#there is a forum (the whole thing is forum) and they do respond
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strinak · 2 months ago
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the level of technical knowledge these mfers assume! "here's a vsb file to check the collection for errors you can then manually correct"
GIVE ME STEPS GUYS! I CHECK WHAT FROM WHAT!!! i drag and drop a file, cool, what file?????????????? where is it????????
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vivwritesfics · 3 months ago
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Cat Mom 🤝 Cat Dad
Max likes being anonymous on these bengal cat forums. He likes making friends and talking about his cats without his own name attached to it. The Italian princess likes the same thing (jeez I wonder what happens next)
I had to do a special one for the actual day of my birthday lol
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Jim&Sass
Help! My cat got stuck in another room!
Jam&Toast
Dude get offline and go help them!
Jim&Sass
What do I do! The door is stuck!
Jam&Toast
Get a hammer!
Max did just that. He didn't knew the person giving him advice, but he knew her cats. Jam and Toast. Her post showing off her pretty cats, two bengals, were how he knew her. There was nothing else about her, just her cats.
It wasn't a lot that he knew about it, but it was enough. He didn't know that she was sitting eagerly by her laptop, waiting for his confirmation that his cat was all right.
Jimmy and Sassy's dad was an enigma. But Jimmy and Sassy looked sweet and the stories he told about them were adorable.
That was what she called him in her head, Jimmy and Sassy's dad. She was sure her name in his head was similar. Jam and Toast's mum.
Jam&Toast
Did you get them out?
There was a moment where he didn't respond, where he must have been getting the cat out of the other room. Her perfectly manicured nail was between her teeth, but she didn't bite down.
Her nail had been perfectly done for when the driver's arrived for Monza.
His icon popped up in the bottom of the screen, three little dots beside it. She leaned forward as his message appeared on her screen.
Jim&Sass
Sassy is safe
Not sure what I'm gonna do about the giant whole in my door
Jam&Toast
Oh, you've got to show me that door
A picture from him came through within seconds. There was his door, with a decent sized hole in the middle of it.
Jam&Toast
Holy shit, dude
Jim&Sass
Trust me, I know
He was easy to talk to. Grabbing her laptop, she sat herself on her bed, placed her laptop on her bed, and settled down for the night. Jam and Toast, her two Bengal cats, were curled around each other at her feet, fast asleep.
She turned her laptop around and awkwardly snapped a picture of her two sleeping cats. The picture wasn't the greatest, and it was kind of hard to see two cats laying there, but she sent it anyway.
He sent pack a picture of Sassy licking a yoghurt treat from his hand.
They could have spent the entire night talking, the conversation branching away from their cats, but Jimmy and Sassy's dad had to go. She didn't ask where he was going, wished him safe travels and shut her laptop for the night.
***
Jimmy and Sassy's dad hadn't been online since Wednesday. She hadn't expected him to message her while he was away, having fun. But she did miss him. She missed talking about Jam and Toast to somebody that wouldn't brush her off, missed hearing about his cats.
It was Sunday, and she was on the grid. It was a bit of fun, going down to the grid. Sometimes Martin Brundle attempted to speak to her on his Grid Walk.
She stood by the Ferrari, talking to her good friend, Charles Leclerc. When Martin Brundle tried to speak to her, her security guard sent him away.
"Did you hear about Max's cats?" Charles asked after she had told him all about the stuff Jam and Toast had been doing that week. At least he wasn't changing the subject completely.
She frowned at him. "Max Verstappen?" She asked and Charles nodded.
"One of his cats got stuck in a storage room, nearly broke his arm trying to get her out."
She glanced from side to side, trying to look for Max on the grid.
***
Max watched as the Italian Princess approached him with the trophy. It wasn't a win, but he was still grinning. Charles had won Monza in a Ferrari, and Max was proud.
The Princess smiled at him. Max didn't want to consider it flirty, but he didn't know how else to interpret it.
After the Italian national anthem, they left the podium. Max grinned down at his trophy before throwing his arm around Charles' shoulder.
He saw the Italian Princess striding towards them. Stepping back, Max watched as she threw her arms around Charles. They spoke in Italian as she looked at the trophy Charles held.
Max went to move around them, but the Princess fixed him with a look. "How are Jimmy and Sassy?" She asked, letting go of Charles.
His cheeks were pink as he answered her. "They're good," he answered. "With the cat sitter, probably being naughty."
It wasn't a terrible response, but he wasn't getting it. "Max," she said and took a step closer. He was trying so hard not to look weirded out, she could tell. Her hand was on her hip, head slightly tipped to the side. "When are you flying back home?"
