#more than sss

[h4dal-blacksite]

WSS: actually good points, does research, doesn't send death threats

SSS: only point is "Wilbur is an abuser", no research done, sends death threats to WSS and others, forces CCs to speak about the situation, probably all listen to tally hall (problematic member, but they wouldn't know that, refer to point two), just icky in general.

[roxiusagi]

this was supposed to be a quick haha doodle and yet it turned into a whole two day activity (sigh) so on main blog it goes

(this is obviously a reference to that classic mushroom tumblr textpost but i dont have the original so i cant link it sorry but you know the one hsakdj)

anyway this is a scene of Kim Gongja from SSS-Class Suicide Hunter (SSS급 자살헌터) and his epic speedrun strats. fun fact this is actually my first manhwa that i decided to check out because Mayhem rly likes to read them mahwas and i finally caved in to all the coaxing hskfhk.

but hey this one is super fun actually so if an incredible amount of dying and rewinding time as a solution to minor problems doesnt bother you then hey you can give it a try aha jk unless

separatedly under cut

[godza]

starting to think theres more than ten people (part one)

[sexynetra]

SIX SENTENCE SUNDAY

I was going to work on this more during my shift but then I remembered it is Oscars day and I’m chronically addicted to awards shows 😔 anyways here’s the intro to my grandekofi bar au <3

~~~~~~

Two drinks. Just two.

That was how many drinks it took for Dame to admit she was in love with Tia. Well, admit it to herself at least.

She stared at her reflection in the grimy bathroom mirror of the bar Hannah had dragged them all out to for her birthday. Even with the dingy lighting, Dame could see the flush of her cheeks, left over from when Tia had wrapped her arms around her waist as they waited at the bar. It wasn’t long after that that she had excused herself.

[shego1142]

I know yall probably know about poverty and generational poverty and what not but I just want to vent….

Because like… the things people don’t like know about generational poverty unless they’re experiencing it is just how… trapped you feel… weighed down by absolutely everything.

See I honestly think something may be up with our gas line

Which is a terrifying thought.

Now, idk if it’s a leak per se (though we’ve got the windows cracked just in case) but if we turn on our stove the gas smell is really strong, the flame flairs out of the sides of the stove, etc.

Shit that shouldn’t be happening.

Shit that is really fucking dangerous.

We know this is dangerous, we’re not stupid.

We know we should get it fixed.

But here’s the thing, okay?

The floors are just base boards, they’re falling in and there’s holes everywhere.

There’s rats that we’ve tried every trick in the book to get rid of, short of hiring an exterminator. We’ve borrowed traps, had traps “gifted” to us, tried poisons that friends and family have bought for us, etc. It cuts them down but they come back.

All of our food is in thick sealed plastic containers and yet they’ve eaten some of the containers open. They even ate our soap and makeup and cleaning supplies and that didn’t seem to stop them. (Our soap and cleaning supplies are now in plastic containers too but idk how long it will deter them, and the makeup is thrown away)

We have shoddy wiring in the house, done by my own grandpa back in the 70’s when they first bought this place.

Our roof has cracks in it that have failing patches, done by a family friend.

Our AC doesn’t exactly work very well and it’s been reaching 100°F weather (with 70% humidity no less) and to fix it we’d need $10k at least, but we’d also need new flooring, so it would likely be more than that…

Etc.

And like, it’s not that the house is dirty, but that it’s falling apart.

And here’s the deal… calling someone who knows what’s what about houses to check the stove means calling someone who is going to inspect the whole house, someone who’s going to say:

“hey uh, your gas is messed up and your electricity is messed up and so’s your plumbing… Your floors are bad… we have to condemn this house and if you can’t pay to fix it up then you’re going to lose it.”

And it’s not like we got this house and destroyed it by a lack of maintenance, this house is like, 50+ years old, and has been my home since I was born.

My grandma and I couldn’t take care of everything because my grandpa had Alzheimer’s and he was going downhill and it was me and her caring for him.

My health is really bad and I can’t work a regular day job because of it, but I haven’t been able to hire a lawyer to apply for disability, so we’re living off one income and whatever side gigs I can do from time to time.

