#maybe it’s cause the realism in those

[alfairy]

Fears to Fathom episode 4 came out. It was good, but people are out here calling it the scariest episode? Nah, I still think Carson House or Norwood Hitchhike are the scariest

[novemberheart]

Chapter 3 <- Chapter 4-> Chapter 5

{Overview} As you grow closer to Johnny, Simon steps in

{Warnings} Slight angst, female reader, this chapter is a bit short, Johnny being a sweetheart, cursing

“Good morning everyone!” You sang, making your way to the front of the large room. A few mumbled greetings reached your ears. You put your hands on your hips a heavy sigh leaving you. “I said ‘GOOD MORNING EVERYONE”! You shouted, your hands cupping the front of your face.

Louder groans echoed through the room but ‘good mornings’ were quickly passed to you.

“I know the coffee isn’t the best, but I encourage you to have a cup.” You huffed. “Who remembers what we’re talking about this month?” You hummed, beginning your pace around the room.

“Symbols.” Robert spoke up from next to you.

“That’s right.” You cheered, turning back on your heels. “Let’s narrow that down a bit, what is our main focus this week?”

“What different colors symbolize.” Another man shouted from the back.

“Perfect. Thank you, Captain Taylor.”

“We are learning about what different colors can symbolize. So let me just throw out the color orange. What does that make you think of?”

“Oranges.”

“The sun.”

“My grandson.” A few laughs broke out in the one. “What? His favorite color is orange.” Sergeant Pierce huffed.

“No that’s actually perfect. Sometimes colors can remind us of people. Alright what about the color white?” You continued, pacing back around the crowded room.

“Snow.”

“Sheep.”

“Clouds.”

“A nice, sandy beach.”

“A wedding.” Your ears perked up at that one. You turned on your heels, your eyes squinting towards the far left of the room. Your eyes widened as you locked them with Johnny. A polite smile pulled at your cheeks as you suddenly felt shy.

“All of those are good.” You complimented, making your way back up front. “Today we are going to be focusing on what Sergeant Pierce shared with us. I want you to paint someone from your memory- but I want you to stray away from realism and focus on colors that either described your relationship with them. For example let’s say- I don’t know- twenty years ago you met a pretty little thing while you were stationed in Italy.” A few hoots sounded off from around the room. “Yeah, yeah.” You smirked rolling your eyes.

“Anyways let’s say you met this person and they were passionate. What color would you draw them as?”

“Red.” A few people said in unison.

“Perfect, red. Now let’s say along with this person being passionate this person made you happy. What color would you add?”

“Yellow!” A few others shouted.

“I think most of us agree on this so far. Now let’s get a little deeper. Now we know you can’t be happy all the time so let’s say between these moments of happiness there were pockets of uncertainty. Maybe one of you wanted a more serious relationship or maybe there was the looming possibility you could be transferred somewhere else. What color would you add to represent that?”

“Dark blue.”

“I’d add red again.”

“I think a dark green.”

You let out a small gasp. “We finally got some different answers. So far we have a person painted in yellow, red, maybe some dark blues and greens. Now just looking at this painting we would be able to grasp the sort of feelings this person might cause you. That’s our goal today. Now I don’t want any of you to worry about being vulnerable because your perception of a color might not be the same as another’s- so don’t go making assumptions, okay?” You paused for a moment. “Oh and try to keep the paintings somewhat PG, I plan on hanging these in the hallway.” You said. The room grew with chuckles before the vets got to work gathering canvases and brushes from the center of the table.

You made your way around the room chatting with each table, this was the part you loved about your job. Getting to know about each person and watch as they opened up without even realizing it. You flushed and excused yourself after a particularly raunchy table, finally ending up near Johnny.

“What do we have going on here?” You teased looking around at the canvases.

“Don’t know where you’ve been hiding this one.” Thomas spoke up, nodding his head towards Johnny. The Scot looked up from his canvas sending you a wink. This corner of the room had been the loudest, breaking out into laughter every other minute.

“He is pretty funny isn’t he?” You replied, eyes dancing back over to Johnny. The man flushed, obviously not expecting the compliment. He looked extra handsome with a red hue to his cheeks. He quickly recovered, flashing the table a smile.

“I got nothin’ on you bastards.” He finally spoke up.

“You remember that son.” Elias chuckled, giving Johnny’s shoulder a slight nudge.

“Well don’t you boys go scaring him off.” You whispered sternly. They smiled at the playful glint in your eyes.

“We’ll be nice to your boyfriend, Hun. Not to worry.” Thomas assured. The instinctual urge was to deny it-for Johnny’s sake, but you decided to let it be, you and Johnny sharing a knowing glance.

“Well that was fun, Bonnie.” You jumped at the deep voice.

“Really? They did seem to get into it a bit more than the ones in the past.” You beamed. Johnny got a bit closer admiring everyone’s handiwork. His shoulder brushed against yours, and you felt the instant urge to sink into his warmth. With him this close you could smell his cologne- a fire with a hint of spice. Out of your four temporary roommates Johnny was the one you felt the closest too- the next runner up being Kyle. He went out of his way to check in with you and be friendly- even with his playful flirting.

“Hey, where’s yours?” You perked up, turning towards him a hand resting against the table.

“I was trying to sneak out with it.” He whispered, his eyes wide as he got caught. “I was going to leave it by your door, but here you go.” He removed the still wet picture from behind his back.

Your hands reached up to cover your mouth in shock. You knew Johnny was good- but you had yet to really study his work. It was a portrait of you, with one hand on your hip, the other resting against your cheek as you looked down with a slight smile. The aspect that really blew your mind was the emotion he was able to capture in your eyes. Happiness, content with a hint of amusement. Your picture was filled with color.

“Johnny.” You gasped before you could stop yourself. Your bleary eyes looked up to meet his. “This is the most thoughtful thing anyone has given me.”

“Well that makes me sad.” He whispered back. His hand reached up, the pad of his thumb brushing a fat tear that rolled down your cheek.

“God, I’m a mess.” You sputtered, wiping your tears on your shirt collar.

“A hot one.” You laughed through your tears, your eyes meeting his melted blue ones one again.

“Thank you, Johnny. I mean it.”

Afterwards Johnny took you out to lunch at a cozy pub a few blocks away from work. You two chatted over the daily special. You learned he was the second youngest of four sisters.

“So that’s why you’re not uncomfortable around me.” You jested.

He talked about where he grew up, the look in his eyes making you homesick for a place you’ve never been.

“I’ll take you there one day, Bon. You’d like it. It’s rainy with lots of farms.”

He asked about you. Not that you had too much to share. You told him about your different jobs, growing up as an only child, how you missed home but overall were happy you worked up the courage to leave.

He paid the bill before you even realized it had been dropped off at the table.

As he drove you back to work the realization that this was the best date you’d even been on hit you like a bolt of lightning. Not that you had any right to call it a date. He was just being friendly and wanted you to feel welcome. Maybe he was trying to score some points with Laswell that he was being a good host. The thought made your heart sink a bit. You shook the thought away.

“You okay?” Johnny spoke up from the drivers seat. You quirked your eyebrow. “You shook your head like there was a bug on you.”

“I did?” You muttered causing him to nod his head. Had you always done that? Sure you would shake thoughts out of your head- but you weren’t aware you physically did it. “Spasm, I guess.” You shrugged nonchalantly. He hummed- seemingly fine with your answer.

That night you were by yourself. The house was empty when you came home. You made yourself a quickly dinner, washing the dishes before you even began to eat. It was another nice night out, just chilly enough you could wear one of your favorite sweaters. It was quiet outside, except for a few planes passing overhead. One of the perks of living all the way in the back corner you supposed. The trees rustled from the wind and even though you couldn’t be more in civilization- you felt far from it.

A few moments passed until you heard movement over by Simon’s shed. Your hairs quickly stood up as the familiar feeling a fight or flight kicked in. Luckily that was short lived as the door opened to reveal Simon. You took a deep breath, adjusting your gaze to look back at the sky.

“Heard Johnny took you out.” He grunted.

“Yeah, he did.” You confirmed, not even registering the sweet smile that graced your face. He sighed causing your smile to fall.

“Don’t get use to it. I bet he told you all about his home and how he’s going to take you there one day. We’ve got enough on our plate without you crushing him.”

All the safety that had begun to settle in your bones quickly disappeared. You stiffened in your seat suddenly feeling all too imposing.

“I don’t think that.” You sputtered. It was a rare occurrence that someone would be so blunt with you. “I didn’t mean to overstep.” You continued, your throat tight and a small shake beginning in your body. Simon refused to meet your eyes, his trained on the house. With another sigh he made his way back inside leaving you in the suddenly all too dark and cold backyard. You made quick work of heading back inside and up to your room.

You heard a car pull into the driveway and a small commotion downstairs. With an embarrassing whimper you rolled over pulling the covers far above your head.

Hi friends! I hope you liked this next chapter. Sorry I made Simon a bit of a meany- he’s just protective of his boys and doesn’t want to see them get hurt! You understand right? As always likes and reblogs are greatly appreciated. See you next time! 🤎

[zmediaoutlet]

In honor of the rewatch, what do you think caused Sam and Dean to not speak for two years? I know there’s some stuff Kripke said about flubbing how long Sam had been at school for, but from the show it seems that Sam leaving for college wasn’t what made him and Dean stop speaking, and that something happened after that to cause it. I’d love to hear your take! ❤️

Yeah, I firmly believe we should just ignore meta information about the show. It doesn't matter if Kripke says he made a mistake -- that's what's in the script and that's what got filmed, so that's what the characters said and it's what the truth of the thing is. So what happened?

I'm just gonna copy something I already wrote about this -- https://zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/696657028926652416/happy-wincest-wednesday-a-stanford-era-q-for-u -- but this part is key:

I do like to headcanon (…or maybe this is actual canon) that Sam started dating Jess right around that two year mark, and therefore his spare time was taken up with girlfriend. And then from there, it is very easy to imagine Dean calling on the road somewhere in South Carolina, trying to stay awake by bothering his little brother, but in the three hour time difference Sam’s on a date with this killer blonde and he silences his phone so as not to interrupt. And then maybe Dean’s in Maine and he calls Sam because he’s bored on a stakeout and Sam’s watching a movie with his new maybe-he-can-call-her-his-girlfriend, and he misses that call, too. And then maybe the next time they do talk, Dean’s kinda snippy-bitchy because, damn, you avoiding my calls?, and Sam’s kinda snippy-bitchy back because, no, but he does have a real life, Dean, he isn’t just waiting around for random VH1 Behind the Music trivia. And so maybe the next time Dean thinks to call, nursing his stitches in a motel room somewhere in Texas, he decides not to. Don’t want to bother big time college boy, does he. And then maybe Sam hasn’t heard from Dean in a while, and he actually makes the initial call, but that time Dean’s with John and sees the name come up on the screen and doesn’t want to start a fight, and Sam hears it go to voicemail and thinks, fine.

The realism of drifting apart because 'if you won't call me, then I won't call you' -- it just kills me. Especially because Sam's filling in his life with friends and a girlfriend and a planned-out future (no matter how ephemeral those things are or how connected to them he is in reality), and Dean's... increasingly lonely, out on the road. He tried to date Cassie for 3 weeks and that failed. John's hunting alone more and more. Dean's got one-night stands and empty motel rooms and a contact list on his phone that he tries not to look at too hard, for fear of getting sucked down into the darkness of a number he's too afraid to call. Miserable. I love it.

[jennysparksandtheauthority]

The fallacy of realism in Life is Strange Double Exposure. Another more or less analytic rant :)

Okay. I lied. This is the real LAST commentary about Deck Nine's fiasco. Or maybe not.

ANYWAY. I'm reading a lot of discourse of how it's realistic that Max and Chloe would break up.

