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ginnsbaker · 20 days ago

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All Of Your Pieces (11 - Nightmares)

Chapter Summary: “Trust me, I didn’t go easy on her,” Clint replied gruffly. “Her brother came to her rescue. I blinked, and they were both gone.” You frowned, not entirely sure if you could take Clint's word for it. You chastised yourself for not being more vigilant during the encounter. Next time you faced off against Wanda Maximoff, you promised yourself, it would end differently—she would be subdued at the very least. Her powers were admittedly terrifying, and you couldn't help but wonder how your seniors intended to handle her capture.

Or if perhaps she posed such a threat that she would be better off dead.

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x Female Reader Chapter word count: 3.4k | Chapter Tags: None

A/N: Welcome to Part 2, To Build A Home, or basically the history of Y/N and Wanda before Westview, starting at the end of Ultron. Most of Part 2 will be told from Y/N's perspective. Part 3 will be Wanda's. Without further ado... // More author's notes here.

Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist

The place smelled like rust and copper—of blood. The warehouse was enormous and maze-like in its structure, and somewhere in the distance, metal groaned like a wounded animal. You had just put two of Ulysses Klaue's men down—clean shots and no hesitation. Their bodies lay cooling on the concrete as you readied yourself to confront anyone else who stood in your way.

You tapped your earpiece. “Nat, Clint, what's your position?”

Static replied, a white noise that filled your head like ocean waves crashing inside a seashell.

You tapped the communicator, harder this time.

“Do you copy?�� More static.

And, weirdly enough, more silence. Just a minute ago, the area was crawling with hostiles. Now, you could hear your own muted steps. You were always light on your feet, just as you were trained to be.

You glanced over your shoulder. The two men you took out were gone. The floor where they fell was clean, no blood, no bodies. You blinked hard, but the scene didn't change.

“What the—” you muttered to yourself before you took a step and the ground beneath you suddenly felt like it was made of quicksand.

Before you could react, the floor gave way entirely. You plunged downward, swallowed by the very ground you stood on. The sensation was disorienting—a free fall through darkness that seemed to stretch on forever. Your stomach lurched as you tried to grasp at anything, but your fingers closed around empty air.

Then, as suddenly as the fall began, it ended. You landed softly, as if the air itself cushioned your descent. You found yourself standing in a bright corridor with white walls and sterile white lights—nothing that indicated a warehouse. The air smelled of antiseptic and faintly of lavender.

A distant cry erupted down the haul—a child's wail. The sound of it dug into your bones and you followed its source because you had to, because it was pulling you like a magnet draws steel.

You walked down the corridor, vaguely unaware that you had none of your weapons with you, the armor you donned replaced by a white hospital gown. Doors lined the walls, each identical, each a possible gateway to something you weren't sure you wanted to face. The cry came again, more urgent this time. It was coming from the last door on the left.

Taking a deep breath, you turned the cold knob and pushed the door open.

Inside was a small hospital room bathed in harsh fluorescent light. On the bed lay a woman and recognized her immediately. Your mother, but younger, frail and exhausted. Her eyes were closed, and her hands rested gently on her swollen belly.

A nurse glided quietly around, checking the beeping instruments, scribbling on a clipboard. She glanced up and looked directly at you, but it was as if she didn't see you at all.

Your mother stirred, her eyes fluttering open. “Is he okay?” she asked weakly.

The nurse smiled reassuringly. “You're doing fine. Just rest.”

Your heart thudded, the hairs on your arms rising without your consent. This was the day—you realized—the day everything changed. The day you were born, and your twin brother wasn’t.

A doctor entered the room, his expression serious. He whispered something to the nurse, and they both looked solemn. Your mother noticed. “What's wrong?” she demanded.

The doctor sighed. “I'm sorry, but one of them didn’t make it.”

Your mother’s face twisted in anguish. “No... no, that can't be.”

She looked down at her belly, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Which one?”

“The boy,” the doctor replied softly.

A raw, wrenching sob broke from her. “It should have been her,” she cried bitterly. “I wanted a son. Not... this.”

Something inside you shattered into a million pieces. You wanted to reach out to her, to tell her you were sorry, to convince her it wasn’t your fault. But you couldn't move, rooted to the spot by an invisible force.

The room started to blur, its edges bleeding out like ink on damp paper. You blinked, and suddenly you found yourself in a darker corridor, its walls creeping closer with each heavy step you took.

You heard footsteps behind you—a slow, deliberate pace that sent a chill down your spine. You quickened your stride, but the footsteps matched your speed. You broke into a run, your breath coming in ragged gasps.

Rounding a corner, you slammed into a figure. Stumbling backward, you looked up to see your twin—the shadowy figure that resembled you but wasn't you. Its eyes were hollow as if they had never fully formed.

“Why did you take everything?” It spoke.

“I—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” you whispered.

It leaned closer to you.

“Yes, you did.”

Voices overlapped, a cacophony of accusations and doubts and things you believed in and kept running away from.

“You're just a thief.”

“A murderer before you were even born.”

“Who's the real villain here?”

You clapped your hands over your ears and screamed at the top of your lungs but no sound came out.

The ground shook, cracks racing across the floor, chunks tumbling into the dark below. You struggled to stay upright.

“It should’ve been her.”

“Sickly girl.”

“What a waste.”

“Y/N!”

A jolt ran through you as someone shook your shoulder. Instinct took over. Your hand flew to your sidearm, drawing it in one fluid motion as you spun around.

The shot rang out.

“Whoa! It’s me!” Clint exclaimed, ducking just in time as your pistol aimed where his head had been a split second before, the bullet embedding itself in a stack of crates behind him.

Horror washed over you as you realized what you’d almost done. “Clint... I...”

He retrieved your pistol from the floor, hesitated, then handed it back to you butt-first. “It’s okay, kid. You weren’t the only one.”

—

“You didn’t even read the briefing, did you?�� Clint smirked, handing you a bottle of water. You took a long gulp, wiping your lips with your thumb when you were done. No matter how much you drank, you still felt parched. Glancing around, you spotted Steve and Tony whispering. Judging from the look on their faces, you could tell that what happened to you also happened to them.

“What is she? Some kind of witch or something?” you groaned, massaging your temple.

“Steve sent us the profiles on the Maximoff twins well before we boarded the Quinjet. It was all in there,” Clint added, sitting down beside you.

You kept quiet, avoiding his eyes. You rarely did your homework before a mission—why would this time be any different?

“That’s exactly why you walked into her trap,” he snapped, taking your silence as an answer. “Knowing your enemy is basic, whether you’ve got a god on your side or not.”

You nodded, taking the ribbing with good grace.

“Maybe if you hadn't gone so easy on her,” you retorted, leaning back against the curved bulkhead of the jet. You briefly closed your eyes, only to snap them open immediately, not wanting to be haunted by the persistent vision. You wondered how long the after effects of the Maximoff witch would last.

Clint chuckled, shaking his head in a way that was unmistakably patronizing. You hated when he got like this. Hated how your random outbursts never affected him.

“Trust me, I didn’t go easy on her,” Clint replied gruffly. “Her brother came to her rescue. I blinked, and they were both gone.”

You frowned, not entirely sure if you could take Clint's word for it. You chastised yourself for not being more vigilant during the encounter. Next time you faced off against Wanda Maximoff, you promised yourself, it would end differently—she would be subdued at the very least. Her powers were admittedly terrifying, and you couldn't help but wonder how your seniors intended to handle her capture.

Or if perhaps she posed such a threat that she would be better off dead.

“What did you see in there?” Clint suddenly asked, snapping you out of your thoughts.

You shrugged, not wanting to revisit that experience even in your mind. The mere thought of it sickened you. Only someone truly evil would subject another to such a nightmare for tactical advantage. Physical violation was one thing, but to invade the mind? That was a trick only a truly depraved person would consider.

“Nothing,” you replied curtly.

“Talking can help, you know?” he offered gently, but he was already rising from his seat, giving you the room you seemed to need.

