#measurement for intelligence for SOME FUCKING REASON

[enough-spider-noir-stuff]

I think Hobie is scarily smart but also not at all books-smart. He can understand really complicated stuff (see: him literally building a dimension watch from scratch) but also his education sucked majorly and he has no idea how everything works/is called "properly".

He knows pretty well what he can do, but he also consistently underestimates just how much that is, compared to most people.

[indecisive-capricorn]

Headcanons to Dating Yandere Tom Riddle:

WARNINGS: MDNI! Yandere, stalking, implied dubcon, mentions of sex, violence, mentions of blood, mentions of breeding, mentions of wife, mentions of marriage, etc.

SUMMARY: A chance to experience what dating Tom Riddle is like, even when it's against your will to do just that.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: So, this headcanons leans more into dating Yandere Tom Riddle but technically, even without the yandere and dark part, he will do questionably dark things for his partner. I'm planning to make other headcanons that goes into details about that specific situation. For example, a "Headcanons to Dark Tom Riddle x Pregnant Wife Reader"

MASTERLIST & REQUESTS: Before you go, have a glass of wine or better yet, recommend a good bottle. any kind of message is always a delight.

It doesn't matter where you come from, alright? Although it's important for Tom to have an excellent muggle free reputation, Tom has his ways to make sure any history you have with muggles are erased. No one knows your precise history because of it either, but according to their Dark Lord, you were a witch from a fine family in France. While that might have been true, what they didn't know was how you were actually a rebel and fought against him for a time until he kidnapped you.

You left him with no choice! He was infatuated with you due to your strength and infamous beauty. Tom kept on sending you gifts, invitations to balls even and attempted to bait you to become Dumbledore's spy in order to get closer to you. However, you rejected all his gifts and invitations, burning them into the fireplace as soon as they arrived.

You were intelligent enough to know about his plan, but as evil and cruel as Tom was, he was also a genius.

When Tom kidnapped you, you had screamed all the curses in the world at him, refusing for him to even touch you. However, it silenced down when you saw several death eaters pointing their wands to the necks of your little sister and other family members.

You were a rebel and if Tom tried to take you with the threat of hurting your family, he knew you would continue to reject him. After all, actions speak louder than words, and as the death eaters began to torture your family, you finally got on your knees and pleaded for him to stop. Tom was more than pleased with your actions, but to ensure that you will stay true to your promise, he demanded a kiss from you, which you reluctantly gave in the form of a peck on the lips.

Though Tom had spared your family, he will make sure you never see them again. One way or another, no matter how many times you plead and beg to see them, he will rip you away from your family for the sole reason so that your focus would not waver from him. Yeah, he's that possessive of you.

Speaking of being possessive, Tom from the beginning of the relationship will always make sure you are covered in the finest silk and most rarest yet stunning jewellery. You might try to refuse them at first, but you don't quite get it. All of the fine dresses, luxurious clothes and expensive jewellery that he had picked out for you was also his way to tell others that you're his, that you're his possession. Try to refuse it and he will punish you.

There are various of punishments Tom can give you. It depends on what you have done that made him measure how severe the punishment should go, but it also depended on his mood. If Tom was only lightly jealous, he'll most likely just leave marks on you like hickeys and bruises. However, if Tom was severely jealous.. then prepare yourself. Tom had once fucked you in front of two of your old friends whom he had taken as prisoner as a way to humiliate you after you had tried to communicate with them in their cells. Just don't defy him, okay? It won't end up good for you.

Other than that though, Tom will take care of you. He feeds you well, pampers you and even shower you with affection from time to time, which you always try to refuse. Tom tries to spend some time with you whenever he has the time, even with the ongoing war. Tom doesn't usually allow you to be out of the manor, but with his company, he allows you to wander around the garden and as much as you hate his company, a bit of fresh air will certainly do you good after being stuck inside for a long time.

However, with all that, he expects you to do your duties as well. You both might not be married yet, but Tom already views you as his wife, the only thing lacking is a wedding ring between your fingers and a ceremony. It will happen sooner than later. But due to it, you became the lady of the manor is your job to make sure that everything was going well in your 'home', telling the servants on what they must do to keep the cleanliness of the house.

And oh, on that note, you're not able to ask for them to help you escape. You learnt that the hard way because the day after you had tried to ask them, all of their tongues had disappeared, unable to speak properly anymore.

Tom desires to flaunt you to the public after making your relationship with him 'official'. However, he will only start bringing you to balls after he was sure that you will behave and Tom might just make a potion to help with that. He considers it as one of the duties you have to perform as his partner. But oh my, you do look ravishing in that tight dress he picked out for you.

At times during the night, you found Tom rubbing your stomach, eyes full of desire, as he thought fondly of children. He had been unsure of starting a family before. Of course Tom needed an heir, but he didn't think he would ever find himself wanting more children until he met you. It didn't matter if you didn't want children. Sooner or later, before or after marriage, you will be swollen with his child. And what better way to ensure an heir than start now?

[celaenaeiln]

On note of the Blockbuster thing and Dick’s over working himself, I can recall a time when after the first time Blockbuster got taken out, Dick was so lost emotionally and mentally, he went for months on end getting the absolute hardest cases and capers imaginable, getting more illnesses and injuries so much and frequently. It got so bad Bruce and Alfred had to drag him to the Batcave and Bruce had to get some tough love across.

He let Dick know that he was upset at him for failing to take care of himself and self forgive for what happened to Blockbuster. He forgives Dick for the latter case but will not tolerate Dick losing the value of his own life in self pity and guilt

Thoughts on this?

YES!!!

Dick overworks himself so hard that he kinda passes out and dreams so vivid that they're almost hallucinogenic but when he wakes up-

Nightwing (2016) Issue #117

Bruce is PISSED. Ofcourse it's gotta be because Dick let Blockbuster die right? He just stepped aside and let Catalina take the shot despite the no kill. He broke the OATH the two of them had forged. That's why Bruce is mad right?!

Nightwing (2016) Issue #117

WRONG WRONG WRONG!!

Nightwing (2016) Issue #117

"You have no right to expect me to excuse you - for losing sight of the value of yours."

CMON BRUCE!!

He basically said "I don't care if you killed someone. If you want me to forgive you fine. But don't you dare fucking think for one second that I'll forgive you for almost dying."

Bruce is crazy about Dick. I've already talked before how he has control issues regarding Dick life but I want to reiterate that Bruce wants control of Dick's everything. His life, his relationships, his death.

You can see the visible rage in Bruce's body. You can see how hard he grips Dick's chin. He's furious that Dick would put his life below anyone's.

This isn't the only time Bruce gets furious at Dick almost dying either. Remember Forever Evil?

Nightwing (2011) Issue #30

His sole reason for beating Dick is LITERALLY beat his frustrations and fear that Dick almost died!! He's the one that died Bruce!! Why are YOU mad?!

The thing about Dick and Bruce's relationship or rather Bruce's relationship with Dick is that Dick could literally be standing in a room of blood and corpses and the first thing Bruce would do is rush over to him and check if he's okay. And then scold him because "what if they're blood accidentally got into you, Dick? Haven't I told you the dangers of bloodborne pathogens and other transmittable viruses? How dare you let them hurt you!"

Bruce has a no kill rule but sometimes when Dick's life is in danger he definitely looks the other way. No punishment if Dick does something to someone else but he travels at the speed of light when Dick lets something bad happen to him.

Not only that, he doesn't mind other people dying if it means saving Dick's life. Between the world surviving and Dick, he will always choose Dick. And how do I know that? Because he's done it before.

Forever Evil Issue #5

"No, this is a search and rescue mission first--"

"Richard Grayson?"

"Yes, Luthor. Once Nightwing's safe, we can take down the syndicate."

The world is in SHAMBLES.

Central City

Forever Evil Issue #3

Metropolis

Forever Evil Issue #3

The justice league is gone.

The villains who actually wanted the end of the world are so shocked by the state it's in now that they've decided to become heroes. But none of that matters. It doesn't matter to Bruce that half the population is gone, people are killing, stealing, and dying. As long as Dick is alive - it's okay.

In fact an entire world could be corrupted beyond saying but as long as Dick isn't then it's a world worth saving.

Forever Evil Issue #3

Do you realize what this means? It means that Bruce's scale of measurement for evaluating the quality of a whole fucking planet IS Dick Grayson.

Even an hyper-intelligent construction questions what happens if his favorite, Dick, dies.

Infinite Crisis Issue #3

What happened after Blockbuster, where Bruce completely ignored the death of him. Ah-I said ignored but the reality is created an excuse for - is completely in line with his relationship with Dick and more importantly highlights two things.

Breaking the no-kill rule is acceptable if it's Dick Grayson or relates to Dick Grayson.

Bruce is crazy about Dick and he will go crazy for him.

[quillyfied]

Happy Halloween and Happy Ghostfuckers, time to dig into the chest cavity of this episode and not come back out until the next! Another banger of an episode; someone in the Helluva Boss tag called it the Truth Seekers of season 2, and I am so inclined to agree, actually. Equal parts reaction and analysis, and 100% spoilers, like, did that even need to be said?

First: MILLIE MY BELOVED. After a season and a half (over five whole years) of some pretty lukewarm development and attention, having this episode start off with Millie being her happy cheerful self is already such a breath of fresh air, especially given the relentless nonstop personal drama Blitzo and Stolas have been part of for the last couple of episodes. It’s great that this episode is starting after a brief time skip, too; feels more natural for an audience that has had three months to process it all. Watching Millie step right into emotional support is amazing, too, for reasons that have been hinted at before; Happy Campers was so good for her and Moxxie’s characters and I’m prepared to fight about it. Having one of the few women in the cast be relegated to “emotional backbone” doesn’t feel as bad when she’s already expressed insecurity about her importance in life, shown that being an unbelievable badass doesn’t always give her the kind of attention she wants, and isn’t afraid to knock the people in her life down a peg when they aren’t supporting her back. Yes that was just from Happy Campers, and this episode reinforces that with further excellent context. But sshh. We’ll get to that later. Time to watch Loona and Moxxie breaking down because they’re sick of Blitzo’s shit but not to the point of leaving him yet (because they love him too shsshhhshshsh).

Interesting that after a few weeks of moping, NOW is when Blitzo is starting to ramp up his destructive behaviors; what tiny glimpses we were allowed to get in the mission shorts showed a Blitzo that was coping but seemed to be holding it together (you’ll pry the idea that Blitzo’s inability to work the crystal in Mission: Antarctica is directly related to his confidence, not his skill, out of my cold dead rotten hands). This sudden left turn into emptying IMP’s bank accounts and forcing Moxxie and Loona to act out his grief with him appears…new. Maybe lying around eating ice cream and cheese (bro) like a sad sack while watching human television isn’t a new behavior, but the Blitzo-level catastrophic destruction masquerading as retail therapy reads to me as a sudden snap, maybe due to the proximity of a certain lunar cycle. It’s certainly looking on par with running three rings to Wrath and maxing out someone else’s credit cards on shitty horse riding lessons (something that, based on the vague timeline I’ve been able to wrangle out of this godforsaken show, Millie wouldn’t have been present for, though to be fair it’s not like Blitzo ever really has a measured emotional response to anything).

(Viv, if you’re listening, consider this a brief cosmic request for Secretary Stolas to help poor Moxxie with this paperwork. Please. PLEASE. PLEEEEASE.)

I love too that Millie’s approach as default team Emotional Intelligence isn’t to meddle, either, because that also shows maturity on her part; letting the grown ass adults around her handle their shit while still being sweet to them is such a good and necessary component of the IMP team. Hang on having another Millie Feelings Moment while trying to have some sort of chronology here.

…it’s entirely purposeful that Bethany Ghostfucker has Charlie’s hair, right? Because they share a voice actress? Which means…Blitzo has now cosplayed some reference of Charlie…THE STREAMS THEY ARE CROSSING.

I also love how nOTHING could have prepared me for realizing that Blitzo’s outfit in this episode is a cosplay. Of a HUMAN. WHO FUCKS GHOSTS. I don’t know why I am so surprised at how literal the title is; this show continues to both sicken and delight me XD (raunchy humor isn’t my thing and Blitzo was definitely pushing it for me this episode, but also…it’s so nicely balanced with the real emotional breakdowns that I can’t even be mad about it)

Anyway, back to Millie and her Emotional Genius: very glad that she realizes what Blitzo is going through requires a little more babying than usual, and VERY glad that she and Blitzo already have an established system for when he needs to be babied and she doesn’t initially cave to it (I will be buying that magnet, thanks Spindlehorse). I also love how Millie encourages Loona to step up and help Moxxie (who also desperately needs some help, but Millie really can’t focus on him right now because she needs to focus on the root of the problem, which is Blitzo), essentially through begging but also just by being her usual kind self. And that quiet little moment of Millie using Loona’s name for maybe the first time ever is just…mwah. Chef’s kiss. No notes.

Sidetracking again to wonder why the subject of ghosts is just now coming up when Blitzo literally has an alert light labeled “Ghost.” Like. I feel like Blitzo believing in ghosts while Millie staunchly does not is such a good dynamic to play with, but also why is this the first that it’s being addressed. XD Okay, I get it, throwaway gag from the first episode that is becoming relevant now and maybe didn’t have that much thought put into it when it was first made, but I can dream. Or pick relentlessly at tiny details while completely missing the bigger picture. It’s fine. I’m fine.

What I’m not fine with is how Blitzo can completely trash the van in nearly the same way two episodes in a row (assuming that IMP going on the run is happening in Mastermind, which is far from a given, but phwoar would it be maximum emotional impact, to have an episode showing IMP finally moving into their shitty office and how much it means to them, only to have it ripped out from under them the next episode LOLOLOLOL). I’m mostly irritable that my prediction was untrue :P Although I am glad that the prediction that this hotel guy was Leviathan was disproven, because let’s be honest, that would make no sense. Some rando infestor demon, though? Totally on point. Also makes sense why he “falls” for Blitzo’s bullshit disguise; he knows they’re imps because he’s also a demon. Something new to play with. Though it’s interesting that even when Rolando goes rooting through Blitzo’s head, he still doesn’t seem to know either of their real names. Informational blind spot? Would make sense, with how the fight goes down, but later. Later.

Side note to wheeze with relief because when I first watched this episode, it was without subtitles, and I thought Igor was wheezing Blitzo’s name. Him saying “bitch” makes more sense actually. That’s fine. It was much creepier thinking he was saying Blitzo’s name actually XD

Listen. Listen. We know that Blitzo sort of self-medicates with sex and sexual humor. We know that he’s loaded his confidence eggs into the competent at sex basket, because his competence at emotions has a body count (literal). Much like how it was painful to watch Blitzo operating at maximum asshole behavior at the beginning of Apology Tour what with his relentless insistence at returning his relationship with Stolas to safter, sexier ground…watching Blitzo try to distract himself with a sexually charged silly new hobby is equally painful. Because for him, sex is surface level, because anything deeper is dangerous (lord above please ignore the innuendo IGNORE IT). If sex happens to come with emotional attachment, he ruthlessly severs it. But Blitzo being horny isn’t the problem, it’s his disregard for the people that get caught up in his horniness (and he certainly knows how to weaponize his raunchy humor and sexual charisma when it suits him). The Scooby Doo antics are hysterical, but watching Millie start to buckle under the strain of indulging Blitzo is as fascinating as it is inevitable. We already know Millie doesn’t have infinite patience even for Moxxie. So to watch her reach her limit with Blitzo when she might be the only person in IMP whom we have never seen snap at him…delicious. Absolutely the best. And GOOD ON HER for snapping at him for cutting her off, which is a thing he does all the time with everyone ever but rarely gets called on (because he’s waltzed off at that point usually).

And, as I dearly hoped, it’s Millie that starts to really get through to Blitzo, not by being gentle, exactly, but by being her refreshing blunt-not-bludgeoning self. She gives Blitzo the reaming he deserves, but doesn’t belittle him about it; she just points out that his behavior is harmful, draws a boundary, and leaves. Exactly what Blitzo needs…though his brain is certainly going to fuck with him about it first, because lol rejection-sensitive dysphoria being exacerbated by fucked up haunted trauma illusions is a BITCH.

When the gif for this episode dropped and it was Blitzo sliding down a ventilation shaft, I never saw a single other person remark on the dark liquid in the corner of the gif sliding down the shaft after him. I didn’t say anything about it either, just noted it and freaked out quietly every time the gif passed me by. NOW KNOWING THE CONTEXT OF THE DARK SLIDING LIQUID MAKES IT WORSE. I already suspected it was blood (Hellborn blood to be exact). I did not suspect that it would be THAT MUCH BLOOD. Though it’s interesting that Blitzo doesn’t recognize it as such, never calls it that, never seems to realize it. So. Maybe it isn’t blood (spoiler: it’s not blood, I am just dumb and didn’t realize what it is until a third viewing, good job me), but it sure as hell resembles Hellborn blood enough that I have the heebie jeebs. And the visuals are just SO CREEPY—Blitzo is practically drowning in it as he’s dumped into a waking nightmare, and like. Blitzo is an assassin by trade now, and we know IMP did a lot of in-Hell contracts before switching to corner the Sinner market, so there would ostensibly be a lot of Hellborn blood on his hands, but he doesn’t care about that. A job’s a job. The blood he feels guilty about…well…we know, okay, I won’t insult y’all’s intelligence by rehashing it, because it’s about to be made real damn obvious anyway.