Even the devs have been on Twitter saying the most basic stuff you've heard a thousand times before:

As someone who’s been in a loving, committed relationship for more than a decade (and we met in our early 20s), that shit MAKES NO SENSE FOR PRICEFIELD. Move forward? Yes. Absolutely. But you can move forward with another person. Moving forward doesn't have to mean leaving your partner behind, and certainly not for these two.

Max and Chloe didn’t create a “trauma bond”. People seem to forget they were childhood best friends. They went through trauma together. There’s a difference.

Each time my wife and I went through devastating shit (cause life is a bitch sometimes), I leaned on her, we carried each other. We went through rough days, of course, we fought sometimes, but we grew together. I fell more in love with her seeing her taking decisions, reacting to me, dealing with her own shit, taking care of me when I didn’t have the energy to take care of myself as I would take care of her when the roles were reversed.

Sure, some relationships don’t survive when they go through bad times.

But Max and Chloe? These two literary broke space and time for each other.

Characters have to be profoundly CHANGED at the end of stories for them to be meaningful, for stories to move us. This has been established since we began to tell stories around campfires thousands of years ago. It's been engraved in conventional storytelling even way before Aristotle gave it a name in his Poetics.

At the end of the BAE romantic path, Chloe was ready to die for Max, and for a whole town of people who mostly despised her. She had changed profoundly. She had understood the meaning of love and loyalty and devotion, because Max showed her.

Max was ready to face the consequences of choosing Chloe. She had changed too. She had understood that loving Chloe made her better, braver, determined, that the past was in the past and that she couldn’t keep rewinding. That she had to accept herself, fight back, take ownership of her destiny.

When they left Arcadia Bay they were both devastated, but ready to fight for each other and move on. The Chloe that gave Max that reassuring touch and that loving look at the end of the game would NEVER, under no circumstances, break up with Max by letter saying all kinds of mean shit. This destroys both their characters' arcs from LIS1. It's an unsuccessful, poorly camouflaged reboot.

Maybe if the break up was presented differently it wouldn’t have enraged so many people. Maybe. We’ll never know. I’d still argue that having a path where Chloe is dead, the decision to break them up was absolutely unnecessary. But to have made that decision, and to justify the OOC behavior and the outcome of their relationship by saying “it’s realistic” (some people have taken the devs' discourse to heart) is just ridiculous and dissapointing, and just straight out unprofessional. This kind of revisionism and lack of understanding of the themes and motivations of the first game is truly baffling, so much so it’s hard for me to believe how NO ONE at Deck Nine or Square Enix with some level of responsibility and proper education in media stopped the madness.

Writers choose what to include in a story, meaning they bear responsibility for the narrative choices they make, regardless of whether those choices are realistic. Fiction is an inherently constructed art form. Authors decide what to include, exclude, emphasize, or downplay. Using “realism” as a justification can be seen as a way to avoid responsibility for narrative decisions, especially when those decisions are unpopular or ethically troubling.

This is writing 101, and I can’t believe a supposedly professional game dev studio is acting like children writing their first fics on Wattpad and falling into the realistic fallacy.

In “The Decay of Lying,” Oscar Wilde famously argued that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” suggesting that art should not be constrained by realism. Another example is the philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes, who in “The Death of the Author,” argued that the meaning of a text is not determined solely by the author’s intentions, thus challenging the notion that invoking realism absolves a writer of their choices.

They CHOSE to break them up.

They chose to villainize Chloe, the canonically queer, fan-favorite character that was at the heart of the story along with Max. Together.

Crying realism doesn’t make it any less senseless, knowing damn well they knew how it would affect people.

So, Deck Nine, Square Enix: please take some fucking responsibility.

BONUS (Michel Koch ❤️):

[ewingstan]

Worm and other media that won't just let you shoot the Joker, part 1:

Worm comments on the structure of stories, especially superhero stories, in some interesting ways. There's a lot of stuff that happen in superhero comics for no real reason than that it needs to happen for the story to be interesting; a huge amount of Worm's worldbuilding is devoted to taking these things and making the fact that they have to happen an explicit in-setting constraint. For instance, superhero stories tend to have more powerful heroes face off against much more powerful villains than their less-powerful allies, to the point where it seems like super-powerful threats are coming to earth every few weeks just because it wouldn't be interesting to read that comic otherwise. It gets weirder when you compare what villains end up visiting the cities of uber-powerful heroes vs the cities of less powerful heroes: Gotham mostly just has to deal with serial killers while Metropolis is a magnet for evil gods. Worm plays with this by having the Endbringers exist only because the big hero needed something to fight in-text: it changes "powerful heroes need powerful villains or else it wouldn't be interesting" from a Doylist justification to a Watsonian one. Then there's the fact that so much of the horrible conflict in Earth Bet is explicitly caused by Gods making sure the powers they grant people lead to increased conflict, the fact that one of the most powerful characters does what she does because the plot path to victory says she needs to, etc.

But the big one is Jack Slash, and how he's only able to get away with his bullshit because he has plot armor as a secondary power. As WB says here, "Jack's a reconstruction of the Joker type character in the sense that you can't have such a character take such a high profile position in the setting, without having there be a cheat." The Joker and similar characters are only able to keep being relevant threats in their stories because the narrative bends to let them win and stops them from being killed. Jack Slash is only able to keep being a relevant threat because his power makes the universe bend to let him win in the same way. Not only does this make for an interesting obstacle (its almost like they're fighting an authorial mandate!), but it skewers the use of similar character's plot armor and how unrealistic and unsatisfying it makes their stories.

But wait, what does it mean for a story to be "unrealistic" in the context of superpowers? Is being unrealistic in those contexts actually a problem? For that matter, what does it mean for a narrative to bend to let someone win? Its not like there's an objective way fighting the Joker would go, which the author is deviating from by letting him survive.

[Stuff under readbelow contains spoilers fo, the movie Funny Games and the book Anybody Home?]

Maybe we could say that if characters like the Joker were real, and put in the situations they are in their stories, they would end up being killed really quickly. But is that a reasonable way to judge stories? A narrative where such a character is killed unceremoniously to satisfy a need for realism isn't any less an expression of the author's deliberate choices than a story where the character keeps showing back up to satisfy a desire for fan-favorite characters. And while Jack Slash's arcs help show why deviating from "realistic consequences" in the service of keeping a character alive can make a story exhausting and screw with an audiences' appreciation of stakes, it doesn't make a strong case against the concept of villains having plot armor in general. A story isn't necessarily worse just for being constructed to keep the villains alive—all stories are constructed, and sometimes being constructed that way makes for the best story.

That becomes more clear when you take the premise of Jack Slash as "killer who wins because the mechanics of the universe says so" and make clear just how much "the mechanics of the universe" really just means "the story". Which is how you get Peter and Paul from Funny Games.

I'd highly recommend watching Funny Games (though for the love of god check content warnings), as well as Patricia Taxxon's review of it that I'm cribbing a lot from here. But to summarize, Funny Games is a movie written and directed by Michael Haneke about a family's lakeside vacation being interrupted by the appearance of two murderous young men, who capture them in their own house and slowly torture and kill them off. At least, that's what it seems to be about initially. It marketed itself as a somewhat standard entry in the genres of torture porn and home invasion thrillers, and played itself straight as one for the majority of its runtime. But then one of the two villains of the pair, "Paul," starts talking to the audience.

It starts small: after crippling the family's father and revealing that he killed their dog, Paul has the wife look for its corpse outside. While giving her hints, he slowly turns back towards the camera and smirks, before turning back. In isolation, maybe it could be interpreted as Paul smirking at Peter, seeming to look out at the audience only because of clumsy blocking. But then it happens again. Paul tells the family, who are completely at their mercy at this point, that they're gonna bet that they'll all be dead within twelve hours. When the family refuses to take the bet, asking how they could hope to win it when he can clearly off them all whenever they wish, Paul turns towards the audience and asks "what do you think? Do you think they stand a chance? Well you're on their side aren't you. Who you betting on, eh?" The audience is being acknowledged; their role as someone invested in the story is being examined by the ones introducing the stakes.

But the biggest moment comes near the end, when the mother grabs the shotgun she's being threatened with and blasts Peter. Paul startles, grins, and then hurredly grabs a tv remote and presses rewind. The movie itself suddenly rewinds to right before the mother grabs the gun, and plays again with Paul grabbing the shotgun right before the mother reaches for it.

Its a truly incredible moment, in that its the perfect way to forcibly take away the audience's suspension of disbelief. It forces the audience to acknowledge that they're viewing a story, not something happening to a real family. After their moment of catharsis against the villains, Paul makes the confront the fact that the movie will end however the creators want it to, and if they want the villains to win they'll will regardless of how little sense it makes. Fuck you, we can go from being set in the normal world with normal rules to the villains traveling back in time with a tv remote, because a story does whatever its creators want. Haneke just decided to make that obvious in the most jarring way imaginable.

But maybe the best way to illustrate Funny Games effectiveness at this type of artful unveiling is comparing it to its less-effective imitators. I've recently finished Anybody Home?, a recently-published book by Michael J. Seidlinger. It has the conceit of being narrated by an unnamed mass-murderer, guiding a new killer in their first home invasion. I started reading it before I watched Funny Games, and even afterwards took a while to realize the unnamed narrator wasn’t just a pastiche of a Paul-like character but was actually supposed to be read as Paul himself. Seidlinger was having his book be a sort of unofficial sequel to Funny Games, narrated by its star. Once I realized, a lot of the books details suddenly clicked. The big one was the constant references to “the camera" and the idea of murder being a performance for an audience, one that needed to be fresh and original to make “the cults” enjoy it. Take these passages from page 77:

If it happened, it would perturb. It would create suspicion. It wouldn’t end up ruining the performance, and yet, it could have derailed our casing. The camera can have all it wants; either way, it’ll make it look better than it really was. It’ll strip away the cues and other planned orchestrations and it’ll show the action—the actuality of each scene, each suggestion…

This is a spectacle, above all. The craft pertains to keeping and maintaining a captive audience; behind the camera, you’ll never know how it happened—the trickery that made the impossible possible, the insanity so close to home. It is spectacle.

Through online activity, the son made it clear that something is happening at home, yet we cannot be certain if he has noticed the camera.

These all point to the idea that the murders are being viewed by an audience rather than just by intruders, that this is a performance for said audience's benefit more than anything else. But notably, it also reinforces the idea of these characters having an existence outside of the camera: the camera shows the action and "strips away" the cues behind it, the victims have a life outside the camera such that they could plausibly sense that the camera is now here. The victims are sometimes described as playing into their role, but always metaphorically; always as if normal people start acting like characters when put in certain circumstances. Whereas Funny Games posits that characters will behave however the author wants them to, denying the claim that stories are realistic simulations of hypothetical scenarios.

The whole thing is predicated on the idea that there needs to be a guide, that the villain of a home invader movie is really in danger of something going wrong. Paul/The narrator keeps giving directions on what needs to be double checked, what needs to X, and its completely against the spirit of the role Paul served in Funny Games. If something goes wrong for the villain they should just be able to rewind and do it over, because the story was written for them to succeed. Anybody Home? throws out Funny Games theme of the story being on rails, of the winner being whoever the author wants it to be and the events following whatever the author wanted rather than what would "really" happen. It throws out the whole idea that it’s all just a story, by supporting the idea that the characters have lives not captured by the camera—or more relevantly, not captured on-page.

Because Seidlinger using the language of film in a book leads to different things going on with the fourth wall. The way Funny Games and Anybody Home? make the camera explicit are just different, and the former does it much more interestingly than the latter. Seildinger’s characters aren’t looking back at the reader, the fourth wall is never actually breached. Funny Games has Paul look into the camera to address the audience, making clear how it’s a story being set up for the audience's benefit. Anybody Home? invokes the idea of a camera tracking everything home invaders do in general, having it be a third-party force that’s itself an unseen character contained within the story, observing the intruder's crime rather than the reader. Why is it still a camera, if we're in a book rather than a movie? A character in a book talking about a camera watching them does not convey any of the same meaning as a character in a movie suddenly looking into a camera and smirking at the audience!

