#if adults can’t go on that’s also why

[naburi]

WILL YOU AVAIL ME AGAIN?

DAHYUN X READER

TAGS: DILDO PLAY, LUBE, BODY OIL, TONGUE PLAY, MISSIONARY, DOUBLE PENETRATION, DOGGY, ANAL

3.4K WORDS

Midnight and still awake, browsing to find a video that will satisfy you for tonight. It seems like you're looking at identical girls, fake big boobs, slim limbs, small waists. They all look the same which you find boring, not until you found her video. Her smooth thick legs are spread to front her tight pink slit, pleasuring herself in front of the camera, only wearing a face mask to hide her identity. “She looks like my coworker”, you said. Milky white skin, thick legs, broad slim shoulders. You didn’t give too much thought to the similarities not until you saw your coworker later that day.

You’re a young corporate man who can’t find romance to have a meaningful connection. You thought finally finishing college will improve your sex life, but what you found is the opposite. Everyone is busy in the fast paced workplace. Nobody has the time to build relationships, you are all too tired to go out to satisfy your sexual life. That’s why you start to lean on watching adult content. It’s easy, quick, and convenient as you can all have different platforms to have access to numerous adult content creators.

“MS. KIM,” you caught yourself calling Ms. Kim's attention. The thought of the woman you watched last night flashes on your mind. Dahyun looks back, “Hi, Mr. y/n, can I help you?,” she asked politely while still baffled you shouted her name. “I… I… No, I don’t have anything to say,” you say nervously. You don’t even know why you called her name. Feeling embarrassed, you apologize to Dahyun and quickly go back to your cubicle. The woman was left standing processing what just happened.

“It’s her right?” You said to yourself, rushing back home, not even bothered to change clothes. You pull out your phone to go back to the website you found the video. You found her page and surfed through her contents. Her first upload was 6 months ago. She goes from posting just the bottom half of her body, cropped from shoulder up, to revealing her head which still keeps her identity with a white face mask. She consistently uploads every week, most of her videos are just herself playing with her slit with different dildos, she also posts a quick video teaser having an intercourse but you need to subscribe to her page to have access to her adult contents.

Dahyun has a great image in your company. She's the youngest but already has few promotions due to her work ethic and dedication. There are rumors that her quick ascension to the corporate ladder is not because of her hard work but due to what she can do for you after work hours. The rumors didn’t hit the ground enough because of how well she befriended everyone in the company. Her young angelic face helps but what caught everyone’s heart is her bubbly personality that shines bright in the dull and depressing workplace.

It’s been a week now, you took every instance to get an interaction with the company’s princess. From personally passing some documents, to having conversations with someone in her department. Dahyun is not in the same department as you thus making your investigation more complicated. You thought about stalking her social media accounts but all are in private. You started befriending her close coworkers but good things about her are the only thing they talk about. Finding proof that they are the same person seems like an impossible task thus you finally gave up. Nothing would change if you prove that they are the same person, it’s not like you will snitch on the company’s princess after all.

Heavy rain pours just as you’re about to clock out. You and your coworkers are standing outside of the entrance waiting for the rain to die down. A white SUV pulls up in front of you, the driver’s window rolled down, its Ms. Kim, “come inside, I'll drop you off at the subway station.” Some of your coworkers who also take a subway with you ride the SUV. Everyone is too shy to take the passenger seat including you. “You can’t all fit in the back, one should sit beside.” She said, nobody what’s to go in front but they manage to convince you. Sitting tightly on the passenger seat, your colleagues at the back keep asking questions to Ms. Kim, as they also what’s to get close to her, while you’re sitting quietly due to shyness.

Dahyun’s phone that’s on the dashboard lit up revealing a notification. You notice a familiar application icon and the text that says she has a new subscriber. This is the proof that you're looking for, Ms. Kim is an adult content creator. Your colleagues in the back didn’t notice the notification and Dahyun just casually turned down her phone, thinking you don’t know what the notification is all about. Everyone is thanking Ms. Kim for the ride, She noticed how happy you are but not giving more thoughts about it.

Arriving at home, you now have more reason to watch all her contents, you're watching the company’s princess pleasure herself. Everyone's beloved coworker is in an adult site spreading her legs for views and money. It's been a few nights now and her masturbation videos became repetitive. Your high needs satisfaction thus you now subscribe to her paid contents to watch her get fucked by different men, from local Koreans to foreigners, she let herself get fucked to make an content. Her most viewed content is where she pours body oil all over her body which highlights her white skin. Her glowing white oiled up skin, made the sex more erotic. Her buttocks made a heavenly sound as the guy is hitting her from behind, her small oiled boobs get massaged sensually before she takes the cock inside her again. Dahyun wails and moans under her face mask as she gets fuck harder. The few bucks you spend for her content is worth it.