THE HAUNTED MILLIES BEING ALL THE TIMES SHE COULD HAVE DIED IN PREVIOUS JOBS THOUGH. Bless the people smart enough to pick that up and throw that spaghetti at the wall because folks it STICKS, it’s so obvious and SO GOOD. And SUCH a neat little insight into Blitzo’s head, too: he cares SO MUCH about his employees, his family, and it does actually haunt him, how many close calls they’ve had. It does occur to him that his actions affect others. It’s just never bothered him, certainly not to this degree. I fully blame Apology Tour and Verosika for getting him started on considering how his actions have consequences for other people, how he “hurts other people’s fee-fees” but also routinely leads his team into dangerous situations where his mistakes could cost them all. And these phantom (lol f-word) versions of Millie not only driving this home through the visuals, but saying the quiet part out loud, asking Blitzo if he realizes this about himself? If he’s ever loved someone without hurting them? FUCK.

I said so many times I wanted Blitzo broken in half; I have FEASTED, friends, because Blitzo’s issues are bigger than Stolas and if he doesn’t address them, he won’t ever be happy with himself, let alone with anyone else, romantic or platonic. ALSO, feast upon the intersecting themes between Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel, because “you think you can change?” immediately put me in mind of “addict trash like you doesn’t change,” which…I believe whole-heartedly is something that Val said to Angel, maybe even said in that moment, but the framing of it and Angel’s character arc made it so clear to me that Val’s words had become Angel’s own. Except Angel started proving him wrong. He started struggling, however small and desperately and weakly, to change who he was, to become someone he actually liked instead of what everyone else wanted and liked. Blitzo is in the same boat. Because both of these shows are so much about how hard it can be to become a better version of yourself, especially in a world that’s set against you being that person, that will hurt you for daring to be better, to be different, to be YOURSELF. What Blitzo is going through right now is the emotional beat-down that every person who has ever wanted to self-improve despite (or maybe even because of) trauma or mental illness puts themself through. If you’ve ever been this mean to yourself and driven yourself to a sobbing panic attack, clap your hands (clap clap).

And then the low blow. The tearjerker. The cry-maker.

Teenage Blitzo running to his mother. Calling out for Mama. Telling her about the scary dream he was having. AND SHE COMFORTS HIM. She never turns on him, she’s never angry, she never even flinches as she’s burning alive in front of him. Ghosts aren’t real (sad) and we aren’t ever going to meet Tilla except through other people’s eyes, most likely Blitzo’s, but that double-edged knife of knowing that Blitzo both was so loved and loved so hard back, only to be the one who got her killed…we’ve known as an audience for a while now that this is the biggest burden on Blitzo’s soul, the one thing he may never forgive himself for and can’t conceive of anyone else forgiving, because it’s what’s Fundamentally Wrong with him: he makes everyone’s lives worse. How can he love when he is so completely destruction incarnate? How can he reach out to Moxxie, to Millie, to Loona, to Stolas, to Fizz, when the person dearest to him crumbled to ash in his hands and it’s his own fault?

How can Millie look at him and tell him he’s wrong, that he made her life better?

Fuck hang on cry break FUCK I forgot to remove my eye makeup before doing this lolololol

Okay. Pivoting to scrutinizing this flashback, because the first thing that is immediately apparent to me (besides how hot Millie and Blitzo are DAMN) is how much older and more tired Millie looks. Millie in particular. We’ve become accustomed to Millie looking a certain way, so the new look is certainly exciting, but it’s the expression that’s really the kicker here. She looks hardened and badass, but so, so tired. She’s tired of just being the muscle. She’s tired of scraping by for a buck, and fewer of them than she deserves. My theory that Wrath is saturated with imps of a similar skill set is correct; my theory that Helluva Boss isn’t going to address the class/race issues they’re drawing on in any meaningful way might yet be disproven. Because Millie doesn’t have horrific family trauma. What she has is what every imp has: systemic oppression and its accompanying insecurities. We got hints of this back in Happy Campers, when she was so thrilled to be the center of attention and important and liked, and NOT for how well she kills people. Now it has further context, and is why Millie being the Emotional Support of the team is so important to her as a character: she never thought she could be anything else. She never let herself believe she could be anything but someone’s underpaid goon that was going to die an early death and be as meaningless as everyone told her she was. Until Blitzo and IMP carved out a space for themselves and moved to THE TOP RING IN HELL. The one where Lucifer lives, the one where the Goetia seem to congregate, the one ring that, despite being a flaming hellhole (lol) that is full of weird dead humans and is constantly being beset by angels at least once a year, is considered the one place imps can’t make their mark. Gosh this episode is so important for making so much of that thinly-veiled subtext all throughout Helluva Boss into text, for underlining Striker’s compliment to Blitzo for making a name for himself by owning his own business, for saying EXPLICTLY AND OUT LOUD that imps aren’t even good enough for the shittiest, most moth-eaten office in Pride.

I’m still not holding my breath on Helluva Boss actually solving anything socially within itself, because that seems like a tall order. But it is no longer too much to ask for Stolas to grapple with some pretty heavy questions about his behavior and his preconceived notions, his internal biases and the ways he has hurt Blitzo in return. SECRETARY STOLAS PLEEEEEASE, I AM BEGGING.

Anyway. Time to drool over the fight choreography, first of this fight between Millie and Blitzo, because it’s GORGEOUS. They have what I was hoping so hard for them to have: fighting as a love language XD Blitzo and Millie understand each other on a pretty instinctual, almost primal level; their fight is a dance, not just because they’re both good at it. It’s an extension of their friendship, or what will become their friendship. Their bodies are their most basic communication tool, Millie often through touch and snuggles, and Blitzo through either fighting or fucking, depending on what’s needed. They both have killer instinct, which Moxxie’s anxiety often chokes out within himself and which Loona hasn’t really had the chance to hone.

I also love that moment before Blitzo tips the pool table, the whole “reputation is everything” “Oh yeah? So what’s your reputation?” Because. BECAUSE!! Millie is an exceptional assassin, but in this fight in particular, she is so different from how she is in the rest of the show. She’s a proper Wrathian imp assassin, angry and hard and relentless. Compare that to the beginning of Ozzie’s, when she scuttles into frame holding an axe in her teeth and screeches about how she’s still so jazzed up, clearly amped and so much more joyful than she is during this flashback. Again, said it at least twice, will say it once more: she looks so exhausted, like she’s burning herself out just to make it. And she isn’t a unique case in that regard by any means. It’s working for Blitzo that makes her unique, that gives her joy in her work instead of making her rely on how other people see her. Sinners already don’t care about her or her feelings; her next meal isn’t contingent on appearing as hardened and badass as possible, it’s on a Sinner having a grudge, which is an exclusive meal ticket that only Blitzo could have weaseled them into.

I also want to point out that this fight between Blitzo and Millie? Pretty well mirrored by the fight between Millie and Rolando!Blitzo. The way Millie blocks him with her forearm, the way she slams him into the wall—those are things Blitzo did to her, back during their first fight. Granted, Millie getting the coolest anime punch-stop of all time is something that’s all hers, because Millie is so special and had no idea until she found a new life. She is the happiest imp there ever was and she kicks no less ass for it.

(WHERE IS MY TIMELINE, IMP WAS AROUND FOR A YEAR BEFORE THEY GOT THE BOOK AND THE OFFICE. Unsure of how long after meeting Loona and Moxxie this meeting with Millie takes place, and this does scramble around the timeline of how long Blitzo had the book before Stolas calls to make the arrangement, and where does Moxxie and Millie’s marriage fit into this? They’ve only been married a year, so probably started dating pretty soon after meeting…still have no idea on when Stolas and Blitzo’s first time happened and how long after that was Loo Loo Land. I will tie myself into knots over this, must stop now.)

Anyway. Putting the fights to bed for the moment, gotta get in on those good good BFF snuggles, which will go immediately into Blitzo’s Trauma: The Movie. After Rolando does the honor of driving home the point that yeah, imps have it real fuckin’ bad in Hell canonically and textually and said out loud and everything, thanks for asking.

…oh. Right. Rolando dissolves into black goo. Blitzo wasn’t crawling through a tunnel of blood. It was a tunnel of Rolando. That’s somehow worse. Ah well. My point about Blitzo’s regrets and visually looking like he’s wading through Hellborn blood stands.

Small detail that’s standing out to me in this episode: how much Blitzo is holding his chest during the Rolando fight. Wondering if he’s cupping the pendant he almost lost, or if he’s injured in the chest pretty badly. Which is SO IRONIC if true, because. Y’know. Feelings. His are hurting.

Gosh this fight with Rolando is so scary, though. We’ve never seen infestor demons before (unless you count the Glam sisters, but they weren’t in their element, so to speak), and the power differential between Rolando and Blitzo and Millie is pretty stark. Different from the fight between Striker and Millie and Moxxie, Striker overwhelms with skill. Rolando is overwhelming with power. Don’t you just hate it when higher-class demons have special powers that reinforce the hierarchy? Bullshit. Anyway. THE FIGHT TAKING PLACE NEAR THE POOL IS SO GOOD. Because why wouldn’t an Envy demon have the water advantage? They’re literally fish people. And it’s TENSE OKAY.

BUT NOT AS TENSE AS BLITZO’S TRAUMA: THE MOVIE IS ABOUT TO BE.

I find it particularly significant that Rolando licks up the scarred side of Blitzo’s neck and then says a few minutes later that Blitzo’s level of insecurity is “intoxicating.” Yeah I imagine he’s super tasty to demons who feed on that kind of thing. See previous horrific trauma hallucination. Which I now have reason to believe wasn’t based entirely in reality; we already know all the Millies didn’t die that way, and now a snapshot of Blitzo finding the pendant in the wreckage. He didn’t watch his mom burn to death, not the way he was forced to watch in this episode. Goddamn. Rolando is an asshole, huh?

The Cash backslap really took me aback, actually, not just because Blitzo flinches away from it. The stills show that Cash does it while holding Blitzo’s still-burned wrist in his other hand, so this is really soon after the fire; one has to wonder if Cash did it because Blitzo caused his mother’s death, or if it’s just for the circus. Hard to get a read on Cash, no idea what his attitude towards Tilla is besides a gleeful willingness to use her to manipulate his son. I suppose I’m also shocked because I never really doubted that Cash probably hit Blitzo at least a little, but…a backhand, to me, reads of casual violence, something that’s done without much thinking about it. The way Stella reared back to backhand Stolas and we know by her shocked expression that he’s never caught her wrist to avoid the impact before. Terrible comparison, by the way, and by terrible I mean great but causing me emotional distress. I hadn’t suspected that Cash was likely just as physically abusive as he was emotionally abusive towards Blitzo. Nice to have the confirmation. I hate it here.

Okay, because I haven’t seen the screenshots anywhere yet: first scene of Millie and Moxxie is from Murder Family when Moxxie unties them. Second…I don’t know, actually, and I’m embarrassed to admit that. Maybe Truth Seekers? I could make the argument for Exes and Oohs if Moxxie was in a wedding dress, but I’m not sure. Any of the many times Blitzo has intruded on their time together, I suppose. And, fun fact: the shots that are playing in Blitzo’s eyes when Rolando forces Blitzo’s eyes open are the ones of Fizz and Verosika in Ozzie’s again. In case that was information you wanted. It’s also upsetting that Loona in LA is part of the reel of Blitzo Thinking Everyone Hates Him, because the fight in Spring Broken at least makes sense to flashback to. Though I do keep forgetting, constantly and with an insistence that infuriates me, that Loona and Blitzo were also having a fight during Seeing Stars and when she kicks him off of her at the end, it’s while Blitzo is apologizing for threatening to replace her.

I find it very interesting that there’s a split-second of Barb that cuts in when the Stolas part of the reel plays; it’s so fast, but right after Blitzo pulls away from Stolas’ hand in Ozzie’s, there’s a second shot of Barb as she’s yelling at him in Happy Campers. Significance? Probably that their separation hurts him just as much as his current one with Stolas, he’s just had more time to try and get used to it. Or represses it more.

Oh hey. Blitzo in his head is back in uniform, crystal and all. Nice. I didn’t even realize it. (…Crystal and all. Like it’s become part of his self-image already. HMMM.)

So interesting that Rolando chooses the most obvious pressure points to try and get to Millie…without realizing that coming out of Blitzo’s mouth, it completely robs them of power BECAUSE of their heart to heart. Millie already knows in her core that Blitzo rejects that image of her, because it’s an image of himself that he also rejects and he refuses to let her wallow in it. Their friendship is built on, well, building each other up in that way. Why in fuck would Millie listen to this asshole wax on and on about how she’s a lowborn inbred hick (what the fuck dude) when he’s currently possessing the guy who helped her break that image of herself? Like. Come on, asshole, use your brain, not your bigotry. But I guess that’s also the point of this episode, showing with explicit clarity that IMP is special because of all the anti-imp sentiment they’ve had to wade through and dismantle within themselves, so why would a supposedly “superior” demon think he had to hit any harder or more precise than that? Also. Though. The careless way Rolando is just throwing around Blitzo’s body is pretty sickening.

Special moment of silence for how Millie knows that Blitzo can take a beating that few others can and uses that to expel Rolando. I’m not crying. It’s fine.

“You’re dead, Bethany!” This is. Such a weird thing to say. Especially when you just went on a pleasure cruise through this guy’s deepest darkest fears. You can pull out what haunts him in the night, but not his name?? Counterpoint: he didn’t CARE to pull out Blitzo’s name. Because he’s an imp.

The knocking Rolando into the pool thing was hysterical, though. Such an anticlimax. Right before the electrocution and the eye-popping and all. Lol.

“FUCK hotels!” Says the man who was casually cosplaying an aspect of the princess of Hell who runs a hotel. I love these shows. I love the casual interplay between them. A crossover one day would be the best thing ever.

“I’ve never had a real friend that I didn’t want to fuck.” That is such a blisteringly honest thing for Blitzo to say that I don’t think he expected it to come out of his own mouth. And I love that Millie knows it has nothing to do with her and everything to do with Blitzo, and how Blitzo feels about Stolas. I just don’t think Blitzo realized he felt that way until he said it out loud.

And wrapping this all up with a nice bow with some Loona and Moxxie character growth, where she ACTUALLY takes care of him instead of leaving him to his own devices! Giving half a shit prevents arson, folks, love to see it.

This had the exact structure of Truth Seekers that got me hooked on this show in the first place: cutting the raunchy humor (which is hit or miss with me, usually don’t like it overmuch) with really deep, complex, and honest character moments. The way Blitzo mentors both Moxxie and Millie in different ways while still relying on them is just so satisfying. Even more satisfying is seeing Blitzo change from a one-note loud pervert into a complicated guy who has real feelings about other people and doesn’t actively want to hurt the people he cares about because he DOES CARE. He’s a fuckup, and he’s trying, and it’s so, so, SO good.

I’m sure I have forgotten to wax eloquent about something or other, but it’s almost four hours later and definitely almost five thousand words into this thing, so I’m gonna cut myself off here. Toodles! See you all in November for Mastermind, which is gonna be FINE I’m sure!!

[resident-gay-bitch]

May 9; Weed

Ship; Sirius x Barty (bitchkiller)

@marauders-rarepair-fics

Sirius honestly couldn’t believe he was doing this. Going to Crouch for his much needed relaxation time. Honestly, Crouch and relaxation is the biggest oxymoron Sirius had ever heard.

But, well, desperate times desperate measures, and all that crap.

Crouch couldn’t believe it either, when Sirius came knocking out by the greenhouse, asking for some weed. It’s just that the Gryffindor guy got caught last month, slacking, smoking too much of his own supply or something. So Sirius hasn’t gotten high in over a month, and he just needs a break.

Especially from all that blasted studying Moony and Worms are doing, constantly it’s just scratch scratch scratch of quills on parchment, and flipping of pages, and humming. Oh, Sirius can’t stand the humming.

So yeah, he’s here now, getting high with Crouch because he remembered Regulus saying he delt. Because he didn’t want to get high alone, and James is on his date with Lily, and Mary’s on her date with Marlene, and Peter and Remus are studying (which Sirius would also like to dub a date since they spend all their fucking time together). And Crouch, whilst probably a psychopath, is actually funny sometimes.