By the end, you realize that this is caused in part by the book's bizarro take on how horror movies exist in this world. It reveals that in its setting, all horror movies are adaptations of real home invasions, which get recorded by unseen mysterious forces. Killers enter a home and enact violence, are filmed by some supernatural camera, the footage gets leaked to the public, and then the killers sell the rights to the work to studios. The events of SAW really happened, but the movie was just an adaptation. Funny Games really happened, but the Paul in the movies was just an actor playing the Paul narrating this book. The killer's victims eventually realize that they're "victims," but not in the sense that they realize their characters in a story, only in a sense that they realize they got sucked into their world's magical realism bullshit.

Ultimately, while the book does the same trick of being all about how horror stories are “for” us, it gets rid of all the tricks that made it work for Funny Games. It even strips it's in-universe version of what made it special; Funny Games is just another adaptation of a real home invasion. All the meta stuff that makes it interesting in its genre are just gestured at as aesthetics.

So what makes Jack Slash in Worm succeed where the killers in Anybody Home? fail? Both are constructed to be entertaining for a 3rd party who stand-in for but aren't actually the audience; the entities in Worm, the cults in Anybody Home?. But Jack Slash doesn't mix his metaphors. Worm may turn various real-life factors affecting a work into in-story mechanisms of the world in the same way Anybody Home? does. But it doesn't also base itself off a text that takes in-story mechanisms and breaks them to force the audience to see the various real-life factors affecting the work. In effect, WB pulls off a trick Seidlinger tries and fails because WB wasn't taking another metatexual story and stripping it of what made it interesting.

Though that introduces the question: can such meta-moves be mixed? Can you have a text where story conceits become explicit plot mechanics the characters are aware of, while also having characters really look at the camera and tell the audience that its all just a story? Can you actually sell it and make it something interesting?

There is one story that tries this. I don't know if it pulls it off, but it certainly makes a lot of interesting moves that create a fascinating whole. It even comments on the Joker in the same way Worm does, having a character who seemingly cant die because the roll they play in the story is too impor—

Ah fuck.

Continued in part 2.

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! I had two quick questions about one of my characters.

She lost one of her eyes as a child (she had it removed as a child due to cancer) and now she wears an eye prosthesis. She's a very friendly, outgoing, funny person and she's a fashion designer.

Question 1

I know a lot of people like to customize their canes/wheelchairs/etc. and have them in fun colors, put stickers on them, etc. and since she loves making and wearing tons of fancy, cool outfits, I thought it would be fun if she had customized eye prosthetics.

I've seen ones that look like gemstones, funky patterns, and even smiley faces and that seems like something she would love, but I'm not sure if that would be bad in some way?

I guess I just don't want it to come across as me saying disability aids need to look super cool and crazy or else they're boring? She does have a normal one that she wears most of the time, but sometimes she just likes to have fun with it and wear a wacky colorful one, especially when she's dressing up.

Question 2

She's a very funny person and she loves making jokes and pulling pranks. I know a lot of people with prosthetics like to make jokes with them (for example I've seen one of those "this outfit is super expensive" videos but the twist was that most of the cost came from their prosthetic arm, which they proceeded to swing around inside their shirt).

She's absolutely the kind of person to make those types of jokes, but I want to make sure it doesn't go too far or come off as offensive or rude.

One of the jokes I was thinking about is her pretending to sneeze, popping out the eye, and then going "omg I sneezed so hard my eye fell out!" only to reveal that it's a prosthetic.

Another one would be someone asking her to keep an eye on something and she goes "Yeah man I got this" so she pulls the prosthetic out and sets it down on whatever she's supposed to "keep an eye on".

(Don't worry she's going to clean the prosthesis after setting it on stuff lol).

Hello!

Having custom prosthetic eyes is completely fine and, at least in my opinion, doesn't imply that they need to be cool/fashionable/fun/etc. It's just another way for your character to express herself!

Something to consider, however, (Especially if you're going for realism) is that prosthetic eyes are expensive and, depending on your character's circumstances, her insurance would likely only cover one (And a fairly simple/basic one at that). Custom made prosthetics are always going to be a lot more expensive and a lot less likely to be covered by her insurance.

You mentioned that she's a fashion designer, however... if she has some connections in the fashion community, she may have easier access to those kinds of prosthetics than other people would. Maybe she knows people that make them? Or maybe she can trade favours/designs for them? Either way, it could be a solution or even just an interesting plot avenue to explore.

In response to your second question, writing characters making jokes about their disabilities is fine but you want to be careful about how you go about it -- especially if you're not disabled in that way yourself. It's a bit of a balancing act to make sure your character isn't being written to be the comedic relief (Which is, unfortunately, something that happens with a lot of disabled characters).

Although the jokes seem to be in fine taste, I do have some logistic concerns with them.

For the sneezing one, I'm not sure she'd be able to pop it out that quickly and, if she can, it wouldn't be the best idea. Popping the eye out quickly is a great way to drop and damage it and, as mentioned, they are EXPENSIVE.

Taking the prosthetic eye in and out frequently also increases the likelihood of causing damage to the eye by irritating the socket or turning the eyelashes inward which, trust me, is NOT comfortable. You would also want to be careful with setting it on random objects. Because the prosthetic eye is going directly into the eye socket, you really don't want it to be dirty when you put it back in and if they're out and about, it may not be possible to clean it properly right away.

This isn't to say you can't do this. It could be funny once or twice but doing it regularly could have some not-so-ideal consequences so it's good to keep this stuff in mind.

You didn't ask about this but I'd just like to mention: Be careful about writing self-deprecating jokes about her disability. It can get VERY uncomfortable for your readers very quickly, especially if you don't have that/a similar disability. Honestly, I'd advise that able-bodied writers avoid writing these kinds of jokes for their physically disabled characters in general.

Overall, your character sounds great and very well thought out! I'm glad to see more characters that are blind from illness/medical causes rather than the usual traumatic incident.

Cheers,

~ Mod Icarus

[whorediaries-09]

Hi! if you still taking requests I'd love to make another one about the love of my life, James Potter.

I know it might be super cliche but I was thinking about professor! James forgetting his lunch or maybe reader is a sweetheart who brings lunch to him and everyone at Hogwarts it's obsessed with them because they're sooo cute and they're like their cool school parents

Please and thank u, muak right to youuu.

ugghh this is so cute!! i loved writing this one!! i hope you like it!

labyrinth;

pairing- professor!james potter x professor!reader warning(s)- fluff. (let me know if i should add more) a/n- i literally changed a lot but it's low-key similar?? i'm sorry though i hope you understand, my brain could only come up with this.

little train.

' you would break your back to make me break a smile you know how much I hate that everybody just expects me to bounce back '

'good morning students! i hope you've got your models ready for today.' you say, walking into the class. the curtains have been rolled up perfectly by your plethora of eager art students, who chant a good morning, staring at you as your steps fall into the classroom. they know you like to work with the sunlight.

they scramble around their canvases and models, the soles of their shoes rubbing against the newly polished tiles. they look at you with eager faces, waiting for your model to appear. you raise your hands, addressing them.

'okay so this the first class is for realism - which annoys a lot of people over here, i know. but everybody has to pass these few assignments okay? i've to send them for supervision to the higher authorities so that they can ensure i've put on the correct grades according to the quality of the work.'

'because unlike you, they don't care about the creativity,' the political science professor enters the classroom, wearing his dazzling white smile. the students turn their heads, watching him enter the room. among the few students who know both him and you, there's rumbling. and among those who know you, there's questions rising of the cause of the sudden rumbling.

'quieten down kids, no more talking. this is a very important class. you'll learn the basics and the importance of this branch of art. mr. potter,' you look him in the eye. he visibly tones down his raised arms and shoulders, 'i need you to bring me two tools and a canvas.' he nods.

*-

james is sitting directly under the rays of the sun. they are golden, reflecting upon his beautiful dusky brown skin. it hits him in the eye, but he's still, letting you take your sweet time while you explain the theories and the basics of the art.

he likes how patiently you teach them the correct ways and methods while also consoling them by reminding them every other artist has a unique style and shouldn't be bound by some rules. you stay to teaching them the outlines of color theories, which couldn't be modified much when this art style was practiced.

he's also never felt this nervous and giddy. he's usually a very confident man, but within your presence, a few ties of his uptight confidence break, and all hell loses free. he's turns into a puddle right under your piercing gaze, which is unusual for a man like james potter. he would still remember the day you'd asked him to model for you. he'd gone home and giggled into the pillow like a high school high on hormones.

'hi, mr. potter,' you'd whispered behind him. he'd been talking to sirius. he'd been taken aback by your sudden appearance- and sirius' lack of reaction, considering he'd been sitting facing james.

he turned around, and by habit ruffled his already messy hair. he smiled, trying to hide the pleasant shock behind his eyes. he felt his cheeks warming up with the way you looked at him. sliding him a paper cup, you stood, twiddling with your thumbs.

'this is?-'

'chai! masala chai! consider it a bribe for the awkward question i'm about to ask.'

'nothing is awkward james, love. i think you'll be fine.' sirius said. he slipped his fingers within the crook of his jacket that had been hanging on the edge of the chair. he smiled, a mischievous uplift of his lips. 'but just in case,' he said, walking out of the room, leaving you and james alone. james gulped, following his friend's silhouette.

'so...'

'yeah, uhm so i was wondering whether you'd model for me? only if you're comfortable though!' james was sure the red hot blood rush into his cheeks was extremely was visible. he felt his nerves turn mush and stomach flip with giddiness.

'i don't particularly mind it no,' he said. he took the burning cup into his grip, taking a slow sip. he only hoped it wouldn't be too spicy.

'so you're up for it?' you asked. he saw the tension from your back literally lift up, and a glee float in your eyes.

'i am up for it,' he said taking another sip of the tea. 'but you need to tell me why me,' you rubbed the back of your head, laughing nervously.

'uhh... i think you've gorgeously complicated features which would allow me to teach my students with enthusiasm because i teach the best with complicated features. i don't mean it in a harsh way, i also think you're beautiful so...' he nodded letting your words sink into his brain and stop himself from taking you by your neck and press his lips onto yours.

'is it any good? the tea?' you asked, breaking the awkward tension and the lack of his response. you wondered whether you made him uncomfortable with your answer.

'it's perfect. the sweetness and the spiciness.'

it was not.

*-

'okay so carefully outline your vision for the model, and let your brains take over your mind! this has been a boring class i realize but please submit your homework by the deadline so i'll suggest ways for improving your work-'

'-because this is extremely important for your grades students. now the kids over here who are also in my class, i'll deduct grades if you all don't take her words seriously.' james completed for you, cracking his back and rolling his shoulders. the students booed mockingly. one of them, a fiery person too raised her voice,

'you're barely serious in your own classes!' james knitted his eyebrows.

'are you questioning my abilities of teaching?'

'no, i'm not. i'm saying you're not serious in your own lessons sometimes- and you're a pretty much of a goofball yourself.'

'that's fine, i can be a goofball and be a good professor too. ms. grace, please mind your tone, or i'll be obliged to turn into an insufferable old prat.'

'okay come on let's not create an unnecessary drama over here, you have theatres and mr. pettigrew to help with that.' you said, trying to calm down bubbling waters. the students picked up their bags, walking away. yet again, leaving the both of you alone.

james helped you put on your coat. he wondered whether his part was done. he wondered why he cared so much about whether his part was done or not. the question lingered at the tip of his tongue before he spat it out.

'is my work done now?' he asks. you linger, your back faced towards him. he feels a wave of heat from your body crumple over his senses. you turn around, facing him. the remnants of the sun rays surround him, filtering out his outline. there's something in his eyes. a string of vulnerability you've never seen in his eyes. a string of vulnerability he's never felt within his.

