#the central thing is we have to convince someone to Do something. and so i chose smth i care about

[orcelito]

I guess I should start making fliers soon

🤔

[zepskies]

Lost on You - Part 1

Pairing: Soldier Boy/Ben x F. Supe!Reader

Summary: 1983 is a big year for you. You’re finally chosen to join the ranks of Payback, led by the most (in)famous supe in the world: Soldier Boy. He’ll never admit that he’s trying his damndest to figure you out. You’ll never admit that he’s actually growing on you. But the problem with this game is deciding who’s the predator, and who is prey.

AN: Welcome to Part 1! You guys have really warmed by heart with all the anticipation for this series, so thank you so much. I think it's going to be a fun ride. ��

Song Inspo: “Magic” by Olivia Newton-John. And check out the full “Lost on You Playlist” here. There’s going to be lots of ‘80s music in this series!

Word Count: 4K

Tags/Warnings: SB being an entitled asshole (strap in for a lot of that), misogyny, bullying, and a “meet cute” of sorts…

🎙️ Series Masterlist || YouTube Playlist || Spotify Playlist

Part 1: Siren Song

April 3, 1983

“Why the fuck wasn’t I consulted about this?” Soldier Boy groused.

Arthur Cohen, otherwise known as “The Legend,” released a heavy puff of his cigar within the relative privacy of his office. Vought afforded him a great deal of luxuries, at the cost of days like this.

So, he’d offered the supe one of his most coveted Cubans to pacify him. Because true to form, he was edging closer to a temper tantrum by the minute.

“This decision came from on high, my friend,” Arthur said, with a smile that hid his inner anxiousness. He tapped some ash off his cigar with a finger adorned by a gaudy gold ring. “Stan Edgar, Stillwell, even the entire board of directors signed off on this one.”

“I don’t give a fuck who bought into this PR bullshit,” Soldier Boy postured, crossing his arms across his dark green supe suit as he leaned into the plush seat adjacent to Arthur’s desk. He raised a solid boot on the edge of the newly polished mahogany, and then another, crossing them at the ankles. His cigar was balanced between his teeth in the corner of his mouth.

“The last thing we need,” he said, pausing to inhale. Then he took the cigar from his lips to blow out smoke in hot annoyance. “Is another broad on the team.”

Arthur inclined his head. “I understand your concerns.”

“Do you?” Soldier Boy snorted. “Countess is bitch enough to deal with, believe you me.”

Arthur sympathized. He knew Crimson Countess’s attitude well, but he supposed Soldier Boy had license to say so more than anyone else, considering she was his girlfriend.  

“Look, I could give you the numbers: expected profit margins, demographics, etcetera, but you don’t get paid to hear that from me,” Arthur said, with a magnanimous hand gesture and a fair bit of old Jewish charm. “I’m askin’ you to trust me. This girl’s good, okay? Not just a wig and a pair a’ tits. Nah, she’s got talent. Got a set of pipes on her too, my God.”

Soldier Boy gave him a sly look. 

“Not like that,” Arthur said. He shook his head in amusement, but not with the face of a man who hadn’t already thought about the girl’s pretty mouth. He stroked his chin.

“She’s…interesting. Well, you’ll see. If she brings up the ratings the way we hope, we’ll be able to relocate Swatto. Hopefully to Siberia. He’s a fucking PR nightmare waiting to happen.”

“All right, the guy’s a moron, but he’s fucking hilarious,” Soldier Boy said, smirking. “Like one of the three Stooges.”

Yeah. Arthur wondered if that homeless man Swatto almost split open in Central Park after a sneeze thought he was funny. 

“And her powers. Really?” Soldier Boy went on. His brows drew together then, as he frowned. “Sounds like she blew something up someone’s ass to get this far, and it ain’t smoke.”

“Trust me, that’s the real deal too,” Arthur assured.

But he could see that Soldier Boy wasn’t convinced. The supe rolled his eyes and released another puff.

“Anyway. I’m fucking bored. What’s the next project?” he said. Arthur took an unfiltered breath and peeked at the files strewn across his desk.

“Well, Red Thunder is coming out this fall. We’re pretty sure it’s gonna be the blockbuster of the year,” he replied. “After that, we’ll see about writing a sequel.”

If it makes back the millions we spent in production going over budget, thanks to this asshole’s weekly benders, he mentally added.

“I don’t care about a bullshit sequel,” Soldier Boy said dismissively. “I want to do something new.”

“Something new,” Arthur intoned.

The supe raised a brow. Again, the cigar was balanced between his teeth.

“Yeah.”

He really must be bored, Arthur thought, if he actually wants to work.

“All right, let me brainstorm on that for ya,” Arthur said. “Matter of fact, tell you what. Give me ‘til the end of the week. In the meantime, we’ve got the security team monitoring the police scanner for potential saves.”

The supe didn’t look impressed. His brows furrowed, as if he was irritated that he didn’t get an immediate answer, but his slight nod signaled his agreement before he finally got up from his chair. His boots dragged off Arthur’s desk, knocking over a framed picture of his kids with it, and thudded heavily on the ground. He left the office thereafter.

Arthur heaved a breath of exasperation. He didn’t get paid enough for this shit. 

Fucking supes.

But he didn’t dare utter that thought out loud.

It was days before Ben finally crossed paths with the new girl. Not that he’d been giving the idea much thought.

After that day in Arthur’s office, Ben became engrossed in his own devices—namely one of the assistants, Joanna, his stylist, Angela, and Rachel, his maid, after Donna blew him off for dinner for the third night in a row. This time for some tree-hugging conservationist gala of some kind. 

Frigid bitch, he thought, shaking his head. 

On his way to the gym, he passed the T&T Twins gossiping. Just the sight of them irritated him. Tommy was a kiss-ass, and Tessa shared a brain cell with her brother, so she wasn’t saying much for her gender either. 

“Would you pick your tongue off the floor already! You’re so disgusting,” Tessa said, shoving her brother.

“What? She’s fucking hot,” Tommy snapped in defense. When they finally saw Ben coming, Tessa piped down with her attempt at a “demure” greeting.

Tommy came in hot with a too bright voice and a, “Hey, boss!”

Ben gave them a stoic nod, fully intending to blow past them.

“Have you met the new girl yet?” Tommy asked, with an unmistakable pop of his brows and indecent smile.

Ben nearly rolled his eyes. “No.”

And don’t fucking care, his tone conveyed. He continued on his way to the gym. Behind him, the twins gave each other a look, and a shrug.

When he got to the gym, Journey was playing overhead. Ben frowned as he saw Black Noir working out by himself. The young man wasn’t wearing his suit. Instead, he was bare-chested and running on a treadmill with a nearly 90-degree incline, sweat glistening on his skin. 

Fucking show off, Ben thought. 

Then there was Gunpowder, his young sidekick, practicing his archery. Ben went to him and slapped a hand on his back in greeting, none too gently. The teen stumbled, his arrow landing into the wall instead of the target. 

“Spot me at the bench, ey kid,” said Ben. “And grab me a towel while you’re at it.”

“Uh, sure,” Gunpowder replied, ducking his head as he went. Ben got settled at his usual bench press machine, sliding his back down the thin leather cushion. He waited for the kid to add on his fifty-pound weights on either side, until it reached two hundred pounds. That was just the warm-up. 

“You met the new girl yet?” Ben asked, after he began lifting his first rep. Gunpowder stood behind his head.  

“No, sir,” he said. “Haven’t seen her yet.”

“I haven’t either,” said Noir. He’d come over on his way to the showers, regaining his breath all the while. Ben gave him a sharp side-eye.

“Did I fucking ask you?” he said. 

Noir paused. He hid his frown behind a stoic front, since he didn’t have his mask to do it for him. He toweled off his face and chest as he left the gym. 

Ben shook his head, but he never broke stride on the bench press. 

You seemed to be mysterious. 

Barely anyone had seen you, and you hadn’t gone out of your way to ingratiate yourself with every member of the team, like Ben would’ve expected. Donna had set him in her sights on her very first day.

With fake demure in her hazel eyes, a flick of her long red hair over her shoulder, and a sultry smile, she’d let him take her hand and bring it up to his lips for a gentlemanly kiss. 

That same night, she’d accepted his invitation up to his suite and let him do some very ungentlemanly things. Ben smirked at the memory as he made his way down Vought Tower’s infinite hallways. She sure knew her way around some kinky shit.  

And she still did, the little minx. She’d just been putting the freeze on his balls lately, for whatever her reasons were this time. He didn’t pretend to care or keep track at this point. 

If people only knew what a royal pain Crimson Countess was.

Ben was only taken out of his thoughts when he heard someone singing in the breakroom, gently, but beautifully. He couldn’t make out the words though. He stopped and leaned inside the doorway, just to see who it was. It was early enough in the morning that he was surprised anyone but him was awake.

You were standing there at the counter, making some coffee from the percolator. Soft and dulcet notes fell from your lips in some kind of lullaby. Quirking a brow, the oddness of it managed to draw Ben’s steps into the kitchen. You were wearing a leather supe suit that molded to your every curve, not unlike Donna’s, except yours was black with violet trim lines.

You eventually noticed him with a smile.

“Good morning, sir.”

Ben gave you a charming grin, blatantly eying you from breast to toe before he noted that the coffee had finished percolating. 

"Hey there, sweetheart,” he said. “Pour me a cup, would ya?" 

You did so, and he admired the graceful movements of your hands, and the sweet sound of your voice as you continue to hum to yourself. 

"You're a little crooner, aren't you?" he asked, taking the plain white coffee mug from you. 

When your hand brushed his, he felt it.

Your power.

It threatened to overtake him, drawing you into him like the crash and current of a tidal wave, where he couldn’t help but be pulled undertow. There in that darkness, he craved your warmth as well as your body. The thought, the need gripped him at his core… 

He wanted you to devour him, body and soul.

And he finally registered that your eyes were glowing violet, along with your knowing smile. 

Then you blinked. The violet haze was gone, along with your hold on his mind. 

You went back to sipping your coffee as if nothing had just happened. Ben faltered, mentally and physically as he was forced to grip the counter. He even had to catch his breath as his mind reeled from the loss of connection. 

He covered his unbalance with a steely, angry frown. What the fuck just fucking happened?

He looked at you harder than before, drawing himself to his full height and towering over you. Still, you didn’t seem all that intimidated.

“What the hell did you just do?” he growled.

Your knowing, easy smile remained. 

“Nothing,” you replied. “Just a little smoke.”

Ben’s eyes widened.

“Sounds like she blew something up someone’s ass to get this far, and it ain’t smoke.”

How the hell had you heard about that?

He quirked a brow, but you just sipped your coffee with a gentle slurp. Your gaze moved away from him as you went to the fridge to take out a carton of eggs.

“Want some breakfast? I’m thinking of making some eggs, sunny side up,” you said.

Ben’s hand clenched at his side, but then, he forced himself to relax. Or at least, to look relaxed. You had some fucking audacity to try toying with him…but he had to admit, you were something new.

Interesting.

“What’s your name?” he asked, in a tone that demanded.

“Sirena,” you answered. Your superhero name, which he’d already known when Stan Edgar told him about you a week ago.

Ben’s frown deepened, but he reminded himself to retain some charm. He took your chin between his fingers. His grip was light, but his green eyes were intense, and focused on you. 

“No. Your real name, sweetheart,” he said, brushing your cheek with his thumb.

You blinked, but you obliged him with your name, and a smile that edged at flirtation.

“What’s yours?” you returned.

He had to smirk. He knew you knew full well who he was.

“Call me Ben,” he said.

Three Days Ago…

You tried not to be completely overwhelmed by the sight of this huge tower as you pulled your suitcase behind you. Vought-American was an institution of superhero production, and Payback was the face of it all. The absolute pinnacle.

I still can’t believe they chose me, you thought, but you tried not to let that show. You needed to make it seem like you knew what you were doing. You belonged here, and you were seizing this chance.

Madelyn Stillwell, the head of Superhero Public Relations, personally greeted you at the gate and showed you up to your room. However, you’d barely gotten a chance to step inside and look around before her pager went off. She wore a certain smile when she saw the number on the screen. She tossed a strand of strawberry blonde hair over her shoulder and glanced up at you.

“Sorry, sweetie. I have an appointment to get to, but the directory is there on your desk if you need anything. Feel free to get comfortable,” she said, gesturing at you with her pager in hand. “I’ll be back in an hour or so to give you a tour of the building.”

“Okay, thank you so—”

The door closed behind her before you could even finish your sentence. That deflated you a little, but you tried not to let that small exchange bring you down. Your apartment was huge. Or at least, it was much bigger than the shoebox you left in the Village, let alone the Brooklyn brownstone you grew up in, sharing with two other families on each floor.

You hefted your suitcase onto the bed and began to unpack your clothes, makeup, and toiletries. 

You also took out the only framed picture you had—one that housed your parents and your older brother Chris. You were both grown already, but in this picture, you were barely twelve years old. That little girl didn’t know that her entire world was about to change, when her powers manifested for the first time. 

That thought did succeed in dimming your mood for a moment, but you sighed and set the frame down on your new dresser. You’d have to remember to call Chris. His son was turning four years old in a few weeks. 

Though your attention shifted to a black shape in the corner of your eye. It was a garment bag hanging on the closet door. You went over and unzipped it, revealing your new super suit. It was all black leather and violet accent lines down the sides, along the collar, and down between the breasts in a V-shape. It was strategic to accentuate curves and bust. 

You whistled lowly. It was beautiful, but Jesus did it look tight. 

“Wow,” you remarked, trying out the zipper up and down. “They really like their leather, huh?”

Still, you itched to try it on. After a few minutes of struggling and wiggling, you managed to get into the suit. They’d taken exact measurements, so it did look good. You felt like a new person…a superhero.

You smiled at yourself in the bathroom mirror. But then, you forced the smile off your face and shook your head, schooling your expression into something less doe-eyed and pathetic. More in control.

There you are, Sirena, you thought. You had long ago trained yourself with that enigmatic look. You knew how it felt on your face. The easiest way for you to get what you wanted in this world, the way you’d gotten this far, was with this exact face.

Only show them what you want them to see.   

Almost two hours later, you’d finished unpacking your belongings and explored every corner of your new beautiful apartment, but still, Miss Stillwell wasn’t back yet.