We don’t have the money to pay the mortgage, buy groceries, pay the home insurance, the gas bill, pay medical bills, buy pet food, etc and also then pay for our house to be inspected and potentially condemned for things I didn’t even do in the first place, things that came before I inherited this house…

My whole family has been poor my whole life, from my great great grandparents to my parents, etc.

It was always “you don’t pay for a professional to fix it, you either fix it yourself or get a family member or a friend of a friend to fix it”

Which means that if we ask a building inspector to tell us what’s wrong with the house… well… it’s going to probably be everything. Because this house has never been “professionally” fixed, it’s only ever had family members and friends of family members slap duct tape over glaring issues and say they’ll only charge you a glass of sweet tea.

Which means it’ll probably cost nearly the entire value of the house to fix tbh.

I just feel like I’m on a ship that’s sinking and way more water is coming in than I could ever manage to get out. I keep trying to patch the leaks but the materials just not available, and besides, if I stop bailing out the water for even a second to go and try and patch the leak, I’ll go fully underwater.

And you know, it’s not fair. It’s not right that it’s like this. This is our home and we love it. This has been my home for years and we love this house, this land, the trees and plants that grow, everything here is loved. It’s cared for. We try to take pride in it.

But you wouldn’t know that because we’re too busy trying to bail out that sinking ship. We’re too busy from constantly working and cleaning and repairing.

It’s not okay that it’s set up that way. We need help, we need community. We should be able to call someone and be like “Hey, we love this house, we’ve never been late on a payment, we’ve worked our butts off to try and keep things going, but we need help. Can you look at everything this house needs to function and be in good condition and help us get those things?”

Like, hell a payment plan option would work, wouldn’t it? Why isn’t that the done thing?

I mean, I know why, the more houses that are taken from the poor means the more real estate that’s available for the rich, they’re already trying to make our whole neighbourhood into some corporate venture instead of a residential area. And besides, if they manage to make us homeless they’d be just as happy throwing us in jail for the “crime” of being homeless and poor and making money off free labour.

Like that’s why it’s normal practice not to help anyone keep their home when they actually have a home. The system is set up for you to fail unless your family is at least moderately wealthy.

It’s just such an unforgiving cycle. And I know I’m beating a dead horse with this vent. I know that like over half of America’s population is likely in the same shitty place we’re in.

It’s just… I’m so tired of being in cycles like these.

I’m too sick to work, too poor to afford to get on disability, and both too poor and too exhausted to go to the doctor to get proper treatment, and it’s just a loop.

I’m too exhausted to fix the house, too busy cleaning the house to rest, too exhausted to make money to have professionals help fix the house, rinse and repeat.

The house breaking down is very likely making me more sick, but I’m too sick to be able to get the house fixed.

My grandparents didn’t have money to fix the house, my parents don’t have money to fix theirs, I don’t have money to fix my house.

Every step forward is like ten steps backwards and I genuinely don’t know what the solution to all of this is.

I feel so fucking trapped. I don’t even have the energy to run a gofundme for myself to try and get the help we need, because it takes so so much to to actually get a gofundme up and off the ground, I have tried before and it’s always been a failure because I just literally never have enough energy for it.

We have so many things we’d love to do. We’d love to make this house into an eco-friendly, sustainable home, with solar panels and a huge garden. We want to make a farm stand with fresh eggs and vegetables and fruit and let it operate on an honour system, so anyone who needs food can take what they need and pay what they can, yes even if it’s $0. I want to crochet hats and mittens and set those out too, for sale or just for those who need them…

We want so badly to take care of our community… but it feels like our community isn’t there to support us, not because people don’t want to support one another but because we’re all trapped or are being prevented from supporting one another.

Because having a farm-stand means you need to buy business licenses… building a sustainable home means you need to buy a building permit.

Every step of the way feels like good intentions are wasted, road-blocked.