“Maybe that works for old-timers,” you tossed back. “Never worked for me.”

—

When Ultron ultimately went down, it felt far from victory. Survivors moved like ghosts, blank-faced and aimless in their direction, clutching what’s left of their former lives. You stood there, surrounded by twisted metal and smoldering ruins—another battle won, another piece of yourself lost.

Your eyes landed on Wanda. She perched on a heap of debris, crimson energy fading from her fingertips like the last wisps of smoke. She stared into nothingness, eyes as clear as shore but with nothing there to find.

You knew that look. The emptiness when half of you is gone. Both of you were twins once. Now, both alone. You never got to know the boy you lived with for nine months because he never made it outside your mother’s womb. But just knowing he was there, that he existed, left a void that would never be suffused. You’d always feel incomplete, forever wondering if you truly deserved to be the one who lived.

You understood her pain, at least in an abstract, cataloged kind of way. But empathy was a luxury you couldn't afford, not with the bitterness festering inside you. Ever since she got into your head and forced your past to rear its ugly head, you haven’t been able to properly sleep for days on end. You fundamentally opposed Steve's choice to collaborate with the Maximoffs, believing they belonged in a containment cell, not on the field. You saw how Wanda fought off Ultron’s droids. She was extremely dangerous—maybe even more so when she felt so strongly.

The quinjet touched down at the Avengers facility, its engines winding down with a low whine. You disembarked with the other quietly, dirt and grime clinging to your skin and suits like mold.

Steve called everyone to the landing pad. He looked over the team—bruised and battered, yet standing. Morale was low, but Steve saw this as an opportunity for growth. You preferred Tony's approach. When things went sideways, he'd hit the bottles and maybe blow off steam by blowing up a few empty depots. His way of coping suited you better than Captain America's endless supply of pep talks.

“Good work out there,” he said, though his voice lacked its usual conviction. “Get some rest. We'll debrief in the morning.”

He turned to you as the group began to disperse. “Could you show Wanda to her quarters? They're next to yours.”

You met his eyes and scowled. The nerve of him to ask that. Without a word, you turned on your heel and headed down the corridor toward your room.

“Hey!” Steve's voice followed you. “I'm talking to you!”

“Let it go,” Natasha murmured to him. You caught it, just barely, over the pounding in your ears.

“That's not acceptable,” Steve argued.

“She's been through hell,” Natasha interrupted. “We all have. Give her some space.”

Wanda stood where you'd left her, eyes fixed on the floor, as if she wished it would swallow her whole. She hadn't reacted to the exchange, lost in her own head.

Steve ran a hand over his face, the first signs of weariness lining his forehead. “Fine. Can you take Wanda to her room, then?”

Natasha nodded. “Come on, Wanda,” she said, tilting her head toward the direction they needed to go, the same one you disappeared into a moment ago. “Let's get you settled.”

Wanda allowed herself to be led away. Steve watched them go before his thoughts returned to you and he shook his head; there were battles worth fighting, and this wasn't one of them.

In your room, you slammed the door shut, making a sharp sound that hurt your own ears. It’s exactly as you left it—sterile, impersonal, a place where nothing bad had ever happened because nothing had ever happened at all.

You paced the length of the room, muscles coiled tight, every nerve ending tingling with restless energy even though you were sure earlier that you had given it your all on the battlefield. Steve has sided with a known terrorist, and now he's brought her to the doorstep. This compound might never have felt like home, but still, it was your sanctuary—a place to let your guard down once in a while.

A few minutes later, after you had been sitting on your bed, staring at the blank wall, there was a soft knock at your door.

“Go away,” you muttered.

The door swung open abruptly, and you let yourself collapse onto your back near the foot of the bed with a sigh.

“Steve's worried about you,” Natasha stated, peering down at you as you gazed up at her upturned figure.

“Steve worries about everything.”

“He asked me to check in.”

“Consider me checked.”

She studied you for a moment. “She's not your enemy anymore, you know?”

“Tell that to Banner.”

“People change.”

You shrugged. “Not that much.”

Natasha crossed her arms and then sat beside you. There were a few beats of silence, a moment for both of you to gauge each other before you sat up and looked over at her.

“She gave you nightmares, too, right? Even if you never told me what they were, I doubt they were pretty.”

Natasha's face remained docile, not betraying any sign that she was merely keeping up appearances or that she secretly despised Wanda too. You envied her control over her emotions, how she concealed herself from the world while still managing to be a good friend without restraint.

“Worst I've had in years,” she admitted. “But she was on the other side then. Doing what she thought was right. Fighting for what she believed in.”

You scoffed. “That's supposed to make it okay?”

“No,” she said softly. “But maybe understandable.”

You didn’t have a comeback for that. You knew Natasha had a point. You’d do everything you could to neutralize an opponent, and the twins simply did the same thing.

“We can't fault her forever for surviving,” she continued. “For doing what she had to do.”

You didn't say anything. Admitting she was right—like she always seemed to be—felt too much like giving in. You've never won an argument with Natasha, and it was both infuriating and impressive. Each time you tried to best her, it ended the same way: with you respecting her even more for her relentless logic.

She glanced at you. “You don't have to forgive her. No one's asking you to. But dwelling on things that are over? That's a prison of your own making.”

“Easy for you to say,” you snapped. You knew you sounded juvenile, but you couldn't hold back. "Not all of us can just flip a switch and turn it off.”

She gave a small, mirthless laugh. “There's no switch. Just choices. Every damn day.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means you can distract yourself if you have to. Find something else to focus on. Just so you don't have to think about it all the time.”

“And if I don't want to forget?”

“Then don't,” she said softly. “But don't let it consume you either.”

She stood up, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from her suit. “Get some rest.”

As she made for the door, you couldn’t help but fire off one last parting shot. “You can bet I won’t forgive her. Not anytime soon, anyway.”

Natasha paused but didn't turn around.

“Thanks for the therapy session,” you said, laying down again and rolling onto your side with your back to her.

You expected her to leave after that, but instead, she lingered, sharing an unwarranted piece of information.

“Wanda's in the room next to yours.”

“I know,” you said, getting up to close the door after her.

—

The walls of the quarters were supposed to be fortress thick, but when you dragged yourself out of bed for a midnight raid on the fridge, the sliver of light bleeding from under Wanda's door was impossible to ignore. So, she was awake. You paused, your gaze fixed on the thin glow, suspicion worming its way through your thoughts. Was she plotting something in there, alone with her powers at this ungodly hour? You shook your head slightly, dismissing the creeping paranoia. If Wanda decided to turn on them, well, that was Steve's headache to deal with. With a shrug, you turned away, your mind settling back on the rumble in your stomach as you headed towards the kitchen.

You assembled the basics: bread, peanut butter, jelly. The ritual to your favorite snack was almost therapeutic—the smooth glide of the knife spreading peanut butter thick, jelly thin, just the way you liked it. You grabbed another knife to cut off the crusts, a habit you never quite outgrew.

As you began slicing the edges, a figure materialized through the wall beside you.

“Jesus!” you yelped, the knife slipping and nearly nicking your finger. Your heart leapt into your throat as you stumbled back.

“My apologies,” Vision said.

You took a deep breath, clutching your chest. “Could you not do that? Ever heard of using a door like a normal person?”

He tilted his head, considering your words. “You are correct. I should adhere to conventional modes of entry. I will take note of that next time.”

“Great,” you mumbled, turning back to your sandwich with a huff. Your hands trembled slightly as you resumed cutting. It was still strange to hear J.A.R.V.I.S’ voice coming out of this being’s mouth.

Vision stepped fully into the kitchen. “Allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Vision.”

You eyed him warily. “I know who you are.”

“May I inquire about your culinary creation?” Vision asked.

“It's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

He stepped closer, examining it with keen interest. “The coloration is intriguing. I haven't encountered many purple foods in my lifetime.”

You raised an eyebrow. “You've been alive for, what, three days? Not exactly a lifetime.”