You checked your watch and hummed to yourself. Your curiosity getting the best of you, you decided to leave your apartment and explore the tower by yourself. You took off the suit as well, so you could make your way around more anonymously. You were sure no one really knew who you were yet. 

Your theory was proven true when you walked through the halls, passing Vought employees without even a blink in your direction. That was okay though. Soon enough, all these people would know your face, as well as your name. 

You reached one of the top floors, where you thought you remembered The Legend’s office was supposed to be (according to the directory). Maybe you could meet him and get a jump start on your schedule.

You stopped short, however, when an office door slid open. Out came a slightly disheveled Miss Stillwell. Her blouse was hastily tucked into her gray pencil skirt, and strands of her blonde hair were a bit frizzy as they brushed her shoulders, as if she’d combed them down with her fingers. You plastered yourself to a wall around the corner, only peeking around after she passed by.

Your brows popped up incredulously when you read the name plate beside the door she just came out of.

Stan Edgar…holy shit. His signature was on my contract!

Along with Arthur Cohen, or The Legend, as Stillwell had told you when she welcomed you in. He was the Senior Vice President of Hero Management, so who the hell was Stan?

Well, whoever he was, he was giving it to the head of PR.

Okay then. You shook your head and continued on your way. At the end of the hall, you finally found the right office. You were about to open the door, when you heard male voices coming from inside—one older and dry, and the other deep and strong.

You reached out with your awareness and allowed your powers to engage, likely making your eyes glow with a violet hue.

Sure enough, you sensed two men in the room. And as the voices raised, you recognized one of them. It was unmistakable; you’d been taking the time to binge all of his movies for the past month, ever since you auditioned to get into Payback.

Soldier Boy. 

A smile spread across your face. For a moment, you were incredibly excited…until you actually heard what he was saying.

“The last thing we need is another broad on the team.”

Your mouth fell open in shock as your brows drew together. You carefully pressed yourself to the door and kept listening.

“And her powers. Really?” he said. “Sounds like she blew something up someone’s ass to get this far, and it ain’t smoke.”

“Trust me, that’s the real deal too,” Arthur assured.

You glared at the door furiously, as if you could burn lasers out of your eyes. You crossed your arms, but you breathed evenly as you strived to keep your emotions contained. 

Control, you reminded yourself. With another deep breath, you managed to let go of your ire, but the more you listened to the conversation, the more impossible that became. You turned away from the door and made clipped strides down the hall.

You knew you had to tread carefully here. You’d heard some of the real stories about Payback, because you’d taken the time to listen. You weren’t about to enter Vought Tower without having some idea of what you were getting into, and you knew you’d have to prove yourself as the rookie on the team. You just hadn’t expected their leader to be such a chauvinistic asshole. 

Though inwardly, you snorted. Well, the guy is from the ‘40s. Best generation, indeed.

You rolled your shoulders and shook it away, like water off your proverbial feathers. Your mouth set in a firm line as you held your head high.

The game begins, you thought.

For the next few days, you watched. You studied each member of your new “team” as you encountered them, and you quickly realized that this team wasn’t much of one. 

They looked out for themselves, and bickered amongst themselves, in the case of the TNT Twins. Crimson Countess had given you a lovely, polite face that still somehow mocked you when she walked away, along with the bounce of her red hair. 

Your powers didn’t allow you to sense or read women, but you recognized a diva when you saw one.

Clearly, she was used to being the woman on top, especially as Soldier Boy’s girlfriend. You wanted to roll your eyes at the thought. From what you’d heard (and the masculine cologne you smelled on Arthur’s assistant Joanna yesterday), Soldier Boy got around. His relationship with Countess was either very open, or it was well-crafted PR.

You had another growing, unsettling thought. The more information you gathered just by observing the team, the more you had a hard time believing that you were ever going to fit in around here. 

It was only your third day in the Tower though, you reminded yourself, as you got dressed for the day in your suit. That kind of negativity wouldn’t serve you here. 

So you left your apartment in search of coffee and breakfast at the breakroom and lounge area, exclusive to the team. You supposed these guys were either late sleepers, or they got their food brought to them. You were relieved to find the room empty, and you let out a deep breath.

Remember why you’re here, you thought. It’s not about you. 

It had never been about you. 

You rummaged through the cupboards in search of the one thing that would perk you up—good coffee. You found it near the top shelf and began to prep the coffee maker. You hummed to yourself while your hands moved on autopilot. The tune strengthened, deepening and then sweetening on higher trills. 

Suddenly, your spine prickled. Your mind buzzed faintly with awareness as you sensed a presence.

It was familiar and overwhelmingly male, with heavy, confident steps coming down the hall. You tilted your head and frowned. 

Soldier Boy, that asshole. 

But then, your lips curved upwards. This could be fun. 

When Soldier Boy walked into the breakroom, he noticed you. You pretended not to realize he was there, but you felt the heat of his gaze roaming over your body. You wanted to sigh. Predictable.

Right then, you made a quiet, firm decision. Today, this man was going to learn your name. And he wasn’t going to forget it. 

You turned to him with a smile when he approached—the most pleasant one you could manage.

“Good morning, sir.”

AN: Game, set, match. 😘💚 As many of you know, this story is expanding on this Soldier Boy imagine, which I wrote almost a year ago now. In the back of my mind though, I always thought this idea could be more someday.

So please let me know what you thought of Part 1! I'm so excited for you guys to see what's coming up next...

Next Time:

“Countess, I’m not trying to replace you. I’m not trying to take anything from you.”

“Except my boyfriend,” she shot back. Finally she turned her head towards you with cool disdain. “You think I didn’t see you flirting with him last night at the afterparty?”   

You rolled your eyes, though you hid a sliver of embarrassment. You should’ve known she’d spot that.

“He approached me, okay?” you said. Maybe you were about to let your pettiness to get the best of you, but you couldn’t help it. You smiled slyly. “And from what I hear, I’m the least of your worries. Looks like Ben has quite the appetite.”

The cracks of Countess’s cool façade finally broke through to anger.

▶️ Keep Reading: PART 2

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[kabr0ztrousers]

Let me start off by saying that everything I've read from you so far has been amazing! Ok so I used to be terrified of clowns but now I adore them. Fem reader who is scared of clowns and super timid gets dragged to a fair by a friend. One of the clowns notices and tries to cheer her up maybe tripping over himself and just being goofy. He takes her to a tent and fucks her with his other clown friends showing her there's no reasons to fear clowns. Super fluffy please!

Kabr0z Writes Episode 37: Coulrophilia

Find the rest of the Kabr0z Writes anthology here!

CWs: Clowns; intox; group sex; enthusiastic consent;

A/N: Clowns aren't a thing I naturally find sexy, so we'll see how this one goes. Thanks for the request either way!

There's 4 or 5 stories to get through before the ask box empties out, so please if you have a request or an idea, send an ask or a DM and it'll get added to the pile!

######################################

If there's one thing that's always made your skin crawl, it's clowns. Not that there weren't things that didn't scare you otherwise, you've never quite had a head for heights and spiders can just generally do one, but clowns always made you uneasy. That said, here you were at the circus. Primary habitat of your natural enemy. Your friends had convinced you to tag along, placating you that it'd be fun and you wouldn't even see a clown unless you went into the big top.

They lied, of course. The place was crawling with clowns, seemingly everywhere you looked there were at least two or three. That along with your friends having disappeared almost as soon as you passed the ticket booth, you weren't having the best of times.

Something honked behind you. You tried to ignore it, but it honked again. One of those pale-faced freaks trying to get your attention. You turned to tell them to kindly sod off or point you to the exit.

The clown wasn't there, then another honk came from behind you. You turned again, still no clown. Another honk-honk. You quarter-turned, then shot back in time to see a young man with a greasepaint grin pratfall on front of you. You stifled a chuckle as the man feigned trying to get up a couple of times, each time comically failing in more audacious ways until with an impressive backflip, he landed on his feet, swaying dramatically.

"Well hel-lo there ma'am" His over-pronounced southern drawl was a bit much, but fit the vibe "Are ya havin' a good time?"

You smiled at him, "I'm not much for circuses, and I've lost my friends"

The clown mock-cried when you told him your predicament, pulling hanky after hanky out of his sleeves and dabbing at his eyes "Well, can't have that, can we? Would a balloon pal make it better?" Before you could respond he was already halfway through making a poodle from a long balloon, what could you do but accept it?

"What ya' gonna name him?"

"Squeak!" The name popped into your head. You noticed you're smiling now, the clown noticed it too

"That's a good name" he gave an exaggerated nod "Tell you what, I'll put out some feelers to find your pals, 'til then, would ya like to meet mine?"

You smiled and nodded. The clown produced a hobby horse from the baggy silks of his outfit and 'mounted' it "Well, just follow me, the Clown Ranger!" He galloped off, but not so fast you couldn't stay on his tails as he guided you through the throngs of people, pausing every so often to pull an attendant's ear or dazzle someone with a quick card trick.

Deeper and deeper into the circus you went, the music of the calliope organ getting louder as you drew towards the tents in the middle. The clown lifted a tent flap and motioned inside"After you, Mon Ami"

You stepped in, and blanched. If you thought outside was bad, this was clown central. Literally. A man on stilts was holding a clipboard, calling out commands to the garishly painted mob below, who was needed where, what tent needed a moment to set something up, whose act had gone awry and clowns had to pick up the slack. Your clown cowboy was behind you, fastening the flap back up and motioned to the stilted one.

The chief clown bent down to listen, perfectly balanced even though the stilts were as long as you were tall. He was dressed in black and white with a perfectly even white face besides a pair of exaggerated red lips and gleaming red nose. The lead clown nodded and leant down to you, he spoke with a faint French accent "So, you have lost your fellows, yes? Please tell me what they look like, we will let them know where you are"

You gave a description to the clown, who reared up and called it to the arrayed fools, buffoons and jesters before coming back to you "You are welcome to wait in here, Ranger Rick will keep you company. Enjoy!"

Your newfound clown friend took your hand and swept you to a quiet part of the tent "This is the green room," the accent was gone now, "a bit quieter for you. Wanna see some magic?"

You nodded and the clown grabbed a deck of cards, dazzling you with his sleight of hand, occasionally seeming to screw up a trick to make you laugh before pulling your card or a coin from somewhere seemingly impossible

A couple more clowns stepped into the room and joined in the fun, before long you were in tears of laughter as they riffed off one another.

The night dragged on, and your friends weren't found, the clowns reckoned they'd probably left the circus already. You couldn't help but feel bummed out at that, seeing as they dragged you there to begin with. It was only you, your cowboy and two others in the room, the cacophony from outside dying down.

You and the clowns were sat on some benches, passing around a hip flask, enjoying your own private after-party. The men in front of you were still cracking jokes, though the more they drank the bawdier they got. After recovering from a particularly vile gag about a priest, a nun, and a donkey, you felt butterflies in your stomach. Whatever was in the flask was strong. You'd always had a weakness for a man who could make you laugh, and you were always a bit too easy when you'd had a few drinks.

You budged up to the Clown Ranger, putting your arm behind him and giving an experimental pat on his ass. It was a lot firmer than those oversized trousers gave him credit for. You saw him blush a little despite his makeup as he looked bashfully away from you.

The other clowns noticed "Oi, oi! The cowboy's pulled!" The one on your left called out, thumbs in his suspenders, bowler hat perched on his head. The other just gave a deep belly laugh "He gets all the ladies, never any for us Bozos!"

You cocked an eyebrow at the one in the hat, then the other "You know, I've never had a four-way before..." You spoke as sweetly as you could, the liquor wasn't making it easy to mask your desire for the men around you.

The clowns looked at one another, speechless for the first time in the night. You blushed hard and hunched your shoulders, certain you'd killed the mood. You stood up to leave before you made a bigger fool of yourself.

You stopped when you saw the looks in their eyes. They were all trying to figure out if you were serious, or if you were just joking. You paused to make sure, and certain enough you could feel the desire in the looks they gave you.

Sod it.

You kissed the cowboy. Dragging him to his feet by his comedic lapels. He kissed back, one hand on your back, unfastening your bra through your shirt, the other gripping your ass.

The other two were standing too now, stroking your body as they gently undressed you. Button by button they unfastened your blouse, letting it fall to the sawdust floor before sliding off your bra, leaving you topless as you enjoyed the attention of the three men worshipping your body. You unbuttoned the cowboy's waistband and his pants fell, revealing white boxers patterned with love hearts, which you opened to pull out his cock. It was already rock hard in your hand, thick and uncircumcised. You started with the balls, licking and sucking them before licking all the way to the tip of his cock, savoring the scent of it as you went. The other two followed suit and exposed themselves to you. A cock in each hand and one in your mouth, you sucked and jerked them. All three men were panting over you as you went, feeling your wetness dripping from you and soaking into your underwear. You're glad you wore a skirt, your jeans would be ruined by now.

You pulled off your soaked panties and stood back up, still facing your cowboy as you pushed him back down onto the bench behind him before mounting him. His cock was throbbing against you as you rubbed it against your clit, coating it with your wetness before lining it up and sitting down on it.

He whimpered as it went in, the look of bliss on his face clashing with the painted rictus grin. The one in the hat held his cock beside you. You turned your head to suck it as you rode your cowboy, presenting your asshole to the final clown behind you.

You're not sure where he got a bottle of lube from, but you're glad he had it. The clown in your rear was the biggest of the three, gently pushing it in, stretching you out as you felt the two cocks frotting against one another inside you.

Hands were on every inch of you, your tits, your waist, the sides of your head, your own were busy on your clit and teasing the balls of the one in your mouth.

Your orgasm came easily, quickly followed by another and another, groans muffled by the cock you were sucking on as you buried the cock below you in your pussy. The cowboy must've felt it, you could feel him start to pulse and paint your cunt with his cum. You took the cock out of your mouth to pull his head to yours and kiss him as he dumped his load, pushing your tongue into his mouth. Next was the one in your ass, pushing himself deep into you before releasing into your guts, gripping your tits and squeezing as the last few humps exhausted him.

Finally the one in the hat brought himself off over your face. You opened your mouth to catch as much as you could, but you couldn't help loving the feeling of his cum spattering across your face in hot ropes.