You smile and interact with Ms. Kim during the day while touching yourself watching her contents at night, this has become your routine until she has not been in the office for a few consecutive days now. Nobody knows why she’s absent for a few days now and her manager doesn’t want to disclose her reason. Watching her videos doesn’t hit the mark anymore. You’re about to go sleep but a notification pops up on your screen. Dahyun just dropped a new subscription based content. You can subscribe to her live stream where you can select what kind of dildos she will use and what position she will do a live masturbation. How this works is you're gonna give her gifts during the stream for her to follow your instructions.

She announced that the live stream will start tomorrow at midnight. You’re one of the first subscribers that’s in her live, her legs spread open just like the first time you saw her content. Her one hand is caressing her slit while her other hand is fondling her breast, Different sizes of dildos and lubes lined up to her right side. One viewer starts giving gifts with his comments on the stream. She asked Dahyun to use a thick dildo. She lubes the dildo and slowly inserts it in her slit. The thickness of it gives her a hard time as her slit didn’t even get to warm up. Few attempts pass by and she finally gets to put it all inside her, she starts to moan as she’s pumping the thick dildo inside her.

“Use the tentacle dildo and sit on it,” one commented. Dahyun reads this as she gets notified for the gift. She poured lube to the dildo and started stroking it to spread the lube. She sticks it in front of the screen as she slowly impales herself in the tentacle shaped dildo. The unusual shape gives Dahyun a different sensation making her more horny, she grabs both of her boobs as she’s sitting up and down to the dildo. She started to play with her boobs without even an instruction. She’s massaging her under boobs upward then focusing her fingers on her nipples. One of the viewers commented that she should use oil as she’s caressing her boobs. Dahyun follows, quickly pouring oil on her chest, smothering it all over her boobs, her boobs massages get more erotic due to how smooth she caresses her two mounds.

“Use the black dildo, in your anal, sit on it” a viewer commented. The black dildo is noticeably inspired by a big black cock, it's shaped like one and in great detail. Dahyun uses two hands just to pour lube all over the dildo. She turned her back to the camera as she’s slowly sitting on it. Her big butt is now in full view, the sight of her ass taking the big black dildo is too erotic, Dahyun groans as her ass is getting stretched. The viewers are praising her on how erotic she is, they commented that her moans are heavenly. They keep giving gifts even without instructions as they are pleased with what she’s doing.

To your surprised, Ms. Kim is finally back in the office. Everyone greets her and wants to know the reason for her absences. You're happy to see your colleague but you’re too embarrassed to greet her as you know the real reasons why she’s having a hard time walking around the office. You heard that she’s saying to your coworkers that she has a sprained ankle is the reason she can’t walk straight. Nobody bats an eye as the company is just glad to finally see their bubbly princess.

You thought everything goes back to normal but it’s been a week now and Ms. Kim has nowhere to be found, her manager said that she filed for a long leave due to personal reasons. You took the subway with heavy feet as you’re saddened by the news, it seems like you developed an affectionate attitude towards your colleague and just wants to see her do well again. After taking a bath as an attempt to lift your mood. You saw a notification from Dahyun’s page. She’s offering a VIP subscription where you can meet her face to face. This subscription comes with a hefty price and you need to abide by 5 sets of conditions: you can’t remove her face mask during the session, you can’t asked for an oral sex, you can’t ask for her personal information, you can’t record anything during the session, you should wear protection during intercourse.

You didn’t waste any time and avail her VIP subscription even though it’s worth half of your monthly salary. After sending your payment. You received a message where she sends you a time and date where you can meet her. It’s on Saturday afternoon, in one of the hotels in the city. The sudden realization that Dahyun will know that you’re one of her subscribers sent you into a frenzy. You don’t want to cancel your meet up as this golden opportunity may not knock again.

It’s Friday night, you do a quick shopping for self care materials as you want to look good and smell good when you finally do it with Dahyun. You are embarrassed to buy packs of condoms as it’s been ages since you last bought one. It’s the day of the meet up. She sends you a message that she will wait for you in the room. You're now in front of the hotel, standing nervously while wearing… a face mask. You plan to also somehow conceal your identity to Ms. Kim because you don’t want to destroy your working relationship with her. This plan fails miserably as Dahyun can’t hide her shock expression the moment she opens the room door.

