#no one got this mad over ai generated text?

[james-silenthill]

The AI art thing is a complicated and multifaceted thing and I am not fully on either side. #libra

[th3-c0ll3ct3r]

I need to know. I do.

So people... Genuinely believe... The AI generated looking account of being Shelby's cousin is real?

For context someone who said they were Shelby's cousin blames shelby for the abuse, said she mad them cry and that she did it to herself. And that she was yelling at Wilbur and to support Wilbur.

Shelby commented on it saying that she only had one cousins and it clearly wasn't them.

Now people are questioning why "she got so defensive" to a fan account.

Context over.

All I have to say is... BITCH ARE YOU FUCKING BLIND?-

Your going to tell me, WITH CONFIDENCE Shelby, her friends and her family don't know who own cousin is?

Your going to tell me that everything Shelby's said doesn't line up? "he had hole in his walls" Fundy did a vlog with Wilbur that showed IN THE VIDEOS that Wilbur did indeed have holes in his walls. Fundy even said it looked gross.

"he was violent" over the last couple years. Not now. YEARS. Content creator and non-content creator have said be was a violent man.

Minx said he was violent but was written off as an alcoholic.

Bilzo was written off as a small content creator.

Niki was told she should THANK HIM because he made her.

Other were seen as clout-chasers.

And it took one, mentally stable and popular person to be like "Hey he's a bad guy" for people to go back and look huh.. Maybe he is bad.

There are people who already knew and were being validated. People who were annoyed because they said there piece and got shit for it and now had people back-tracking when it was too late.

Heck even Scott Smajor said Live on stream that he'd obliviously knew longer then anyone else and that's why Wilbur was no longer in MCC videos.

And suddenly your like, "she's getting a bit defensive isn't she?" Well yeah.

She's human.

That's like telling someone, "your family didn't actually get hurt", "they did. You know they did" then them being like "OMG THEY'RE SINGLING ME OUT THIS PROVES THEY'RE LYING!"

Do you know how stupid that sounds when you write it out. And then to assume that no one talked to anyone in private about anything?

Do you really think that Wilbur's friends AND random people would have co-ordinate an attack on him for like 3-5 years straight?

And this is straight the Emma situation. People are seeing that you can create a "successful" allegations using AI and have younger audiences BELIEVE IT.

You assume this allegation is true but don't assume that someone could be using AI to write that (because it was screenshot of text with a popular image of Wilbur in the background) because they like him?

Did you not assume that maybe... Just maybe, someone would (like Emma) make up some random BS for personal gain and then exploit it?

Did you not assume that with an Apology come with the acknowledgement that you did those things? Because Wilbur didn't deny it. He expressed he did do it actually, he just did a terrible job of justify it.

Did your assumption not lead you to the conclusion that text is easier to fake then a real person with real tears telling you?

Did you not assume that it's become a trend to fake things for clout?

Did you not look back and go "but there was tons of evidence BEFORE shelby said anything"?

Did you not go back and think, shelby's a person and she's allowed to be upset. She also knows her own family and probably know the social media account that her family uses, so it can't certainly be that person?

Or do you have your values so far up, that you cannot see AI when its right in front of you.

If you can't see one of these many things, then either you need to think about yourself and do some soul searching or your genuinely deluded.

There was even a comment say it looks like an AI generated response, and guess what? When I went back to take a ss of it for this post the user had suddenly been reported and suddenly couldn't use there account.

Weird right?

Also it you're a "oh I'm neutral on the matter. I don't support anyone" person. I hope you seek a conclusion because you clearly can't see the one in front of you.

And to the "But what if was really?" or "support Wilbur" squad. Refer to all previous points and if you still have this opinion, I kindly ask you to leave. Touch grass. Go back to school. And to hopefully better yourself as a person.

[crystalelemental]

Full tierlist is here, breakdown of the B-tier. Now these ones I generally like, they've got something great going on. They don't quite hit the same highs or personal connection, but this is where I feel like we get something strong coming out.

Also, it took until after I did all this to realize that Leaf was not listed. Apparently they just posted Green and considered them the same. Which would be funny, except they did the wrong iteration. If Lear existed, she would be here, somewhere around Briar.

Arven: I adore the boy, he just barely misses out on evoking the stuff that hits A-tier. This is a personal problem and I hope to make a full recovery some day.

Adaman/Irida: Very fun duo, not a huge shipper of the two, but I think they do shine independently as well. Truth be told, I think Irida is the more interesting of the two, but Adaman is more my kind of person being a time-obsessed lunatic.

Penny: See Arven. I should like her more than I do.

Drasna/Sabrina/Lorelei: just really solid designs with some things I strongly latch on to.

Larry: Oooh boy. Okay. Listen. I like Larry a lot, but I also find his thing kinda uninspiring. Like sure, it's funny, he's got stuff going on, but I think the "regular guy" bit plays against him a bit too strongly in a generation that actually produced some Grade-A lunatics.

Bede: He's grown on me so much. I wanted to punch him when we first met, but now I want to punch him with affection.

Bianca: once my favorite rival. I think she's got a fun arc, in that she's the first rival to truly back down and find an alternate path. "But Brendan/May-" always keep up the battle pretenses. I dunno, Bianca just hit because they examined what someone who's just not into the battling thing goes through on these journeys. It was cool.

Iris: I want to like her more but her games shortchange her.

Shauntal/Cheryl/Lacy: They're just cute designs with some neat quirks.

Wally: Soft boy rival who I cherish.

Peony: Love me an over-enthusiastic father figure.

Clavell: Cheugy. In all seriousness, he's just a very cool dude. I expected him to be forgettable, but he is a serious man who is an absolute buffoon at heart.

Gladion: What if Hugh were interesting?

Dana: Masters sold me on her. She's constantly angry. Mood.

Alder: Does not get nearly the respect he deserves. Very interesting Champion figure who does interesting champion things like give children existential crises.

Iscan/Palina: I am not one to ship, but these two do it for me. They're cute.

Turo/Sada: I assume the people? They're fascinating case studies in terrible parents and kinda terrible people. The AI are your real parents and are a delight.

Tyme/Saguaro: I love these professors, so good.

Katy: Design-wise I like her a lot, and she's got a bit of the airhead vibe. And she is a baker, which is bonus points. I dunno. Katy gets it. She had my heart when she tried to rap and failed so badly she couldn't even rhyme words. Same, girl. Same.

Marshal: Punch man. Bottom text.

Briar: God, I should adore Briar, just look at her! But Indigo Disk was nothing if not an overwhelming disappointment on the whole, and she completely failed to stick the landing. I think they just tried too hard to avoid a serious confrontation of ethics on her part. They should've made her less hinged.

Archie/Maxie: listen, they're idiots, but they're fun idiots.

Grimsley: He's a fun guy.

Literally can't remember his name: Funny man. Clavell's ex. Love this dude. Christ I cannot remember his name. CYRANO! Fuck I'm up late to do all this, that is not a good sign for later.

Eusine/Morty: Similar deal, nice boys who are after their legends and are very pure in their pursuit. They have grown on me wildly.

Tate/Liza: I'd normally be mad about them being put together but they are evenly matched.

Bugsy: I have a soft spot for the little nerd professor. He's just really into bugs. Fun fact, did you know there's a super edgy fan rom where they made an OC that's like Bugsy's sister, and decided it was totally in character to have Bugsy be abusive? I'm sleepy and this is where my stream of consciousness has led us.

Elesa/Skyla: Gorlfriends. Elesa is slightly higher ranked for being the bigger dork.

Kahili: Great design, I really vibe with her look and general attitude, I desperately wish we got more.

Gardenia/Candice/Kabu/Clay: just some fun gym leaders. Clay is Peak American.

Atticus: probably my favorite Team Star member. Actually did nothing wrong.

[vtori73]

I think the argument and viewpoint of people being annoyed at artists rightly being upset people don't actually give them any kind of support even though they regularly offer their work for free to them even though they dont need or are required to is again another form of entitlement people feel over artists work and I dont give a single shit if other artists agree or believe its "bad marketing," its nothing but shitty selfish self-entitlement and should be called out as such. A lot of people want to think artists are the ones actually being entitled for wanting the most minimum of support but I argue the true entitled people are the ones getting mad at creatives who remind them that they are living breathing beings who are supplying them with this free entertainment who do actually have needs like everyone else.

Like, its kind of similar to when people were being whiney babies about "feeling guilty" seeing gofundmes, mutual aids, etc that use less than positive text to promote them although obviously these people are much more often more in need & I don't argue that. I'm just saying the overall sentiment comes from a similar place of people feeling UNCOMFORTABLE being reminded other people have needs and instead of doing something positive with that discomfort turn it into anger and such that they would rather spew and apply onto the people making them feel that way.

Because, honestly? To anyone who genuinely hates artists who do these "guilt trips," what EXACTLY do you do to support these kinds of artists? Do you do anything? Anything at all? Because I don't get why you WOULD feel guilty, if you actually show support for these people why exactly do you have a guilty conscience? Artists only ask this of people who enjoy their work freely, if you're doing something else to support them WHY feel guilty??? And yes, I'm aware people tend to like a multitude of artists and can't support all of them but it becomes much easier if do the bare minimum of occasionally sharing the artists work whether through social media or with other people offline.

I honestly do feel it's partially why people are still so quick to use AI because there are no strings attached, there is no human being behind the work, there is no person who could make it more complicated who may have silly little desires like engagement to their craft or money for food and rent. Some really do just truly believe artists are nothing but selfish beings and because of that believe stuff like AI is okay and right to use. Sure, most of why generative AI became a thing was about making money by being a cheap product but another big aspect that people need to acknowledge is also the fact that poor artists weren't/aren't respected and it's exactly WHY people don't want to pay them what they are worth and why they would rather them being exploited and used up rather then actually supported and funded. People will very openly show support for those who are rich and super famous and popular who don't need it and will regularly spend money on them by buying their various merch and stuff they sponsor or attending their super spreader events but once a more lower class artist tries to ask for just a crumb of support that's FREE... people immediately become turned off and move on to other artists they can support who don't ask for anything or remind them of their humanity.

...I think... I think I also may have just realized another reason why I never got the "separate the artist from the art," mentality and what ACTUALLY is at the heart of this sentiment which is the popular mentality that I shared above of separating a living being from a product they created so you can enjoy it much more selfishly without conscious or consequence.

[madscarypod]

Mad Scary Pod - The Intro Episode Recap

Welcome to the Mad Scary Podcast! Hi. Hello.

In this introductory episode, we forget to share the podcast name, discuss what drew us to the horror genre, explain our relationship to writing (& each other), and ask ChatGPT to recommend horror movies to watch and discuss in future episodes.

We make a pledge that our podcasts will not be over an hour (let's see how we do). Millie (me) rambles on about why we chose the genre - spooky stuff being the sweet spot for 80s/90s kids. I name-drop Buffy the Vampire Slayer (both the movie and show) as well as the influence that movies like Scream (which Rina incorrectly attributed to Matthew Williamson instead of Kevin Williamson, our bad!) and The Ring had on my developing brain. Rina waxes nostalgic about writing 30-page papers and working production as part of the theater club (nerd alert) at our all-girls Catholic High School. We chat about our early creative collaborations (drop a Euphoria spoiler?) and talk about our general goals for this hella meta pod.

We delve in on our healthy curiosity of Generative AI from the POV of two millennial women, ex-teachers, women in tech, and brunettes with bangs that love Ratatouille. Also, is Ratatouille a horror movie? Maybe.

We make our case for Generative AI in the Arts which is: it's not going back in the box, so give it a test run and try to find the benefits of this new tool that is very much in its infancy. It can't be "creative" without us, and even when we prompt it to be so, it's pretty meh. Check out Rina's post for more on how she used text-to-image AI to help us create our logo. With that being said, there is some major potential for it to support creative thinking and endeavors. Also, let it help you negotiate a lower rent. Shout out Sean!

Finally, we ask ChatGPT in real-time to help us with a short list of movies to watch for our horror movie research. Check out our prompt and the OG list below:

We got a pretty solid list - most of which are contemporary picks. We'll definitely need to make some adjustments. Also, umm, hello ChatGPT, Let the Right One In IS a vampire movie. Fix it!

After a fairly insincere apology, ChatGPT redeems itself with a pretty good pick. We take this as kismet and decide this is the first movie we'll be reviewing for our next episode. "Under the Shadow" (2016), directed by Babak Anvari, is currently streaming on Netflix. Check out the trailer... if you dare!

So, yeah. That's what we said and did for the most part. Give it a listen if you haven't already. We'll be dropping our next episode in a few weeks!

[badassbuchanan]

Be Mine?

REQUEST: Could you write something where the reader has never had a valentines so bucky goes all out to celebrate valentines day with her? Like she just feels so loved at the end of it? Thank you💖

Warnings: smut; unprotected sex, fluff, hand job, pussy rubbing, romantic 

Word Count: 4884

A/N: I’m sorry, I tried but romance isn’t my strong suit - anyway, happy V day!

I tossed my hand carelessly through my freshly washed hair, trying to make it look somewhat decent as I made my way through the compound. “Meet me by the elevator at six.” That’s what Bucky’s text had said yesterday, and that was the first I’d heard from him since our conversation earlier in the week. 

“If you don’t get a better offer by valentines day, we should just do something together.” Bucky suggested as he absentmindedly scrunched up his nose. We’d been chatting over a pot of tea in the kitchen after listening to all of our friends’ special plans for the upcoming romantic holiday. “Otherwise we’ll be the only two in the compound without a date.”

“I don’t really do valentines dates.” I shrugged matter-of-factly, my heart sinking as I felt a soft blush of pink cover my cheeks. Dates in general had always been a touchy subject with me, but especially valentines day dates. I’d never had one. Ever. In my life. And it was embarrassing for me to admit. 

My comment didn’t get past the clever brain of the Winter Soldier, a soft frown of curiosity appearing on his chiseled face as he lifted his mug to his lips. “What do you mean, you don’t do valentines dates?” He emphasised the word ‘do’, blowing gently on the hot beverage before taking a sip. 

His eyes were fixed on me, patiently awaiting my response as I felt my heartbeat speed up. “I just don’t.” I shrugged innocently under his stare, noticing the little frown lines which appeared on his forehead as he processed my answer. 

“You think Y/N’s ever met a guy good enough to take her out on the most romantic day of the year?” Sam’s voice immediately had Bucky’s eyes rolling, turning his head to the side to watch the chuckling avenger stroll into the room. “You’re dreaming, cyborg. Even I wouldn’t try.” 

“It’s not that!” I jumped to my own defence, not wanting Bucky to think that was the reason I’d turned him down, because it wasn’t. Bucky and I had been great friends ever since he’d arrived from Wakanda, we felt somewhat connected by the commonality of the enjoyable silence and peacefulness of being alone. Something which people like Sam would never understand. “I’ve just never had a date for valentines.”

Bucky was a selfless guy and I knew he’d only offered to spend his valentines day with me out of kindness. He was an extremely handsome super soldier with a charming personality and a heart of gold. He’d be able to get a valentines date with a beautiful girl with a blink of his eye. 

“I guess I’ve never really felt strongly enough about anyone in that way.” I elaborated vaguely, looking between Bucky who was giving Sam a fed up look and Sam, who had grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and was happily leaving the room with a chuckle, knowing he’d done his job of winding Bucky up.

“It doesn't have to be a date.” Bucky pressed his lips together in a small smile, his voice softening as he looked over at me, his steel blue eyes shining bright. “We can just hang out like we usually do.” 

I smiled over at him sweetly, thankful for his understanding nature. “Okay, sounds good.” I let out a soft chuckle as his smile widened at my answer, taking another sip of his drink as his heart skipped a beat. 

I arrived at the meeting point right on time, deciding to wear a pair of distressed denim shorts with a floral top tucked into them after much deliberation. I was nervous. I didn’t know why, I’d hung out with Bucky hundreds of times before. But it was this damn day putting so much pressure on something as simple as two friends hanging out. 

The compound was particularly quiet where the rest of the team had already left for their dates. The silence only made the loud beating of my heart more evident. Bucky still hadn’t shown up. He’d probably found himself a proper date for tonight and forgot to tell me. 

“Hey F.R.I.D.A.Y, has Bucky left the compound recently?” I asked softly, fiddling with my hair as I prepared for a lonely night of movies. 

“No, Miss Y/N. Sergeant Barnes is currently in the south living room.” The AI answered immediately, the response surprisingly me as I raised my eyebrows. The south living room was an extravagantly decorated room of the compound, hardly ever used other than for special occasions and honourable guest visits. 

“Thank you, F.R.I.D.A.Y.” I spoke as I pressed the button for the elevator, my nerves calming a little as I tried to guess Bucky’s reasoning for being in that particular room. I stepped in the elevator, feeling the metal contraption move between floors. So maybe he hadn’t blown off our date - correction, ‘hang out’. Maybe he’d just forgotten where he’d arranged to meet me.

I stepped out of the elevator and wandered down the darkness of the hall, only illuminated by the soft light coming from the living area. I dragged my fingers along the cream coloured wall absentmindedly, the quiet sound of a song playing made me tilt my head questioningly. “Bucky!” I called out as I neared the entrance to where the AI had informed me of Bucky’s whereabouts. 

My breath got caught in my lungs as I turned into the doorway, my body completely still as I widened my eyes in shock.

