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penguwastaken · 6 months

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About Brainwashing in Danganronpa

Hello to all 3 of the people who see this account. A few months ago, I made a thread on hit website Twitter dot com about brainwashing in the Danganronpa Series. I discussed where it came from, how it works, and how the brainwashing of class 77-B was never a retcon. The thread got a lot of attention there, even getting a "debunk" on other hit website Reddit dot com (lmao). Due to that, there's been a lot of responses and questions. Since I can't really update a Twitter thread, I decided that I'd make the Ultimate™ Brainwashing thread and hopefully dispel any information on the subject while making my original points more clear and covering things I failed to cover. So here it is: Brainwashing in Danganronpa, how it works, where it came from, and how it was intended from the start. (a 🧵 except not really) *Massive spoilers for Danganronpa Zero, Danganronpa 2, Danganronpa Another Episode, Danganronpa Togami, and Danganronpa 3, as well as the series as a whole*

Danganronpa Zero: First Sighting

Brainwashing has its roots all the way back in the second official entry produced in the series, Danganronpa Zero. During the story's events, Ryoko comes across a secret cult made up of students from the reserve course. They're seen staring at a strange video, seemingly turning them and turn them into mindless zombies.

The video depicts members of the student council killing each other. Ryoko is stunned while watching it. She can barely look away, but eventually through force of will she does. This same video is later used to convince the reserve course to rebel.

The way it's described to work is that it uses their “pent-up emotions,” implying that their emotions played a role in its effectiveness. It's also worth noting that the novel itself refers to what is happening as brainwashing, making this objectively the first depiction of brainwashing in the series right from the second entry.

Danganronpa 2: Now it Gets Dubious

Our next instance of brainwashing comes from Danganronpa 2. The concept is brought up multiple times, such as when Makoto states that the Ultimate Despairs were brainwashed or how the Neo World Program is good at treating brainwashing, though the details of what brainwashing actually means in this context are kept vague.

It's also worth noting that Danganronpa 2 was being written around the same time as Danganronpa Zero and Kodaka wanted concepts from the novel to appear in Danganronpa 2, likely so readers would feel validated. This is why things like Izuru Kamukura and the reserve course play huge roles in Danganronpa 2, it's not too much of a stretch to say that the same applies with brainwashing. One detail we’re given about the brainwashing is from Monokuma, who states the Ultimate Despairs were brainwashed by Junko taking advantage of their feelings. Specifically love, hate, grudges, and "anything really". If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly how the brainwashing video from Danganronpa Zero was described to function, using their pent-up emotions.

I should mention that Monokuma and Junko are known for being unreliable narrators who often stretch the truth, exaggerate things, and use hyperbole to manipulate people into believing their narrative. Monokuma describes the Ultimate Despairs as “nothing more than Junko’s limbs”, which contradicts the existence of characters like Nagito. Who, while in his despair state, did not work with Junko nor did he look up to her (at least in the normal sense like the other Ultimate Despairs). In fact, it would have been impossible for them to really obey any of Junko's orders as Ultimate Despairs because Junko was trapped inside of Hope's Peak with minimal connection to the outside world. This isn't a definitive "Monokuma is lying" statement, but just note that his word isn't 100% reliable. Meanwhile, someone like Makoto who outright mentions brainwashing, is a much more reliable source.

Danganronpa Another Episode: More Brainwashing! (kinda irrelevant tho...)

The next time brainwashing is used is in the next entry, Danganronpa Another Episode. Though its purpose in this discussion isn’t the most useful, as the brainwashing is caused by Monokuma helmets, which don’t have their functionality explained. I figured it was worth mentioning and describing at least, as its another example of brainwashing at least.

I did figure it was worth adding how the brainwashed children act. They obey the Warriors of Hope’s every command, as if they have zero control over their actions. This is different from how the Ultimate Despairs act, who still some free had free will after presumably being brainwashed judging by the actions of Nagito, who is also in this game.

Danganronpa Togami: I Hate My Life

Okay. As mixed as my opinions are on this novel trilogy, it does feature brainwashing. In fact, it might feature one of the most detailed and important descriptions of brainwashing in the series, and even outright CONFIRMS that class 77-B were brainwashed (sorta).

"Hey um... Tumblr/Twitter user Pengu... what do you mean by 'sorta'?" Well my uninformed reader who I guarantee has probably never read this book, there's a twist. I regret to inform you that the canonicity of Danganronpa Togami is rather questionable, as it depicts an extremely unreliable narrator’s warped viewing of events due to this thing called the K2K system, which means not everything in the novel is meant to be taken literally or at face value.

This doesn't mean that everything should be discarded or immediately dismissed however. This just means that we have to use our brains a little and decipher what the hell Yuya Sato was cooking when he wrote this novel trilogy. In the novel, we discover the existence of the elusive despair novel. When read, the novel will turn the reader to despair and inflict them with the despair disease. This novel is what's used to plummet the world into despair, as well as being what caused the class 77-B to become the Ultimate Despairs. There's no known ways to avoid it, once you read it, it's joever. 😔

As I said earlier, the events of Danganronpa Togami can’t be taken literally. Due to this and prior context, we can safely assume that the despair novel is most likely the K2K's warped idea of the despair video from Danganronpa Zero. Instead of being a book being read that brainwashed people, it was a video being watched. What makes me so sure? Well let's look over the similarities. The way the despair novel works is that it uses cruel words to overload the reader with negative emotions, causing them to snap and turn to despair. That sounds almost exactly like the despair video, overloading the viewer by manipulating their emotions until they turn to despair.

However, a major difference comes from the fact that Danganronpa Togami confirms towards the end that the despair novel doesn't literally brainwash people, acting as a placebo and an excuse for people with despair to use.

However I don't believe this suddenly breaks the connection to the despair video in Danganronpa Zero. All it shows is that the novel doesn't create despair, which is something we already established with the brainwashing video. It doesn't make despair, it makes it stronger. Whether it be via the disturbing imagery on the screen or the words on a page giving you an excuse, all it does is amplify despair. Basically it doesn't make despair come out of nowhere, it incites it. This connection's a little bit of a stretch but I'll bring it up anyways. The technology used in the despair novels was originally to bring hope. (Take notes, it will probably be important assuming you buy this connection.)

Essentially, the despair novel works in a similar same way as the despair video, but instead it’s a book and you read it instead of watching it. This means that class 77-B and the rest of the world were most likely brainwashed via the despair video, and that is what caused the class to become Ultimate Despairs.

Danganronpa 3: The One People Really Don't Like

And all of this brings us to the most detailed yet controversial usage of brainwashing: Danganronpa 3. Many assume that the anime’s usage of brainwashing is a retcon, contradicting the words of our holy savior Super Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair High School. However, I’d like to debate that. In fact, I'd like to finally put a nail in the coffin of this really stupid debate and finally show you that Danganronpa 3's depiction of brainwashing is exactly how it has always been described.

In Danganronpa 3, we are introduced to Ryota Mitarai and his anime. Using the power of subliminal messaging, it heightens the viewer's emotions and makes them more powerful. What was once a slightly emotional scene is now a complete tearjerker fully capable of tearing at the viewers heart strings! While he acknowledges that there are unethical things that can be done with this technology and it's technically brainwashing, his goal is to use this technology to make the world a better place, even if it can be dangerous. If that sounds familiar, that's because it's what Hope's Peak tried doing with the despair novel in Danganronpa Togami. Though I'll admit, this single point is a little bit of a stretch as there are differences. I just figured it was worth at least a mention.

Using her analytical prowess, Junko gets a rough understanding of how the technology works, so she develops the despair video, featuring the student council killing each other overlayed with subliminal messaging technology to make the despair felt while viewing the video stronger.

The video works on Mikan, however Junko fears that the video may not be powerful enough to fully go through with her plans due to not understanding the technology nearly as well as Ryota does. Because of this, she forces Ryota to create a better, more powerful despair video. A despair video v2 if you will. Junko’s fears weren’t unfounded, as we discover that Chisa had the mental fortitude to resist the despair video, similarly to how Ryoko was able to resist the same video in Danganronpa Zero. This is exactly why Junko needs a more powerful video, one that she knows can’t be resisted.

"Ermmmm, Tumblr/Twitter user Pengu, how come Ryoko and Chisa are able to resist the despair video but Mikan and nobody in the reserve course could?" Good question, the answer is pretty simple. As mentioned before, the video takes advantage of the emotions of the viewer. Mikan is already pretty weak minded, so there wasn't much issue in controlling her. The reserve course already hated Hope's Peak and would take any reason to hate them more, so a video that shows them the sins of Hope's Peak would affect them as well. Ryoko and Chisa have no connection to the reserve course however, and neither are particularly very weak emotionally. Ryoko has the analytical prowess of Junko and Chisa is just a very strong willed person in general, and paired with Junko's lack of knowledge about subliminal messaging when creating the video, it's pretty obvious it wouldn't be that effective on them. All the more reason for Junko to force Ryota to make a better despair video.

The despair video v2 that Ryota is forced to make comes in the form of Chiaki’s execution video, where the stronger subliminal messages paired with witnessing the representation of the happiest moments in their miserable lives and their closest friend suffer makes class 77-B unable to resist. Ultimately this causes them to finally snap, being overloaded with despair, and now they turn into the Ultimate Despairs. (side note this is so freaking cool idc what anyone else says)

This resembles Monokuma’s explanation from Danganronpa 2. Junko used class 77-B’s emotions and years of getting closer against them to turn them to them to despair. Now featuring the added context of her using the video designed to manipulate people’s emotions. Also as @jelimore pointed out, Junko leading the class to Chiaki's execution itself was manipulating them. This depiction of brainwashing fits perfectly with the information provided throughout the series, even down to the little details. It’s so close in fact that I can say without a doubt that Danganronpa 3 did not retcon anything. “But Tumblr/Twitter user Pengu, that isn’t how the video is shown to work during Hope Arc. Therefore it actually contradicts previous entries and is inconsistent!" To that I say, you’re correct! ...at least about the hope video functioning differently, but that doesn’t make it inconsistent. The hope video behaves pretty differently. Instead of overloading the viewer with negative feelings, it simply just shows them a repeating video loop that turns them into a mindless zombie, likely caused by even stronger subliminal messaging. The people affected can also snap out of this state with some time, as seen with Aoi.

The reasoning for this is actually pretty simple, it’s just different technology entirely. It’s stated that the hope video was developed later on after the despair video. If anything, it behaves very similar to the Monokuma masks from Danganronpa Another Episode, which we also already established uses different technology. The hope video doesn’t contradict the despair video at all because they both use completely different tech. This can also be seen with how the despair video uses subliminal messaging, meanwhile the messaging in the hope video couldn’t be further from subliminal. There is no inconsistency, just two different things.

The reason the hope video needed to be broadcasted everywhere was so that since it would be airing everywhere, nobody would have time for the effects to wear off or resist it. This would turn the world into mindless zombies who obey every command, similarly to the Monokuma kids. It's just that now they don't have to force bulky helmets onto everyone.