I can’t even begin to explain how many jobs I’ve applied to, writing, editing, working as a cook or a waiter, data entry, etc.

In school they told me I’d be able to do anything I wanted to. I was a “gifted” straight A student and as I’m sure many people on this site know, that’s not bragging. It’s the opposite. The school system, the system that is supposed to help me be successful in life, told me I would be, and now I would be lucky to make $7.25/an hour while living in a place where the minimum liveable wage is $35/an hour.

It costs $35 an hour for one person to live moderately comfortably in my town. And this isn’t an arbitrary number, it’s literally on our county’s government ran poverty assessment website.

And that’s not a thriving wage it’s a surviving wage. It’s Home, Food, Utilities, Transportation & Clothes.

It leaves no room for medical care, comfort, entertainment, etc.

So what the hell are those of us who are working for anything less than that, or those of us unable to work, supposed to do?!

And like I said, I know I’m preaching to a choir rn, I know everyone is experiencing some version of this. I just… I need to be able to express it from time to time. To talk about how unfair and ridiculous and needlessly cruel this is.

It’s so deeply flawed and evil that we’re unable to have legitimate health concerns inspected because we’re worried about the house being taken away from us.

It’s trash. It’s inhumane.

And if anyone has any like… suggestions or advice that would be great… I’m considering just having our gas service canceled by our gas company and buying a small electric grill instead… but our gas also powers our hot water heater so…

:/

[xitty]

Artem anniversary card got. 🥰

Tbh though, I find the previous two anniversary cards lovelier than these. Plus not so hyped for the SSS bond mechanic. These are sold as steamy cards (the evolved versions) but no card has managed to out-steam Artem's 2nd anniversary card (hot damn that card).

[boinin]

Was thinking about how I'd rate bllk characters in order of favouritism. Reo has reaaaally jumped up thanks to EpiNagi.

Right now, my top ten looks like this.

1. Kunigami (duh)

2. Chigiri (a surprise to no one)

3. ... probably Reo?? (he would have been around position 7 before the latest EpiNagi chapters)

4. Hiori

5. Isagi

6. Kaiser (I'm a tsundere for him)

7. Bachira

8. Rin (when I stopped attempting to take him seriously my appreciation for his character jumped a lot)

9. Nagi

10. Noa

[kara-knuckles]

People who default to Ines's S2 and never use her S3 are weak.

[super-shapeshifter-showdown]

i wanted to submit an image for Mimi from Super Paper Mario but I couldn't decide which one to use because she has like 10 different outfits for some reason, so here's all of them, you can decide which image(s) to use:

(she's like the only character in the game to change their outfit. i don't know why they decided to go all-in with giving her different clothes every time she shows up throughout the game but hey, i'm all for it.)

anyway here's her "true form", which i guess is more relevant to the shapeshifting part:

Oh wow 11?? Thank you for sending them all in!

[weepingmillow]

I am once again coming here to inform you about my shippy ship songs (SSS). Out of My League by Fitz and The Tantrums Literally Cyclonus singing about Tailgate!!!!!

[ice-devourer]

why is it so hard to think about soft skills to put on a resume T — T

[nkogneatho]

𝐒𝐀𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐘𝐌𝐀𝐍'𝐒 𝐄𝐗𝐂𝐋𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐂𝐔𝐌𝐒𝐋𝐔𝐓

—cw: rough, blowjob, degrading nicknames, hair pulling, tie leash, fem!reader

—a/n: this came into existence after i watched the new episode and i realized this mf is insane and actually has some wild ass kinks

you hated how the world pictured kento. he wasn't just some bored and tired man who hates his job. he was more than that. he was insane. if only there was a way to show them that.

"On the knees." Nanami ordered, the cheetah print tie circling around his big, rough hand.

You did what he asked to. Not that your body had a privilege to betray your lustful brain and deny. He wrapped his tie against your neck and secured it with a distanced but tight knot. Tight enough to yank when needed. You couldn't meet his eyes in embarrassment, maybe a little fear too. This was a side he kept hidden to the world, only portrayed if he either loved them or wanted to kill them.

"Take my cock out, my sweet slut." Your fingers struggled to unbuckle his expensive belt. He wouldn't help, you knew it. Once you got the metal out if it's loop, you aimed for the buttons, then the zip. Your sweet fingers dug through his underwear to find his cock. It felt so big in your hand always, and it wasn't even completely hard yet. You started giving it slow pumps and heard him curse under his breath. you waited for his next command, for him to tell you what to do but it never came. Instead what came was a hand that cupoed your jaw, forcing you to lock eyes with him.