“Bucky, what’s all this?” I whispered softly, my heartbeat speeding up as I looked in at the busy super soldier standing in front of me. 

“Crap, is it six already?” Bucky mumbled to himself as he rushed to light the candle in his hand, placing it carefully on the coffee table. He looked up at me with an innocent smile as he shoved the lighter into his back pocket.

He was standing near the roaring fireplace, the floor almost fully engulfed in rose petals. He’d strategically placed candles and flowers on the mantlepiece and the coffee table, a rug thrown down of the floor with pillows and a bottle of champagne ready for us to indulge. 

“Y/N, please don’t be mad.” Bucky begged as he saw the stunned look on my face. I tried to process what was going on, why he’d put all this effort in, but instead, I just stood there speechless. “I know you said you didn't want this to be a date but I just-”  “Bucky, it’s beautiful.” I spoke with eyes full of tears, my hands shaking slightly as I stepped further into the room. I’d only ever seen such a romantic gesture in movies, I’d never in a million years expected that one day it would happen to me. 

Bucky watched intensely as I walked towards him, his eyes softening into a smile as he realised I wasn’t upset with him. He sighed out in relief, holding his hand out to tug me close to him as I continued to admire the gorgeous set up he’d put together.

“You said you’d never had a date for valentines day,” He spoke deeply, shaking his leg nervously as his eyes stayed glued on me. His hand kept hold of mine as I looked up at him, attentively listening to his words. “Well neither have I.”

“Are you telling me that Sergeant James Buchnanan Barnes, even back in the roaring forties, never had a valentine?” I gasped in a playful tone, although I truthfully was surprised to hear his confession. Bucky was a catch, I would’ve thought he’d have been spoilt for choice back in his youth.

He rolled his eyes with a chuckle, reciprocating my gaze as his fingers absentmindedly massaged my palm. “Well at least I didn’t say I’d never had a date because I’d never found anyone good enough!” He raised his eyebrows accusingly, his lips falling into a sassy pout. 

“That was Wilson!” I reminded Bucky with a tilt of my head, a small smile playing on my lips as his gorgeous eyes bored into mine. I felt myself get carried away in the moment, tugging him slightly closer as I admired him.

“I made us some chocolate covered strawberries.” He mumbled shyly, a proud smile on his face as his eyes flickered down to my lips absentmindedly. 

“You really thought of everything, didn’t you?” I sighed out contently, walking passed him to sit down on the rug. I crossed my legs and looked up at Bucky who followed my lead, sitting down on the soft material next to me. 

I watched carefully as he leaned over to grab the flute glasses in his metal hand, his other grabbing the bottle which he sat between his thick thighs. Bucky’s arms tensed as he pulled the cork out with a pop, the soft music still playing in the background filled the silence. 

My heart fluttered as I gazed over admiringly, my fingers fiddling nervously with the blanket beneath us. Bucky’s brows furrowed as he focused on pouring the liquid into the glasses without it spilling over the top. 

I smiled maybe a little too widely, catching Bucky’s attention as he looked over at me innocently. “What?” He chuckled with a charming smile, placing the bottle down carefully away from where we sat. 

“Nothing,” I smiled back at him, too lost in the bliss of the moment to stop and think things through. I could feel myself falling for him, fast. The vulnerability of it worried me, but Bucky made feel safe. “You just get these cute little lines here when you frown.” I spoke sweetly, lifting my hand to touch between his brows delicately. 

Bucky smiled as he watched me, entertained by the mesmerised look on my face. “I think you’re the only person in the world that thinks frown lines are cute.” He chuckled softly, leaning over to hand me a glass of champagne. 

“I don't think frown lines in general are cute.” I corrected him, rolling my eyes with a cock of my eyebrow, our fingers brushing slightly as I took the glass from his hand. 

“Oh, so you just think they’re cute on me?” He smirked teasingly, watching my face blush pink as he caught me out. He lifted his glass to his lips, sitting closer to me now from where he’d handed me the glass of champagne. 

“Gosh, you really love making me blush, don’t you Barnes?” I sighed with a shy smile, sipping the fizzy alcohol as I watched Bucky’s smile widen. His eyes travelled up and down my body as I shuffled to sit with my legs sideways, leaning on my hand which moved me closer to him. 

“Hey, can I tell you a secret?” Bucky’s voice dropped to a serious tone as his heart started beating a little harder. I detected a slight hesitation from him as he coughed shyly, his eyes glued on mine. 

“Mmh hmm.” I nodded sweetly, my eyes softening as I tilted my head to the side, my finger circling around the rim of the glass as I anticipated his confession. 

“When I originally suggested we do something for valentines,” He looked down at his lap nervously, a small smile of his lips as he thought carefully about his words. “I wanted to ask you, you know, not just because we were going to be the only two people without a date.” 

Butterflies fluttered in my tummy as I shyly looked down into my lap, trying to hide the smile that had appeared on my face. “What was the real reason?” I asked curiously, my voice softening to match his. 

“Well, because I think you’re the greatest girl in the whole world.” He answered deeply, his eyes flicking up to my face just for a moment as he smiled at how happy I looked. “You’re beautiful, smart, generous, accepting, funny.” 

“Is this just another way of you getting me to blush again?” I cut him off, teasing him accusingly with a raise of my eyebrows. It broke the tension, Bucky scoffing softly as he took another sip of champagne. 

“No, that time was an accident.” His ocean blue eyes caught mine as he responded, both of our hearts beating a little faster than usual at the new depths of our relationship we were exploring. 

“You could’ve asked me, you know.” I spoke as I watched Bucky lean over to grab the chocolate covered strawberries he’d made from the table. He looked back at me as the plate lifted into his hand, waiting for me to clarify. “On a date. I would’ve said yes.”

“You would have?” Bucky’s eyes softened as he sat back down, strategically sitting so close that our arms brushed together. He offered me a strawberry after throwing one into his mouth, placing the plate and our champagne flutes safely on the marble base of the fireplace.

“Of course,” I nodded quickly as I ate the chocolate covered fruit, catching any of the excess juice with my tongue. “Bucky, you’re the most loving, kind, handsome, brave, loyal guy I’ve ever met.” 

Bucky held his breath as he listened to me speak, the both of us feeling so loved in a world of so much pain. “You’re not scared of me?” His voice cracked slightly as he furrowed his brows into a frown.

I confirmed my answer with a shake of my head, my heart aching a little at the thought of him worrying about people being scared of him. 

“I could never be scared of you.” I admitted softly as an intense moment started to build between us, which neither of us were able to control.

I felt the tension between us boil over, noticing Bucky’s eyes dropp to my lips as I instinctively leaned closer to him. I let my hot breath linger on him for a moment before I pressed our lips together. 

Bucky’s metal hand immediately rose to cup my cheek, keeping me close as he kissed me back, the taste of strawberries on our lips. I felt butterflies in my tummy as his stubble scratched against my skin, tilting his head to deepen the kiss. 

I sighed out in satisfaction of his mouth on me, his kisses sweet and gentle as I pressed my palm flat against his solid chest. I felt his pecs move with the rhythm of his breathing, my cheeks flushing a light shade of pink as I felt myself wanting more from him.

He was touching me with such delicacy, as if he was scared he would break me. I shuffled forward as Bucky breathed into the kiss, his hand snaking around to grab the back of my head. He pulled me against his lips harder as my hand slid up to hold the side of his neck.

I parted my lips encouragingly, mimicking his action by tugging him closer by my hand on his neck. Bucky grunted softly into the kiss which was becoming needier with every second. 

I whimpered into the kiss, our heads tilting as our lips collided. My palm held onto his strong jaw, his stubble scratching my hand as his metal fingers ran down the side of my body.

I sat up a little straighter which leaned me further into Bucky, the palm of his hand supporting me at my waist. I hummed contently between kisses, Bucky’s eyes falling to where my lips were moving to connect to his again.

I gave him a sultry look as I pulled back from his mouth teasingly, lightly tugging on the thin material of the white t-shirt he wore. Bucky immediately took the hint, removing his hands from me as he pulled the top over his head.

He shook his hair back into place as he threw the shirt carelessly next to him. I couldn’t help but stare at his body in amazement, running my fingers up to where his metal arm fused to his flesh.

Bucky’s lips pressed back onto mine, a small whimper escaping my lips as his tongue pushed its way into my mouth. I felt my wetness seap down onto my cotton panties, sliding my thigh to rest on top of his as he let his hand quickly move over my ass to grab the back of my thigh.

Bucky grunted softly as he tugged on my bare leg, the silky flesh under his metal palm had his cock stirring in his pants. I took the hint, shifting myself to sit straddling the super soldier’s lap.

It was as though all of our built up emotion had exploded in a moment, our touches getting riskier as we roamed each other’s bodies. I let Bucky’s bottom lip sit between mine, sucking on it slowly as his tongue ran over my top lip.

“Is this okay?” Bucky whispered against my lips, our chests heaving as I nodded in response. I closed my eyes when I felt Bucky’s lips travelling across my cheek, leaving little pecks in their path. 

I massaged the back of his head, my fingers dug deep in his long hair. I let out a shaky breath as Bucky’s lips reached my jaw, his tongue wetting my skin with his open mouthed kisses. 

I tilted my head to the side, granting him more access as my other hand clung to his strong bicep. His metal hand held the back of my neck, supporting me as my body gave in to the pleasure. His flesh hand tugged the hem of my top out of the shorts before letting his palm slide underneath the material.

Bucky groaned against my neck as his hand came into contact with my lacy bra, his kisses getting sloppier as they reached my collarbone. “Tell me to stop.” He huffed out as he tried to control himself, not wanting me to feel pressured into anything.

I shook my head softly as I turned my head to look at him through half closed eyes, overwhelmed by the amount of pleasure and love I felt. “I don’t want you to stop.” I whispered vulnerably, Bucky’s head lifting to look at me with his gorgeous blue eyes.

He leaned in to press his lips back against mine, a whimper escaping my lips as I rolled my hips down onto his. A groan erupted in his throat, his hand travelling back down my body as he gripped the material of my top in his hand.

I leaned back momentarily, balancing myself with my palms on his bare chest as I helped him lift my shirt off of my body.

Bucky panted as he took in my semi-naked body, his hands rubbing the start of my hips needily as he watched me let my top drop on the floor. I leaned my hands back behind my body, making quick work of undoing my bra to let my boobs bounce freely.

I could feel his hardened bulge pressing against the inside of my thigh, his eyes fixated on my tits as he moved his lips onto my chest. I whimpered softly as his hot mouth left wet kisses on my breasts, his tongue flicking over my hardened nipples. 

Bucky’s hands hugged my body tightly, pulling me as close as he could as he sucked on my tits. I ran my hand through his soft hair, biting my lip as I closed my eyes in ecstasy.

Bucky’s metal palm slid down to my exposed lower back, holding me against him as he flipped us over. My back gently hit the blanket, Bucky’s large frame hovering above me as he moved his lips back up for another kiss.

My hands slid down his toned chest, over the chiseled abs of his stomach until I reached the button of his jeans. I tugged the waistband away from his skin gently, a little huff escaping his lips as I did so.

I broke the kiss to focus on what I was doing, Bucky’s head dropping into my neck as I popped open the button of his jeans. My head flew back, little moans escaping my lips as Bucky nipped at the base of my throat softly. 

My fingers pulled open his zipper, my pussy clenching as I slid my hand into his underwear. My touch was greeted by his hard cock, heavy in my hand. Bucky huffed out softly, his eyes closing as I felt my way down to his balls. 

I gasped softly at how big he felt, his lips kissing a strip up up the front of my throat and chin. His lips reconnected with mine as I circled his swollen tip with my thumb, smearing the leaking pre-cum. 

I lubricated my hand as much as I could with his juices before wrapping my fingers around his shaft. I tugged on his member gently, feeling his whole body tense at the foreign feeling. I hummed into the kiss, my pussy aching with need as I imagined how he’d feel inside me.

Bucky moaned as my hand jerked him off, his hips bucking to meet my touch as he hovered above me. He kissed me with so much force that my head pressed hard against the floor, softened slightly by the blanket. 

I felt his cock twitch in my hand, his hips jolting forward as he tried to control himself. Bucky lifted his flesh hand from the floor and moved it down between our bodies, his fingers tracing down my bare skin. 

His eyes immediately dropped to look between our legs, he licked his lips as his fingers came into contact with my shorts. Bucky’s jaw clenched as I squeezed his cock tighter, keeping my eyes trained on his gorgeous face.

Bucky skilfully flicked open the button on my jeans, his lips dropping to kiss me as he snaked his hand beneath the material of my panties. I gasped as he cupped my mound, my wetness leaking down onto his palm. 

My fingers dropped from around his cock, clinging to his bicep as he rubbed my pussy. My hips bucked up to meet his touch, needier than ever for his attention. I moaned into the kiss, my tongue flicking his as I arched my back off of the floor, feeling Bucky sit back from where I was. 

I looked up at him innocently, all baffled and horny as I watched him hook his fingers into the waistband of my shorts. In one swift motion, but slid my shorts and panties down to my knees. I wiggled my legs, helping him get them off the rest of the way as he sat back on his knees. 

“So beautiful.” Bucky mumbled as he looked down at my naked body, his cock standing proudly against his stomach. I bit my lip shyly a I sat up, my arousal dripping down onto the rug. 

Bucky crawled closer to me, his flesh hand running up my bare thigh as his cock throbbed desperately for attention. I breathed shakily, my arms wrapping around his neck as he pushes the last of his clothing down his thick thighs before kicking them behind him. 

He hovered over my body as I laid back down, now being cradled by the pillows he’d decorated the floor with. I could feel his big member against my thigh, trying to nudge its way into my warmth. I whimpered needily, bending my knees and pressing the heels of my feet against the blanket.

“Just let me know if this gets too mu-“ Bucky cut himself off with a moan, his nose crinkling in pleasure as he felt my hand wrap around his cock again.

I guided him to my entrance, encouragingly rubbing his throbbing tip into my wetness. My hand pulled away when I felt him pushing into me, filling me up with his big cock.

I let out a sensual moan of half pain and half pleasure as Bucky’s lips parted, a shaky breath escaping them as we felt my pussy clench around him.

My thighs clenched too, squeezing around his hips as his thick length slid out from where it was half sheathed inside of me. Bucky was going at a painfully slow rate, sliding his cock a little deeper into me with every thrust.

His lips dropped down onto mine, kissing me gently as he stretched my tight little pussy with his cock. The feeling of his thick length inside me made me dig my fingernails into the muscly flesh of his back.

I whimpered against his lips, my face screwing up in pleasure as he pulls his head back for a moment to admire me before crashing his lips on mine again.

I lifted my legs to wrap around his waist, my hips desperately bucking up to him in need. Bucky used his flesh hand to balance as his metal one ran up my leg, over my waist and up to my boob, squeezing it gently.

I cried out and arched my back into his touch, still in disbelief at how good he felt inside me. His cock filled me up again as he let out a grunt, breathing heavily as his body stilled.

Bucky moaned against my lips as he felt my pussy squeezing his cock, both of us lost in the overwhelming feeling of our bodies connecting. I pecked his lips over and over as he started rocking his hips back and forth slowly, making my tits bounce with every thrust.

His balls slapped against me, the sound filling the room as I let my mouth hang open. Our breaths met in a hot mix as Bucky squeezed his eyes shut in pleasure.

His hips jerked with each thrust, feeling himself rubbing against my walls as my pussy lips hugged his length. Bucky shuffled forward on his knees, deepening the thrusts as he picked up the pace.

I whimpered out softly, the new angle hitting all the right spots as my pussy welcomed his size, his cock soaked in my juices. “Bucky” I breathed shakily as I wrapped my arms around his neck, hugging him tightly against me. Bucky’s head fell perfectly into my neck, his little grunts intensified in my ear now.

A shiver ran through my body as I inhaled his manly scent, overwhelmed by the emotion and euphoric feeling of the moment. I felt my pussy tingle with pleasure, already close to my high as Bucky fucked his cock into me.

I tugged on his hair lightly when I felt his lips on my neck again, both of his hands pressed into the blanket either side of my head as he nudged his hips forward, sending his cock deeper into me. Bucky moaned into my neck, his cock twitching inside of me as he became overwhelmed with the feeling.

Bucky stopped his thrusting with such a suddenness that my eyes opened, a worried look washing over my face. He panted breathlessly, gripping my hips and supporting my back as he picked me up, sitting back on his knees with me on top of him.

I let out a moan the new angle impairing me on his cock as my arms stayed clung tightly around him. Bucky groaned full of pleasure, kissing me slowly as he started thrusting up into me, using his new position to his advantage.

Waves of pleasure mercilessly washed over me, only being intensified by the way Bucky was watching me fuck himself on top of him. He leaned his head back to watch me, his hips lifting to meet my movements as his arms clung to my body.

His eyes were soft and full of lust, his lips dropped into a pout as he watched me whither on top of him, overwhelmed with pleasure. I moaned with as gasp as my orgasm suddenly took over, my body pulsating on him as I rode out my high. 

I leaned forward and kissed him deeply, our tongues playing as he kept me in place despite how my hips were jolting at the throbbing of my clit. Bucky’s face dropped into my neck, his hot breath against my skin as I felt his warm cum spurting inside of me. I sighed out in satisfaction as Bucky grunts, wave after wave of cum filling me up.