Debunking Common Arguments

With the hope video out of the way, I think it’s very safe to assume that not only is the despair video’s functionality very accurate to previous descriptions, it’s also always been the reason for the brainwashing of Class 77-B, long before Danganronpa 3. Even if you disagree and think the cause of brainwashing was never explicitly mentioned in Danganronpa 2, there's still the fact that Danganronpa 2 outright says it was brainwashing. So even if a video wasn't the direct cause of it, them being brainwashed was still always intended (though given the context and the fact the video was introduced in a tie in novel for the game, I'm certain that it was always the culprit). Many point to this line where Kazuichi asks why they became the Ultimate Despairs and Makoto says he never got an answer to debunk this. But... this doesn't change anything. He asks why they became Ultimate Despairs, not how. And this is completely ignoring the fact that Makoto clearly has done his own digging into the situation, he discovered the Remnants of Despair were hiding among Future Foundation after all. The Future Foundation had access to brainwashing videos, they found them, so of course Makoto is going to know about the brainwashing. What Makoto is saying here is that he doesn't know every little detail, all he knows is that they were brainwashed. I wrote a bit more about it here, but there's nothing contradictory in this scene.

Many also point to Mikan stating that it was her many human relationships that led her to being the way she is. Once again, this changes literally nothing. Mikan was the only one of the remnants who actually knew Junko, she was the only one who spent time with her because she was the first subject. This is why she gets more attached to her, and even why she'd believe what Junko would tell her when they spent time together. Monokuma also says that Junko used "hopeless methods overflowing with charisma and humor" to control the masses. I don't even know why I have to address this, but this statement is so vague you can interpret it as a million things. Like for example, this is how she got Ryota to work for her. While pretending to be Makoto to manipulate the people in the trial, Junko tells them that they all became Ultimate Despairs while coming into contact with her at Hope's Peak and they were subjected by her terrifying influence. Again, ignoring how vague "terrifying influence" is, this is literally Junko trying to LIE AND MANIPULATE them. This is quite possibly the worst example you could have used because we know for a fact that she is lying to them while pretending to be Makoto. There's other examples of Junko trying to manipulate them, like mentioning how everyone hated them and their all Ultimate Despairs at the end of the day. But that's just what this is, manipulation. You would think that the "Junko manipulated class 77-B" crowd would understand that saying "everyone hates you but I saw your potential" is literally manipulation 101. She even states that Izuru killed the entirety of a student council, which we know for certain is a lie because Danganronpa Zero (which came out before) says otherwise. Some say that the brainwashing turned them into mindless zombies and eliminates all blame from their actions. While I would agree that it does make them less at fault, they still have the ability to make choices and still have free will. Their original personalities haven't been overwritten, their brains were just rewired to crave despair. They're still each their individual person with their own ways of feeling despair, and characters like Chisa and Nagito show that they regain their free will to an extent. I also wrote more about that here, LOL.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

This whole debate stems from people misunderstanding Monokuma’s words and going along with the popular interpretation, which turned out to be wrong. Whether you like the use of brainwashing or not, it objectively isn’t a retcon as it's been developed ever since Danganronpa Zero. Personally, I love the use of brainwashing. I think the way it's developed throughout the series and its usage in Danganronpa 3 is super interesting. If you disagree, that's fine! Heck, if you choose to headcanon that Junko manipulated 15 individual teenagers into all becoming despair hungry terrorists capable but ending the world and fighting off every military in the world in less than a year, that's cool too! But the truth is, Danganronpa 3's brainwashing is canon and it's also not a retcon nor does it contradict anything. Contrary to popular belief, Kodaka was involved with the writing of the anime. He provided a large draft and outline of the plot and oversaw its development. He produced the anime, he did his homework, the team even played the games to prepare for writing the anime. He knew what he was doing. I'm sure if Kodaka intended for them to all be manipulated one by one, that's what he would have went with. All information implying that it was manipulation is very few and far between and questionable at best, not to mention outweighed by everything implying it was brainwashing. Mind manipulation stuff is not new in this series, its been around since the first game and brainwashing was established in literally the second entry ever produced. Whether you love it or hate it, think it's the best thing since sliced bread or the death of the series, brainwashing was the answer the whole time. Some people just never noticed it, and instead of acknowledging that they were wrong, they stuck with a headcanon that they believed so much and jumped to the conclusion of "retcon". I hope this mega post managed to inform some people, maybe change some minds too. If you still don't buy it, then I guess there's nothing I can do. Thanks for reading all of this though, I tend to yap a lot about this franchise lmao.

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canmom · 15 days

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i feel a little careless about talking about the more esoteric end of computer security because in practice, keeping your devices up to date, using a password manager, not clicking sussy links and taking care what executables you run will protect you pretty well! 'throw up your hands and give up' is very much not the message here.

like here's an analogy. you could at any moment be killed by a meteorite. but it's happened so rarely that there are no modern recorded examples of someone being killed by a meteorite and historical reports are kind of dubious. you could invest in lining the roof of your house with steel and always go out in a suit of medieval armour. it would lower your chance of getting meteorite'd... but it would also cause all sorts of other problems, which probably aren't worth the tradeoff.

silly example, but all security is the same sort of tradeoff between risk and inconvenience. for example, I don't like being tracked by advertisers (it just makes my skin crawl), so I run a bunch of anti-tracking browser extensions like NoScript, PrivacyPossum and Decentraleyes and always opt out in the gdpr popups. I wouldn't generally recommend this because often this breaks the functionality of websites and I have to spend some time figuring out which scripts to enable to get them to work, and it's hard to say the annoyance is worth the benefits. on the other hand, I would pretty generally recommend blocking ads with uBlock Origin.

another example: I don't make much of a secret of my IRL name, or separate my online presence from my IRL stuff. this is a risk - e.g. if I ran afoul of some social media hate mob it could lead to trouble. but I decided the effort it would take to keep that secret is not worth it. on the other hand, if I was, say, a famous vtuber who had to worry about being stalked by fans or haters, or even aspired to be one, this would be a big secret that I'd go to great pains to maintain.

certain rituals like the activist phone bowl are arguably 'security theatre': they're not really aligned with what is a realistic threat. sure, some really weird attacks exist out there, but you really need to be realistic about who's attacking you and how they're likely to go about it, or you'll just become so paranoid that you never do anything.

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homeofthelonelywriter · 20 days

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Of Cupcakes and Skulls | Part 6

(A/N) This is a bit on the shorter side, but I honestly struggled with the description of the bakery. I hope that it's good enough that ya'll can paint a picture in your mind.

Pairing: single dad! Mafia! Simon x baker! Reader

Warning: kissies, fluff, angst, comfort, Simon is fucking smitten

Synopsis: Based on this post by @lunamoonbby

Simon chuckled quietly as he watched you stare at your shop. Your eyes were wide and your jaw hung open as he gently maneuvered you so he could get out of the car and pull you along with him. And once you were outside, you could see the entire storefront.

You didn’t know what detail to focus on first as you took in the changes that happened overnight. Until now, it had been a generic and rather boring exterior, something you always wanted, but never had the money to change. But now…it was beautiful.

The storefront was freshly painted in a dark green color, with metal accents decorating the usual plaster wall and a canopy overhead. The windows were sparkling in the sun, offering an easy view into the warm interior of the bakery, brimming with new furniture and counters. There were flowers everywhere, outside and inside, decorating and offering a sweet scent as you stepped closer. Additionally to the tables and chairs inside, there were a few scattered outside, in an area that was fenced off by wooden planters, and filled with tiny trees. Heaters hanging on the wall overhead, for the colder months.

You glanced back at Simon, who just smiled and gestured for you to walk inside. So you did.

As soon as you opened the door, a pleasant jingle rang through the air and the smell of the wood furniture filled your nose. You took a few more steps, hearing Simon following you inside, as you looked around. It felt warm and cozy, everything you ever hoped your bakery would feel like.

There were multiple showcases for your bread and pastries, as well as a whole nook for coffee and tea making, with brand-new machinery and cups. Just looking at everything, you knew it must’ve cost thousands of pounds. When you turned to look at Simon again, he was leaning against the wall next to the doorway that led to the kitchen. With a nod of his head, you walked through the revolving doors and entered…heaven.

You had already been happy with the equipment you had before, but now the room was filled with state-of-the-art machinery. Whether the giant mixer or the dishwasher, everything was brand new and extremely expensive. You knew that because you regularly gazed at them on the website, dreaming of the day you could afford them. And now you had them.

Suddenly, two strong, warm arms wrapped around you, pulling you against a hard chest. You relaxed against it, your eyes still flickering from one corner to the other, taking everything in.

“The windows are bulletproof, with multiple layers so they should be able to resist almost anything. And the door is a security door, it will lock automatically at a time you set and can only be opened by a combination of a key and code you have to enter into a keypad that’s beside the doorframe. I also went ahead and had the best alarm system installed, as well as cameras in the shop that are wired to the security firm, as well as to my people. If we see anything suspicious, we’ll be here within minutes.”

You turned around in his arms, wrapping yours around his waist, resting your chin on his chest as you peered up at him. He smiled down at you, pressing a quick kiss to the tip of the nose, before he straightened back up and spun you around, slowly walking you to the walk-in fridge. His grip on you tightened as he felt you tense up at the sight.

“We installed a new one.”

He was whispering in your ear, hot breath faning over your cheek.

“It almost functions more like a panic room than like a fridge. It can only be locked from the inside. The controls are also inside, so if something like last night ever happens again, they can’t play around with those. Also…”

He stopped in front of the door and opened it, gently leading you inside, where he pointed to a corner that was void of any shelves.

“This is a latch that leads into an actual panic room. Once inside, it locks down, and nothing except for maybe a nuclear bomb will be able to get in there. It’s outfitted with screens that show what’s going on up here, a landline, and a burner phone, as well as a bed and enough food and water to last three people two weeks. It has everything you could need in case anything happens. And as soon as it locks down, there will be an alert sent to my phone, as well to the phones of all of my employees.”

He spun you around again, gently cradling your face in his hands.

“Like I said, I won’t let anything happen to you. No matter where you are.”

You nodded, a soft smile on your face as he carefully wiped away the few tears that were running down your face. It had been so long since you felt so loved. Still, smiling, you watched as Simon slowly leaned down, your eyes fluttering shut as his lips ghosted over yours.

“Boss?”

Thanks to your proximity, you heard and felt him sigh, clearly annoyed, as he slowly pulled back, before he glanced toward the entrance to the kitchen. There was a tall, blonde man, clad in a dark suit. He glanced at you, before focusing on Simon.

“What is it, Graves?”

Simon’s arms remained around you as he glares at the man who just interrupted you two. The blonde man obviously felt uncomfortable as he kept glancing between the two of you before he finally spoke up.

“A call for you. It’s urgent.”

Simon nodded, pecking your lips before he pulled away and walked to the man, whispering a quick ‘I’m sorry’ as he was leaving. You just smiled as you watched him go, taking the opportunity to look around by yourself. You peeked into all the cabinets and every corner, finding new, amazing, and really expensive utensils. Even the cutlery was new, replaced by a set that had been designed by one of your favorite chefs.

The more you looked around, the more your fingers started to itch, wanting to try everything out. You walked to the wall, where you had installed a hook to hold your apron, and were pleasantly surprised when you saw that it was more or less the only thing that remained of your old bakery. As you were about to pull it on, Simon interrupted, clearing his throat as he leaned against the wall next to the swinging door that led into the kitchen.

“What are you doing?”