A subtle smile crossed his face. “An accurate assessment.”

You chuckled softly. “Grape jelly. A classic. You should try it sometime.”

“Not sure if I could,” he replied. “But perhaps I will.”

Vision hovered. The silence stretched just long enough to become awkward. You were too spaced out to bother breaking it.

“Speaking of food,” he began, “Miss Maximoff hasn’t eaten. Nothing in over twelve hours.”

You were about to take your first bite, but the mention of Wanda left a bitter taste in your mouth.

“And why is that my problem?”

“Given that her quarters are adjacent to yours, I thought you might be concerned,” Vision said.

“Concerned? About the person who messed with my head? Hard pass.”

Vision regarded you with those unblinking eyes. “Holding onto resentment can be detrimental to one's well-being.”

“Did you read that in a fortune cookie?”

He seemed unfazed. “I simply thought informing you would be appropriate. Miss Maximoff appears... isolated.”

“Not my issue,” you grumbled, but the image of Wanda alone flashed through your mind. Despite yourself, you felt a pang of sympathy.

Vision nodded slowly. “Very well. If you'll excuse me.”

He turned to leave, this time opting for the doorway instead of phasing through the wall. You watched him go, a sour twist in your gut.

“Wait,” you called out before you could stop yourself.

He did, looking back at you expectantly.

You sighed, rolling your eyes. “Look, just... take her something to eat. Here.” You shoved the sandwich plate toward him.

He glanced down at the offering. “It might be more meaningful if you delivered it yourself.”

“Yeah, that's not happening.”

He accepted the plate. “I will relay the gesture.”

“Don’t,” you rushed out. “I mean, don’t tell her it’s from me.”

Vision appeared to hesitate, but acquiesced with a nod.

“Great,” you said, already regretting the impulse. “Gotta run.” You grabbed your jacket from the back of the chair.

“Are you going out at this hour?” Vision asked.

You shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. Might as well own the night.”

“Do be careful,” he advised. “The city can be unpredictable after dark.”

You managed a faint smirk. “Unpredictable is where I thrive.”

You were due for a night out anyway.

#wanda maximoff x reader #all of your pieces masterlist #my fic #my writing #wanda maximoff #clint barton #natasha romanoff #steve rogers #tony stark #vision

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navillee · 1 month ago

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Hello love. I just went through your whole page and I love it. I’ve been craving for sub LADS. If I may, can I request an introduction to Sub Raf like the one you did with Sylus? 🤍

Sub Rafayel: an introduction

As a fellow ENTP just as myself, there's some interesting peculiarities about Rafayel as a partner/sub that would be interesting to highlight;

Unlike the other guys, Rafayel is the one I got the hardest time trying to "label." That's because this men can't be labeled at all;

While Xavier, Zayne and even Sylus bring a certain steady pace on their identities as subs, with a solid and clear rhythms, Rafayel is almost a body of water (ba-dum tss) doing the exact opposite;

Of course that he also has his own personal preferences and definitely personal turn ons, but there's a spontaneity on him that's different from the others;

It's a sense of first exploring, that he did in fact, recognized himself as a sub only after he got in a situationship/relationship with you;

He's ultra spontaneous. He adores to explore, and he knows how to. PERIOD;

I mean, he waited 800 years to explore your world with you. The only thing he didn't mention is that he also waited to explore himself with you too;

Adding to it, Rafayel has a silver tongue, but differently from Sylus, he doesn't provoke all the time. He uses his cleverness to bring new ideias and perspectives when he talks to you;

That's why, especially in the beginning of your relationship with him, he would navigate though all the seas that his witty banters with you would allow him to;

He's a sweet talker, inducing you to try new things with him without you even notice it. Does he want you to pose nude as his painting's muse? He would previously comment about historical artists that did the same, left some art books near the couch at his studio for you to see, and someday, maybe in the slow cozy morning after your first time with him, Rafayel would casually sit near the edge of the bed, pencil on hands while you to talk about next plans as he capture every detail of your curves curled in the bedsheets;

He has the gift of the gab, entering the nest was just an easy play for him. He wants your heart, you're his nemesis;

Did you ever heard about the term "obsessed poet"? That's Rafayel. When he's passionate about something he's the obsessive artist. He pulls an all-nighter on a painting with the same pleasure he did stalking you;

He wants more, he wants everything and he sometimes can't even tell why. Is that the bond you two share playing with his head? Is just his love? He sometimes can't tell it apart;

That's why I would guess he's more of an "Obsessive sub in training."

He would accept every new aspect of you with gratitude, it's exciting for him. You feed his obsession for you, just for him to get greedy for more;

That's why when you told him you would "lock him in a cage, whip him everyday to finish his paintings and force him to address you as 'master'" he was like: "oh."

"that's an interesting idea. Wait, did I just get hard?"

He's a house sub, and I can see him as a submissive princess as well (don't mistake it for "pillow princess" it's not the same thing);

A house sub because I don't see him indulging with others. He runs away of his own art events with you, and I think that this aspect will be kept on the bedroom. He wants a world of only you two exist, where he can unleash himself from boring social standards. Drown into personal paradise, his Lemuria again, his beloved bride;

The "submissive princess" comes from the premise of he's the fucking sea god. He's your slave, but he also wants adoration. He wants you to engage on his banters, to tell him how good he's doing, to shower him with praises and comfort;

He let an entire civilization die to get you back into his arms. But he did it good, right? Please, tell him he did good. He will crumble otherwise;

Talking about specific kinks, even though you two are exploring each other's preferences, I do think he would be collecting new addictions about you;

Public sex, but not any kind. Two, being more specific;

Rafayel would love to getting you riding him by the shore at night. It can be a private island you two went to spend the weekend together. He told you it was to inspire him on a new art work of his and trust me, nothing more inspirational for him to listen to your moans mixing with the sounds of crashing waves;

The public play was a breaking-code-life-hacking to make Rafayel attend his own compromises. Place a little vibrator on his pants. On his cock near the sensitive tip, on the base, just toet him wanting more. Even shoved into his ass to make him stumble on his own convinced words while he discourse to his fans, making him wanting to leave earlier so he can let you use him as your personal lemurian toy. Thobias will never know. At least he can pretend he doesn't, since the problem with Rafayel's absence was solved;

Let's talk about Ebb & Flow. That's when he turns the subbest sub to ever sub;

That's when his defiant personality is left to the side and he turns into the attention-seeking whore he is. No witty remarks, no teasing or talking back. He's clear as water about how much he needs to breed his miss bodyguard over and over again;

All positions, every room in the house (even those fuckin stairs);

He will lose control over his pride. Rafayel would turn into a drooling whimpering mess, repeating his words like a pray. "Please miss, please miss, please!", "I need to cum, I need to cum, I need to cum..."

He would be desperate if the day comes and you're not with him. He would try to call you, to send you audios crying and moaning, and revealing photos and videos of how much he needs his miss bodyguard to take good care of him;

Maybe even pictures of him using a lingerie set to show how pretty he looks to fill you up with his cum. You can't deny him if he looks this docile, right?

If he's sagacious enough (he is) he would coincidentally invite you to a private island weekend matching right with his Ebb & Flow day;

What? A merman needs to mate on his natural form and habitat. You can't rebuild Lemuria with only one dick (iykyk).

#l&ds #love and deepspace #l&ds rafayel #rafayel x mc #lads rafayel #love and deepspace rafayel #rafayel x reader #rafayel #headcanon #rafayel l&ds #ebb and flow #sub!rafayel #sub!rafayel x dom reader

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thesiltverses · 4 months ago

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Hello! Writing first to thank you for such an extraordinary creation - as a piece of writing and even more so in performance. Every episode manages to somehow build on and outdo the last; you navigated that transition from a smaller scale story of grisly mysteries and personal crises of faith to a grand scale of war, revolution and political satire with absolute aplomb, and never lost that throughline of exceptional characterisation and sharp writing, always steering to the most interesting conflicts. You are always very humble in your public comments, but I hope you allow yourself a little pride, because this is absolutely top notch stuff.