'no.' you say. your breath is hot, which falls on his lips. he gulps, noticing how close you are. somehow it feels natural. in your piercing gaze he feels his beating heart stop. it's as if your features are one hell of a drug, reeking him into a spiral of things he's never felt before. your beauty is surreal, captured within his memories and his heart. he wishes he'd capture the way he sees you onto the canvas.

'are you bored of me, james?' you ask. you've never said his name before. it sets his senses on fire, a creeping hotness melting onto his nerves.

'no,' he says. he moves closer, his mouth so close to yours. he wants to touch them, get drunk upon the reminiscent taste he's never tasted before.

'are you sure, james?' you ask, your eyes falling onto his lips. he nods, unable to answer. in your eyes, he sees his portrait in a beauty he's never seen before. his fingers slips into yours, and he feels them.

and he wonders, when your fingers work on the canvas, how you conceive him, how you decipher him. all he's sure of is that he's the most beautiful when you portray him.

*************************************

taglist - @reggieisfit @siriuslycaptainofthedawntreader @jamespottergf @eternallybipanicking @fictional-magic @iamgayforyourmom1510

(if you want to be tagged please send a request through my inbox.)

****************************************

[morganbritton132]

Ahh I love your emtts I catch up on every day like it's my evening newspaper 😂 Speaking of I just saw the response where you mentioned Robin and Steve saying hi to their FBI agents and that's hilarious

Like the idea that Robin and Steve are so used to being bugged that they say hi to the FBI, Steve is vehemently against Alexa, doesnt have much of a social media presence (aside from Facebook) and is still futile trying to stop Eddie from breaking his NDA because Eddie may only have one Steve signed FOUR is so funny in the context of this au where Eddie just tells tiktok Steve has mommy issues 😂 The contrast is just so funny to me

But anyway. I absolutely love your au and all the details you've put into it and I hope you don't feel too much pressure when you get responses like this. Hope you have a good day

No pressure felt at all! I absolutely love being sent stuff like this. I think it’s so cool that people pick up on little world building things and expand on them because those are my favorite things to write. I’ve always found something really fascinating about grounding a character into a realism that’s just kinda mundane. I think it’s neat and I think it’s cool that other people see it and seem to like it.

It's like the saga has it’s own fandom and I love it.

After Starcourt, Steve and Robin started signing off their phone calls with “Bye Steve/Bye Robin/Bye FBI agent bugging my phone” because sometimes there was this weird staticky sound on the line when they talked.

And sure, maybe it was because the mall fire caused significant damage to the power grin and everything was flickering and staticky that summer. Maybe it was Steve’s second concussion of the year still ringing around his head. It’s funnier to imagine that it’s an FBI agent sitting in some hot sweaty van listening to them talk about girls and minimum wage jobs.

“Holy shit,” Steve said one night, cutting Robin off in their ever-depressing job search. “We’ve talked about girls.”

“Uh, yeah? Did you forget?”

“That means that you came out to me and the FBI, Buckley.”

Steve actually told Robin that the FBI monitors them for a bit after every Upside Down event. They patch you up and give you an NDA, and then they watch you for a while to see if you’re a traitor to your country. That’s just common sense.

Dustin overheard him and said that this was real life and not a bad spy movie. Steve was just being paranoid.

Steve’s just like, “Oh yeah, if I’m so paranoid then why was there a weird van in the school parking lot when I l picked you up from your nerd club? That’s classic FBI.”

“You mean Eddie Munson’s van???”

Eddie signed the NDA but he’s never taken it seriously.

The first thing he did after he left the hospital was write a song about Vecna. He still preforms that song to this day. The artwork for their first album cover was a drawing of a demo-bat. That album sold over two million records.

Eddie’s never had a secret that he hasn’t told. Sometimes Eddie starts talking and he doesn’t know what’s going to come out and other times, he outs his husband’s mommy issues to his audience of six million.

Eddie will start a live stream like, “Ask me anything, I’m an open book.”

Steve’s just like, “Babe.”

“Sorry, Steve said I’m not allowed to be an open book.”

 

(Side note: It is very important to me that the only social media that Steve has is Facebook because (1) it’s a mom’s social media and (2) it’s unsecure as fuck. Not only is Facebook spying on you but it’s selling information. I just think it’s so funny that Steve won’t get an Alexa but he’ll give all his pictures and location to Mark Zuckerberg.)

[tamelee]

What do you think of the will of fire and konoha? Do you support them?

Ah, I think a lot about that. It's challenging to dive in without getting completely lost in it, though, and without me having to go and take a million screenshots. Most scenes include some sort of example why the current system or why WoF have failed a certain character, and that is important because those are the messages within the story that support the overall theme. Specifically how a character reacts to a situation. 

And in the end, it's the Shinobi system that needs changing one way or another. 

Creating a village that prioritizes unity, loyalty, and protection is great. I definitely support what Konoha was supposed to be, and it had been necessary. But it failed because there are bigger issues.

I've read a lot of pro- and anti-WoF posts, and I think most of them are right in some ways, but I don't think you can judge the operation of an ideology that's part of a system without questioning... the broader system. And that's exactly what it distracts you from; the WoF never addresses the root cause of any conflicts. 

The ideology itself isn't to blame. The WoF doesn't inherently promote anything harmful, but it's too simplistic. Hashirama's ways to achieve peace were ambitious but perhaps too naive, whereas Tobirama operated from his own biased sense of realism. I don't like how authority applied the WoF, that includes Hiruzen and Danzo, of course, who manipulated and abused it in a way only to serve their own interests and encourage people to sacrifice themselves for it or do that sacrificial part for them. Prioritizing a single village or nation without questioning the system that applies to all Shinobi is bound to fail. 

Hence, Naruto wanted all Shinobi to work together, or why Sasuke believed there had to be a single enemy that would force all Shinobi to work together. 

And why Itachi made it a point that certain things like a clan or village should be questioned. Or why it was so significant to question what personal bonds meant as opposed to the collective belief that made Shinobi with the same headband comrades automatically.

There are many issues, so do I support it? Maybe? But only if applied responsibly, and we haven't seen a good example yet. So maybe it's not even possible, but that also makes it interesting. 

Or—hear me out—you can introduce aliens, and none of that matters anymore because now Sasuke is right and Naruto gets his wish without any creativity while both are miserable regardless—tadaa~ 

[homestucksimplified]

The 12 Classes of Doom.

“Doom is the Aspect of inevitability, destiny, fate, conformity… Doom Players are known to be good listeners, people who understand and will empathize, even if they don’t know how to fix many issues. They seem to be okay with fate, with the way things work, with both contentment and pain. Doom Player Sollux knew that he was going to die, and he accepted it, knowing nothing could be done about it. Doom can be heavily emotional”.

“Doom is a poetic Aspect, and it’s extremely interesting, although rarely depicted in the comic. A Doom Player’s struggle might be about acceptance, a doubt about how it all is supposed to work. It is realistic and skeptical, not always pessimistic instead. Doom can be stability, having an outlook on life that is healing in their own way. I have heard from a Doom Player that “the Life-Doom Aspect pair is the facet of a person that deals with healing. While Life heals through change and improvement, Doom heals through acceptance and adjustment”. This difference is sometimes described as “the vent friend” (Doom) and “the advice friend” (Life). Life is the opposite Aspect to Doom, and it is serving and helpful”.

Sburb Players each have a combination of an Aspect and a Class. Aspects are understood to represent what a player’s goals and actions in life are caused by. A Class is within an Aspect and understood to represent the way they deal with their Aspect.

The Sburb Classes are Maid, Page, Mage, Knight, Rogue, Sylph, Seer, Thief, Heir, Bard, Prince, and Witch. (Lord and Muse*)

(*Classes Lord and Muse seem to only be possible in either Cherub society or in two-player sessions. They are very absolute and it’s rare for a human to identify with their descriptions. I will have to leave them out here and only write about the remaining twelve :)

Adding the Classes to the Aspect of Doom will result in twelve God Tiers. My analyses of them are as follows:

1st God Tier: Witch of Doom

Witch is the Active Class of manipulation. Witches are known to “control” their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. A Witch of Doom, specifically, would be one of the most repressed people in their lives, always shutting off what should be natural (though they would not be blind to it, they’re not naive about what fate is supposed to bring, they simply no not want to accept that it is true). Witches are characterized by rebellion, and Doom’s rebellion is against fate, the condemnation, sometimes even death. It is impossible to escape from your Aspect but they try their best, but does escaping from destiny not end up becoming your destiny?

Witches of Doom are the most frightened of Witches, but they’re also probably the strongest. I can see them being good liars, and pretty optimistic people, maybe trying to hide the realism or nihilism that might be building up inside them, begging to be seen. They would want to appear more as a Life Player, be helpful and free from destiny and/or suffering. It is through accepting suffering that they will become well-developed Doom Players.

2nd God Tier: Heir of Doom

Heir is the Passive Class of manipulation. Heirs are known to “influence” their Aspect or through their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. An Heir of Doom, specifically, would passively manipulate fate in a way that might be shown as “coping”, maybe tricking themselves and those around them into believing the opposite of the truth, for example, that everything will be okay when in reality they know it won’t. It can also be the opposite, if they are mostly negative; they could bring people to believe that a perfectly safe and fine situation will actually end in great tragedy. They don’t do this on purpose all the time, though, and unlike Witches, they have more control of that power. It’s not only their way of dealing with fate, it is also what they are naturally inclined to do. The challenge in an Heir of Doom’s life would be not being in control of what is to come.

Heir of Doom is a canon Homestuck God Tier. Mituna Captor is the character that holds that title.

3rd God Tier: Mage of Doom

Mage is the Active Class of knowledge. Mages are known to “understand” their Aspect or through their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. A Mage of Doom, specifically, would be aware of everyone’s fates and their own as well. I guess in a non-fantasy world that would be through “connecting the dots” and great observation skills. Mages are the most aware of where they are and of what their Aspect means, so Mages of Doom would be completely accepting of, you know, acceptance itself. In subtle cases they might be realistic people who don’t try to defeat their doom, and in extreme cases they might be people who are completely in peace with the fact that they are going to die. It will depend from Player to Player, but Doom will usually have a connection with suffering. Mages of Doom would be understanding of everyone’s suffering, maybe the perfect empaths. Their mind would never be focused on fixing the inevitable, they only accept it as it is; because if it’s meant to go this way, it’s for a good reason. They don’t go against fate.

I like to believe a Mage of Doom would read this and go “yeah. Guess I’m a Mage of Doom then”.

Mage of Doom is a canon Homestuck God Tier. Sollux Captor is the character that holds that title.

4th God Tier: Seer of Doom

Seer is the Passive Class of knowledge. Seers are known to “study” their Aspect or through their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. A Seer of Doom, specifically, would analyse fates and what they might be, what might be hidden behind them, what the reasons for them might be… They are analysts, like every Seer, but of what wouldn’t really appeal to others; of death, suffering, drama, the inevitability of many aspects of life. Seers of Doom would be really interesting people with many interesting hobbies. I can see them, like some of the Time Players, enjoying collecting bones, or rocks that not everyone would notice on the beach. They are probably drawn to endings, and I mean this in the most innocent way. I can connect Doom and Time pretty often, because both overlap when talking about finality; Time for the rush reason and Doom for the fate reason. Does that make sense? Seers of Doom might be really good at understanding how something is going to end, studying situations to figure out motives. What differs them the most from Mages is that they would watch from afar and not feel as intimate with destiny as Mages would.

I don’t know why, but “Mary On A Cross” by Ghost gives me Seer of Doom vibes.