You stayed for a moment, panting and sweating. Feeling the men going soft in you as their juices gently leaked out of you.

Then the one in the hat gave you a handkerchief. Then another. Then another.

"Sorry, they're all tied together"

##############################

Pleasant clown gangbang. More plot that I expected, less than I could've done.

Once again, if you have a request, an idea, a fetish, whatever, drop an ask. As long as it's within the very minimal boundaries in my pinned, it'll probably get written, completely free of charge! It's literally a free commission!

One last note: I did a surprising amount of research on clown makeup for this, it's a fascinating world as it turns out, but cut most of it to avoid writing a treatise on clowning. Ah, well, maybe one day

[traveler-at-heart]

Across the Natashaverse - Part 2

Natasha Romanoff x F!R

Summary: After you're sent to another world, Natasha has to deal with yourself, from another universe, and a very different life.

Other POV from this fic.

“Put more weight on your left foot” Natasha says, barely checking America’s movements.

Of course she knows this is important. Maria asked her to train Chavez in the basics of hand to hand combat. Her mind is elsewhere, though.

Especifically, you.

Natasha thought she was doing you a favor, she really did. Someone as kind as you could do much better than her. Agreeing to a date would only give you false hope, so she rejected the invitation.

It was foolish of her to think that things would be the same after that. You weren’t distant or rude, though that might have been easier.

Every morning, you’d still have breakfast with her, show her funny videos or tell her about your latest discoveries in the lab with Stark, which in the end, were related to her work as well.

You simply stopped sharing your interests, or going out of your way to seek her company. Long gone were the days of sitting together at the Met while you talked about your favorite paintings. Or the grocery shopping that turned into strolls through Central Park and ended in your favorite bookshop.

All that was left now were pleasantries.

“Am I doing it right?” America asks. She sure as hell isn’t, so Natasha shakes her head, hoping she can manage to focus on the task at hand.

“Stop” she says, stepping on the sparring mat.

“Please don’t tell me you want me to fight you”

“You’re punching the air, Chavez. The only way to learn is by doing. It will be fine”

The girl doesn’t seem too convinced, but Natasha starts with slow movements and corrects America as they go. When the intensity of the training increases, the girl’s powers begin to stir. A yellow flash on the ceiling distracts Natasha, and the next thing she feels is America’s fist colliding with her cheek.

“Crap! Agent Romanoff, I’m so sorry”

But there’s another loud thud, not far from the gym.

“Did you hear that?” Natasha asks, trying to figure what the noise is.

“Maybe”

“Take a break” Natasha instructs, looking around the room to check if everything’s alright. The team is still figuring out the extent of her powers and Natasha worries the girl just unleashed a demonic creature or something.

The redhead is so focused on the room, she doesn’t notice someone approaching.

That is, until she feels a hard slap on her ass, and a sultry voice against her ear.

“There’s my favorite ass-assin”

Five seconds later, she has the intruder upside down, back against the floor, gasping for air.

“Baby, I know you don’t like my jokes but this is a little too much, don’t you think?”

It takes her a second to process what’s happening.

“Y/N?”

“Hey, love” you smirk, all smug despite being knocked down by Natasha. “The weirdest thing just happened, I was going to get a snack because Anya was moody and then fell on my ass right outside the gym”

Natasha stares at you, as if you’re speaking a foreign language. And then it all clicks. The slightly longer hair, how you smell and feel different.

She let’s go of you and starts pulling your shirt by the collar.

“Hell yeah, let’s get naked”

“Where’s your birthmark?”

“I don’t have a…”

“You’re from another world”

“Ah, that’s so sweet…” you try to lean forward and kiss her, but she pushes you away. “Babe, I’m getting mixed signals here”

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., call for an emergency meeting”

—

“I’m sorry, she’s what?” Sam points at you, and Natasha pinches the bridge of her nose.

“She’s from another universe. America must have opened up a portal when we were training”

“Alright, so she just opens it back and we correct the mistake”

“It’s not that simple” Tony walks in.

“Uhm, guys. This meeting should be for Avengers only” you lower your voice, eyeing the man suspiciously.

“Hello? That table you’re sitting in so carelessly. Mahogany. Paid by me”

“Yeah, I’ve never seen this man before”

“A world without Tony Stark” Steve says, amused.

“Must be really quiet in your Compound” Sam says and you smirk.

“Why, no thanks to you. Not with all those super models you’re always bringing back to your room” you raise your eyebrows and Sam’s eyes widen.

“I date super models? I wanna go to her world”

Steve and Tony begin to argue about how that will make the multiverse collapse, when Natasha interrupts them.

“She’s messing with you, idiots”

Tony and Sam look at each other and then at you. You almost fall to the ground as you laugh. Since you’re not helpful, the team ignores you as they keep discussing the best way to identify your reality and correct the glitch.

“Y/N 2.0, we need more information about your… where did she go?” Tony grumbles.

“I got this” Natasha sighs, stomping to the kitchen. Sure enough, you’re rummaging through the fridge, complaining at every item of food you find.

“Don’t you have anything with sugar here?”

“You’re free to prepare anything for yourself”

“Not unless you want the kitchen to explode, Nat”

The redhead pushes you aside, while you look around the living room, inspecting the pictures on every place you can find.

“No wedding? Or Anya?”

“Nope” Natasha says, her voice shaking lightly.

“Why?”

“None of your business” she says, handing you a plate with a sanwich.

“Thanks. How did you know I was lying about Stark and Wilson?”

“Your voice gets all high pitched when you tell a lie” she answers, refusing to look at you.

“Huh” you mumble, taking a bite out of the sandwich. “Um. Is this peanut butter?”

“Would her Highness prefer caviar?” Natasha teases, but turns around and finds you covered in hives. “Shit!”

“That’s fine” you say, struggling to breathe. “Nothing an epi can’t fix, love”

You pass out in the middle of the kitchen, wondering if you’ll leave this foreign universe in one piece.

—

After leaving you at the medbay, Natasha goes back to the meeting room. She’s examining all the reports and missions that are related to multiverses. It’s a lot to digest, including all the quantum physics.

Alone for the first time since this whole thing started, she finally allows herself the chance to miss you. Right around this time, you’d be making dinner, and she’d be in the kitchen, pretending to help just to be close to you.

What if she never gets you back?

“Hello, there” a voice says. You approach slowly, knowing it’s best not to surprise her.

“How are you feeling? I’m really sorry…”

“There’s no way you could have known. It honestly never occurred to me that things like allergies were different” you say, patting her leg. “Interested in string theory?”

“Yeah, it’s a great ice breaker” Natasha says, and you chuckle. “You don’t seem too worried”

“The America Chavez of my world has had a bit more training. I’m sure I’ll be back home for lunch tomorrow”

“You could have said something!” Natasha feels the need to kick your ass again.

“Hey, I was gonna! And then I almost died”

“Jerk”

“What are you so worried about? She’s in a safe world”

“What if your Natasha gave Y/N a similar welcome?”

“Oh, I’m sure she had her pinned to a wall, only for very different reasons”

Natasha turns to you, alarmed. Her jealousy is so obvious that all you can do is laugh.

“There it is. I wasn’t sure you had any feelings towards her. Wanna tell me what happened?” you nudge her chair with your foot and she looks at you, annoyed.

“She asked me out, gave me flowers, I said no”

“Flowers, huh? Well, she’s more romantic than me. Natasha and I were pretending to be a couple for a mission and then I just blurted out I wouldn’t mind doing it again under different circumstances” you explain, laughing at the memory.  “But hey, if flowers and chocolates aren’t your thing, I respect it”

“It’s not like that”

“Then, what is it like?”

She thinks back to all the times you’ve made her feel safe, cared for, loved. You make it look so easy, but for the life of her, Natasha can’t figure out how to reciprocate.

What you make her feel, is too good and beautiful for someone like her.

“I haven’t earned her love” is all she manages to say.

“Natasha” you call, softly, and only speak when she finally turns to you. “You don’t have to do anything to be deserving of love”

There is silence, and then you take her hand in yours.

“Come on, I’m starving. Let’s grab some Chinese”

“Fine. No more peanut butter, though. I don’t want to fight myself if something happens to you”

“Now that would be entertaining”

—

Next morning, everyone is back in the meeting room. Apparently, due to some bad experiences, they’ve decided you should come back to your world immediately, before the universes collapse.

“I promise you, it will be fine” you insist. Natasha is the only one that seems to believe you, so you save yourself the trouble and spin around in the office chair.

“Can you stop?” Steve says, irritated.

“I’m trying to create a vortex that is powerful enough to send me back to my reality, Steve” but he still glares and you stand up. “Fine. I’m getting a snack”

As you exit the room, Natasha comes running behind you.

“Wait. I wanted to apologize”

“Steve is an old grumpy man, don’t sweat it”

“No, not about that. I’m sorry for… being so hard on you when you first got here”

“We deal with aliens and all kinds of threats.  It’s not so crazy to think that an intruder is dangerous. It’s all good, Nat” you shrug your shoulders.

“I just wouldn’t be ok if your Natasha had acted that way with my Y/N”

“Your Y/N?” you repeat, pleased as Natasha blushes. “Good for you, Romanoff. Get the girl. Trust me when I say, she’ll make it worth it” you wiggle your eyebrows.

“Such a flirt”

“We can’t help ourselves around you, no matter the universe”

You wink, and walk to the kitchen, leaving Natasha in the hallway.

Inevitably, she thinks about you. The one that belongs here, with her. Are you enjoying your time in that other universe? Will you resent her for bringing you back? Maybe that Natasha is more loving and sweet, and you’ll finally realise that she can’t actually make you happy…

Her thoughts begin to spiral again, until the commotion in the room breaks her train of thought.

“Damn, you fell from the ceiling” Sam says, looking up. A yellow portal closes just as Natasha opens up the door. Everyone’s around you, and when your face comes to view, Natasha’s heart almost stops.

There’s a little cut and bruising from the fall, but you’re back.

She pushes everyone, and wraps you in her arms. You return the gesture.

“Hey, it’s ok. It’s me”

She hugs you closer, smiling against your neck.

Natasha’s never letting go again.

—

“So, tell me everything!” you say, sitting next to Natasha as you drive back home. “Did I tell you I almost died to peanut exposure?”

“Looks like someone had fun” your wife comments and you smile.

“What about you, my love? Did you do anything dirty with my other self?”

“Well, there might have been some kissing and touching before I noticed…”

“Not to brag, but the other Natasha was on top of me” you say, trying to pretend like it’s no big deal your wife kissed another you.

“You pissed her off and she threw you to the ground, didn’t she?” Natasha smirks.

Damn it.

“Maybe”

Seeing your daughter brings you back to reality. Fun as it was to be in another universe, your life is perfect here.

“Mommy, are you cooking dinner again tonight?” the girl says as you carry her to the kitchen.

“Uh… let’s have lunch first, yes? Go wash your hands”

Natasha hands you a plate of what the other Y/N made and you gasp.

“Holy crap, this is delicious! Babe, not gonna lie, I wouldn’t have judged you if you fucked her against a wall after tasting her food”

“You’re such an idiot” Natasha rolls her eyes, sitting on your lap and stealing a bite of the pasta. “But you are my idiot”

“Always and in every universe, baby”

You kiss her softly, happy to be home.

[hunnylagoon]

Take Me to War

PT1 Friendly Fire

Streamer! Ellie Williams x reader

A writer, I think is someone who pays attention to the world. We are observers, it is in our nature to be off-putting and turn shallow things deep.

Premise: Your neighbour is becoming increasingly loud and you decide to do something about it.

PT 2 Here!

Two things I hate the most?

My neighbour and New York City.

They shared something in common, they never rest. I liked my quiet life in my small town until I was convinced that all of the greatest writers lived in the city, what a joke. I sold my virtue to move to New York and now my body burned with the shame of not belonging.

I worked as a journalist and in advertisement but it didn't fill the gaping mass that consumed me, I felt like a sellout so I quit to do freelance, and now I feel like even more of a sellout. Freelance is making me think that I hate ghostwriting more than I hate my neighbour and New York City.

It's like you do all of the work and get zero reward but I'm desperate to pay the bills and all that stuff I've been telling myself all my life 'I may never be a rich man but the rich man will never have me' well, the rich man most certainly had me. I was paid an almost criminal amount of money to pour my soul into art just for it to get stamped beneath a new name and make a gross income six times the size of what I sold it for.

I look for happiness everywhere but I do not find it. I search for it in things everyone seems to pry joy from; I go clubbing, walk in Central Park, and date around, but happiness doesn't seem to exist there for me.

I plead for it in my morning cups of tea with a spoonful of honey, the sunshine glittering in a puddle after a rainstorm, for a brief moment, it flickers in the light of my cinnamon-scented candle. The truth is I am almost comforted by my sadness and it is in my lowest moments that my creations are the most beautiful, it is like I am dead and I despise those who aren't for I enjoy the company of my silence more than anyone I have ever met.

It was my dream for my name to be above 'New York Times Best Selling Author' but instead, it is just my work beneath it and maybe that's why I'm so bitter.

Right now as I am trying to salvage the bits and pieces I was given by a washed-up pop star for her memoir my neighbour is screaming and laughing incoherently in their apartment, it makes me miss living in an actual house.

The noise usually started up when I would finish up my writing and get ready for bed, then it would go all the way through the night. The dumb fucker probably threw parties every single night; my roommate never faced an issue with this as she worked at a club and was usually working when the deafening noises would begin.

I on the other hand who lived in that apartment and worked from that apartment was always cursed to listen to the random thumps and spats of laughter that sounded all through the night. At least once a night when I'm sound asleep, I hear a bang against the wall and each time without fail, I'm brought awake with my heart thumping.

Trust me, I have retaliated.

On occasion when I'm sleep-deprived and at my absolute limit I'll bang on the walls, that only stops the noise for a minute. I've even complained to my landlord and that one week was heaven until it eased back to the clamour that I've almost grown used to.

Almost.

I still hate it.