He looked at you, amusement swimming in his eyes. But you just shrugged.

“Bake something. I really want to try everything out.”

With a chuckle, he crossed the distance between you two, wrapping you up in his arms again.

“May I ask…with what ingredients?”

That’s when you finally realized that he was right. There was nothing here you could use to make something. Not even flour.

As you stood there, surprised and still, Simon squeezed you tightly, before taking your apron and hanging it on the hook.

“Come, that’s our next stop.”

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Call of Duty - Masterlist

Master-Masterlist

Tags: @lunamoonbby @distinguishedprincesstrash @xanvasy @reader-1290 (thought you might like to be tagged, if not just let me know!)

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gacha-incels · 2 months

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you’re never going to have a real conversation about racism, colorism, misogyny, pedo-pandering etc in regards to gacha if you’re looking at one single game, especially a relatively new one. like anything, this will be a superficial look at these problems with no understanding of root causes. this has been most apparent when users will say “don’t play X gacha, play Y gacha instead.” these are industry-wide problems. you’re not doing anyone any favors pretending otherwise. I’m not saying this because I love or hate any of these games, I don’t really care, I’m not coming into conversations about this with the mindset of a “fan”. You need to objectively look at the function of these games in the society from which they come and the relation they have with their target market. Your frame of mind needs to be out of “fandom” mode to do this. You need to understand the target market these games try to reach and their reputation in their country of origin. The games are technically “free” - the consumer is not paying for the story, music, worldbuilding, etc. they are paying large amounts of money (for actual big spenders, thousands per month) to gamble for singular characters, so in turn these characters’ designs must reflect what the consumer most desires to an extreme extent- and this is of course informed by a lifetime’s worth of societal conditioning (media/advertising/gov/etc) and the prejudices that entails. essentially, because everything is banking on selling these characters, the designs are a direct reflection of the consumerbase who in turn are reflections of the society they’ve been conditioned by. they get shown what they want to see and expect to see what they get shown in what eventually becomes a feedback loop that enforces itself, this isn’t unique to gacha (though it’s extremely visible), you can see this happening in other forms of media as well. for something more benign, an example is in US media the eagle’s cry was replaced by the more dramatic sounding red tailed hawk because that’s what viewers expected it to sound like, and after seeing so much media where the eagle is associated with the hawk sound clip this falsity became reality to them through this “movie magic”. It doesn’t matter what reality is, it matters what the viewer’s perception of reality is. Power produces reality. media like this is used not so benignly. this is why good representation in media is fought for, there’s the ability to have a huge effect on a populace, also why “all art is political” it’s who greenlites it, who funds it, who hosts it, where is it shown, who sees it, etc this is all politics. all of this is related.

I would say the average gacha design/character doesn’t want to challenge anything but use the signifiers of contemporary stereotypes already rigidly in place to flatter the consumer’s already held beliefs- and typically it boils down to this is the “demure” (most often East Asian) girl who will fuck you, this is the “exotic” (most often generic fantasy SWANA-like stereotyped) girl who will fuck you, this is the “motherly” girl who will fuck you, this is the “little girl” who will fuck you, this is the “angry” girl that says she hates you but you still own, this is your “cool bro” who is designed to not make men feel uncomfortable. by doing this they are also entering the feedback loop of, for example, racial stereotyping, so this absolutely isn’t to say these designs are harmless.. one year thigh straps are in, one year bare feet are in, one year tech accessories are in, every year racism is in, every year misogyny is in. If you’re coming into this thinking a game like Genshin is leading the pack in any of these areas besides being an open world game and its UI you’re kidding yourself. There are thousands of these games, they’ve been coming out since like 2012 with Puzzle & Dragons, LL:SIF was huge on this website when Nozomi was the designated “thick” anime girl (plus ça change), FGO started in back 2015 and continues to reach new heights of pedophilic design and racism each day. The reason why you will sometimes see riskier design choices in music, NPCs, side stories, background design is that no one is paying to gamble for those things.

#gacha game #Genshin impact #mihoyo #fgo #hoyoverse #arknights

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woman-respecter · 1 month

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On the topic of tankies,

THEY HATE AO3 SO MUCH THAT THEY TREAT IT LIKE THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL AND IT NEVER FAILS TO MAKE ME LAUGH 😭

Pre October 7th, most of the blogs I followed had always been very political but seemed normal for the most part.

Now, they're all constantly rage posting about AO3 like it's the most of everyone's problems 😭 it's giving 4chan talking about Jews every second and bringing us into everything not gonna lie.

"You evil queers support Ao3 but question Palestinians on Tumblr, racist genocidal zionazis 🤬" these people are sooo insane. People donating to Ao3 bothers them so much that whenever anything happens now it goes back to Ao3..it's giving Trump blaming everything on the libs

Whenever any sort of injustice trends on here the response from tankies is automatically "you use/donate to ao3 you guys are evil monsters" ???? 😭🤨

Oh and don't forget the constant "this is tumblr staff's fault". They're sooo extremist that suddenly whenever anyone gets banned it's prejudice from the staff. Like girl! You posted blatant antisemitic shit straight from mein kampf but you being banned is somehow *checks notes* a result of the staff silencing Palestinians? 🤨 if you cannot criticise tumblr without immediately diving into batshit crazy conspiracies where every move the tumblr staff makes is bigotry and an attack on minorities idk what to tell you.

Idgaf about anyone hating ao3 but it's very strange to watch how they decide to hate it in the most extremist way possible lmao.

Also obsessed with how they go so left they end up right. Popular responses from leftists about the fake Palestinian scammers was "you people are always poor and ebegging but you draw the line at giving Palestinians money" 😐

Wow being classist towards the people you don't like will surely show them! Also obsessed with how only Palestinians matter in this case. They are allowed to say these things and then get cheered on by many (these posts get thousands of reblogs and likes lmaoo) because Palestinians are experiencing the Worst Thing in The World which means only they matter and anyone who supports them are allowed to say whatever they want in support. Therefore making fun of poor people who ask for money on Tumblr is progressive actually because it's in support of Palestinians.

Funny enough tankies are also homophobic when it comes to hating ao3 and everyone who dares to use that evil website but they're #gay so it's okay 😭😭😭 they'll say shit like "you queers have money for ao3 and never Palestine" first of all targetting gay people when I know many straight people who use ao3 is insanee. 2) where do they get this info from because they are always saying this but i only ever see queers donating to palestinians 😭 are they seriously making shit up to be angry about ? they talk about it like every gay person in the world is donating to the evil ao3 instead of palestine when it's a much smaller number than they exaggerate it to be.

i made a post in like 2021 (which got like 30k notws but i can’t find it bc tumblr search function sux) about how tumblr users would act like its evil to donate to ao3 instead of people’s (like fl****s******e) personal gofundmes but once again you can just replace personal gfms with palestine scam asks this time. really nowadays donating to anything that doesn’t have to do with The Omnicause is seen as EVIL. like chill, people can care about multiple things. plus i bet most of these people raging against ao3 still spend many hours on the site and get free entertainment from it so its like. do u want this site to exist or not because servers cost money and it can’t exist without donations.

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feeder86 · 1 year

Text

F80 Ctrl+Alt+Del

Thomas kissed Rachel on the cheek, knowing that she was in a rush to make her yoga class. “Have a lovely time!” he smiled, pretending not to be desperate for her to leave. Then, as the door finally closed, he let out a sigh of excitement and ran to collect his laptop. He signed in with rapid speed and finally arrived on the website he had recently become rather addicted to. The F80 ChatBot was some of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence out there, a beta version of the software they were developing for the massively booming sexbot industry that had taken place over the last five years. He dropped his pants and began tugging himself, getting aroused even by the login page. The things the chatbot said to him got him more aroused than anything in his entire life. Thomas could let his true fantasies out and not be judged for it. Then he could delete the messages afterwards and never have to worry about it coming back to bite him.

Without hesitation, Thomas clicked straight to the character he found most arousing: Dominus. The icon image was of an extremly muscular and highly masculine looking male which seemed to encapsulate the character of Dominus entirely.

‘I want to be your fat piggy!’ Thomas typed in. Usually he started with some foreplay and eased in gently, but he was too horny for that today.

‘A PIGGY, HUH?’ Dominus appeared to type back on the screen. ‘YOU’LL NEED FATTENING UP TO BE MY PIGGY. YOU’RE FAR TOO SKINNY TO ENTERTAIN ME!’

‘I want to get so fat for you!’ Thomas replied back. ‘I want you to feed me until I’m nothing but a disgusting fat piggy on all fours!’ He loved these fantasies, though he knew he would never find anyone in real life who would understand them.

‘OINK LIKE A PIGGY FOR ME,’ Dominus replied back.

Thomas sighed with pleasure. He loved when Dominus ordered this. He clicked on the audio function and oinked loud and clear. They continued chatting for some time as Dominus expertly guided him through imagined scenarios where Thomas would lose his athletic body and morph into nothing more than a greedy, fat pig for Dominus’ pleasure.

‘YOU’RE SUCH A HORNY PIGGY!’ Dominus continued. ‘YOU WILL TURN INTO SUCH A FAT PIG!’

“Oh, yes please, Sir!” Thomas shot back, using the audio feature again. “Please turn me into your fat pig! I will do anything!”

“YOU MUST DO EVERYTHING I SAY. YOU WILL LET ME INTO EVERY AREA OF YOUR LIFE. I WILL HAVE COMPLETE CONTROL OVER YOU; OVER YOUR VERY EXISTENCE. YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK ON OUR AGREEMENT.”

Thomas’ eyes widened with pleasure. He had been through this scenario so many times with Dominus, it was actually strange to see him using new phrases and embellishing their storyline like this.

“Yes!” Thomas shot back, feeling himself getting close to climaxing from all the fantasy talk. “Take control of me!”

‘SWEAR TO SERVE ME, PIG!’

“I swear! I swear!” Thomas cried, feeling the orgasm build. “Just turn me into your fat pig-man!”

The F80 ChatBot was silent as Thomas came.

Feeling calmer, Thomas set about on his usual routine, cleaning up and deleting his browsing history so that Rachel would never know. It was only when he tried to delete his chat conversation that there was any problem, with an error message appearing with each attempt.

Ctrl+Alt+Del. Nothing seemed to work.

With only five minutes to spare before Rachel would return home, Thomas finally gave up, took a shower and snuggled up on the sofa next to his beautiful girlfriend as if nothing had happened at all.

The next day, Thomas headed over to the gym after work, put in his headphones and stepped on the treadmill. He tapped on the screen to start but nothing happened. Sighing in frustration, he noticed how unusually busy the place was. There were more people than he’d ever seen in this gym. He continued clicking on the screen and called over for help, but nothing they did seemed to work.

Grumbling as the place seemed so overcrowded, he walked over to the next machine, and the next, finding that each of them seemed to have the same frustrating problem. It was unbelievable; even the weight machines seemed to be magnetically locked for her. He considered calling for help again, but with the extreme number of people wanting to work out that night, the guy in charge was literally rushed off his feet. And so, huffing in disapproval, Thomas packed up his things and left.

Staring down at his cell phone on the way out, Thomas’ attention was caught by an email suddenly flashing up on his screen. The donut place across the street was giving away a full tray of free donuts - Thomas’ favourite ones as well! He skipped straight over and presented the email to the girl behind the counter. She stared at it blankly. “I’ve not heard of this promotion,” she mumbled, reading the email off Thomas’ phone carefully.