I was struck by Paige's final words, that she hopes what they left would be found 'flawed, inadequate, yearning'. As the show went on, I was surprised - in a good way - that the show's politics gradually crystalised into a full-on nihilist anarchism, something perhaps even along the lines of Monsieur Dupont. (Muna used the 'a' word in one of the Q&As but it was pretty evident even before that). Taking these gods as a metaphor for ideologies and social systems, the scope of it becomes pretty universal - and unsparing. And, equally, hard to answer.

I wondered when the Many Below/Wound Tree was introduced what answers they would find: what political movement could truly resist cooption or becoming its own horrible self-sustaining egregore. And in the end the answer you express I suppose is a negative one: that even Paige's god of victims is a tool, one that must eventually be discarded to go into some unknown place beyond it all (to walk away from Omelas), towards something that narrative fiction - as a form of the 'endless words' that are derided so much in the third season - can no longer address. Which I respect - to pose the question is vital, even if the tools can't reach any answers if they even exist.

I think this struggle exists in many stories that address themes of making a break from the rapacious society that created them (and take it seriously) - your Baru Cormorants and Mononoke-himes. We can describe the problem vividly, but since we do not have a counterexample to hand, any story we tell about ~what is to be done~ and what it will look like when it is feels like it will be just as hollow as the spins and angles and parasitic fantasies that so many characters advance in the Silt Verses. (How could there possibly be a time where it finally works out, after we have seen all this? But then, what are we living for?)

To try to make this a question and not a ramble, I wanted to ask - what do you see as the role of fiction in addressing the horrible machinery of this world? Is it enough to pose the question particularly sharply, skewer the bad and inadequate answers, and leave the readers/listeners to figure out how to make the killing of gods concrete? How do we punch through the bounds of it all being Content, another product to be bought and sold? What does it mean to sit here and fantasise about people making that revolutionary break when there is no revolution to be had?

I don't know what answer I'm hoping for here, but given the themes of the show, I feel like this must be a kind of thing you've thought about, and probably have a far more developed line of thought than I do. And if this is a bit too much to drop in your inbox on a Saturday morning, I will say again thank you for writing this story and all the actors for making it so strikingly concrete - it truly means a lot, and I will treasure it.

Hi, and thank you for listening and for a beautifully written and thoughtful ask! ('Horrible machinery of the world' stopped me dead in my tracks.) And I am very proud, genuinely.

I don't have a good enough answer to your questions, and for me a lot of TSV is very much about trying to figure those answers out, but let me try and sum up my perspective bit by bit.

Is it enough for fiction to pose the question, without also proposing the answer?

I don't think it's enough for fiction as a collective body of work.

I'd argue there's probably a tendency towards open-endedness and irresolution in these individual narratives simply because it feels like a more honest acknowledgement that in real life, the foe has yet to take a real body blow and will not go down easy; that the foe, in fact, is the marketplace for the work itself and ironically profits from the popularity of stories with easy heroic victories over villains who represent capitalism. That these stories inevitably become a pleasant consumable that serves our complacency within the belly of the beast, a kind of daily tonic to reassure us that good always triumphs and regular people always come out on top.

I also think that the sheer scale and scope of the topic creates its own challenges; you probably can't engage thoroughly enough with both the dystopian question and your ideas for a utopian answer all in a single story, without ultimately turning the latter into that false reassurance, a quick handwave of a happy ending.

You mention Omelas, and I think we could illustrate the problem by looking at how LeGuin handles her two successive masterpieces:

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, which gives us the titular resource-rich u(dys)topia built on invisible suffering, and the dissidents who turn their backs on that world and walk out into the inhospitable wilderness in search of something better.

The Dispossessed, which as its premise gives us Anarres, an imperfect but sympathetic anarchist society whose adherents turned their backs on a neighbouring world of capitalist plenty to live out in the inhospitable wilderness in search of something better.

Anarres can very reasonably be viewed as LeGuin's direct answer to the question posed by Omelas, and she would have likely had it in her mind already as she wrote Omelas. But if the short story had ended with 'I hear that against all odds, the ones who walk away have successfully founded an anarchist utopia where hardship is everywhere but it's shared as equitably as possible. THE END', the amount of lazy shorthand and empty comfort involved in that happier ending would inevitably make it a dishonest and unserious offering.

Instead, Anarres is a starting premise to be interrogated at length over the course of a separate story, rather than a happy ending to simply reassure the reader that better things are possible - and even at the end of the novel LeGuin's unresolved questions are still very similar to the ones that we're left with in Omelas (and the same questions that I feel like we were knocking about in The Silt Verses, and which I guess you could argue are all lingering concerns at the end of Mononoke, as well): how and where can we find space to create and sustain a genuine alternative when the narrative environment of capitalism is so powerfully all-subsuming and constantly growing to fill the space? Do we need to disconnect entirely, vanishing as if dead? If we disconnect, how can we possibly survive and what inhumanities or ethical compromises will be required of us? If we do survive, is our isolationism a dereliction of human responsibility to those left behind?

All of which is to say that I think present-day fiction absolutely can make the attempt to meaningfully explore potential alternative-utopian solutions in more depth and with far more tangibility than we attempted with TSV - but that dystopian fiction like ours which concludes with the unexplored promise of a revolutionary utopia and the vague reassurance that the irrepressible human spirit will figure things out from here on out (Chewbacca gets a medal, everyone's in the streets wearing a Guy Fawkes mask) doesn't do much more than dramatically undermine its own goal of disrupting the audience's comfort.

That said, one of my big regrets this season was that we didn't succeed in more engagingly exploring and articulating the Woundtree camp's development into a flawed but functioning society in Dispossessed fashion ahead of the ending. That was my intention, but what quickly became clear was that in a dramatic format, with a limited cast, it was just endless static meeting-room scenes with Paige and Elgin discussing difficult responses to impossible challenges, while everyone else was out having dynamic and exciting adventures with lots of fun and exciting gods. Dystopias remain too entertaining for utopias' own good.

What do you see as the role of fiction in addressing the horrible machinery of this world?

I believe that absurdist horror fiction specifically, founded on the principle of 'people in a world that makes no sense, deluding themselves that it definitely does make sense' can play a very powerful role in that stated purpose.

Many horror traditions carry the baggage of inbuilt or inadvertent conservatism - the concept of a peaceable, passive, safe, middle-class Normality which is then disrupted by a terrifying outside threat (alien, ultra-foreign, ultra-low-class, underworldly, wild, etc). But absurdist horror very directly identifies Normality as the true source of our terror and very directly confronts our human response to it. It creates the right environment for us to ask all of the good questions. Isn't this an unsustainable nightmare we're living in? Why are we expending so much energy pretending it isn't? How do we get out and what do we do if we can't?

Probably the only listener reaction that's genuinely frustrated me about both of our shows is the folks who come away turning their noses up at the bluntness of that approach and acting like they've Solved The Art simply for figuring out where our broad sympathies lie. "Hm, just listened to The Silt Verses and I understood it at once; it's clearly trying to say that capitalism is bad. A little heavy-handed in its messaging for my liking, hm-hm!"

Not to go full Garth Marenghi, but for me the directness of the provocation and the obvious outrageousness of the nightmare is the point; it then allows us to go to places that other genres (or more understated critiques) generally can't.

How do we punch through the bounds of it all being Content, another product to be bought and sold? What does it mean to sit here and fantasise about people making that revolutionary break when there is no revolution to be had?

God, I don't know.

Maybe it means nothing; maybe we can't punch through; maybe there is no story unruly enough to be truly unco-optable, and therefore even the most radical fiction ultimately serves as a distraction, a placebo, a reassurance (that we are not alone, that better things are possible) which will impact the wider world more by keeping us subscribed to the Kindle app than by any action we might feel inspired to take.