Not funny in the way any of Sirius’ friends are funny. No, funny because he does dumb shit and says stupid things and Sirius can laugh at him. He honestly thought getting high with Barty would be amusing. Like a freak show or something.

But now he’s here, one and a half joints in, passing it back and forth with the bloke, and he’s actually enjoying himself. Somehow.

They’re judging people, sitting up on the stone wall and swinging their legs about, mocking anyone that walks past. They’re laughing together, not at each other, and surprisingly getting along.

At one point Reggie walked past and was instantly weirded out by them getting along, and so they both heckled the shit out of him and then spent five minutes laughing about it.

And Barty actually has some interesting things to say, and he’s much smarter than Sirius had assumed. When he popped the question as to why Barty wasn’t studying, he simply said he didn’t care, and that he didn’t study for his last exams and got full marks for all of them.

And a lot of the jokes he makes are actually quite intelligent.

And he’s not a total arsehole either. Maybe. Well, he’s definitely an arsehole, as they’re sitting here together making fun of people, but not a total dick.

He’s not being a dick to Sirius and that’s the main thing.

And he’s not bad looking. Okay, maybe that’s also a lie, he’s quite weird looking. But Sirius tends to like that. He’s captivated by his absurd lankyness, and his crooked smile, and knobbly fingers, and his scruffy eyebrows, and his hooked nose that he seemingly has had broken at least once.

And for some reason Sirius is wondering what he might look like with his clothes off.

It’s night now, and the castles dark, and everyone’s gone to dinner. Sirius is hungry, and he can hear Barty’s stomach rumbling too. They haven’t had anything to eat (besides that half packet of crisps Barty stole from a third year) since they started smoking, and are really starting to feel it.

But suddenly they’re alone, and the air is warm, and their inhibitions are lowered, and Barty’s looking at him.

He’s looking at him.

“Would you punch me if I kissed you right now?” Barty asked, catching him off guard.

“Do you want me to punch you, if you kiss me?” Sirius asked back.

Barty smirked, “Depends how mean your punch is. Promise to make me bleed?”

“I don’t want a busted knuckle.” He shrugged, leaning back against the piller.

“So you won’t punch me then?”

“I guess not.” Sirius sighed, “Are you gonna punch me for it?”

“I could.” Barty grinned, crawling over to him, “Maybe we could get into a bit of a fight.”

“You’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, probably.” Barty grinned, licking up the side of his face.

Sirius smirked, grabbing his chin with rough finger tips, “Good effort, but it would take much more to disturb me, Crouch.”

“You’re more fun than I thought.” Barty smirked, “I expected you to be a party pooper like your brother. But you’re a little insane, aren’t you?”

“Darling, I don’t think you get to decide who’s insane or not.” Sirius teased.

“Piss off, fucker. Takes one to know one.” Barty waggled his eye brows, “And don’t call me darling unless you plan on wining and dining-“

“Oh, shut up.” Sirius groaned, pulling him in to kiss.

And yeah, maybe Barty isn’t so bad after all. Besides, his weed is pretty good, so Sirius is just going to come back for more, isn’t he?

[sucrows]

IBARA SAEGUSA + BREEDING (DC)

You work too closely to him and too similarly. You’re a threat, and he needs to get you out of the way and well... Drastic times call for drastic measures. 

Contains: AFAB Reader, Bottom Reader, Top Ibara, Breeding, DUBCON (Baby trapping), Manipulation, Creampie, Rough sex, Overstimulation, Fingering

Word Count: 3676

(NSFW Below Cut)

When you first cropped up, Ibara didn’t think much of you.  

Producing and being an idol at the same time is hard work- most people can’t do it. There’s few who take on both of those jobs at once for a reason. Surely, surely, you’ll wash out like many others, deciding to keep to one or another. It’s inevitable. 

But then you don’t. 

You’re organized, smart, dedicated, motivated- all the same as him, and it drives Ibara insane.  

You work too closely to him and too similarly. You’re a threat, and he needs to get you out of the way and well... Drastic times call for drastic measures. 

Ibara’s friendly to you. He makes your work easier on you. He praises you. Hell, he even helps you out on occasion. There’s nothing for you to suspect. While your work ethic makes you a threat, your naivete about other people in business makes you an easy target. You’re too trusting, too nice. You’re objectively a much nicer person than him... It’s the one thing he has above you, and it’s going to be the thing he uses to get to you. 

Over time you let him closer. Casual taps on the arm advance to the occasional shoulder pat to playfully linking arms. You talk about shared projects, then general work, then personal goals. You start to trust him more and more. It’s almost a shame, Ibara thinks. A person as nice and genuine as you are choosing this industry to work in... You deserve better.  

At least after he’s done with you it won’t be a problem anymore. 

*****

Casual friendly touches get further and further, until they begin to blur the line between what’s appropriate and what's supposed to be inappropriate for people in your stations. The first time Ibara fucks you, it’s in your dressing room after a live.  

He’d helped you with some difficult contractors for this event and he’s come to see the results. Just as you are intelligent and nice, you’re also a force to be reckoned with on stage. With adrenaline running through you, you practically throw yourself on him after he propositions you. So easy it was that Ibara almost suspected you might’ve been leading him into a trap instead but no, nothing. Once again, you display a naivete that others in the industry have long learned to do without. 

You whined and moaned from his movements. He curled his fingers in you, toyed with your chest, told you dirty things, made you taste him, made you take him- everything he could think of. He made notes of every little thing that made you crumble for future reference. The only problem was the way you insisted on a condom... It was good and he enjoyed it but... he’s a man on a mission, and this mission allows for no personal pleasure seeking or sentimentality. Ibara knows what he needs to get done for his and Eden’s career. 

It only escalates in frequency. You can now recall times when he locked your door and he, the Ibara Saegusa, threw himself onto his knees in front of your office chair. You’ve hidden away in his office and been pressed up against his windows at night in the dark. You can now expect to find at least one article of your clothing to be permanently hidden within his own. You’re now sure that there’s probably at least one of his shirts hiding in your laundry at any point in time. 

You might never have had “the talk” but with not only the physicality of everything, but the other interactions between you too? It’s hard for you to describe your relationship as just friends with benefits. You trust him and as far as you know, he trusts you. Why would you ever have a reason to suspect his intentions? 

You don’t question him, and he moves on with his plan. Condoms are just so uncomfortable... how about pulling out? If it’s too risky you can use spermicide or something? What about ovulation tests and tracking your cycle? Come on, don’t you think it’ll feel better too...?  

Slowly your hesitation wanes as do your complaints about wanting to use protection. Ibara’s right, there are other forms of birth control. If you’re ever really desperate, there’s even Plan B. You trust him... He would never do something to risk one of your careers. 

*****

It’s been long enough. 

A big awards event has just happened, and both of your units won in the categories you were nominated for. The night had been filled with celebration and joy and the slightest bit of champagne. You now head back to your apartment... or you pretend to, before heading to a hotel Ibara texted you. 

It’s a golden opportunity and he has full intentions of taking advantage of it. 

Within the privacy of the hotel, there’s nothing keeping you from each other. The door is barely closed before you feel yourself pushed up against it. Ibara’s mouth is immediately on your own, harshly biting your lip and trying to coax you open. Your reaction is immediate. Complete submission to his whims. With your mouth open there’s no hesitation for his tongue to enter your mouth, tangling with your own and stealing your breath away. The taste of the fancy drinks has long faded away but just being in his presence starts to make you feel drunker than any alcohol could ever make you. 

His hands explore you; they already know every ridge and bump and weak spot- both the ones that make you crumple in pleasure and pain- but he still moves them with as much interest as your first time together. The contrast between his hands drives you insane when one insists on pushing you against the wall while the other one tries to pull your hips closer.  

You can’t help but raise a leg to wrap around Ibara’s hips and he immediately takes it and pulls it upwards. Before you know it, both of your legs are pressed up to your chest and you’re trapped between the man and the wall. He finally moves on from your mouth and you don’t know how he’s not panting like you are now. His mouth just explores lower to your neck. No marks can be left there because of your careers, but he can already anticipate how the future months will break down that excuse. For now, he can just kiss and nip at it, not quite as intense as he would like, but satisfying enough to move on for now. 

He pulls his head back and stares at you. The sight from your perspective is enticing to say the least. His face flushed from your making out, the hotel light shining from somewhere behind him that gives him a halo, his messy hair and clothes that hint at your shared actions... 

Ibara smirks at your staring, letting you bask in him for a few moments, then continues his plan. He already has you in his arms, all it takes for him to carry you to bed is to shift your weight and walk a few steps over. You yelp in surprise at the sudden action- he’s not exactly the largest guy, it’s much too easy to forget the amount of training he does. You flop onto the bed and bounce a bit from the drop. It’s his turn now to stare, standing between your parted legs. Admiring all the same things you did for him. 

He briefly stares at you in contemplation. You’re so excited for this... little do you know of his plans. The way he intends to ravage you tonight. The way he wants to keep going at it with you until there’s no chance you aren’t going to be carrying his child. The way he wants to knock you up and watch you get fat and useless over the course of months... 

He practically lunges for your waistband, pulling off your pants and underwear in one go. Ibara’s waited so long for this, he needs it, needs to finally take you. He grasps at your top next, yanking it off as well. It’s astounding how practiced this is, you truly are just in the palm of his hand. 

He can immediately see that you’re dripping wet but he’s not going to go straight for your hole, no, he wants you more desperate before he does that. He drags a finger between your folds to gather up some slick, then brings his fingers slightly upwards to rub around the area he knows your clit should be. The move is so familiar to him by now, another carefully memorized part of the plan he’s executing. He carefully massages the area until he finds that certain spot that makes you inhale sharply. Having found his target, he smiles. 

It’s very sudden that his hands move faster. While the one he’s now placed at your chest to play with your nipples is quite pleasant, the feeling of his aggressive stimulation of your clit makes you nearly squeal. You resist the urge to clamp your legs shut around Ibara’s hand and instead just close your eyes. The darkness makes your body just that much more sensitive than before.  

“What a whore... acting like this.” 

He stops briefly to slap your clit and your legs shake more and more with the strain of not moving. 

You whine at Ibara’s harsh words, not gone enough yet to fully avoid protesting. He gathers up more slick onto his fingers before continuing to pleasure you once again. Though, you quickly note that now he’s reaching for your clit with his thumb, and now two of his fingers wait just outside of your hole. He massages once again until your clit is located once again and, pressing down onto it, slides his fingers inside.  

Ibara smiles at the way you thrash your head, resisting the urge to move but desperately wanting to do so. “What would your fans think if they saw you like this...?” 

You want to respond to his words, but the moment your open your mouth he begins to pump his fingers in and out of you, stimulating your clit all the while. Instead of any complaint, a pitchy moan is what leaves instead. He nearly laughs at the flustered expression you make. 

“Hm, how unprofessional. I expected better from you.” 

Every single one of his words makes your face burn hotter. Though disheveled, he’s still fully clothed. Meanwhile you lay completely bare on your back, legs open for him to do whatever he wants. There’s a tinge of insulting truth to his words as he continues to pleasure you. He moves his hand faster. Every time he pulls his hand out and back in again, it brushes roughly against your clit. Now when his fingers are fully in, he’s taking a moment to curl them before he straightens them and pulls them out once more. The pleasure is so intense. He truly has learned every weak spot... 

You feel so hot, like you're burning up inside. You can’t help but moan and whine out pathetic little sounds while Ibara works you harder and harder. The pressure on your clit and the fingers in your cunt being exactly what you need. You can feel your orgasm creeping up on you and you desperately reach out for his free arm. You want him closer to you- No- you need him closer to you. You desperately want to feel the warmth of his body close to yours. To your shock though, all he does is slap your hand away and tsk at you. 

“So close already? You do know we aren’t stopping anytime soon?” He chides. 

Despite implying he wants you to last longer, he doesn’t give you one second to cool off. You would beg for him if you could muster the breath to speak words or the brain to form them in the first place. The pleasure is too good and it’s too hot and the way he feels- 

You let out an embarrassingly loud moan as you finally cum, breathy cries of “Ibara-!” being cut off by pathetic little whines. Every time his thumb brushes your clit it’s a wave of pleasure that makes your stomach tense and every push of his fingers into your cunt makes you feel so whole you can’t help but moan. He works your body so easily, playing with all its sweet spots with no hesitation. He’s also moved his other hand to your hip. The thumb of that hand pushes into the bone there and holds you down every time you thrash into his hand. 

His hands seem to calm their efforts as you ride out the waves and begin to come down again. Until suddenly, he shifts his weight, and his hand slaps your folds once again. You yelp and your legs jump up, but he’s already begun again. He roughly moves your hips upwards and stands in close, once again going for your clit. He slides his wet fingers up from your hole and rubs you with the added lubrication. You’re still oversensitive from having just come and his actions immediately get you going again. 

He looks amused when you let out a long whine. “So easy...” 

Ibara’s rubbing gets more and more passionate and before long you feel yourself caving once again. You thrash your head to the side and he doesn’t stop. You moan out his name and he doesn’t stop. Your hips twitch and all he does is hold you still so he can keep going.  

You’re about to come again when, to your surprise, something slips into your hole. The penetration is the last push you need before you come again. As you look down with hazy eyes you see him finally splitting you open and the visual of it makes you throw your head back and embrace the feeling. It pulses all through your body, starting at your core then reaching all up your spine.  

You once again expect a break, but you also can’t bring yourself to be surprised when he starts immediately thrusting into you. He does a few slow, deep ones, before he feels you fully prepared and starts to truly go at it. 

“How shameful. Do you even see yourself right now?” He degrades you while he starts to speed up. The contrast between you two only grows stronger. The only piece of clothing he has removed is his blazer, having only unzipped and buttoned his pants to bring out his cock. Meanwhile you sit entirely debauched, lower half leaking slick and upper half redder than ever before. 

Ibara smirks at your staring. “Can’t even respond to me anymore I see.” 

You open your mouth to do so, but he cruelly grabs your nipples between his fingers and squeezes, making you only squeak instead. 

“That’s alright.” He rolls the buds and watches you whimper. “Whores don’t need to speak anyways.” 

He pushes your legs further apart and thrusts into you harder, finally fully getting onto the bed. The sound of his hips slapping against yours echoes through the room. The room is full of the scent of sex and the sounds of your copulation.  

Your brain already felt hazy from the orgasms, but his refusal to give you even a second of a break makes your further lose yourself. Right now, you want nothing more than him- whatever it is that he’ll give you. Ibara’s cock in you is so heavy and the pressure is so delicious and his hands that roam wherever they please leave a burning trail of desire in you. You squirm and try to move your hips against him, doing your best to meet his every move even though you’re stuck underneath him.  

He seems amused at your mindless thrusting but if you were more aware... you might’ve even spotted a hint of a scheme in his eyes. Nonetheless, he grants you the pleasure you seek and returns his hand to your clit. He goes back to his old maneuvers. You’re just so weak underneath him... weak to his handling of you and weak to his attitude towards you. So, so naïve.  

Your next orgasm takes you by surprise, you were simply enjoying his movements and suddenly all your muscles feel full of too much energy and the sensation of pleasure courses through your body once again. You squirm against his body, feeling overly sensitive. 

Ibara feels you clench around him and takes the opportunity to push your legs right up to your shoulders. Your weight is suddenly being supported by your upper back and you would recognize this as a mating press if you weren’t so focused on the way he’s fucking you. Your body is still throwing at you pleasure but now it’s electric whipping through you instead of smooth waves. You half-heartedly kick at him from the feeling, but he growls and sturdies his grip on your leg.  

The way you look is so erotic that Ibara would usually commentate on it as he had earlier, but even he can feel himself being lost to pleasure. You alternate between squirming against him and laying back while moaning and whining. You’re entirely brainless in the exact way he had planned for you to be. He’s getting closer and closer to completing his goal and something in the back of his brain is screaming in excitement. 

He pushes your legs further and now your weight is all practically on your shoulders. It makes all the blood in your body rush to your head. He thrusts harder and harder, knowing exactly where this is heading... the point of inevitability where nothing would be able to go back to normal.  

You’re already such a mess underneath him but he can’t help the urge to angle his thrusts upwards and play with your chest once again. You squeal in exactly the way he wants you to. You’re too brainless to think, to protest, to care. All you can think about is the pleasure you’re feeling right now. Ibara’s always been a very generous partner, but today he’s combining everything he’s ever done to you at once. All the sensations going on in your head and body make you think Ibara, Ibara, Ibara-! 

He’s reaching his limit. The adrenaline coursing through him is overwhelming all his senses. A sense of intense excitement at how he’s actually about to do this- actually try to impregnate you- so strong that his face grows into a smile even though he’s panting. He hardly even notices how hard he’s breathing.  

