have to read it first but, over here, I talked about the connections between why the same musical cues are playing in the 2.06 kiss scene and the Jesus scene. What we're going to do here is expand those thoughts out to include Death spreading its wings having the same musical cues and talk about why that might be.

The 2.06 kiss/Golgotha scene meta talks about how the show is using different meanings of the word passion and how Golgotha is contrasting romantic passion with the suffering and death of Christ, aka The Passion of the Christ. This isn't the only instance of a comparison between destruction and death and passion in the series. Looking at more of them will probably help clear up what's going on with the parallels between Death and Crowley (and Aziraphale) in the series, so, that's what I'll be doing here and you can let me know what you think, yeah?

Passion is, by far, not the only word that has such wildly, contrasting definitions, but it's one of the strongest examples of it because of how its definitions illustrate how people make comparisons between the experience of erotic love with the agony of suffering and death. The word is an example of something we could call a destructive sexual metaphor or sex and death.

Throughout history, humans have sought words to explain the experience of sex and many different common metaphors have arisen from this. Crowley and Aziraphale, for instance, also have a whole thing about one of the other most common ones in the arts, which is the sea. Linguistically-speaking, though, the most common ones have always been death and destruction. Why?

Well, some people see an orgasm as a rebirth of sorts and the closest thing a person experiences to death while still remaining alive. Both sex and death come with a sense of a lack of control. They are on the opposite ends of a spectrum when it comes to experience, with one being an example of intense pleasure while the other being possibly painful and an ending from which you do not return. This draws contrasts between them. Similarly, something being destroyed-- like a crumbling building, say-- is seen as metaphoric for the feeling of coming apart that can accompany an orgasm.

As a result, across many languages, there is a metric fuckton of linguistic overlap between words related to death, destruction and violence and words related to love and sex. The French phrase that means an orgasm, for instance, is la petite mort which, when literally translated means the little death. When Hozier sings the song that is on Crowley's playlist and offers his life in exchange for "that deathless death," the "deathless death" in question is an orgasm. He is using death as a metaphor for the sexual pleasure about which he is singing, which is currently one of the most well-known examples of sex and death/destructive sexual metaphor in modern music, if nowhere near the only one.

If you start thinking about slang words for sex, I'd wager quite a few of them are going to fall into the category of a destructive sexual metaphor because they're also words related to a sense of destruction. Bang. Smash. Wrecked. Nailed... Would you sleep with him? Yeah, I'd hit that... Even puppy love is destructive sexual metaphor, as it's a pash (short for passion) or a crush. The word that we use to say we have a little thing for someone-- a crush-- is the same word we use to say someone was killed within the rubble of a bombed building. Both a little disturbing and quite interesting, right?

If you've ever written or read erotica that was at least purporting to be a little literary 😉, you know that there's usually a lot of writhing and thrashing involved-- words that are originally rooted in flailing around in pain that are being used to describe how the body moves in the midst of sexual pleasure. These words, too, are a form of destructive sexual metaphor.

As anyone who has gotten back from seeing Deadpool and Wolverine improve the sales of Hondas for the foreseeable future can tell you, using violence and destruction as a metaphor for sex is not going anywhere. It's not new-- it's actually very, very, very old. How old, you say?

Well, how's this for homoeroticism: the word weapon comes from the Old English waepen, which was a word meaning penis, you guys. Dudes literally invented swords and the like to kill each other and then went 'this is just like my dick' to a point that they just called them the same fucking word. 😂

It's a truth universally acknowledged that nearly all Good Omens fans have seen Our Flag Means Death-- a tv show whose title is an example of sex and death happening, let alone the rest of the show. This also means you've all seen the most blatant example of destructive sexual metaphor on screen maybe ever and, if you have seen OFMD, you already know exactly what scene I'm going to say... 😂

It does not take much to infer that, perhaps, Stede's sword was standing in here-- so, was metaphorical for-- his cock and what Ed really desired here was to get done into the following Tuesday. The sword is a very overt metaphor for penetrative sex. This is what very blatant, destructive sexual metaphor looks like. More subtle ones exist-- it would be hard for them not to, by comparison lol-- but this is it a nutshell.