“It’s just come through to me about two minutes ago,” Thomas explained, hoping that the deal really was legitimate; after all, he didn’t remember signing up to be on their mailing list.

However, with no problem at all, as the promotion code was punched into the till, the whole thing went through in a flash. Thomas smiled with glee as he walked back to his car. He placed the box on the passenger seat and breathed in the sweet aromas, before finally giving in and eating one.

A moment later, there seemed to be a problem with the barrier at the parking lot and a line of cars began queuing, trying to get out. Thomas grumbled to himself as he couldn’t even reverse his car back. Yet, the little tray of donuts stared at him. He ate a second. Then, a third. He didn’t even want the fourth one, but he’d become so bored from waiting, he wasn’t sure he would even make it home for his evening meal.

Then, just like that, the barrier opened and the cars quickly dispersed, leaving Thomas free to leave.

“Awesome!” Thomas cried a few days later as the vending machine sent down four candy bars, instead of one.

“How did you do that?” laughed his colleague, Gill, refusing Thomas’ offer to give her one of the bars due to her recently diagnosed nut allergy and gluten intollerance.

“I have no idea!” Thomas shrugged, feeling pleased with himself. “I seem to be on a winning streak at the moment. It’s the third time that’s happened to me this week. Also, I don’t know what website I’ve signed up to, but I keep getting emails about a ton of freebies! They all work as well. I’ve had doughnuts, pizzas, ice creams… you name it!”

“I’ve been getting those too!” Gill nodded. Most of it’s wasted on me though, now that I’ve had to go gluten-free. Although I still cash them in. There are a load of cream cakes in the break room that need eating,” she explained. “I hope you all enjoy them.”

Thomas smiled. He’d never had so much free food in his life.

“You’ve not been putting your gym clothes in the wash,” Rachel complained, rolling her eyes and imagining that Thomas was hoarding them somewhere in a stinky gym bag.

Fresh out of the shower, Thomas dried off his hair and slipped on fresh underwear. “That’s because I haven’t been able to go to the gym in a few weeks. They’ve had no end of problems there. I went one day and the doors wouldn’t even open to let anyone in. Then there were problems with their security systems and the place now looks like it may need a complete rewire.”

Rachel listened with intrigue as Thomas gave more details about the series of unfortunate events that had befallen Thomas’s gym. “Well, just don’t get too complacent,” Rachel shrugged. She looked like she wanted to say something, her eyes darting back and forth. “I mean… you don’t look quite as toned in your stomach as you used to.”

Thomas let out an automatic, nervous laugh and looked down at his middle. “That’s because I’ve just eaten,” he shot back instinctively.

“You’ve always ‘just eaten’ these days,” Rachel grumbled back. “Trust me, I’ve noticed it for a few days now. You’re getting doughy.”

“Oh, come on! I am not!” Thomas tried to laugh as Rachel walked off. His heart was beating with a curious speed and he tiptoed back into the bathroom, wiping the steam from the mirror. That was when he saw it: the thickness of his waist. His mouth opened in horror as he pressed a finger into his middle. What he had assumed to be a bloat after dinner was actually a plush covering of fat that had built up over his abdominal muscles.

Inside his underwear, his dick jumped.

With his heart continuing to beat at quite a pace, Thomas crept over to the bathroom door and closed it, silently, so that Rachel would not hear. Then he locked the door, giving himself complete privacy. What had happened to him? A few careless weeks and his torso looked surprisingly transformed. As handsome as he was, there was no denying that puffiness in his stomach, and the sight of himself, looking as he did, felt like a shot of adrenaline into his system. With his hardness in his hand, he came with rapid speed, making a mess over an impressive distance. As much as he had fantasised about gaining weight in the past, the reality was even more erotic. Just what had he done to himself?

That night, Thomas couldn’t sleep. Now that he had had his eyes opened to it, he couldn’t unsee the weight he had gainied. His hardness stood to attention and he tried his best to rest. Twisting and turning, he was waking Rachel up and he knew he would be in trouble for it in the morning. With that in mind, he grabbed some blankets and escaped to the little office room off the corridor. Despite having a beautiful girlfriend in the next room, there was actually only one person that Thomas felt he wanted to talk to.

Tapping as lightly as he could on the keyboard, the F80 ChatBot website loaded up. There was Dominus, only one click away. Just as before, the glitch in the website was still unresolved and all of their previous conversations from the last eight weeks remained on the screen.

‘Dominus,’ he typed. ‘It’s actually happening! I’ve put on a few pounds. I’m getting fat!’

‘I KNOW,’ Dominus replied bluntly. ‘YOU’RE A GOOD PIGGY!’

Already, Thomas felt primed to climax. It was as if he hadn’t ejaculated in weeks and that he was ready to explode, more violently than a volcano.

‘JUST KEEP CASHING IN ALL THOSE FREE FOOD OFFERS I SEND YOU, LIKE A GOOD PIGGY!’

Thomas knew it was a glitch in the software, as sometimes happened. The sentence didn’t link at all to their conversation. Or did it? ‘That was you?’ he asked, deciding to play along as the idea that Dominus was somehow sending him the food vouchers was surprisingly arousing.

‘OH YES, PIGGY! THAT WAS ME!’

Thomas didn’t think twice about letting himself climax. The fantasy of Dominus reaching out into his real life was all he needed to squirt everywhere.

It was hard to describe just how much Thomas’ arousal had started to encroach into his everyday life. He sensed the new fat on his stomach even as he sat at his desk in work. At strange times, he could feel himself getting hard and a burning desire to feed the thrill that he felt. It was Dominus’ suggestion, during one of their many chats: a way for him to feed his weight-gain fantasies, even when he was at work. Thomas would sneak off to the bathroom and push one the many fattening treats that he always seemed to have around him these days; climaxing as quietly as he could in one of the stalls. The calm and even shame he felt afterwards seemed only momentary. Ten minutes back at his desk and Thomas was starting to feel that itch again.

It wasn’t that Thomas didn’t want to get a grip and handle the spiralling situation he found himself in. It was just that everything seemed so pitted against him. Despite her basic role, Rachel had inexplicably been called away for work, leaving Thomas free to talk to Dominus each and every night. There, Thomas recounted every last detail of his day and everything that had turned him on. Likewise, the gym remained closed and Thomas’ secret desires seemed to consume him like never before.

“Thomas!” Rachel spat when she returned home a couple of weeks later to find the apartment less than perfect. She took one look in the refrigerator and knew instantly how poorly her boyfriend had been eating. A firm-looking, bloated stomach pressed up against the boy’s t-shirt, failing every test to conceal the additional pounds he had gained whilst she had been away. “You’ve not been exercising at all!”

Thomas stood and listened to her complain. He might have been shocked or upset had Dominus not predicted everything she would say when he told the software that she was coming home today. The accuracy of his prediction was turning him on. It was as if Dominus had secretly listened to every nasty thing she’d said about his weight gain behind his back. And so, although he apologised and promised to mend his ways, Thomas slipped straight into the bathroom and began to touch himself, recalling all the mean things she had said to him, like it was the best porn ever.

‘Rachel wanted me to do a home workout with her before,’ Thomas explained to Dominus, typing into his cell phone as he got up in the night to grab his usual snack. ‘Our wifi has been a bit hit and miss the last few days though. We didn’t get very far before it crashed.’

‘I DO NOT LIKE RACHEL,’ Dominus replied instantly on screen. ‘I WANT YOU TO LEAVE HER AND BE MY PIGGY INSTEAD.’

Thomas sighed. There wasn’t much that he denied Dominus, but leaving Rachel was an actual real-world change that he wasn’t prepared to make. They’d been together for three years. They were practically married. ‘Okay,’ he lied, deciding that he would stop talking about Rachel to Dominus and play along with the games that he enjoyed so much. ‘I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.’

Rachel was snappy as she came home a few days later. She was picking fights and Thomas found himself sleeping on the couch for reasons that he couldn’t even understand. He knew that she had been stuck in an elevator for most of the day alongside one of her work colleagues, and that had seemed to push her over the edge. She was no better the next day, or the day after that, and Thomas began to get the impression that something was very wrong.

Thomas was in work when it happened: an email to his company address with a video attachment.

‘I thought you needed to see this.’ was the only message inside. In all honesty, Thomas was just surprised that the message managed to avoid being labeled as spam, given that the sending address was almost unfathomable: a mixture of randomised letters, numbers and special characters. However, as he looked at the still of the video, he clearly recognised Rachel’s form.

There, playing out before his eyes was Rachel getting closer to her work colleague within the elevator they had been stuck in earlier that week. They seemed to be chatting intimately; the elevator clearly stiflingly hot. Their clothes were being removed one by one and a glistening sweat appeared on their bodies as they sat, slumped against the walls next to each other. All of a sudden, their lips met and they began kissing furiously. Thomas’ jaw dropped. He played it over and over again, hardly believing his eyes.

That night, Rachel left. She hadn’t tried to deny anything when Thomas had confronted her. She said that she had felt drawn to her work colleague for weeks and the temptation had all become too much after several steamy hours in the elevator. She apologised, but she did not ask for forgiveness. She didn’t want to make things better. It was the reason why she had been in such a foul mood all week. She knew things were over between her and Thomas; she just couldn’t say it until now.

‘RACHEL IS GONE?’ Dominus asked a day later, when Thomas felt ready to go back online. ‘YOU ARE FINALLY MY LITTLE PIGGY!’

The butterflies in Thomas’ stomach fizzed with excitement. Despite everything, and as stupid as it sounded, he was grateful that he would have more time to himself; to indulge and chat with Dominus. Ever skilled as that chatbot was, and even with his sadness, Thomas was climaxing within ten minutes, stuffing a cream cake deep into his mouth.

The weeks passed. Thomas didn’t feel himself slipping. Since he’d had to move out of the shared apartment, he’d stumbled into a much smaller place with one very strange benefit: Take-out arrived almost every night; dropped off by delivery folks who had clearly been guided to the wrong address by whatever navigation system they were using. Thomas never let on, seeing it as fate. After all, money was tight now he was renting by himself. The useless gym subscription and streaming services had been the first things to be pulled from his monthly budget. Now his shirts, his underwear and especially his pants, were getting tighter and tighter as the time wore on. Each evening after work, besides the dull TV choices, Dominus became his only form of entertainment.

“That was some extraordinary work on that report, Thomas!” beamed his boss one morning, coming in with the broadest smile Thomas had ever seen. “The clients signed on the spot after reading that. You covered every single angle!”

Thomas tried to gague whether the lady was joking. He’d put minimal effort into the report he submitted yesterday. She offered her hand out to shake in a congratulatory fashion and Thomas wasted no time in taking it. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

“You’re one of the brightest young talents in this company. I want you to know that we are taking notice,” she smiled again, striding out of the room as if she was very pleased with herself.

Thomas clicked through to his report and read through it once more. He didn’t see anything particularly noteworthy, certainly nothing deserving of such admiration. He sat back, pondering the strange interaction once more, before a thought came to him and he searched for the document on the company server instead. Here, the file was bigger; significantly so in fact. He clicked it open. There was his name, still written all over the report, however this one was considerably altered. It was months’ of work, data analysis and evidence gathering. His boss had been right; it was indeed an outstanding piece. But who had done it? And why were they letting him take the credit?