"I'm going to use this beautiful face as my cocksleeve, yeah? You'd let me, right?" Your core wet, your mind hazy at his words. He didn't need to ask. You know it was just a formality and a dessert that came with the gentleman personality. But he was anything but a gentleman in the bedroom. Calling you names. Using you to his satisfaction. But he knew you liked it because he's the one feeling your pussy tighten when he calls you a "slut."

Nanami's hand traveled to the back of yiur hwad where he grabbed a fistful if your head. You gulped in preparation about what had to come. You opened your mouth and Kento slammed his dick inside you. It slid fast through your tongue but you could taste the hint of his precum.

"Fuck. So good for me," he said, beginning to thrust. "You like when I fuck my frustrations on you." You did. "your mouth is my cumdump, right? you're such a good little slut who always sucks my anger out of me." People out there constantly think how is he always so calm. He's not. The truth is here. He comes home and fucks his anger away. And you count yourself lucky to be his fucktoy because holy shit, the way he fucks you makes you feel like you've found heaven on earth. It's sinister. The darkness in his eyes. They consume you. But ironically, the pleasure that he gives you can only be compared with heaven.

"Shit! I am close—sss agh!" he felt the back of your throat vibrate which sent excitment down his balls. "fuckfuckfuck" he cursed as he yanked your hair back to look at your doe eyes. Soon, he caught up to his high and all you could make for a sound was consumed by his thick load shooting deep inside your throat. He was so deep you didn't even get to taste them. Nanami pulled out, the remaining beads of his cum lacing your lips.

"Such a good little slut. my exclusive cumslut," he cooed running his thumb over your lips, glistening with your sakiva mixed with his released. "ready for me to fuck your brains out, fuckdoll?" Like you'd ever say no.

[sexynetra]

Hiiii! Hope everything is great with you! Is it too pretentious to ask for a little SSS? 🤭

Not pretentious at all!! I lost track of the days of the week 😅

I’m still slowly but surely (more slowly than surely) plugging away at this chapter so I promise there will be content coming sometime 😭

anyways for now here’s… six-ish sentences? Marcia’s sentence fragments are the bane of my existence for these 6 sentence Sundays tbh

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eyes still closed, Anetra spoke up after a moment. “Take a picture. It’ll last longer.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m not staring. Your eyes are closed anyways. Shut up,” Marcia sputtered out and Anetra laughed warmly.

“I can feel your eyes burning holes in me. It’s fine, I think it’s cute.”

[llycaons]

I love jiang ni, but the romance the show is trying to build for her and xfn is pretty generic and really not hitting. she’s aggressively...guess what you would call a tsundere, and that’s the only way she seems to be able to interact with him. and even though they’re close to an extent, he still exercises his power over her since she’s a servant and has to take care of him. he might be tolerant of her attacks and assassination attempts, but he also forces her to pay him when she fails which kinda sucks since he’s literally richer than almost anyone else in the city. their interactions can be charming and funny and I think it’s funny when she tried to bite him, but I really don’t like them as a romantic pair when they act like that with their statuses are so unequal, and the writing for their romance is rather lazy anyway imo

[midnightactual]

Your stats!

“Oh, you’re close.”

[beannoss]

Something I think about a lot and wonder if maybe gets overlooked in Twilight’s story and as vitally indicative of his character is actually in the very first chapter:

Anya isn’t needed for Strix. Twilight decides to adopt her anyway.

[Spoiler warning: Mostly this post deals with early chapters already in the anime but there is reference to chapter 62, which has not yet been animated and will be in season 3]