He kept me close, our breathless bodies pushed together as we sat there in the afterglow of our orgasms. I’d never cum so hard in my life, the gentleness and love of Bucky’s actions had only topped the experience.

I turned my head and smiled lazily, kissing his swollen lips as my fingers ran through his hair. Bucky reacted by leaving soft pecks on lips over and over, his softening cock still buried inside of me.

“Y/N.” Bucky whispered softly, his breath still warm against my lips as his hooded eyes gazed into mine. “Will you be mine?” 

“Your valentine?” I softly asked, holding him tightly as I thought about the coldness I would feel once his body retreated from mine. 

“No, forever.” Bucky replied hopefully, making my heart stop as a wave of emotion flooded through my body. 

“Forever’s good for me.” I smiled as my eyes filled with tears, nothing but love for the man in front of me as I connected our lips in a gentle kiss. The perfect end to the perfect day.

tag list:

@harrysthiccthighss

@annestine

@bestofbucky

@be-patient-be-good

@nothing0is4here

@velvetcardiganbucky

@sexwithhiddlesbatch

[farfromharry]

The one with the much needed bandaid | Peter’s Girl

Summary: You and Peter finally talk about what you saw the night of Liz’s party, and you become sort of his go to nurse

Word count - 2375

Warnings - mentions of injury, language? i can’t remember

━━━━━━━━━♡♥♡━━━━━━━━━

Peter had spent the entire weekend practically pulling his hair out over the whole thing with Y/N. He couldn’t believe he was so reckless that in the space of the same night he’d managed to one, accidentally reveal his identity to one of his best friends, two, scare away the bad guys by underestimating just how dangerous they were, and three, summon Mr Stark- well his suit and some kind of phone call, to save him from a lake after being dropped in by some weird bird man.

So you could say Peter’s last few days hadn’t been very enjoyable or realistic at all and it was driving him insane.

He was trying to fix things one by one, and he’d begun with apologising to Mr Stark for any inconvenience he caused. His mentor was quick to brush it off, telling him not to get too worked up about it, but warning him to leave the dangerous men to him and the people who were specially trained to deal with these kinds of things, not just some kid from Queens.

He didn’t know how much of that he would stick to, determined to catch these guys as quickly as possible if the avengers weren’t going to jump in, but he’d try and keep that quiet and unknown to Tony of course.

The next part of his plan was to find you on Monday morning, to at least try and explain what he was doing in Spiderman’s suit outside of Liz’s party, maybe tell a few white lies to get himself out of the web he’s caught himself in.

And his plan for the bad guys… well that was still in the works, but he was smart so he’d figure it out in his own time.

»»——⍟——««

You had received numerous texts and calls from Peter since the moment you woke up that morning, all of which had been ignored. You’d gathered he’d want to talk to you but you weren’t returning the sentiment, and you weren’t even sure why. Were you mad he didn’t tell you? Mad that he’d put himself in all that danger?

You didn’t know, but you did know that you were planning on avoiding him so you didn’t have to find out.

Peter had met up with Ned that morning like he did every morning. He was rambling on about some new star wars theory that the brunette would normally love to hear and give his opinion on, so the fact that Peter was ignoring him was strange.

“Are you okay? You seem a little on edge,” Ned pointed out. Peter turned to look at him with a small, unconvincing look.

“I just need to talk to Y/N.”

Ned rolled his eyes. He didn’t know what happened that night other than Peter had left him looking stupid at the party, prompting Flash to call the boy some names while he wasn’t there.

Seeing as Mj had stopped defending him and Ned wouldn’t get involved, the male was free to ridicule Peter for as long as he wished, making for a lot of weird stares in the school halls.

But back to the present, his best friend didn’t seem too happy that he was so obviously keeping things from him, because Peter Parker was a horrible liar.

When your eyes met Peter’s figure resting against your locker you quickly spun around and started heading in the opposite direction, even if you had no idea where you were planning on going. Your hair whipping around was what caught Peter’s attention from his peripheral vision.

“Gotta go,” he announced to Ned, heading off the way you left with a quick jog in his step. You could hear Peter calling your name louder the closer he got, prompting you to speed up.

You cursed quietly when you came to the end of the hallway, having to decide on the spot whether to go left to a crowd of rowdy students, or right to a dead end. People must have thought you both looked crazy, even though that was the only other conclusion you could come to about yourself after you saw Peter on the rooftop.

“Y/N!” Peter yelled, grabbing your wrist in a gentle but firm grip. You stared at him wide eyed, almost like you were afraid of him, and it was a look that Peter never wanted to see again.

He quickly looked around before tugging you through an open door that led you to an empty classroom.

He closed the door behind him, leaving you standing there watching him blankly. He took a few minutes to try and prepare what he was going to say, granted something he should’ve probably done before he pulled you into a room with him.

“I want to explain the other night,” he stated, meeting your eyes for the first time that day. Your expression stayed stoic, pursing your lips.

“You want to lie your way out of admitting you’re Spiderman?” you sassed. The male was slightly taken back at your bluntness.

“Yeah, I guess,” he joked, trying to lighten the mood slightly. You didn’t look impressed at all, and he sputtered out a few apologies.

“Okay yes, I am Spiderman-“ you interrupted him with a scoff, running your hands through your hair in frustration. “Please just hear me out, y/n/n.”

You huffed, folding your arms over your chest. Peter had to admit that without your usual happy mood, you were intimidating and he never knew you were even capable of that.

“Fine, go ahead.”

He took a deep breath. “You aren’t meant to know because- it-it’s dangerous Y/N.” Your heart fluttered slightly. “I didn’t tell anyone because I wanted you all to be safe, I don’t know what I’d do if I was the reason you got hurt.”

Your features noticeably softened. He stepped closer to you, taking your hands in his and running his thumb over the back of your skin.

“You can’t tell anyone, please.” His soft eyes met yours in a pleading look.

“Who else knows?” you asked.

“Ned,” he mumbled. “And Mr Stark, but that’s it.”

You perked up slightly, and Peter noticed.

“So, Mj doesn’t know?” He shook his head, murmuring something about how it probably wouldn’t take her long to figure out though. Sensing your happiness about his words, the boy assumed you were happy that you knew something that she didn’t, and he didn’t really understand why. But that wasn’t the case, you were just glad that it meant she was safe, what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, right?

“Will you keep my secret?” he asked, staring at you with eyes that resembled those of a scared puppy. You sighed, flashing him a smile and nodding your head.

“Of course I will.” The tone of your voice suggested to Peter that you weren’t done and there was going to be some kind of condition here.

“But?” he prompted.

“But please be careful, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

He grinned, pulling you into a tight hug. You tucked your head under his chin, inhaling his scent and being calmed by his presence.

Peter couldn’t wipe the smirk off of his face thinking about how you weren’t aware of his abilities, something he’d have to explain to you sometime. “You have so much to learn about me.”

»»——⍟——««

A soft tapping on your window was the last thing you expected to hear at almost midnight on a weekday. You raised your head from your pillow, squinting your eyes to try and make out what was on the other side of the glass.

You eventually had to turn on your light, startling when you noticed the shape of a person, more specifically a superhero.

You swung your legs over the side of your bed, hissing when your feet made contact with the cold floor, but you pushed that aside to go and open your window to invite Peter in.

He hastily pulled off his mask, revealing his ruffled hair and bloody face to you.

“Oh my god,” you gasped, taking note of the streaks of red on the side of his face. He looked at you with tears in his eyes, stepping forward without a word to engulf you in a hug.

You were careful wrapping your arms around him, making sure you didn’t cause him anymore pain with your hand placement.

“What happened?”

He raised his head, pressing the spider symbol in the middle of his chest. His suit grew loose, making it easy for him to take off and leave on your bedroom floor.

Your eyes widened, staring at Peter’s body in shock. You knew when he explained the whole situation with the spider that he would have some muscle, but you were definitely not expecting that.

“Um,” you were more or less speechless, forgetting how to even form words while this gorgeous boy was standing in your room in nothing but underwear.

Peter obviously hadn’t thought it completely through, his eyes widening when he realised you were indeed staring at him half naked.

“Sorry, I-I-“ You shook your head, ignoring the definite blush on your cheeks as you guided him to your bathroom. You got the boy to sit down on the side of the tub, where he nervously played with his fingers.

“So, what happened?” you asked, setting your emergency first aid kit on the side. He blankly looked up to you, finally looking at you properly. Only now did he notice that you must have been trying to go to sleep.

You were in an old shirt and a pair of sleep shorts, your hair tied up in a messy ponytail without any makeup. Peter always thought you were pretty, and it seemed as though he was only now realising just how pretty you were.

“Pete?” you whispered, snapping him out of his daydream.

He apologised. “What did you say?”

“I asked if you could turn your head to the light.” He nodded, doing as you asked and bearing his wounded cheekbone to you. His fists clenched when he felt you touch the alcohol to his cheek, hearing a small apology after you heard his pained hiss.

He thought back to a couple minutes ago when you’d ask how this happened, mentally debating whether he should tell you or not. He came to the conclusion that if you were going to generously patch him up then the least he could do was tell you how he got himself in this state in the first place.

“There was some guys following this girl, trying to back her into an alley.” You paused your hand movements, looking into his soft honey eyes with a sympathetic smile. He took that as a sign to continue. “I couldn’t just let it happen, I thought about if that was you or Mj and ai just-“

Your heart almost burst with love for the boy, pressing a friendly kiss to the top of his head that had him blushing a deep scarlet in seconds.

“You did the right thing, even if you got a little hurt.”

He nodded, glad he was able to get your approval, especially after your one condition of not telling anyone was that he was as careful as he could be.

“Where else does it hurt?”

You helped clean Peter up as best as you could, the boy telling you that his quick healing should deal with the parts that you couldn’t, such as the bruised ribs.

“Let me just put a bandaid on and you’re good to go.” He rolled his eyes, trying to tell you that he didn’t need it. It was only a small cut on his bicep but you were insisting on covering it up. Peter watched as your eyes widened when you pulled the bandaids from the first aid kit.

“What is it?” he asked.

You nervously held them up, watching as his face twisted into one of amusement. He let out a loud laugh, quickly being scolded by you as you warned him that your parents were sleeping.

“Really, Y/N?” You blushed, looking down at the bandaid in your hand with a flood of embarrassment. The face of Iron Man stared back at you while Peter continued to giggle. You rolled your eyes, holding out his arm and sticking the bandaid over his cut anyway.

“I hope Mr Stark sees,” you teased, sticking your tongue out at him like a child. “You’re all done.”

He thanked you quietly, heading back into your room while you tidied away the mess you’d made on the counter.

Only when you were done you headed back, planning on getting straight back into your bed as soon as Peter had left.

“Thank you for helping me.” You nodded your head, leaning against the door frame of the bathroom as you watched him slip his suit back on.

“Peter,” you whispered, catching his attention just before he left. He hummed quietly. “You know you can come here anytime you need help, right?”

You were being completely genuine, and Peter could see that in your eyes. He was incredibly grateful for you. He held out his hand to you so you’d come over, intertwining your fingers with his when you were close enough to reach.

On an instinct he dipped his head so he was able to kiss your cheek, refusing to meet your eyes as a cute blush spread across his face, the tips of his ears also tinting pink. If he’d have looked at you, you were sure he would’ve noticed he made you equally as hot and bothered, your heart racing so fast you were surprised he couldn’t hear it.

But he could, and it only made him more nervous that he’d just messed things up.

“I know.” He sent you a smile before shooting one of his webs towards a building in the close distance, slipping his mask on over his face and giving you a wave as a final farewell for the night. Thus began the routine of Spiderman showing up at your window every time he was injured and in need of a bandaid, or in some cases a little more than a bandaid.

━━━━━━━━━♡♥♡━━━━━━━━━

peter’s girl taglist → @sunsetholland @captainamirica @tomsirishgirlx @givebuckyhisplumsnow @lou-la-lou @slutforsr @tayyx @gog0juice @minejungwoo @creatorofthegalaxy @annathesillyfriend @paninipress @bvttercupbby @peterswebshooters @whoeveniskendall @itsallyscorner @hoodpankow

[arcticdementor]

There are three kinds of dissidents: (a) anons, (b) pundits who still care what people think, and (c) outsiders who DGAF. All these groups are great; real greatness can be achieved in any of them; and good friends I have in each. But each has its problems.

…

The problem with (b) is that you are always policing yourself. Not only do your readers never really know what you really believe—you never really know yourself. In practice, it is much easier to police your own thoughts than your own words. When choosing between two ideas, the temptation to prefer the safer one is almost irresistible. This is a source of cognitive distortion which the anons and outsiders do not experience. (Though anons do suffer something of the opposite, a reflex to provoke.)

As a pundit, you sense this stress in every bone of your body; you can never show it to your readers. This creates a deep dishonesty in the parasocial relationship between writer and reader—like a marriage that can never escape some foolish first-date fib. The falsity, like the blue in blue cheese, flows through and flavors every particle of your content. Neither you nor your readers can ever be sure whether you are speaking the truth, lying to them, or lying to yourself—but you are constantly doing all three. You may still be very entertaining—enlightening, even. All your work is ephemeral, and once you die only your relatives will remember you. And it’s not even your fault.

…

From my perspective, both the anonymous and official dissidents exhibit a kind of unserious frivolity, but a very different kind. The frivolity of the anon is imaginative, surreal and playful at best, merely puerile at worst. The frivolity of the pundit has no upside; in every paragraph he is breaking Koestler’s rule, and he knows it; the best he can do is to shut up selectively about the things he cannot write about.

And his mens rea, too, is awful. He is selling hope. He is selling answers. Pity the man whose life has brought him to the position of selling answers in which he does not believe, or which he is forced to believe, or which he must force himself to believe. However sophisticated and erudite he may be, he is just a high-end grifter. His little magazine is a Macedonian troll-farm with a PhD. He is lucky if his eloquent essays about the common good don’t appear above a popup bar peddling penis pills—and in fact, I know more than one brilliant scholar in precisely this bathetic position. The frame defines the picture; the context sets the price of the text. Sad!

Worst still must be the reality that bad punditry is worse than useless—since useless strategies for escaping from a real problem are traps. When you lead your readers toward an attractive but ineffective solution, you lead them away from the opposite.

You got into this business to change the world for the better. You cannot avoid the realization that you are changing it for the worse—because your objective function is that of Chaim Rumkowski, the Lodz Ghetto’s “King of the Jews.”

You exist to convince your own followers that they neither can nor should do anything effective. The easiest way to do this is to convince them that ineffective strategies are effective. And this, as we’ll see, is exactly what you cannot avoid doing, dear pundit.

Moreover, from our present position of profound unreality, where the official narrative shared and studied by all normal intelligent people and all prestigious institutions can only be described as a state of venomous delirium, the opportunities to play Judas goat are almost unlimited. Cows, remember: there does not have to be only one Judas goat.

…

A particular favorite of the pundit is the error that AI philosophers call the “first-step fallacy.” It turns out that the first monkey to climb to the top of a tree was taking the first step toward landing on the moon:

First-step thinking has the idea of a successful last step built in. Limited early success, however, is not a valid basis for predicting the ultimate success of one’s project. Climbing a hill should not give one any assurance that if he keeps going he will reach the sky.

When a vendor sells you the moon and ships you a rope-ladder, you’ve been defrauded. Time for that one-star review.

…

Today we’ll chart the edges of the legitimate possible by looking at three recent pundit essays which have done a fine job of exploring those edges, and maybe even expanding them: Richard Hanania’s “Why is Everything Liberal?”, Scott Alexander’s “The New Sultan”, and Tanner Greer’s “The Problem of the New Right.”

…

After reading Hanania’s essay, a fourth pundit (who is out as a radical conservative) asked me: why does the right always lose? “Narcissistic delusions,” I replied.

Which was far from what he expected to hear, or what most readers will take from the essay. All three of these essays are good and true; but their inability to go far enough leaves them pointing their audience in precisely the wrong direction.

Most readers will emerge feeling that conservatives need more and better narcissistic delusions. Indeed, both pundit and politician are right there with just such a product. This meretricious frivolity, posing as seriousness, is too egregious to leave unmocked; yet the right reason to mock it is to challenge it to assume its final, truly-serious form.

Richard Hanania and the loser right

Hanania’s true point—backed up with a ream of unnecessary, PhD-worthy evidence—is that the libs always win because they just care more:

…

Since the rebirth of conservatism after the revolutionary monoculture of World War II, all conservative punditry has consisted of attempts to create more excitement around policies and values which effectively resist the power of the prestigious institutions—giving “normal people” as much to care about as their fanatical, aristocratic enemies.

Sensibly, this tends to involve raising “issues” which actually seem to affect their lives, but which also run counter to aristocratic power. Over decades, the substance of these issues changes and even reverses; the opposite stance becomes the useful stance; and “conservative values” have no choice but to change to reflect this. (If this seems like a liberal way to rag on conservatives—the cons learned it from the libs.)

…

“New Right” is not Greer’s term, but as a label I can barely imagine a worse self-own. It promises something ephemeral and irrelevant. So far as I can tell, this same cursed label has been used in every generation of conservatism to mean something different. When it inevitably fails and dies, people forget about it, and the next generation, stuck in the eternal present of a Korsakoff-syndrome movement, can reinvent it.