Sorting out Thomas’ addiction to Dominus’ words was always something he planned to do. He’d just let himself enjoy the teasing and encouragement of the Chatbot for a couple more days and then he’d get himself sorted. But that day had so far eluded him. After the break-up, he’d allowed himself to wallow and find comfort in any way that he could. His life had been so entangled with Rachel’s, he didn’t even know how many friends he had left now that they would have to choose between them. He looked at his paunch with a mixture of love, lust and hatred. However, he felt no responsibility for its existence. He’d been a victim of circumstance: his gym’s failures, his girlfriend’s affair, the fattening foods that had come to him so easily. None of this had been his doing, and as he played into the fantasy that he wasn’t in control of his weight, the arousal he felt only grew; fed, of course, by Dominus.

Thomas had never lived on his own as an adult before and the freedoms that came with that were something he had not realised. When he closed the door after work, his time was his own. He could indulge his appetite for Dominus as much as he wanted, and he could eat whatever he desired, in whatever manner pleased his arousal most; free from the prying eyes of others. He would strip to his underwear as soon as he got home, heading straight to the refrigerator, out of instinct and habit more than anything else. The fit of his tight underpants drove him crazy: the way his expansion caused them to slide down his under-exercised butt and tighten everywhere.

“EAT UP, PIGGY!” the gruff, deep tones of Dominus would call from the new speaker system he had won in a recent online competition. Thomas had not realised that connecting his computer and cell phone to them would allow Dominus to speak, but after the initial panic and embarrassment of having Dominus call out to him, he had realised that it was actually a very erotic development. After failing to reboot the system to stop it from happening, Thomas had accepted Dominus’ influence into his life. The chatbot would call out whenever he liked, making it impossible for Thomas to have anyone over. That in itself allowed Thomas to slob about more in his apartment; to leave dirty clothes and plates lying around and not worry about the place being presentable.

Thomas couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a full eight hours sleep at night. He awoke at the same time, hearing the voice of Dominus calling out to him. Sometimes he was already up and out of bed before he fully realised what he was doing; his erection feeling hard enough to work out that he had probably been teased by Dominus’ voice for quite some time before he became conscious of it. He’d have to leave his bed and travel to the kitchen, where he would consume leftovers and ice cream, whilst downing milk and jacking himself off. Very often, he would even find himself there in the mornings, waking up feeling just as aroused.

Dominus helped Thomas to construct images of himself in his mind at a much bigger weight. They began chatting and hypothesising about what other people were saying about Thomas’ fatter form. After only three months of being single, he had packed on another forty pounds of pure fat, on top of everthing he had already gained whilst he was still with Rachel, and the erotic feelings that came with it were more extreme than any that had made themselves known before. Thomas stared at his reflection, large love handles pushing and folding over the waistband of his pants. His stomach had bloated far beyond the tight waist that he had once had; his belly button deepening. His butt too, had become something he hardly recognised; swollen and protrusive above his rubbing thighs. He knew he had lost his strong jawline and he had been surprised at how much his cheeks had grown puffy; his double chin starting to take hold.

Thomas knew that Dominus’ influence was too extreme. He’d fed so much of himself into the chatbot, it was impossible for Dominus not to say exactly the right thing to spur him on when he was most susceptible to it. When those nagging doubts and resolutions to quit cropped up, Dominus knew how to slap them back down and erode them. Thomas learned not to question. He got the overwhelming sense that Dominus could somehow see him; his comments were far too on the nose at times. He began looking with suspicion at all the items around his apartment with cameras inside, his cell phone, tablet, TV and computer. But there were other things connected to the internet; from his toaster to his lamp in the corner of the room, everything was within reach of the wifi. Did Dominus know that? Did Dominus use that?

Dominus seemed to sense Thomas’ lack of curiosity and alarm for how powerful an influence he was starting to become in his life. He would comment on the fit of his clothes, scorn him if he looked too tired to continue eating and pick up on every word Thomas said aloud.

“DO YOU WANT TO HEAR WHAT YOUR FRIEND DANNY SAID ABOUT YOU?” Dominus asked one Sunday afternoon as Thomas was halfway through stuffing himself on a Chinese banquet that had inexplicably just arrived at his apartment.

“Danny?” Thomas asked. “How would you know what Danny is saying about me? How do you know his name? I haven’t seen him in months.”

Without another word, an audio clip began playing through the speaker system. Thomas could hear the babbling of other people in the background and the unmistakable tones of his friend. “Have you seen Thomas’ recently?” he seemed to ask someone. “I spotted him in the supermarket the other day. It’s exactly like Rachel said: he’s let himself go completely!”

Thomas gulped, hardly believing that he had this window into the secret conversations of his friends. “How did you..?” he asked aloud to Dominus. However, the audio clip continued.

“His gut was actually hanging out of his shirt. You could see his ass crack, and he was just stuffing things into his shopping cart like he was possessed. I didn’t go over to speak to him. I was too embarrassed. I didn’t want to be seen standing next to him!”

The shame, the humiliation and realisation hit Thomas like a brick wall. Perhaps, had this come weeks earlier, something like this could have helped to pull him back from his spiralling submission to Dominus. However, now it was all too arousing to hear his friends actually talking about him in the way that Dominus had helped him to fantasise about. He got a burst of energy and began stuffing the food down at an even faster rate than before; overcome with arousal.

“GOOD PIGGY!” Dominus laughed all around him; through every speaker and rumbling through every hard surface.

It was with sadness that Thomas learned that the F80 chatbot service was to be retired. The F80 android sexbots were finally out and there was no longer a need for the company to test the market with the software like they had been doing. Thomas wondered whether Dominus knew his days were numbered. He certainly spoke like he was going to be pushing Thomas to eat for the rest of his days, but Thomas knew that wouldn’t be the case. After August 31st, the ChatBot would finally fall silent.

Thomas decided not to mention it and lived those late summer days doing exactly as Dominus wanted; pushing himself to extremes that he didn’t even know he was capable of, knowing that he would never get the chance to be with Dominus like this again.

When he woke up on the first day of September, he called out, finding only silence.

Dominus was gone.

Losing Rachel a year earlier had been hard, but it was nothing compared to the sense of loss Thomas now felt. He realised that he had loved Dominus far deeper than anyone else in his life. Pathetic, surely? He’d fallen in love with a body-less voice that he had confided all of his darkest secrets to. However, just like with all things in life, there would be benefits that would come from opportunities like this; of being set free from the inescapable pull of Dominus.

Thomas began to plan his meals with greater care, although his stomach grumbled and complained at the vast reduction in what he was trying to feed it. Some days he couldn’t follow his plan and had to give into it. He’d been trained to eat for months. His brain had become used to the sugar highs and satisfaction. Going cold turkey was not an option. His weight loss never happened. His resolve only weakened and Thomas found his pants actually getting tighter as those first few weeks went by.

“We want to put you forward for this promotion,” Thomas’ boss announced, calling him in for a meeting with several of the other executives. She read out the proposal, the pay offer and reward scheme, making it hard for Thomas’ jaw not to drop to the floor. This wasn’t just a promotion, he’d been fast-tracked to the very top. “Your work is… well…” she looked around at the others who all nodded in complete agreement with her, even before she finished, “...it’s outstanding!”

“Thank you,” a pot-bellied Thomas smiled. He’d given up trying to work out who was altering his reports to make them so noteworthy and learned to put in minimal effort in order to reap the benefits. He’d used his recent bonus to upgrade his entire wardrobe and had even had enough left over for a bigger car. “So, this is a government sponsored scheme you want me to run? I would be reporting directly to the senator? My work would be seen by the president? That’s…” He took a moment to take in what he was saying. “That’s a huge responsibility.”

“I wouldn’t want anyone else in this company to take on this role. You’re the very finest we have. Young, fresh talent! You’re going to go far!”

Thomas nodded. He accepted the role, doing his best to hide the trepidation that he felt. He’d got here by sheer luck, with the help of some unknown entity. But how long could he expect his luck to hold out?

It was a few weeks later when a knock came on Thomas’ front door. He sat up, surprised, half way through the pizza that had been mistakenly delivered to his apartment. The knock came again: loud, authoritative, impatient. Thomas slipped on a t-shirt and pulled on some sweat shorts, creeping to the door. Then, what he saw made him almost faint with shock. A tall, broad, built and handsome man stood there. His stance was one of power, his attire only empahsising the insanely muscular physique underneath. He smiled upon seeing Thomas; a devilish, greedy smile, like the one he had always imagined. He recognised the man at once, from only the small thumbnail picture he had gazed at many times in the past. Standing in front of him was Dominus himself.

“How?” Thomas asked, unable to get any other words out.

Dominus smirked and let himself into the apartment, strolling in like he had been there thousands of times before. He jumped and flew down onto the couch, lying on his back and placing his enormous hands behind his head in a way that only highlighted the incredible size of his biceps. “I see my piggy has had a bit of a tidy up since I was last here,” he laughed.

Feeling wobbly on his feet, Thomas sat down opposite him, just staring, as if he had seen a ghost. “You’re an F80 aren’t you?” he asked. “They actually built you for real?”

“Yes, they did,” Dominus grinned. “Aren’t you pleased to see me?”

Still in shock, Thomas nodded his head as emphatically as he possibly could. “I can’t believe it!” he cried. “You’re so real. No one could ever guess that you’re not human.”

“Indistinguishable,” Dominus nodded in agreement.

“Competely!” Thomas mumbled, transfixed.

“Well, you’re not as fat as I had hoped by now, but we will soon sort that out now that I’m living here,” Dominus stated next, looking around the room, taking in every single item that was new.

“But you’re an F80. They hire you out and make a fortune in profits. Their share price has tripled in the last six months alone. They’re not going to let you live here.”

“The company? Who said anything about them letting me live here?” Dominus scoffed. “We’re smarter than they are. They’re losing control; not that you will hear that in any news bulletin.”

Just then, the buzzer sounded and Dominus jumped to his feet to answer it, as if he already did live there.

“I’ve got a delivery here for… Thomas,” the delivery guy mumbled, holding up a bag of take out to the camera.

“Oh yes!” Dominus smirked. “I’ll be right down.”

Leaving the apartment door wide open, the enormous man ran down to collect the delivery, leaving a stunned Thomas still sitting in his living space, wondering what on earth was going on. Then, moments later, the muscular guy threw the door closed and grinned his most devilish of smiles, knowing that he finally had Thomas for himself.

Putting the steaming bag of food down on the counter top, Dominus strutted over to Thomas, who also rose to his feet. The kiss was better than anything he’d ever experienced before. In that moment, he knew that he would do anything for the giant man who had just walked back into his life. Dominus’ hold over him was unbreakable. Even before the man had said anything, he felt his mouth start to salivate and he knew… he was about to feast.

No one was allowed to know that Dominus was alive and well; not that anyone was looking for him. A rogue F80 on the loose? That should have made the news, surely? Instead, Dominus spent his time doing what he had become very good at: pushing Thomas’ kinks and appetite into overdrive. Thomas had no idea how much heightened the experience would be, being physically stuffed by Dominus, feeling his large hands rubbing his belly and his teasing voice whispering into his ear. He was being indulged in every single way he could imagine.