Ok, I can hear you saying: alright, I love the sadly departed queer pirate show, Vida, but what does this have to do with Good Omens?

As we'll see, Crowley and Aziraphale are fucking obsessed with death and destruction as a sexual metaphor, that's what, and sex-and-death is a theme of Good Omens.

Crowley and Aziraphale are supposed to be hereditary enemies. For thousands of years, when they've been in a place where someone could overhear them, they've had to sound like they dislike one another. To sound like a good angel and a bad demon, there needs to be talk of being on opposite sides of what is ultimately supposed to be a large-scale military conflict. Heaven and Hell are places of violence and destruction that are full of talk of war and Armageddon, right?

As we'll look at, you can use those words of death, violence and destruction to mean sexually euphemistic or, depending on the word, even romantic things... which is what Crowley and Aziraphale do.

Crowley and Aziraphale's language exists to mask their speech in public but the way they use it is to take those words of aggression and use them as flirtation. They're wonderful dorks who get off on seeing how cleverly they can wordplay each other into bed. Their little birdsong mating dance-- whether in public or private-- involves a ton of sex and death and destructive sexual metaphors. I've picked out a few of what I think are great examples but this is in no way all of them.

Receipts time. 😉

In 1.01, a drunk Crowley and Aziraphale are, on a surface level, talking about the destructive devastation that will happen to Earth when Armageddon happens. In reality, Armageddon here is a metaphor for a top notch time in bed. It's the end of the world so it's an irresistible metaphor for a really, really, good end, if ya get me.

Crowley flirts with Aziraphale with a bit of destructive sexual metaphor that is actually made even funnier retrospectively by 2.01's Before the Beginning scene and that's this bit here: "Stars crashing down!"

Making someone "see stars" is an example of destructive sexual metaphor in language because if a boxer takes a punch and starts to wobble, someone might say "oh, he's seeing stars"-- meaning, he's probably a bit concussed or, at least, disoriented from the punch-- but you can also want to make someone "see stars" in bed, which is descriptive for giving them pleasure. It comes from how many people see flecks of light when they orgasm. Crowley is taking this one step further by referring to them as the stars, which is made funnier by the fact that they set the stars in the sky and the first things he ever showed Aziraphale were literal fucking stars 😂.

And what are these stars doing? They're crashing down.

Crowley is comparing the stars falling out of the sky in the final destruction of Armageddon-- so, the destruction of the universe-- as metaphorical for the two of them in bed later on. Aziraphale gonna be so gone, he'll be like what are they putting in bananas these days? (The bananas are another post. Do not distract me while I'm on a roll here lol.)

Aziraphale comes back not long later when he's gotten enough drunken synapses to fire and he's got a destructive sexual metaphor for Crowley that wins at life by their standards because it also encompasses the sea which, as we looked at in the Fish meta (I'll link it later on in the post), they've been using to talk about sex seemingly ever since they first started having some literal and metaphorical oysters back in ancient Rome.

Aziraphale's metaphor? The Kraken.

The Kraken is a mythological sea monster that was often seen as something of a sea serpent, even if historians believe that it was based on giant squid and octopi before those were more well understood. Hmm, I wonder what long-limbed sea serpent could be The Kraken in Aziraphale's metaphor here? 😉

And what's supposed to happen to "The Kraken" that is Crowley during Armageddon?

Oh, it's supposed to come up from the sea to the surface "in the end, when the sea boils." When it all gets too hot because the sea in the mother of all boils here and "the end" is in sight, The Kraken is going to come to the surface.

This is Aziraphale using Armageddon as destructive sexual metaphor. He's comparing sea creatures trying to escape the boiling waters of Armageddon and dying trying to Crowley's near-future orgasm.

They managed these drunk so imagine how filthy they are sober! 😂

We don't have to, actually, as there are lots more...