I'm broken from my thoughts when my phone rings, it vibrates till it's almost at the edge of my desk and I feel for it; don't worry buddy, I wanna jump too. I read the caller ID and I almost wanted to gag, it was a woman from the publishing company who reached out to me and asked me to write Nicole Elliot's novel. Despite wanting to throw my phone against the wall to stop Noemi's constant checkups and get back at my neighbour while I'm at it, I answer the phone "Hey, Noemi!" I glance out the window where the winter sun has long set, leaving nothing but billboards, street lamps and neon signs to light up the New York night. Under the unforgiving lights I can barely make out the gentle snowfall.

"Hey," She draws it out and I can hear in her voice that she is smiling "I know it's a little late, just checking in, how is the draft coming along?" A loud thump sounds against my wall along with intolerant cackling "What's that?"

"Just some street noise," I dismiss "Anyways, the draft is coming along great, I'm a couple thousand words away from finishing it. I will of course send it to you and I would really love it if you could reach out to Nicole and ask for her opinion on it before I carry on with the final copy," I give a middle finger to my wall, even if my neighbour can't see me, it makes me feel a little bit more formidable "I did follow her outline, which was difficult but I think I salvaged it pretty well."

This time there is a yelp from my neighbour and what sounds like someone slamming their hands down onto a table, Noemi thankfully ignores it "You haven't been in touch with Nicole?"

My eyebrows furrow "She hasn't responded to any of my emails and she's been turning down all of our scheduled Zoom calls, so no, I have not been in touch with her."

"Weird," Noemi comments and there is a brief break of silence between us "She's been M.I.A on our end too," I could hear her scribble something down. "So can you get the draft to me by Friday?"

Two days? If I lock myself inside and don't see the sun then I totally can "Absolutely!" I do work better under a deadline.

"Great," She sounds almost relieved "We will hunt down Nicole, it would be nice to get her greenlight with this but whether or not she approves it, she has already signed off and it will be going to print."

"Okay," I fight the urge to respond with 'sick' or 'aight' because I'm an adult now and someone who is masquerading as a professional.

"Sorry, what was that you mentioned about an outline?" Noemi asks, she sounds more confused with each word "I wasn't aware Nicole made any-

She is swiftly cut off by a crash from the other side of my wall, when I say crash I mean it. It sounded like someone just bodied their car into drywall. My eyes went wide as I saw a crack splitting up my once pristine white wall. I hold my phone against my collarbone as I get up and pound my fist against the wall, giving it a kick for extra measure.

"Is everything alright?"

"Certainly," The nice thing about phone calls is that the person on the other end can't see your awkward habits or subtle outbursts (Or neighbours breaking through your shared wall). After I hit the wall, everything went silent for just a second before laughter sounded heavily from multiple people. "Noemi, thank you for sourcing me out to write this, I am really grateful for this opportunity I will send you that draft on Friday." I try to wrap up the call but she speaks up.

"Well, I've read your work and I was very impressed, I trust you will do well with this. Sorry to have called you so late-

"Thanks, have a nice night now!" I'm talking faster than I can even think, the only thing in my head is the fact that my neighbour is slowly deteriorating my wall.

"Wait-

Before Noemi can finish her sentence, I've hung up the phone. I'm leaning back in my cushy office chair, hands gripping my hair as I stare down the newly formed crack in the wall. I don't entirely like to be confrontational, even in school I hated drama, but I was beginning to think it was necessary.

I saved the progress I had made on the memoir and pushed myself up from my desk. I was clad in nothing more than a t-shirt and some plaid pants, it was my writing attire and in the moment I didn't care much to make a good first impression. It was fucking freezing the second I got up from my desk.

The moulding on my bedroom window was broken which allowed the frigid New York air to slip into my room and make me shiver with each breath. At my desk, I would usually have a throw blanket to shroud my freezing body but the moment I discarded it, I felt regret. I almost wanted to wrap myself in it to confront my neighbour but the pyjamas alone didn't help me look tough.

I did however shove my feet into some cow slippers and march right up to their apartment.

Apartment 2D stood in front of me, the pastel blue door making me angrier with every second that I looked at it. I rapped my knuckles on the wood and crossed my arms to stop me from shuddering.

My nerves built up as I slowly heard a door within the apartment shut followed by footsteps leading to the door. I would just ask them politely to quiet down and calmly work on a way to fix the shared wall that they are slowly ruining.

The door opens and staring me down is a woman. I had expected it to be a man to be truthful. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, the colour teetered on the verge of auburn and brown. The woman is clad in a black tank top and grey sweatpants, it's almost parallel to my outfit.

"You need to be quiet," I say the first words that come to mind "And stop assaulting my fucking wall."

She sucks a sharp breath through her teeth "Are you apartment 3D?" She asks to which I nod "I knew you would be stopping by soon." She has this sheepish and almost sardonic smile on her face and despite the amusement she's portraying I can see sadness brewing in her green eyes like a storm.

"I don't know what you're doing in there where you are up all night, I don't even have a clue how you sleep and work with all this time to spare to be a nuisance." I say and then swiftly feel the urge to backtrack "I'm sorry, that was a little rude, but mate, I can't sleep or work when you're being loud doing whatever you do."

"Fuck," She mutters looking back into her apartment and then at me "I'm sorry, I'll keep it down."

"What about the wall?"

Her eyes look me up and down, settling on my cow slippers "I'll find someone to fix the wall."

I press my lips tight together, looking dead into her eyes, scraping my brain for something else to say. It was almost like I wanted to fight. I had expected this to be a full-out conversation that ended in yelling but god she was pretty and she was telling me just what I wanted. "Okay."

"Okay?"

I regard her once more with what I assume is a cold glare before ushering back into my apartment and slamming the door behind me, the whole time, my neighbour watches me from her doorway.

That was the first night of uninterrupted sleep I'd had in a month.

-

I woke up earlier than I would've liked when my roommate Margot came home from work at 4:56 on the dot. She made sure to slam every single door and cupboard before throwing herself onto her bed in all of her makeup and musty clothes that had to endure whatever happens at a nightclub between the hours of 8 pm and 4 am, which I can't imagine is very clean.

Still, even though I was a little ahead of schedule I fell into my morning routine. It started with ignoring my phone, this was followed by a mug of Bengal spice tea with a teaspoon of honey and a splash of cream.

Sometimes I would curl up on the couch, though it snowed last night and I loved fresh snow. Freshly fallen snow absorbed sound, it was like soundproofing for the earth. There wasn't anything like the rare peace you could find in New York. I figured I would have my morning tea on the fire escape.

My peaceful image was destroyed the second I pried my window open and crawled through I was hit with the intense smell of pot. "Shit," I mutter, instinctively wafting the scent away from my nose.

"Sorry, man," I see my neighbour leaning against the railing of the fire escape, nursing a joint. It hadn't crossed my mind that I shared a level of the fire escape with her, I had never seen her out here but now the smell of weed that drifted through the damaged moulding on my window made sense, I had always assumed it to be Margot.

"Joint for breakfast?" I ask, half-joking. A dusting of powdery snow adorns each step and railing, creating a delicate layer of white that contrasts with the industrial gray of the metal though it looks like my neighbour has pushed all of the snow off the platform.

"Nah, for dinner I guess, it helps me sleep," She's in the same outfit from last night, except her hair is now loose around her face and she threw a hoodie over her tanktop.

I furrow my eyebrows "You've been up all night?" The slight tension from the previous night has dissolved completely.

"Yeah," She says it like it was a stupid question and it partially was but I hadn't stayed up that late since New Year only because I was the designated driver and was in charge of getting everyone home safe. "I don't sleep much, that's probably why I keep you up all night."

I mean, I'd let her keep me up in other ways "Honestly, I've gotten used to it, it's almost like white noise." I try to sympathize even if it isn’t necessarily true.

"Next time I'm loud, you have every right to bang on my door and chew me out." She takes a drag from her joint and I watch as the smoke escapes her lips, her cheeks tinted pink from the cold.

"Good to know," I glance behind her at the open window and all I see are purple LED lights cutting through the darkness of her apartment. "Now I know that we share a fire escape I'll just crawl through your window and yell at you that way," I joke, taking a sip from my snoopy mug.

This makes her laugh in the slightest, she crushes what remains of her joint on the cold railing and tosses the bud into the pot of a dead plant that's covered in snow and has lived on this fire escape long before I moved in; one time I just about removed it but I felt bad, it's like I was evicting it from its rightful home "Feel free."

"Am I allowed to ask why you're up all night breaking the sound barriers?" I ask, pulling my fuzzy robe tighter around my body to fight the bitter air. "Are you the leader of a cult? Would it be better for the world in the long run if I push you right now?"

The corners of her lips curl up into a smile once again "You've figured me out, just know I've got some big plans with Koolaid," She plays into my teasing.

"It was flavour-aid, actually." I don't know why I said that.

"What the fuck is flavour-aid?"

"Koolaid basically," Silence stretches between us "So what do you actually do all night?"

"It's a bit complicated," She says, of course, it was complicated. "I work from home," She couldn't do something normal, she probably did voice acting or ran a podcast or some weird shit like that.

"Sick," Don't worry, I made myself cringe when I said that too "I work from home too."

"Yeah, you said something about work last night, are you in marketing?"

I shake my head "I'm a writer," every time I tell someone that, I feel a twinge of embarrassment. I know it wasn't a noble career like my parents had hounded me over, but it felt noble to me. I had two absent parents and was raised by a pack of wolves, I would devour as much food as fast as I could because I didn't know when I would be eating next. I was far too emotional to be around all of the narcissists who preferred their own faces to my company, the only friend I had was the written word.

Since then I have been serving my soul up to strangers through word documents.

The thought makes me homesick for the arms that did not hold me and I truly expect my neighbour to make a mockery of me, the way others have. The way they've told me 'It's a tough industry but hang in there!' and pat me on the back like I'm a hopeful child clinging to her mother's skirts.

"That's really cool," She smiles while she gazes out to the skyline, I can see her perfect side profile and ski-slope nose "I wanted to be a writer, I thought myself to be a poet, and then I thought myself to be a scientist and wanted to be an astronaut. Now, I'm here."

"Where's here exactly?"

"Working things out, figure it out as I go," She shrugs like she is unsure of her answer.

I think it's beautiful how everything around me has been touched by human hands and carries so much history. For a quick moment, my mind wonders to those who built this building, the calloused hands that crafted the iron railing and now my neighbour who was leaning against it. "What's the end goal with this whole freefall thing?"

"To make it out alive."

"And your name?"

"It's Ellie."

-

That night Ellie stuck to being quiet as she promised. The next night was a different story. I was so close to finishing the draft of Nicole Elliot's memoir and was praying that the deadline would pass with no issue.

However, the noise began again. I was coming around to like Ellie and I didn't want to go yell at her again so I shoved my headphones in and turned up my playlist as loud as I could. There is no song I can blast in my headphones to drown it out.

She did say that the next time I was loud I could come and chew her out, I wouldn't do that; I would just knock on her door and quickly tell her that she was being too loud, and then we would both carry on with our respective work.

I stopped in front of the smooth door and raised my hand to knock. Ellie slips the door open just a crack, when she sees that it's me she opens the door. "Hey, Ellie."

"Hello," She smiles "To what do I owe the pleasure?" She had a very nice smile.

We both know the circumstances of my visit but I spell it out anyway "Dude, you're way too loud, it's disruptive and I'm working under a deadline."

"I know, I'm sorry." She looks genuinely apologetic.

"I don't know any office job that needs you to scream for hours on end," Alright, that blows what could've been a simple visit where she apologizes and I leave, I always had to add on.

"Right, sorry," She carries herself with so much confidence that it is like she is wearing armour made of gold though she has these subtle awkward tendencies of someone who has never been loved and was forced to improvise. "It's hard to explain,"

"Yeah, you've said-

"Do you wanna come and see?"

I'm taken a little aback and for a minute I think this is all a ploy for Ellie to lock me in her her apartment and kill me because she is sick of her neighbour banging on her door "What?"

"Well, you've asked a couple of times and if you have a minute I can show you."

I pause, mauling over her proposal. I think of my laptop on my spruce desk, open to the final pages of the memoir and I make up my mind "Alright, just not too long."

"If you say so," Ellie opens the door wider for me to move past her and then shuts it behind us.

Ellie's apartment is what I had expected from her even though it is surprisingly nice. She has a large L-shaped sofa in the living room adorned with throw blankets and pillows and a huge flatscreen with a coffee table in front of it. The layout is exactly like mine but inverted, her open kitchen has some odd knick-knacks that looked like they belonged on an Amazon must-haves list.

I don't go into her bathroom and the door leading to one of the rooms (What is equivalent to Margot's bedroom) is shut. The apartment itself is pretty sparse aside from little bits and pieces as she only moved in a month prior.

On the left side, I see that purple LED spilling out of what I assume to be her bedroom.

She walks in ahead of me and the second I follow in after her there is one question I have to ask "Ellie, are you a porn-star?" There are entirely too many computers in here. Her desk is set up with one of those fancy triple-screen PCs and she has a laptop placed seemingly randomly on a white loveseat that's pressed against the right wall.

There is one of those galaxy lamps that projects that trippy shit onto your walls and ceiling. The screen of her PC is facing our shared wall and I can see a huge hole where I assume that a loud crash from the other night occurred. Plastered all over the walls are posters from video games and movies, many of which I hadn't seen.

"What?" She sounds nearly offended "No," she grabs a folding chair from the corner of the room and unfolds it beside her black florid office chair. She sits on the folding chair and motions for me to sit in the office chair. "Come, sit."

I hesitantly sit in the chair "Are you going to attack me now?" I ask, getting defensive for no particular reason other than it was in my nature "Because I've read The Outsiders and I'm pretty sure I can fight."

She chuckles "I'm not gonna fight you."

"Because I'd win?"

She furrows her eyebrows but has this look of amusement on her face "Yeah, definitely."

"So what is this?" I motion around at all of her equipment.

Ellie puts one earbud in then hand me the other "Chat," She says, looking dead at the camera clipped onto her PC "This is my neighbour who came to yell at me for being annoying, she has every right."

"Who are you talking to?"

"I'm streaming," She said, clicking something on the screen so it changed, instead showing Ellie and I in front of the camera, I looked absolutely lost next to a rolling chat bar full of jokes that I didn't understand and people saying hello to me.

"So I was right," I turn my attention to Ellie "You are an internet person."

"Yeah, I'm an internet person but you weren't right, I don't do porn."