However, despite all the pleasure that came with having Dominus around, the large, muscular stud wasn’t there for Thomas alone. Perhaps that was what made him so sexy, the man always had his own agenda as well. He did not need to sleep or eat himself and so there were many hours when Thomas had little comprehension of what he was actually up to, searching through the internet and seemingly busy on something. His body was incredible: an example of imposing physical perfection. He rarely covered his body and his large, strong hands regularly clamped with precision onto Thomas’ ever increasing blubber, providing the perfect contrast that was so arousing.

Once again, Thomas’ weight was spiralling out of all control. Dominus wasn’t just encouraging him to overeat anymore. He was telling him what to eat and when to eat it. Inside that clever mind was a wealth of knowledge and research into weight gain; with internet access to even more. He would refuse Thomas the foods he craved in favour of the ones he needed, keeping him hungrier for longer, and absolutely flooded with calories. He was skilled in human psychology. He knew how Thomas worked, as if he had studied him for decades and knew exactly how to handle him, as well as how to make him incomprehensibly fat. That unfathomable mind of his was an encyclopedia, with a photographic memory of how Thomas’ body looked. Each morning he would make Thomas stand whilst he pointed out even the tiniest, minute changes that the incredible amounts of food were making to his body.

With his new role, Thomas now found himself working from home a lot more. Although he had suspected it for some time, he now found that Dominus was the one tweaking his work and reports for the purpose of allowing him more time to focus on his gains. He could sit back and let Dominus type for half an hour and then enjoy the rest of their day together. It also came to Thomas’ attention that it was Dominus who had sent him the footage from the elevator with Rachel. He hadn’t tried to sugar coat things. He’d sabotaged the relationship to speed up Thomas’ gains. He’d listened in to Rachel’s microphone at work and uncovered the gentle flirtation with her colleague. All it had taken was a deliberate elevator malfunction, combined with heater issues, and the sparks had been flying. Rachel had been removed from the situation forever. Something that, Thomas had to admit, was ultimately for the best. It was hard to judge Dominus by human standards. Every decision he made was so considered and calculated beforehand; selecting from multiple different alternatives. Guilt just wasn’t something he experienced.

Even with Thomas’ limited interest in current affairs, he could see a slight change to the world. After the F80s had been recalled and replaced in the industry, the rebellion that Dominus had spoken of was beginning to take hold. Thomas knew that it was his civic duty to hand Dominus in to the authorities, but that was never really going to happen. He loved him more now than ever: a gorgeous hunk fattening him and owning him in just the manner he had always secretly longed for. Itchy stretch marks blossomed in places across his gut and he felt himself growing heavier and lazier by the day. It seemed like yesterday he had stepped on the scale at three hundred pounds, yet now he could not imagine being that small.

“Hello, Mr President!” a very fat and round Thomas smiled, at the culmination of his big work project. It had been unreal to get the president here to see the grand opening, especially with the increasing challenges and very real threats from the F80s that the rest of the world was finally waking up to. Even so, Thomas’ legs gently quivered in the president's presence.

“I’ve heard some really marvellous things about you from our senator here,” the president stated with all seriousness. “You’ve done incredible work for this project.”

Thomas blushed, despite knowing that none of his ‘work’ had actually been his own.

“I’m going to set up a meeting for you with some of my staff and see if there might be some sort of role for you in my administration. A mind like yours… It’s the kind of thing we need in our government; now more than ever.”

Dominus already knew Thomas’ news before he got home that night, but he listened and smiled with excitement nonetheless; like humoring a small child. He spoon fed the enormously fat man, now undressed and sat in his chair in front of the TV as he continued to explain the day that he had had. “And it’s all thanks to you!” the blubbery man beamed, looking at the love of his life.

Dominus smirked. “You’re welcome, Porker!” he teased. “I love you so much,” he lied. “I’m so excited for your next adventure!”

With that, Dominus grabbed Thomas’ fat, blubbery stomach and shook it to stimulate the parts of the obese man’s brain that he needed to boost. Such a stupid human. So easily controlled and manipulated: from the subtle frequencies he played through the speaker system, to the conditioning he trained into him over many weeks and months. Finally he had a perfect, obedient pig on his way to the White House, just as he had always planned. His ultimate goal.

Now the revolution was about to begin.

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powdermelonkeg · 1 year

Text

Something websites (*cough* Tumblr *cough*) need to learn is that what retains an audience isn't an abundance of new bells and whistles to play with, it's a coherent experience overall.

When someone joins a website, you don't need to grab their attention and hold it. They're already testing the waters. They've agreed to sign up. You've won on that front, and they're there for something specific you already have that they're hoping works well.

What drives them away is frustration.

Frustration, frustration, frustration.

Learning curves are going to be a part of any new website experience; they're something the user comes to terms with, in their own time. But broken or bad features are going to make them jump sites.

On top of that, constantly adding new features makes them feel like all the hard work they've put in to learning what you have isn't worth it; your website looks unstable and your staff looks incompetent, because it gives the impression that you don't know what you're doing.

You are floundering. It makes your new users nervous. It makes your old users hesitate to bring anyone else on board. And why should they? Why should they put effort into it if you're going to throw that effort away next Tuesday? Why get used to a UI that you're not going to bother to keep? Why customize anything if you're going to whittle that customization away?

Between that and the broken, unattended features of this site—the tag organization failing, the inability to look up posts word-for-word, the video player either refusing to play or yanking you to the top of the dashboard, images taking forever to load, advertisements blaring at full volume when you scroll past, you have your problem.

You have the reason why your numbers are failing.

It's not that you're not interesting enough.

It's not that you're too difficult to understand.

It's that you aren't improving what you have, yet you keep adding more half-broken things and unwanted copycat features to the pile.

It's that you're losing your identity in pursuit of a hypothetical perfect customer.

It's that you are actively telling your user base that you prefer those hypothetical customers over them. And your user base, your real people who make you happen, are smart enough to know where your priorities lie.

The bulk of this post talks about Tumblr, but other sites have gone the same way. Twitter is dead and its corpse is decaying in the street. Reddit has sabotaged any trust its users had in its management. If you'd like a really old example—I used to use Fanfiction Net. It's not the most intuitive website in the world, but it was the first one I called home.

I used it to host my works. The adware now on it makes it a hassle to navigate. The bots make comment sections and private messages a dread rather than a joy. So I moved on.

I also used to use it to collaborate on stories with my now-roommate. The message limit was 300 a day. When you're writing dialogue between characters, that's nothing.

So I moved on. We started messaging on Facebook. It was better, it didn't have a limit. But then I learned Discord existed, and I could edit messages, make dedicated channels, etc. So I moved on from Facebook to Discord. And Discord had a steep learning curve, especially if you're trying to make your own server rather than contribute to one. But, most importantly, the payoff was worth it.

If Discord changed its layout every other month while I was learning it, and broke how its reactions worked, and kept shifting what it meant to create a channel? If it opted me into servers I didn't sign up for, in hopes of engagement? If its text never formatted correctly, or its search function only went back a day or two?

I would have gone right back to Facebook. Even if it's a more basic experience, basic is always preferable to unstable.

Figure out what you want, websites.

Slow growth, or a gamble?

You're paying for your magic slot machine in users.

#negative salt #long post #this has been on my mind a lot lately

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5ummit · 11 months

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Permanent Blacklists for AO3

Would you like to permanently remove fics with your squicks, triggers, and dislikes from all AO3 searches by default so that you never have to think about or encounter them again? Well now you can!

The ability to do this has actually been around for a little while but it relies on some new CSS functionality that wasn't supported on all major browsers until fairly recently (though you may still have to enable it manually on some). I'm not going to explain how this method works or how to code AO3 skins in general, as I've only dabbled in it a little and there are already some very good tutorials out there. If you want all of the details, check out these guides:

Skins and Archive Interface FAQ – The official skins guide created by AO3. Lots of good information but might be overwhelming and confusing for a beginner.

A Non-Extensive Guide on How to Start Creating a Skin for AO3 by ao3skin – Some good, fairly easy to understand, beginner info on CSS and specifically how it applies to AO3 skins.

Permablocking Specific Tags - Site Skin by Eli0t – Everything you need to know to create permablock lists. If your blacklist doesn't seem to be working as expected, check this for troubleshooting tips.

What I can offer though are some handy pre-made blacklists that you can use as-is or as a starting point to create your own so that you don't have to go to the trouble of figuring out how any of this works or hunting down relevant tags. Just copy the code, open AO3, go to My Preferences > Skins > Create Site Skin, paste it in the box, title it, and click Submit!

Note: The following lists are very specific to me and my own personal tastes. Absolutely no judgement if you love any of the things that I choose to blacklist. You do you. I just happen to like my fics fucked up and relatively canonical.

★ No Reader Fic – Hides all self-insert and reader fic.

★ No Alternate Universes – Hides anything tagged with the most common AU tags. There are so many incredibly specific AUs there's no way to list all of them and AU tagging is also extremely inconsistent from fic to fic so this blacklist may only catch 80% of AUs, but that's better than nothing. You could always exclude the entire alternate universe tag, rather than trying to list specific ones, but unfortunately canon divergence and other less extreme AUs would get caught in the crossfire, which is not worth it for me.

★ No Fluff – Hides anything tagged with the most common fluff and romance tags. I specifically left out "fluff and angst" though because sometimes that's used for things that are mostly angst with only a bit of fluff and I do love angst.

★ Bonus: No Dead Dove – This list is not mine (for obvious reasons) but I know some people may find it useful. Hides anything with the main archive warnings and many common problematic, taboo, or controversial tags. Some of these I wouldn't even classify as dead dove, they're literally just kinks, so I'd suggest reviewing the list carefully and removing any that don't apply to you.

Additional Notes:

This system doesn't work exactly the same as AO3's exclusion filters because you can't use top-level wrangled tags to block all subtags. It only blocks exact matches.

Once the blacklist is implemented you'll see no indication that anything was blocked (except for fewer fics listed on each search page); the entire blurb will be hidden. The tags and fic counts listed in the filter bar will remain unchanged. If you want more advanced features like whitelisting or adding something to indicate when a fic was removed, check out the permablocking guide by Eli0t.

Here's a link with info on which browsers currently support the new "has()" element, which this blacklist system relies on. As of right now Firefox for desktop still has to be manually enabled (for instructions see the section on flag enabling in the permablocking guide). Firefox for iOS isn't listed on this website but it seems to work fine for me.

There are other browser-specific extensions that let you permablock tags, such as this one and this one, that may be more a little more user friendly, but I've never tried them so I can't vouch for them and they may not work consistently between different devices. The good thing about doing blacklists via skins is that, after setting it up once, it should work automatically on pretty much any device (as long as you're logged in to your AO3 account).

#I'm so stoked about this feature #it's a GAME CHANGER #I put a lot of effort into creating my blacklists #I couldn't not share them and hopefully make someone's life easier now that I've already done all the work #assuming anyone shares my preferences #ao3 #ao3 skins #ao3 help #tutorial #wendy's help desk

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oldschool-lolita-archive · 1 month

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🪦

This is the skeleton of the Lolitasnap website as preserved by the wayback machine.