There’s an awkward air in the hotel room. It seems like the two of you might not do it out of embarrassment. The silence in the room was broken by a pop up message on her phone. You notice how her expression changed as she read the message. Whatever is in the message is enough for Dahyun to ignore that her coworker will share the same bed as her. She laid her conditions in a serious tone as she removed her clothing, sitting naked on the center of the bed waiting for you to make a move on her.

You strip down your clothes in nervousness while only leaving the face mask. You awkwardly sit in front of the naked woman. You look in her eyes to see her expressions, but she doesn’t have any, it looks like she’s ready for whatever you want to do with her. You first touch her boobs, your two hands awkwardly reach to her mounds, carefully playing it. Dahyun knows that both of you will get satisfied with you still being cautious. “Mr. Y/n, I know it’s you, you can remove your face mask and do me as you please,” she said finally addressing the elephant in the room.

Dahyun’s message wakes you out of your nervousness. You’re here fuck the company’s princess and that’s what you do, you remove your face move and instructed her to lay down. The woman that you have been watching every night is not laying down in front of you. You position yourself on top of her reaching her two boobs again but this time, caressing them like how they deserve. Dahyun's boobs perfectly fit her body, and shaped her body to great proportions. The woman groans on how aggressive you mauled her boobs but you can’t help yourself due to how soft they are. Her pink nipples that you saw her playing on her content are now in the tip of your own fingers.

Dahyun yelps as you play her nipples. This encourages you to use your tongue to pleasure one of them. Flicking her nipple in a circular motion she grabs your hair to press your head even closer to her boobs. You notice that Dahyun also brings her toys with her. You reached out for her bag on the side table, from watching her oiled body to being the one pouring it to her. You pour directly on her nipples which caught her off guard by the wet sensation. From her nipples to her boobs, you massaged her body, smearing the oil in the process. Her white milky skin glistening, her smooth skin gets slippery making it easy to caress the rest of her body.

You pour oil down to her legs as well, massaging her thick legs, your fingertips move dangerously close to her slit which elicits a gasp from Dahyun as she’s anticipating it. You notice how she got wet after you massage her legs. You lick her slit up to taste your colleague. Dahyun keeps moaning as your tongue explores her slit. From her slit up to her clit, you lick every part of it, making your goal to eat Dahyun well. Your tongue focuses on flicking her clit, the woman jolts her hips in pleasure. You hold down her waist to keep her in place while continuing your barrage on her clit. You notice wetness in your chin due to Dahyun getting more wet. You hardened your tongue now and inserts in and out of her slit. The woman pushes your head down even more, while her other hand is stimulating her clit. You suck and lick your colleagues till she shakes her hips due to orgasm.

Dahyun is laying down letting her orgasm flow till she feels your tongue is now exploring her ass. Her ass is as pink as her slit, you spit on it as lube before you slowly lick her ass. Her legs started to move uncontrollably as she’s not used to her ass getting licked. From soft circular motions to fast in and out of her ass, every touch of your tongue elicits a loud moan from Dahyun. You notice she used one of her dildos to rub her slit while you're eating her down there. This signals to you that she’s ready.

You stand up to wear a condom while Dahyun can’t wait as she’s already shoving a dildo in her slit while she’s waiting for you. You smirk as your naughty colleague can’t wait any longer. Spreading her legs up. You position your cock in front of her slit that still has a dildo inside it. You pull the dildo out of her and it reveals how her slit forms into a hole that accommodates the size of the dildo. Dahyun is looking at your cock seamlessly entering her slit. The feeling of a warm cock can’t beat any size or shape of a dildo she thought. You hold her small waist as you gradually quicken up the pace. Hands on her face masks to cover her mouth, she’s embarrassed how her coworker can make her moan this load. Her muffled moan only adds to your fuel to fuck the company’s princess like she’s your slut.