You’re squealing at him and squeezing around him. Your face is outright lewd with its expressions, and he can’t hold back anymore. He pushes in as deeply as he can and grinds there, feeling himself letting go. His balls are firm against you, where they twitch and pump you as full as possible. His own pleasure hits him hard but he does his best to maintain the momentum of his hands. He can’t have you noticing what he’s doing now, he needs you drunk on your own pleasure. 

Right up against your cervix- Your womb, egg, walls- everything gets covered in white as it flows in deep, aided by the mating press. His sperm reaches everywhere it can inside you. The cum fills you up to the point of overflowing. You haven’t had a session together in a while and he’s been holding off until he could see you again. This plan was long in the making, and it's finally coming to fruition, with you hopefully bearing the actual fruit of it.  

As Ibara’s orgasm tapers off he gives a few more half-hearted thrusts, trying to milk the last of his seed out. He looks down in pride at the sight of white seeping out along the sides of where his cock is dipped into your hole.  

Your babbling is dying down and you just cover your face with your arms, completely overwhelmed. You’re almost entirely limp and cock-drunk. Ibara had worked you into another orgasm while he finally completed his own- not that you’d noticed- and now you wanted nothing more than to rest. As he lets down your legs, you easily slide onto your side and curl in on yourself. 

Ibara steps back and looks at his hard work. His cum is now escaping your hole, trickling down the curve of your thighs. The back of them being bright red from how hard his hips had hit them and glistening from the amount of slick that had drooled on them throughout your fucking.  

Even with his carefully tracking your cycle, giving you teas and foods meant to increase your fertility, pushing you into a mating press, there’s still a chance it won’t take now... but the likelihood is that it did. There’s a good chance that in the last few minutes, he had just knocked you up. Your fates and futures might now be more closely intertwined than ever before... 

And the thought of that drives Ibara wild. 

He immediately feels himself growing hard again. He wants it so desperately that everything in him screams to jump on you again. It screams to follow his instincts and mark you as his own, claim you as a mate. You’ve been so kind and trusting and talented- there's no better option than you to carry his spawn. He needs to take this opportunity to secure his heir- 

He pushes your thighs apart and positions him behind you. You’re practically dead weight and all you do is whimper at his touch. 

It might not have taken, but that’s okay. He’ll just have to keep going tonight. Keep fucking you dumb and brainless and pliant for him. Keep coming inside and filling you up with his seed. Keep holding you down and proving himself as a proper mate for you. 

He gathers his cum on his cock, and slides back in, ready to make you take if you haven’t already. 

this was written to hyperpop does it show

[grif-hawaiian-rolls]

Red VS Blue, but make it Guild Wars 2

ok so i'm going to try and make this au make sense if you look at it from either side without prior knowledge of the other but theyre both so entrenched in my brain im not sure how well it'll work if you get lost im sorry in advance- or you can just enjoy the group piece and ignore the insane rambles below the cut! fair warning: its a lot! my red team yapping showing up in full force!

Don't say I didn't warn you :3

Context:

GW2 is a fantasy setting MMORPG, set in the world of Tyria. There are 5 playable races with their own unique cultures and such. I'm using the wikis for the races bc im lazy- the names are links to the proper wiki, but i've VERY ROUGHLY summarized for ease-

ASURA: The smallest playable race, Asura are highly intelligent and have a cultural focus on Academia and Research- furthering the reach of their magi-tech, sometimes at the cost of morals. Asura tend to be characterized as cocky intellectuals, who know more than everyone else in the room at any given time and they know it- but they're going to have a solution to a problem before you've finished explaining it.

CHARR: Giant anthropomorphic cats, the Charr are a militaristic race with a culturally cynical look on the world and a stubborn streak to match, and a general distrust of magic due to some Prior Circumstances. Charr tend to be characterized as gruff, fuck-around-and-find-out types, due to the military culture, and have more focus on their squad (warband) over individual relations.

HUMAN: On the surface, pretty par for the course here, but humans aren't actually native to Tyria- not that this stops them from being a cultural and territorial powerhouse in the setting. There is a fair bit of tension between humans and charr, and humans and some of the non-playable races in the game. Humans tend to be characterized as stubborn, tenacious and resourceful in a Tyrian context.

NORN: visually speaking, Norn appear to be giant humans, native to Tyria. Culturally speaking, Norn value honor and nature in equal measure- you should make a Legend for yourself, but you need to respect the Spirits of the Wild. Typically, norn are characterized as loud and boisterous, but reliable in a fight and always down to celebrate an impressive victory and share a story.

SYLVARI: The youngest race in Tyria, having only existed for about 25 years or so at the start of the game, Sylvari are plantfolk who Awaken from their mutually shared Dream as grown adults. The Dream gives sylvari the knowledge they need to function right out the gate, although the actual extent of said knowledge varies slightly by individuals, and is tended to by The Pale Tree (or the Pale Mother/Mother Tree, as sylvari know her)- sylvari follow a set of tenants given to them in the Dream that encourage compassion, kindness, and a drive to do what must be done called a Wyld Hunt.

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RvB is a Halo machinima set in an appropriately sci-fi setting that is, above all else, fucking ridiculous. The plot, when it manages to exists in a semi-coherent fashion, focuses almost entirely on a band of absolute asshole idiots who cheat death as a hobby, swear a lot, and generally just would be unpleasant people to know but it is incredibly entertaining to put them into situations so that sums up the general vibe of the show. RvB is slightly less relevant to this au as the characters are what I'm yoinking and theyre all getting explained in their gw2 contexts here, but the main point is: the show is silly, and everyone in it is some brand of annoying, rude, mean, stupid or any combination there of. Also? Probably traumatized by war, whether or not they realize it. __--__

BORING STUFF OUT OF THE WAY ITS CHARACTER TIME __--__

THE GULCH KREWE - An Asura research team focused on making self sustaining golems. Technically Vic is the krewe lead, but he never seems to show up at their lab situated in the middle of no where for.... safety reasons. The official, documented by the asuran governement Gulch krewe is really incredibly small, at four asura strong, counting Vic even though there is quite a bit of debate on whether he actually counts since he's never around, but they have a reputation for being the worst krewe to work with. Ever. Of all time. Between reports of "unsafe necromantic practices" and general "workplace threats and harrassment", the only people who stay in the Gulch krewe have no where else to go. The "rank" nickname theme started mostly as a joke, but once it was started it was basically impossible to stop.

"Captain" Bucch Flowers - Asuran Necromancer - Asura, typically, do not have last names. Bucch, is not known for being the typical sort of asura. Eccentric and regarded as "morally questionable" by previous krewes, Bucch is a friendly individual who finds other people fascinating, both in terms of their psychology and physiology. He always has a smile on his face and a warm, cheerful demeanor that some people have claimed to be "unsettling", but I mean, really, he's just being nice. Right?

"Sarge" REDACTED - Asuran Engineer - Sarge took to his nickname with a brand of enthusiasm that really was just a warning to the kind of person he is, going so far as to have his previous name removed or changed on all documents he could. Loud, brash and unapologetic in everything he does, Sarge is the main "threat" of the Gulch Krewe between his wild experimental inventions, with their tendency to either go rogue against their creator or just plain blow up, his complete and utter lack of patience, and his habit of gesturing with his loaded shotgun during a conversation. His volume never drops below LOUD, but he's a very.. unique brand of genius who excels at making things that really shouldn't be physically possible work.

"Doc" Dufresne - Asuran Mesmer - Doc is, by all counts, the odd one out of the official Gulch krewe. Meek and empathetic in nature, Doc tends to be the moral voice of the krewe- one that often gets ignored. He is still annoyed by his ridiculous nickname, even if it is nice to have the affirmation that he really is part of the krewe. He's not even really a doctor! He's not great with medical care or technology. Or fighting. Or much of anything, if he lets himself be a little too honest. But he's part of the krewe, for better or for worse, and if that just means he uses his magic to pull his krewmates away from whatever is trying to murder them this week, then so be it.

The UNOFFICIAL Gulch krewe is a bit more.. diverse. Technically, non-asura don't get listed as krewe on the paperwork. They're hired help, not technically part of the team that gets credited for the work done in the published papers. Generally, this is because most hired hands don't have that much to do with the actual invention or research process- they're just there to be damage control when things go wrong. However with the Gulch krewe... a lot of things tend to go wrong. Technically speaking, there is no reason for a krewe of four three to have separate research teams. There is barely a reason for bigger krewes to do it. However... Captain Flowers and Sarge rarely seem to work on the 'technical' level of anything, and all it took was one offhanded comment from Vic (over comm, no less! couldn't even cause problems in person) for the pair of them to escalate and devolve into a rivalry that would ruin Doc's life, and the lives of pretty much everyone else who inevitably get swept up into it as well.

RED TEAM: Sarge claimed RED as his team color well before the idea of having color-coordination even occurred to Captain Flowers. Sarge claims he hired only the best to staff Red Team, with one exception for canon fodder.

Richard "Dick" Simmons - Human Elementalist - Born and raised in the upper ranks of human nobility, Simmons is a bit of a fish out of water when he's not in the human capital of Divinity's Reach. Of course, being an anxious individual with poor social skills, he didn't really fit in there either. He's got enough of the "I'm rich, you know," attitude held over from his upbringing that combined with a desire for praise, awkward conversation skills and the urge to prove his worth through his own intelligence, makes for a really obnoxious, know-it-all kissass of a man. But he's really good with technology, given his magic tends to prefer the buzz of electricity so that counts for something. Usually. He's not that bad once you get past the defensive nature and whiny voice. Probably?

Dexter Grif - Norn Warrior - With a hard earned feeling of "fuck it, fuck that, fuck this, I'm going to bed" that he trained into himself, Dex would have been perfectly content to spend his entire life lazing around his home city, Lion's Arch, scamming tourists and generally just kind of doing his own lazy thing. Or, at least, that's what he tells himself, as he has to look for actual work on the docks. It sucks. So when some loud mouth asura rocks up, shouting something Dex didn't really listen to beyond being a job, and a supposedly low effort one? Sign him the fuck up. But when the job is evidently not all naps and bored asura-watching, Dexter Grif will make his complaints known. Just... maybe not in range of Sarge's shotgun.

Donut - Sylvari Mesmer - Freshly Awakened, bright eyed, curious and endlessly talkative, Donut (Grif swears that can't be his real name, right?) is the Red team's resident socialite, sharpshooter, grenadier, portal expert and color coordinator. If you need something done, Donut is your man, or he can find you your man. While some people find his chipper attitude and love of 'dressing up' his friends with illusions annoying, and his tendency to veer into innuendos a bit awkward, everyone agrees it's hard to genuinely dislike Donut as a person. Maybe it's a mesmer thing, maybe it's a sylvari thing, maybe it's just Donut being Donut, it's hard to say. Despite his impeccable aim and frankly impressive throwing arm, Donut tends to be a little oblivious to the things right in front of him, but he's trying his best so most people tend to let it slide.

BLUE TEAM: Captain Flowers accepted BLUE as his team's color in good humor, as he tends to accept most things. He was not nearly as intense on his "requirements" for his team as Sarge- truthfully, most of Blue team were picked because Captain Flowers thought they were interesting more than anything to do with their actual skills.

Kaikaina Grif - Norn Elementalist - Kai has been called a lot of things, and not all of them flattering. Her personal favorites include sexy, wild, bodacious and "absolutely insane". She's a diverse gal. When her brother left Lion's Arch to go work for some mysterious asura in the middle of no where, Kai swore she didn't care. That lasted for all of a week, before she decided Dex was clearly up to something else and the asura job was a cover. Upon hunting her brother down and discovering, no really, it's literally what he said it was, she was disappointed. At least, until Captain Flowers offered her a position on Blue team. Being paid to stand around, look pretty, and bother her brother? Fuck. Yes.

Lavernius Tucker - Human Guardian - Growing up an orphan in Divinity's Reach makes a guy either really cruel or really clever. Tucker's never been the cruel type, so he went for clever instead. Though that quickly turned around to bite him in the ass, because being clever, and maybe a little bit of a smartass, means people notice you, and being noticed does not go well for him. Between at least one cult insisting he was some kind of savior from a forgotten bloodline, a jerk or three who didn't like Tucker outsmarting them or standing up for the people they were bullying, and whatever the hell is going on with his kid (courtesy of aforementioned cult), Tucker has more than had his fill of being noticed for being clever thank you very much. He just wants to find a quiet place to lay low and figure out this whole being a dad to a dragon thing. He's done being a hero and honestly he's done being helpful. Tucker's here to get paid, maybe get laid, and not get attached to anyone else that might screw him (or his kid) over.

Junior - Saltspray Dragon - Sort of a package deal with his dad, Junior is still figuring out the quirks and details of being a dragon in a society where 'dragon' is usually associated with the end of times, even for a "lesser" dragon like him. Fortunately, they're pretty solidly hidden in the middle of nowhere, so the only people around are friends of his dad's. Sort of. Junior is shy, generally, and tries to be careful with his size and his magic, but he's still a hatchling and sometimes it's real easy to get carried away when he's excited. Good news though! The Gulch krewe are well versed in shit breaking every other day, so no one gets too mad if something gets knocked off the shelf by his wings.

Church - Sylvari Thief - Some sylvari chose to cut themselves off from the Dream, in an effort to obtain either a sense of freedom from expectations, spite, or just a general desire for peace, quiet and solitude. While Church can certainly guess at his own, personal, reasons for becoming one of the Soundless, he sure as hell doesn't remember making the decision. Or much of anything, really, before about a week before he got hired onto Blue team. Just the name Church, which he can only assume is his name. He tells himself, amongst his internal tirades about his woes and his miseries, that Flowers hired him because he's smart and clearly the asura could see that. Not pity or anything like that. Still, it would be nice to actually remember literally anything. But Church doesn't complain about that- he's got more than enough things to bitch about from being part of the Blue team to distract his ego, his temper and his generally whiny attitude towards life in general. Who needs a past when you're surrounded by idiots?

Michael J Caboose - Norn Ranger- Never without his trusty arctodus companion, Freckles, Caboose is a joyful wall of muscle and hugs that frequently forgets that most people cannot, in fact, support the weight of him and his wolf-bear. Young and with no legend to speak of, Caboose is on a journey of his own making, to find friends that are just... so cool, everyone is going to want to hear stories about them! He just has the very very tricky job of remembering those stories. But hey, what are friends for, if not to help him when he forget a detail or twelve? And honestly, he thinks he found a GREAT group of friends here on Blue team. Sure they can be a little bit mean, but, Caboose has the heart of a skald according to the nice old ladies back home in Hoelbrak, and his heart knows when there's neat things

THE GOLEMS: The Gulch Krewe, official and unofficial, developed two more-or-less completely self-sustaining golems after splitting into their respective teams. They're not perfect, by any means, but they're certainly impressive to behold. Especially given that they both seem to be... well, people. That.. wasn't intentional.

Lopez - "Human" Engineer - Inspired by the dolls made by Tixx in the Infinirarium, Sarge chose to build a golem that looks almost human. His official logic claims that the more flexible build and increased intelligence allows for Lopez (Officially: L-0-PEZ - Lab-OH-Personalized Engineering Zoner. Sarge swears it makes sense. Red team is pretty sure he just made it up because he liked the name Lopez) to handle his own maintenance and upkeep, with improved head to body communication and modular independencies. The side effect of Lopez's "self repairing" abilities (read: his ability to take himself apart to put himself back together) is the fact that his body have very distinct seams, and he's prone to falling apart at them. His head coming off his neck is the worst and most common offender of this problem. Like most of Sarge's intelligent creations, Lopez has a sour attitude and very little respect for his creator. If you asked him, the only reason he sticks around is because it's easier to get his hands on the tools he needs to fix himself. That and no one else speaks Orrian since the continent and kingdom sank over 250 years ago. Well, no one besides Sheila.

Sheila - "Charr" Necromancer - Captain Flowers took a slightly more.. macabre approach to his golem creation. Made from the ethically and responsibly sourced bones of an anonymous charr donor (Captain Flowers's words), Sheila is a feat of magi-tech engineering and necromancy. Due to her... organic internal base, Sheila is much sturdier than your average golem for her size, and the necrotic magic that keeps her together and functioning needs almost no supervision, as it naturally drains minute fractions of life force from things around her, like non-sentient plants and insects. Though there are some... quirks, to be certain, but that's to be expected with such experimental magic! The days where she almost seems like a different person are most likely just her getting used to a shift in the magic, that's all. Nothing to worry about. Usually though, on her good days, Sheila is calm and patient, with a friendly attitude she seemed to pick up from Flowers, although somehow she's a bit better at reading a room than he is. She tends to be the most responsible and level head in the lab, which is fortunate considering she's also the biggest one there, excluding Freckles.