5th God Tier: Thief of Doom

Thief is the Active Class of stealing. Thieves are known to “take” from their Aspect and through their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. A Thief of Doom, specifically, would take advantage of their own ideas of destiny to try to benefit other areas of their life. I see the stealing classes as the most unrelated classes to their Aspects, it is harder for me to figure out who is a Thief or a Rogue, but I can tell that most Thieves are tempted to steal “for themselves”. This has never meant they are self-focused or self-fulfilling, it just means they are less naturally inclined to sacrifice themselves in the name of others. Thieves are usually very comfortable in their Aspects, not ever doubting it, and instead taking every chance they have to perfect it. In a concrete way, a Thief of Doom would, for example, use other’s pessimistic moments to lecture them about it, showing off their certainty in whatever destiny they believe is coming to them. Being comfortable in their Aspect, they would not be affected by suffering as much, they would feel at ease with pessimism. They are confident that if it is the right thing, it’s going to benefit them one day.

6th God Tier: Rogue of Doom

Rogue is the Passive Class of stealing. Rogues are known to “redistribute” their Aspect or through their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. A Rogue of Doom, specifically, would be either defined by sweetness or by incapability. Let me explain, Rogue is a Class that is described to be giving, and with this particular Aspect, it could mean sweet but also dangerous things. A Rogue of Doom might be a great listener, giving away their time to empathize with people or make them feel heard at least, but they might also have extreme sides, like (taking the Aspect more literally) leaving their fate in others’ hands or even being killed by them, due to their own incapability to center their Aspects on themselves.But this being said, every God Tier has macabre interpretations that are not great to think about, but this one stood out to me. Being a Rogue of Doom doesn’t guarantee that a person will leave their destiny up to others, but it facilitates it.

7th God Tier: Knight of Doom

Knight is the Active Class of utilizing. Knights are known to “handle” their Aspect and through their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. A Knight of Doom, specifically, would be the biggest stereotype of Doom, pessimistic and used to suffering and being in the middle of the action. “The action”, in the Doom Aspect, can mean death of relatives, for example, and a Knight of Doom might be used to dealing with that. (This characteristic is also present in Knights of Time!) Otherwise, it can mean constantly having to handle and/or explain inevitability to others. Knights might not be the biggest fans of their Aspect, but they will accept it and not even complain that much. This is an interesting fact in Doom too, would they accept… acceptance?

The song “As the World Caves In” reminds me of this God Tier.

8th God Tier: Page of Doom

Page is the Passive Class of utilizing. Pages are known to “rise” their Aspect or through their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. A Page of Doom, specifically, would carefully and sometimes accidentally deal with the sensitive topics of suffering, death, finality of all things. It will all naturally come to them, in a way they really have no control or awareness over, and they will accept and accept and just handle everything because that’s the only thing they can do. Differently from Knights, they might feel like they’re useless in relation to the inevitability of change. Their main challenge will be learning how they are balanced in whatever chaos of destiny is happening around them. Pages have the potential of being the strongest Class when they learn the patterns of how they deal and how they should deal with their Aspect. I can see a Page of Doom just feel like they are following and not adding anything to the world, because things always happen without their input so how are they affecting anything? (If there’s any Page of Doom reading this, it’s not true; we are all affecting the world.)

9th God Tier: Maid of Doom

Maid is the Active Class of construction. Maids are known to “create” their Aspect or through their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. A Maid of Doom, specifically, would create their own fates! Maids are MADE of their Aspect, Maids of Doom are made of destiny and the ideas of suffering and comformity! Though it is the Active Class of construction, it is also a Class that serves, so it is also important to note that Maids of Doom would do anything to benefit destiny, whatever it might be. They are not the class that knows, they are the class that is.

I find Maids of Doom interesting, because how do you create something that to most others, just comes along on its own? Well, Maids have their technique of building, they will do what it takes until they feel like they are doing their job in a satisfying way. A Maid of Doom might be obsessed with living a perfectly spontaneous life, if that makes sense. They are attending to fate and building themselves from it!

10th God Tier: Sylph of Doom

Sylph is the Passive Class of construction. Sylphs are known to “build” their Aspect or through their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. A Sylph of Doom, specifically, would passively work with fate in order to make it easier to deal with, and then build upon it. I can see them as controlling and bossy about the Aspect. To use a random example, I can see them getting angry at someone who gives them advice, because that is not how Doom works. It’s inevitable and unchangeable, and it is the right thing to follow. I always see Sylphs as possessive of their Aspects, like they are the only ones who can take care of it, even if abstractedly. A Sylph of Doom would make their own interpretations of what their doom should be (maybe even macabrely, how their end should be) and will live their lives with those opinions very close to them at night.

11th God Tier: Prince of Doom

Prince is the Active Class of destruction. Princes are known to “wreck” their Aspect and through their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. A Prince of Doom, specifically, would seem pretty edgy. They’d want to be as positive as Life Players, but would fail miserably and fall back into their inevitable pessimism about inevitability. Unhealthy Princes try to escape from their Aspect, and everyone starts unhealthy. They would be constantly worried and angry at their own destiny, and would be awfully aware of it (Mage is the Class of knowledge, but Prince is the one of awareness!) despite their attempts. Destruction can be literal, in this case it might be breaking objects related to fate, like breaking the weapon that is trying to kill you, “biting the hand that feeds you”.

I like to use the song Call Me What You Like by Lovejoy for this God Tier. Especially “I’m not paranoid, I’m a realist; I know you’re gonna kill me”. I also like to say that, while fate is the correct and natural thing to most Classes, to Princes of Doom, it is the wrongest path of all.

12th God Tier: Bard of Doom

Bard is the Passive Class of destruction. Bards are known to “deconstruct” their Aspect or through their Aspect, both literally and figuratively. A Bard of Doom, specifically, would not purposefully ruin fate’s plans, but would definitely cause that ruin. Think of the term “back to black”, and the inevitability of going back to old patterns and to what happens spontaneously. Bards have a hard time accepting their Aspects, and can go through weird and unbelievable phases with it. This particular Bard could have a complicated relationship with the fact that everything ends, and other times that some things are infinite, they might at one time be okay with death and at another lose their minds about it. Regarding fate, they don’t know they’re against it, but everything they do works in favor to annulate it. Like Princes, they might prefer the idea of belonging to the opposite Aspect (Life), being more positive and less complicated and ever-changing.

[damnfandomproblems]

"Ok but the ask you’re responding to is specifically saying that there’s a difference between depiction or endorsement and endorsement is a problem that many self-identified proship people are just refusing to acknowledge because it’s more convenient to argue every anti is against any bad thing being depicted ever. "

Here is the definition of endorsement: an act of giving one's public approval or support to someone or something

Here is the definition of depiction: to show or represent by a drawing, painting, or other art form

Please take notice of how the definition of depiction does not mention realism and how the definition of endorsement is specified as an act of giving public support/approval. If someone writes/draws something themed around abuse but portrays it wildly inaccurate, but they do not specifically say, "Hey yeah, I support this thing IRL," it is not an endorsement of that thing. It is just a depiction, however inaccurate, however inappropriately inaccurate

"You do get that pretty much all stories that depict murder, terrorism, torture etc. don’t portray it positively, right. Heck, terrorism is something people famously define by whether it’s justified or not, and there’s a fair few common terrorist tactics most will agree cannot be justified at all like bombing civilians and the like regardless of your cause (not the least because because they aren’t even going to further said cause). If a story said that someone was objectively in the right for doing a 9/11 analogue I doubt most “antis” would be cool with that."

Maybe it's because I don't engage with children's media, but most stories I read or watch flip-flop between portraying all those topics either accurately or inaccurately, and either positively or negatively. Children's media portray things as is because children's brains aren't fully developed and they need to be taught right from wrong, truth from lie, and reality from fiction. Once your brain is developed enough to separate the difference, bad things can be portrayed as good and good as bad because a strong moral framework that won't waver on just stories alone should have already been developed

Saw movies are just gore porn, same with slashers and most horror in general. You root for the villain because you watch those movies special for the brutal unexcusable violence, violence portrayed purely for entertainment and thus can absolutely be considered "romanticize" if not just straight up sexualized. John Wick, you root for him to kill all these people because one person hurt him, you root for him to take countless humans lives over the grief and pain of a singular animal life. You root for the glorified romanticized violence, cheer for it, in fact.

Also, with the attitude towards America today, I can already bet there are people already out their claiming that 9/11 was deserved, and those kind of people exist everyone, and that includes within anti groups. This argument is just a straw man fallacy. Also, more so than anything, if someone was to write a story from the perspective of someone who believes the attack was deserved, I can guarantee that it would most likely be, with 99% certainty, be aimed at adults. Adults, that I remind you, should be developed enough to understand that this is a story with an unreliable narrator, and that just because they the character glamorize the tragedy doesn't mean that they the person should too. Most proshippers and antis and everyone else not sucked into that toxic waste pit of shipping/censorship discourse would be able to accept that, and even if they think it's distasteful, understand at the end of the day it's just a story that trys to take into the mind of someone horrid to try and make sense of their horridness

"Also there’s a key factor you’re ignoring here. There are circumstances where it is justifiable to kill someone. Most concede at least self defense cases."

Definition of murder: the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.

Definition of manslaughter: the crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought, or otherwise in circumstances not amounting to murder.

In most places, killing self-defense isn't murder, it's manslaughter.

Murder very, very rarely is considered justifed by most people. Manslaughter, however, tends to be more debatabled. But even then, debatable is the key word. Their is no definited, absolutely line in the sand of accepted manslaughter and unacceptable manslaughter. People absolutely do argue about self-defense killings. Some believe it's just as bad as murder. Some feel it's a gray thing where the killer still needs some of consequence, some believe it's fully excuseable.

What you see in movies more often than not, though, is murder, not manslaughter. It is deliberate and/or done after the threat has been lifted. More often than not, from my experience, it's revenge killings, not self-defense.

This argument is just morality wank and the "key factory" of "justifiably" is completely subjective. It's a variable, not the control

"Like, another ask tried to use John Wick as a gotcha because it’s a “toxic love and bad actions portrayed positively” or smth because John Wick being motivated by into killing several gangsters who broke into his home, killed his dog, and are shown to murder people (including a priest who worked for them), by his love for his dog. And somehow that’s just as bad as someone being in an abusive relationship and that being seen as a good thing."

Are you talking about a real being in an abusive relationship and being told that's good, or about a fictional character in a fictional relationship experiencing fictional abuse portrayed inaccurately? I am assuming it's inaccurate fiction you're talking about, fiction, that once again would be aimed at adults, who can understand that this depiction is inaccurate. Just like how they can cheer on for John Wick and his romanticized violence in the context of a story and hate that same violence when acted out in real life, they can cheer on for a fictional inaccurate abusive relationship in the context of fiction and hate that same abuse when acted out in real life

Not only that, once again, whether abuse or murder is worse, be it in fiction or reality, is debatabled. Many can argue that romanticized and/or real murder is worse than abuse because murder is final wherest abuse can be healed from with time and effort

"Like, absurd as that comparison is on its own, it also relies on that killing being equivalent to any other form of killing regardless of context. And that’s silly because obviously there’s a difference between killing someone in self defense or as justified retaliation (again, the mobsters in this example are in fact murderers of people too) versus just murdering innocent people. "

The difference is subjective, "justiced retaliation" is extremely subjective, all of this argument is subjective

"You can’t say that with rape, incest, pedophilia etc. There’s not a circumstance where that can be justified. Every case is horrible and unjustified, there are not types you can rightly portray as a good thing or as morally acceptable."

Don't get me wrong, I agree that real life rape, incest, pedophilia is all wrong, but there are people who disagree. Justifiably is always subjective in the real world, and laws in many places reflect that justifiably, child marriage is still legal in many places, so incest, and so is rape. If I was to really push and play the devil's advocate and come up with a 1 in a trillion bullshit argument, how justifiable would rape be if their was a gun to your head, maybe even to your familes heada too, and you werw told to either assult this person or be murdered? I could easily agrue that rape in that situation is justifiable under the argument that preserving life is more important than preventing momentary trauma

"I never thought I’d have to explain this but here we are."