You hear Dahyun calling your name through her covered mouth, her walls tightening, the woman is near her orgasm. You now hold her wide hips to get a better grip of her as you rammed your cock deep inside her as face as you could. Dahyun let go of her mouth to let a loud moan echo all throughout the room. You let her orgasm again while your cock is still inside her. Pulling out, you want to keep her slit stimulated. You put the dildo back inside her as you asked Dahyun to masturbate using her dildo while you fuck her from behind. You position her in a doggy position, her ass still wet from your tongue assault earlier on. She felt your tip bump in the entrance of her ass. Dahyun’s face is in the bedsheet, one hand plowing the dildo in her slit, she felt your warm cock slowly entering her ass. The woman groans lowly as she’s taking it all deep in her. Dahyun tight ass is no Joke, even though this ass takes the biggest of dildos, it’s still tight like it’s begging to get worn down. Dahyun has a big white ass which is impaled with your cock. Every slap to her meaty ass leaves a red mark of your hand. You both groaned as you started to move your cock in and out of her. You remember the endless nights you watched this big ass of her get fucked by dildos or other men, but for this moment, it’s yours to destroy. You plow your cock slowly and deep in her ass making sure your tip reaches as deep as your can. Dahyun is now biting her face mask, muffling her cries of pleasure. You began to move your cock at a quicker pace which made Dahyun speak inaudibly. She can’t move her dildo anymore as she’s getting too stimulated on how you fuck her ass. You’re now maintaining a quick pace plowing her ass, Dahyun cries your name as all she knows now is how your cock pleasuring all parts of her tight ass. She tried to reach for your arm that is holding her hips to signal you that she can’t take it anymore. Dahyun is about to turn into a mess. Her body drops on the bed but you still keep fucking her ass. Dahyun doesn't know how long it has been but she noticed when you asked her if you can cum on her back. She can only muffled a “Yes,” before you remove your cock in her ass and spray paint her back with all your cum.

The woman fell asleep for a few minutes before sitting up like she’s in a hurry. She asked if she could leave now, still catching your breath. You agreed to leave together. “I need money, my brother is sick, he will undergo operations next week,” Dahyun said as she’s driving you to the subway station. Without asking a question, she answered what you’re terrified to ask. You listen to her story while she’s driving you to the subway station. Her parents are too old to work, her family is only dependent on her. She asked if you can keep this between the two of you. She said she will go back to work after her brother’s operation.

“Will you avail me again?” Dahyun jokingly asked.

[dukeofdelirium]

never gonna understand the argument that Katara didn’t love Aang or something.

Katara was 100% more physically affectionate toward Aang. She almost always initiated their physical contact.

She also expresses clear jealousy over him as early as ep4 at Kyoshi Island lol. Aang was literally right when he said “you know what I think? I think you don’t wanna come because you’re jealous” 😂 SHE WAS

Katara was hesitant to start a romantic relationship with Aang because of the war, not because she lacked romantic interest in him. I mean, she quite literally says this on screen.

This is another thing that confuses tf out of me. How can anyone actually watch that scene in Ember Island Players and think it translates to “Katara doesn’t like Aang and is gently rejecting him” ?????

Katara 1) denies viewing Aang platonically and 2) straight up says her reasoning for not pursuing a romantic relationship with him after they kissed during the invasion is because the war is still going on and 3) she then continues by saying she is confused about WHEN they can be together if ever.

Both of these characters expected the war to already BE over. That was why Aang kissed her at the invasion, at least partly. Also partly because, yknow, he could’ve died and never gotten the chance. Which also brings up another thing, the argument that she rejected him kissing her then?

This isn’t true. Katara very much did kiss him back. But once it was over, and once he was going to leave her and face what could’ve easily been certain death, she looks upset. Not really difficult to understand why she looks that way, considering Aang did just tell her “what if I don’t come back” right before said kiss. Katara has already witnessed him die right before her eyes. This is a difficult topic in their relationship. And that fear of losing Aang continues to keep her away from their romantic relationship until she finally feels safe to express it at the end of the show.

Aang’s actions are also not difficult to understand at all. He confronted Katara during that play after she sought him out. He never asked her to follow him. And the only reason he confronted her was bc he was feeling 1) super insecure bc of the play’s depiction of everyone in their group and 2) bc he’s about to face the world’s greatest military force and their leader on the anniversary of his entire people and culture’s genocide completely ALONE and could very easily be killed.

Aang shouldn’t have kissed her at the play. No one says he should’ve and he reprimands himself afterwards. With that being said, though, it’s totally understandable as to why he does kiss her, that being that he’s afraid he is going to die again and he wants to express that he loves her before it happens. Also, the fact that Aang wasn’t there for his own people is surely a driving factor in how he expresses love to others afterwards, that being that he feels the need to “be there” so to speak. And “being there” in this moment is showing Katara that he does love her, and the only way he rlly knows how to is to kiss her bc words did not work.