__--__

THE LANCER WARBAND: A tight knit charr warband, working outside of the charr legions mostly for decent pay and interesting jobs, the Lancer warband are skilled fighters, excellent hunters and all around impressive soldiers. Their one weakness? Their inability to get anything done without either a fight or fair bit of chatter (and the occasional argument leading to the fights) first. But once they've settled on an objective, they're nigh unstoppable.

York - Charr Engineer - By far the most laid back and easy going of the Lancer warband, York is the resident gunsmith, philosopher, mechanic and lockpick. If it requires nimble fingers (or claws, rather), York's got it covered. While he tends to be the chattiest of the bunch and that makes him seem distractable, York is often laser focused on his task- he just doesn't feel the need to act like he's focused. He's curious and honest in nature, and is always quick to come up with a joke to lighten a heavy mood.

Maine - Charr Warrior - Silent and deadly are the words most commonly used to describe Maine- not that they would ever come from him. Massive even by charr standards, Maine is brutal and efficient in a fight. By the time an enemy has seen his white fur, they're already screwed. Outside of combat, when it's just the warband, Maine still isn't a talkative sort of guy. He prefers to stand back and let the rest of them talk for him, with a few exceptions.

Washington - Charr 'Thief' (unrealized revenant) - Originally the 'cub' and rookie of the Lancer warband, Wash has earned his stripes as it were for his cunning adaptability on the field and his almost ridiculous good luck when it comes to survival. While he tries to be kind and compassionate when he can, he's more on the pragmatic side than he used to be, and he can't always balance being nice with being realistic. Still, Wash has a sarcastic streak big enough to give York a run for his money, and enough sharp wit and sharper knives to keep just about anyone else on their toes.

Texas - Charr Warrior - A bit of a badass, Tex is the Lancer warband legionnaire and easily the best fighter of them all. She's harsh, even to her own warband, but she cares more than she likes to let on. However, her temper tends to get the best of her, and she frequently works alone to blow off steam. The last time she left... she didn't come back.

South - Charr Necromancer - One of the twins, South is aggressive, impatient and vicious just as much as she is efficient with her magic. She's a survivor and despite her bitchy attitude and general disregard for the rest of her warband, she gets shit done. Maybe a little meaner about it than she needs to be but hey, it's done right? Who cares if a little more blood was spilled or if a few more punches were thrown than were strictly necessary.

North - Charr Guardian - The other twin, North couldn’t be more different from his sister. He’s gentle, understanding and tries to be a shoulder to lean on for anyone who needs it, not just their bandmates. Granted, sometimes this does get him punched, but his kind nature doesn’t stop him from giving as good as he gets. He’s a skilled marksman with a longbow, and his calm nature helps him keep a level head in a fight- useful, when you specialize in placing traps.

'Honorary' warband: When their Legionnaire, Tex, mysteriously vanishes, the Lancer warband is left fumbling in the wake. Fortunately, they have friends they can trust to help them get their bearings.

Carolina - Human 'Warrior' (unrealized Revenant) - not the step dad but the dad who stepped up Carolina has been a fighter and a soldier her whole life, or very damn near it. While not raised to quite the same degree of military as the average charr, her mother ran a tight ship of their home and after her passing, her father ran it even tighter. Her friendship with the Lancer warband started with a night of mildly drunken chaos with York, after which she kept in close contact with the charr. Intense in every factor, loyal, and more than a little competitive, Carolina thrives in combat situations that demand the most of her, which makes her a fast friend for the rowdy warband. Without Tex, the Lancer warband needed a leader, and Carolina stepped into the role of unofficial legionnaire as easily as donning her helmet. While comparisons between herself and Texas make her uneasy, she does admit she likes the feeling of being 'Boss' with the charr.

Reggi "Wyoming" - Asuran Mesmer - Reggi is a bit of an odd ball and a loner before he begins spending time with the Lancer warband. He enjoys a good pun and a bad knock-knock joke, but his disinterest in most scientific endeavors left him with little opportunities within asura society. So he left, took his humor and not much else with him, and has been something of a drifter ever since, more interested in taking care of himself above all else. While the Lancer warband may groan and scoff at him from time to time, they do work well with him, and even a selfish bastard like him needs back up from time to time.

[vvatchword]

In Defense of BioShock Infinite

Although I had preordered BioShock Infinite with all its bells and whistles, I did not actually play it until January 2023. And lordy, I had me another Experience with a capital E. How the hell a bunch of urban Yanks could capture my experience as a queer democratic-socialist atheist struggling with her roots as a rural evangelical-cum-fascist is kinda magical, honestly. As to the game itself, it didn’t hurt how good it looked—the kickass skyhook gun battles—that novel setting—the complex characters—that delicious historical setting—that bloodthirsty critique of America—and to top it all off, they had pulled yet another Cassandra. Hell, speaking of which—not only was the game fun, it was fucking smart. It was intelligent, memorable, and meaningful in a way I hadn’t experienced in video games for years.

Now, back in 2013, when I had realized that I would be spoiled for Infinite, I left the BioShock fandom. After completing the game, I headed to Tumblr to re-engage, wagging my whole body like an excitable golden retriever, only to discover that BioShock Infinite was remarkably absent, and when mentioned, brutally derided. 

“I hate BioShock Infinite and all my friends do, too,” someone said in the tags under a post. 

I was utterly befuddled and deeply sad. I wanted to talk about BioShock Infinite! I wanted to dig into it, uncover unexpected ideas, learn new things, talk shit, make new friends—the full fandom experience. And instead I kept stumbling into hateful diatribes and super-charged disgust.

Obviously, I first looked at myself and my own judgment. Had I missed some obvious problem or misread some theme or dialogue? This wouldn’t be the first time I’d snapped down on a hook. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

There are two parts of BioShock Infinite that are unquestionably terrible: the fridging of Daisy Fitzroy and the false equivalence of violence between haves and have-nots (lol what are the have-nots supposed to do, ask nicely?). Additionally, one could look at the use of real Native American tragedies as tasteless. Personally, I do not—in the same way that I don’t find it tasteless that real war victims were used as inspiration for Splicer deformities. This is what really happened; this is commentary on events that really happened to real people. 

At this point, I’m sure I don’t have to explain why two of these themes are Unequivocally Bad. 

Anyway, I thought that perhaps these were the reasons BSI had been condemned to Super Hell.

I was wrong.

How Criitcsim Werk

This wasn’t the fandom I’d made friends in over 2010. Hell, this wasn’t the fandom of 2013. This was a fandom made up of Babies. They were making their first coltish stumblings into media criticism and with it, dredging up the same brain-dead bullshit from Tumblr circa 2008.

Suddenly I was brought face to face with people who seemed to think that if a character couldn’t be likable or good that the story itself couldn’t be likable or good; that one bad element means the story is unsalvageable (lol u pussies); the implication that one is bad for liking it; the destructive juvenile insistence that media accurately measures its fans’ moral qualities en masse like an astrological sign. This goes far beyond simple like or dislike and plunges head-first into Puritanism: praying loudly on street-corners instead of quietly in a dark corner where God might hear you.

At one point I had a kid go off about how they wouldn’t take time to understand Booker DeWitt’s perspective because he had (fictionally) taken part in a genocide. (That same person said the Native American element had been employed for shock value, a thought that sometimes keeps me up at night, because it is legitimately one of the dumbest criticisms the game has ever received.) At another point I saw someone acting personally offended that (fictional person) Dr. Suchong’s (fictional) data was being stolen (in a fiction) by a (fictional) racist who would (fictionally) take credit for (fictional person) Suchong’s (fictional) inventions “while calling him slurs”. Sure, a better question would have been, “Why would the creative team opt to do this” rather than assume intentional racism from a Jewish creative director with an in-office multi-ethnic team in the year of our lord 2013, but why not handwave the choice with prurient moral dismay so your audience won’t beat you to death with bats? 

It was as though fans were treating these completely fictional characters as real people whose personal gods had opted to torment them, and that their tormentors merited the kind of censure that psychopaths should receive. As I hope all of you understand, this is fucking madness.

More than once I saw people posting about hating the studio or the creative director in ways that seemed intense, unreasoning, and excessive—notably an “I Hate [Irrational Games creative director] Ken Levine” stamp (rofl the more things change amirite). People get so performatively moralistic about it that I started wondering if I missed something big along the way. Was there some secret Voxophone I missed swearing fealty to baby Hitler or some shit?

Double Standards

At the same time, I was utterly confused. BioShocks 1 and 2 both featured some absolutely ghastly bullshit based on real-life horrors and a thick mix of complicated human beings—many of them victims who have become monsters. The fact they are grounded in historical tragedies is a huge part of their appeal. Hell, I don’t think those games would have had half their meaning without World Wars I and II and the threat of a third.

A gay man who feels so cursed by his orientation that he is incapable of intimacy and systematically destroys his ex-lovers—including the man he loves the most. A Korean who survived Japanese occupation and a Jewish Holocaust survivor repeat the violence and traumas exacted upon them and their people, subjecting a new generation to agonies unthinkable. Chasing the shadows of Bolsheviks, a Russian citizen becomes the brutal tyrant that he loathed. A rich lawyer with an easygoing drawl designs a concentration camp and systematically harvests hundreds, if not thousands of political prisoners, selling them out to medical testing for a quick buck.

But a Native man who destroys his own people and class to ensure his own survival and social acceptability is too far? This character is where people drew the line, so much so that the entire game is disavowed? Hell, if you’re just talking about Booker (rather than Comstock), he doesn’t have anywhere near the largest bodycount. If we were to judge on the metric of human misery alone, Booker wouldn’t even hit the top ten. 

Keep in mind that the most-discussed BioShock game on Tumblr is BioShock 2, and that one of the biggest fandom favorites is Augustus Sinclair—the easy-talkin’ Georgia lawyer who sells your character into horrors past all human comprehension, as he sold hundreds before and after you. Sinclair is a motherfucker so vile that BioShock 2 gives you no choice but to murder him. But Sinclair is also pleasant; good-looking to some; spends the whole game making sweet love to your ear; is one of the only true positive experiences you experience in a horror story. Unlike DeWitt, a man who is brutal and awful from step one, Sinclair is smooth and sweet. Unlike DeWitt, Sinclair’s victims are faceless, completely fictional, and carry no political or social baggage.

People fuckin’ ship this guy with Subject Delta, his explicit victim. He’s usually described as a squishy cinnamon roll. In most fanfiction, he often gets to escape to the surface and fuck Delta while helping raise Eleanor as Dad 2. It is rare that I find fanfiction that acknowledges his monsterhood in all its glory. In fact, I can only think of two.

Literacy Comes in Levels

My problem with the over-the-top hatred of BioShock Infinite is along the same lines as my confusion at Twilight and Harry Potter hate: there is so much worse out there (how much do the haters actually engage with media if they think this is that bad—yes, even considering the shitty creators themselves!), the hatred far outweighs the sin committed (in BioShock’s case, the truly bad bits are not central enough to derail the larger narrative), people don’t seem to hate it so much as they want to be seen hating it, fans want to enforce an unspoken rule hating it (bitches this is poison. Stop this), and there’s something about the hate that stinks of poor reading comprehension.

A great metric for general literacy is the newspaper. In journalism, you’re writing for the lowest-common denominator, which for years here in the USA has been about a fifth-grade reading level (about 10-11 years old, for my non-American readers). The AP posted an article a couple years back about how the general reading comprehension of Americans needs to be dropped to a third-grade one (8-9 years), and baby, I’m here to say it’s true. 

Most of the problem is that the American education system is shitty as fuck. The rest of it is from an extremely American disdain of intellectualism and the arts. People are not taught how to interpret art or literature—a difficult and subtle skill which involves accepting such truths as “multiple contradictory readings can exist and yet be simultaneously correct”, “the author can be a complete tool and still be right about things”, “the author can be a great person and still write horrifyingly incorrect bullshit”, and “worthwhile works can be ridiculously long and it really is your fault for not having an attention span”. 

Media criticism must be learned through trial, error, asking questions, confidently swaggering into a public space to announce your brilliant insight only to have your ass handed to you (usually by your older self ten years later), being willing to admit you swaggered confidently into a public space to state bullshit and then amending your bullshit only to produce more bullshit, and otherwise making a complete and utter cock of yourself. We are taught to fear and flee pain and failure, despite the fact this is how we learn and improve. Because we judge our value by whether or not we are “smart,” we are afraid of displaying that we don’t know something or might be mistaken–better not to try at all than to reveal ourselves to be fools. And yet the best way to learn is to crash up against someone else and be proven wrong!

American parents are terrified of hurting their children to the point that they spare them cognitive dissonance of any kind, disavowing difficult art—without any appreciation for the fact that art is how we provide safe spaces to explore key human experiences, better preparing us to face those difficult subjects when there are real-world consequences (sex, gender and social expression, grief, violence, predation, illness, interacting with people of different ideologies, whatever new issue is pissing off some smooth-brained old motherfucker somewhere). 

If parents and teachers aren’t teaching us how to interpret art, we’re probably never going to develop the skill at all, or crash unsubtly into it in a piecemeal fashion (hello it me). Another unfortunate side effect is that these readers tend to be blitheringly superficial: they are literally intellectually incapable of reading deeper than the uppermost layer of a text. The curtains are always blue.

And let’s not forget the role moral performatism plays in media criticism, which although faaar from new, has reached hilarious levels in the age of social media. What’s important isn’t understanding something, it’s finding something to symbolically burn at the stake so everyone knows God loves us: please keep loving me, please don’t hurt me, please don’t throw me on the fire—for performatism is not for outsiders. We long for human connection so fucking much that it’s more important to destroy what might point out our fallibilities than it is to let ourselves stand in the furnace and burn out the dross.

What do you think the point of BioShock Infinite was?

Emotional Machines

Let’s face it. Human beings give a lot more credence to how something makes them feel than they do its complex invisible reality. We are not logical creatures; we are emotional ones. Our logic is too new a biological mechanism to override something as powerfully stupid as our primal lizard brains.

Knowing this, let’s take BioShock’s most popular characters. The first two are Subject Delta and Jack Wynand, the protagonists of BioShocks 2 and 1, respectively; and why not? They’re the characters we play. In the first two BioShocks, whether or not you kill Little Sisters determines the ending you receive. In other words, Delta and Jack can only be as “wicked” as the players are. 

How do people want to see themselves? As good. What do people want to see around themselves? Good. (What is “good”? Uh, well,,,,,,) What do they want? Simple moral questions with simple moral answers. And in the first two BioShocks, what is moral is obvious: don’t kill little girls. It’s actually kind of insulting once you say it out loud.

In-fandom, Jack and Subject Delta are almost never painted as murderers or monsters, but as victims and heroes; I saw someone musing about putting Subject Delta on a “gentle giants” poll and I nearly choked on my own tongue. I only saw that musing because someone put Subject Delta and Jack in a “Best Fathers” poll. Nobody in-fandom really considers the “evil” or “complicated” endings as canon choices, despite those versions being fully understandable alternate readings, with a story that doesn’t make sense without them. (I don’t believe Burial at Sea is necessarily canon; in fact, I would bet good money that it is a huge middle finger lol, mostly because a number of brain-dead motherfuckers won’t take unhappiness for an answer.)

Most fandom art and writing is gentle, sweet, good: the symbolic healing of the damaged, the salvation of innocents, the turning of new leaves. These things are not just saccharine sweet—they tend to be unrealistically sweet. Now, far be it from me to demand these works cease. There’s a reason they exist. People write them because they need hope and happiness; I have enjoyed them greatly myself and intend to enjoy them in the future. But if y’all get to have your dessert, I demand the right to have my dinner.

The Colours Out of Earth

Let there be media where the opposite can also be true: where everything is unbelievably complicated and unforgivably fucked-up. Let there be characters who slide slurs into their speech without thinking. Let there be characters who destroy themselves in a thousand different ways, not all of them obvious, some of them horrifying. Let there be well-meaning people struggling with all their mights to do what is right only to destroy everyone around them and then completely miss the fact it’s all their faults. Let there be wickedness painted as goodness, superficial appearances accepted over essential and inherent values, denial of change and transformation, failure to accept that what is old must die and what is new must live, human stupidity and short-sightedness and cruelty in all their flavors. Let’s smash it all together and see how it plays out. 

Oh, badly? No shit! But “badly” isn’t the point. How does it play out?

Let there be a world of gradients—a place I can float from color to color, hue to hue, value to value, while attempting to figure out where, why, how, and by whom they transform—to taste concepts in a hundred different ways, test their textures by a hundred different mediums, insert them into a hundred different contexts. I need to understand why I feel the way I do; I need to understand morality in all its hideous, fragmentary glory. For I have been sold to a ideology of blacks and whites, and let me tell you: it prepares you for nothing, and it will always destroy what is most precious about human life.