Who reads the conservative pundits of the ‘80s? Even those who remember them have to throw them under the bus. Every generation of National Review twinks, solemnly intoning what they conceive to be the immortal philosophy of our hallowed founders, is horrified by its predecessor, and horrifies its successor—a truly bathetic spectacle. And of course, each such generation would utterly horrify the actual founders.

…

Greer then goes deep into David Hackett Fischer territory to explain the obvious, yet important, fact that this “New Right” consists of upper-class intellectuals (inherently the heirs of the Puritans, since America’s upper-class tradition is the Puritan tradition) trying to lead middle-class yokels (the heirs of the Scotch-Irish crackers, and (though Greer does not mention this) Irish, Slavs, and other post-Albionic “white ethnic” trash, today even including many Hispanics. He even gives us a clever historical bon mot:

Pity the Whig who wishes to lead the Jackson masses!

Uh, yeah, dude, that would be called “Abraham Lincoln.”

But the point stands. Not just the “New Right” with its new statist ideology, but the whole postwar American Right, is a weird army with a general staff of philosophers and a fighting infantry of ignorant yokels. How can this stay together? How can the philosophers bring forth a mythology that creates passionate intensity in the yokels?

…

There is wisdom in this madness, of course—the problem is caused by aristocrats whose minds are wholly given over to narcissistic delusions. Doesn’t it take fire to fight fire? Doesn’t it take passionate intensity? Isn’t passionate intensity generated only by myths, dreams, poems and religions, not autistic formulas for tax policy? So the answer is clear: we need more and better narcissistic delusions. Ie, shams.

After all, any “founding mythology” is a narcissistic delusion. The flintlock farmers and mechanic mobs of the 1770s, and the Plymouth Puritans of the 1620s, have one thing in common: none of these people even remotely resembles the megachurch grill-and-minivan conservative of the 2020s. None of them even remotely resembles you.

They did live in the same places, and speak sort of the same language. Otherwise you probably have more in common with the average Indonesian housewife—at least she watches the same superhero movies.

To Narcissus, everything is a mirror; in everything and everyone, he sees himself. No field is riper for narcissism than history, since the dead past cannot even laugh at the present’s appropriations of a human reality it could not even start to comprehend.

And fighting fire with fire is one thing, but fighting the shark in the water is another. For the aristocrat, transcending reality is a core competence. The essence of leftism—always and everywhere an aristocratic trope, however vast its ignorant serf-armies—is James Spader in Pretty in Pink: “If I cared about money, would I treat my father’s house this way?” Mere peasants can never develop this kind of wild energy: that’s the point.

Yet Hanania remains right about the amount of energy that a rational, Kantian agenda for productive collective action motivated by collective self-interest, or even collective self-defense, can generate. The grill-American suburbicon is like Maistre’s Frenchman under the late Jacobins: he has defined deviancy down to rock-bottom. “He feels that he is well-governed, so long as he himself is not being killed.”

O, what to do? When you are solving an engineering problem and see the answer at last, it hits you like a thunderbolt. The conservatives, the normal people, the grill-Americans, must accept their own low energy. They must cease their futile reaching for passionate intensity, whether achieved through Kantian collective realism or Jaffaite founding mythology. They must fight the shark on land.

Conservatives don’t care—at least not enough. Yet they want to matter. Yet they live in a political system where mattering is a function of caring—not just voting. Therefore, there are two potential solutions: (a) make them care more; (b) make systems that let them matter more, without caring more.

Conservatives have low energy. They want high impact—at this point, they need high impact. After all, once you yourself are being killed, it’s kind of too late. Any engineer would tell you that there are two paths to high impact: more energy, or more efficiency.

Conservatives vote but don’t care. If we don’t have a viable way to make conservatives care more—meaning orders of magnitude more—effective strategies and structures must generate power by voting, not caring. They must maximize power per vote.

…

Interference means voters who are on the same team are working against each other. Impedance means voters resist delegating their complete consent to the team.

Interference is like a bunch of ants pulling the breadcrumb in different directions. To eliminate interference, point all your votes at one structurally cohesive entity which never works against itself.

Impedance is like getting married for a limited trial period, so long as your wife stays hot and keeps liking the stuff you like. As Burke pointed out in his famous speech to the electors of Bristol, the fundamental nature of electoral consent is unconditional:

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of Constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a Representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider.

But authoritative Instructions; Mandates issued, which the Member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgement and conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental Mistake of the whole order and tenor of our Constitution.

The cause of electoral impedance in the modern world is the conventional concept of “agendas” or “platforms” or “issues.” When you vote not for a cohesive entity, but for a list of instructions you are giving to that entity, you are not voting your full power. You are voting for Burke’s opponent, who felt “his Will ought to be subservient to yours.” In effect, you are voting for yourself. Narcissism once again rears its ugly head.

When you vote an agenda, you are granting limited consent to your representative. You say: I vote for you, for a limited time, so long as you stay fit and cook tasty dinners. I am actually not voting for you! I am voting for “reforms for conservatives” (Hanania). I am voting for “a broad set of shared attitudes and policy prescriptions” (Greer). Dear, I am not marrying you. I am marrying hot sex, regular cleaning and delicious meals—till ten extra pounds, or maybe at most fifteen, do us part.

You implicitly withhold your consent for anything not on your jejune list of bullet points. Then, you wonder why your representatives have no power and are constantly mocked, disobeyed, tricked and destroyed by people who are legally their employees. This is not political sex. This is political masturbation. You voted for yourself. And instead of a baby, all you got was a wad of tissues. Nice way to “drain the swamp.”

Your vote does not work because you are not voting, delegating, or granting consent. You are like an archer with one arrow who, afraid of losing it, refuses to let go of it. Without releasing his dart, all he can do is run up to the enemy and try to stab.

So if conservatives want to maximize the impact of their votes, all they have to do is the opposite of what they’re doing. Instead of voting for the okonomi a-la-carte stupid little political menus of hundreds of unconnected candidates and their staffs, they can all vote for the omakase prix-fixe chef’s-choice of a single cohesive governing entity.

Such a power, elected, has the voters’ mandate not just to “govern,” but to rule. When no other private or public force enjoys any such consent, no other force can resist. We are certainly well beyond “rule of law” at this point! On the inaugural podium, the new President announces a state of emergency. He declares himself the Living Constitution. In six months no one will even remember “the swamp.”

Wow! What a simple, clear idea! The engineer, when he comes across so compelling and obvious a design, knows there’s a catch: he won’t get the patent. Someone else must have invented it before. People may be stupid—but they’re not that stupid.

Indeed we have just reasoned our way to reinventing the oldest, most common, and most successful form of government: monarchy. And we are setting it against the second most common form, the institutional rule of power-obsessed elites: oligarchy. And to install our monarchy, we are using the collective action of a large number of people who each perform one small act: democracy.

The alliance of monarchy and democracy (king and people) against oligarchy (church and/or nobles) is the oldest political strategy in the book. The suburban conservative, who just wants to grill, either has no idea this ancient and trivial solution exists, or regards it as the worst thing in the world—even worse, possibly, than his sixth-grader’s mandatory sex change.

And why? Ask your friendly local Judas goat, the pundit. Even the “new right” pundit—who only differs in his policies and issues. Which are, true, slightly less useless. As the top of the tree is slightly closer to the moon.

The 20th century even came up with a handy pejorative for a newborn monarchy. We call it fascism. No word on whether Cromwell, Caesar, or Charlemagne, let alone Louis XIV, Frederick II and Elizabeth I, were fascists.

But, to borrow Scott Alexander’s charming term, also not his own invention, they were certainly strongmen. TLDR: if you want to be strong, elect one strongman. If you prefer to be weak, elect a whole bunch of weakmen. Do you prefer to be weak? “If the rule you followed brought you to this place—of what use was the rule?”

The pundit reassures you that you don’t need a strongman to be strong—you’ll do fine with weakmen—so long as those weakmen have the right “shared attitudes and policy prescriptions.” By the way, here are some attitudes I’m happy to share with you. Click now to accept cookies. Did I mention that I have policy prescriptions, too? Skip ad in 5 seconds. Congratulations, you’ve been automatically subscribed! Check the box to opt out of most emails—void where prohibited by law—terms and conditions may apply…

…

An odd sort of pundit, who remains only nominally anonymous but has always very much GAF, Scott Alexander does not have Hanania’s cagey diplomatic noncommittal. As a “rationalist,” he is deeply committed to his own class status, and to oligarchy itself—which, like most, he misidentifies as “democracy.”

While the whole raison d’etre of the rationalist is the irrationality of our oligarchy, as displayed in genius moves like refusing to cancel regularly-scheduled airline flights to stop a Holocaust-tier pandemic, the rationalist’s dream is a rational oligarchy—using Bayes’ rule, which given infinite computing power will become infinitely intelligent—in Carlyle’s immortal phrase, “a government carried out by steam.”

Obviously, this is not just logical—it immunizes the rationalists from the scurrilous charge of “fascism,” or worse. And they were right about stopping the flights. So was my 9-year-old. Sadly, in a world of universal delusional delirium, rationality can get quite pleased with itself by clearing quite a low bar.

My view is that no government can be or ever has been carried out by steam—only by human beings—a species the same today as in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, if possibly a little dumber on average—and this will remain the case until some computational or genetic singularity occurs. For neither of which events will I hold my breath. This is why I find it easy to picture 21st-century America under the phronetic monarchy of an experienced and capable President-CEO, and almost hilariously impossible to picture it under a Bayesian bureaucracy of polyamorous smart-contracts.

Alexander disagrees. Here is his analysis—the same text that Hanania quotes. Let’s go through it thought by thought, and see if we can’t turn it into some delicious carnitas.

…

Let’s get back to those “elites.” Alexander conflates three quite orthogonal concepts in his use of the word “elite”: biology, institutions, and culture.

Elite biology is high IQ, which is genetic. Elite institutions are any centers of organized collective power—Harvard, the Komsomol, the Mafia, etc. Elite culture is whatever ideas flourish within elite institutions.

Destroying biology is genocide—specifically, aristocide. Destroying institutions is… paperwork. Who hasn’t worked for a company that went out of business? Same deal. And if the culture is the consequence of the institutions, different institutions (with the same human biology) will inevitably nurture different ideas.

The SS was anything but a low-IQ institution, yet it propagated a very different culture than Harvard. 21st-century Germany is anything but a low-IQ country, but the ideas of Kurt Eggers do not flourish in it. It seems that high-IQ institutions can be destroyed—and the new “elite culture” will be the culture of the institutions that replace them.

So the only target is the institutions. There is nothing “nasty” about closing an office. In the worst possible scenario, the police need to clear the building, lock the doors, and impound the servers. Such tasks are well within their core competence, and can be performed with calm professionalism. They will probably not even need their zip-ties.

…

For democracy to be effective in such a situation, it must know its own limitations. It can seize the reins—but only to hand them to some effective power. This power must have one of three forms: an existing oligarchy, a new monarchy, or a foreign power.

Also, there are three classes in an advanced society, not just two: nobles, commoners, and clients. Since clients support their patrons by definition, once nobles plus clients outnumber commoners, the commoners have permanently lost the numbers game. This is why importing client voters is a recipe for either civil war or eternal tyranny—if not both.

…

Yes. This is what happened in denazification, except with monarchy and oligarchy reversed. For example, all German media firms today are descendants of institutions created, or at least certified, by AMGOT. Nothing “organic” about it.

The essential problem with Alexander’s picture of this process is that, since like most smart people today he inhabits Cicero’s great quote about history and children, he simply cannot imagine replacing one kind of elite institution with another. Nor can he imagine high-IQ elites—human beings as smart as him—which are as loyal to a new sane monarchy as today’s elites are loyal, slavishly loyal, to our old insane oligarchy. Does he think that Elizabeth’s London had no elites? Caesar’s Rome?

If Alexander was analyzing the Soviet Union in the same way, he would conclude that elites are inherently devoted to building socialism for the workers and peasants. Since the present world he lives in is all of history for him, he cannot see the general theory which predicts this special case: elites like to get ahead. To genuinely change the world, change what it takes for elites to get ahead.

If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of “race opera,” as my late wife liked to put it, the floodgates of race opera will open. If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of Stalin hagiography, Stalin will be praised to the skies in beautiful and clever rhymes.

…

There are two big strawmen here. Let’s turn them into steelmen.

First, “the populace uses the government” is non-Burkean. The populace (not all of it, just the middle class) installs the government. Then it goes back to grilling. So long as the commoners have to be in charge of the regime, and the commoners are weak, the regime will be weak. They need to “fire and forget.” Otherwise, they just lose.

Second, Alexander has clearly never heard of the atelier movement. No, this is not the same thing as your grandma in front of the TV copying Bob Ross.

What happens is this: every (oligarchic) art school and art critic no longer exists. Not that they are killed, of course. Just that their employers are liquidated (not with a bullet in the neck, just with a letter from the bank). They exist physically, not professionally. They were already bureaucrats—they had careers, not passions. Who gets fired, but keeps doing his job just for fun? Certainly not a bureaucrat.

And every (oligarchic) artist no longer exists—not that they are killed, of course. Just that the rich socialites who used to buy their stuff got letters from the bank, too. Libs sometimes talk about a wealth tax—a one-time wealth cap, perhaps at a modest level like $20 mil, will concentrate the rich man’s mind wonderfully on actual necessities.

Elites like to get ahead. The people who got ahead in the oligarchic art scene can no longer get ahead by doing shitty, bureaucratic, 20th-century conceptual art. Because there were so many of them, and because the demand for this product has dropped by at least one order of magnitude if not two, elite ambition is replaced by elite revulsion.

The enormous supply-and-demand imbalance for both art and artists in 20th-century styles leaves these styles about as fashionable as disco in 1996. “Paintings” that used to sell for eight figures will be stacked next to the dumpster. “Artists” once celebrated in the Times will be teaching kindergarten, tying trout flies, or cooking delicious dinners.

Inevitably, some of these people have real artistic talent. (The first modern artists had real talent—Picasso was an excellent draftsman.) They can go to an atelier and learn to draw. They will—because now, acquiring real artistic skill is a way to get ahead in art. And again, elites like to get ahead.

…

There is nothing “normal” or “natural” or “organic” about oligarchy. Does Alexander think “uncured” bacon is “organic” because, instead of evil chemical nitrates, it uses healthy, natural celery powder? He sure is easy to fool. But who isn’t?

Culture and academia is already yoked to the will of government in a “heavy-handed manner”—yoked not by the positive pressure of power, but the negative attraction of power. When the formal government defers to institutions that are formally outside the government, it leaks power into them and makes them de facto state agencies.

Power leakage, like a pig lagoon spilling into an alpine lake, poisons the marketplace of ideas with delicious nutrients. Ideas that make the institutions more powerful grow wildly. Eventually these ideas evolve carnivory and learn to positively repress their competitors, which is how our free press and our independent universities have turned our regime into Czechoslovakia in 1971, and our conversation into a Hutu Power after-school special. PS: Black lives matter.

The paradox of “authoritarianism” is that a regime strong enough to implement Frederick the Great’s idea of “free speech”—“they say what they want, I do what I want”—can actually create a free and unbiased marketplace of ideas, which neither represses seditious ideas nor rewards carnivorous ideas. But it takes a lot of power to reach this level of strength—and it requires liquidating all competing powers.

I have never been able to explain this simple idea to anyone, even rationalists with 150+ IQs who can grok quantum computing before breakfast, who didn’t want to understand it. Ultimately it reduces to the painful realization that sovereignty is conserved—that the power of man over man is a human universal. (Also, we all die.)

No surprise that nerds who think of power as Chad shoving them into a locker can’t handle the truth. PS: I went to a public high school as a 12-year-old sophomore, was bullied every day for three years, and graduated college as a virgin. Whoever you are, dear reader, you are not beyond hope. You can handle the truth.

…

And yet: Alexander’s post is about Erdoğan—and his description of Erdoğan is spot on. It also is a perfect description of Orban in Hungary; it applies to Putin in Russia and Xi in China; and it is even pretty accurate for Hitler, Mussolini and friends.

What all these “strongmen” have in common is that they are provincial. Turkey is not exactly the center of the world. Even 20th-century Germany was nowhere near the center of the world, though it could at least imagine becoming that center. If Turkey just disappeared tomorrow, no one would have any reason to care except the Turks. Who needs Turkey for anything? What would collapse—the dried-apricot market?

Erdoğan’s problem is that he cannot vaporize the oligarchy, because the institutions that matter are not in Turkey. The provincial strongman has no choice but to follow the “populist” playbook that Alexander describes so well.

Orban can kick Soros’s university out of Hungary; he cannot do anything at all to Soros, let alone to the global institutions of which Soros is only a small part. He is indeed “arrayed against” these institutions, to which his Hungarian elites (who speak nearly-perfect English) will always be loyal. The contest is unequal and has only one possible winner, though it can last indefinitely long. Even Xi, whose country can quite easily imagine becoming the economic center of the world, is a provincial strongman—in fact, he sent his daughter to Harvard. Sad!