"Not yet," I shrug "Times are desperate," To this, the chats come in even faster than before. "So do you just sit here all night and scream at people?"

"I play video games and do challenges, sometimes I do just sit here and scream at them."

"That makes so much sense," I say "If there's any job that needs you to be obnoxiously loud and annoying, it's a youtube personality."

"Okay, well-

"So you're like Logan Paul?"

Her eyes go wide "No-

"What explains why your eyes are so bloodshot."

"You are a writer," She says it like it's a fact I wasn't aware of "You are in no place to judge, you probably spend as much time in front of a screen as me."

I nod "I hate to say you're right," My attention shifts to the hole behind me "Can you explain how playing video games put a hole through the wall?"

Ellie looks almost embarrassed, she doesn't say anything in response, instead, she just clicks something to screen share with us in a little box in the corner and then goes into YouTube. She types in 'Ellie Williams falls through wall' My eyebrows furrow as I read it, and she clicks the first video that pops up.

The video starts off strong; Ellie is cackling at something that her friend off-camera is saying, her friend then makes a comment that makes her laugh even harder and she throws herself back in her chair. This act breaks it, you can hear the chair snap beneath the pressure and Ellie just lets it happen as the chair crashes against the wall. Her eyes go wide when she realizes she's just put a massive hole into the wall and seconds later you can hear me on the other side banging my hands on the wall. Her eyes go wide and she stares at her friend off-camera, all of the laughter stops abruptly before her friend can't hold it in anymore and erupts in chortles, and the video cuts off.

My hand flies over my mouth to fight back the laughter I so badly want to let out. Ellie and I sit wordlessly, the only sound being donations on the screen and my giggles slipping through. Eventually, I manage to compose myself and look to Ellie, I don't have much to say except for "Oh my god."

A/N: Streamer! Ellie won the poll so here we are. As I was drafting out the other chapters for When I Was Your Girl, I decided that it is most likely to be discontinued unless I do a rewrite which will not be in the near future. I’m not rocking with the plot and there was a lot of mixed feedback, sorry if you were invested I guess, but you have this series to be invested in now!

[phoenixyfriend]

Anakin's Pregnant and So Must Marry

So the other day I sent this message to a few friends and waited to see who would bite:

I want a "someone gets pregnant but it's a history/fantasy AU where the ONLY way to not become utterly destitute is to marry the person who got you pregnant (or marry someone willing to lie and claim they did it)" AU First thought is Rexwalker but I'm open to ideas

And I already shared the silly Bo/Din version with jebiknights here, but I alsodid a version with @threebea, and that's what this one is.

It's Rexwalker. Also Codakin? And Padme/Cody. And background Blyla. And Obi-Wan's the central figure of a spiderweb polycule.

Let's go!

Context is mostly this AU.

Bea:

Rex not getting him pregnant but claiming the baby despite the ungodly amount of complications it's about to involve for himself. Because he's a soldier and it means Anakin marrying down BUT marrying at all means he is spared being thrown out on the streets. On Rex's side, accusations of him gold digging and baby trapping Anakin, his father absolutely livid because either he has beef with the family or serves under Dooku or both. Anakin (at first) not WANTING Rex to make this claim. (it was an impulse to save him so there was no planning at all) Like develops into romance/lust later on but for now they are friends at best, and Rex has just taken on a lot on his behalf, and Anakin is the one that usually is throwing himself in front of bullets (or arrows or whatever).

help what if Anakin's got some Virgin Birth bullshit going on like Shmi

Oh Palpatine as Main Father Figure for Anakin too so you know there are some plots and schemes and anger happening because he had plans for Anakin. (Obi-Wan like his minder or guard or something who was actually doing more raising than Palpatine but has No Say about any of this.) Anakin: I did not have sex Obi-Wan: [panicking] Anakin I think we're past lying about it. You need to tell me who the father is (and I will fix this somehow I will fix this for you) Anakin: It was a virgin birth Obi-Wan: ………. (we're doomed.) Oh Dooku not a relation Dooku is the scheming vizier because those are always fun. Knows somehow Rex isn't the father and is trying to prove it, because if Anakin can't inherit he benefits.

This could be in that AU I've got where Anakin's all princess-in-the-castle who doesn't know if he has any REAL friends because most of his friends work for him somehow (tutor Obi-Wan, maid Aayla who is technically also spying on him, Padme is a lady of the court, Rex is his bodyguard, and Ahsoka works in the stables).

(The fantasy AU is trans-inclusive but also aghast at children out of wedlock.)

Also an option is the thing from the first season of Bridgerton where a soldier got someone pregnant and then went off and died in war, so his brother comes by and says that since his brother did this to her, he'll take responsibility and marry her himself.

Rex: Cody is the father Obi-Wan: (Well I know that's not true because Cody was fucking Padme, rip Cody) Rex: And as he's passed, I'll take responsibility. Naturally Cody returns just before the end of the 'season' to mess up the plan and suddenly he's supposed to marry Anakin and what is happening now?

Cody's ghost, if he were actually dead: Obi-Wan you know what threesomes are, right? You know how close Padme and Anakin are, right?

If Cody had known Rex had Feelings for Anakin then maybe he wouldn't have agreed, but Padme had thought it would be fun to hook up with Ani while Cody watched (it was the anniversary of Shmi's death, he's soooo sad, honey, what if we cheer him up?) and there was never supposed to be any PiV contact between Cody and Anakin, buuuuuuuuuuuut then they all got a little carried away and Whoops

Obi-Wan and Cody were pals they gossiped he would know. (Although he does get convinced. Maybe Cody didn't tell him because he knew Obi-wan would murder him himself.) Cody: I lived. I'm back from the war. What do you mean I'm going to be a father? (Oh no i got Padme pregnant and then just left her to deal with it?!?) Of course I'll take responsibility! Anakin: Um. So. Hi. Cody: Why's Skywalker here? lol I'm still on virgin birth (I just think it's funny no one is at fault but everyone has to deal.)

Obi-Wan: Anakin are you saying our lord in heaven (or whatever fantasy equivalent) impregnated you? Anakin: …..I mean… I guess it must have been? Which… kind of fucked up when I think about it actually Obi-Wan: (Anakin giving birth to the messiah wasn't on my bingo card, and yet somehow I almost believe it just because of all the grey hairs I'm about to sprout)

Padme swans in, grabs Ani and the Fett boys, and swans right off into a study to lock the door behind her so Obi-Wan can't get in. Then draws a curtain over it so noises are too muffled to get through the keyhole.

Anakin definitely assumes that Shmi, while deeply unhappy, was properly married to and impregnated by His Dear Father, Palpatine. Rather than some lady that got Magic Pregnant and then kind of abducted and forced into marriage so Palpatine could have the magic baby.

Until Dooku pulls Obi-Wan aside and has some Words about how uhhhhh nope. There was some weird magic happening. Old Man's A Sorcerer.

Obi-Wan: (OH NO) Obi-wan who didn't want this to happen and doesn't want to know any of this having to deal with the fact that not only Anakin MIGHT have a virgin pregnancy but also it might be magic

Oh hey, what if there WAS a threesome but the pregnancy timeline doesn't match up to it.

Threesome happens after Cody's return, just before Rex and Anakin have properly confessed and incites some jealousy on Rex's side, and some 'is it weird to be thinking of his brother while we're doing this' on Anakin's side. Padme: …. you really need to confess to Rex, Ani.

Dooku doesn't know the details of the magic but he can send a hawk to fetch the Wretched Hag Of The Woods Which was supposed to be Mother Talzin, but she didn't feel like it, so she sends Ventress instead. (Who of course brings her cousin, Maul, as her escort/chaperone/bodyguard (unecessary)).

He and obi-wan have intense sex in the middle of all this because both of them are stressed out for different reasons. Do they like each other??? who knows??? But do they have sexual chemistry and energy to burn? Yep

Dooku keeps trying to maneuver to get Ventress married to one of his nephews.

Ventress: [looks at Vos] that one. She will deign to have a threesome with Obi-Wan but once again sexual chemistry and they aren't going to let it get out to Dooku because they are NOT going to marry each other. Obi-Wan: I'll leave the nuptials to you two Between the stress sex Obi-Wan is doing an attack of the clones stuff where he's investigating plots, while the actual main focus is on the romance with Anakin and Rex, but every so often he pops in with something like: "Your mother had a virgin magic birth. Palpatine is a sorcerer. There's a plot to steal your inheritance." and then pop back out again meanwhile Anakin is pining and getting ready for wedding and feeling guilty he's dragged Rex into this

There is a visit from a Duchess of far-off lands that Obi-Wan is infatuated with but cannot leave the kingdom (and Anakin) for.

The main impact this has on the plot is that the Fetts are trying to avoid having to explain why their dad keeps getting into arguments with her while Obi-Wan does absolutely nothing to stop them, mostly egging the pair on.

And then Satine gets bored and decides to write Anakin's pre-nup.

hah secret 'royal or at least of suitable rank Fetts' that curve one of the many plots aimed at the couple wedding Jango: …. yeah I was Mand'alor for five minutes. Satine: I know you were >:) Jango: 😠 leave me out of this!

Obi-Wan has so many sexual relations and none of them are nearly as scandalous as Anakin's, probably because Obi-Wan himself isn't a royal.

Maul? Hate sex. Quinlan and Ventress? Longtime lover and his current partner sex. Jango and Satine? Both.

Obi-Wan is very into giving and receiving oral. Can't get anyone pregnant like that. Played for laughs just every chapter he's uncovered something and he's fucking someone else and the plot absolutely had no time for any of it. Anakin should notice but has way too much going on and does not think of Obi-Wan in relationships so just sort of misses it. Rex: …. (salutes. God Speed Mr. Kenobi) Like he gets that he's flirting. He picks up about Satine and Obi-Wan. But he doesn't think Obi-Wan has actually done something with impropriety.

Obi-Wan keeps telling them the Big Plot Stuff about AotC style intrigue, and the one that mentions to Anakin 'Oh yeah, I saw him leaving the bedroom of [important person]'

ahahaha Anakin learns about Obi-Wan's complex polycule Palpatine: I fear your tutor is sleeping with your soon to be husband. Anakin: (How the fuck would he have the time?!?!?) Rex: Yes, I did sneak into Obi-Wan's rooms. Remember. When I was sneaking into your rooms? And his room is how we get me secretly into your rooms? Anakin: …. oh right. When this is all done Obi-Wan claps Anakin on the shoulder, finally seen his charge married and happy and everything is good: Welp I'm going to go to the desert and live as a hermit. Anakin: I've made you my vizier. Obi-Wan: …has Maul left yet?

I think Anakin might STILL be assuming that most of those bedroom visits were either benign or Meant To Be Spy Things.

Satine is the one exception, he does assume that has the potential to be romantic intrigue.

Regarding Quinlan, he's just like "Oh, yeah, they get drinks sometimes! Besties!"

And the rest are clearly Obi-Wan trying to get state secrets.

He can see Obi-Wan having a grand monogamous secret forbidden romance. Anything else is gossip and slander and he will not have it.

Clearly he and Satine had tea and a single chaste kiss full of longing under the moonlight

Ahsoka: The real miracle here is that no one thinks Obi-Wan got him pregnant. Padme: I think that was a plot point at one point, but Ventress cut it off at the pass Ahsoka: It's hard to keep up with this… Bail: Won't anyone think of the governance of the kingdom? Padme: [pats shoulder] It's almost like the system we find ourselves working under is imbalanced and places too much emphasis on blood Satine: Oh wouldn't it be a shame if we had our own intrigue going on >:D Padme: ooooo let's draft some bills! [winks] Obi-Wan: Considering the amount of sex everyone gets up to [He can talk] the fact that we do have all this emphasis on bloodlines really isn't the best way to ensure a kingdom's leadership.

Cody, to Padme: Darling, please do not fuck my dad's situationship.

Padme: (but she's so pretty) Rex this chapter: I wrote a poem. Fox: You're absolutely fucked little brother. Rex: Help. Anakin: He wrote me a poem ;A; Aayla: Oh boy you're absolutely fucked (This is probably the period of which Cody is betrothed to him because of the misunderstanding of him not being dead and not having gotten Anakin pregnant.)

Aayla (a maid who is also a spy) and Bly (a member of the guard) are having an incredibly normal courtship in the background.

Everyone else is doing out-of-wedlock and Obi-Wan's polycule and possibly virgin births... and then there's Aayla, who just got a ring after eight months of flowers and polite flirtation, and will be getting married in two months after the appropriate readings of the bahns.

no stress or secrets at all Also in the background (given more emphasis than the Obi-Wan intrigue) are the Aayla wedding plans Anakin (who is worring about what and who and how his own wedding is going to go): oh that's nice TAT

Rex: Bly how did you do it? Bly: … I ?? I just… I courted her. And talked to Vos. And she said yes when I proposed. Rex: that doesn't sound right

Cody and Padme were either engaged or already married when he "died" at war, maybe? Padme can't publicly say it wasn't cheating because that would stain HER reputation, possibly irreparably.

Extra scandal, yes. Has to be some back room talks about this. Poor Padme, tho. Part of the early chapters everyone tinged with mourning. And the baby that is Cody's is a scandal, but also being used by the more schemy members of the court to cheer people up (for ulterior purposes). Oh maybe that's why Jango gets pulled to court: has to deal with the accusations on his house by house Naberrie. No one can be openly too negative because Anakin the prince is the one with child. But ALSO your son cheated and broke a marriage contract so you have to go and deal. Jango: I would rather die you can't make me do this [is dragged by Satine] noooooo Also Jango has to show up because his grandchild is potentially going to be heir of the kingdom. Jango: Satine please. Please just deal with it yourself. Have Alpha deal with it. If he wears a helmet no one can tell the difference Alpha: Nope. Satine: Stop squirming Jango mourns Cody in his own way, but also he had a lot of children and not much face time with them.

Bring along Bo-Katan, that's always good for some comedy of the stupid variety. "Bo, you can't propose to the stable girl, you hate this place and she doesn't want to leave, it'll never work."

(in the background of all the OTHER background stuff, lesbians!)

Bo: I'm coming too Satine: wait, you want to come? Why? Bo: …

She and Pre are trying to poison each other and it's getting to be a bit much.