Amazon is paying Boots Riley to make TV shows. Disney won much praise for delivering a revolutionary fantasy in a Star Wars shell. Apple is funding excellent, discomfiting and furious corporate satires about how we happily ignore invisible worker abuses for the sake of our own lifestyles, but they also cannot be considered accountable for the deaths of Congolese child-labourers in the global cobalt supply chain. The Dispossessed is in development as a limited series and the LeGuin estate are closely involved.

The master doesn't just own the tools, he's been buying up the guillotines as well.

What if, as with the unknowable nothingness outside of Omelas, the only art that cannot be reduced to product in net service of the status quo is the art that's so invisible and inaccessible and disconnected as to not exist at all? Does being relatively small and ramshackle really lend us any ideological purity, any genuine detachment? You can listen to The Silt Verses on Apple and Spotify and Amazon Music. Brought to you by Acast.

Chapter 36 with Dev and Seb was to a large extent intended as an articulation of that worry. To what extent can we still trust in the integrity of a sincere love story (one that we want to believe in) it if takes place in an insincere and predatory environment? Can any meaningful story be told honestly within such a space?

This stuff really worries me. I think it's probably right to worry. I don't know the answer. I do know that there are some folks for whom the show has made a tangible difference in terms of their life's direction, and that's a huge comfort to me.

There was someone who said it helped them find their faith, strangely and wonderfully. Someone else who said it contributed to their decision not to go down a more lucrative career path within what they view as an exploitative industry. (I hope they don't regret that decision; I hope it makes them happy.)

So there's something there. Maybe.

#silt verses spoilers #tsv spoilers #spoilers #sorry this is long

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katsukikitten · 2 years ago

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Thinking about Katsuki showing up on your balcony late at night, knuckles knocking at the glass door beside your bed waking you up with a surge of adrenaline.

He's tired from his hero work and he hasn't had a chance to see you in weeks, not that he was obligated, the two of you using each other for weeks.

The real shock comes to you as you see pro hero Dynamight glaring at you from the cold, welcoming him into your apartment and realizing quickly that you've been fuck buddies with a pro and this is how you've found out.

He doesn't speak, he's tired, utterly exhausted and for some reason his tired body brought him here. Normally, when he'd show up at the front door of your apartment, he was on you in a second, making your knees weak with teeth gnashing kisses.

Tonight he looks dead on his feet.

"You okay?" Your voice is feather soft at 3am and when he doesn't answer you decide silence is best for now. Grabbing onto his large fingers only made larger by his gloves. Guiding him to your bathroom where you crank the shower and turn the light on low.

Here you can see the blood, dust, and grime that sticks to his hero uniform, one of the long sleeves ripped or burned away. Hopefully from his own quirk.

Gingerly you start with his gloves. Pulling at the Velcro at his wrists, shimming them off slowly as if he were a startled animal. He just looks down at you with this look in his eyes you can place, you just know it makes your stomach churn with far too many emotions.

Next you grab onto his heavy gauntlets, careful to set them down easily when you hear them slosh with sweat that he'd later deem too old and dangerous to keep but for now he lets your hands work. Manicured fingers undoing his grenade belt, placing them on top of his bracers, then the piece at his shoulders, before bending over to grab his steel knee pads.

Hooking your finger into he tongue of his steel toe combat boots, undoing the knot and loosing the strings while gently guiding his weight to one foot and then the other to remove them. Then again, pulling off his socks with ease placing them in your dirty hamper even if they'd make the whole thing smell like caramel and musk.

Pushing the hem of his shirt up, revealing the hard plans of his body. The one he earned through hard work and resolve. Discipline that he executed in every aspect of his life except with you.

He helps you by raising his arms until that too ends up in the basket in your linen closet. As if you'd do the laundry for his hero uniform.

Like he belonged here. Solidifying the fleeting thought when you pull his pants and boxers down, tossing them in before shutting the closet door.

When you go to leave he grabs onto the crook of your arm, still looking down at you from the corner of his eye with that sad, angry and almost numb look, like his eyes were dying embers.

"You'll stay." Only Bakugou has the ability to pose what is normally a question into a statement, a command and yet he doesn't sound demanding tonight.

So you stay, turning back around and when you realize he isn't getting under the burning hot stream of water, you begin to strip from your underwear and one of his old t shirts you managed to steal.

Grabbing onto his fingers, stepping into the shower and when the steam hits his back he audibly groans, similar to the sound he makes when he sinks into you.

After a few long moments you let your hand grab at the nape of his neck, pulling him to you as you later your heavily scented shampoo in your hands. He tries not to let his cock jump at the domesticity, at the idea that he'll smell like you for hours after.

Let's your nails rake at his scalp and lather his hair before you force him to rinse, repeating again when you decide he's dirty enough for a second wash through.

Lathering the conditioner with care and making him step just out of the stream as you grab your body wash. Another sigh leaves him as he watches you. He knows from your perspective all Bakugou can see you as is a sex object, a cock sleeve, but from the second he first slipped into your heat it was anything but.

It's why he kept coming back.

You drew the line in the sand after the second time, "fuck buddies don't catch feelings right?" "Right." He had confirmed gruffly, like he didn't already think he was falling for you. He knows it seems he always left right away but eventually, over the past few months, he left some things. That shirt you peel off your pretty skin not too long again for starters. He'd cook you meals for the week with the excuse that it was so you'd stay healthy enough to take his cock.

But really he was tired of seeing the evidence of take out or quick meals in your trash can and the bags under your eyes. Since he's been leaving the prepped containers for you, your health has seemed to improve.

It stings when you go over his shoulder, a small gash he didn't know he had and you care for it gently.

"It's deep." Concern in your tone as you talk to yourself, "It shouldn't need stitches...."

Your brows are furrowed up, biting your pouty bottom lip between your teeth as you think. But all he can think about is you, you, you.

And how you make him feel and how the last thing you said to him, although you truly do not remember, is I love you while his hand was around your throat.

The three words claw up his, raw and biting tired of being shoved down deep into his belly where butterflies die the second they're born.

"I love you." It slips past his tired tongue, his body weak from the sight of you combined with his 48 hour on call shift.

You look up at him, shocked, tears pricking your eyes in disbelief as you blink furiously, "What?"

A bit of his roughness returns to his stiff limbs, fingers grabbing at your jaw like he does when he doesn't approve of your response when you fuck.

"I said," He's growling, brushing his nose gently with yours, "I love you."

He doesn't give you room to reply or reject him, his lips finding yours, pressing hard enough your teeth gnash against his. Tongue claiming his stake on what's his making you sigh into his lips as the realization hits you.

Maybe, just maybe, he's always loved you.

#kitten writes 🖤🐈‍⬛🖋️#bakugou fluff #katsuki fluff

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goldsnek · 3 months ago

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Help me please. Do you have any tips on how to draw perspective? Like a hand in the foreground of the character, so that it blocks out a bit of the characters arm? I’ve been struggling so much

I'm not the best with this ahaha but I do have a very good tutorial about it.

youtube

A thing that helps you immensely, though, is the use of references, Abuse that, use as many references as you need, those are your best friends when it comes to hard poses.