In a global century, the only way for these provincial strongmen to develop genuine local sovereignty is to go full juche. This is simply not possible for Hungary or Turkey, both of which are firmly attached to the cultural, economic, and military teat of the Global American Empire. Indeed it is barely possible for North Korea, a marsupial nation still in China’s pouch. So Alexander is right: these “strongmen” cannot win. Their regimes will all go the way of Franco’s. It’s impressive that they even survive.

Erdoğan simply has no way to attach his best citizens to his own regime. They are citizens of the world. Elites always like to get ahead. If you’re a world-class talent in anything, why would you try to get ahead in Istanbul? Suppose you want to make a name as the world’s greatest Turkish writer. Succeed in New York, then come home. Turkey is a province; provinces are provincial.

Yet I am not a Turk or a Hungarian, and neither is Scott Alexander. The greater any empire, the more essential that its fall begin at the center. The Soviet empire did not fall from the outside in; it was not brought down from Budapest or Prague; it fell from Moscow out.

And the American empire will fall from Washington out—though that may not happen in the lives of those now living. And although nature abhors a vacuum and no empire can be replaced by nothing—and oligarchy, in the modern world, can only be replaced by monarchy—the “strongman” of this monarchy will not look anything like these mere provincial dictators.

…

The result of Alexander’s perceptive calculations, which are only wrong because their only input data is the present, is simply that our present incompetent tyranny is and must be permanent. Of course, every sovereign regime defines itself as permanent. Yet when we look at the past and not just the present, we see that no empire is forever.

Some grim things are happening in America today. These grim things have a silver lining: they expose the gleaming steel jaws of the traps that the aristocracy sets for its commoners. They remind the cattle that a goat is not a cow and a baa is not a moo.

Every pundit is a Cicero. And amidst all the greatness of his rhetoric, Cicero could not imagine a world that had no use for Ciceros—a world governed by competence, not rhetoric. By the time Caesar crossed the Rubicon, nothing had failed more completely than the whole Roman idea of governance by rhetoric—an idea many centuries old, an idea whose execution had beaten all competitors to capture the whole civilized world, but an idea that was past its sell-by date. Rome herself was no longer suited to it. The republican aristocracy of Rome no longer meant Regulus and Scipio and Cincinnatus; it meant Milo and Clodius and Catiline. Its factional conflict was the choice between Hutu Power and Das Schwarze Korps. Caesar was not a disaster; Caesar was a miracle.

In the death of the American republic, every detail is different. The story is the same. The contrast in capacity between SpaceX and the Pentagon, Moderna and the CDC, Apple and Minneapolis—between our monarchical corporations, and our oligarchical institutions—is a dead ringer for the contrast between the legions and the Senate.

The sooner we stop pretending that this isn’t happening to us, the better results we can get. Wouldn’t it be nice to get to Caesar, Augustus and Marcus Aurelius, without passing through Sulla and Marius, Crassus and Spartacus? Alas, from here and now it seems unlikely. But I can’t see why every serious person wouldn’t want to try.

[leavemyelevator-alone]

I’m testing something out. Please send feedback! Endgame happened :(, but Far From Home didn't. Spideychelle is still real, though. The glasses are like the E.D.I.T.H. ones in FFH, just to give you a general idea of what they look like.

The first time Peter tried on the glasses Pepper gave to him, he broke down in tears. In the glasses, standing in all his (now-AI) glory, was Tony Stark. The former billionaire--who was supposed to be dead--sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. "Hey, kid. Didya miss me?"

Peter sobbed, tears streaming down his face as he collapsed onto the floor, not enough strength to even take the glasses off, let alone get back up. This was the cruelest thing that had ever happened to him. Five years, seven months, and twenty-three days ago, he had dusted on Titan in his mentor's arms, waking in the Soul Realm, almost-positive that the realm was his new home and he would never see Earth again. Then, he came back to Earth, only to have to fight Thanos again, and had to watch his father figure die in front of him when he could have done something to save him. He had to go to Tony's funeral, and while he got to meet Morgan and Harley, Pepper had broken down in tears, causing Peter to weep as well. After the funeral, a teary-eyed Pepper had handed him a glasses case and, with a watery smile, said, "He would have wanted you to have these." Peter had all but broken down again right there and then. When May took him home, Peter had put the case on his desk, unable to even look at it without tearing up. It had taken him two weeks to get used to the fact that Tony was really gone, not that he was happy or content with it, and two more weeks to gather up the courage to try on the glasses. Only to see a holographic image of his long-gone mentor. Peter cried until his head hurt and his eyes were red. The hologram in the glasses murmured comforting words, obviously slightly uncomfortable. That made Peter cry even more. Finally, when his tears dried up, Peter sniffed, wiped his nose with his sweatshirt sleeve, and reached up to take the glasses off.

"Wait!" The hologram called. "Wait, please don't take the glasses off. I haven't gotten to talk to you since . . . you know, and I really want to talk to you. The last time these glasses were activated were when Steve and I went to Camp Lehigh in 1970 to get the Tesseract to save the world. I--" The hologram--Tony--'s voice cracked, and he paused for a minute. "I asked Pepper to give these glasses to you in case--in case I didn't make it back to do it myself."

Peter blinked back more tears, even though he had though that he'd run out. "But--but why?"

"Gonna have to be a bit more specific than that, kid."

"Why me?" With that one question, it was if a dam in Peter broke. The words tumbled out of him, unable to stop. "Why did you choose to give the glasses to me? Why not Morgan? Or Pepper, or Happy, or Harley, or--" Peter took a deep breath before he was off to the races again. "Why did you have to get the gauntlet? You could have given it to T'Challa! His suit absorbs kinetic energy, so he would have been able to wield the gauntlet. Or Captain Marvel. She's powerful enough! But no! You did it and--" Peter cut himself off with a sob. Tony was quiet for a few minutes before softly saying, "I didn't have enough time to get to either of them. I didn't know that I would die, but if it let everyone else live, then so be it. My life for half of Earth's population? That doesn't seem fair."

"Who cares if it's fair!" Peter cried. "You died! I was at your funeral. You shouldn't be here; you can't be here. 'S not possible."

"Actually," The former hero contradicted with a small grin, "I'm here through the power of science. Everything that happened to me when I was alive, I remember it all. This--" Tony gestured to himself "--was a project I'd been working on for a while. A couple of years, actually. I wanted to find a way to turn a human into an AI. Or, rather, a way to transfer the human mind into an AI. Arnim Zola did it, I could do it better. And I did."

Peter sniffed. "So it really is you, Mr. Stark?"

"The one and only." Tony smiled. "And call me Tony, kid."

Peter frowned. "What? No! Mr. Stark--"

Tony sighed, cutting him off. "Okay, think of it this way. My name is still Tony Stark, yes, but as an AI, I have an acronym--T.O.N.Y. So call me by my acronym."

Peter's brows furrowed. "But what does it stand for?"

"Uh--Terrifically Overused Nerd Yeller?""Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."

"Beautiful reference kid," Tony applauded him with a laugh. "And I'll try to find something better, okay?"

"Mm-hmm." Peter nodded."But seriously, call me Tony."

"Okay . . . Tony." Peter took a deep breath. "What now? I assume you don't want to go back into the case."

"No!" Tony burst out before composing himself. "I mean, no, that would not be preferable."

Peter laughed slightly before nodding. "Okay, but it's, like, one in the morning. I have school tomorrow, so--"

"Ooh!" Tony bounced around in the glasses lenses, which made Peter snicker silently. "Can I go with you? I've always wanted to see what Midtown was like!"

"I dunno . . . Won't the teachers get mad at me for wearing sunglasses?"

Tony crossed his arms. "Puh-lease. You have an AI in the dang glasses. Clear lenses."

And just like that, the whole room wasn't tinted dark. Peter had to blink a few times to get used to it, but he was very impressed. Tony smirked before making a shooing motion with his hands. "Alright, now off to bed with you. You need sleep before school tomorrow."

"Night, Tony. Well, morning, actually.""Just go to sleep!"

:*:*:*:*:*:

When Peter woke up the next morning, the first thing he did was grab the glasses to make sure that it wasn't a dream. He'd be devastated if it was. As he slipped them on his face, Peter was met with the sight of a bleary-eyed Tony Stark. "Kid, what? What could you possibly need me for at--" Tony looked at the side of the left lens, where the time was labeled "the ungodly hour of four fifty-seven in the morning."

Peter smiled. "Wakey, wakey. I gotta get up by five if I want to make it to school on time."

Tony groaned. "Noooo . . . Five more minutes!"

"I'll give you as long as it takes for me to get my teeth brushed, shower, change, and I'll grab the glasses as I head down to breakfast," Peter compromised, and Tony nodded rapidly. "Deal!"

It took until Peter was wriggling into his t-shirt (no matter how popular they get, antibiotics will never go viral) for it to really hit him that this is Tony, he's not quite dead. Peter did a little happy dance before picking up the glasses again. When the holograms flickered on, Peter saw a snoozing Tony--pillow, blanket, and all--and had to refrain from snickering. As quietly as he could, Peter tiptoed into the kitchen, careful not to wake May, who'd had an overnight shift at the hospital. Grabbing a pen and a notepad, he wrote his aunt a note explaining that yes, he'd grab something to eat and that he was on his way to school. Snatching an apple from the bowl of fruit on the island, Peter munched on it as he got onto the subway. Making it seem like he was on a call on his phone, Peter said, "Tony, hey. Tony, dude, wake up. I can hear your snores."

"Huzzahwhat?"

Peter snickered. "I gave you more than five minutes. Now wake up--" He lowered his voice "--or I'm putting the glasses in the deepest, darkest corner of my backpack."

That caused Tony to spring up with a screech. "I'muppleasedon'tputmebackinthedark!"

Peter laughed. "I'm not. It was a threat to wake you up."

"Not very nice," Tony pouted. Peter just smiled as he "hung up the call". While Peter bounced his leg up and down, Tony began humming something that sounded like Eiffel 65. The subway finally stopped, and Peter got off, Tony still humming. As he entered the gates to Midtown, Peter had to practically race across the street to avoid getting hit by Flash's car. Tony stopped everything he was doing to ask in a deadly calm voice, "Peter. Did that punk just try to run you over, or am I seeing things."

Peter's eyes widened. "Uh . . ."

Tony growled, but Peter hurried to say, "C'mon, you can meet Ned and MJ."

Tony dropped the subject, but Peter had a distinct feeling that this conversation wasn't over yet. In the meantime, Peter walked to his locker and gathered his books for his first class. "So, Tony, what else can you do?"

Tony hummed in thought. "Well, the glasses automatically synced to both your phone and the suit when the first time you opened the case, so if you get any notifications, I automatically know. Speaking of which, you just got a text from May. She says to have a great day and that you better had actually eaten breakfast today."

"Please tell her I will, and that I had an apple."

"It's sent. Now, back to what I was saying." Tony grinned mischievously. "I can see what other people are doing on their phones, like who they were texting, what they're checking on Instagram, what they're doing on the Internet."

Peter whistled. "That's intense."

"What's intense?" A voice behind the spiderling asked, and Peter spun around with a grin. "Ned!"

The two friends did their secret handshake (that had Tony intrigued) and Ned instantly began rambling about a new LEGO set he got this weekend, and oh my gosh, dude, it's got seven thousand pieces, and could you come over later today to build it? Peter laughed. "I can't come over today, but maybe we could build it at my place?"

"Why are those cheerleaders giving you disgusted looks?" Tony inquired, but Peter ignored him. "Ready for English?"

Ned made a face. "No."

"Me neither."

Ned stopped dead in his tracks for a minute before spinning around to face Peter. "Dude, when did you get glasses? I thought you didn't need them after--"

"They're not exactly prescription," Peter interrupted. Pulling the glasses off of his face, he handed them over to Ned. "Try them on."

Ned put them on, and his jaw fell down to the ground. "Tony Stark?! Bu-but how?!"

Peter shushed him. Tony must've said something, because Ned was nodding as fast as his head would move. Taking the glasses off, the Filippino gaped at his friend. "Peter, where did you get these?"

"Pepper gave them to me," He explained, pushing the glasses up the bridge of his nose. "After the funeral. I only found out about Tony last night."

"Yeah, because you wouldn't open the dang case until last night," Tony muttered. Peter grunted, but didn't reply to Tony. "C'mon, Ned. We gotta get to class."

:*:*:*:*:*:

"You have a call from an unknown number coming in," Tony informed Peter while he was right in the middle of taking a test. "Ten bucks says it's Nick Fury."

"I don't have ten bucks," Peter murmured distractedly. "Besides, I can't answer right now. Doesn't he know I have school?"

Mrs. MacMillan's eyes swept over the room, and Peter ducked his head to avoid her gaze. He whispered, "Send him to voicemail."

"I'm proud of you, kid," Tony said happily. "You're ghosting Nick Fury."

"Uh-huh."

Peter finished his test and turned it in before getting out his notebook to work on web formulas. Tony watched quietly for a while. "You know, I haven't seen Morgan or Pep in the weeks that I've seen you. Do you still keep in touch?"

Not wanting to disrupt the class, Peter wrote, ‘I do, but they've been busy. Pepper's still gotta run SI, and Morgan's starting pre-school.’

"Do you think . . . I could see them?" Tony asked, with a tinge of hope. Peter cracked a smile. ‘I'm sure we can work something out.’

Tony's grin was one of relief. "Thanks, kid."

The billionaire disappeared from view, but Peter wasn't worried. Tony had told him that even though he won't always be visible, he's still there, and Peter knew this to be true because Tony kept up a constant stream of chatter and/or informs him of texts, phone calls, police alerts, his opinions on people, news, etc. When the bell rang, signalling lunch time, Peter maneuvered his way through the halls with a practiced grace that one only got from years of doing it. He made his way into the lunch room, lunch sack in hand, and sat at the table to wait for Ned and Michelle. He didn't have to wait long.

Michelle slid into the seat next to him. After calling them losers, she had gotten closer to the two and, over the course of the year, she and Peter had started dating. She kissed his cheek. "What's up, dork. Nice glasses."

Tony grinned. "Oh, I like her. Reminds me of Natasha."

Both Peter and Tony sobered up at that comment, but Peter forced cheer as he responded to Michelle. "Hey, MJ! How's it going?"

She regarded him in an unimpressed manner. "Could be better could be worse."

Ned plopped into his seat across from the two, panting slightly. "Flash alert."

Michelle frowned, and Peter rolled his eyes. Tony poked his head into the frame of the glasses. "Who?"

A hand slammed down onto the table, causing the three lunches to bounce. "Hey, Puny," Flash Thompson sneered. "How's your uncle? Oh, wait, he's dead!"

He and his cronies cackled, and Tony's brows knitted together, eyes flashing in anger. "That's the kid who almost ran you over. This guy's obviously a punk. Why do you let him bully you? You can stop a bus with your bare hands!"

Flash continued insulting Peter, oblivious to the raging billionaire in his glasses. "Where's you get the specs, Parker? They're too expensive for you." He said you like it was a curse. "Hand 'em over."

When Peter didn't move, Flash snarled. "Now!"

"No!" Peter burst out. "No, I'm not giving you my glasses. I need them; they're mine. You can't have them!"

Flash could clearly feel some of the kids in the cafeteria's eyes on them, so he just growled, "Whatever. They're probably cheap knock-offs anyways. Come on, let's go."

The bully stalked away, his lackies right behind him. Tony continued to shout at Flash for almost hitting people, screaming profanities at the top of his holographic lungs, occasionally slipping into Italian. Peter winced. "Tony, you do realize that he can't hear you, and you're just yelling in my ear, right?"

MJ arched an eyebrow, and Peter flushed. "Sorry. Here."

He handed the glasses to her, and, slowly, Michelle placed them on her face. Her eyes widened with surprise when she saw the hologram. "Peter, what . . .?"

Again, Tony obviously said something to her, because she nodded in understanding and handed the glasses back to her boyfriend. "Those are seriously cool. I completely understand why you can never give those to Flash. Ever."

"She's right, kid. That punk is getting nowhere near me. Or the glasses," Tony stated firmly. Peter snorted. "Okay, both of you, I get it. No Flash."

The rest of lunch passed rather smoothly, and Peter was off to his next class. By the time Academic Decathlon rolled around, Peter knew how to use the glasses fairly well. But as soon as he walked through the door of the module that most of the clubs gathered in, Tony piped up, "Careful. The building's not exactly stable."

Peter frowned. "What do you mean? We've been in this building for twelve years."

Tony's holographic eyes widened. "You do realize that these module buildings are only supposed to last for ten years, right?"

Peter swore under his breath, but before he could say anything else, Michelle beckoned him over to the group, and AcaDec practice began. The practice was halfway over when Tony's fears came true; the building collapsed around them. [I know it probably wouldn't work this way, but shhhhh] Miraculously, nobody was injured. Peter called, "Is everyone okay? Is everyone here?"

He got an "I'm here" from everyone, and Peter instantly turned his attention to someone who could help them out of the rubble. "Okay, Tony, how do we get out?"

The team watched in amazement as Peter seemed to have a one-sided conversation with himself. "To the left, got it."

"Up and over the beam."

"What? No, I can't do that. I'd out myself."

"That could work, but what about--"

"--carbon monoxide and then we'd--"

"--possibly burn the place down, but--"

"--get us all to safety." Peter grinned. "Thanks, Tony."

The former hero smirked. "All in a days work."