Dooku: Why are so many mandalorians here? Maul: To fuck Kenobi would be my guess, at this point… Dooku: What? Maul: What? Ahsoka and Bo are working on the 'Cody is actually alive' intrigue Bo: I don't think my cousin is dead and you have a mind for mysteries (and also I want to spend time with you, but I really do think you'd be a big help here)

Ahsoka: Wait, you're cousins? Bo: Well I don't want to call him my nephew-in-law, he's older than me. Step-nephew? My sister's situationship's son.

Bo: at this point it's just easier to say cousins. It's about the same level of family familiarity Cody had a side adventure where Clovis put him on a boat to get rid of him or something, so he could swoop Padme, who was not having it. Bo and Ahsoka save him from being forced into conscription at sea or whatever. Obi-Wan does not want Ahsoka in danger, but also is just glad someone else is getting some work done around here other than him. Obi-Wan: I'm going to knight you Ahsoka: I'm a stablehand? Obi-Wan: When Anakin is king I'll tell him to, he'll listen to me Well, to be fair, the person on the purse strings of the kingdom is probably Bail, or else they would have gone under by now. Bail agrees to sex and then just sticks him in between Breha and him for an afternoon nap. Obi-Wan has his ways. Sex mostly. But also connections. And competence.

For the purse strings thing: Consider! Fox.

Obi-Wan: hmmm Fox: >:) Kenobi (you know you can't get past me) Obi-Wan: 🙂 Mr. Fox. Fox: [Suspicious] Obi-Wan: [Places Vos in front of him] Quinlan: Fox! Fox: Damn it, Kenobi! Just: Fox: HAH You can't use your methods on ME I'm incorruptible! Obi-Wan: [buffs nails] Don't worry darling I have people for this. Alternatively: Obi-Wan: Anakin would really appreciate you pushing these papers through Fox: [automatically] Sure. [Signs Palpatine's signature] Done. lol the Fett siblings are immune to Obi-Wan because they know he's in a situationship with their dad Alpha: (eh… I'd probably still do him.)

Alpha is the result of an Incident from when Jango was a teenager and grew up with very little respect for him as a father. Treats his own dad more like a brother because the age gap is fairly small, and Jaster did half the raising.

Rex: He gave me a violet, what does this mean? Ahsoka: Wait flowers mean things? Rex: Royals are always giving flowers to pass messages! Anakin: The blue reminded me of his armour ❤️ Obi-Wan: Aw. Blue violets also mean love and faithfulness Anakin: Wait what? Bo: I got you a flower. It reminded me of you Ahsoka: Oh ❤️ [who has been looking this up] Yellow rose means eternal friendship ha ha I love it [both of them crying and pinning inside at the misinterpretation] Ventress: [watching them] … I should say something. This can't go on. Obi-Wan: No, they'll work it out. I have faith in Ahsoka.

Bo: NOT IN MANDALORE Ahsoka: Oh, what does it mean there? Bo: Um. I forget. <- several hours later -> Jango: It means you want to kill the person you gave it to. Bo: NO.

Also I love the idea Jango absolutely fluent in the language of flowers. Had to be to keep up with all the scheming Satine gets up to (good scheming). Obi-Wan: Ahsoka will get there before Anakin does. Ventress: no bet. Quinlan: I'll take that action Quinlan: You underestimate Rex. I think he's going to be able to---is he … singing? Obi-Wan: A love ballad. Ventress: … is it though? It's pretty ambiguous. Quinlan: fuck Anakin: (Rex loves someone else and I'm keeping him away from them ;A;) I'm sure whoever hears it will love it. Rex: …

[theonlyqualitytrash]

The irony of Fyodor's words:

These words have always stuck with me when I started to reread the manga, especially with the recent chapters and Fyodor's behavior. He says something deeply philosophical, but also deeply ironic.

In the anime, he says:

“People are eager to believe that they are acting with free will. That they know best. They become so excited by their own discoveries that they give them too much value. We all loathe to believe we can be controlled.” (Season 3, Episode 4, 17:35)

And in the manga:

"People, honestly, simply, wrongly assume that 'I thought so myself.'" (Vol. 10, Ch. 42, Page 35)

At first glance, these two quotes seem to say something very similar—that people tend to overvalue their own thoughts and discoveries, believing them to be entirely their own, when in reality, they might be influenced by something (or someone) else. But here's where the irony kicks in: Fyodor himself embodies this very mindset.

Despite his belief that people are wrong to assume their thoughts are independent, Fyodor operates under the assumption that his philosophy is entirely his own. In truth, it’s shaped by a lifetime of suffering, trauma, and a near-obsessive need to control the world around him.

Fyodor’s theory—that all ability users should be eradicated—is rooted in his own experiences of feeling powerless and out of control. The abuse he’s endured, combined with his ability, has led him to view the world—and its "free will"—as fundamentally flawed. He believes that to restore order to this chaotic world, the gifted must be suppressed. Yet, isn't this philosophy itself an example of the very thing he criticizes in others? His conviction that he has discovered the "truth" mirrors the self-deception he critiques: the tendency to believe that his thoughts are purely his own, unaffected by external forces, including his trauma.

In a way, Fyodor is trapped in the very mindset he warns against: the idea that his conclusions are logical and independent, when they are actually the product of his suffering, his obsession with control, and his refusal to accept the chaos of human nature. His belief that he’s arrived at the ultimate truth—that ability users must be eradicated to prevent chaos—reflects the same misguided, self-affirming belief that he accuses others of having.

Fyodor, in his isolation and intellectual torment, has convinced himself that eradicating others' abilities is the only way to restore order. But this "discovery" is not a product of pure intellect. It is, instead, the result of his trauma and distorted worldview. The irony is that he has become the very thing he despises: someone who clings to his own belief as the ultimate truth, dismissing the possibility that his thoughts are shaped by his personal history, his suffering, and his need for control.

At the heart of this contradiction is Fyodor’s desperate desire for control. His philosophy isn't just intellectual; it’s emotionally driven, born of his experiences with powerlessness. In seeking to rid the world of chaos and disorder, he longs for a sense of security. But he fails to see that his quest for control is itself a response to his internalized trauma. His attempts to impose order are shaped not just by logic, but by his scars.

This leads us to the central irony: Fyodor cannot see that his belief system is flawed not because it's illogical, but because it’s emotionally driven. He claims to have transcended the emotional influence of others, yet in doing so, he becomes a prisoner of his own narrative. He cannot escape the fact that his thoughts, like those of the people he criticizes, are shaped by his fears, desires, and personal history.

Fyodor's rejection of external influence is, in the end, a perfect reflection of the flaw he exhibits: the inability to recognize that his thoughts are not independent, but deeply shaped by a lifetime of suffering and a need for control. He believes that he has arrived at the ultimate truth through intellectual reasoning, but in reality, his philosophy is just as much a product of his internal struggles as anyone else’s beliefs.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk :>

Dividers: saradika-graphics

[writers-potion]

Suggestions for a body swap story? They seem harder to write

Body-Swapping Stories: I Understand You In A Particular Way

The high-concept of a body swap story is versatile, with endless possibilities. The main factors of a body-swapping plot would typically be comprised of:

Two people whose souls are being interchanged (the catalyst)

Awkward/funny/dangerous things they encounter by living the life of the other person (main premise of the story) 

A resolution brought about through insight gained by the protagonist about the other person’s perspective/secrets, with a promise to act differently once they’re returned to their original body. (the moral of the story)

Why are body-swapping stories appealing? Among many reasons, the central premise of such a story is to address the theme of: how much do we really know about others? 

As souls living in one body only, we encounter problems due to our lack of understanding about others around us, including external conflict, jealousy, misunderstanding, etc. It is a universal human experience to be curious about what’s in another person’s head and want to be somebody else sometimes.

By forcing the protagonist to experience “thinking inside another person’s shoes” in the literal sense, body-swapping stories tend to be versions of the characters growing up by breaking out of their old worldview to widen their intellectual horizons. 

Here is a list of common story components and patterns for a body-swapping story.

A Body Swapping Mechanism 

The body swap happens out of the blue as a one-time occurrence: a lightning strike, electric shock, supermoon, weird potion, etc. In this case, not much justification is required as there is no magical system or follow-up about why this happens.

A higher power conducts the body swap: a fairy, a disgruntled God trying to teach a lesson, a reputable couple therapist, etc. The rationale here is that this higher power is trying to redeem/punish the protagonists. 

One character actively wishes to have their body swapped: the school nerd who envies the prom queen, a daughter who wants to be a grown-up, a poor man wanting to be the rich man next door, etc. 

A character has the ability to “infiltrate” other people’s bodies. They use this ability in an attempt to solve a mystery, espionage, disguise a murder, etc. 

Only “destined pairs” can swap bodies. In this case, a bit of justification/worldbuilding would be good to convince the readers how these people are paired (bloodline, soulmates?).

Body swaps are conducted through a specific ritual or potion. This can be a candles-and-pentagon type, a magical notebook, a specific dance, etc. 

Body swaps are common in the story world, and everybody (with certification/practice/of age) can use this ability. 

The character(s) do something wrong which sets the swap in motion.

The Relationship Between Two (or more) People Getting Swapped

Relationships with long-standing misunderstanding: busy parent & unhappen child; couples on the brink of breakup; siblings with beef; strict teacher & irresponsible student, etc. 

In a romantic arc, a potential couple who are now going to fall in love as a result of this body swap

A human and an animal/supernatural creature 

Enemy relationships: the head of rival companies; a murderer and his victim, etc. 

If you have a magic system, your choice of people would depend on what the magic system dictates. Ask the question: is this someone my protagonist must learn about? 

Things to Explore

Protagonist(s) exploring each other’s bodies

Them arguing over how the other person should/shouldn’t use their bodies

Them trying to keep secrets from each other.

Them teaching the other person about how they should/shouldn’t act so that the body swap goes unnoticed by others around them. 

Them snooping around each other’s lives and secrets without the other knowing.

Them trying crazy stuff they’ve always wanted to do but couldn’t due to physical constraints.

The Purpose of the Body Swap

Providing the entrance into a new (fantasy) world. Ex) Human swapping bodies with a witch, forcing them to learn about the secret society of magicians.

Teaching the protagonist a hard-earned lesson. Ex) An ungrateful child gets to live a day in the life of her mother which humbles her. 

To resolve a long-standing (romantic) conflict. 

To provide a tool for crime, with unexpected consequences. 

Interesting Ideas

Writing these here just because I can. 

The Living Realm and the Dead Realm are like parallel universes. When someone meets an untimely death, their body gets swapped with their doppelganger in the parallel universe.

The protagonists are living in two separate story worlds. The author who’s in charge of writing stories for them is highly indecisive and keeps switching protagonists mid-story. 

The protagonist and her friend swapped bodies to cheat in an exam. But the protagonist’s friend dies – in the protagonist’s body. 

A magical agency offering to swap bodies for trans people who wish to have the body of the opposite sex. But their services come with a huge price tag…

Hope this helps <3 Let me know if you guys have more questions/ other ideas/ helpful resources below in the comments!

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💎Before you ask, check out my masterpost part 1 and part 2 

[sith-shenanigans]

The thing about the Omelas story is that I don’t hate it, actually.

Don’t get me wrong. Usually, when I think about it, it drives me up a wall. I also—on the subject of responses to it—didn’t really like The Ones Who Stay And Fight. (Most of my reasons are said, better, in this article. Not the part about the tone, but that it shot for ambiguity and ended up in “somehow, the clearly magical power of child suffering made more sense than intolerance being a memetic virus that can only be solved through police murder.”) I’m fond of responding to trolley problems by asking who’s tying people to trolleys, and then insisting that it is morally relevant that someone tied those people to the tracks, because you wouldn’t be deciding who lives and who dies if someone hadn’t made the deliberate choice to put those people in mortal peril for no pressing reason.

(I like to think I’d save the five people. I think a lot of us would most likely panic and do something entirely unhelpful, and in practice, I have no idea if I’m one of them, because no one has ever tied anybody to a trolley track in front of me. It just hasn’t come up. But the ideal would be to save the five people. That’s not my answer in the organ-harvesting version, though, because it’s bad for everyone to live in a place where a surgeon can decide to kill you for your organs, no matter how many people doing it just this once would save.)

But I don’t dislike the story that Omelas came from. I don’t even dislike trolley problems, unless people are trying to insist that the context doesn’t matter. (The context always matters.) The problem is that everyone treats Omelas as a trolley problem. “Here’s a utopia where one innocent person has to suffer horribly. Is it worth it, to keep so many other people from suffering? Would you stay and be complicit, or would you walk out to go anywhere else?” The child is the central feature of Omelas, the only thing that matters. The child is nonnegotiable. You can’t rescue them, you can only walk away.

But the narrator did give us the chance to believe, before adding the child in.

Omelas is described to us as half place and half thought experiment, by a narrator that adds things as they go, a narrator that says this at close to the opening:

As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.

And goes on, in the narrative, to consider the reader’s opinion, to ask what they’ll believe.

I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however – that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc. – they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that: it doesn't matter. As you like it.

[…]

But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. […] Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine souffles to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be?

Omelas is a story being told to a listener, a utopia being described; the reader is an implied participant in a conversation, the narrator reacting to what they said where the page couldn’t hear. And so, after all of that, the narrator says:

Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.

And the narrator goes on to describe the child, the terrible price, the self-justifications that people employ. Because the listener doesn’t accept the festival, the city, the joy—only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. So the narrator engages in “the treason of the artist” (if you can't lick 'em, join 'em) and regales us with the child’s sorry state.

[…] They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there snivelling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.

Now do you believe in them? Are they not more credible?

I don’t think we’re being asked, as readers, to consider whether it’s worth it, though it’s certainly something we can consider if we want. But the narrative seems quite clear that it isn’t: to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. A description of Omelas, of why Omelas should be believed in, but how could that be anything but a condemnation of a city powered by a forsaken child?

And, of course, everyone wants to ask—why don’t we free the child, why don’t we comfort the child, why don’t we change things and take the risk of making everything worse? Why is the best thing we can do to walk away?