I can no longer believe in a world where what is lost always returns, because that world does not exist. I have a reflexive need to come to terms with Finality: what I have lost, what I have destroyed, what will never return, what will never be better. I have a reflexive need to understand Transformation: what I am now, what is as of the present, what has risen shambling from the ashes, what turns to gaze upon me in the darkness. I need to understand what is wretched about me as much as I need to heal myself. How can I heal if I can’t understand how I have hurt and been hurt? 

I need to shine a light in the dark. Not to remodel it, not to destroy it—because I also can’t believe in a world where the wicked is destroyed forever—but to behold it, to learn from it, to view my own impact upon it, to accept how it has become a part of me, to learn how to do my best (because that’s all one can do). I must learn to love people more than causes, I must learn to love people rather than the act of winning, I must learn to love people rather than battle. I need to stand in that endless black with the lamp off and my eyes closed, letting the agony roll over me, burning with a fire that throws no light, rolling back and forth from an intense self-loathing to a fury at a society that destroys what is most valuable because it didn’t make them feel the way they wanted.

The Unforgivable

I believe that there are only two differences between Booker DeWitt and his equally cursed cohorts.

In the Hall of Whores: The Unmarked Slate

First, unlike the previous two games, where you enter the world as a tabula rasa and might roleplay as what you perceive as a good person, you are explicitly put into the shoes of a monster, and nothing you do can save you.

With other shitty BioShock characters, you are passively watching other people, and you are able to hold yourself apart. Sure, everyone else is crazy as fuck from using biological Kryptonite, but you’re too smart to end up a crazy fucking asshole like them! Sure, you are now technically a mass murderer, but those fuckers deserved it, damn it! 

“Look at this crazy bastard!” you say, rolling your eyes at the Steinmans and Cohens and Ryans and Fontaines. “It sure is a great thing I’m not a crazy bastard!”

You are able to escape acknowledging that you, too, in certain circumstances, might be the crazy bastard. You are being challenged to stand in the body of a person who has committed unforgivable sins. Imagine if you yourself committed those sins. Imagine what sins you have already committed. Imagine what brutalities you cannot take back. Imagine what horrors you have wreaked just by breathing.

“Ahhhh!” said players, probably. “What do you mean I’m not allowed to be good?”

Because that’s what the game was designed to do. Because “good” is a fucking cop-out and if it’s how you live with yourself wait until you find out you’ve been doing horrifying bullshit all your life without question. You can be evil by association through no fault of your own.

Original Sin

Second, the plight of Native Americans is a sin that non-Natives will always carry, and the socially conscious are aware of this even if they don’t know how to put it into words. The state of affairs being what it is, it is unlikely that First Peoples will ever be treated humanely, much less have their land returned. They must struggle for scraps of what is rightfully theirs while we lounge on their corpses. We cannot help but benefit from their destruction; we are made unwitting partners with our forebears; we steal the fruits of their lands and make mockeries of their faiths and identities. We have destroyed part of what made this world fascinating and unique and most of it can never be returned. Even if everything were to be made right tomorrow, their genocide is a sin that we will carry until we die, because the only reason we could be here at all is because they were killed. 

The obvious solution stands before us, but the powers that be are so much greater than we that we are effectively powerless, and achieving anything less than total restoration smacks of anticlimax. 

This is unbearable.

How can one think of oneself as a good person if one sees the good that must be done, but cannot achieve it? If one’s actions are meaningless? Goodness without action is pretension.

We are all Booker DeWitt. We have all set fire to the tipi. We swept the ashes away, we ignored the sizes of the bones, we built a CVS on their graves, and then we made statues and holidays commemorating Native Americans like the world’s cheapest “Thinking of You” card. We have de-fanged them, transformed them into cardboard cutouts, and set them up as cute little side characters in our sweeping American dream.

Booker is not a man. Booker is America and Americans—and America and Americans are monstrous: one part hypocrisy, two parts incessant violence, three parts constant peacocking, and four parts dumb as a stump.

The Monsters We Make

Outside of the message about “choice,” an enormous part of BioShock’s thematic ensemble is the creation of monsters. How are monsters created? Who or what is responsible for creating them? What do the monsters think made them the ways they are? Can a monster be saved? How? Is it enough to acknowledge you did wrong and want to be a better person?

Maybe most people are aware on some instinctive level of what facing one’s own monsterhood means. No one wants it. It’s not fun. It hurts. It’s embarrassing. It’s destructive. It’s admitting you don’t have it all together and might never, ever—that despite your best actions, you can have it horribly wrong at any point. In an age where we demand moral perfection, it demands vulnerability: you must admit that sometimes you’re the racist, the transphobe, the sexist, the nationalist, the classist, the homophobe, the violent, the wrong, the dumbfuck. 

Human beings are not built to be moral; human beings are built to survive. We so rapidly learn how to deal with our contexts at such young ages that we don’t have the time or capabilities to question why those contexts are the ways they are or why it is demanded we perform the ways we do.

In a very real way, BioShock Infinite demands vulnerability of us. It demands you look in the mirror and see what is monstrous in you—how you have been created—manufactured—a tool, a machine, a trained animal. It asks you to recognize that you can be a monster simply by association. And if we can’t look into the mirror and truly acknowledge that monsterhood, we run very real risks of becoming or enabling those monsters in one way or another.

Worst of all: perhaps monsterhood isn’t optional. Perhaps the monster was inside of us from the very beginning. It’s not a matter of if you become a monster, but when, under what circumstances, by whose hand. What is more, believing the “right” moral stances will not save you. Monsterhood can afflict anyone, in any ideology, any political stance, in any social movement, in any faith. The only element that can save you is to truly love other people, and even then, you can fail, for there can be states where there is no winner and ways to misread how best to treat another person.

Environment and Society: Context Will Not Be Denied

BioShock 1’s original ending is Jack-as-monster, regardless of how many children he saves, regardless of your feelings as player. He passes through the gauntlet of Rapture, but he has supped of its poison. And he wasn’t poisoned when he entered Rapture the second time—he was poisoned the minute he was conceived. He was born of it. He had no hope of ever escaping it—he never could have—he’d never had a choice to begin with.

No matter what choices you make in BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth will always kill you. Why? Because she has seen every world—every context—every limitation—every boon. And there is no way to stop what has been; there is no way to undo what has been done. The minute you have committed to a decision, you have split the universe; there is no telling what kind of person it will make you. In fact, there’s no telling which of your decisions will matter at all. Only Elizabeth can see because she is the unlimited future: your offspring stands before you, judge and jury, and you will have no choice but to accept her verdict, for despite your name, you are incapable of controlling how you are interpreted. 

Elizabeth sits across from you in the boat and stares without blinking. She sees a million million similar Bookers. Some are a little bit taller, some a little bit shorter, some a little heavier or lighter. Some more-resemble one grandparent or another. They have different colored ties. This one blinks when rain hits him in the eyeball. That one took a brutal beating back on the airship and one eye is swollen shut. That one can’t stop shaking; this one is unable to speak at all; one hasn’t yet lost hope, although even he doesn’t realize it.

They all lowered the torch to the tipi.

The baptism determined Comstock; what determined Booker?

Why Booker Is

In BioShock 1, characters are often stand-ins for larger concepts. Thus Ryan stands in as Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Ubermensch; Bill McDonagh as Andrew Ryan’s conscience; Diane McClintock as the citizenry of Rapture; Captain Sullivan as law and order; Frank Fontaine as the truest expression of Objectivism in its distilled form.

Who is Booker? Most importantly: why is he?

Booker is a fictional character with a brutal background based on historical events, alternative and true. Booker might be Lakota; Booker might have undergone forced Anglicization; Booker might have been ripped from his parents; Booker is a product of violence, perhaps literally. Booker is American exceptionalism distilled. Booker is the past in constant judgment of itself, unable to live with itself and unable to die. Booker destroys what is best in him and around him in exchange for belonging. Booker has sold the future to absolve his sins. Booker has sold his daughter because he is a fictional character in a work of fiction who needs to be propelled.

Booker is a shell, a sluice, an environment. Booker is the broken shape you are meant to fill, horrified. His internal shape should torture you as it has tortured him: the messy slaggy soul of a shitty tin soldier.

Does Booker take the baptism and become Comstock? If so, it might be his second one. His last name literally means “the white.” His first name can mean “author.” It is most likely his second name: an attempt to rewrite himself. And when he was unable to rewrite himself the first time, when the cognitive dissonance boiled at the edges of his skull, he found there was only one way to cleanse himself the second: to remake the world entirely. To force transformation on everyone else. To take vengeance on a world that could never love him, never want him—to create a world that has no choice but to love him. If he can’t change the world’s mind, he’ll change the world.

Note what he opts to do: to take the fight to the environment–to the unyielding universe.

Context Is Everything

It is no mistake that BioShock Infinite occurs in 1912: the sinking of the Titanic is often credited with ending an unfettered optimism, a period when the Western world believed technology had brought the human race into a golden age. With World War I—which would follow a mere two years later—came modern warfare and all the horrors thereof, not the least of which was the realization that humans had created a kind of war that could destroy the entire world. World War I also seeded the rise of the United States: much of the wealth of warring Europe—itself fat on the blood of subjugated peoples and stolen lands—would rattle into America’s coffers.

It is also no mistake that BioShock 1 directly follows World War II. With WWII came a heightened terror—that this war is not the last war, that there will never be an end to war, that war will go on expanding and expanding until it has consumed us all. World War III would not be denied: prettily packaged in the ideals of its children, it simply followed the utopians down to their underwater tombs. According to BioShock 1’s original ending, World War III is not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when.

But even more important than the history in the BioShock games are their settings. Mute leviathans, Rapture and Columbia determine all of your behaviors: from where you can exist in space to all of your desires and goals to how you choose to present yourself to how you opt to behave. Isolated in extremism—whether that extremism is the crushing depths of the ocean or the unbearable lightness of the air—most of their power is that they simply cannot be escaped. You can’t outrun them. They are everywhere. They are everything.

Like Lovecraft before it, BioShock acknowledges the greatest horror of all: you cannot escape your context. Your context does not only involve your immediate surroundings. It is also historical; contains zeitgeists from various cultures and subcultures; is filled with pressures both personal and impersonal, human and nonhuman. Many of these forces can hurt you. Many more can destroy you. What you do to survive depends very much on where, when, and with whom you must live.

Human beings are not built to be moral.

The Death of the Future

In the film Operation, Burma!, a soldier asks Errol Flynn: “Who were you before the war?”

“An architect,” says Flynn.

Who were you? Because that “you” doesn’t matter now. That “you” is irrelevant. So you’re an architect. What the war does to you; what these deaths mean to you; your past, your education, your loves and desires and forward motivation, the you that could have been outside war, the you that slogs alone into the brutal future—all completely irrelevant. Your forebears don’t care so long as you can bleed. 

Children are the manufactured tools of their creators—helpless before the enormous strength of their elders and the zeitgeists that enclose them, poisoned by their parents’ insecurities and flaws, utilized like weapons regardless of the cost—often with great love.

Consider something more than the traumatized culture: consider the society filled with traumatized children; consider the traumatized society. Consider channeling children through that trauma over and over and over again, if you can. Poisoned—poisoned—poisoned—all of us poisoned. Poisoned by those who loved us most. Poisoned by the people we trusted. Poisoned by the people who meant to make a better world.

I believe it is notable that creative director Ken Levine is Jewish; I have read from multiple accounts that the European Jewish diaspora was uniquely traumatized from the Holocaust and passed that trauma down upon their own families. I sometimes wonder if he saw that firsthand.

The fathers eat sour grapes; their children’s teeth are set on edge.

Choice: Player Expectations and Entitlement

For players who experienced BioShocks 1 and 2 with their multiple endings (Good, Bad, and “ok bye then I guess” respectively), it must have been jarring to suddenly reckon with being a monster. How often I see players grousing that nothing they do will change their wicked pasts! These players completely miss that the only meaningful choice had already been made, that it had nothing to do with the player at all, and even if they had been there, DeWitt was still unforgivable. The only way to go on was to bow out and allow the future to redefine herself.

Nobody was ready for that shit. 

Like it or not, BioShock 1 had set a precedent. Not everyone’s going to read up on creator intentions. If any keyword came blaring through the noise, it would have been “choice.” Most players only recognize choice by the ability to make it, not the absence of it, and most of them weren’t equipped to recognize that its lack was the point. The meaningless choices were commentary, and they were as much about the player as they were about DeWitt himself. Not every choice will be meaningful, will it? And there will be choices you make that will be momentous, but they will seem very small when you make them.

Because most players had experienced what they thought was a basic moralistic tale in the first two games, and would see Infinite not as reflection upon America’s destructive personality, its obsession with a meaningless Good/Bad duocracy, and the infinite, cyclical nature of violence, they saw Booker’s death as corrupted artsy claptrap.

“I did the good schuut,” they say. “I want the good schuut end. Where happy end??? Where treat :(”

Bitch the future is here. 

Time to die.

It’s Not Me, It’s You

Generally I despise essays that end with, “But the real fault lay with the clueless motherfuckers who played the game!” Often, if enough people complain, there’s something to it; the message has been obscured somehow. Details or explanations weren’t clear or intuitive enough, some mechanism isn’t working somewhere, some character needs to talk more or less, some setting needs to be transformed. O artist: stop whining and get cracking. If everywhere you go smells like shit, it’s time to look under your shoe. 

But sometimes it’s true that a piece of media is on a level folks aren’t equipped for. Think of every literature and art class you’ve ever had, if you’ve been fortunate enough to have one. There’s always someone scoffing in a back row, like here are all these jokers making more of something than they should. Similarly, some of you have been arguing with me this entire time, saying: “I just wanted a video game. I just wanted to shoot something and feel better and instead I get this bullshit ending that makes no sense.”

First of all, smart bullshit (and even fucked-up attempts at smart bullshit! Hi BioShock 2) gets to exist on this Earth along with Gmod and Roblox or Schuut Big Tits 84 (there are 84 tits and you must shoot them all. They explode into smaller tits) or whatever-the-fuck-else you think is a worthwhile gaming experience. Second of all, miserable bullshit also gets to exist, and what did you fucking expect if you played through either BioShocks 1 or 2? When you hear a football player quavering out in the darkness for his mom to pick him up, how’d that make you feel? What did you think was going to happen to Jack after pounding back the entire Plasmid library, the cancer cocktail that explicitly destroys the fuck out of its users? Third of all, if you missed the smart bullshit going on in BioShock 1 and didn’t think BioShock Infinite might be larger in scope in more ways than one, that’s on you. Fourthly, if you were simply satisfied with saving like, 15 kids from a violently-perishing city of thousands and call it good, I mean… is that really where your thoughts end? Are you really that fucking small?

It’s Not You, It’s Me

You ever meet those motherfuckers who talk shit about Shakespeare or modern art? And you’re just left there staring with dead eyes at this poseur who mistakes playing devil’s advocate for intelligence, cheek resting on your fist, thinking about the fanfic you’re writing, wondering who it’s for, remembering that all your smut-writing friends get ten times the viewers, and considering throwing yourself in front of a bus.

Yeah, there’s a personal element to this: the fact that BioShock Infinite is the kind of art I like and long for and want to make myself, the fact that the game was successful and yet the studio was closed, the way its DLC was so rushed that the story plopped out like half-baked mystery meat—realizing that the same forced rush was at 2K’s behest for BioShock 2, as well, and wondering how good art can ever be made in this unforgiving capitalist hellscape. The game was weirdly niche and I’m not 100% sure I’ll ever experience anything quite like it again. And with the whiners in this fandom, the loud ones controlling the narrative, some fresh brain-dead exec in some brain-dead publisher might be like: “We must keep it safer and simpler for these fuckin babby adult!”

Nah bitch nah. Naaaah. Cry some more while I enjoy me my fucking dinner. I’ll eat it while making loud smacking noises and keeping unbroken eye contact. Come here. Let’s look at each other. It’ll be like Lady and the Tramp but we want to punch each other. What truer form of love can there be here in the modern world?

I keep having to remind myself that this response isn’t new. I keep having to remind myself of my place. I keep having to remind myself why I write, why I read, why I like to experience art to begin with. It’s not for the reasons other people do it. Oh, I want the same emotional release as everyone else, I want the same rollicking plots, I adore the same tropes. I seek out everything and anything for a good time; I’ll read Moby Dick today and a smutty 5,000-word abortion with the world’s most suspect grammar tomorrow. I don’t give a shit if it’s low- or high-brow; there are all kinds of ways to have fun and there are all kinds of ways to engage with art, and lord knows I’ve done my share of smooth-brain criticism. The problem is that I’ve always wandered off by myself, sunk into an all-consuming reverie, on tracks that no one else ever seems to be on, and then looked up to talk excitedly about something only to realize I’m alone. And whose fault is that?