He answered and she checked the dainty watch on their wrist. "Do you think you have time to come and meet my cats, Jam and Toast?"
The surprise on his face was evident. "No fucking way."
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malereadermaniac · 5 months ago
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Arranged Marriage ~ Byakuya Togami x Male Reader
The Togami's never get a choice in their partner, the choice is made for them to the benefit of the family; whether that be for more heirs to be made, or to join forces with other families Partially inspired by 'The swan princess' - 'This is my idea' Regular, non-despair au - Top!Byakuya x Bottom!Reader word count: 1.3k Sfw & Nsfw (headcannon form) / MDNI ~ amab m!reader / FDNI
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You had known Byakuya since you were both very young. Everyone knows of the affluent Togami's, and most people know that arranged marriages are common for them; however you wouldn't expect the arrangements to start so early. Ever since the age of seven, your summers were either spent within the Togami's main mansion, or the Togami's spent their summers in the (l/n)'s mansion. Your parents (the powerful, yet less than Togami, (l/n)'s) had done everything in their power to ensure that you were to marry into the Togami's via Byakuya; from suggesting a powerful alliance to his parents in meetings, to outright proposing that you two boys wed. Shockingly, Byakuya's parents were very open to the idea - your family was the next most powerful in the country, and it would not only benefit the Togami empire but also the family's face in the public eye; a gay marriage within the mostly traditional Togami family would surely uplift their image. So, every single summer since you two boys were seven has been spent together; whether you like it or not!
And good lord did you both hate spending time together. Unlike the BORING Togami heir, you had a bit more pep in your step - which inevitably led to you annoying the hell out of the affluent progeny. You would try to convince the blonde to play some game with you but ultimately get ignored in favour of whatever book the boy was fixating on that day, or Byakuya would play along with your game but make fun of you the whole time! And as the two of you got older, your relationship stayed the same - mutual dislike, for changing reasons however...
At the age of 14, Byakuya found himself still annoyed by you, yet not due to the sound of your voice of your obnoxiously high levels of energy, rather because you were one of the few people on his level! In fact, you were above his level most of the time. No matter what the young blonde would do, you would one-up him constantly; you have won almost every game of cards the two of you have played, the two of you have always tied on your 'over-summer' academics, and the affluent adolescent could never impress you with his riches due to your parents buying you things to try and impress the Togami's! Byakuya had grown up with the idea that he needs to be above everyone else in all facets of life, so you coming along and beating him at everything made the rich teen see RED. However, every night, of every summer you two were spending together, Togami's parents would remind him that the two of you were pre-destined to be together, and that the blonde 'must accommodate for his future'.
Later, at the age of 18, your presence annoyed Byakuya for different reasons. This time, for reasons he chose not to think too deeply about. It was a known fact throughout the entire country that as you two young boys had grown up, puberty had done you both very nicely - tabloids and online forums wouldn't stop discussing how dashing the Togami heir looked in recent photos, and many times you were also discussed. Your perfect skin, your lips, your body, your hair, your personality; you were praised and adored more and more everyday. Byakuya wasn't jealous of this though, he'd get hit on constantly at events and other such things. What specifically annoyed the blonde was the fact that people acted on their liking of your looks; and worse, that you responded to advances. Again, Byakuya would never analyse his emotions too much, because he'd realise that he was in fact jealous that other men were getting your attention, however he would feel irked and pissed off whenever he saw you flirt/be flirted at by staff. The heir has fired many body guards of his and house staff due to them taking a liking to you, and Byakuya has also been a dick in passing to staff at your own home which flirts with you. But again, Byakuya's jealousy of others receiving your affection isn't something he dwelled on, very rarely would the handsome man think about his feelings late at night and spend hours spiraling about the possibility of him actually liking you!
At the age of 20, it fully dawned on Byakuya just how charming you truly were. Sure, you were the heir of an inferior family, and an annoying man at that, however during the summer you had both turned 20 the blonde truly couldn't deny his feelings towards you. Byakuya had come a long way from when you were both young boys, he had gone from his father forcing him to kiss your hand every time the two of you met to kissing your hand voluntarily. Byakuya was awe struck by you; not just by your looks, but by your kindness to others (something he'd never though he'd cherish or admire), and also due to the way you complimented him so nicely - like two pieces of a puzzle, you and Byakuya just fit together, not overlapping but rather harmonising. The smug look on both your parents' faces was enough to make you two men want to argue once again, just to wipe the satisfied looks off of their faces, however you simply couldn't. The summer you two turned 20 was the first time the two of you didn't mind spending time together. Byakuya had finally put down his books in favour of talking to you and getting to know you, and you couldn't deny just how attractive that was from him; the handsome, rich man was interested in you, and not even sexually like other men you had sneaked around with, but rather he was interested in speaking with you.