Like… idc if ppl like the writing or not. Acting like it’s some huge mystery or impossible to comprehend is you essentially saying you’re dumber than the 6 year olds that watched ATLA 😭 like how could I at 11 completely understand this whole thing yet these grown ass adult women can’t wrap their minds around it for even a second? Like it’s actually sad lol

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Kentucky Route 0, One of Three Games About America

Script and Thumbnail below the fold!

Kentucky Route Zero is a magical realist point and click game of what I’d normally call Narrative Adventure, which came to kickstarter in 2011, then came out in 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2020, because you can’t have nothing for free, even things you pay for. The game is a text-driven game without any of the trappings of your typical point-and-clicker where you jam a ladder in your pants and try to work out why you want to put green dye in the water fountain. Instead it follows the haunted mind of Conway, a trucky driver and his interactions with small handful of people on a part of the Kentucky Interstate, while he to find the place he needs to do his delivery, despite being utterly lost.

I enjoyed what of Kentucky Route Zero I played, but the thing that stands out to me in hindsight is its sound design. It’s a beautifully defined game, audio-wise, with all sorts of thoughtful foley for its environments, and the way that even the pieces of the interface that Conway interacts with have their own sort of specific authentic sounds, chonks and thunks and ch-zzzzses.

It’s also visually splendid, beautiful in what it tries to represent in the heightened reality of its setting but also the format of a videogame. These places look good from the angle that’s chosen, creating lines of artwork and bars of cages, depending on what you’re focusing on, and by being a fixed-camera story of its type, Kentucky Route Zero takes on traits of theatre, with blocking and careful positioning and timing all making up part of how the story unfolds.

A story I haven’t finished.

See, I don’t feel like playing Kentucky Route Zero Act V.

Sit down, traveller. Let me tell you a story.

There’s a chance you’ve heard this story before. I’ve anonymised it here, not because I think you shouldn’t be able to work out who it is, but because the idea of focusing on the who runs the risk of ignoring the what. Plus, I don’t want to direct anyone to a person who said something stupid and encourage fights. That’s not the important issue.

This is the story of when someone perfectly represented something, and probably never realised it.

You will sometimes hear me talk about the take that ‘there are three games about America,’ with a tone of utter revulsion and derision. This is from an incident back in 2020, when a game developer and advocate for inclusive games, had an opinion, on the internet. This advocate is well-established and has a big audience, but also, he’s crucially, not a white guy, not a Christian guy, and not an American guy. These are factors that play into what he said, which was, in summary, that while Kentucky Route 0 was no doubt phenomenal, he wasn’t interested in playing it right now.

To this, an actual adult responded with:

This is legitimately the worst take you’ve ever had. There are only about three games that are actually American, and this is one of them. Everything else is designed for export. Kr0 is a precious and valuable thing. It is of immense and intense personal importance.

Now, resisting the urge to argue with a tweet, which is just generally a bad practice that leads to doing things like wanting to be on twitter, and setting aside this tweet conflating ‘this is of personal importance to me’ and ‘this should be of importance to you,’ this position describes the idea that there are only three games that are ‘actually American.’

What does it mean to be ‘actually American?’

America is a pretty pervasive presence, if you’re not aware of it. Most people in the world have to know about what’s going on in America. We know about your Presidents and your Senators and your Constitution, to the point where people can be more aware of how your country’s laws work than their own country’s laws. I’ve often seen it held up as an example of how poorly educated people in say, Canada and Australia are that we believe we have, say, a ‘first amendment right,’ but the thing is you have to ask why there is that.

We watch so much American TV.

We listen to American music.

We try to make our news broadcasts look like yours, because that’s what real and legitimate news looks like. We try to retell your stories in our local languages because that’s what real media looks like. Our children sing songs in your accents because that’s the culture that a multi-trillion dollar economy has pumped into the whole world.

America demands we attend their wars and surrender our living to become their dead and when we are done America sells the survivors a cheeseburger.

This is not a remarkable or controversial statement. You must know, this is not even vaguely challenging to know about. Everywhere in the world is replicating parts of the American empire, because America exports and enforces the vision of the American empire. McDonalds may sell curry in India, but it’s very important that the curry being sold is McDonalds curry because that is how you know it’s an American style curry.

What this means is when someone tries to assert there are only really three games about America, that’s a kind of specialised brain rot that requires you to consider games that are very much about America as not being really about America. And thus we see the other thing about America, which is it’s not enough for America to be the most important place in the world that everyone else in the world needs to recognise, but also, most of America is inadequately America for this vision of America. You saw this in the wake of 9/11, and the election of Barack Obama: huge amounts of American media resurged in extolling the values of ‘real’ America, as opposed to the parts of America where the vast majority of Americans lived, which just so happened to paint a lot of marginalised people living in the cities as ‘fake Americans.’