Twilight decides it — “I’m going to rework the mission so it doesn’t involve a child because that’s too dangerous” and he’s 100% right! Donovan Desmond is canonically a far right warmonger with fascistic authoritarian aims. His government made liberal use of the SSS — a group to mirror the Stasi — who continue to operate in morally dubious ways (much more likely they’re actively morally reprehensible, though we’ve mostly only had rumours of that so far). From what we can tell, Desmond is at best an absent father and likely actually worse than that: if that's how he treats his own children, imagine how he might treat others. And the timeline seems to indicate that the experimentation performed on Anya was done under Desmond's government — even if Twilight isn't aware of experimentation on children, he is aware of both human and animal experimentation under Desmond's government. Taking all that and also the complexity of Strix's aims, undoubtedly there were other things that could be done, more straightforward if not necessarily easier.

So. Why? Why entertain the change at all? And then, having entertained it, why go back when the reasoning is indisputable?

On the Doylist level, I think Endo wanted to ensure that Anya had some agency within the set up — Endo also does this with Yor. It would be much harder to be on Twilight’s side fully, or to trust him on an ethical level/take him as any sort of moral authority, if he were just straightforwardly using these two people. To have them be active and consenting participants (arguably to actually be affirming the arrangement: Twilight sets it up, but Anya and Yor actually make it happen) even if the audience only knows the depth of their knowledge/motivations/etc currently, shifts the power dynamic in important ways.

But it also the set up tells us important things about Twilight. He is largely impatient, cold, detached in chapter one. His overarching feelings towards Anya are, I think, real annoyance, real confusion, and real impatience. He just doesn’t understand this damn kid and it turns out she’s a person which is frankly unacceptable — he’d needed and anticipated an automaton, ideally of himself in miniature form. (Though I think one could ponder whether Twilight was, in many ways, an automaton himself at this point, but that's maybe for another meta 🙃)

He’s not entirely unmoved of course — we're given to understand he’s affected when Franky tells him how many times Anya’s been adopted and returned, and isn't amused by Franky's joke about names. Franky's comment — "Just don't get attached" — reinforces this. The prospect of “the future” perturbs Twilight when he’s reading the parenting books. His initial reaction to Anya’s kidnap is horror. All these are true too.

Then there’s also this, from earlier in the chapter:

It’s exposition, yeah, and it’s also exposing. "Hopes" and "joys" are very specific words to describe those events. It could simply have been "A marriage? An ordinary life?" but describing them as such — hope for marriage; joy in ordinary life — expose something of what Twilight feels about those two experiences and, on the flipside, they expose what he deems he's lacking. No hopes of intimacy; no joy in (an ordinary) life. There's an argument as well, of course, that he's being ironic but I don't think that actually invalidates the above analysis. Drawing attention to 'hope' and 'joy' at all are revealing, regardless of Twilight's tone in thinking of them. I think it's also interesting this panel, taken in conjunction with a pair of panels in chapter 62, Twilight's backstory. The above is almost a pulled out version of this below panel of Twilight's recollection of his childhood, and of course the returning image of not just a rubbish bin but a rubbish bin on fire when it comes to disposing of his identity:

Back to Strix. Both his final interaction with Karen and the whole everything of the framing of Strix is making Twilight think (and feel, ahem) things that he hasn't for some time. Twilight decides, I’m reworking this. It can’t proceed this way. Not because Anya is a pain in his ass, not because she’s not as (apparently) intellectually advanced as he’d originally thought, not even because he thinks he can find another child who would better be exactly what mission parameters called for. No:

And what changes his mind is Anya asking to come home.

One of the important parts of this to me is this:

He seeks consent.

This moment is a keystone, I think, to understanding Twilight. It’s also more telling than he maybe realises. Twilight is decisive — we all laugh because he spirals at the drop of a hat when his daughter or wife look even mildly upset but outside those (also very telling) scenarios, he makes decisions and he pursues them. Often he makes decisions quickly. He’s a dab hand at it; it’s a large part of why he’s as good a spy as he is.

He’d decided to change Strix.

Anya asks him, in essence, not to.

So, he doesn't.

But it's wild that he entertains keeping her request at all — why? Why even entertain it? It’s dangerous; it’s impractical; there are too many moving parts outside his direct control; Anya isn’t the sort of child he’d wanted for the mission if he’d spent any time thinking about what a child might actually be like; Strix is in many ways an extremely long shot anyway, Desmond could just stop attending for reasons unknown and unrelated; etc.