By the same token, maybe I haven’t talked enough. Maybe I spend too much time with my mouth shut. Maybe I haven’t stood up enough for things that are worth our time, worth talking up, worth setting on pedestals.

I tell you, BioShock Infinite will stand the test of time. It’s too good for this. It’s too good for you, warts and all. Some of you will grow to understand that; some of you won’t; many of you will shrug and go on with your lives (and this is fine; it is only a video game). But I’ve truly not seen anything like it. I can’t believe a mainstream video game was allowed to be so fucking brutal about the American juggernaut, and what’s more, that it sold like hotcakes. Plus, I can’t think of any works in recent memory that have struck me so close to my own heart. No creative work has made me start beating a monster’s face into a washbasin for ten hours only to lift her by the scalp and see my own eyes looking back.

Look into those eyes. See your own stupid impulses pouring out. Your own stupid excuses, your violences, your sins—your claws, your teeth, your costumes, your hilarious attempts at interpretive dance. The beast doth protest too much.

O, monster—behold thyself—and tremble.

[locke-esque-monster]

In the newest installment of "plot holes that make me insane in TUA season 4".

So S4 Five and Lila and up briefly visiting Five's original apocalypse that he spent about 40 years in.

(I say about 40 years because we never really did a breakdown between Five's time in the apocalypse vs his time with the commission. Was it 40 years in the apocalypse and then some additional time at the commission? Was it 40 years total and some of that included years at the commission because he wasn't being fully honest with his siblings when he first got back? Was it 40 years and either so little time at the commission it couldn't be measured in years - like weeks or months because he was that efficient of a killer with his powers to work his way into infamy that quickly? Or even that with Five constantly time traveling it was harder to measure time at the commission? And on that note, when he traveled back he said Delores said the numbers were wrong, so does that mean the commission let him bring her with him on his trips and he abandoned her in 1963? Or did he just keep talking to her in his head? But I digress.)

Let's ignore at the moment how S4 Five should really have some trauma or intense reaction upon seeing this world he was stuck in for 40 years. And also ignore the implications of the multiverse and how it really should have split here if this is really Five's OG apocalypse, since he has no memory of this event happening. (Even though we definitely should not ignore ether of those things.)

No, let's focus on the real problem. That if the subway system exists between timelines how in the actual fuck is it right there and pre-S1 Five never investigated it.

Five who said he tried every method to get back to his family. Five who had roughly 40 years alone. Five who was eating bugs to survive. He never considered going down there for shelter? Raid for supplies, like the vending machines? Because from what we can see, the trains run through regularly, he should have seen one if he went down the subway for even a short period of time.

And that's disregarding the fact OG Five saw 2 people, one who looks like him, run in and out of the subway. By my math OG Five has been there alone around 6 years. Maybe he thinks he's hallucinating after all this time. Maybe he ruled out looking into the subway before for some reason like safety. Or maybe he missed the train down there with a very brief visit. But you truly think with the possibility of 2 people appearing there he then wouldn't go that way and (re)investigate the subway somewhere between now and the time The Handler recruited him?

Because the OG Five we know would not have left any rock unturned trying to get back to his family. And god knows the only things on his agenda for literal decades were survive and try to figure out how to get back.

It was bad enough that S4 had a total character assassination of Five at the end of the series. But it's even more frustrating they also managed to retroactively discredit the intelligence of the original version of Five we met in season 1 by accident.

[yannaryartside]

SydCarmy vs Lucus

AMBITIONS AND PERSPECTIVES ON ART

This is a long one. Is about the series's themes on pursuing the arts, and the reasons that this ships work as symbolism for it.

When thinking about the reasons Marcus and Sydney were not going to work out (as far as we can see), I read a comment saying: "they are not on the same level" and the more I thought about it, I realized it not only meant they are not equal in culinary expertise, but they also have different ways to "live" their path in the culinary arts, almost opposite philosophies about it. And all of it is explained in their conversations with their (possible) romantic interest. 

WHAT IS AN ART PHILOSOPHY?

When you enter a path in the arts, any part, at some point, you will have to make decisions about how you are going to transit this path because there are very different ways to live a creative life, to make money out of it, and how feel fulfilled about it. Many people will enter their path with an idea of what success looks like, probably modeled after an artist that you admired, the desire for your art to be recognized as good, or as "the best," or even to disrupt what came before you. Shortly, art philosophy is how you value your path in the arts: What makes it good art? What point of your career is gonna bring you satisfaction? What guides you to it?

CARMY AND SIDNEY : "LET'S BE THE BEST AND REACH LOST OF PEOPLE"

They both want to be "the best," their definition of it equals stars, reviews, magazine interviews, and restaurant numbers. The creative impulse is only as valuable as is booming, and a chef is only as good as the size of their kitchen.

They both want exterior recognition and aspire to a big audience, and their satisfaction in their craft depends on that; what makes their unbearable jobs worth it somehow is if "people loved the food." They both have wounds and bonds formed around food and love making people happy with the food, but they have selected a perspective of what "the best" is and is an ambition they run almost blindly to. You can think the burger place on your block has the best food in the world. There are cooks utterly content with that, but the Michelling stars are telling otherwise.

Of course, this is the most tangible way to measure success in arts, the singer with the most loved songs, the book with the most readers. Quality is supposed to be evident by popularity, and they want it, decorated with the prize of succeding in such a competitive industry. They have tried to win the culinary rat race and have regrets about it.

Carmy (motivated by the rejection and abandonment from his brother) worked his ass to unhealthy levels to climb the culinary ladder, living to best everybody around him and run the best restaurant on the planet (which, if we believe his monologue, only took two fucking years). Sydney is presented to us as somebody with equal creative powers, intelligence, and instincts as Carmy, which is particularly obvious in their brainstorming sessions. But she hasn't been offered the same opportunities. Her previous bosses described her as "incredibly talented, impatient, and green." and one friend told her as "always trying to be the best." There is much to say about how her impatience may sabotage her ambitions. Still, it may be because she fears getting stuck, labeled, or never recognized by her talents.

These two have 3 things they prioritize in their art paths:

Creative expression+people love the food

Exterior recognition based on the industry standards (stars and big kitchens)

A rat race (sense of urgency) and your ability to play on it.

What makes your food the "best" is comparing it to everyone else and "winning" in a particular category. 

Not to mention, they are both deeply aware of the logistics and money sides of the restaurant life. It is not like they don't value inspiration, but their ambition is the defining force behind said inspiration. 

MARCUS AND LUCA: "LET'S BE INSPIRED AND EVOLVE"

Luca was introduced to us as someone who was "trying to keep up with Carmy, who was much better than him," the same way the audience feels Marcus is someone trying to impress and keep up with Syd. Luca knows the culinary world, has traveled, and has a privileged position making high-end desserts (possibly in a place with stars). He is the Carmy to Marcus's Sydney. 

Btw, there are some crazy parallels here too:

Marcus and Sydney have a wound/fear related to their mothers.

Luca and Carmy have strained relationships with their siblings (Luca has a sister he cannot find).

Both Carmy and Sydney got into cooking because of early childhood passion

Marcus and Luca got into it by "chance," discovering a passion that they never expected to love this much or be good at.

Mentor x student relationship.

Back to Marcus and Lucas's perspective of art. Notice how Carmy was trapped in a sense of urgency environment, with many people working for him, in NYC, a chaotic city; while Luca seems to work entirely by himself, in a pretty chill environment, in a rather peaceful city. Luca and Marcus thrive on this environment, which is about thought and delicacy, unlike the "efficient, fast run kitchen" Carmy and Sydney established.

Marcus had no philosophy about his craft because he was barely starting. Still, he adopts Luca's philosophy, which has 3 parts:

You may never be the best. Some artists have to let go of the idea of being "the best." There is a lot to say about this. But I want to express this using an example of the craft that I aspire to get into: writing. A friend once told me that some books are not meant to reach millions because they have a very specific audience, and what makes them good is how "memorable they are." More of it, some artists are never recognized in their times. The industry may not be made for them, or it may be just luck. Limiting the value of art by the industry standard is depriving the world of art that needs to be more exploratory, spontaneous, or just free. 

Since industry validation may not be available to you, instead of "being the best" against others, you can decide, "My only competition is me from yesterday." This perspective is super important because it gives you something to aspire to, ensures your creative growth, and allows reinvention.

It is not about skill but being open to the world, yourself, and other people. It is not about fancy techniques or recognition but about being inspired. 

To Luca and now Marcus, the creative process is as good as is honest, and a chef is as good as the effort he puts into it. The "self-exploration" and the recognition of the people surrounding him allowed Marcus to create his desserts: The Copenhagen sundae, for his ultimate school (and Luca), "Mum's" honey bun, Sidney's donut (the first one in believing in him and when he recognized his dreams), and "The Michael" the one that put him to make bread, and the tribute that needs to be made.

[kompaktcat]

Sasha here!

CW here for references to hypnosis;

With the recent vibe of robot girls being The Thing on here lately I thought it might be fun to share a related thing of mine that's been an ongoing project for a while. While I have not had the drive or capacity to really work on new updates for it for a long while (I just kinda came out of a bit of a dormancy which does not help), this project was the collision between my enjoyment of machine/robot/pet play, hypno stuff, and a l o v e for prop making that we don't get to indulge nearly enough.

The goal with this was to make something that looked like it was plucked straight out of its universe and plopped into ours, and while not perfect, I'm proud of the work that went into it. It's intended to carry the vibe of an old software manual binder, but in a retro future sorta way.

The other goal was "Imagine if a robot girl had a manual to mess with her firmware" because let's not dance around that.

Please note that within the context of this project, where "System" appears, is meant to convey "operating system," as this project was conceived prior to RealisationsTM

Presenting the Firmware Operator's Manual

Neofelis Integrated Systems is imagined to be a prominent industry leader in the electronics integration and cybernetics field, that is rumored to dabble in biosynthetics and synthetic intelligence development, but these rumors are unsubstantiated outside of the company. In reality they're a Bit Fucked beneath the surface.

Opening the cover, numerous post-its are scattered on the interior, to help sell the idea that this manual existed in a real working environment. An extra LOTO tag is included in the manual, Just In CaseTM

The interior title page mirrors the outer cover, but with some additional information. Numerous pages within this project are also dotted with UV reactive EUrion constellations to depict anti-duplication measures.

Contents 1/2. The second half won't be shown here because Reasons. EPM here refers to Elevated Permissions Mode -wiggle eyebrows-

You can't just design and construct synth prototypes without proper regulation. That just won't do. Everything is definitely above board here.

These pages are just such a vibe. I can't help but add them between sections.

There are a few graphics that were made and sprinkled into this project to really fuel the software manual vibe. The chassis diagram in the print copy is now out of date, slightly. Also, never miss an opportunity to hide memes in a creative kink project. We like easter eggs.

Beyond this there's complete sections regarding ethics and safety (some of which is genuinely important SSC/RACK info, because that's important), and the sections containing various hypno commands, which will not be shared openly for obvious reasons. There's also the Error Codes page at the back, full of error codes I really have not bothered to memorise admittedly.

Anyways, that's all to share. Questions are encouraged though!

[multi-level-shipper]

This shit was a fucking acid trip, like most of the game.

Anyway, something that poked my brain was the Infirmary. For all this game's insanity, there were actually some decent roots planted for worldbuilding/ character development.

It seems like the reason the cast ended up in Queen Bouncelia's domain is because they're treating the player as if they have 6 stars in GTA. Seline is no exception to this rule, and that seems to be her motivation for coming down to the lower floor, as she watched us leave in Chapter 3.

Toadster noted in his "Archives" that she was already hiding when brought in, and crying in her shell. She may have been antagonized by a bigger enemy- likely Kittysaurus or Tama/Chamataki (turtle chameleon thing), and she may have gone past the kingdom's walls for sanctuary. (That's just a loose theory, though.)

In any case, at some point she was frightened enough to shut down completely.

This could be some kind of anxiety attack, though there's no way to "diagnose" Seline at this point. Also interesting that Seline felt too afraid to even continue moving around on the lower floors. I think this is meant to speak to just how dangerous the lower floors are- if the giant ass snail is afraid, you should be, too.

Next, Jumbo Josh. Toadster categorizes him as a "Green Gorilla", which in hindsight, weirdly makes a lot of sense.

Firstly, an adult silverback gorilla can bench up to 4,000 lbs (or at least, that's what google told me.) Not that we needed an explanation of why he was able to throw Stinger Flynn, but I can only assume that if we adjusted that number for his size...it probably checks out.

Second, the fact that he walks like a chiropractor's worst nightmare. It took me a second, but I FINALLY realized that his posture is meant to IMITATE A GORILLA. Like, look at this:

DEFINITELY EXPLAINS WHY HE WALKS LIKE A HORSE IN GARRY'S MOD.

And thirdly, Josh's love for vegetables is also a gorilla trait. 85% of a gorilla's diet is leafy greens, with the remaining percentage basically amounting to termites and larvae.

Not too much to say about the Fucked Up Birds, but still! Nice to see them finally displaying a flamingo behavior (AKA their sleeping posture) because they seemed to lean more heavily on ostrich behaviors in previous chapters.

Toadster mentions in his archive for "The Teacher" that she keeps repeating the phrase "I can't be late" over and over to herself after being subdued.

He also notes that the bowling pins "calmed her down," which may not entirely be the case. In Chapter 3, in Banbaleena's "Classroom", each object had an assigned role like Cool Kid and Popular Kid. The bowling pins were meant to be the Bullies.

So Banbaleena is likely stuck in a prison of her own self-doubts right about now, which is doubly sad when considering her insistence in Chapter 3 that she was actually trying to be a good teacher. Either someone placed this idea in her head that she needs to strictly adhere to all these rules, or it's a stress she placed upon herself trying to fulfill her identity as a teacher.

Stinger Flynn gets better as the story progresses. He seems to have an ego to the point where he sees himself as a savior that can't see the faults in his own plans. His initial "safest procedures" plan seemed so obvious to him, but it seems as if he measures success by efficiency rather than the cost of human lives. While he's smart, he's not immune to being wrong, though he has yet to learn this.

He also seems to suffer from some form of depression, or at least intense sadness, and we see this as he talks to Banban in the latest hallucination sequence. Makes sense- his intelligence would make him much more privy to all the horrible things happening around him. It seems as if his high intelligence comes at a high price.

Last note- This might just be a case of recycling animations/rigs, but I think it's cute that Banban shares nearly the same emo pose as Banbaleena.

[leportraitducadavre]

I'm dumb, so what was Itachi's actual plan for his final fight if Sasuke remained in Konoha? Was he going to throw the match? Because there's no way Sasuke would've become stronger than he was in Oto, or even gone through the Susanoo without his own. Did he actually want Sasuke to get the Mangekyou then? Because the only way for that would be Sasuke becoming a traitor or Itachi killing Naruto (hey, he messes up Akatsuki's plan with this, 2 for 1).

You see, there's a very simple way to explain Itachi's reasoning, and that's as easy as to state: He had none. He's a very badly written, stupidly elevated character who is considered an intelligent man for no other reason than because others within manga consider him "smart" to save some face before Kishi's lack of effort with Itachi.

His "plan" (if you can even call it that) was to provoke Sasuke in such a manner that he'd do the opposite of what Itachi was asking him to do. That's right, that was his brilliant plan all along, he tortured, manipulated, and constantly demoted Sasuke's strength because he wanted Sasuke to stay in Konoha and trust Kakashi (whom he also beat up for good measure) with his training.

I guess what he wanted was for Sasuke to "trust his friends" (who he also threatened) and fight alongside them to defeat him, or... well, who the fuck knows? He's an idiotic man with far more idiotic reasoning; Sasuke killing Naruto would make him a traitor in the village's eyes and he'd be hunted for it, those that promised Itachi to protect Sasuke would have an excuse to finally kill the last living member of the clan they hated and what would Itachi freaking do then? Sasuke, without any other place to turn to, would have gone to Orochimaru regardless, and Akatsuki would face a setback, but they'd be able to find Kurama either free or inside another vessel.

Furthermore, Itachi told him that "killing his best friend" was the reason he obtained Mangekyou Sharingan which ended up being a lie so there's no guarantee Sasuke would've actually obtained MS, so him killing Naruto would be incredibly fruitless in this regard, what a stupid moron!

Sasuke NOT killing Naruto was the only thing he did against his brother's "orders" -and thank fuck, because Itachi's attempts at protecting Sasuke not only left a trail of bodies behind him but also almost kill Sasuke multiple times.

[alpaca-clouds]

The Lies We Are Taught In School

Talking about science this week, let me talk about the thing that irks me more than anything: The fact that we get taught so many lies in school. Both in regards to science, and in regards to stuff like history. Like, holy fuck. Why do we get taught that much garbage?

If you google "Lies we got taught in school", you will find an endless amount of listicles going over a variety of lies.