Because we needed the utopia to have suffering in it, to believe it. Because it couldn’t be real until there was a cost, a price, something cruel and unfair to balance out the scales. Something had to be wrong with Omelas, as the narrator spun it up before us. Yes, perhaps we could save the child, perhaps we could ruin everything, perhaps we could be heroes—wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that be the story we want, here, where someone is suffering and only we (who are of course more compassionate than everyone else) can fix it? That would make it a real utopia, if we could kick down the doors and fix everything ourselves.

But it would have been better to believe that Omelas could exist without someone suffering for it, when we were asked.

[battlekidx2]

Hazbin Hotel - Vaggie Finale Thoughts

My thoughts on Vaggie are… complicated. I think the last two episodes of season 1 do a really good job with her and I love the beats her character hits, but the rest of the season didn’t build up to some of these beats the way they should have to make all of them hit as hard as they could.

I’m just going to jump right in to explain what I mean.

Vaggie’s role in episode 7 where she has to go convince Carmilla to help them face the angels is at its core fantastic and the song that they get together is a banger, but the basis for this song– that Vaggie is being driven by vengeance and has to fight for love instead– rings hollow. 

Everything Vaggie has done this season has been for love. She’s been nothing but supportive of Charlie, putting all her effort into the hotel and Charlie’s mission. Her song and arc in episode 3 surround Vaggie’s belief and love for Charlie. Vaggie fighting for love has never been the central issue of her character because she’s been doing it all along.

I like the idea of Vaggie being driven by vengeance, considering how brutally Lute mutilated her and how she was cast out of heaven for the “horrible” offense of hesitating to kill a child this would make sense for her character, but this wasn’t shown at any point prior to this song. 

Where was this thirst for vengeance when she came face to face with Adam and Lute in the hotel room? Where was Vaggie’s anger at heaven when Charlie was calling out their hypocrisy? At what point in this season did Vaggie choose vengeance over her love and support for Charlie?

If vengeance was what was really driving her character then Vaggie would be pushing Charlie to call out heaven. She would take some impulsive actions to strike back that put Charlie’s goals in danger. She wouldn’t be the one telling Charlie to keep a cool head or singing about supporting Charlie no matter what.

This is the issue that’s been plaguing Vaggie this entire season. So much of her character has been tell rather than show. We were told by Husk that Vaggie hates herself. We were told by Carmilla that Vaggie was driven by vengeance. When Vaggie is faced with the decision to support Charlie against heaven or side with heaven to keep her secret the narrative lets Vaggie just not make a choice.

She doesn’t get to show her character and flaws through her actions. At least not the ones the show says she has.

I think this problem is a bit more obvious because when the show does build up something with her character it is really good.

Vaggie being the one to reach out to and convince Carmilla to help their cause is a great beat. We see early on that Vaggie isn’t a people person. She has trouble trusting and/or inspiring others, but here we get to see her reach out to and connect with someone else, and it's through this understanding the two have that she is able to get Carmilla to help her (by training her to fight angels) and the hotel (by providing weapons).

This exact struggle is also reflected in the moments with the hotel residents. Throughout the season Vaggie has always come across as being on their level. Charlie is well-meaning, but because of her privileged upbringing she has a very black and white view of redemption and struggles to deal with the more serious mental health issues that the hotel residents face. Whereas Vaggie is more jaded and has made massive mistakes in the past.

The other hotel residents can understand her struggle to do the right thing and redeem herself, which is why it was impactful to have Vaggie be the one to let them know that they can leave and that she’s the first one to see that they stayed. It emphasized the connection between them.

Vaggie’s fight with Lute was also amazing. Lute was the angel that cast her out, ripping out her eye and cutting off her wings. There’s a personal connection there that makes this battle investing. The way their battle ends really emphasizes the conflict between Charlie and heaven in episode 6 by showing that Vaggie, someone cast out of heaven, is more worthy of heaven and angel wings than Lute, Adam’s right-hand woman, through her decision to choose love over hate and spare Lute’s life.

It’s these moments that show the full potential that Vaggie has as a character and put the moments that they fumbled in stark contrast.

I really like this show, but I do think it has flaws. Vaggie’s character is a prime example of how the pacing of this season made certain character arcs suffer. 

I'm hopeful that the show can improve on some of these issues now that it officially has a season 2 and that it was the biggest animated release on Amazon Prime (which is impressive because The Legend of Vox Machina had the massive already established fanbase of critical role watching it). I really enjoyed watching this season week to week and can’t wait for what they have in store for us next.

Side note: The moment where Vaggie spared Lute is where she should have gotten her angel wings and specifically she should have gotten Lute’s angel wings. This would just heighten the thematic importance of this moment and show through Vaggie’s mercy– the very thing that got her kicked out of the exorcists– she has shown that she is more worthy of being an angel than Lute. I can’t take credit for this. I heard it from Sarcastic Chorus.

[moonshynecybin]

I find Marc covered up fully underneath his leathers, upto his neck & wrists, so fascinating when we have the others in half sleeves, mesh or nothing. I can't remember if he always was that way or changed midway, if there was a particular reason? If Alex does the same? It just gives regency era eldest spinster daughter hair tied up tight covered up to the neck waiting for the highest titled rake to come show her the pleasures waiting for her.

marc would be SOOOO good at the kate sharma of it all. like bridgerton season two is in many ways rosquez 2 me. marc WOULD deny himself love and marriage if he convinced himself it would protect alex and vale WOULLD close himself off from love for fear of losing anyone he loved ever again after the untimely death of his [dont worry about it] from a bee sting. perfect set up for vale to decide to court marc's much more agreeable and younger (NOT A SPINSTERRRR) brother who because he needs someone to secure the family's future with and alex is one of the most eligible and educated bachelors on the market. and he knows he will never fall in love with him. whereas marc is known for going on crazy person horse rides (how he first meets vale) and pissing people off. and ALEX is locked in this fun codependency thing with marc, where marc sacrificed so much to get him there from spain and its the only way they can like. still live in the same household because the marquez finances are a lil shaky for regency reasons (alex it should be noted will fall for vale's ward franky SO fast and they shall have their own tortured by familial obligation repressed regency drama please trust this. it WOULD involve alex saving franky from bandits. again trust.)

so anyways vale commits to courting the idea of alex. butttt marc and vale. kind of hit it off. chemistry! goofballs ! a game of crochet that legitimately turns a little dangerous (marc is. cheating the whole time lmao. vale is ALSO cheating he is kicking balls into the bushes and. possibly. checking out marc's ass when he bends over to fetch them. victimless crime looking never hurt anyone.) truly luca meets marc and is like lovely to meet the man my brother plans to marry :) and alex vale marc are all like. um. hah. about that. EVERYONE can see and marc and vale are down fucking horrendous but are cutting themselves off from love so aggressively its UPSETTING ! vale CANNOT lose anyone he loves and marc will sacrifice EVERYTHING for alex's future so they are locked in horny tension for monthsss. it is. insanely horny close proximity sniffing. it is. dancing at balls probably more than is strictly proper. it is. marc getting pushed into a body of water and having to strip off his paper thin old-timey shirttttt. getting wayyyy too into betting on horse races like they are throwing elbows. alone in various well dressed rooms breathing the same air SO much yearning and holding back because like. they CANT do that to alex (alex. does not want that man lmao).

until finallyyyyy its alex and vale's wedding day and marc feels like hes going to THROW UPPPPPP. worlds saddest little spinster. pale sad brave face on. but he walks in and vale is just. he cant take his fucking eyes off marc. at the alter in a church in his best suit. he cant stop looking at him. and he feels like hes going to cry but he doesnt know why. and alex walks in and looks at the two of them looking like they want to DIE and it clicks. right then. that theyre in love (huge relief off of his shoulders tbh. already sexting franky via horny letter in his mindpalace) like alex KNOWS his brother and he KNOWS the only way get marc to stop doing something self destructive is for alex to tell him he doesnt have to. so he turns away from vale and he takes marc's hands. and he calls of the wedding.

BUT that doesnt resolve our central conceit on vale's end. what do you do when the scariest thing in the world is the person you love dying. and that is a belief that has been informed by person you love dying trauma. well in vale's case you simply have to realize YOU ARE ALREADY IN LOVE... TOO LATE IDIOT. having them and MAYBE losing them is better than never having them and losing them ANYWAYYY. so in this its like. the wedding falls through, alex marries franky so hes fine, and marc gets in a HORSE RIDING ACCIDENT ! and its uh. not looking good. and marc almost DIES and vale wasnt even THERE and he didnt knowwww how vale feels. he never got to be with him :( truly life is fleeting go fuck your twink :( finds out marc is going to be okay and cries for hmm. maybe the first time in ten years? and then they get married :)

[beautysurvives]

So I saw this painting, Bacchante, on tumblr the other day, and I was immediately reminded of Rowena's costume/styling from season 15 episode 3:

obviously, there's the similarity in hair and color palette, but also the quality of the fabric -- the way the light reflects off of it, and the natural/foresty background that all kind of give 15x03.

So out of curiosity, I researched the painting (ie went to wikipedia) and found an ancient Greek tragedy.

To my understanding, the woman depicted in the painting is one of the Bacchantes, ie a female follower of Bacchus (Dionysus, the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theater). Their name literally translates as "raving ones," because Dionysus is all about inducing baccheia, a kind of liberating madness.

Which is to say that this description of Dionysus and his role in the play reminds me of a few figures and themes in season 15 (one of them being Belphegor, and his chaotic influence), but I think the most obvious connections are to Chuck, and, to some extent, Jack, who (we assume) has been possessing and "liberating" people (ie inspiring them to do things that other people consider insane) since as early as season 12, when he convinced both Kelly Kline and Cas to protect him.

Anywho, here's more info about the play:

Again, I could speculate on some links to different characters (the mortal mother's story can connect to both Kelly and Mary imo -- but also, Amara's mortal mother from the start of season 11), but I just don't have any concrete thoughts yet so I'll hold off.

What I do wanna circle back to is the role of the Bacchantes (the titular Bacchae) in the story. They're the raving, howling, hunting female followers of Dionysus, and the chorus--

Lots of tragedies are named after their main characters, but this tragedy is named after its chorus -- followers of the God of theater himself -- whose hymns are thought to be the origin of the Greek chorus. So the Bacchae's role in the play is a weird sort of full circle thing, very in line with the ouroboros theme that is central to Jack's existence in the narrative of Supernatural.

Going back to Rowena, as one of the Bacchae, a member of the chorus, a homogeneous group representing the general population of the story, whose purpose is often to narrate and comment on things happening both on and offstage, and to communicate and make clear the themes of the play for the audience.

And Rowena is the first of many significant characters who will willingly sacrifice their lives in season 15 (because she believes in magic and fate -- ie, she believes in the structure of the story -- the destiny that was revealed to her in her Death book). She even becomes sort of a God-figure in her own right as the Queen of Hell, foreshadowed by her brief power grab in Funeralia, but not actualized until after her ritualistic death -- making her similar to Billie, who died to become Death, giving her elevated status as someone who oversees and shapes the narrative -- and making her similar to Dean, whose death makes him into the narrator and almost-god of The Winchesters.

Okay okay I'm running out of steam now sadly but want to quickly switch lanes back to Dionysus and who he could be in our story, because I just had a huge realization in the middle of writing this.

Dionysus, like plenty of Gods, often shows up in disguise. I don't think we've never seen Chuck shapeshift, so we're not led to believe that that's something he does. But it's not a power that most angels have -- in Heaven, this ability is only ever observed in archangels: specifically, Gabriel and Lucifer. Out of the two, only Gabriel is shown to shapeshift at the drop of a hat, for his own entertainment. Also, only Gabriel is shown to fake his own death.

He's also a figure strongly linked to the whole concept of narrative, meta storytelling, characters knowing that they're trapped in a fictional world, and being forced to act out their written roles. Also! One of very few characters initially introduced as someone else (The Trickster) only for us to later discover that he's actually a huge part of the story! One of those things that changes the entire context of his introduction, but only in retrospect.

Just like Chuck!

Just like Jack!

Now I'm not saying that all three of them are the same character per se -- although, the entire structure of spn is built off of characters mirroring each other, which definitely relates to the things that Jack -- and biblical!Adam, and Chuck himself -- say about the nature of God. For example, that the "Divine Spark" is in everyone, that God!Jack will exist everywhere even as he disappears, that he's "Him" but he's also still himself, which echoes one of the first things he says to Sam:

-- all of this is to say: remember in changing channels, when Gabriel trapped them in his TV world? He "plays" other characters who interact with Sam and Dean, like Dr. Sexy. In their cop show parody, Sam and Dean talk to and then kill a man who they "think" is him, and when he reveals himself to gloat, they kill the "real" him. Then, they think they've been set free, only to find that they're still in one of his illusions.

Now, the last time I watched season 15, I was struck by the uncanny nature of a lot of their interactions with "the public" -- the Greek chorus of spn. There were a couple of episodes (Golden Time and Last Call) that I've thought for a while are written by Chuck himself, specifically for the purpose of inspiring Sam Dean and Cas to "get back on the horse," reigniting their passion for hunting -- which fits a common story beat in the typical Heros' Journey structure (another circular structure, also known as the monomyth, that feels related to the Ouroboros motif).

I felt like the cops in this season were especially uncanny. The cop who talks to Cas in The Gamblers and the cop who talks to Dean in Last Call (I was always especially weirded out by the cop in LC, and so surprised that more ppl in fandom don't talk about the strangeness of this scene) both have this very over-exaggeratedly goofy almost scene stealing dialogue, that made me kind of picture them as Chuck himself, or at least the voices/influence of Chuck in the story. But NOW?

I can't stop thinking about that scene in changing channels.

In 15x07, Last Call, the sheriff keeps talking nonsense (seriously, this scene is so strange) about Hollywood and telling Dean that he "has the look" and should give it a shot (he also references Knight Rider, which is the show Sam and Dean are stuck in in Changing Channels after they mistakenly assume that they're free). He doesn't give Dean much useful information to work with, except that he points him to Swayze's bar.

While the sheriff in 15x11 alerts Cas to Jack's return, sharing surveillance footage of Jack killing and eating the heart of Dr. Sariel, a fallen watcher angel.

tldr: I think there's a very good chance that either Chuck/Amara or Jack (or maybe Gabriel, and possibly even Lucifer) or just the concept of God in general in spn is NOT the judeo christian god, but Dionysus, the god of theater, whose domain can now include television.