So, yeah, why? Maybe because of this —

In conjunction, I often think of this moment in the cruise arc:

Twilight first naming the feeling as lonesome, and secondly tacitly conceding that he perceives Yor as a companion and that that relationship is important to him, something to be missed. What makes this for me though is that Anya calls this out "Papa's you're so sappy" and Twilight's reaction is that of someone caught-out. He doesn’t say “nuh-uh!” but he may as well have. Essentially, something landed a bit close to home, hm? Maybe some of that hope for marriage? A soupçon of joy of an ordinary life?

Twilight’s loneliness underpins many of his decisions with his family — probably without him being fully conscious of it. I think he is at least somewhat conscious of it, but also if he looks too closely... Well, best not to. I could fill this post, I think, with images that demonstrate his loneliness throughout the series; that sorrowful/pensive close-up of his eye(s) is one of the abiding motifs for Twilight throughout. I'd probably start with this one from Twilight's backstory arc:

Anya's request plays directly off his loneliness. Still though, he doesn’t immediately capitulate — he emphasises Anya’s choice. Is she sure? The last day has been scary for a child (and for him, but he's ignoring that part) and Twilight, in his increasing recognition that Anya is a person, is probably aware in the back of his mind that he hasn’t exactly been warm or welcoming or at all patient with her. Things that people respond to — he's otherwise excellent at manipulating people, so of course he understands this. So. Given she'd just had this scary experience, given he hasn't exactly been great with her: Is she sure? She wants to come home — with him?

I think the moment may get a little lost because Anya says something riffing off his own earlier thoughts and self-revelation (featuring that shadowed, lonely eye motif again!)

Were this a post about Anya, I’d talk about how it’s an important character moment for her as well by way both of demonstrating her agency/choice and also that she isn’t nearly as dumb as Twilight thinks (and the audience, maybe, also thinks).

But in my view, she didn’t actually need to say anything about it making her cry. I think she could simply have said yes in that moment and Twilight would have agreed.

Twilight’s an unreliable narrator; he’s disconnected from his heart and that shrouds his own motivations from himself — something he actually also concedes in this chapter!

And it shrouds from us just how much he actually understands himself. He’s also a master of deflection. Easy to assume or say that bringing Anya home is just to align with Strix. Nothing more to see here; nothing else going on. But also that ripping off of the mask in the panel above — and the literal 'riiip' sound effects — also indicate to us that this is an unveiling to himself.

In my view, Twilight agreeing to Anya's request, deciding to go back to original mission parameters, actually shifts his motivations, subtly. Now he’s committed not only to the original mission goals, but also to Anya. He needs Anya to succeed at Strix, not only for Strix's sake, but also because otherwise the mission will end and she’ll have to go back to the orphanage, and he’s just agreed with her not to do that (not right away, in any case). I don’t think at this point he’s thinking it’s forever — his thoughts throughout the manga indicate he still expects the Forgers to be temporary. I don't think the shift in motivation is necessarily even conscious, but given the set up, I think something inside Twilight recognises that agreeing to bring Anya home is a compact, jointly engaged. Mostly all this has become subsumed into Strix: he makes decisions. He pursues them. He deflects, even from himself. Of course it's just for the mission; this saved him the trouble of reworking it, of figuring out something else. Nothing more to see; no need to think any more on it. And to be fair to him, Strix is very high stakes, resting pretty solely on his shoulders, so of course that is, objectively, motivation enough. Why even consider beyond that?

But I personally think that to the extent he's aware of it at all, there is something else going on, that he wants to have Anya for as long as it takes him to work something else out for her. If that's the case, then of course, we have Occam’s razor: the simplest solution may be the best one.

Maybe Twilight should just keep Anya himself, eh?

[Image description: gif from Spy x Family season 1, episode 1. Twilight and Anya have just found out Anya passed her entrance exam and are overjoyed. Celebratory, Twilight picks Anya up and swoops her into the air as they smile at one another. End image description]