I am not bringing you unique information. This is just obviously true things if you don’t live within the boundaries of an environment that flatters you as the most normal thing in the world. The vast majority of the world is not America. There are eight billion people in the world, more or less, meaning that America is about 4% of the world, and yet, it is catastrophically, overwhelmingly, deleritously the common touchstone for how things are ‘supposed’ to work. This is through media imperialism, which is mostly supported by American companies exporting all their media to foreign markets extremely cheaply.

‘about three games that are actually American.’

This fascinating piece of doofusry still, even now leaves me agog. ‘Actually American.’ Kentucky Route 0 is actually American, you see, as opposed to… what? Is America’s Army one of them? You know, the game financed by the American Army? What about Call of Duty, a franchise that is in part subsidised by American military complex manufacturers? What about Grand Theft Auto, a videogame that tells the rags-to-riches story of American excess in criminality, setting aside the way it’s made by a Scottish company. Actually American, because American doesn’t mean America, it means one tiny little pool of ‘America’ where the speaker can imagine there’s a realness and an authenticity to the America-ness that doesn’t involve all the messy realities of what it is to be America. It’s the towns of hard-working people, that suffer under your particular description of oppression, whether that’s cities full of nonwhite people or corporations bleeding the country dry, always eliding the social cruelties and terribleness of these places, as if giving people money stops them from being bigoted (for example).

This is then used to recruit these poor, superior Americans, the you know, America Americans, whose sufferings are noble and whose authenticity cannot be impeached and they are then used as a defense against criticism of, you know, America. It’s the same speech Charlie Daniels gave about how foreigners may think they could push around Barack Obama (a dude who bombed a lot of shepherds with the most elaborate and brutal military ordinance in the world) but they were going to have a harder time taking on Americans who wrestled alligators, who at this point have exactly zero recorded drone strike kills.

This is because America America isn’t real.

‘Real’ America is a nebulous nothing that you can project whatever you want onto, and which is also not responsible for anything terrible that America does. It’s not the American Empire, it’s not the exporter of culture, it’s somehow purer, better, a sort of individualised folk who are to be protected and extolled, shriven of all the things about America that make it anything but its perfect idealised form of America.

I could go on.

I really could.

This is something that defines the world I have to live in. I speak English. I’m white. I’m from a coloniser state. I should be able to integrate easily and smoothly into the white supremacist capitalist hierarchy of American culture, but we are told, that no, we are not acceptable. We are only valid as long as our differences are invisible. We, a real people, do not get to have opinions on America, because we do not know True America. When you spell colour wrong in a chat message, when your accent isn’t quite right, when you don’t know the difference between junior and sophomore year of high school, then you are shown, you are evinced, and you are made very aware that you are other, you are outside, you are wrong.

And really, there’s no good reason for it. We send our soldiers to America’s wars, we buy America’s submarines, and we sing your songs. Our currency mimics America’s, our culture permeats with America’s, we even have such a crushing inferiority complex about the empire that there’s an academic term for what we feel about our own media compared to the media of the truer, proper empire to which we are vassal.

The term is ‘cultural cringe,’ and it was coined by Henry Lawson, who you, odds on, have never heard of. In 1894, he wrote:

The Australian writer, until he gets a “London hearing,” is only accepted as an imitator of some recognized English or American author; and, as soon as he shows signs of coming to the front, he is labelled “The Australian Southey,” “The Australian Burns,” or “The Australian Bret Harte,” and lately, “The Australian Kipling.” Thus no matter how original he may be, he is branded, at the very start, as a plagiarist, and by his own country, which thinks, no doubt, that it is paying him a compliment and encouraging him, while it is really doing him a cruel and an almost irreparable injury. But mark! As soon as the Southern writer goes “home” and gets some recognition in England, he is “So-and-So, the well-known Australian author whose work has attracted so much attention in London lately”; and we first hear of him by cable, even though he might have been writing at his best for ten years in Australia.

This is imperialism. This is a way in which we have been induced and brought by the empires around us to accept their ways as correct, as the normal, as default. And that is the mindset you must have if you want to look at the breadth of videogames, with their American ideas like health insurance, readily available guns, the importance of freedom, the ubiquity of air travel, the branding and iconography of types of food and the sports metaphors and then say ‘yeah, this doesn’t have anything to do with America, not really.’