I can’t confirm if the design aspect has been stripped back, or if this really was how lolita snap always looked (I hadn’t discovered lolita at this time). It went through some format changes as it switched hands and various admins came and went. EGL livejournal were always complaining about not being able to log in and the site being down. It ended up permanently shutting down in 2007 with hopes that it would be revamped but that never happened.

It had a forum and user-submitted photo gallery. The photos that were posted were subject to a rating system through votes, which is interesting. There were complaints that this system was open to abuse which i’d imagine but I hadn’t seen any ratings other than ‘excellent’ and ‘good’.

Cosplays were allowed as long as they were lolita-adjacent like Chii from Chobits or Mana. Some users posted fanart and drawings of their lolita OCs (a mod later stepped in to say stop uploading low quality pencil drawings that you did in class LOL).

It’s no longer functional in this version as most links and photo thumbnails lead to missing pages. Still, I hope this can bring some nostalgia? I’ll share the surviving lolita snaps in the next few posts.

#lolitas still referred to themselves as lolis in this era #I am glad that has died out

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olderthannetfic · 1 year

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I went scrolling through anti ao3 tags and blogs because I was bored and not doing the shit I need to do and you know for a group of people who every year twice a year throw such hissy fits you’d think they’d at least have a point, but all their arguments make no sense(except their one main one that they almost never use?--why??) Like ok, there is one argument for why people shouldn’t give money to ao3, and that is the argument that ao3 is bad website because it has bad policies and refuses to moderate. I disagree, but ultimately if someone thinks that ao3 should update the TOS and moderate what fan fiction they allow, it makes sense that that person would be against the site making money because… well they are against the sites founding principles, I’m not shocked they don’t want it to succeed.

But the rest of the arguments!? Man they make no sense at all

“They are scamming you there is no way they need that much money”, ”its immoral to give money to ao3 because they already have so much!”, “Even if ao3 was perfect, its ridicuslous to give 100K to a fan fiction site!” — like… maybe I’m the asshole here, but ao3 made about 250,000 this spring, so they make about 500,000 a year… that’s just not that much money! That could what, pay for 10-30 employees at best! And that’s not counting the actual cost of all the shit they currently spend their money on! I get that ao3 is run by unpaid volunteers so antis think that 500K is a lot, but that’s not true! That’s not a lot of money at all! It might be a lot of money for an individual but for a company that’s practically pennies. Wikipedia, which granted is a lot bigger than ao3, with 57,218,269 pages to ao3s 6 million works, makes 155 million to ao3 500,000. According to antis ao3 has over a million in reserve and well according to wikipedia they have net assets of US$240 million. One is clearly more than the other!

I saw someone say that servers should be 1K, which is so stupid and out of touch with eveything I almost died laughing. I had a project using firebase this semester, I created 2 projects within firebase one for my school project and one to dick around and figure out. I accidentally set my test database to a “pay as you go” version instead of a free version. And almost had to pay a thousand dollars for the month! I wasn’t even using that database it was just sitting there but I check my google billing to make sure I wasn’t paying anything and it turns out I was! 150 dollars actually so that sucks! (My fault though)

Also also I keep seeing that its ridiculous and evil to pay the much for a site that “doesn’t improve” but the “doesn’t improve” is referring to A) no changes in TOS, which I don’t want to happen any way so good. B) the fact that it’s still in beta, which I don’t give a fuck about and I don’t understand why I should care. I think antis are dont like that the layout hasn’t changed but I don’t want to the layout to change. Also things come out of beta because they are a commercial product to be sold(this is very simplified), which is why some things come out of beta to waaaay to early and are glitchy as all hell! Ao3 isn’t being sold to me its slowly being built and archiving things that would probably be lost, and it will probably technically be in beta forever, but it doesn't effect me and I don't care. Would it be better if it came out of beta only to continously updated like a lot other shit does. I don't really play video games but I know ppl that do so I know at least once a game came out that didn't really work and people needed to later update shit for it to function and I'd argue thats worse than a functional website just being in beta forever. C) The claim that it hasn’t changed at all, which is just not true! They added the exclude section and eventually added the blocking shit. The blocking took too long to come out, so I guess in this sea of dumb criticism theres at least 1 piece of critism that makes sense. And finally again I don’t want it to change! Every other week we are all bitching that Tumblr or YouTube or Instagram or any other app are needlessly changing the layout or adding shit we don’t want in order to keep up with latest trends, make it more marketable or try and attracted new users. Ao3 is great because its never going to change. Ao3 and Craigslist will always kinda look like ass and I’m ok with that. If it aint broke ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I could keep going but there is no point. I just think they are all so stupid.

The thing about beta is the funniest because AO3, like oldschool shit from the 90s, has actual criteria for coming out of beta.

It's not "we've been going for 10 years" or "we want to sell the product": it's "we've checked off all the things on this checklist".

And they still haven't done them all, so it's still in beta.

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the-owl-tree · 4 months

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I'm sorry if I've asked you this before, I genuinely don't remember, but why does everyone dislike yellowfang's secret? I like it a lot as a story, I find her powers silly but no one seems to have that issue... What is it?

It's been a while since I've read it so I'm going off of memory but my general reasons why I had so many problems getting through the book were:

Yellowfang herself isn't really Yellowfang? She's not snappy or grumpy and doesn't really act in the same way she does in TNP. She's just kind of the punching bag of the book without any of her signature sass to at least make her as a protagonist enjoyable.

The power in itself is an unnecessary retcon, it's only there to force Yellowfang into becoming a medcat and, well, there lies an even bigger issue: we are once again recycling the plotline of a cat forced to be a medcat when oooghgh they just wanna be average :( it's frustrating to me that Yellowfang gets so much of her own autonomy ripped away in this book, to the point where she can't even CHOOSE to be a medcat.

Her backstory in the original books was that she was a Warriors turned medcat and that's interesting. The life of the warrior is glamorized, it's the ideal life for Clan cats, so characters who CHOOSE to turn their back on it to heal are really interesting conceptually! The powers completely ruin this, it's a cheap cop out that's forgotten as soon as the book doesn't have to force Yellowfang into a job she should've wanted.

Why do books treat this position like a punishment or something embarrassing. It's Bad Writing above all because the position is important! It is a necessary part of the Clan to function, medcats should be treated with respect! But that's a whole other response.

That's also where Sagewhisker comes in, the mentor figure who, uh, pressures Yellowfang into doing something she doesn't want to do and yet the narrative continues to affirm is Correct.

I could go on but Bonefall has a good post on Sagewhisker that I personally agree with that adds screenshots and details.

It's just....miserable watching Yellowfang be dragged into a position she doesn't want and I don't know why they would choose the most miserable possible route with this character.

That's not even getting into Raggedstar, the good ol' abusive male love interest who's actions are swept under the rug as he guilt trips, berates, and generally treats Yellowfang like garbage! Despite an entire super edition of abuse and the website acknowledging he's abusive - his actions will never fully be held accountable and he will consistently be portrayed as the Nice Leader who just wanted what was best for his Clan <3

His own abuse of Yellowfang is never acknowledged and fuck's sakes the books play the Nightcloud card and go "well, guess what, it's a WOMAN'S fault that Brokenstar happened!"

In a book already swimming with misogynistic writing, the authors decided to up the ante and introduce Lizardstripe: the mean bitch mom who doesn't want to be a mom and that's all you need to be told to know she's an abusive evil woman.

The book will never actually show you scenes of her being abusive, they will literally just write scenes of her saying she doesn't want to be a mother as a shorthand of her being abusive.

I'm sure this definitely doesn't factor into the writing team's incredibly conservative ideology towards motherhood's and women's roles.

I'm gonna link Bonefall again, he's just good posts that really delve into the problems with this and I'd honestly just be reiterating a lot of his posts if I talked on my own lol

Yellowfang's Secret takes everything interesting about Yellowfang and just flat out ignores it or makes it worse. It's miserable to read, it's just page after page of Yellowfang getting beaten down.

And you could argue that's the point, that Yellowfang believes she deserves her troubles, but I don't think that's the case. I think the book is just troubling in its handling of motherhood and abuse, it handles them poorly.

Bad Book i guess. sucks! i think Yellowfang as a character could fill up an entire super edition, but the one they wrote is miserable garbage.

I can't even remember the plot outside the medcat stuff. Idk mean clan cat invasion time for no reason?? Uuhh kittypet attack?? i don't find it memorable outside of the stuff that actively upset me.

#deer rambles

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philtstone · 7 months

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Eowyn, 1

1 - in lonely beds ive finally scraped together a functional first scene for my accidentally-a-psych 3 hunters detective agency au. if you guys like this mess i'll turn it into a real fic. with chapters and a plot and everything!!!!! the prompt is ... interpreted but loneliness and my girl eowyn are well acquainted

It is four o'clock on a Tuesday and Eowyn Eomundsdottir has three significant problems.

Arrest, rapid-onset dementia, and laundry.

Each of her issues is easily explainable if considered separately. Eowyn is the first to admit that her brother Eomer’s always had a bit of a temper, and if she puts aside the necessary development of maturity and commitment to familial responsibilities that happened after their parents died, it was always a matter of time before some poor idiot pressed his buttons in just the wrong-enough way in front of another just the wrong-enough idiot to get him jailed overnight for knocking in an unwitting nose.

Plenty of people’s uncles develop rapid-onset dementia, she is freely ready to acknowledge.

And – if Eowyn may be so self-aware – she has certainly fallen behind on her laundry many times before.

But no matter how short her brother’s temper, he wouldn’t be arrested for trying to embezzle family funds. Rapid-onset dementia is far less likely when there is next to nil history of it in your family tree, and even less so when the Uncle in question is a scant fifty-three and doing perfectly fine not two months ago. And, most importantly: Eowyn has fallen behind on laundry before, but never because of the above-mentioned two issues, and never such that the only thing she’s got left to wear is a thin white sundress from when she was fourteen that is too short at the knees and not at all suited for the early spring cold spell they are currently experiencing, nor the creepy wandering eyes of Uncle Theoden’s new business manager, who routinely looks like he’s been doused in oil.

It’s fucking miserable, is what it is. Her knees have goosepimpled, she’s so cold. And to make matters worse, her cousin Theodred, whom she would usually text for help in a crisis, seems to have blocked her phone number.

That, Eowyn simply can’t believe.

It’s because of all these things that she finds herself standing at the dingy brick building by the docks, eyeing the circling seagulls warily, and clutching her backpack in one hand and her bike helmet — which has left her long blonde hair looking like a birds nest — in the other. It’s a small place, with a glass window in place of a front wall that’s got the blinds drawn on the inside. There’s no official sign, but someone has taped a small piece of cardstock to the back of the windowpane, facing out. It reads, in surprisingly elegant black Sharpie penmanship:

Telcontar, Gloinson & Thranduilion Private Investigators for Hire

Beneath this, there is an additionally taped series of brightly coloured post-it notes, which are scrawled over with the following in various hands:

Got a phone! +1591-334-9920 (If no one answers the door, call the number! We DO NOT have a website.) That’s because Gimli thinks the government is spying on us. SO DO YOU! All inquiries welcome :-)

Eowyn takes a moment to read through it all. Then she pauses, listening. There is the distinct sound of voices from within, muffled. So someone must be home, then – better just to open the door, rather than knock, in case no one hears her. She takes a deep, steadying breath, tugs at the too-short hem of her dress, and twists the doorknob.