And, to get meta for just a second, recently I was listening to the spn then and now podcast, and thinking that it's kind of funny that Rob and Rich's characters don't appear often, and yet they've both carved out such important roles in the fandom -- both as real life actors and as characters. They've both regularly MC/hosted at conventions for years, they both started out as different sort of minor characters and were later revealed to be characters who both observe and shape the narrative as a whole, and now they're doing this podcast where they watch and comment on the show from an audience's perspective, and reveal things about the bts stuff that we wouldn't know otherwise.

idk. as always i don't have a conclusion, I just wanted to share my findings with you all

[kevgansey]

couldn't help but think constantly about season 2, like we are getting introduced to new characters (and new cast members 💓💓), but mostly because of annabeth. i've always seen som and botl as annabeth's books, they let you understand her personality, what she wants, what she is.

so there's some of the annabeth's moments that i really exacted/hope to see in the next season cause i know leah would EAT these parts yeah

“we could use your intelligence” “because you have none on your own!”

on princesse adromeda where luke is talking to both annabeth and percy, and he tries to convince annabeth to join him, pushing on something that he knows annabeth is extremely attached to, her intelligence. annabeth tries to stay strong, to don't freak out about how, her long time friend, her brother has turned out. even with this sense of sadness she is always the sassy little queen that we have been introduced in the first book !

CC.

i love the scene at circe's. and i can't wait and i do really HOPE to see the reyna/hilla cameo. i guess this scene is important because in some ways we see annabeth give up immortality for percy. and this is just the first time.

the whole backstrory with cyclops and it will be even better if we get some flashbacks

every single memory from her childhood is important to the construction of her character, there wouldn't be annabeth if there wasn't her memories. i guess this part of her story is important to let the reader (and in future the watcher) think about how much bad things annabeth went though since the age of seven. she has been fighting monsters since she was seven.

the sirens scene

okay, this is mostly percabeth BUT i just love how determined annabeth is in that scene, yeah i know that lot of people would consider her actions pretty stupid but be honest with yourself. first of all she was 13, she was a child, second thing, because of that we are getting introduced to her fatal flaw, pride. in that moment annabeth didn't know if she would had another chance to listen to the sirens so she took the opportunity that she had.

“ Three people sat on a picnic blanket in Central Park. A feast was spread out before them. I recognized Annabeth’s dad from photos she’d shown me-an athletic-looking, sandy-haired guy in his forties. He was holding hands with a beautiful woman who looked a lot like Annabeth. She was dressed casually-in blue jeans and a denim shirt and hiking boots-but something about the woman radiated power. I knew that I was looking at the goddess Athena. Next to them sat a young man … Luke.

The whole scene glowed in a warm, buttery light. The three of them were talking and laughing, and when they saw Annabeth, their faces lit up with delight. Annabeth’s mom and dad held out their arms invitingly. Luke grinned and gestured for Annabeth to sit next to him-as if he’d never betrayed her, as if he were still her friend.

Behind the trees of Central Park, a city skyline rose. I caught my breath, because it was Manhattan, but not Manhattan. It had been totally rebuilt from dazzling white marble, bigger and grander than ever-with golden windows and rooftop gardens. It was better than New York. Better than Mount Olympus. ”

this part is just so extremely dear to me. we see what annabeth really wanted. her dad, her mom, her brother and her biggest desire to create building because she wants to be remembered through them. the things that we don't see in this scene are percy and thalia. thalia, she is gone, annabeth would neved see her again so why even think about her as someone who would come back in her life, and percy. percy, that she already consideres as her percy. she knows that she already has him in her life. this scene is so sad and full of meaning we see the cruelest desire that annabeth has. she wants her family back. she wants to be someone one day. and she wants to feel proud of herself.

[betterbemeta]

I think AI Art exploits and degrades not just artists, but every single person who looks at it in some ways because 'how we look at art' is part of art itself.

This principle is super easy to experience as an artist. All you have to do is practice and reach a plateau where things you did before seem worse to you, that felt great at the time you made them. Your ability to see art changes as you make art, and as you view art.

It's not snobby to say that there is a low average level of 'seeing' art. There's also a low average level of seeing technical design, or seeing weather patterns, or seeing copy editing mistakes and that's why we have architects and engineers, meteorologists, and professional editors. I think a lot about this bit by Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics:

Like the point here is not that 'most people are superficial', but that the surface of art is what most people are familiar with. And it is this basic familiarity that I believe AI Art exploits to fake integrity, something that even the most well-known laughably 'bad art' still technically has.

Like, laugh all you want but effort went into the surface of this art such that it appeared 'okay' to the one who made it, and to those who maybe aren't paying attention or see that its colored and shaded first, the anatomy last. It relies sort of on your familiarity with 'what art looks like' to accept it, but not completely. Someone did work to try and earn your acceptance even if, uh, it's not very good in some ways.

But AI Art relies fully on how unfamiliar you are with art. Let's call this principle 'glamour'.

At first 'the glamour' is unconvincing: this is during the AI's training. But the first 'pass' is the threshold where information builds up about how to reproduce a minimally acceptable image. This is where the glamour is set: the minimum accuracy to convince a human being to fill in its gaps. To basically capture their imagination. From there, front-end use of the machine learning model is released for general users, and it is those users who then select out of many outputs which glamour fools them most. As the other half of this system, the hidden decision-maker, humans are also 'learning' familiarity with the glamour: comparing it to not just our surface knowledge but to itself. We have left reality.

A good example of this can be seen in AI-generated pictures of fiber crafts. It's possible that traditional or digital artist might not be perfect with their drawing or perspective or coloring etc. or may stylistically push the boundaries of perspective or form on purpose. But for a knit, crocheted, or sewn piece a final product often can't exist without its craft having physical integrity:

Aside from the issues that are obvious (fake tilt shift photography with no consistent field of blur, a spaghetti yarn ball, unknown stitch on the vest, no comprehensible seam between the arm and the body, etc.) here are some things that stick out to me to knowing even a little about knitting,

The fake stockinette on the helmet is confused about whether it is completed horizontally or vertically: vertical on the headband (many hats terminate this way, so there are plenty of images to sample) but indecisive when it has to become a round hat shape.

The number of rows on the arms is inconsistent, decreasing strangely where a k2tog would never be.

There is no consistent way the hands make sense, if they are 'mittens' or if the stockinette ridges become 'fingers'.

We can't see how the bottom of the foot was finished: the left foot either began or was decreased to meet at a central point but it doesn't match the right foot and it's not clear how either foot keeps it shape.

Beyond the plagiarism of the images that went into generating AI outputs, your diminishing time to learn about/be exposed to 'things' (beyond just 'art,' anything that isn't essential to your survival) will become increasingly exploited in the future. If left unchecked, images like these will represent not only novelties or etsy scams but a large amount of people's exposure to 'things' in general. Which then leads to something like AI inbreeding (AI generating based on AI), except like... with you.

When people are more familiar with a glamour than 'the real thing', even superficially.

Exploitation of this type isn't even a new thing. It's just that AI can speed it up or extend it to new spheres. Anyone can see a physical table and think 'this table is crap' if it's poor quality because of how much we use tables and our knowledge of what tables are and should do. But I think the blog McMansion Hell actually illustrates a real, practical situation where the familiarity level with a craft (architecture) is low and standards lower to meet it. These hulks were certainly built to invoke 'glamour', but when closely inspected, they have the design equivalent of 12 fingers or bra straps bleeding into someone's skin.

Another easy example might be the excessive 'glamour' that surrounds selling cars in the USA. Very few people will buy enough cars to become more than superficially familiar with them and the amount of people who are car-related professionals is negligible next to the number of people who require a car.

Both cars and houses are expensive purchases that are made relatively infrequently, which is why their brokers and dealers can bet against a customer's average level of knowledge. But soon, many more things may become like buying houses or cars: obscured by glamour.

AI Art relies on you to be a sucker, just like how a sketchy sales rep depends on you to be a sucker. Except even worse than the sales rep, your brain is expected to not just be dumb and inexperienced, but also to get actively dumber over time from doing all the work too.

[fipindustries]

i was watching a review by genetically modified skeptic of a christian movie about an atheist psychologist interviewing a death row serial killer who is possesed by a demon.

the demon tells the doctor that he is a demon and he is very adamant in trying to make the doctor believe him. he also apparently hates atheists and goes on a huge rant about how atheist are stupid or whatever.

now, drew (genetically modified skeptic) rightfully points out that is silly for the demon to try to convince the atheist that he is a demon or for the demon to be angry that the doctor is an atheist, after all the demon would want people to not think he is a demon so its easier for him to corrupt them and spread lies and seed doubts about god, right?

so that got me thinking how i would write a good version of this story where the demon is interviewed by an atheist doctor and his goal is not to be discovered but then the atheist slowly comes to realize what he is truly dealing with by the end of it*. the premise sounds interesting, it would lend itself to some pretty good dialog between them, some interesting mindgames and there would be the constant ambiguity of "is he really a demon or not". similar to another horror movie that i really like "the autopsy of jane doe" where two scientifically minded doctors have to perform an autopsy on the body of a woman and they slowly come to realize she was a witch and her evil powers can still affect them even after death.

first we need to establish what is the goal of the demon here, probably he wants the doctor to diagnose him as insane so that he can do an insanity plea and not get killed. this is trickier than it sounds, getting an insanity plea can be hard and doctors will try hard to detect when someone is acting in bad faith. so that would be the first central tension of the movie, wether this guy is actually insane or not.

second we need something that would make even a skeptic start to suspect that the guy might actually be possesed by a demon, maybe the act of entering the body is extremely violent and traumatic to the point that the victim goes into epileptic, a fuge state and become extremely aggressive, maybe that is how he was trapped in the first place. maybe the killer tried to summon a demon and so he was found near the ritual site surrounded by sigils and diagrams and blood and candles and a victim that was sacrified or whatever.

afterwards we could make it so that a body that is possesed for long periods of time starts to slowly rot, maybe strange paranormal phenomena that the demon cannot control starts happening around him, like not being properly captured on camera or mirror reflections looking a little strange. all things that could make the doctor start asking questions that the demon has to find the way to answer convincingly while also selling the idea that he is insane.

the trick would be in making the external phenomena weird and notorious enough that even an atheist doctor would start to open his mind to the idea that he is dealing with something paranormal but also not make it so obvious that there isnt dramatic tension for the audience and there isnt a realistic possibility for the demon to get away with it.

(*) in re-reading this i have come to realize that this is actually more or less the plot of the exorcist, for most of the movie the people are desperatly trying to find out what is wrong with the girl by diagnosing her with mental illness and doing MRI scans and whatever, and the priest himself is very skeptic of the idea that an exorcism is needed, the exorcism doesnt happen until the very end

[weebsinstash]

Damn, imagine if all this YT drama was happening when Spot's situation was currently going on too. And, well, since our dimension is fucked and we just seem to jump through dimensions without the watch, what if we end up in Spot's place? (The blank void when he entered one of his own spots).

And, it would be funny to look at him, and for him to look at us and just... stare or wave. He is weird like that, and we are too.

Also, we can start bonding on feeling out of place? Sharing the same experience of everyone leaving us behind/ignoring us. Maybe we can even seek solace in his presence, and in his unique persona (even if he is supposed to be a villain).

And the fact that this is the only place we don't glitch out of? Maybe some bullshit physics as this place literally makes no sense, as well as us. It's like we belong here, with him. He could always teleport us somewhere else, but we look so tired, so pitiful and in so much need of some sort of care... he feels bad for us. And maybe, he can try and convince us to stay with him. After all, he *is* the only one who hasn't turned his back on us, right? He isn't a bad guy like those 'friends' of us were saying!

Meanwhile everything is going to shit in the society's HQ :)

I've actually had a few ideas involving The Spot where he's either the yandere or antagonist or a central character in some way and it's really just a matter of me getting around to. Writing the dozens of things I want to write lmao

But bro your mind 😩 you've just been exiled during the YouTwo incident amd you're glitching and, you know, slowly deteoriating over time, and, suddenly, you're in this weird literally nondescript place where you're suddenly... 'balanced out'? You don't feel like you're being pulled in a bunch of different directions anymore, and you look around and it's just some white void with black dots everywhere that you think you can kind of see and hear things out of if you get close enough, but, first and foremost, is that a person? Spot just like. Is staring at you with this very deer in headlights energy and, you both awkwardly wave to each other, "uhhhhhhh... hi?" "...hiiiii, uh, is this 'your place'? Thank you so much, dude, I've been zipping all over the place, i thought i was gonna die, you saved my life" and maybe you even hug him and he's not sure how to process this because you're clearly a variant of Spiderman but you hold no animosity or hostility towards him whatsoever and 👉👈 this is the most positive human interaction he's had in ages.

Not even his powers, but his knowledge alone would be extremely useful in this scenario because like, he could literally just warp around stealing whatever parts he needed to build something that would "hold you together", given his involvement with Alchemax and the colliders specifically

You're just so understandably and genuinely grateful and Spot feels GOOD about being needed, about being someone's savior. He really had been one of the only ones who could help you and he gets a little drunk off that fact. Whether your glitching is a mutation and is your own power or you're simply some weird anomaly, you two form a kinship, and if it IS some sort of weird ability, maybe he even decides to mentor you a little! Gives him something to do, and it totally isn't to help distract him from how lonely and depressed and miserable he is!

But similar to how the other villains discounted him, you kind of discount him yourself in the sense that you don't see him as a threat. Which, he doesn't necessarily want you to, and it's not some sort of disrespect thing, but, the linger he spends with you, the more he wants you to see him as a man, a man with needs, emotionally, psychologically, physically. Whyd you have to give him all those hugs when he hasnt had human touch in forever, huh?! Don't you know how lonely and touch starved he is?! And you just think you can--can walk away from him? Disrespect him after everything he's done for you, disrespect him like everyone else?

You can always try and 'outrun him' with your little glitching, but, even if you manage to lose him, he'll pick up your tracks again, and one day you wake up from finally crashing from exhaustion to find a pitch black figure at the foot of the bed, slowly pulling in everything around it like some sort of eldritch black hole. And Jonathan menacingly waves to you, "I don't think I'll have trouble keeping up with you this time. I made sure of it"