Peter began to guide his fellow classmates out of the collapsed building. "Okay, Isaac, to the left, there should be a plank of wood, we gotta crawl under that. After the plank, there's a beam that's resting at a fifteen degree angle. Go over that."

Slowly, but surely, the team made it out of the destroyed module, covered in dust, but alive. Most of the team collapsed to the ground, but Betty squinted at Peter. "Who were you talking to?"

Peter was startled. "What?"

"Back in the module, you were talking to someone. Someone named Tony, and he obviously guided us out. Who was he, and how did he know the layout of the building so well?"

Peter panicked. "Uh--he's a, um, family friend, and he does architecture?"

It sounded lame to even him, and Betty eyed him suspiciously, but left it at that.

"A family friend?" Tony was not amused. "An architect?"

"Hey," Peter hissed. "You know I don't do well under pressure."

Michelle bumped his shoulder. She murmured, "Thanks for getting us out of there, Tony."

"Tell her I said you're welcome," Tony exclaimed, and Peter relayed the message. MJ smiled, and Peter flopped onto the ground. While things wouldn't ever be the same as when Tony was alive, that was okay. Because Tony was right here, and Peter wouldn't have it any other way.

This is one of my favorite AUs/Headcannons of the Marvel Universe. I just feel like Tony would have found some way to keep himself alive after he died, and, being the tech genius that he is, he probably would have done it this way. You can contradict me, but I will protect this idea till my dying day. Please, please send feedback!

[andoqin]

K-Dramas of 2020

Well, like the general mood of 2020, the dramas this year were uh, certainly an adventure. I was going to put all the dramas I watched this year here, but uh. This turned out longer than expected so I’ll guess I’ll separate K-dramas at the very least.

Putting this behind a cut because Long.

Completed:

365: Repeat the year: I barely remember this one, but I gave it 8/10 on MDL, maybe I should lower that, because honestly all I remember are the time-travel meet up set and the main actors.

CHIP-IN: A short who-dunnit, which has interesting characters, although the show was very wise to be capped at 8 Episodes, because the “mystery” was pretty predictable and also starting to wear thin. Still, the younger cast was stellar and I hope we get to see them in more.

Diary of a Prosecutor: The cases in this drama were actually legit interesting to me and I found the politicking surprisingly not bad. People were flawed in very human ways, but the drama gave us enough time with our main characters to enjoy getting to know all of them.

Do you like Brahms: Contender for worst drama of the year for me, good lord I hated the way this tanked its story line, its characters and the romance. Is it believable that the main characters might act this way? ... Debatable. Is it entertaining to watch? Hell fucking no. Don’t watch this one, unless you like stupid misunderstandings and non communication. 

Extracurricular: Short action-y show on Netflix that makes me hopeful for what Sweet Home might be. 

Flower of Evil: Lee Jun Ki gets to suffer prettily. That is All. Okay Moon Chae Won and LJK were great together, but it got almost makjang-y by the end. 

Hospital Playlist: Delightful Slice of Life Medical show, that despite its delightfulness never quite got me. Very enjoyable and at 12 episodes it doesn’t overstay its welcome, but it didn’t stay with me either. 

Hot Stove League: Pretty entertaining and as a drama about sports management seems reasonably accurate? (Not that I’d know of course). 

Hyena: Flawed as heck in some aspects (the lawyer-plotting got lulzy and boring at the same time), but oh my god some of the HOTTEST chemistry this way from sunday. Joo Ji Hoon and Kim Hye Soo just crackled anytime they were on screen together and Joo Ji Hoon as the high powered lawyer who falls head over heels in love with KHS’s character who is more reluctant to act on those feelings is just *chefs kiss*. Also didn’t suffer the Dreaded Plot Denuement of 2020 (DPD2020). Sure the latter half wasn’t as tight as the beginning, but it stuck the landing and that’s all that matters. 

Into the Ring: Weird camera angles and sometimes overly sharp edited shots aside, this had a solid romance, great characters, great romance and almost made me want to get into community politics lmao. 

It’s Okay Not To Be Okay (Psycho But It’s Okay): The first half of this show is just *amazing*, the way the scenes transition is pretty much film-like and the main character trio is stunningly well acted. Sadly the story with the mom is resolved in the weirdest fucking way, but the drama decides to do the smart thing and just forget about it once that’s done and the finale made me cry ;_;. 

Itaewon Class: Sadly also suffered the DPD2020. I was really into the first half, loved the way the characters found support in each other, plus: a main trans character! Handled really well! Also iconic OST. I was one of the few people who was into the romance of the main couple, but the way the latter half of the plot developed was just completely nonsensical and felt like the writer was just trying to tie off the lose ends as much as possible. 

Kingdom Season 2: The first season was stellar and this continues the trend! Although it doesn’t quite reach the highs of the first season I am still so looking forward to season 3! More Joseon zombies please!

Money Game: I... apparently watched this, and looking at the logo there is some vague feeling of “Yeah this is familiar”. But nothing else...

Mr. Heart: Okay-ish BL drama that has it’s cute moments but nothing that made me go “Ooooh”. I am glad SK is getting in on this trend though!

My Holo Love: So all of those Robot/AI shows that came before that I’ve seen and had the premise of “Oh no, I’ve fallen for a ROBOT” when it either turned out their object of affection was either human or actually a robot, but their human counterpart was so shitty that no sane person would like them worked pretty well for me. This one didn’t. From what I remember the heroine does very much fall for the holographic version of this guy, but the human version is *different* and yet whoops the main couple is still human/human. Granted you can’t really do romantic kiss scenes between a girl and nothing, but the switch-over felt abrupt and the way our main lady just transfers her affections to the dude never sat right to me. 

Mystic Pop Up Bar: Quite a few dramas this year went with 12 eps, and were all the better for it. Hwang Jung Eum is incredibly hit or miss with me (mostly it’s miss honestly), but in this one she’s used really well and I liked the way the premise was used!

Private Lives: I recently wrote a longer post about this, but honestly another victim of terrible writing and maybe DPD2020. 

Stranger 2: Love! Not as much as Season 1, but man this writer is *so* good at writing smart and interesting plots and looking at things from many different angles!

Tale of the Nine Tailed: Flawed but man do I ever love the OTP. Like really really love it. Plus it stuck the landing for me in a way few dramas did in recent months.

The School Nurse Files: So weird. So fucking weird. And yet, so very entertaining. Thanks to its short length ( I think) some plot threads felt very much unceremoniously dropped, but it has a canon lesbian couple!

The World of the Married: Makjang to the Nth degree, got kind of exhausting by the end, but Kim Hee Ae is so good. 

Train: Yoon Shi Yoon gets to suffer prettily! 

When the Weather is Fine: Kinda mellow and sweet and I wish I could live like the main character does (just have a bookshop in the middle of nowhere and still no money issues??? The Dream) but for that also not super memorable. 

Where Your Eyes Linger: SK’s first major Webdrama I believe? Cute and as a foray into this genre not bad, but I hope this is just a taste of things to come.

Dropped:

Hi Bye, Mama: So many people loved this, I couldn’t get over the basic premise and the way my brain tried to tie the logic in this together made my head hurt.  The King: Eternal Monarch: Maybe KES dramas just aren’t for me, I didn’t like the plot or the main couple. Woo Do Hwan and Kim Kyung Nam were amazing though and please please I beg both of you do more stuff. 

18 Again: Nope. Lee Do Hyun is pretty, but the setup drove me bonkers and I pretty much liked no one. 

Zombie Detective: Yikes no thank you. Complete mismatch of tones I wanted and the drama gave me. 

Romantic Teacher Dr. Kim 2: Zzzzzzzzz. I found the first one mildly entertaining at least but this one just made me fall asleep immediately. 

Black Dog: Yeah I watched like 2 Episodes of this and lost interest. 

Search: I’ve watched like 6 eps and I know there’s zombies, but I couldn’t tell you much more tbh.

Start-Up: I watched 2 episodes in the beginning, didn’t think I’d want to live watch this and then just popcorned the tag until it got insufferable with the ship wars and this dropped out of my watch list pretty immediately.

Record of Youth: Pretty much the same deal as with Start-Up only in this case there wasn’t so much a shipwar as the tag showing me that this drama would *not* be my bag at all. 

Still Watching: 

Kairos: Hmmmm timey-wimey stuff. The FL is this close to losing me though. The fact I thought it plausible that she would murder someone just based on a TEXT from someone else says it all. (She didn’t, thank god, and seems to have found a few of her lost braincells, but by god she was frustrating). 

Birthcare Center: I like what it’s trying to say and the main character and her husband are very cute, but a lot of the side characters don’t really interest me. It’s only an 8 ep drama, so I might finish this.

The Spies Who Loved Me: Honestly I’m this close to dropping it. Only my intense love for Yoo In Na and fondness for Eric are keeping me going. But she might not end up with Eric and I’m gonna be mad. Honestly if they just went OT3 I’d be really cool with this, but despite the small advancements in dramaland, they aint ready for that yet. 

Lies of Lies: I watched 2 eps and I might continue (the premise seems hilariously makjang and sometimes I’m into that, but it’s *very* much on the backburner)

The Uncanny Counter: Delightful Webtoon vibe, with some great visuals and actually nice action. I’ve only seen 2 eps so far but at least they don’t want to make me poke my eyes out or make me fall asleep. Let’s hope it avoids the DPD2020 plague. 

[silvensei]

In This Mad Machinery

A human and an android swap bodies, resulting in identity crises, existentialism, philosophy with the boys, and fun!

Detroit: Become Human | gen | 20k | rated T | introspective comedy/sci-fi

Chapter 4 (2k words) | [AO3 link] | [first] | < prev | next >

- - - - - - - - - -

“And you’re sure Markus will be okay with…y’know, all this? Like it won’t freak him out if I just walk up to him as not you?”

“He is a leader for a reason: he’s reasonable.”

“Mm. Good reason.”

“Just explain it to him from the beginning. Offer to share the day’s memories if that’ll be easier—oh!” Connor shifted in the driver’s seat to fully face his partner and held up a hand. “Not a memory transfer! That’s a different process altogether. That’s what we did to switch. Markus technically is part of the same prototype series as me, so it might prompt for a complete memory transfer—don’t do that one!”

“I got it, Mom: Don’t accidentally kill myself.” Hank shut the door, leaning his forearms on the open window. “As for you, just lay low. You can tell Jeffrey that you’re you if you want, he’s probably heard worse from me before, but maybe don’t let it get out into the whole precinct. Not only would CyberLife get snippy about their secret plans leaking too much, but can you imagine the hell Gavin would raise? Christ.”

Connor paused. “I’m not sure if I can, but I’m sure he would be troublesome.”

Hank laughed. He had heard Connor laugh before, on very rare occasions, but he didn’t think it ever sounded this relaxed and easy. It really gave his rough voice an amicable quality. “Swing back here when you’re done? Or call if it’s more than an hour?”

“Can do, Lieutenant.”

He stepped away from the car as Connor shifted out of park. “Careful with the wheels,” he called before starting down the driveway toward the Manfred house.

In the corner of his vision, the external temperature reading increased to 67.7°F (19.8°C). Focusing on the readout expanded the widget: RH 58.1%, Precip. 12%, Wind 3 mph NW, Sunset 8:52 PM, Moon Phase—

He looked away. It was still there—being a heads-up display and all—but the gesture dismissed the weather. Who could possibly need that much information. No one. It’s been bombarding him from all sides with random facts and figures and updates ever since he woke up like this a couple hours ago (2 hr 32 m 57 s). No wonder Connor was such a know-it-all: his programming forced him to be. Hank slowed his stroll. What was Connor going through right now, free of his encyclopedia of trivia for the first time in his life? Hopefully not lost and unsure and uninformed. God, he hoped not.

He shook his head, quite literally to get his damn android brain to stop calculating the chances that his best friend was having an identity crisis or existential crisis or any number of other crises. Instead he thought about how his shoulders didn’t ache when he did that. His knees didn’t have that familiar creaking he’d grown so accustomed to, either. In fact, besides the pressure on the soles of his feet to keep him grounded and the near-imperceptible brush of fabric and sunlight against his skin, he didn’t feel much of anything. Thinking about his current body only brought up biocomponent specs and functionality reports (100% - Fully functional).

“Fucking-A…,” Hank muttered, noting once again he didn’t sound like himself. Being stuck in an android could be likened to sensory deprivation and informational oversaturation at the same time. If he dwelled on it too long, it’d drive him insane.

Something pinged him as he approached the door, and the door clicked open. “Welcome, RK800.”

Hank stepped into the foyer, marveling at its grandeur. It was a veritable mansion when compared with his single-story shack. It probably was a mansion. He wondered if Sumo would like living here, with the marble and the high ceilings. Maybe in the summer. The stone would keep him nice and cool. Air probably circulated well in here, too. Although the zebra rug didn’t look terribly comfortable

The double doors across from him slid open. Strolling in in an asymmetrical tee and jeans, Markus slipped a paint brush into the pocket of the smock tied at his waist. “Connor!” he called with a grin, wiping off some paint from his hands. “I thought you’d never take up my offer to stop on by!”

Hank returned the grin. He’d have to pass that comment on to Connor. “Hey, Markus.”

The android caught him in a brief hug before stepping back. “So what’s up? Care for a painting lesson?”

“Thanks, but not right now. Just have some…neat info we thought you would enjoy.”

“Oh, really?” He crossed his arms. “‘We’ as in you and the lieutenant? Isn’t sharing DPD intel kind of illegal?”

“Not exactly. I mean, yeah, but it’s not DPD.” Hank took a breath (UNNECESSARY; temperature nominal) and rocked on his feet. “We got an email from CyberLife this morning about some quack idea to define sentience. They wanted to see what would happen if they threw souls around, human and android alike.”

Markus scoffed. “Sounds a bit pompous. What makes them think they can even do that?”

Hank cocked his head and held open his arms. “They already have.”

Markus raised an eyebrow. He shifted his weight, looking the other over. “Connor…?” he asked slowly.

“Not at the moment. Hank Anderson.”

A half smile completed the look of surprise. “A human in an android body? And Connor is…?”

“Heading to the precinct. They called me in for something and he’s, well, me for the day.”

“Huh. You’re right, this is interesting. Temporary?”

“Yeah—here, Connor suggested I just…show you his memory—our memory—of today.”

“Sure, yeah.” Markus held out his hand. At Hank’s hesitation, he finally let out the chuckle he was holding back. “If you can figure out how to do it, that is?”

“Great, another snarky robot on my hands,” Hank grumbled, grabbing his hand. Markus caught another laugh and shifted his grip to his forearm instead. Their skin shied away from their touch, and the connection pinged his system. [RK200 #684 842 971] connected.

File copy requested: [Visuals; Audio] {-04:00:00.0}:{00:00.0}

Accept             Deny

The notification took up his vision in an instant. It didn’t say anything about a memory transfer like Connor warned, so he figured it would do. Just thinking about accepting the prompt completed the request, and the past four hours from his chassis’ perspective played back at breakneck speed. From Connor petting Sumo and reading a book exactly four hours ago to Hank’s latest quip, it all sped by, too fast to comprehend and yet with every detail intact and evident. He reeled, flinging his arm back.

He blinked rapidly. The only sign of the event was the text (Copy complete) fading from his vision. Markus, on the other hand, dropped his hand to his hip, unfazed. “Mimicking a nexus connection by adjusting and enhancing the brain’s natural electric field to induce a complete data transfer,” he mused. “That is genius! It doesn’t prove anything spiritual, that’ll require much more philosophical debate into the depth and scope of AI, but it certainly doesn’t disprove anything either.”

“How can you understand all that so fast?” Hank asked candidly.

Markus smiled. “Years of practice.” He untied his smock and beckoned him towards the door. “Why don’t we continue this in the den?”

The doors slid open into an absolutely spacious sitting room. As if the zebra pelt on the foyer floor wasn’t excessively extravagant enough, the first thing Hank saw was a giraffe in the corner, probably real, definitely stuffed. (Analysis: TAXIDERMY, est 16yr) He had to stop from rolling his eyes at its ostentatiousness. “Ritzy place ya got here,” he commented, hoping Connor’s voice defaulted to conversationally neutral.

“Yes. Carl doesn’t particularly like it either.” Damn. “However, the media seems to dote on and worry about an elderly millionaire more when they live a modest, humble life than when they look the part.” He gestured to one of the couches in the center of the room. “Please.”

“Y’know, based on news reports and the whole ‘led a revolution’ thing, you’re not exactly what I expected.” The couches were bright cherry red, fitting the theme of the room. He sank into the one closer to the door.

Markus sat across from him, crossing his legs. “Even celebrities need days off,” he pointed out. “I used to be a caretaker. That doesn’t define me anymore, and Carl has a new full-time caretaker anyway, but I still like to come check on him when I can. Get free painting tips while I’m here. But enough about me.” He folded his hands in his lap. “I’m dying to know what your day’s been like.”

“Playing shrink now? What about, just…general exposition?”

“Anything! This is unprecedented!” His eyes shone. Connor was 100% correct that Markus would be ecstatic. “All of our efforts these past months have been towards helping mankind understand androids as people, and now here you are, literally seeing things from our point of view! Walk a mile in the other’s shoes, as the proverb goes.”