At the age of 22, the time had come for you two heirs to fulfill your responsibilities; via inheriting your places as heads of the family, and by marrying each other. But unlike how you'd thought your wedding day would go as children, you cried tears of joy rather than of frustration - Byakuya spoke his vows with truth coating his tongue and lips, and you both celebrated the day rather than giving fake speeches and smiles. And the night of your wedding was well spent as well; don't you worry!
As you'd expect, Byakuya is so god damn DOMINANT
His body is also sooo perfect - slim, muscular, tall, he's really just made to ooze sex appeal
The blonde barely has to even speak in sentences to have you on your knees at the foot of your (now) shared bed
His dick is average, a nice fit; skinny and a little veiny, 6-7inches, and his pubes are perfectly trimmed and well kept
Byakuya loves to always feel in control, his masculine fingers threatening through your hair to control your pace as you suck his dick with surprisingly good skill
He also really likes to eat you out, the small noises you make egging Byakuya on as he pushes his warm, wet tongue into your hole along with two of his long fingers
This man is also so into dirty talk, calling you nasty and whorish for enjoying his dick ramming into your ass
But the moment Byakuya lays his eyes on you as your back arches up off of the bed and your dick twitches as you shoot your load..? all the sexy man can say is 'pretty'
Exhibitionism is also something your HUSBAND enjoys on the low - your poor staff!
Seriously, Byakuya loves either getting walked in on as he's wrecking you in doggy, or he really likes to call staff in when they need something, making them watch as you keep sucking his dick under his desk/ as he cums inside of you/ as Byakuya makes out with you desperately as the two of you dry-hump into each other
But in summary, Byakuya can't get enough of you, he'd never thought that he'd be able to say that: he fucking loves you...
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liveontelevision · 3 months ago
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Sweet Radio Demon Alastor x Reader
As promised, here she is -
It's inspired by Living Tombstone's song Alastor's Game!
CW: Reader is a cannibal and it's a p big part of the story so mentions and details of cannibalistic intent and murder
♡♡♡
Some people just don't belong in Hell. The structure of divine judgment must be rigged, punishing any poor soul who commits sin without realizing it. Those individuals don't belong.
Then there are those who do. Those who realize there's an afterlife and instantly come to terms with their placement. That's when all the Oh, I'm definitely going to Hell for this jokes start to bite back.
It's always easier for those who choose to be sinners to adapt to Hell's settings. The job market for porn stars and actors is extensive, and protection is almost guaranteed despite the souls owed or deals made.
But, what interested you the most, you depraved sinner you, was the loveliness of Cannibal Town. Not only was it the nicest part of Pentagram City, but you felt right at home considering your appetite when you were living.
It was immense. Some kind of craving that you could never satisfy, no matter how many callers you invited into your home and how many of them never left. You got creative, playing with recipes, spices, and cooking methods, but it was never, never, enough.
Sometimes, you'd wonder how you got to this point. You were a normal enough kid, went to school, had a nuclear home life, and you were comfortable financially, the works.
You remember it feeling like a stomach ache.
A stomach ache that brought you to tears and kept you from school some days. You almost assumed it was something every child went through until you learned what subdued the pain.
Meat.
It was the solution. You ate like a carnivore at first, then the food became increasingly rare as you aged up. Until you stumbled upon some strange forums online (There's something online for everyone, I suppose). You gave in to the cryptid suggestions. You tried rodents at first, only after thorough mental and food preparation, but fuck did it do the job. It made your body shutter and your mind hazy, momentarily melting any thoughts of guilt you might still have.
As time went on, you grew hungrier. Animals weren't cutting it.. but maybe he could.
You found him online, chatted for a while over some messenger, then discovered how much of a dirtbag he truly was. That seemed to disarm you from the whole idea.
Poor thing.
Maybe if he was kind enough, he would have been spared.
You invited him over.
As you watch him approach your door, you tussle your hair, and adjust your clothes that leave little to the imagination. With a continuous, you can do this, you can do this, you're drawn to the knocking of the door.
"Damn, babe, if I knew you actually looked like this, I would've come over sooner." He props his arm on the doorframe as he speaks.
Is.. is that supposed to be a compliment?
Your eye only twitches a bit before you cover your expression with a cute giggle. Holding your hands behind your back, you lean forward.
"Not too bad yourself, big guy. How's a movie sound?"
One thing leads to another, you're seated on your couch, and his hands are immediately on you. For someone who acts so big and tough, his touch is awkward and uncomfortable. Like he doesn't know what he's doing.. probably because he doesn't know what he's doing.