You didn't have to do anything. You felt like a little knight, a ray of light, the hero abmist the icky villains who just couldn't stand aside. We're here because of your egotistical sense of self-righteousness, not of genuine necessity. Don't conflate the two

Posting as a response to a previous ask.

[radiant-reid]

Eleventh Hour

Summary: Spencer's about to move across the country, until his ex-girlfriend gives him some news

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader (angst then fluff)

Word Count: 2.1k

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This is not how it's supposed to go.

Or maybe it is.

College relationships are tricky, tumultuous, and the tangling of lives of two changing people. Although it makes her seem cliche, Y/n thought Spencer was different, and she would stick with that opinion to the end. He was wiser than any other college boy and more mature.

Whether they are the right people for each other or not, it's not the right time.

Their breakup wasn't sad, per se. They're both realists for the most part, and ending their relationship was on the horizon for a while. In the final semester of her senior year and Spencer's last semester of all his years of degree-collecting, their lives are about to go in such different ways that being together will cause more problems, making them sacrifice parts of their lives they don't want to.

So it's uncomplicated and much more pragmatic.

But a dangerous touch of hope comes with being a romantic. Those feelings make it hard to hand back each other's things, tell their friends and families, and sleep alone again.

Spencer's realism and romanticism work inversely, the former getting stronger as the latter gets weaker. It's why he never expected her to call.

Now he's sitting in front of her, frowning because something's really wrong. She hadn't looked so distraught when they broke up, but tears prick her eyes while her stomach threatens to evict her lunch.

"What's wrong?" He asks. He would never be able to stop caring about her, and he figures it would take a monster to not care about her after speaking to her just once. It could be about her mom or dad or a friend.

Y/n knew she had to tell him when she found out. Morally, it was the right thing to do, and Spencer deserves to know. Just because it was an easy choice to make doesn't make it easy to do. As soon as she tells him, everything changes between them again. They've gone from strangers to lovers to strangers, and now they're going to be something else. Whatever they're going to be, it's up to Spencer, and there's going to be very little she can do to change his mind about how he feels for her.

She keeps playing with her fingers in her lap, failing to reach the threshold of confidence needed to look at him. "This is... shit- I don't even know how to tell you this, Spence." She admits, heart pounding in her chest.

That makes Spencer even more puzzled. What could she really need to tell him a month post-breakup that was so life-changing. "It's okay." He assures her.

He's back to that old shyness she used to find endearing. She knows it because she can see his itching and resisting to touch her hand. "I'm pregnant." She confesses, biting her bottom lip.

"You're what?" He spits back.

Yeah, it was life-changing news. Earth-shattering.

He's spiraling like he never has before because, holy shit, it's news that he's never heard before. It's news he didn't expect to hear ever, honestly. And not from her, that's for sure.

"Pregnant." She repeats, so it'll sink in quicker. "And I'm sorry."

"It's not your...fault." He tells her, although he doesn't seem genuine.

There's upset in his features, and against her better judgment, she pushes it. "What are you thinking?"

"That I don't want a baby." He snaps, standing up as the realization hits him like a freight train.

It catches her off guard. Majorly. Spencer never, ever speaks to anyone in a tone that short, let alone her. And it makes her want to cry because she needs someone. She had hoped it would be him. Whether it's the new hormones or him being in front of her again, there's a longing for the connection they walked away from.

Her inner romantic wanted him to jump at the chance to have a baby with her, promise they could work things out, and the immense love she's been feeling for him wasn't one-sided.

"Y/n, I can't have a baby. I'm about to move across the country tomorrow." He declares.

It's categorically cold, just factual. That makes it the most heartbreaking.

She actually can't believe what she's hearing. They're young and not together, but she thought he might care a little bit more about the baby that's 50% him and growing inside her. Maybe he isn't as different as she hoped.

"That's why you broke up with me?" She asks, tears clouding her vision.

He doesn't do what she expects, and she's starting to think it's downright stupid that she ever thought he'd wrap his arms around her until she stopped crying. And why is she crying all the goddamn time now?

"Don't do that." He says sternly. "It was mutual."

"It's not now." She informs him, wiping up her tears angrily.

Spencer stops for a moment, taking a breath to avoid saying something he can't take back, something that might ruin his chance at ever getting to meet his child.

"We can't get back together just because we're having a baby." He reminds her. "You have to know that."

Y/n bites her lip, nodding. "Yeah. So this is just me telling you. We can forget everything else."

He's not sure he wants to do that now that she's being so upfront about it, but he's not going to be that contradictory. "Thanks." He whispers. "Whatever you need, let me know. Not that-"

She cuts him off, getting up from the couch and opening the door. One thing- along with the fact he doesn't want to be part of their lives- that she didn't want to hear about is him pledging money, thinking it's the same thing as love or time. "I know." She says, somehow able to get her following words out without crying. "Call me if you ever want to meet an adorable baby."

That makes it real, and his stomach flips in a new but not terrible way. Once she shuts the door on him, he stands there on her apartment step for a whole minute, wondering if he should go back and fix the fuck-up he's just created.

There's not much more crying Y/n can do. She's got a plan, a job lined up for once she gets a degree, and friends who love her. Her baby won't have a dad, though, because she'll never be able to love and trust someone like she does Spencer.

~

Unless someone has taken Spencer's phone, he's calling her early that morning. Something compels her to answer. "This isn't sending the right message." She answers the call, joking to relieve the tension from her major confession less than 12 hours ago.

"I need to send a different message." He confesses, confusing her. She's not going to let herself believe it's good until there's no doubt. "Can you meet me?"

"On this coast." She agrees. It's for her baby, she reminds herself. A baby who deserves a dad, even if he breaks their mom's heart.

"My apartment?" He suggests.

She sighs, resisting the urge to sob about the place she used to spend so much time at. "I can't. Not when your stuff is packed up."

"Some of it's yours." He tells her. "But I can come to you."

That's worse, she decides. She can't have a replay of last night. His apartment will look generic without any mementos in it.

"No, I'll come to you." She decides. "Soon?"

"Whenever you're ready." He assures her, bouncing his knees up and down nervously.

She's not sure what she's doing, and she knows she's dumb for fixing her hair and putting on makeup, but she does it anyway. Then she's out the door before she can rethink her poor decision.

"Coffee?" Spencer offers once she walks in and takes off her shoes.

The walls are bare, and there are no books in the bookcase. It's not Spencer at all which doesn't make her feel better.

Y/n shakes her head. "I can't."

"Fuck, right. Sorry." He stammers out his words. "Do you want to sit?"

She doesn't know what she's doing there, so she nods, sitting down on a couch they'd fucked on so many times it wasn't appropriate. He doesn't follow suit. "Why am I here, Spencer?" She asks.

He snaps out of the trance he's in. "Oh, yeah. Hold on." He requests, walking off before she can ask any more questions.

Every second he's away, she gets more and more in her head until that feeling of wanting to be sick is too overwhelming. "I, uh, should go, you know? I'm sure you've got stuff to do." She fails for an excuse, but she knows she has to get out of there before she's in tears on his couch, looking even more pathetic than she does now.

"Please." Spencer walks back into the room with a box. A box with yellow and white horizontal stripes on it that she's sure is new. "Can you just open this?"

"The person going away doesn't give the gift." She shakes her head, rejecting the gift. "Don't make this hard for me."

His heart breaks seeing her trying not to cry, the sweetest person he knows who thinks he's running away. "Please."

Those fucking puppy dog eyes. She takes the lid off the box cautiously because she's terrified and takes out the contents. A baby onesie with an FBI logo on it. It's the first onesie she's ever held, and it has her crying.

"What are you doing?" She asks between tears.

"Trying to stop making decisions that'll ruin my life." He tells her, sitting on the ottoman in front of her. "Like I did a month ago."

She frowns. "Yeah?"

"Oh my god, yes." He assures her, crying a little himself. He's feeling the pressure because he cannot mess this apology up. "Y/n, I should have fought to be with you because you're worth fighting for. You always will be. I shouldn't have let you go then, and I will do anything it takes for you to not walk now."

"You're not getting on a plane?" She recalls what he said before, safeguarding her heart.

He shakes his head. "Not today. And not ever if you don't want me to." He informs her.

She's honestly gobsmacked with so many questions in her mind and no idea what order to ask them. "I want this baby." She mumbles, unsure about if it's going to put him off.

"I'm terrified." He confesses. "My dad was... lousy, at best, so I don't know how to be a father, but I'll learn. I'll read every book there is." He promises. "I acted like an asshole, and I'm so sorry. I got that." He nods to the onesie she's gripping tightly. "Because I promise I will do anything to be in your and the baby's life."

"Is this a hint?" She wonders, reading over the logo.

Spencer chuckles, nodding. "Not very subtle." He admits. "I'm supposed to be going to live in DC and work at the Behavioural Analysis Unit in Quantico, but I'll quit before I even start to stay here if that's what you want to do."

She thinks it over for a moment, but the decision is pretty easy. Sure, Spencer can get a job anywhere with his brains and degrees, but he wants to help people. "Let's do it." She agrees, smile widening.

"Do what?" He asks, caught off guard.

"I can't be without you." She tells him, reaching out to touch his hand softly, testing the boundary. "I've tried, and it's the worst. I want you in my life. Let's move to DC."

"We don't have to." He reminds her quickly.

She shakes her head. "We can have a fresh start." She reminds him. "We're following these dreams together as a team."

Spencer leans forward to cup her cheeks, wiping up her tears. "I'll do anything to make it up to you." He promises.

"Pack my stuff." She jokes, feeling his breath on her face as he laughs with her.

"Can I kiss you now?" He asks desperately, earning a nod from Y/n. He dives in quickly, missing feeling so close to her. His lips are gentle on hers, like he's worried about breaking her. When he pulls back, he nods at the box. "Finish opening it." He suggests.

She does, crying a little again when she sees the teeny tiny converse and teddy bears. "This is perfect." She mumbles.

He beams at the praise and her. "You're perfect. I'm just lucky."

Tell me what you think

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[olderthannetfic]

I’d like to appeal to the advice of your followers with a question concerning the degree of realism of sex in smutty fanfic. Two questions really. I know fanfic is not reality- but if (almost) all authors describe certain things in a specific way, I start to wonder if I missed something. And since I write a bit myself, I’d like to get things right.

The first is about bruising. A tight grip on arms or hips is apparently enough to cause bruises. I have participated in enthusiastic and even rough sex and never, ever got bruised. So I decided to test it out with my husband and asked him to try and bruise my arm by gripping it. Even a very tight grip caused no bruises. I only got (mildly) bruised after asking him to apply full force, which took him some effort and was seriously painful. It really hurt and not in the sexy way. Now maybe I bruise less easy than most but encounters with table corners etcetera say otherwise. So am I missing something here, or did smut writers collectively decide that bruising is sexy and therefore bruises are easily caused by a tight grip?

The other thing is about soreness. In all or most fics, not only fanfic but also conventional straight romance novels, passionate sex means the receiving party will be sore enough to be limping the day after or even have trouble sitting down. In my personal experience, very rough, slam-in-as-hard-as-you-can fucking both vaginal and anal does not result in any observable soreness afterwards while walking or sitting. The insides may get chafed, yes, rubbed raw even, depending on the use of lube, and that will be supremely noticeable during consequent bathroom visits or the next fuck session if it follows soon after the first, but that’s it. The only soreness I ever had was muscle soreness in my thighs or other limbs if the position took some physical effort to maintain. But internal soreness, never. So again, did writers collectively decide soreness is sexy, or what’s happening?

--

I'm pretty sure they're both just Law of Horny.

Yes, probably some people do bruise more easily than you, but the way this is described in fic is as though those hands had finger paint on them. We're talking full on hand prints after a few minutes of slightly hard gripping. Nobody bruises like that unless they have a medical problem where they should be a lot more careful during sex. Haha.