Anyway, this thread, this incident, was a big deal at the time, in that there were a lot of people from within the community of game developers and journalists who seemed very happy to line up and get mad at a brown foreigner for being inadequately enthusiastic about the possibility of playing a videogame. But don’t worry, after a day or two, an apology was forthcoming for all of this fracas, by which I mean, the original developer apologised for being so thoughtless as to, again, express honest lack of enthusiasm in a videogame.

For me, this was a kind of break point, where I started just blocking indie devs on sight. I don’t want to know what they’re involved in, I don’t want to promote their work, and I will hold tiny grudges against them that I do not seek to transfer or encourage in others. This was one silly incident in which a lot of people said something silly because they don’t know better, or they’re arseholes.

None of this is fair to Kentucky Route 0. It’s a game with its own intentions and its own perspective. It’s not trying to make this conversation happen. Kentucky Route 0 has been choked and gripped by this position around it, where to talk about an American game, someone put a cross on it that made it the avatar for All Things America. The wild thing to me is that I had, prior to this point, played two episodes of Kentucky Route 0. I thought it was pretty good, and I liked what it did with the negative space of dialogue options – when a character you’re controlling makes excuses, the excuses you choose show you other things you could be making excuses about that you, the player, didn’t know beforehand. That’s some good Narrative Storytelling Design, I like that a lot. But now I can’t really engage with Kentucky Route Zero because the main thing it makes me think about is how this final chapter, meant to round out the game’s story and present a conclusion and a point, became this flashpoint for a lot of people to be very casually racist.

Which kinda poisons the whole thing for me. It’s an authentic thing, I’m sure, it’s a thoughtful thing, too, but the people stepping up to say I should care about it did so in a way that made me hate them.

Any time you see me say ‘three games about America’ I’m talking about this, and the attitude of a particular kind of American that America is, as always, exceptional. It’s real easy to not realise when you’re just voicing your self-centeredness and how easy that is to ignore the opinions of people around you and what they’re saying. This is what I’m talking about when I mention ‘the three games about America.’

[fade for credit text]

By the way, the three games about America are Crash Bandicoot, Sam & Max Hit The Road, and Bust A Move.

[torchflies]

I can’t remember what fic it was but essentially mav couldn’t read very well (or he was dyslexic like I said I can’t remember) but he still read Bradley bed time stories but the stories were based off the pictures in the book. Would Jake do that with his swamp chickens growing up so they would have bed times stories?

Also how does slider ice and mav react to finding out Jake is dyslexic????

P.S. I love you’re writing ❤️❤️❤️

Thank you so much for the compliment, Nonny! 😭❤️

Oh he absolutely did that! Also all the Cajun stories he heard about while working with adults to get money, fishing and lifting heavy stuff, he commits to memory — he tells them the scary stories of the rougarou and feu-follet.

He wants them to be like ordinary kids, scared of things that go bump in the night, not people.

Jake copes with his dyslexia very well as an adult, most people don’t even notice his occasional stumbling over words that he spells or him taking a little bit longer to read something. His kids have never known anything different, so it’s normal for them for one kid (usually Mack) to do all the ordering if they go out, or to read street signs aloud. They just do it like second nature and eventually someone asks why… Oh, Ness has math brain and he’s tired so I figured I would read the sign so he didn’t have to double check.

Jake, turning bright red as he drives the crew around: She means I’m dyslexic.

It changes nothing and everything. 😉❤️ Suddenly every piece of paper Jake gets handed by Mav is at a lower contrast level so it’s easier for him to read. Slider will offer to read aloud a chunk of the big NATOPS Jake is studying. Ice won't give him directions like left and right, he’ll use specific coordinates or clock hands, or “follow the yellow car”. Bradley will proofread his writing without a single comment and Jake… is very confused.