When Crowley and Aziraphale crossed paths in The Kingdom of Wessex, how did Crowley flirtatiously greet Aziraphale?

"...you have found (dramatic beat while he poses) your death."

Crowley is amusing them both by using the words he has to say to sound threatening while posing as the seemingly violent Black Knight to actually refer to the fact that he's not Aziraphale's literal death-- he would never harm him-- but he is very much Aziraphale's metaphorical death, in that he is Aziraphale's lover.

It's a play on death and destruction as sexual metaphor, in that Aziraphale arrived expecting an encounter with violence, potentially, and, instead, he's found "death"-- pleasure.

For a pretty basic example, there is Aziraphale's "sitting on it" joke and that smirk 😂 to Crowley...

...this is a pretty surface-level but still very funny joke equating the sword with a cock and illustrating that Aziraphale is making the comment innuendo intentionally for the amusement of his partner, who more than gets the joke. Hell, his partner originated the damn joke...

Destructive sexual metaphor is also why Aziraphale references The Titanic when promising a great time at The Meeting Ball and why the theme song to the 1997 movie is on his playlist in S2.

The Titanic is the greatest nautical disaster that has ever occured. By Crowley and Aziraphale standards, that makes it metaphorical for best of the best sex. (Unfortunately, Aziraphale accidentally manifested an actual disaster instead lol.)

One could also say that positively destroying some barbecue is destructive sexual metaphor, especially when one looks one's partner dead in the eye in the middle of it and uses it as euphemistic for other things onto which one might like to go down.

Whew. Good thing Crowley has the constitution of an ox...

Now, you might say... but what do these two care about death and destruction? They're immortal! Except... they're not. Not entirely.

Their relationship is dangerous as all fuck and if they got caught, they could be killed. They do fear actual destruction and Aziraphale uses the word destroy to refer to that with Crowley in earnest more than once when expressing his fear over it.

The spectres of holy water and hellfire looms over them because they could be killed if they are caught. How they end up surviving that risk at the end of S1-- swapping bodies-- is a sexual metaphor in and of itself. The point is that there is risk to them so they understand the human comparisons between sex, destruction and death.

This is really why Aziraphale is so excited about The Bullet Catch in S2. There is nary a more frequent example of a weapon used in destructive sexual metaphor than a gun and, as I looked at a bit in the Fish meta, The Bullet Catch is a metaphor for the history of their sexual relationship and Rome, in particular.

In 1941, The Bullet Catch was Aziraphale's answer to the destructive sexual metaphor Crowley had made when redirecting the bombs in the church by finding an equally sex-and-death magic trick that they could perform together. They both were well-aware of the metaphor.

Understanding this and destructive sexual metaphor in general helps to make clear what it is that Aziraphale actually mouths at Crowley:

When Crowley is struggling to actually fire the gun because he's anxious and, ya know, doesn't want to kill Aziraphale (kinda understandable lol), what Aziraphale mouths at Crowley helps him focus and fire the literal gun that they could not possibly be using more euphemistically if they tried (and they are trying lol.)

If you look at the above gif, you will see that "trust me" are not the actual words that Aziraphale was saying, as those words do not match the movements of his mouth. What he says means "trust me" to Crowley, as Crowley later states, but those are not the words that Aziraphale actually soundlessly said to Crowley on the stage.

Instead, it's pretty evident that what Aziraphale actually mouths is "come for me." He got Crowley to fire the literal gun with some words that do it for Crowley in the situation for which the literal gun is a metaphor. Aziraphale having a gun to his head and using language he'd use in bed is the most sex and death thing that has ever sex and deathed.

This is referenced in the Chateauneuf-de-Pape scene afterwards, when they're still talking about The Bullet Catch as if it was sex, both well-aware of why they spent their date night using a gun-firing performance as foreplay.

Aziraphale referring to what it was he actually mouthed:

Finally, if The Bullet Catch is the king of destructive sexual metaphor scenes between them, then the queen is The Seeds of Destruction.