#askboxx #tutorial

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entiqua · 4 months ago

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I love your artstyle!! Do you have any tips for drawing?

thank you so much! i'm really happy you like it!!💗 as for tips, what i would say would change drastically depending on what kind you're looking for, but some very general ones:

draw what you love and want to see most, regardless of whether anyone else wants to see it. if you don't enjoy what you're drawing it'll never come out as good or genuine as something your whole heart and soul is in. i mean you'd think this would be a no-brainer but sometimes i've had to sit back and ask myself 'if no one was ever going to see this except me, would i actually spend time drawing this?' and i was surprised by the answer

that said, it is also completely valid if your motivation for drawing is to draw for other people! there have been plenty of times where i was too artblocked to draw my own ideas but was still able to draw commissions or gifts and enjoyed it simply because making other people happy with my art makes me happy.

don't get too caught up in having a consistent art style. in my experience this 1000% hinders you

having your sense of anatomy degrade over time without you noticing because you keep drawing the same types of characters is a very real thing! if this is a concern to you be sure to draw a variety

follow a billion artists that you like the art of and you will have endless inspiration injected directly into your brain every time you open social media

my favourite practical tip for those who draw at a desk: keep a small mirror next to you at all times. absolute game changer for quickly referencing hands

if you're drawing digitally, make the canvas huge! in my experience this lets you draw messier/faster and you can't tell at all when you zoom out. if you tend to get stuck spending unnecessary amounts of time micromanaging pixels (me💀) keep it zoomed out while drawing

related to the above point, messy drawings can have far more expressiveness in them than neat and polished drawings. nowadays i never do lineart and go straight from 'barebones stickman pose' to 'varying-levels-of-coherent sketch' and use that as my lineart. sweet freedom from the sketch-looks-better-than-the-lineart phenomenon

if your goal is to improve, then you really do have to scrutinize your art, figure out what you're not satisfied with, and commit the time to focusing on it. 'practice makes perfect' kinda rubs me the wrong way because of how much i've seen it interpreted as 'just draw everyday and you'll magically improve' but genuinely it won't get you very far if you don't actively think hard about what you're trying to improve and take the steps to do it. is this a hot take idk. also hand in hand with this, not every artist is trying to improve and you shouldn't feel bad for this! maybe you just wanna make a little headshot doodle of your fave blorbo and that's your only drawing goal ever. awesome. maybe you know your art has flaws but it's passable enough to convey what you want and you're perfectly satisfied with that. (this is the stage i'm usually at). also awesome!

don't hesitate to draw something because you think it's out of your skill level. the worst that can happen if you draw it is that it comes out terribly but you learned something and can always redraw it better in the future. the worst that WILL happen if you don't draw it is that you'll never draw it. and then it will sit in the back of your brain haunting you for years. it's not like i'm speaking from experience or anything aha

look up 'hand stretches for artists' and do them if you draw a lot unless you wish to summon the wrath of the carpal tunnel demons

of course, these may not necessarily work for you, and most importantly(!) these are coming from the perspective of someone who is primarily a hobbyist. some of this won't be practical for people who need to build an audience, maintain a consistent style for work, etc. these are just things that have personally helped me over many years of drawing :)

#i haven't posted in like 6 years i've been in the trenches #but i could yap about art all day

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treasure-mimic · 3 months ago

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Psychopomp and What Things Mean When They Don't Mean Anything

So if you haven't noticed or you don't follow me, I recently became interested in a small, one-man dev team indie game by name of Psychopomp. As a brief synopsis and pitch, Psychopomp is a game about a woman who seemingly suffers from paranoid delusions, through the lens of this narrator she tells us that there's a labyrinth of catacombs hidden underneath every public building and sets out to explore them to uncover the world's secrets, armed with nothing but a store bought hammer.

youtube

The game's intro puts it in words better than I could and more influential than any pitch is just seeing the protagonist's design.

As one commentator states, she looks like a skateboard mascot from the mid-2000s. Like she should be on those posters with a snarky quip just fucked up enough to catch those pearl clutching puritans off guard. I love the style and I love the tone and I love the premise.

This might be the best time to note that if you're interested in playing this game, you should stop reading here, as this discussion will contain spoilers. It's a short game, took me about 3 hours on my first playthrough, and it's pretty cheap, even has a free demo in the form of the base version with Psychopomp Gold serving as the expanded, completed experience.

Anyways.

I've always found conspiracy theories fascinating but in the modern age it can be hard to immerse yourself in these reality-detached belief systems without acknowledging, you know, the racist dogwhistling and tangible physical harm it's causing to society at the present moment. Psychopomp is able to pretty gracefully sidestep this issue by setting its anarchic anti-government sentiments against its protagonist's paranoid delusions rather than adherence to a faith or belief system.

Indeed, the game seems to take systemic beliefs as its central enemy. The entities that are necessary to kill to progress through its levels are defined by the systems they interact in, historical figures of elevated status, keystone positions in industrial manufacturing, even abstract systems like urbanism and DNA composition are posed as societal and oppressive. I'm not saying that there's no way to interpret the game in bad faith and make it directed at marginalized social, political, or ethnic groups, but I also struggle to imagine the person who takes the game literally on its face value?

Which I guess leads me to the main topic I wanted to discuss. The game very obviously has an unreliable narrator (for the record, the protagonist remains nameless for the bulk of the game, I will be referring to her as Venus as it's the closest she has to a name that's explicitly stated within the text itself) with the flavor of one whose intake of reality may be different from what's actually occurring. The game uses a combination of conspiratorial rambling and dream logic to stage its unreal tone; for example, one level delves into the "biology" of buildings, stating that they use graffiti to communicate and that black mold is a pheromone used to evacuate its inhabitants to allow for mating. Loading screens come with "Gameplay Tips" and "Real World Tips", both of which are often dense and inscrutable; for example you might get a pair like "Not all enemies are friends" and "Viruses do not exist. Illness is simply your body punishing you for what you've done wrong."

Surrealism and unreality as stylistic choices can be a bit of a tightrope walk to get right. On the one hand, if you make it explicit that a story takes place in a state that did not happen even within the story's universe, a dream or a hallucination, it can rob the narrative of its stakes, regardless of how well executed the internal metaphors are. Psychopomp very explicitly does not do this, regardless of what it is that Venus is experiencing, the game makes it clear through scientific logs and communications (as well as a brief epilogue set outside of her perspective) that something abnormal is happening, the question is just where in between normality and Venus's experiences does the truth of the game's narrative actually lie.

The other side of the tight rope is literal interpretation, presenting a setting that's absurd to our sensibilities but tangibly explainable, where meaning is supplanted by lore and the cosmology begins to solidify into a set of Calvinball rules that don't make sense, but are still adhered to, and this is the side Psychopomp threatens to lose me on. There is a credible argument to be made that there is no difference, that what Venus is experiencing is her reality without warping and distortion, it's a more credible argument than saying she completely fabricated all of it, and it's an argument I was starting to wonder wasn't the intended interpretation. Until I got the game's second, secret ending.

Psychopomp has one collectible that doesn't serve a direct gameplay purpose, but each catacomb has a key hidden away, often behind false mimic walls that bleed and scream when you hit them with your hammer, and which unlock new rooms in the only permanent location "Home". Initially a gray, cubical, concrete room with a single mattress and a small table with a radio on it, collecting keys allows you to further explore outside(?)/within(?) the home with a unique camera perspective and limited interaction. In the first layer there's a blob man who cries out in torment, demanding to know why you specifically made the world like this, giving some credence to the deification of Venus implied by the game's ending. In the last layer, Venus traverses underneath and past her own brain to unlock a repressed memory.

I take this as confirmation that there's some level of abstraction at play here. Under scrutiny it feels as though there must be some level of abstraction at play here because when taken as a whole, the conspiracies start becoming outright contradictory, even if you try to take the cosmology at play as fact, which are the closest thing to objective facts that we have.

See, Venus's perspective takes place an alternate Earth, one that both seemingly was broken off from the planet and now orbits it like a new moon but also has always existed. One of the locations is a natural history museum which explains the history of sentience on this counter-earth, humans rose, went extinct, were supplanted by a species called the thrait, then humans returned in a mutated form and retook the surface and forced the thrait back underground (though the museum also refers to the thrait as extinct despite being the most common friendly NPC you will encounter). Another location seems to imply that the humans of this world, or maybe only some of them, are artificial clay creatures, reinforced by the arbiters of the DNA factory too being clay alleles. The Human Seedbed even has the game's most effective jumpscare in it, where Venus cannot leave the area without being confronted with a jittering clay facsimile of herself.