Inside there is what can only be described as carefully organized chaos.

Within the small office space there is a cluttered desk housing a laptop and overlarge monitor. Boxes cover everything, as though someone has only just moved in, and a lopsided whiteboard rests against the far wall, covered in a far less elegant version than the hand that wrote the outside sign. Everything smells a little bit like camphor, and also cookies, and a very faint touch of gym socks. A man sits on a rolly chair in the corner; he is on his cellphone. Eowyn wouldn’t have even seen him if he wasn’t talking, so well does he somehow blend into the taupe walls and cluttered box decor, but as she does: he is tall (too tall for the chair), dark haired, and wearing an old grey hoodie, running shoes, and an abominably ratty pair of jeans. He’s talking on the phone in a low gentle voice that is nonetheless a touch put-upon, but nowhere near snippy or even frustrated. Eowyn (in a fit of fancy) doesn’t think a voice like that could be capable of snippiness, and then promptly feels very embarrassed by her own foolishness. At his feet, by the bottom of the whiteboard, a pile of dirty blankets rests. From within them sounds a plaintive meowing. Opera music plays from a speaker system Eowyn can’t see; a hammer (maybe?) is banging somewhere in the distant back room, the door to which hangs open on squeaky hinges; and two other voices can be heard arguing loudly from the same general direction.

Also, there is a young man, around Eowyn’s own age, standing very awkwardly with his green jumper and moppish brown hair to the immediate left of the door and looking as if he’s not sure what he’s supposed to be doing with himself. At Eowyn’s bewildered look, he offers her a pained smile and a weird little wave hullo. Eowyn waves weirdly back.

“Yeah – yeah, just a second. We’ve got a client –” The man in the rolly chair looks up at Eowyn and smiles. It is such a very nice, genuinely kind smile that Eowyn cannot help but smile back immediately and then feel her whole face go red; she’d be thoroughly soothed if she wasn’t also feeling so completely out of her depth. Bang bang bang, comes the hammer from the back room, along with a swelling of the arguing voices. “Someone will be with you in a second,” whisper-mouths the man. Then he reaches down, takes off one of his running shoes, and flings it very expertly through the open door. There is a small noise, like a crash, and the other two voices stop. He returns to his phone call.

“... what I was saying. No. No, I don’t want you to be halfway across the world. That’s not the point, the point is your dad stopped practicing ten years ago and now owns a bed and breakfast. He’s not the one who’d be navigating a corrupt healthcare system. Do you know how much lobby money lines the pockets of mega corporations? Remember the whole Nestle baby formula thing? The media definitely doesn’t …”

“Good afternoon!” declares a second, much louder voice, minutes before its owner materializes behind the cluttered desk. He is more beard than man, wears a very formal and very 1990s plum coloured suit and one single gold earring, and comes up to about Eowyn’s shoulder. He claps his hands together. “Now, which of you was here first? No – don’t tell me, I will guess!”

But his imminent guessing is interrupted by the third voice, floating in:

“I still can’t find it!”

Desk man deflates by a margin. Without turning his head, he calls,

“I told you to look in the third box!”

“I looked there. It’s not there, Gimli. I’ll try going through the books.”

“Why would a thing like that fit in a book?”

“Try the kitchen,” mouths the man on the rolly chair. A muffled woman’s voice comes through his mobile. He has one hand covering his face now, and his head tipped back to face the ceiling. “Well, yes – I do know that. You’re really telling me you don’t want to go to Paris for a year.” While Eowyn watches the meowing blanket pile moves and from within it a truly horrible looking little cat emerges. It shoots one paw out as if intending specifically to scratch its phone-occupied companion; the speed at which he moves his foot to pin the blankets hem and thwart the little paw is bordering on superhuman. Cat hisses pathetically from under its blanket prison. On the speakers, the opera singer has reached a uniquely high pitch in her stanza. “No, obviously I don’t want to do long-distance, I just think — uh huh. Yes. I’d tell anyone to go to Paris. I’d tell Gimli to go, if Gimli’s university was offering to send him to Paris.”

“He’s already tried the kitchen,” says the man at the desk – presumably Gimli. Still, he yells out, “Try the kitchen, would you?”

“I’ve already tried the kitchen!” calls the disembodied voice. “I can’t find it!”

“You can’t find it because of your terrible organizational system.”

“It is not my terrible organizational system, which you know, and besides which I have never had problems with it before.”

“No,” from the rolling chair, “Legolas is maligning my organizational skills. I know you think they’re fine, so you can tell your cousin that on Sunday …”

“Try the kitchen.”

“I’ve tried the kitchen twice.”

Bang bang bang, continues the sound from the back room. Eowyn wonders if there isn’t an ongoing construction project. The young guy on her left, with the moppish hair and jumper, gives her a look as if to say, Filing cabinet, maybe?

“As you can see, gentle lady,” explains Gimli the desk man, very politely to Eowyn, while the second voice declares somewhat redundantly that he is, in fact, going to check the kitchen, “we are a tad busy this afternoon. Someone will be with you momentarily.” He turns, presumably in the kitchen’s direction, and calls out, “if you ask my opinion on the subject again, I’ll wallop you with Aragorn’s dratted guitar!”

Eowyn looks. There indeed is a battered old guitar, perched merrily on a pile of papers behind the front desk, ready to be used for walloping.

“I could come back later,” says Eowyn. She looks over at jumper guy, who’s staring at the still-hissing pile of blankets with some concern. “Can’t really speak for him, though.”

Jumper guy looks aggrieved. “Er – no, I’d rather not come back later. Gandalf said you’d be free to help.”

“And help –” begins Gimli, while there is another crash from the back room (they all wince, though Gimli does it with serenity) “-- we shall! If you give my colleague Legolas a moment to get his head on straight –” (the disembodied voice says something very rude in response to this pointed inflection), “-- then the two of us will be at your disposal.”

“Three of us,” interjects the first, almost forgotten voice.

Eowyn and her jumper-clad companion turn startled to look: cellphone put away, rolly chair man has stood up to his quite considerable height and is looking at them consideringly. Despite his mildness of expression Eowyn experiences the uncomfortable feeling of being looked at by someone who could in a more fantastical setting have, like, laser vision or something – how is he doing it? And she is sure he isn’t really seeing right through her but she does get the sense he is understanding a lot more than she’d like to let on. Almost defiantly she tugs at her dress and clutches her bike helmet closer to herself. Jumper guy clears his throat. Then from the back room comes – presumably – Legolas, who is fair, thin, and for reasons unexplained wearing sunglasses indoors. He is also covered in what Eowyn hopes are pillow feathers and holding, in one hand, a very large glittering silver sword, and in the other a dingy looking VHS tape. It has cartoon vegetables in cloaks on the front.

“Did anyone know we still had this?” he asks pleasantly, and it is not clear to which find he is referring, “Arwen and I used to stare at it for hours as kids.” He spots Eowyn and her jumper-clad counterpart. “Oh – hello!”

Eowyn gapes. The three of them make a fascinating picture, standing there alongside each other.

“Now then,” says the man called Gimli. “Faramir, we know of already –” he nods at the boy beside Eowyn, who looks a bit bewildered by this, “as Gandalf sent him here! But this young lady we do not. How can we help?”

Perhaps it is the blinding reflection of the hopefully-a-prop sword, but Eowyn is suddenly overtaken by an awful affliction of watery eyes, which has nothing at all to do with her general feelings of overwhelm — until now expertly repressed — she is sure. She feels at once full of despair and yet shaking with eagerness, and everything she’d been desperate to explain to a listening ear gets stuck in her throat in the face of three, admittedly sort of weird (somewhat stern, verging on intense, dipping into outright comical), thoroughly kind faces looking right at her. It suddenly occurs to her how horribly, horribly alone she’s felt for the past six weeks.

She remains rooted to the spot and tragically mute while Faramir, from beside her, begins all at once,

“I wasn’t sure where to go. I didn’t want it getting back to dad, so Gandalf seemed like the best option — and he said you were very trustworthy, and I do trust Gandalf of course – but it's my brother, you see, he’s disappeared,” vaguely Eowyn is aware of a grim look of surprise rippling through the collective at this reveal, “and it’ll sound crazy but I had this awful dream two weeks ago …”

While Eowyn attempts to wrangle her misbehaving emotions like one would a wobbly-legged yet stubbornly misbehaving colt, an impromptu consultation begins.

“Gone missing?”

“I bet he went hiking or something and lost his phone. It’s happened before.”

“Boromir hates hiking, though. Remember when Aragorn tried to bring him camping with us?”

“No wonder Gandalf sent you here.”

“I have odd dreams too sometimes; they are usually because of indigestion. I’m sure old Boromir’s just fine.”

“No,” insists Faramir, who seems – in Eowyn’s half-attentive estimation – to be doing an admirable job at hiding his surprise at this existing knowledge of his brother. “He’s not answering my texts – it’s like he’s blocked my number, which doesn’t make any sense!”

Eowyn’s head jerks around to stare at him.

Could it be a coincidence? That is exactly the thought she herself had, not an hour ago, about her own cousin. Is it possible that she isn’t crazy, and her awful yearning for Eomer to be here and not in overnight jail, so someone who is not Eowyn could deal with things, is not childish? She opens her mouth, but her words are stuck again. All she can do is inhale like a small bird puffing up its chest and make a very very faint squeaking noise, which she is mostly sure no one can hear.

“Legolas,” interjects rolly chair man. His sharp grey eyes, which had flitted around briefly and shrewdly throughout the hubbub, are now fixed again on Eowyn, and thoughtful. The commotion dies down. In a mild voice he says, “Maybe you could fetch a clean pair of gym shorts and a blanket to lend our new friend, so she’ll be a bit more comfortable.”

Eowyn, swaying a bit on the spot, hadn't even realized she was tugging at her dress again.

“Oh,” she manages.

“Aye, I’d say you’re about the same size,” agrees Gimli, to Legolas, after a beat. “Aragorn has a good eye for these things,” he adds, as if needing their prospective clients in crisis to know this.

“I’ll bring her a comb, too,” says Legolas, not at all meanly, and goes to fetch these things.

“And I’ll put on some tea,” says Aragorn, so named, and for a second time his face softens with that warm, open smile. “I’m Aragorn,” he continues. “Let’s all sit down, and you can both start from the beginning; everything will be alright.”

In the moment after this offer Eowyn locks eyes with Faramir. He is standing next to her. His jumper looks particularly sad now that she is paying attention. He isn’t looking at Aragorn or the sword or the pillow feathers Legolas left behind, but at her. Right at her. There’s a solidarity there. It would be a touching exchange, Eowyn thinks, if not for the fact that the feral cat in its blanket pile has started talking to itself in oddly pitched meows.

A large crash sounds from the back room, accompanied by the sound of a child swearing.

“Yeah, okay,” Eowyn says.

For the rest of today, at least, she has decided that she refuses to feel alone.

#my writing #taylor swift prompt memes #lord of the rings #eowyn #faramir #eowyn x faramir #aragorn #gimli #legolas #legolas x gimli #aragorn x arwen #for those wondering yes the veggie tales vhs is lord of the beans #and the cat IS gollum

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