On the way to Tadfield in S1, we have this scene in which Crowley was giving Aziraphale a few more details about when he dropped off the baby eleven years earlier and started to feel down about how the whole thing is a mess and Armageddon is days away. Aziraphale then starts in on this little monologue using a religious teaching to talk about the nature of evil that gets quite a response out of Crowley.

A lot of people already see the end of the scene for what it is, as it's fairly overt:

You don't have to be looking at wordplay too heavily to see that Crowley's saying that what Aziraphale just said has him hard and that is emphasized by the shot we hold on of Aziraphale to end the scene being that he is clearly checking out the fruits of his labors. So, what, exactly, about what Aziraphale says in this scene is so hot that Crowley is trying to be cool but is very glad in this moment that the car can drive itself?

What Aziraphale is doing here when they're obviously alone is using the slightly pompous angel voice he uses when they banter in their speak in public and he is paraphrasing a religious teaching-- one that Aziraphale doesn't believe in or else he wouldn't be here in this car in this moment-- as the basis for wordplay. What is he doing with that wordplay? He is dirty-talking Crowley in blasphemous destructive sexual metaphor.

Aziraphale sounds like he's talking about the religious teaching that states that evil will always falter, no matter what, simply because it is evil, which means that it is doomed to always cave to good. He is actually using that teaching as a metaphor for how he will "win out" over Crowley the next time they have sex. To do that, he adds destructive sexual metaphor to the very hot blasphemy of using religious language to talk about sex because raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens and all that but if you mash up etymology, blasphemy, destructive sexual metaphor and the pompous angel voice, these are a few of Crowley's favorite things.

How does he use destructive sexual metaphor here?

Aziraphale is talking about how Crowley keeps the seeds of his destruction-- the impetus for what turns him on-- quiet and doesn't let people close to him and to know him is to know just what he likes and oh Aziraphale knows what he likes (like word flirting while he's driving lol)... and also that one of the things that Crowley likes to contain are the other way the "seeds of destruction" can be taken, which is the literal seeds of his destruction (yes, this is scene #543 to make an orgasm denial reference) but doing that, Aziraphale is saying? It's going to be no use, Crowley...

Among the wordplay in here is that Aziraphale is saying that Crowley might think he's going to last but he's wrong because, eventually, Aziraphale is going to have him metaphorically crashing on the rocks in a shipwreck ("founder on the rocks") and "vanishing"-- a word that means to suddenly disappear. A vanishing, in and of itself, is destructive sexual metaphor but the verb 'to come' is also the root of the words appear and disappear, making to 'vanish' doubly-euphemistic for a sudden, dramatic, ah... "disappearance."

Aziraphale is literally sitting there in the passenger seat chatting away in religious speak, wordplay-happy euphemisms, and with those he is saying, among other things: I know you and what you like and what you need and I'm going to have you dying for it and no matter how much you might try not to give in, eventually, you're going to give yourself up to me and I'm going to make you come so hard.

It's a little more detailed and more clever if you go word-by-word but, basically, that is, in summary, why Crowley is trying not to drive off the road at the end of this scene-- and it's destructive sexual metaphor to a point that there's a vanishing and a shipwreck-- plus, the word destruction literally in it.

Finally, the extent to which they use destruction and death as sexual metaphor is actually best summed up by a moment in which Crowley used it-- but not just as a flirtation.

In 1827, as Aziraphale debated healing Wee Morag, he thought he had more time than he actually did. Crowley, who could sense Wee Morag dying, tried to interrupt him to tell him:

Aziraphale continued for a second in which he says: "I will brook no argument"-- a phrase that implied through its use of a word that also means a type of body of water that he thought he had enough time to flirt with Crowley for a moment before doing anything. The whole exchange is only a few seconds long and Crowley knew that it was over before Aziraphale had even proposed healing Morag and that there was really nothing Aziraphale could have done.

He turns Aziraphale and they witness Wee Morag die. This is the first scene we've seen where the two of them see death happen before them, even though we know they've obviously seen it happen on Earth before. Both of them are understandably upset by Morag's death.