But with that in mind, what the hell is Venus then? By no account is she one of these artificial clay people but then how did she get here? The game's introduction implies that she used to be a normal person, or at least closer to, with lived experiences inclusive of complete ignorance to this underworld, the game's endings imply that she's an immortal god-being who has been intentionally working towards her own reawakening, and that is actually one of the least ambiguous plot points within the narrative. None of the pieces of this world lock together to form a cohesive vision of a setting that operates on even the barest of internal rules, and yet the game in the same step refuses to be a character study or subconscious examination, I mean the epilogue is a damn sequel hook that involves assembling the damn Avengers to combat the ramifications of the events of the game.

So, I come to realize, I'm the problem. I might, in fact, be thinking about this too hard.

One of the locations in the game is called "Daddy's Bad Place". It is a single, tiny room of a house or apartment, frozen in a moment of tearing itself apart, that only contains a dusty old TV set with a small, pointless ornament sitting on top. In any other surrealist game, this isolated circle of clarity, a compact orb of recognizable terrain, would be a moment to deliver one single jolt of reality into the metaphor of the protagonist's journey through their own subconscious.

In Psychopomp the TV turns on and delivers a distorted warning about a giant insect which is deadly, deceitful, and above all, not real.

In Daddy's Bad Place I come to realize something. The lore is fake, the characterization is fake, the dichotomy of truth and delusion is fake, the insect is not real. Let's think about what I'm doing here for a moment, right? I'm trying to discern the truth from within a work of fiction. None of its true, none of it happened, what difference does it actually make?

The thing about conspiracy theories is that they don't make logical sense. It's a known phenomenon that conspiracy theorists love to debate, but cannot be reasoned out of their beliefs by facts or logic. There is never a counter, but always a failsafe argument that can be retreated to for safety. What conspiracy theories do make is emotional sense, they make narrative sense. The line that initially sold me on Psychopomp was one of the aforementioned loading screen tips, "All the food you've ever eaten is rotten. You have never tasted fresh food."

Patently false statement, does not hold under scrutiny, but I, as someone who lives in America and lives in a city center and has to get all my food through corporations, can look at a statement like that and say yeah. Checks out. I believe you. We would know if children were being smelted into egg slicers underneath public schools, but it resonates with our emotions about the systems of education we enforce upon children, so it could be true. We would know if buildings were a living, reproducing organism, but it resonates with the feelings of being born into a world where urbanism exists, has existed as permanent fixtures of the world, and is continuously encroaching upon the face of the world, so it could be true.

Anyone who understands the fundamentals of incentives and human psychology does not need to believe that there is a coordinated group of ontologically evil individuals driving the world to ruin for ruin's sake, but that narrative still feels true, it becomes validating in the ways that it plays off of the emotions of believers until it becomes a foundational pillar of belief that cannot be destroyed by logical contradiction.

Psychopomp, in the same way, presents information about its internal systems that cannot be true logically but form self-justification anyways through emotional resonance. It doesn't matter if the lore works because its stated, it isn't wrong, so it must be a truth. This is the way that Psychopomp emulates the unreality of the conspiracy theory in a way that can avoid the disturbing implications of the real world practice. I've made comparison to surrealism by dream logic and surrealism by internal self-reflection, but this is a different mode entirely and the game simply refuses to operate by those tropes at its core. Conspiracy is itself contradiction, not the soft contradiction of two halves of a dream that don't lock together, but the hard contradiction of attempting to apply emotion and narrative to a waking world that rejects either premise. Psychopomp, then, is surrealism by way of conspiracy.

#Psychopomp #Psychopomp Gold #Psychopomp Game #Narrative Analysis #Long Post #Youtube

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averyfawkes · 5 months ago

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6 months passed by like wind. My rehabilitation has gone smoothly and I can't ask for more. The nurses who assist me every day are such sweethearts. They treat me nicely and gossip with me while they do their rounds. They're all funny and caring, and I couldn't ask for more. I'm slowly regaining my control over my body as years of being in coma sapped away my strength and vitality. Everyone praises me for doing my best to eat all my food, take my prescriptions, and give my best in any physical exercises they put me through. Even my mom and my sister, Agnes, were surprised at how I remained positive despite the hardships that I'm facing after waking up. I just give them all a smile and say that I'm just looking forward to the day when I'm fully recovered and resume my life again. I mean, who wouldn't be excited to live their life when they discovered that they literally have a hive mind constantly expanding within their consciousness?

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I hear my alarms start ringing, indicating that I should get up and start my day. These past few months have been a rollercoaster for me and my Dad. He finally confessed to my mom about his sexuality and she also confessed to her infidelity. Both of them acknowledged that having me in their 20's was the only reason they decided to be together. But now that I'm almost done with college, they both thought that it's best for them to be true to each other about how they really felt.

I didn't take that well at first, but after my dad talked to me one night in my bedroom, I felt like I just had a different perspective in life. Rather than dwelling about how I should feel about this whole thing, I'm old enough now to discover myself too and not end up like my Mom and Dad. They still love each other but more in a friendship-type love. I can't go back to the past and prevent them from having me and setting aside their own dreams, but I can focus on my own and let them fully express themselves.

Right on schedule, Dad comes into my room with his phone in hand. He checks on me and smiles as soon as he sees that I'm awake. He raises both his eyebrows before waving his phone at me. I just replied with a nod before lifting both my arms to pose for my morning update. I look straight into Dad's camera and flash a gentle smile, knowing that Avery will love my morning update.

"Fuck, Ethan. You look so hot right now. If Avery is here, I would definitely ask him for permission to suck your cock and gulp your cum. I'm so glad that you told me that you're gay too, just like your old man." Dad says as he types on his phone with his right hand while stroking his boner with his left.

"Oh come one, Dad. You know the rules. My body is only for Avery and no one else's. I haven't cummed for a month now. Avery wants me to save it until he's discharged, and I couldn't ask for more. Although, I'm having a hard time focusing now. The anticipation of finally being able to let Avery enjoy my body is killing me. It's all I can think about right now." I stand up from my bed and stretch my limbs as I talk to Dad. I can feel my dick getting harder just by talking about Avery. I can still remember the day that I met him.

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Damn! My dad is a faggot?! I can't believe this. Now it makes so much sense. Why he's been distant with mom lately, why he likes to pick me up after football practice when I was in highschool, why some of my friends in college told me back then that they swore that a gay friend of theirs saw my dad on Grindr. I thought they were just making all that shit up. I never thought that my gym-hound, alpha man of a dad is a fucking fairy.

After he and mom told the news to me over dinner, I didn't say anything and just walked up to my room. Mom cried while asking me to sit back down but I just ignored her and headed to my room. What do they expect from me? Celebrate how my mom is a slut and my dad is a fucking fairy? Fuck that! I was planning on moving out of this house as soon as I got my first job but fuck this. If I don't get out of here, I will lose my goddamn mind. I can just stay over at my friends' couch for a while, move in with Sophie, or just sleep on the streets. Anywhere is better than spending another minute in this clown house.

Suddenly, my door flung open even when I locked it. I see my dad standing on my doorway with keys in his hand. His eyes are red in tears but he's not making a sound. He gazes down on me as I pack my suitcase full of clothes. He looks back at me with a confused look before gazing down on my suitcase.

In an instant, I noticed something came over him as his body became rigid and tense. His body shudders as if he just peed himself before his eyes roll back into his head. He looks at me with only whites in his eyes and his jaw hanging open as if he was about to puke. I want to move but my body is frozen in utter terror. And then he lunged at me. He pins me down on the floor as his mouth closes into mine. I felt this thick, gooey fluid pouring out from dad's mouth into mine. My head throbs as if I was drunk, high, and horny all at once.

Your parents tried their best to raise you and give you a whole family. Are you going to forget that just because they both made some mistakes? They're both human and did everything they can despite having you while underaged. Cut them some slack and just be happy that they're starting to figure out themselves.

I open my eyes and see that it's morning already. Maybe I overreacted last night when I walked out of them. My mom seemed really hurt by what I did because I never did that to her. My mom and my dad have been great parents to me growing up. I should at least give them some chance to rediscover themselves after all the years of giving me the best childhood any kid could ask. I should set this right and make up for my outbursts last night.