The inexperience helps.
You didn't take into account how large he was. Assuming this would go as planned, you'd be set for weeks, but the actual action of getting him down still worries you.
You're barely an hour into the movie, which you can hardly remember, before his sloppy lips are on yours, which you respond to with a grimace. He doesn't seem to take into account your reactions, grunting against your very unresponsive lips.
Disgusting.
Pig.
He places a large hand on your waist, pulling you roughly to him.
Strong.
Muscular.
You need more. You need to evaluate your prey. You place your hand on his wrist, delicately running your fingers up the entirety of his forearm, tracing and digging into each vein and muscle you can find. That continues up to his chest. Before long, you find yourself straddling him, his wide hips forcing your legs apart a decent amount. Despite his build, his composure clearly shows he's nearly at your mercy. While you're running your hands along his body continuously, occasionally kissing him or letting out fake moans to his ear, you're feeling his ever-growing length pressing into your leg.
You'd be disgusted by the sensation if you weren't planning your next move internally.
You hid weapons everywhere. If you remember correctly, there should be a knife sitting in the crevice between the couch’s armrest and the side table. You just have to reach -
"Take this off." You command with a breathy voice, tugging at his t-shirt that had some unknown stain on it. You almost regret putting so much effort into your appearance.
Oh, well. You're taking notes in the back of your mind for any future endeavors.
You guide his desperate hands to pull the shirt over his head. In one movement, you drop the shirt and take the hidden knife into your hand. You hadn't realized until just now, but -
You're shaking.
You let out a deep breath. With your arms reaching over the arm of the couch, you're essentially caging him in. Nothing looks suspicious yet. Not to him, at least.
You lean in to give him one final kiss. You aren't exactly sure why. It's not doing anything for you. Maybe some sort of sympathy is crossing your mind?
… You'll have to work on that.
You pull away slowly, giving yourself time to examine the state he's in. His eyes are glazed over, his breath shallow.
Now.
Do it now.
You're ready. You've studied anatomy, disarmed yourself to the idea, and prepared for the worst.
You have to do it now.
You straighten your back, the knife now visible to him. He doesn't seem to notice at first until your arms are in the air, hoping to find some momentum in the stab. With your eyes still open, you find the spot where it should end this without too much pain for either party. You dive as fast as you can, but you made a fatal error.
You shut your eyes.
The moment was immediately silenced by the tension of his hand fisting the blade of the knife. He caught it. He stopped it just before it could pierce his chest, only bleeding from his palm. You both sit silently, in disbelief, perhaps.
A silent curse slips from your lips, and that seems to snap him back to this failure of a hook-up.
"You fucking psychopath!" He screeches. He stands, effectively throwing you off his lap as he does so. The action forces a small yelp out of you, and your grip on the knife is immediately taken from you. You stare up at him from the ground.
The tables seem to have turned. He's looking down at you, stumbling and struggling to find his grounding, all the while holding the knife. Despite this, despite his large build and his newfound advantage, he bolts for the door.
Was this better than him attacking you? Will he go to the police? You almost hope he's fragile enough to not admit he was attacked by a frail creature, or that he'll use this as a story to brag to his friends over, I escaped a psycho bitch last night.
You start cursing again. They become more frantic and louder as you follow him out. You watch him stumble off your patio and back to his car. You manage to find reality when a previous thought hits you.
You hid weapons everywhere.
A shotgun sits by your front door. It wasn't the most hidden, but in your defense, it was dark enough outside that it went unnoticed. And you're in a rural enough area that some wouldn't bat an eye at the sight of it.
With shaky hands, you pick it up, already loaded, and aim it at him. He's already in the driver's seat, but you're too exposed to let him just drive off at this point.
You didn't really know much about guns. But in an emergency such as this, it seemed like it would come in handy. So when you took your shot, you never considered the consequences of shooting bullets at a running car, especially with your poor aim.
You come to moments later, fire and pieces of metal surround you. You try to take in your surroundings, but your ears are ringing, and your senses are overwhelmed by the severe burns covering most of your body. You manage to find your home, still mostly intact. The car, on the other hand, is completely decimated.
In the corner of your eye, you think you can spot some resemblance of your date sprawled along the asphalt. With a heavy breath, which you consider might be your last, you let your head drop onto the pavement.
-
"My my, what a predicament you've got yourself into!"
A voice?
It echoes through your head. You can still only see the crackling of the fire surrounding you, and your ears still ring, but the voice seems clear as day. There's a bit of a static to it, but still it's clearnes startles you. You attempt to respond through the pain.