As Aziraphale then speaks to Elspeth, he starts to stammer, emotional over Morag's death and feeling guilty that he didn't save her. Crowley steps up to comfort him before moving to help Elspeth. Crowley wants Aziraphale to know it wasn't his fault and to not feel guilty for flirting while the young woman was dying, as there wasn't a way to save her. He does so by combining the comforting tone and pat of Aziraphale's chest with further flirtation, picking up where Aziraphale left off to show him he doesn't think badly of him.

The comforting flirtation? Is some sex in the face of death.

Crowley says something about grief to Aziraphale that also sounds an awful lot like something someone might say to a lover. The result of the scene is that it has the effect of sounding like Crowley is referencing something once said between them and that was likely something Aziraphale once said to Crowley after a very different sort of "death"-- likely, the first time they performed the The Bullet Catch together.

"It's a bit different when it's someone you know, isn't it?"

So, why does the same music play when Death spreads his wings and when Jesus is nailed to the cross as plays when Crowley and Aziraphale kiss in 2.06? Sex and death. Crowley is death in the sense that he's Aziraphale's death-- and Aziraphale is his.

These two are supposed to be thrilled to bits to one day defeat one another in glorious battle in the final war of Armageddon but they're really in love. They have no desire to hurt one another and every desire to give each other all the pleasure they can. They've developed and enjoy a mutual kink for figuring out increasingly clever and inventive, word-nerdy ways to say they want to fuck each other senseless by way of using words of God, violence, destruction and death to do so, underscoring a theme of sex and death in the Armageddon show.

After all, this is how Crowley once faux-told Aziraphale he wanted to commit murder, so... is it really a stretch? 😉

I'm pretty sure that is about neither goats nor kids, aren't you?

[feshippingpolls]

Admittedly it's just a lot of posts along the lines of "Oh this is a notp I could never imagine x character dating a woman/man" even when they're canonically bisexual like Edelgard or Alfred. I'm probably overstating it, but it's always just a bit uncomfortable to see the idea of them being bisexual responded to so negatively.

To be fair, a lot of modern Fire Emblem (games where the player can romance basically anybody/pair characters up for Fates and Awakening) doesn't really have any characters that are exclusively attracted to the same sex. Since characters with same sex options (such as Niles/Edelgard/romance options in Engage) are always romanceable by both protagonists, they are always functionally bisexual. While this gives bisexual representation (which is great to have), it erases sexualities outside of bi or heterosexuality because every character has to be available to at least players of the opposite sex (gotta appeal to the straights ig + make your child soldiers for gen 2). So even if these characters are functionally bisexual in-game, it feels pretty difficult to believe that the spectrum of sexualities in-universe is so limited and fans will want to have representations of other orientations. Hence, fans might choose to interpret characters who are bisexual in-game as exclusively attracted to the same sex and it kind of comes down to personal headcanons at that point.

Engage is an outlier here because every character can be given the pact ring regardless of the avatar's gender, making every romanceable character (since not all ring supports are romantic) functionally bisexual. While this is very cool and makes every character available to anyone, it also means that characters' sexualities are even more up to player interpretation (unless you want to interpret them as just living in a world where basically everyone is bi which hell yeah pls take me there). I should add that I do really like the way pact rings work in Engage because it sucks to have your options limited based on the gender you play as so it's just nicer to have everyone be bi. But I think it's fine for these characters to be headcanoned differently.

But I don't want to ignore the possibility of biphobia, I do know there's a lot of scrutiny for bi people dating the opposite gender and I'm not sure how much it bleeds through here. However I feel like a lot of this just comes down to personal headcanons. While I recognise it isn't the same since bisexual representation is important, a lot of functionally straight characters are interpreted differently by fans and often interpreted to be bisexual, so I don't think this is a case of biphobia (on a large scale, anyway, ofc I don't know the thoughts of every single fan).

Edit: If you're interested, you should definitely read the comments for different perspectives. At the end of the day I'm just one dumb bisexual and other people have good counterpoints.