“Okay….” Hank drummed his hands on his legs. His first instinct was to think back through the day, but the thought triggered another rapid memory replay. He stopped it and groaned. “It’s fuckin’ fast,” he said. “There’s a shit ton of information even without the router in my head. With it, it’s like I’m every computer at once.”

“That’s an interesting interpretation of it. Maybe a bit of an overstatement.”

He scoffed. “This android brain has involuntarily subjected me to more math in the last three hours than I have had to do in the last thirty years. Like, I don’t need a speedometer at all times, or news updates from Ghana, or access to all the fuckin’ bad memes of my youth. It’s excessive! Maybe not to you,” he added, holding out a hand, “but you’ve grown up with it…figuratively speaking.”

“That’s true.” Markus propped his chin in his palm. “I guess I’d be able to relate more to Connor’s side. I wonder how he likes being disconnected from the network.”

“Yeah, I wonder, too….” Hank pursed his lips. “The kid seemed really shaken up as soon as the whole ‘identity’ question came into play. Seemed like he’s been thinking about it for a while, so I figured…a break from the norm might do him some good. Hell, if I’m getting so overwhelmed by android stuff, maybe he’s finally got some underwhelming peace and quiet.”

“Perhaps. I can ask him later, though; you’re here right now. How about…colors? Does the world look any different? Any sharper, mayhap?”

“Bud, this place would look like a Crayola box to anyone.” Hank took a moment to look around, ignoring the scrolling list of crayon names in his periphery. Sure, it was bright and sharp, but he was fifty-three. If he stole literally anyone’s glasses, it’d improve his vision. “Yeah, I guess it’s all in shiny 4K. Look, Markus, I’m not really a conversationalist; words never were my strong point, so I’m not sure how well I can convey this, ah…ongoing out-of-body experience.”

Markus held up his hands in surrender. “Perfectly alright, Lieutenant. With only a few hours of android life, there’s no sense sitting around talking for all of it. Why not look to some action instead?”

“Action? What’s that mean?”

He stood up with a smile. “Have you ever seen The Matrix, Mr. Anderson?”

“Snuck into a theater to see it opening week.” He pushed himself up in suit. His balance had to correct itself when he was on his feet earlier than expected, being lighter, stronger, and without a whisper of joint pain. “And yes, my friends called me that for months after. Why?”

“Well, we could always spar with some newfound kung fu, but painting has always been more my style.”

“What the fuck are you—” He stopped, remembering the scene he was referencing. His computer brain also conveniently played it back for him, too. Thanks, CyberLife. “I can just download painting? Like that?” He snapped.

“The technical skills, yes; the creativity and style, though, you’d still have to practice yourself.” He picked up his smock and held it out. “How about that lesson?”

Hank raised an eyebrow. He had never pictured himself as a painter. Or an artist of any kind. Or an android. He shrugged. “Ah, what the hell. You’re on, Picasso.”

[next >]

[cloudbankdownload]

konnichiwa, and welcome back to the classic “Matpat video notes from hell” series

yup we’re doing this again lol. just imagine noodle from gorillaz typing this up instead of alex and it’ll almost be just like last time! today (June 10, 2019) we’ll be watching “Game Theory: FNAF, You Were Meant To Lose (FNAF VR Help Wanted).” please note that in the thumbnail it says “don’t trust the tapes!” so you too can be mad at how he’s slandering tape girl like that. and, of course, THERE WILL BE SOME (MOSTLY MINOR) SPOILERS! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED. okay, video time!

-alright, starting off strong with a compilation of Poor Matpat (/s) and all the times he thought he’d made his last fnaf theory video (man i wish fnaf 4 was his last theory vid too)

-not even a minute in and we’ve already got some avengers endgame references smh

-jokingly calls fnaf vr “matpat insanity simulator” and MAN i WISH

-calls the game “an ~inflection~ point” like we get it you can use fancy words okay relax

-thinks there’s more games to come

-vr game supposedly is gonna lead us into “FNAF: The Next Generation” (bro if you’re gonna come up with a name for a list games we don’t even know are gonna exist, at least be creative with it come on)

-”the meatiest game in the fnaf library” with I SHIT YOU NOT an awful graphic of freddy’s head over a disgusting pile of “ground meat” with a big yellow sun-shape with red text that says “NO FAT!” JFC MATT WHY!! WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS!! also y’all are welcome, i definitely took that bullet for you

-i’m only two minutes into a 23:39 video why did i sign up for this i’m gonna die

-oh joy he actually played it on gt live /s

-BRO WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT VOICE HE DID FOR THE PUPPET

-experience of the game is to “recreate the brand” and “clear its name” or w/e

-OMFG HE LITERALLY WAS TALKING ABOUT ALL THE MONEY SOCK COTTON WAS MAKING ON MERCH ONLY TO STOP AND TALK ABOUT HIS OWN FUCKING MERCH SEND HELP GET ME OUTTA HERE IM GONNA GO F E R A L

-he’s really going out of his way to say “THESE shirts are for the LADIES and THESE shirts are for the MEN” SHUT THE FUCK UP BEFORE I KNOCK YOUR TEETH OUT

-seriously man we already knew you were a Gender Binary Cop but this is ridiculous

-there’s game theory underwear. apparently. if i had to suffer through that fact so do you.

-”if you’re a fan of all the hard work we put into each and every one of our videos” WOW matt i had know idea how hard it was to steal other people’s work and ideas for your half assed theories!!!1!!11!!!

-god he makes it sounds like his theory gear is like donating to a charity absolutely unbelievable

-by the way, that ad for his own merch was from 3:32-4:18 and that’s almost a full minute (though trust me, it felt like so much longer)

-quiero matar ese hombre (translation: i wanna kill that man)

-OH. OH HE DID NOT.

-[insert stream of cursing in multiple languages that i cannot be bothered to type out here]

-this little white bitch really just said that there was only one important character missing in the vr game–golden freddy

-“noodle!” i’m sure you’re saying. “there’s nothing wrong with matt saying that!” oh no, that wasn’t the bad thing he said. ohhh no.

-and i quote: “i mean, ballora isn’t around here either, but you know i said ‘IMPORTANT’ [voice saying “buh-buh-baom!”, explosion sfx, air horn sfx]”

-気持ち悪い！(disgusting!)

-me parece que el quiere ser un hombre muerto (it seems to me that he wants to be a dead man)

-anywayyyys back to golden freddy: she’s not in the game because she’s chillin in hell with william afton APPARENTLY

-あの、ちょっと・・・(um, not really…)

-oh excuse me, she’s in hell with william to torture him, not chill with him

-also like how we’re still assuming a lot of things /s

-man this is taking a while

-cassidy (golden freddy) never gives up her soul, proves along with scrap baby plush that help wanted takes place after pizzeria simulator

-franchise is trying to rebuild itself after yknow, a dude going on a child killing spree

-talks about the following malhare ending

-yeah we aint gonna talk about what he calls malhare

-third appearance of the name “jeremy” in the games

-says he’s put the tapes in a “cohesive narrative” order (hah, how much do we wanna bet he’s wrong?)

-lol doesn’t say the order so he can’t be called out on his bullshit (i’m too tired to try and actually piece this shit together)

-this mf really 1) called jeremy crazy 2) or maybe that he’s “just a fnaf youtuber” and 3) PUTS UP A GRAPHIC OF HIM AND MARK GIVING EACH OTHER A HIGH FIVE. bold of you to assume you deserve to be near him mister patthew.

-[GORE WARNING] his take on the jeremy incident (you know the one, it was mentioned in the tapes) is that the ink is blood and jeremy DID cut his face off with the paper cutter. if you’re here from the fnaf discord server, you were probably around when we all discussed that this was unlikely.

-oh wow he really just tried to tie that in with the bite of 87 huh

-he’s convinced jeremy dies (spoiler: we don’t–and neither do a fair bit of people)

-really blaming tape girl for the fact that she didn’t warn about not collecting the tapes until the fifteenth tape huh

-talks about all cassettes collected endings, and how you “lose” no matter what in any of the three endings

-thinks the player is destined to lose the game

-mentions inconsistencies and oddities in the tapes

-i.e. how tape girl introduces herself twice—in tape one and tape fifteen

-how she says in tape sixteen that she knows there’s a way to kill malhare when she can’t possibly be sure, because she clearly hasn’t done it herself (malhare wouldn’t exist otherwise.)

-as in, she’s secretly trying to get you to release malhare instead of killing him

-thinks malhare melded with her conscious after she tried to delete the audio files and then attempted to escape by making the next playtester release malhare

-meanwhile the player is stuck while malhare takes over their body

-thinks that maybe the player waits until the next playtester comes along and loses their consciousness, which lets the player out

-says that putting together the tapes is like putting together the petscop lore

-wonders how many williams are out there--could the ai be replicating itself into multiple people--but admits yeah probably not

-”but that’s just a theory.. a game theory” or w/e the fuck he says

-insert ancient meme about fnaf storyline here bc he was too lazy to make a graphic or w/e

-oh wait no he wants to talk about jeremy haha still gotta sit through this for another minute or so

-random appearance of shadow freddy he found, malhare has three toes (ffs sake not the toe theories again i thought we were done with that crap) like the footprints outside afton house in fnaf ps midnight motorist minigame

-lovelyyy he’s gonna make another video after “thinking” shit over

-”scott cawthon is the villain in his own game” OKAY WHATEVER IDGAF

-i hoped you enjoyed these because they were legitimately the second or third worst experience of my life and i’m really not exaggerating

[ryouverua]

Trial 5 - So about that one thing... (1)

WILL THE ROBOPHOBIA NEVER CEASE FOR EVEN A MOMENT -

Investigation 1 / 2 - second half is where I put my own theories that I penned before playing the trial. 

and man was I proven wrong almost instantaneously lmao - but I’m getting ahead of myself. On with the show!

Poor K1-b0, honestly. He had such a great epic speech planned, totally interrupting Monokuma’s normal opening for the trial -

- only for Monokuma to completely undercut him, aka the opening of this post. 8′D You’ll prevail over robophobia one day, K1-b0! One... day....

Good luck trying to pull that on Maki, though. 8′D

H-Hm. The fact that you’re asking that means that you’re either putting on a really good act right now, or I am so very, very wrong right out the gate. But with that said, where is the sixth person? Maybe that’s what I should call them, honestly. The Sixth Person. The Unknown Loudmouth who thrives off others’ attention. The Mysterious Purple Boy Wonder. ‘K’, if you will.

omg they... have question marks... on their faces.... Now this is definitely a first. So we’re actually going to go the whole trial without either of them, huh. Sure, one of them being gone I was half-heartedly prepared for, but both? Damn.

I’m 99% sure ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’ is like Monokuma’s theme or something.

They are?! Have they been hiding in here the whole time??? That... is actually a really good hiding place? Though I have no idea how they’d be able to get down here before a trial was called...

There’s that same base assumption: Culprit = Mastermind = Kokichi. But what if one of those isn’t true? Or, well, two? Could it be Culprit = Mastermind? Or Culprit = Kokichi? Or just... well, neither?

Man, just... the fact that you’re trying to shut down discussion really lends itself to suspicion. I don’t think I’m drawing the wrong conclusion by saying she was the one who cleaned up after the fact, but I suppose the option of her outright killing Kokichi or mercy-killing Kaito is still a possibility? I still don’t think she’s the culprit because I don’t think she was able to get in until after the crossbow shots were fired (aka let in by Kaito) but...

Or... or if she found Kaito dead already, from illness, and then crushed the body to frame Kokichi for it... but if she thought he was the mastermind, then she would think he’d have control of the full trial and would know that selecting him as the culprit would be the wrong answer, right??? Yeah okay following that idea to the end was pointless in the end but at least I got it out of my system. >3> I also don’t think she would disrespect Kaito’s body like that tbh unless she had to, so...

Oh man are we going to get an end-of-trial reveal then? I’m just gonna be vibrating anxiously in my seat then, I suppose. look Sweetcheeks we’re in sync again!

Aaaah, the class is so small now... I mean, we don’t even have the sixth person we should have. This is sixth chapter-levels of small. what is with the number six showing up all of the sudden

I had to grab this screenshot because tell me this doesn’t give off the impression of a sniper scope lens! Maybe that’s just me? I just really like taking a moment to appreciate the design of the text in the trials ~

I didn’t think this was going to come up so early!

And the one to the back looks bad.... Was it just dripping, or do those correspond with the drag marks? It seems to imply that they do...

Shuichi and I are all about those implications and circumstantial evidence lol

Meanwhile Maki is all about that supposed ‘direct’ evidence. Which, you know, fair! .... is what I would say if I didn’t think she was participating in a cover-up. But the motive behind the coverup... just saying ‘she wants to save Kaito’ isn’t really good enough for me, because that means she’s forfeiting everyone else’s lives in the process of the trial proceeds by its own rules - which it seems to be doing.... And, yeah, everything outside is gone, and she did agree to mercy-kill everyone before they saw the flashback light, but -

Oh, that’s an interesting thought. Kaito overthrows Kokichi, accidentally killing him in the process thanks to Maki’s poisoned arrows. Kaito succumbs to illness, or is going to in short order. Monokuma AI is still up and running, and Maki thinks it’s just because it can run independently of Kokichi, maybe? So she takes advantage of it in order to mercy-kill everyone like Gonta (and maybe Kokichi) wanted last chapter, while letting Kaito die without anyone else thinking he was a murderer? Is this her using her Ultimate Assassin ability in the most compassionate way she can, maybe?

I.... don’t know if I’m 100% satisfied with that answer... but it is an answer..........

It’s not a question of wants, my dear Sweetcheeks - she needs to push this narrative. The real question is if she actually believes it herself.

i thought the answer was bloodstain whoops

Thank goodness there wasn’t. 8′\ I don’t think even Danganronpa could stylize the gruesomeness out of that.

OI MAKI WHAT ARE YOU DOING

“You think that comment about ‘the last time you touched a woman’ was bad? I’m going to show you that I can eviscerate you without even lifting a finger.”

Maki is a force to be reckoned with, damn.

ANYONE COULD BE WEARING THOSE CLOTHES! EVEN ME!

too soon? .... yeah okay

ARE THEY.... SERIOUSLY... ARGUING ABOUT HIS FASHION SENSE.... DID MAKI JUST IMPLY SHUICHI DOESN’T KNOW KAITO AT ALL AFTER ALL THIS TIME

I’M LAUGHING HOW MANY SHIP WAR TRIALS ARE WE GOING TO HAVE why can’t we all just ot3 in peace guys

They are low-key fighting about who knows Kaito the best down to how he dresses himself I cannot believe -

“HOW DARE YOU QUESTION MY ENCYCLOPEDIC KNOWLEDGE OF MY BOYRFRIEND BRO!!”

“Have you ever considered he was wearing it like a cape like an absolute no-taste madman? Or reverted to the ‘tied around waist’ trend?  When you two broke up, it changed him, Shuichi - it changed him!”

“Just like Kokichi Imeanwhat, you didn’t hear me say that, nope -”

also too soon probably

Defeat... but how does this defeat him? The theory I have addresses why she would be so determined/have more knowledge than she’s letting on, but it definitely doesn’t neatly answer how implicating him as the culprit would ‘defeat’ him outside of letting Kaito out unscathed. :x

Oooh, are we going to address that point now? I feel like once we’ve resolved that, we’ll be ready to start breaking things down into easier-to-solve chunks!

Oh... um... o-okay but -

WAIT REALLY? WE’RE REALLY DOING THIS?!

OH!!!!

OOOOOH HOLY SHIT!! HOLY SHIT!

S-SHROEDINGER’S MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM?!?!

WAIT WHAT

I JUST FUCKING SCREECHED -

WHAT?!?!

 KAITO JUST

WHAT?!?!?!

WHAT?!?! AFTER ALL THAT WE’RE JUST - IT’S JUST - HIM?

WHY ARE *YOU* SHOCKED

or is this a ‘WHAT THE HELL WHY ARE YOU REVEALING YOURSELF’ moment?!

“YOU DUMBASS THIS WASN’T PART OF THE PLAN -”

actually oooh she said ‘Momota’ without an `ific behind it - is that a first, or did I only just notice now?

Edit: I’ve been corrected, she’s apparently not used it for a while now. I’m not surprised I just didn’t notice until now. 8′D

I.... I don’t even know what to think right now.... I thought I’d come up with something good in terms of why it was Kaito and not Kokichi, thinking it would be maybe a twist for partway through the trial or something, but then??? he just fucking busts in 15 minutes late with whatever DR’s equivalent of Starbucks is like ‘WHAT UP GUYS WHAT DID I MISS?’

?!?!?!

HOLY SHIT AGAIN

can I just say I really appreciate Hiro Shimono right now holy crap

ALSO YOU KNOW, JUST THROWN ANOTHER GENERAL ‘HOLY CRAP’ ONTO THE PILE MY HEAD IS SPINNING RIGHT NOW

I WANT TO HEAR THE ENGLISH EQUIVALENT OF THIS

but I just heard Kokichi scream something along the lines of (and I’m totally going to butcher this with my limited knowledge, I apologize):  “ORE WA SHIMASEN! MINNA WO AISHITERU KARA!” Isn’t that along the lines of ‘I won’t [die], I love all of you?” or ‘Everyone loves me?” or something? man I’m totally butchering this aren’t I lol please feel free to correct me

As for the english reference we have a confirmed Sinatra fan among us - that’s some pretty great taste you’ve got there, kiddo! hey maybe the japanese one was a detective conan ED ref or maybe I’m just reaching as usual

U-Uh I don’t know about that? I find the exisals pretty impressive, personally. I bet Tsumugi is secretly fangirling as an big mecha!anime nerd.