TBH, the kinds of characters who end up with hip bruises are usually also the ones who have milky white/jade/etc. skin the narrative obsesses over. It's the same ones whose necks get marked up and obsessed over. It's one of those 'you're too pristine, so I'm going to come all over your face' kinks.

As for soreness... I think "sore" vs. "chafed" is just word choice. Authors may not mean muscle soreness. I've definitely managed to make the chafed feeling last for a while by using absurdly large dildos, and everybody in porn has a massive pornstar dick...

That said, while I've certainly had that sensation where something feels different the next day such that you notice it while walking around, not just in the bathroom, it's not your glutes. It's not usually deep inside either. It's more just the opening, where all the nerves are. The way people describe sitting gingerly is silly: Sure, you might be hyperaware while changing position because that area stretches a little, but it's described like the aftermath of flogging.

I think this is just the "Dick so big it rearranged your guts" style of smut writing where the body is ~forever changed~ by this particular sex even though people are made of a bunch of stretchy muscles that are going to go right back to what they were doing before. I mean, I guess you could forever fuck up the cartilage in your knee while doing something stupidly athletic, but that's not hot.

Do I believe somebody identifies with these porn tropes? Sure. Bodies vary. But there's definitely a canned porn version everybody uses, and I doubt it's because they're drawing from personal experience.

[mylesimeblr]

NSFW….

Thigh fucking?? Anyone can top and any Spider ship.

There you go :) I hope it'll be ok!

Pairing: Spider x Lo’ak

Warnings: very explicit smut, very explicit language, dominant Lo’ak, annoyed but sub Spider, obsessed Lo’ak, size difference, human/na’vi, some realism, pseudo secret relationship, slight cheating mentioned, thigh fucking, rimming, masturbation, hair pulling, power imbalance, mild body worship

“Lo’ak,” Spider whines, “We have to go back before they notice we’re gone!”

But Lo’ak isn’t listening. He’s already pressing Spider into the ground behind an abandoned marui at the far end of the village near the forest where no one never comes. Spider licks his lip, his knees digging into the rough sand, the grains marking their way into his flesh painfully. Large hands grip his waist, a mouth closes on his collarbone. A tongue laps hungrily at his skin, warm and raspy. 

“Lo…” Spider tries again, overwhelmed by his friend’s intensity.

The Na’vi ignores him.

When he’s like this, there’s no point arguing with him. Spider might as well make conversation with the sand… 

Long fingers start working hastily on his loincloths, losing patience as they fight with the tie. He just hopes Lo’ak won’t rip yet another. It’s becoming difficult to replace them without raising suspicion, the argument that he’s grown out of them growing cold on Norm. Plus, he’s pretty sure Neytiri is having thoughts of her own. She keeps sending those calculating stares at him, making him feel even more uncomfortable and unsafe in her presence than he usually does. 

Today won’t be the exception it seems as Lo’ak loses patience after a full minute of fight and forcefully opens the cloth, tearing it in half. Spider rolls his eyes. Yet another one…

The Na’vi stops to observe the human’s bare body. Spider hears him gasp as he takes into the whole of him, waiting on his knees and elbows, ass perfectly heart-shaped, his hole hidden in the patch of darkness offered by his slightly parted cheeks. Even though he can’t see him, he knows Lo’ak is probably ready to go, just seeing him like this. His obsession for Spider’s ass is bordering on unhealthy. 

The Na’vi’s large hands run on Spider’s muscled back before falling on his well defined ass cheek, one globe of flesh in each hand. They’re so big and warm on his skin. It makes Spider bite his lower lip and moan. 

The touch is gentle at first - oddly so (Lo’ak is not gentle - Spider knows this a bit too much, there’s not an ounce of patience in that big blue boy).

Suddenly, a controlled slap lands on his butt cheek, startling him. Lo’ak has learned to master his superior strength. But it still stings and Spider lets go of a moan of pain. The hand pats the growing redness on his cheek, soothing it. Lo’ak shuffles behind him and replaces his hand with the warm dampness of his mouth, kissing it before giving way to sharp teeth, sinking themselves into the soft and fragile flesh. He doesn’t bite hard enough to break skin but it still stings and Spider whines, wiggling his butt in the air to make Lo’ak’s teeth release their hold.

“Be good!” Lo’ak warns, slapping him again with a blunt palm, more to assert his authority than cause any actual pain.

Two large hands suddenly part his cheeks. A finger brushes against his virgin hole. Spider recoils immediately, unprepared to be touched.

“Damn,” Lo’ak mutters, “Why do you have to be so small… How am I even supposed to fuck you… I can’t even see any opening in there…” The finger touches him again but never enters, “Maybe I could train you…” The finger curls and the tip gently pressed into the rim.

“No!” Spider says, “You’re too big.”

“Just a finger!” Lo’ak tries to bargain.

“I said no! Your finger is the size of my dick.”

“What about your fingers then?”

“What?!” Spider asks, turning toward the Na’vi to look at him with a frown.

Lo’ak puts him back in place, “You could open yourself for me.”

“I’m not fingering my ass in front of you. Forget it.”

Lo’ak huffs, “You’re no fun.”

They’ve had this discussion dozens of times already. It’s not that Spider doesn’t want to have sex with Lo’ak. He does. Lo’ak is gorgeous. But contrary to him, Spider doesn’t live in fantasy land. He’s sufficiently informed to know the consequences of mating with a guy twice his size and taking a dick as big as his forearm in a hole as large as his pinkie. He tried to finger himself before. Never again. It was just too weird. Lo’ak doesn’t seem to get it. He seems to think Spider’s hole will magically stretch and seal itself back on demand. The guy clearly is deluded… 

“I’d let you fuck me, you know,” Lo’ak says, “If your dick wasn’t so small…”

“My dick is not small!”

“You said it yourself, it’s the size of my finger!”

“That’s because you’re a giant, skxawng! It’s all about perspectives! And that giant cock of yours stays away from my tiny butthole. I don’t want to end up gaping and shitting myself like an old man or being ripped open to my balls, thank you very much!”

Lo’ak rolls his eyes, “You’re so poetic bro!”

“You’re a bad influence!”

A large and raspy tongue suddenly touches his hole, making him yelp and quiver in surprise.

“Lo’!” Spider whines.

The Na’vi ignores him and keeps on licking him, the hard tip pushing into his hole and the sensation is so weird, Spider grimaces a little.

“Come on,” Lo’ak insists blowing against his hole, “I’ll be super gentle!”

“Aaaaaand…. That’s still a no! My ass is not open for business! Besides, why are you so obsessed with getting your dick in me? Don’t you want to preserve yourself for your future mate? I mean, what will Tsireya say when you bond with her and she sees all those times you’ve begged me to fuck my tawtute ass?!”

“Don’t talk about her now!” Lo’ak admonishes before licking Spider’s hole again, “I’m so hard for you, bro! What am I supposed to do with myself if I can’t put my dick anywhere inside you?!”

“Well, find something else! But leave my asshole alone!”

“You don’t even like my tongue?” Lo’ak asks, smiling playfully as he tickles Spider’s hole with his tongue again.

Spider bites his bottom lip, “Mmh…” he moans, as Lo’ak swirls his tongue a bit into him without forcing to pass the rim, “Your tongue does feel nice…” he admits.

Lo’ak’s smile widens, “See? I can be good and gentle with my tiny tawtute!”

Spider flushes at the pet name and size mention. He doesn’t like being babied and at the same time, there’s something about Lo’ak’s voice and the way he’s grabbing him that makes his dick twitch.

“You taste so good…” Lo’ak praises, “You’d be so warm inside… So soft… Eywa, I want to fuck you so bad…You have no idea…”

Lo’ak’s mouth suddenly retreats from his ass. The Na’vi presses his lower back into the ground, making him arch, and spreads his legs. Spider frowns, not really understanding what Lo’ak is doing, until something impossibly large and spiky slips its ways between his parted tights. The human gasps. Lo’ak adjusts his legs until the opening fits the bumps of his cock.

“Yeah… Stay just like that…” Lo’ak whispers in a hot, raspy voice, “Don’t move hì'i 'u…”

Lo’ak presses his hands on Spider’s waist and begins to fuck his thighs, his huge cock going back and forth on his soft skin. Spider moans. The bumps, ridges and spines scratching against his flesh and brushing right under his sensitive balls.

“Lo’...” he moans, letting himself sink into the sand.

Lo’ak spreads Spider’s butt cheeks again and Spider knows he’s staring at his hole.

“You feel my spines, yawntu?” Lo’ak asks, breathless, “They’re for you. They’re just for you.”

Spider gasps. Male Na’vi spines harden when they’re ready to mate… with their mate. It’s usually the sign they have reached full maturity and are ready to bond. The thought makes Spider dizzy.

Lo’ak’s hand trails up on Spider’s back and grabs a fistful of golden dreads. He pulls on it - still surprisingly mindful of his strength - as he keeps on fucking the human’s thighs and perineum.

Lo’ak uses his free hand to pull Spider on his knees, the human’s back pressed against his chest, his other hand still buried in Spider’s hair possessively. With their size difference, Lo’ak easily towers above the human and sees without effort his own cock appearing and disappearing from the human’s tights, the human’s cock bumping against his stomach, leaking.

“You’re hard too, yawntu… So hard… Touch yourself for me… I want to watch you come…”

Spider moans and does as told, wrapping his hand around his cock that he begins to stroke in fast, desperate gestures.

“Love your cock…” Lo’ak groans, “So pretty… Just like the rest of you…”

Lo’ak grabs the human’s waist with both of his immense hands as he keeps rocking behind him, the largeness of his cocks and the bumps and spines causing a bloody redness on Spider’s thighs where they’re repeatedly going through. He will need balm to soothe the growing irritation. 

Spider’s hand moves with jerky movements as Lo’ak’s blue one curls around Spider’s hip and stomach, pressing their bodies impossibly close.

“Come on baby…” Lo’ak encourages, “Let me see that pretty white stream…”

He lets both his huge hands reach toward Spider’s narrow pelvis, passing on the flexing abs on his stomach and buries his fingers into the damp heat of Spider’s pubic hair, gently circling the base of his cock, the tips of his long fingers brushing against his balls.

Spider lets his head rest completely on the Na’vi’s stomach, lips parted, eyes closed. There’s some fog on his mask from how hard he’s breathing.

He comes, spilling on his hands and stomach.

Lo’ak groans. His kuru bumps into Spider’s hip, the tendrils desperate to connect and attach themselves to something. He stares down again at his own purple cock slipping between Spider’s thighs, some of Spider’s seed dripping on him, coating his cock in the human’s warm cum he so desperately wants to taste.

It’s enough to send him over the edge and he follows, going rigid, his hands pressing hard into the human’s waist, his tail slapping his own back. He wants to bond, kiss and bite. But Spider is too small and his mouth closes on empty, his tendrils clenching around nothing.

He lets himself ride his orgasm for a few seconds, Spider’s small hands rubbing circles on Lo’ak’s much bigger thighs. They rest like this, in comfortable silence, enjoying this moment of peace before they have to return.

Lo’ak kisses the top of Spider’s head.

“Still, I’m sure I could train you to take my cock,” the Na’vi notes after a while.

“No.”

“You’re no fun…”

[hellfire--cult]

fic authors self rec game

When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let's spread the self-love 💞

thank you for tagging me @thecreelhouse 💜

okay, i'll give a little lore for each fic

Do I wanna Know? - Stripper!Eddie x Shy!Fem!Reader

I wrote this fic thinking it was going to be a two piece. I had it all figured out in my head, and then when I wrote it the words kept flowing. I also didn't think it would really catch people's attention, I just needed to write that idea in my head. I put a lot of self indulgent things in it, thoughts and mannerisms, so it was also a bit healing to write. It also brought me a lot of joy that people felt identified and that it helped them understand themselves or they felt seen through my fic and it felt like a warm hug.