[blodeuweddschild]

“Why can’t my kid go on that part of the ride it’s literally no different from the rest” cause I said so and im in charge here so stop being a dick about it and also theme park rides have loads and loads of stupid insurance rules. Two parts of the ride may be identical except on one part under 16s are insured if something goes wrong and on the other part they can’t and if your kid loses a limb on this part of the ride the park is fucked

[askamnesiamoonjumper]

aau rework version of the overload/boss fight where it actually has consequences and bearing on the character dynamics save me,, save me aau rework,,,,

[mylastmoleculeofserotonin]

I think I’ve finally put my finger on the reason why I (and people in general) love to watch “kids’ shows” when they are older teens and adults: because empathy and love, especially platonic love, are arguably humans’ most valuable trait and yet, in our society and in “realistic” media is treated as a weakness or at least at odds with being successful. Like, empathy isn’t even unique to humans, it’s found in and is integral to so many species of animals (and maybe even plants too!!), especially what we consider to be some of the most fearsome predators like lions and wolves. But humans have have “gone all in on” empathy and the capacity to form bonds with other humans, even outside familial circles, which is the reason we outlived the homo erectus which lived at the same time as humans since we were able to form larger communities. And all that’s to say that seeing shows where moral goodness is synonymous with empathy and friendship and wins the day is probably very satisfying for our brains since we don’t often see empathy treated as the essential part of us that it is.

That’s why shows like Hilda or Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts are my personal favorites because the main characters’ defining trait is being empathetic and is, at least in the beginning, their only way of avoiding trouble. And these shows in particular feature the main characters advancing the plot and achieving heroic feats through simply talking it out and generally being a kind and helpful person. When I first watched these shows I, admittedly, saw such events as cheesy, but when I took time to think about it, it not only makes sense why it worked, but was quite literally the best possible way to fix the problem at hand because empathy is a very natural thing for humans and is literally how we have become the apex species so of course it can work when someone gives it a chance.

It’s human nature to be kind and empathetic and is why it’s so satisfying to see it spotlit in kids shows.

[quietwingsinthesky]

crow doctor at more of Kate’s events as a child than her actual parents. The other parents are concerned.

her parents are busy! but the doctor! also is, technically, but is also immortal and has a time machine and will, eventually, get to kate’s school play even if he does so after a hundred and fifty years of forgetting he was supposed to go. and then he claps at all the wrong times and no one wants to stand too close to him because he puts people on edge with how little he blinks and kate comes trotting down in costume afterwards to be taken on a trip in the tardis like he always lets her. (NOT brigadier approved.)

it’s only when she gets older that she realizes that some of the doctor’s faces that showed up when she was a kid are faces she’s seen also standing across from her in UNIT. and she’s not entirely sure which Kate he sees when he looks back at her.

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

me: okay time to go to bed now

my brain: do you mean time to write 1,500 words of milex smut

[medievalwitch]

No one knows how close I was to orcas yesterday

[tariah23]

It’s always crazy to see black celebs spew this same rhetoric because it’s such a privileged take… like, they’ve been famous for so long and have gotten their money up, moved out of the projects or whatever tf, that they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be genuinely feel. It’s impossible for them to connect anymore. As far as the qrt, oh wow ☠️.

[fingertipsmp3]

I love the sims 2 because it will completely wreck your shit right when you’re least expecting it

[dashiellqvverty]

i try not to be too obnoxious about liking kids media but i will be honest my one thing that really gets on my nerves is when people compare shows like idk the owl house or whatever to shows like bluey or like talk about them as if they are similar. like yes i logically realize they are probably exaggerating in order to frame all cartoons as especially childish but it still makes me want to tear my hair out like do you know how wildly different the target demographics for these shows are!!! do you realize that preschool television is generally a whole different world from tv for older kids!!!!

[the-way-astray]

holding out hope . . . don’t act like it’s set in stone . . . it’s not . . . yet . . .

(much ranting in the tags)

[littlewigglers]

Do you plan on getting any non millipede friends

I do! I’d love to get some more isopods and raise some beetles from larva again. I’d also LOVE to get back into fish keeping my faves are bettas, shrimps, corydoras and kuhli loaches! Maybe a snake or gecko further down the line? But those are what I know the least about and would be most hesitant to get as I want any creatures I get to have the best care I can give them.

I’d say the only creatures on my never list are spiders, roaches, centipede, anything else that moves overly fast or has a bad bite/is venomous/poisonous. Probably turtles too just due to their life spans.

But millipedes and isopods are what I’m able to keep right now as I’d have to get some new tanks for anything else, as well as all the research I’d need to do to be comfortable keeping them.

Oh also I do have two cats I just don’t post about them here, and I plan to possibly get a third next year but we’ll see :3

[fantasiavii]

I should not have to say this but if you are in a store (especially a large American warehouse style store) and need assistance, the best thing to do is find an employee and/or look around for a help button (most locked items will have one of these nearby!). Please do not just stand somewhere in the store and say “hello. Hello! HELLO!!” in increasingly loud volumes. What the fuck