Good question, tbh - why did Kaito’s voice come out of the exisal? I’d consider the idea of them both being in there, but... but we discovered a body, right? And bloodstains? Unless an old body was reused (and there’s precedence in the series for that), but I don’t know how they would manage it???

Also I’m mad at myself WHY did I accidentally delete the ‘cracker’ cap, japanese Kokichi literally just said ‘cracker’ out loud and it was amazing!!!

THIS REALLY IS GOING TO BE SHROEDINGER’S MECHA

..... I.... DAMN IT THAT IS A GOOD REASON. Fine, you win this round, K.

I MEAN... YEAH....

oh shit you did what now

YOU HAVE IT ON CAMERA?!

UM?!?! NO, CAN WE NOT?!?!

Oh.... Oh no.

I have questions about why the video sped up for a moment and also why he isn’t moving at all (is he??? dead before being placed there???)  but I’m going to push them to the side for a moment because

oh.... no. I DIDN’T WANT TO SEE THAT ASDFKLJSDF D:

Oh dear :(

how many love interests must this boy be forced to watch die damn it

[recentanimenews]

Heeding the Call: Cthulhu and Japan

Depending on your interests, the name Cthulhu may stir feelings of some strange familiarity, or an excited, nearly existential sense of horror to come. Despite the fiction that birthed much of the “Cthulhu Mythos” being moderately popular, the cosmic horrors introduced by H.P. Lovecraft have morphed into a life of their own thanks to the work of his protege, August Derleth, leaving future generations to encounter the unknowable in various forms spanning video games, tv shows, movies, and perhaps the most popular forms, table-top roleplaying and board game experiences. Perhaps less well known, though, is the fact that the Cthulhu Mythos is exceedingly popular in Japan, and has a wide and exciting history of adaptations, works, and impact upon many of the genres we love in Japan to this day. Today, we’ll be taking a look and exploring that history!

The history of Cthulhu in Japan is a bit more diverse than you might initially think, and isn’t as unified as it might seem! The first bits of spreading horror came from translations of H.P. Lovecraft’s original works into Japanese in the 1940s, appearing in the horror publication Hakaba (or Graveyard) Magazine, translated by Nishio Tadashi. These early translations would prove vastly popular, and over the years ended up leading to numerous Japanese adaptations and inspirations based on Lovecraft’s original works.

Anime and manga fans are likely somewhat familiar with Kaoru Kurimoto, creator of Guin Saga, Hideyuki Kikuchi, creator of Vampire Hunter D, fan favorite horror author Junji Ito, and legendary mangaka Shigeru Mizuki, who all claimed Lovecraft as a direct influence on their works at some point. That existential, cosmic, unknowable horror is certainly present in Ito’s works like Uzumaki, and Mizuki’s interest in folklore and yokai make an attraction to the Cthulu Mythos a lot more understandable. Mizuki actually drew an adaptation of the classic story The Dunwich Horror under the title Chitei no Ashioto, simply moving the story and characters to Mizuki’s beloved setting of rural Japan.

Perhaps one of the most influential Lovecraft inspired creators in anime though is Chiaki J. Konaka, likely best known to many for his work on series like Serial Experiments Lain, Digimon Tamers, and Big O, as well as other series like Armitage III (which takes its name from a Lovecraft character!), RaXephon and Texnolyze among many others. Konaka’s career extends into the Tokusatsu side of things as well, having worked on numerous Ultraman series ranging from Tiga, Gaia, Max, and more, as well as many other series. Konaka worked in references to the Cthulhu Mythos into many of his projects, and even wrote his own short fiction; one of them, Terror Rate, was even published in English, and was even a guest of honor at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in 2018!

Much of the spread and popularity of Cthulhu fiction in Japan is owed to a few people, one of the most notable being Ken Asamatsu. Asamatsu has spent much of his career translating and spreading Lovecraft’s works in Japan, running fanzines and other publications in order to spread his love of the existential dread universe. While Asamatsu has worked on a few manga himself, he isn’t exactly an anime or manga creator, but without his input and dedication, it is unlikely that these works would ever be as popular as they are today!

Existential, creeping, unknowable horror translates well to other mediums as well, so it should come as little surprise that video games share various callbacks and influences from the Cthulhu Mythos as well. Atlus’s Shin Megami Tensei series and its many spin-offs feature numerous callbacks to Cthulhu Mythos characters and creatures, with some of the most obvious being Nyarlathotep’s direct role in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona and Persona 2. Many of the other titles reference things like the Necronomicon, with that same text being the initial persona of Persona 5’s Futaba Sakura.

        Aside from Shin Megami Tensei, there are less obvious, but somewhat hard to miss, references to many of the tropes and unique style of horror in the Cthulhu Mythos in From Software’s Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and most directly Bloodborne games. Demon’s Souls in particular draws heavily on the existential, unknowable horror that is descending upon the kingdom of Boletaria and the secrets behind its true collapse, and the Dark Souls games similarly feature somewhat Lovecraftian ideas and monsters. Of the three, Bloodborne is the most direct with its inspirations, with characters routinely discussing the fact that seeing more of the truth may drive one mad, cosmic entities controlling, mutating, and destroying humanity, fish people (a staple of Lovecraft’s works), and humongous, tentacle-faced monsters (here known as Amygdala).

        Ironically, however, there is actually another reason for the popularity of Cthulhu Mythos in Japanese media that helped spread its flavorful influence amongst various genres, and it actually has little to do with Lovecraft’s actual writings themselves. Instead, many Japanese fans encounter Lovecraft’s elder gods through the table-top role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, first published in Japan 1986, and the explosion in popularity was not only a staggering success, but it continues to this day! Although many Western fans might assume that TTRPG games like Dungeons and Dragons are popular in Japan due to some of their influences in fantasy anime, Call of Cthulhu reigns supreme as the most popular TTRPG in Japan, and its popularity likely helped introduce many Japanese to the TTRPG genre in the first place!

Call of Cthulhu is, essentially, a group mystery adventure game, and that seems to have really hit big with Japanese audiences far and wide, because the game has remained in print since its initial introduction in the nineties, and has fans of all ages and genders playing in groups, to the point that some places will find their rooms for group meetings rented out to play games of Call of Cthulhu! Recently, the game even got some favorable air time in an NHK news segment, talking about the game itself and the fun that can be had with it! With this popularity came the growth of a somewhat unique phenomenon: Replays, essentially narrative, semi-novelized versions of Call of Cthulhu campaigns collected and printed for other people to read, similar to today’s popular “actual play” podcasts and videos such as Critical Role or The Adventure Zone. Even today, Call of Cthulhu replays are extremely popular, with new versions being printed all the time, sometimes even adorned with amazing, cute anime styled art and other interesting little design choices, like semi-doujinshi level works featuring Touhou characters, and more! These Replays became so popular that they soon spread to other types of TTRPGs, and are the inspiration behind anime such as Record of Lodoss War, Slayers, and many others!

    If one were to search Cthulhu on Amazon.jp, you’d actually find that most of the results are these colorful and interesting Replay books, almost more so than you’d even find the original novels and stories by Lovecraft himself! There are many other fascinating fan inspired books about the Cthulhu Mythos, including a personal favorite of Cthulhu monsters arranged in a book similar to those of Kaiju and Tokusatsu stylings (even featuring a cartoon Lovecraft on the cover doing the famous Ultraman pose). There are other small Cthulhu publications in Japanese, include a manga anthology called Zone of Cthulhu and numerous adaptations, and Gou Tanabe’s versions are even being translated into English, with The Hound and Other Stories already available, and At the Mountains of Madness coming later this year.

Of course the Cthulhu love isn’t limited to just print media; many anime have featured some nods and callbacks to the mythos, such as in the visual novel and anime of the same name Demonbane, which is even set in Lovecraft’s beloved Arkham. Main character Kuro Daijuji works with Al Azif, the living personification of the Necronomicon, to defeat the nefarious Black Lodge (a very probable nod to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks here). As mentioned above, numerous works by Chiaki J. Konaka draw from the Cthulhu Mythos, but Digimon Tamers might be the most surprising, with callbacks to Miskatonic University and Shaggai, as well as a computer AI that seems to have more in common with the Great Old Ones than it does Skynet! Another example is a fairly popular series, Bungo Stray Dogs, where one of the characters... is actually named Lovecraft! But that's not all! His "The Great Old Ones" ability is a reference to Cthulhu's origins. Probably one of the most famous examples is Nyaruko: Another Crawling Chaos, where the monsters of Lovecraft’s works are revealed to actually be aliens, but still very weird! The anime is a comedy featuring numerous Mythos characters repurposed or slightly renamed, such as Nyarlathotep as Nyaruko, the Yellow King Hastur, and more. The series of novels proved popular enough to spawn 3 anime seasons and other spin offs, proving that even if you take the horror out of the Mythos, people will still find it entertaining and… cute?

Speaking of cute, this brings us to a few interesting final tidbits about the Cthulhu Mythos and Japan. Aside from the direct popularity, the language change and differences have led to a few running gags in Japan about the series, one of which has to do with the somewhat infamous Cthulhu cultist chant, “Ia Ia Cthulhu Ftaghn,” with “Ia Ia” being pronounced very similar to the Japanese expression “iya iya”, which has a few various uses in casual Japanese, either meaning something similar to “um” or “no” depending on how and where it is used. The second comes from the fact that Japanese, being a syllabic language, actually has an easier time pronouncing the supposedly “unpronouncable” names of the Cthulu Mythos creatures, with Cthulhu being translated as クトゥルフ, or “Kutourufu”, which is not only a lot easier to actually say, but sounds oddly cute for the sinister elder god!

Cthulhu mania seems as popular as ever both outside and inside of Japan, with new games, movies, comics, and more drawing inspiration from the titles. Although Lovecraft’s own works are less popular than when the fascination started, the current passion for his ideas stems from the attractive allure of the unknown, the potential darkness lingering in shadows and dark pools of water. Whatever the reason people flock to the Cthulhu Mythos, it seems like we can look forward to numerous adaptations, inspirations, and callbacks for years to come… until perhaps even Cthulhu awakens! Until then, it’s best to keep your wits about you and stock up on your esoteric lore… You never know where the elder gods might pop up next during your next anime, manga, or video game binge!

Have any secret and mysterious ancient Cthulhu influences we didn’t mention? Know of any other influences on Japan you’d like us to cover? Let us know in the comments!

----

Nicole is a features and a social video script writer for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[the-crippled-god]

Ys II: Final

Oh wow is this so much of an improvement over Ys I.

Still playing the Chronicles+ version on PC, I don’t think I’d ever touched Ys II previously.

So, let’s start with the improvements:

Story: I understand now why Ys I and Ys II are mostly considered one big game, the story is very closely tied, and while Ys I is mostly setup and minor stuff, Ys II is a solid payoff. The biggest difference is the villain has a more immediate and vocal presence, frequently appearing to taunt Adol, or you see him and his flunkies conspiring behind the scenes. It maintains the good character writing from Ys I, and expands on the lore of Ys and Easteria in a way that makes a lot of stuff that was just fluff text in Ys I make sense.

Level Design: Again, a big step up from Ys I, areas are less cramped and much more elaborate, almost too the point where I wished the game had a mini-map. Dungeons get a bit more puzzely than Ys I especially towards the end (the final dungeon feels suitably sprawling and elaborate, despite the puzzles remaining fairly simple), but remain mostly hack and slash affairs. Towns also feel less cramped, and are spread out more evenly, making it seem more plausible that these are separate settlements rather than the same town, just separated by a wall or field, which is how they felt in Ys I.

Combat: As mentioned already, bumping at angles now works properly, and Ys II also has a magic system, that while basic, adds a much welcomed option for ranged combat.

Boss Design: Holy shit. Every boss in this game feels fair. There's still problems, which I'll get into, but none of the bosses drove me mad like several of the first games did. You still need to make sure you have the best equipment, and sometimes stop and grind for levels, but assuming you aren't way under the bosses level, all the boss fights feel fair.

This isn't to say the game was without problems, but most of these feel like limitations of the games original release and engine:

Enemy AI: With bumping at angles now operating as a non-direct bump, regular enemies might as well be jokes. I never died to regular enemies, though they did get me close once or twice. Although augmented over Ys I, enemy AI is still dead simple. Enemies will walk towards you at about 2/3rds your speed, if they bump you they do damage. In Ys II enemies can also do the following: Walk at angles, charge and release a melee attack with a wide-ish range, and fire a projectile attack. Enemies towards the end of the game occasionally have more elaborate special attacks, such as breathing a wide swath of fire, or charging up a big lightening AOE. However, enemies will almost never get to do special attacks, since doing damage to them cancels their charge up and most of the time you can just push enemies into corners and ram them to death.

Boss Design: Yeah, bosses are fair now, but they're also limited by the bump combat system. All but the last 2 bosses in the game are only vulnerable to your fire magic, meaning they play more like a clunky shmup than an RPG boss fight, which is novel the first couple times, but quickly gets monotonous. You also have access to multiple healing items in the game, for effectively free, and while you still can't swap items during a boss encounter, you can hold multiple of the same item (with a few restrictions) and use them all. Generally bosses felt too easy, even when I started intentionally fighting them while a little under the expected level.

Navigation: The big sprawling dungeons, limited tile sets, and easy access to fast travel magic meant I got lost a few times, and generally didn't fine I developed a memory of where key things were until right before the final boss.

I really liked this game.

I fully understand why this series was so well liked from this point forwards. For when this game originally game out, the story is super elaborate, with a lot of character, and a unique enough conclusion that makes me pretty excited to continue the series. Following from Ys I, after the battle atop Darn tower, Adol ends up in Ys, which as it turns out, was floating in the sky above Easteria the whole time! Guess Easteria never had a clear day in 700 years? (Or Ys had some kind of magical cloaking device or something.) We find demons are running rampant in Ys too, and with the help of some words from the Goddesses (who we're now pretty certain must be the blue haired girls from the first game) set out to stop the demons. Dallas is a much more direct villain than Dark Fact was, actively trying to stop our advance towards his stronghold, though he also goes out of his way to not actually kill us (even though he has several opportunities to do so), which is nice of him. Along the way we meet several more descendants of the Priests of Ancient Ys, and a bunch of other colourful characters.

At the very end of the game we finally get an explanation of what happened: The Easterians dug too deep. While they thought they were still mining silver in their mines they'd instead started mining Cleria, a metal that is the source of all magic, the goddesses had sealed the Cleria deep underground 700 years ago when they also sealed away Darn, the source of all demons (in a big black orb at the core of Ys). Dark Fact was able to use the Cleria (hence why he was stealing all that silver in Ys I) to unseal Darn, causing the demons (and the Stormwall) to appear, and also causing Ys to start lowering back towards the ground. As it turns out, the source of Demons, and the source of Magic are one and the same. 700 years ago the goddesses chose to seal away the demon bits, but keep the magic bits around (presumably to keep Ys from falling to the ground, killing everyone on it, and probably everyone below too, it's implied Ys was raised into the sky to escape the demons but we'll likely learn about that in Origin). This worked, so long as no one discovered how to use magic again. Dark Fact, being a descendant of the Priest Fact presumably already knew how to use magic, and just needed enough Cleria to use as a catalyst and break the seal, likely mistakenly believing he could control Darn. So, what does Adol do?

Well, with Ys already back on the ground, we slay Darn, destroying all demons, and all magic, forever.

The goddesses thank us (and they were indeed the girls from the first game), lament that they aren't really needed any more, and that they wish humanity would just learn to believe in themselves rather than some old goddesses, wishing instead that they could live as humans. All the captured people are reunited, and Adol goes to talk to the chronically ill girl who has a massive crush on him (one of at least 3 girls in these 2 games who does, not sure why he picks the one most likely to die first, but...).

I really liked the story. There's some stuff going forwards that still feels like I missed something for, like I know Dogi is supposed to be Adols best friend in Oath and forwards, but he's not in Ys II at all (other than being mentioned in the end cutscene) and all he does in Ys I is break you out of a jail cell 1 - 3 times. But overall discovering an ancient civilization not only still exists, but has basically already moved so far beyond that ancient society that even they don't remember how all the magical shit worked is cool. Finding out that you just destroyed all magic forever, by watching your MP bar slowly drain away after you destroy Darn, is really cool. I really like the games set pieces, it's weird that a game this old even had them, but climbing the clocktower felt genuinely tense, and little things like being able to (futiley) attack Darn when he appears to taunt you were quite charming. In the 1980s when this first came out this would've been mind blowing. Gameplay wise this was much more satisfying, if a little too easy compared to Ys I.

I'd absolutely recommend the Chronicles collection. Just, play Ys I on easy, and maybe play Ys II on hard. The games hold up surprisingly well, especially the second one.

Next is Ys Origin, which was I believe the last game made with the Napish engine (playing things in the intended story order means we'll almost always see later iterations of an engine first). I never finished Origin, I got about 80% through one campaign, and 25% through another. Looking forward to going back to it, especially now that the story won't just be meaningless gibberish to me.