2. Hooked on you - Hook!Eddie x Fem!Reader

This came to me in a vision after watching Peter Pan from 2001. But I am also a big fan of hidden messages through fantasy, or through fiction, like little riddles of hidden meanings behind the whole world one creates. For example, in my story, Neverland is a place of self acceptance, of saving, to those who are ready to leave way too early because of grief or a broken heart. I do have backstories for each character and if you read the story you know reader's, but safe to say, all of them, including the kids, suffered gravely. I also loved the mixture of fantasy and wanting to live in ignorance to one's depression and anxiety cause I think we can all kind of relate to that, even to this day. I started writing to escape reality, and reader here slipped into neverland in order to escape it.

3. The White Rabbit series, including Bunny, Bunny, Bunny and Run, Rabbit, Run. - Mafia!Eddie x Fem!Reader - Steddie x Fem!Reader

I wanted to expand my boundaries a bit. I always wanted to write a fic that didn't consist of love, only pure lust and desire, as well as dark romance features. This was literally all self indulgent, with things I've wanted to experiment writing, filled with explicit scenes and using words I never used before. It is just literal sex, but I am pretty proud of my detailing of scenes, of my smut scenes. I was always afraid of making smut scenes bland, the need for realism too great in my body lmao.

4. Please, Trust me. - Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

Oof. I really don't know how to word this right so bare with me. I wanted to show that some people that feel like suicide is the only way to be free, some embrace this possibility with open arms and with relief in their faces. Reader was ready to go. Through and through. She wasn't sad about it. She was excited for it. And it wasn't because she was 'crazy' or 'unstable'. She was perfectly conscious of her decision. I wanted people to see though, that there's always a purpose. That you just need to wait. And maybe that purpose comes with a person, and sometimes it doesn't. I wanted people to know that there's also hope. But my main purpose was to show that suicide doesn't always mean bad.

5. Baring Teeth - Non-Traditional Omegaverse, Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

My baby. Even if it's still on going, and my updates have stopped, I am still writing it. I am proud of this fic in particular because of the plot twists that I have in mind for the future of the fic. I am also proud to like, write something that people, that are not into Omegaverse, can read cause I slowly give hints of what it is, and descriptions as we go further into the story. It's not like I hit people with it without them knowing what it is. People that have never read any of the sort can easily read this and slowly get accustomed to what Omegaverse is.

This was hard. I honestly took a lot of time to think of what I was proud of LMAO

no pressure tags and sorry if you were already tagged: @andvys @munson-mjstan @loveshotzz @pastel-pillows @ghost-proofbaby @lokis-army-77 @munson-blurbs @rip-quizilla

[teecupangel]

I wonder if you’ve ever thought about like, a glitch or a virus in the Animus accidentally causing all the playable ancestors to become self-aware and sentient. I kind of like the idea of them realizing they’re all essentially kinda stuck in the Animus servers and then banding together to essentially blow up Abstergo. hell, maybe Desmond is the reason why they’re all sentient, something about the Apple and the Eye started doing weird things to the samples they took from him so now the ancestors have to find his consciousness!

also I am ngl I think it would be very funny for them to occasionally be able to break into each other’s simulations for various purposes. Edward popping into the American Revolutionary War to say hi to his kid and grandkid. Jacob and Evie and Henry in Constantinople. Altaïr rolling around in the Caribbean, god help this poor non-swimmer.

(and maybe once they’ve gotten him out of wherever he’s been stashed Desmond can teach these guys how to like actually get into Abstergo’s servers and start ruining their lives?)

Ooooohhh, this would be fun and, considering which company Abstergo partnered with to develop the Animus games, this could have just as easily happened because bugs had always been part of the course when it concerned the games they have published.

It might have been a flaw in the Animus game console itself, simply because they had developed a ‘console’ that either didn’t require that the user be related to the genetic memory at all (which had been necessary to stabilize and synchronize with the memories) or they had included a ‘data set’ that includes the DNA origin to stabilize and synchronize with the memories (which meant that they were dealing with a setup they had not fully checked yet (considering Black Flag’s modern day setting was set in 2013 and was released before Rogue’s modern day setting in 2014, that would mean that their Animus iteration had to have been developed and send to Abstergo Entertainment with Sample 17’s data in a year or less).

Also, also, we have seen how ‘viruses’ can interact with the Abstergo games. Liberation’s secret ending which shows the ‘scenes’ that Abstergo tried to remove so that it seemed like Aveline joined the Templar Order in the end could only be accessed by finding a specific NPC in the game in various memory blocks.

So, in this scenario, the whole ‘non-canon character’ popping into other games could have happened during development BUT the Animus game they ship was meant to copy the memory blocks that research analysts got in development so those small inconsistencies could have happened during their breaks or flat-out during a time when no one was using the Animus at all.

The easter eggs (or some fans like to call them “too unrealistic and plain fanservice”) would be included in all the copies of their specific games those games only had minor tweaks to ensure they won’t crash (and have DRMs, I guess) and lesser time for Q&A because, let’s face it, they needed to cut costs somewhere before they were shipped off to ensure they had a yearly release.

It became just a normal part of the charm of these games and Abstergo is just going “Yes, it’s meant to show that we are all connected no matter how many centuries we are from one another!” but internally there are memos going “WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING???”.

Also, also…

We should set up some kind of timeline, I guess?

Because, as far as we can be sure, the only confirmed games that Abstergo Entertainment released are the following:

Liberations (based on Liberation with Aveline) - Prior to 2013

Pirates of Nightmares (based on Black Flag with Edward) - Around 2013 (also has a movie version called Devils of the Caribbean)

Note: We do not have any confirmation that they released any games based on Shay Cormac and, honestly, with how much Shay’s defection hinged on the power of the artifact (which they had probably had to cut out since they were going for ‘realism’), any games based on Rogue would probably need a lot of cuts and edits. They might have just, you know, given up on that in the end.

Buuuuutttt we have confirmation of these games as having been published prior to Arno Dorian’s memories being checked:

Not counting the three on the bottom which we don’t really have any information about, this means that we have confirmation that the following have been released (and, in Edward’s and Aveline’s case, this could have been a re-release ala HD remastered style which Liberation did get in the PS4 era):

Altaïr

Shao Jun

Ezio (also, it’s just sooo Abstergo to go for ‘Fear and Loathing in Florence’, a reference to AC2, but use Ezio’s Brotherhood robes… soooo like Abstergo to use the Brotherhood!Ezio model)

Ratonhnhaké:ton

Aveline

Edward

BUT then you also get

Jacques De Molay

Rodrigo Borgia

Haytham Kenway

This means that if you want the Animus servers' data to be sentient then you can make at least these three Templars sentient as well if you wish to add more conflict to the entire thing.

Now, if we keep the supposed release date with the idea that they released it as Aveline → Edward → Altaïr → Shao Jun → Ezio → Ratonhnhaké:ton → HD releases (or maybe Helix is meant to be a collection like the real-world example of Ezio Trilogy or Rebels Collection)

Then what can happen is that Aveline is the first one to ‘wake up’ and she finds herself in the Caribbean, waking up on Edward’s ship. She tries to ask where she is and her appearance caused Edward to snap out of the ‘Animus control’ and gain sentient.

Then they decide to try and find out where they are via the Jackdaw, sailing her beyond the supposed walls of this place they find themselves in.

It’s during their travels and checking the strange ports (imagine lots of glitching + the entire vibe of Animus Island back in Revelations with each map turned into an island so this means that landlocked maps like Florence and Monteriggioni are now islands) that they see an Assassin taking down a target at the port before running away. They give chase and that’s how they meet Altaïr in Acre docks. Their appearance snapped Altaïr into gaining sentient but not just that…

He remembers up to his death, unlike Aveline who remembers up to her wedding night and Edward who remembers up to a night with Tessa.

No.

Altaïr knows more about where they are than he should.

And that’s when he sees it.

A figure walking the streets of Acre, walking further and further away from them, clad in white that did not belong in his time.

Altaïr gives chase and the two followed him because Altaïr knows more than them, that was for sure.

Altaïr still loses him but he feels like he knows that figure… knows it’s a man and he’s important.

He points at Edward as he says, “Important to both of us.”

But he also knows the man isn’t here in the island composed of Altaïr’s memories anymore.

And Aveline and Edward get a crash course of who they truly are (digital construct of the memories of long-dead Assassins) and where they are. The where is more confusing because Altaïr uses words like “the Animus must always be online to connect to the servers”, “this is the server that has all the data of all researched and analyzed memories”, etc but Edward just summarized it as “prison created by Templars, right?”

“In a way.”

So they board the Jackdaw to try and find an exit and to find this supposed man that was important to Altaïr and Edward.

Along the way, they docked in a port that ends with them waking up Shao Jun as she’s running away from those hunting her. She remembered that this was the memory where her mentor told her to find Ezio Auditore and Altaïr thinks he knows the name.

“But I know of a different name for him as well… Prophet. He was… He was the prophet of that man.”

Shao Jun joins them and she recognized Florence so they docked there and they find Ezio who was looking for feathers.

Ezio stares at Altaïr for a moment then he stares behind Altaïr, his eyes going wild. Altaïr immediately knew what he was looking at he quickly turned around.

This time, the figure was running the rooftops of Florence and the two gave chase, making the rest run after them.

During the chase, Ezio shouts, “Desmond!” and the figure stopped and turned around.

Before they could see his face, a flock of birds flew between them, and the man was gone.

They reached where they last saw the man and Ezio recognized it.

This… was where he and Federico wished that their lives would not change… the day before Ezio’s entire life turned upside down.

With Ezio becoming part of their crew, Ezio had the same information as Altaïr. He knows who he is, where they are, and what they truly are.

But his memories end after seeing Altaïr’s remains underneath Masyaf.

And… he also has his Apple.

Altaïr sees the Apple and realized…

He opened his pouch and, yes…

He has an Apple as well.

So Ezio joined them too and they continue to sail Jackdaw. (If you’d like Adéwalé to be sentient as well even if we have no confirmation that Abstergo profited from his memories as well, this would be a good time to do it)

This time, they get into a naval combat with an unknown ship and Edward is enjoying himself. The ship was beautiful and whoever was in command knew what they were doing.

So Edward decided to ram it and they’d all pile onto the other ship. The crew wouldn’t be able to win against 5 Assassins after all.

But the moment they rammed the ship, both of their ships began to glitch just as they hear a man with a British accent shout, “How is it you came to captain a ship, given the way you sail?”

When the glitching stopped, the Jackdaw looked like it had absorbed the other ship, creating a new ship that seemed to be a merged version of the two.

And there was an Assassin on board that they didn’t know. An Assassin holding an Apple and… he was looking to their right.

Where a lone island filled with buildings taller than any towers they had ever seen could be seen just before the horizon.

The Assassin pointed at the island and turned to face Edward as he said, “He’s waiting for us there… grandfather.”

(If you want Haytham to gain sentient, he’s in the captain’s quarters and he’d open the door a few seconds later with a splitting headache, telling Ratonhnhaké:ton his sailing is shit then stop when he sees Edward. Cue awkward family reunion)

Other Unorganized Notes:

I’m sorry I couldn’t include Jacob, Evie, and Henry, nonny. :(

This was focused on the idea that the Abstergo servers mainly have data of the published ‘games’ while the memories still being researched are in another more secured private server.

Although, considering that Arno and the Frye twins were more ‘modified’ by the Assassins, maybe they could come in as a virus before Edward and the others meet Ratonhnhaké:ton. I think it would be a change of pace if Arno and the Fryes (with Jayadeep) know more than the ‘old guards’. Hell, they could say “We hitched a ride with the virus Erudito sent to find Sample 17 because the public noticed he always makes an appearance as an NPC in all the games so the Assassins think that he’s somewhere here.” “He’s not 17. His name is Desmond.” “Right, didn’t mean to offend anybody.”