I sit up on the edge of my bed as I check my phone. I should at least tell Sophie what happened last night. She might be worried since I always call her before I go to bed. She also mentioned yesterday that she'll be having her first day at work today. I should talk to her to calm her nerves since she tends to overthink a lot.

You don't need to call her. You don't even need to talk to her anymore. You love that girl because you were in college and you need to fit in, that's all. You just want to experience having a girlfriend in college. You don't want to end up like your parents and become stuck with someone like her. You're young and fit, you need to break up with her so you can see what the world offers.

I stare at my Sophie's number on my phone. Do I really want to talk to her right now? Do I really love her? Do I want to end up marrying her and have children with her? Of course! Absolutely! Sophie is the right amount of sexy, crazy, and responsible. Thanks to her, I was able to graduate without failing marks. In times that I need encouragement, Sophie knows what to say to help me get rid of my doubts and fears. I want to build a life with her, and now that she's starting her first job, I want to show how much I support her like she supported me.

You don't even know what to say to her. What if you say something that will make her overthink and mess up her first day. Women are fragile. Anything can affect her performance. It's better to wait until the day ends and then you can talk to her. You have a busy day. You need to get ready to go.

I find my body standing up and heading to the bathroom. I sit on my toilet and take a dump while scrolling through my phone. Maybe I'll just call Sophie after dinner. I don't want to mess with her head and make her lose her focus by saying the wrong stuff. But where am I going? I was planning to hit the gym today and then look for a job posting around the town while jogging back to my house. I don't consider this a busy day.

As I take a dump, I hear my door open. I immediately wipe my ass to see who's inside my room now. I like my privacy but still let my parents go in and out of my room as they please. After I wipe my ass clean, I go out of my bathroom and see my Dad sitting on my swivel chair, looking at something on my computer. As soon as he notices me, he minimizes the tab and swivels to face me.

"Ethan, how are you feeling? Can I talk to you? I just need a moment of your time." Dad asks me as he pats his left thigh, as if he's asking me to sit on it.

I'm so confused right now. I know that Dad just confessed about being gay but this is unacceptable. Barging into my room, using my computer without permission, asking me to sit on his lap?! That's it, now I'm really done.

You always sit on your Dad's lap when he needs to tell you something important. You're a good boy, you always listen to Dad. Every time you sit on his lap, you find yourself opening up to him easily. His words fill up your mind with what you need to do to continue being a good boy. You love sitting on his lap. You love being a good boy for your Dad.

Shit, this must be serious. Dad only asks me to sit on his lap if things are serious and he needs to tell me what I should do to remain as a good boy. I slowly walk up to my Dad and gently sit on his lap. I look straight into his eyes and find myself focusing on him. He reaches out to my computer and I notice the light of my webcam opening but it doesn't matter. I need to listen to Dad and to whatever he has to say. I want to be a good boy.

Dad looks back at me and smiles. I love seeing my Dad smile. I love how I can make my Dad happy. I feel his right hand going behind my back and touching my shoulder while his left hand grabs my cock through my shorts and gives it a firm but gentle squeeze. As soon as he opens his mouth, I find my mind becoming empty of thoughts.

"Ethan, the one who freed me wants to know you more. He thinks that you'll be the perfect boyfriend for him since you're around his age. He's a little shy and reclusive since he's been in a coma for 10 years. He decides that if he wants to have a pretty normal life, he'll need to have normal relationships aside from what he has with me and countless men who are now freed from their responsibilities. Now son, I want you to look at the camera and tell him all he needs to know about my wonderful son." Dad explains to me as I slowly turn my head to the camera and smile. I feel my cock getting harder as Dad pulls down my shorts and starts jerking me off.

"Hi! My full name is Ethan Carter Phillips. I'm 25 years old and my height is 6'2" while I weigh 200 lbs. I work out a lot and my body fat percentage is 10%. I have a degree in finance and just passed my CPA licensure. My dick is 9 inches long and 3 inches thick when fully hard. My balls are heavy and huge, and I can recover quickly from an orgasm. I love fucking my girlfriend, Sophie, in missionary while I play with her nipples until she cums. I want her to be the mother of my children someday. I want to secure a high-paying job so I can give her and our children a life of luxury that they deserve." I find myself sharing all this personal information about myself as if I'm answering a questionnaire listed in my head.

"Oh son, you don't need to put pressure on yourself just to have that kind of life. Not everything can be planned like that in real life. Look at your mom and I, I always knew in my heart that I was gay but I was too scared to come to terms with who I am. I gave it to the pressures and expectations of my family and friends. I dated your mom thinking that it will help me get rid of my homosexual thoughts. Now, we're in a loveless marriage, only waiting for you to get out of the nest so we can separate privately. I don't want that for you son. You need to get yourself out there and discover who you are before settling." Dad explains to me as I find myself hanging on every word while his hand jerks my cock faster.

"Now son, I want you to come with me. We're going to visit a very special friend of mine. He encouraged me to be honest with your mom and finally admits to myself who I am. I know that he'll help you discover who you are as well. After I let go of your cock, you will dress yourself professionally as if you'll be going in an interview. After 30 minutes, meet me downstairs so we can go and meet him." Dad explicitly orders each word carved into my mind.

As Dad lets go of my rock-hard and leaking cock, I stand up from his lap and head straight to the shower to clean myself. I hear Dad going out of my room and closing the door but I don't care. I need to look promising and professional in front of Dad's special friend. I want to make a good impression on him for some reason. My heart is beating like crazy while my mind is wracked with anxiety that I may not be enough for this friend. My cock throbs harder as I moan while I scrub myself. I need to be the best version of myself. I dry myself and head back to my room to pick out my suit.

As I go downstairs, I see my Dad taking pictures of himself in the mirror. He grins as he types on his phone and exhales after seems like sending it to someone. He turns his head and notices me looking at him. I never noticed it before but Dad has a very huge cock. I can see the outline of his cock through his pants as it throbs and pulsates.

"Ready to go, son? You look sharp right now." Dad says as he walks over the kitchen counter to get his keys.

"I really want to make an impression. I just hope he will like me." I reply as we walk out of the house.

Borrow your Dad's phone and send me a selfie. I want to see how good-looking you are right now.

"Dad, can I borrow your phone? I want to take a selfie." I casually ask Dad as he immediately hands me his phone.

I open Dad's phone and type in his password. For some reason, I know what it is but I don't care about that. I open the camera and find a good angle for a quick selfie. My jaw looks sharp with my hair brushed up and with my glasses on. I look so professional and handsome right now. I quickly go into Dad's email and attach my selfie before sending it to an email address that I'm not familiar with. I smile as I catch up to Dad and hand him back his phone.

The drive to the hospital is silent and unnerving. I'm trying my best to hide my boner to my dad but it seems that my legs just spread wider. I can see that Dad does the same. We both stare ahead, not uttering a single word, as our cocks throb inside our pants and leak out pre-cum. My mind is reeling with thoughts of surrendering myself to someone. To be in service to that person for the rest of my life. To become anything that he wishes. Nothing else matters. My focus is now directed into a singular objective for a single person. I can't put a finger on who this person is. All I know now is that I see this person's eyes, I will know it with all my heart.

Dad parks his car in the hospital's basement as he leads me to the elevator. Everything around me fades into a distant noise as I can only recognize my Dad's muscular back and the need to follow him. Dad walks into the hospital's hallway with a clear destination in mind. All I have to do is follow him until I can meet this person. Dad walks into a room and opens the door widely so I can go inside before him. There, I saw this thin, weak-looking man resting on his bed. He looks young and seems like he's been in this hospital for quite some time. I walk closer to his bed and roll it up until the man on the bed is almost sitting up. The man slowly opens his eyes and turns his head to me. That's when I knew.

His name is Avery and I am his. My mind and body belong to him and only him. From this day forth, I am his to use as he please. No thoughts other than his will ever run inside my mind ever again. My purpose is to serve and please him.

#slime possession #male puppet #male manipulation #male mind control #male takeover

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