A lot of people in America will of course know that the version of American history they get taught in school is very "clean". Be it their version of how Thanksgiving came to be ("And then the indigenous people and settlers got along just fine"), how the entire story of Matoaka/Pocahontas happened ("And then everyone just got along and no 12yo girls got raped"), or how the Civil War went ("And then slavery was ended and everyone had equal rights, yay").

Another thing that school keeps telling us is the thing I mentioned yesterday: IQ. IQ is not real. At least not as any measure of intelligence. All IQ tests will test is, how good you are at taking IQ tests.

Or one that I found in so many listicles: The food pyramid. The food pyramid is a great example of a thing that a lot of people believe, that is not based on science, but fully on propaganda by an industry. And yet... It is very common in the US - and almost as common in Europe. At least I learned about it in primary school, and never learned a correction of it until I entered university.

Or getting back to history: A lot of history classes teach so much bullshit when it comes to medieval history and how people in medieval times lived. They will act as if the medieval world was just one thing, rather than many things. Oh, and a lot of schools place the witch burnings into the middle ages - even though they all happened AFTER the middle ages.

Or something quite relevant to trans folks: Schools very much teach that there are only two genders and sexes, and that those usually are based on the chromosomes. Even though intersex people exist and might be a lot more common than we actually realize, given that most people are never tested for intersex conditions. And since we know that other than what was long assumed (the supposed fact that almost all intersex people were infertile) is wrong... Yeah, some scientist argue that intersex is a lot more common than assumed. So even from the very biological aspect - without going into gender - it is quite wrong.

The list really could go on and on.

And mind you, some of those myths (especially in regards to history) are so prevailant, that folks who even go to universities and study ajacent stuff will still be believed. I still remember: Two years ago I talked in a historical podcast about the witch hunts, how they happened after the medieval period, how they looked different in different countries, how they did not happen everywhere in Europe, and how they not always were going for women. Mind you, we linked the historical sources under the podcast... And yet, someone I know, who studied history (though with their main focus on Victorian England) went on a long rant how that was all wrong. Was she able to come up with counter sources for her claims? No, obviously not. But she kept insisting even months later.

In general the entirety of all those lies taught in school usually go back to one of three reasons for those lies.

Propaganda. There are quite a few lies in school - especially in regards to history - that are propaganda. Especially when it comes to the sanitizing colonial history. Stuff like how settlers and indigenous people got along fine. How Lincoln ended slavery. Or for us in Germany, how we totally never really were ever involved in any colonialism whatsoever. That is all propaganda. Even stuff like the medieval prejudices are based on the propaganda that history only ever moves forward. The food pyramid also belongs to this.

Ancient material. This is probably the most common reason. See, a lot of material in school is just outdated by decades. At times because the curriculi have not been updated in decades - at times because the people updating them are actually not professionals in those fields, hence basing their ideas mostly on what they learned in school 40 years ago.

Simplification because kids "won't understand it otherwise". A lot of stuff in school gets dumbed down in comparison what you learn in university, because a) not everyone needs to know it (they say), and b) kids cannot understand it (they say). This is true for a lot of stuff in the science classes. Stuff like "only two sexes", "only five senses", "only three states of matter" is mostly based on this.

But honestly... While the first two reasons are bad either way (propaganda does not belong in schools, and schools should work with modern material), some people might think the last reason is somewhat understandable. But honestly... It is not. Because kids are actually not stupid.

It is one thing to not teach everything and leave out stuff. Otherwise we would not need universities. But... Lying to kids? Yeah, that is not good. It is not a good thing to begin with. And really, why do we keep doing that?

[flowerslut]

about the last ask you answered, at which point do you think rosalie started to like jasper? (I mean, actually like, and not just tolerate him) Also, isn't it canon that he's her favorite brother? I think they are like the cold pro-murder version of alice and edward but their personal mental issues won't allow them to act like best friends forever and stuff

oh I LOVE talking about rosalie (and jasper) and i'm delighted to see a follow up question about this, thank you anon 🤩

when did rosalie start to like jasper? my guess is in the range of 'anywhere between several months to years', which seems like a pretty wide span of time, but i'm sure the trajectory of rosalie's opinion/feelings on jasper went like: anger at him (and alice) being there, followed by toned-down frustration and annoyance, then a period of her just tolerating his presence that eventually morphed into acceptance, that led to a general feeling of comfort once he became part of the routine, and at one point that feeling of protectiveness she feels over her family probably extended toward him. rose and jasper strike me more as "actions over words" type of people tbh. I like to think that one of them stood up for the other at some point and that sense of loyalty was probably a kick off point for friendship between the two of them

but to analyze rosalie & jasper's relationship you kind of have to look at all of the cullen familial relationships; more specifically, the 'sibling' dynamics

edit: I did not mean for this to turn into a meta-length dissection of their characters, but whoops here we go:

canonically, rosalie is stubborn, intelligent, protective, loyal, vindictive, and fucking hates change. she craves normalcy—specifically the type that lets her pretend like she's not a vampire—and is more affected by, and therefore reacts stronger to, things she dislikes rather than the things that she likes, which is important to note. because that makes her a lot like edward—more like edward than any of her other 'siblings'.

rosalie and edward are alike in ways that cause them to bump heads more often than not—their worldviews are pretty similar, they both have a pretty significant measure of self-loathing/an issue with self-esteem (yes, even though rosalie knows she's hot, she's pretty unhappy with who she is) and they despise anything that messes with the status quo—but they think that they both have very different personalities, which I would categorize as their outward expressions of themselves. (they don't, but stick with me here)

there's a funny line in midnight sun where edward talks about how rosalie's "morbid" sense of humor is more in line with his than anyone else's in the family and, ignoring the fact that we all know edward doesn't have a sense of humor I think that it's because of the fact that they 1) both view the world similarly and 2) as rather 'bitchy' characters, their methods of expression fall in line with each others. in new moon we get to listen to edward cheerfully smash a television in a fit or rage, and in midnight sun edward braces himself for rosalie to fuck up his car because she's mad at him. TheyreTheSamePicture.jpg your honor

if you compare one attention-hog to another, they're going to both get pissy about it. rosalie can't stand edward's know-it-all tendencies and finds him pretty insufferable, and edward thinks she's selfish and shallow. they both view themselves as smarter, more reasonable, and 'better' than the other. ain't nothing is ever going to fix this.

"rosalie and edward are like oil and water" no, rosalie and edward are two types of vinegar that hate being combined in the same carafe because then you can't tell the difference between them and they both individually hate 1) not being the center of attention, 2) being compared to the other one, and 3) themselves 🤐 tbh, I don't think it's a coincidence that the two characters with the lowest self-esteem lowkey hate the character that is most like themselves...but let's move on from that tea ☕️👀

let's shift gears to jasper. jasper is reserved, sensible, intense, and appears to be quite mindful on the effect his presence has on others; probably because he knows what he looks like and he has the added benefit that he can feel how other's react in response to that. this is going to give him a pretty high degree of emotional intelligence and an automatic leg up in any social situation, which is why book jasper is so superior that movie jasper in my opinion 🤷🏼‍♀️ and why I can't read a lot of jasper/jalice fanfiction since people love to characterize him as hot tempered and 'edward-eque'

when you read the books jasper is just so? FUNNY? in midnight sun he's inventing stupid games with emmett. his friends come to visit and they spend their time playing vampire football (SHOW US THE VAMPIRE FOOTBALL SCENE STEPH YOU COWARD). in pre-epilogue twilight outtakes, he's holding hairdriers for alice while she queer-eyes bella.

in twilight/midnight sun he's standing on the steps and abiding by edward's "keep your distance" request when carlisle, esme, and alice welcome bella into their house; he's mellowing out the atmosphere so that these introductions go smoothly and so that bella is full-on VIBING, all while grinning at edward over everyone's head while the little scene progresses perfectly, who thinks "he was laying it on a little thick 🙄" (he even LAUGHS at edward when bella says something to the effect of "what CAN'T edward do?!")

but in bella's pov (and edward's) jasper is portrayed as this miserably suffering little guy who only gives a shit about alice (hot) and is often characterized as 'weak' (ironic). but when you look at the way jasper actually acts, outside of the 'attending high school' bullshit, he seems to be having a pretty good goddamn time.

i'm not the first person in the fandom that thinks that rosalie deserves someone to fight more in her corner, since canon shows us that smeyer is unwilling to let that happen (even emmett isn't allowed to defend her in canon!) the only time we ever see anyone agree with her on a serious issue (minus the renesmee debacle, that we won't acknowledge here) is in midnight sun when she and jasper are the only ones who acknowledge the danger bella poses to them. and I think it would be silly to overlook that!!!!

jasper and rosalie share the same levelheaded ferocity that you would sort of expect from someone who knows that, as vampires, a little murder here and there is necessary to keep you and your loved ones safe. so we get this really interesting framing of their characters via edward & bella and ultimately, via smeyer, where we're supposed to see them as 'less-than' because of this ruthlessness they possess. even stephenie, in interviews, has acknowledged that she doesn't understand why people love jasper and rosalie so much, which is so funny to me since?? they're two of the most interesting cullens?? like steph, you made both of their fucked up backstories central focus in book three? they're two characters ready to kill for the ones they love at a moment's notice, and you think us girls and gays aren't going to LATCH onto that?? you're surprised by that? kdgfhjksdg??? don't admit that out loud girl, that's embarrassinggggg ���

also it's important to talk about how rosalie is the survivor of a violently traumatic sexual assault that was the catalyst to her loss of humanity and gaining immortality. she joins the family in 1933, is miserable and angry and resentful, but things get a little "better" in 1935 after she finds emmett and he joins the family. then, 15 years pass.

so, imagine this: it's been almost 18 years that you've been immortal. you've been a vampire almost as long as you were a human, and you've had a hard time, but at least you have a little family who loves and cares for you, and you might not be happy but you're content. your life is stressful, but you're safe...when suddenly two strangers show up at the door. you're at home with your surrogate 'parents'—the world's biggest vampire pacifist and his wife, a woman who, like you, was also a victim of intimate partner violence—and now some girl and this fucking ragged-looking dog of a man are standing on your doorstep acting like they're about to move in????

sure, alice can win rosalie over with compliments, make-overs, carefully plotted and expertly tailored conversation, but what's jasper going to do??? in what world would he go out of his way to win someone, who doesn't even like him, over? using his gift is out of the question—rosalie would probably maim him—and the only way he's putting someone else's comfort and well-being above his own is if they're a <5 foot control freak whomst he's obsessed in love with

as far as rosalie is concerned, the facts are this: jasper is from the vampire 'south'. jasper has been through some shit. jasper has, therefore, done some shit (you don't survive in the southern wars for 80 years without committing atrocities). therefore, jasper isn't just scary-looking physically, but he's dangerous and he has a shitty control on his bloodlust. for rosalie, that would be a fucking recipe for disaster. honestly, I can see rosalie getting along better with edward during this period because of jasper. i'm sure jasper was on the receiving end of some nastiness for a good while there, but unlike edward, I can guarantee you he just kind of...let her do it. not in a way where he's like "alas...'tis what I deserve 😞" because again: jasper has that degree of emotional intelligence that a lot of the cullens canonically lack. he knows it's not really about him. he probably lets a lot of it slide off his back; sure, it would be nice if rosalie didn't hate his guts, but hey! it's better than war!

rosalie likely had to warm up to jasper over time, little by little. I can see her easing up after she adjusts to his physical presence, after she realizes that no, he's not as violent as his appearance implies, and after emmett starts getting chummy with him. I think once rosalie realizes she's the only person left who doesn't like or trust jasper, it would have her feeling frustrated or annoyed, and I think this would be when World's Sexiest Number One Schemer, alice cullen, pounces and finally starts creating situations that get them to interact more!!

after all, alice knows what it's like to have to wait a while to approach someone so they don't literally tear your head off 😈

I think alice was probably the architect to whatever helped jasper and rosalie bridge that gap, maybe with an assist from emmett or even edward! it isn't much of a stretch to jump from tolerating/being 'okay with' someone's presence to finding comfort with it or even enjoying it, and again: rosalie is someone who reacts stronger to shit she hates than the stuff she loves (the girl loves to be a hater, and who can blame her tbh?) so you'll probably hear more about her opinion on you if that opinion is negative 💀 (which is absolutely why she's such an antagonist in the series while she watches this edward/bella ridiculousness)

as for jasper being her "favorite brother"? well, it's a pretty low bar. jasper is competing with edward for that title. he wins by default 💀

anyways I don't have a great conclusion to all this rambling, but rosalie probably started viewing jasper as her brother LONG before she ever vocalized anything of the sort. i'm sure there was some sort of conversation or event where rosalie stood up for jasper or just said something complimentary to/about him that probably solidified their camaraderie more than one-on-one bonding or hangouts ever would. maybe her being willing to share her surname with him was that moment!! that action in and of itself is so telling man!!! I love the implications!! idk man their friendship (that we never really see in canon even if it's implied) means so MUCH to meeeeeeeeee. i love the Murder Twins ♡

[r0-boat]

I'm not sure if you write these two, but...

Imagine Hucow Archie and Maxie. Just imagine what they'd be like, what shenanigans* they'd get up to around the farm.

*includes them fighting

Holy shit could you fucking imagine?! I already have so many things in my head.

BullFarm au! Maxie & Archie shenanigans & headcannons

Fighting? These two are always fighting so much so that slowly but surely, your boss just stopped caring about stopping them. It was futile. Even when he would separate them somehow, they would always find a way to round it. These two bowls are constantly fighting with their fists, their horns hell, even biting(archie) every time there's just muffled commotion; your boss just size Takes a cigarette out and starts smoking and begs for you to deal with it while trying to nurse a migraine he could already feel coming.

Archie starts most of the fights, but Maxie is the one that provokes Archie making him angrier. However around you they seem calm and willing to be in the same 5 ft apart from each other. They know that you hate when they fight so every time you walk around the corner they just sit there quietly glaring at each other while you're doing your work perhaps take this time to bother you instead of focusing on each other.

Before they had become residents on your farm Archie was a hybrid fighter, when people would put hybrids up against each other to fight though he was rescued he didn't seem too bad about it in fact he would eagerly tell you about his fights and accomplishments despite the horrors you have heard from the conditions hybrids would be put in.

Maxie, before he found his way to the farm was a test subject in a lab however not in the same way Colress and Volo where. Colress was genetically created and modified ; Volo was revived from one; Maxie practically grew up there where you would do all sorts of intelligence measuring and training tests perhaps as he got older the scientists retired him to a nice farm to live on. He seems to have learned a thing or two from being there.

Archie has been in so many sparring matches he has scratches and scars on his horns and all over his body which he's very eager to tell you, stories about each and every one. Well he doesn't do full on fights anymore you can happily see him sparring with the stronger Bulls and lifting heavy things trying to keep his form.

Archie is a mighty Bull but would never pick fights with anyone weaker than himself physically, even Maxie, though that quickly changes when Maxie throws insults at him. Maxie, even though he doesn't like fighting, wants to make Archie very angry. He is swift to dodge his attacks, always trying to counter them. Archie thinks he would have been an ok hybrid fighter. Maxie doesn't even want to entertain the idea.

Maxie is not much of a talker unless it's to tell random trivia about plants, ecology, and animals. Maxie is a bit of a bookworm. Most Bulls are not usually interested in human writings, but Maxie is not one of them. In fact, every time you come back to the farm from the town, he would eagerly ask you if you bought anything to read.

Maxie is obsessed with the land and the beautiful natural wonders of this world. Perhaps he had seen something in his youth that made him truly appreciate the land's Beauty. Maxie, after you gave him a new book to read, would always sit either under the shade or out in the sun, looking out into the vast field and Forest of the farm with a book in hand, taking in the fresh air.

Archie is fascinated with the ocean deaths. Something new and unexplored is filled with weird creatures, some strong, some weak. He thinks he is the most muscular Bull on the land, which makes sense since he is fascinated with sharks being the ocean's apex predators. Archie is just a bull that loves the water he seems to always know when the sprinklers come on in the fields and sneaks out there just to get a nice refreshing spray. yeah he's the reason your boss has you stand out there sometimes to watch the sprinklers go

You would think Maxie would also like the ocean because of his natural curiosity and since the sea is mostly unexplored, right? Nope he is terrified of it and he hates it so many weird bizarre and unknown creatures and places he likes the land nice and familiar he thinks most biomes in the ocean are just rocks in the sand.

Archie thinks the land is boring since humans had already explored every nook and cranny; meanwhile, the ocean has not been fully explored.

Archie loves to show off his strength by lifting farm equipment, sparing other bulls while your watching, picking you up to help you reach any thing high. He would happily lift anything for you.

Maxie reads books to you. On your breaks, you lay next to him on the soft grass as he reads you a new book you got him.