"W-Who-"
"Save your strength, my dear. I'll be quick since it seems you won't be with us much longer." The voice says. You can hear footsteps, a clear clicking of heels that echo in this ethereal space you find yourself. You struggle to lift your head, only catching a glimpse of the stranger kneeling in front of you.
"I'll clean up this little mess of yours, and we can discuss my repayment once you're in less of a.. scorched state. Deal?"
How could you consider the consequences? Or even comprehend his words while you’re like this? You aren't sure what he means, and you have no time to question. Your consciousness seems to be honing in on the burns.
You let out a horrific scream, clutching your arms, only intensifies the pain. If you could see the stranger, you'd see a disturbingly unphased smile.
"Help me - H-Help me! Please!" You beg and cry out, finally reaching out your hand to him.
"So? Do we have a deal?"
"Deal - Deal! Fuck- I-It hurts..!" You sob, biting your blood-dampened lip to prevent any more screams.
He takes your hand, gripping onto the raw skin of your burns. Your next scream comes out silently. You feel your vision blur before your body finally comes to terms with its seemingly sealed fate.
-
You shoot up from your bed, your face running with tears. They feel cool, running down your heated cheeks. You quickly wipe your face, leaving a wet smudge of makeup and sweat across your fingers.
Right.. make-up from the date.
You scan your bed, no man in sight. It’s a relief to wake up in your bed alone. Shifting out from under the covers, you look to your hands, waving them in front of your eyes and running your hands across your own skin.
Smooth.
Maybe even softer than you remember previously.
Some sort of calming amenity seems to be sweeping over your body. With glazed eyes, you examine your body that should be severely burned, yet you feel nothing.
Still, in a state of shock, you rise and wrap yourself in your blanket before leaving your bedroom looking a mess. You roam your home, looking around with still-damp eyes. You feel like a tourist. Like none of this is yours.
Not anymore.
You find yourself standing by your front door, opening it without hesitation. It's a clear sunny day. The grass is just as green, if not greener, and there were flowers there that you don't recall ever planting.
Suddenly, your bare feet against the heated pavement sends a slight panic through you, as the more gruesome details of the previous night conjured in your mind.
That's why nothing looks right. You were sure your porch was blackened by the fire. The grass was a flame, and there was a car - and that man and the voice -
You approach where his car was parked, only to find a torn-up strip of rubber, assumingly from its tire.
"What the.." unable to even complete a thought, a familiar voice only brings up more questions.
"Ah, my apologies! I assure you it is quite out of character for me to miss a spot." You see a disturbingly tall figure come from behind, swooping down to pick up the rubber scrap. He examines it within his red talons, turning it back and forth. You stand dumbfounded, but he goes on anyway.
"So, what exactly caused your date to ..implode? Was he not to your liking? Too handsy? Too-"
...
You're too tired for this.
You rub the sleep from your eyes, turning on your heels and letting the blanket drag across the rugged pavement behind you as you head back inside. You almost expect some sort of resistance from him, a qwip on how rude it is to walk off in the middle of a conversation, but there is none. Maybe you just imagined that little interaction. Maybe there wasn't really anyone there, and you're still tired or still sleeping.
You open the door, and that same bright smile greets you from inside your own home.
That seems to wake you up.
Your wide eyes scan his face, then peek inside your home behind him. You turn back around to see where he previously was, and obviously there's no sign of his travels. You slowly turn back.
"May I speak now?" His voice is laced with a radio filter, and it hits your ears in the strangest way. The reality of the situation turns your exhaustion into apprehension, yet you nod your head anyway.
"I may have caught you in the midst of your disarray, but I must admit, I'm curious about what led to it." He steps aside and gestures for you to come inside. To your own house.
"H-He got the upper hand is all." You decide not to comment, moving inside sluggishly. As far as you know, this strange being has no idea of the sins you've committed. You quickly fib.
"He attacked me, actually."
"Oh, how devastating!" He lets out a saddened sigh, a hand over his heart with fake sympathy. "Now, was that before or after you attempted to drive a knife through his chest?"
With a defeated groan, you flop onto the couch.
"What are you? A sleep paralysis demon? A.. nightmare? Am I still asleep?" You grumble, running the possibilities out loud and not expecting a true answer. You actually hoped that it would all go away. That this voice in your head, this hallucination, is just that.
In your head.
"Ooh, I like the sound of that.. A nightmare~ has a nice ring to it wouldn't you say?" He stands in front of you, his hands folded formally behind his back.
"Now. Enough with the compliments. What truly happened, my dear?” When his voice suddenly turns sympathetic, you find yourself actually in need of someone to vent to.
“Well, since you're clearly just a nightmare - or.. something - ” You sit up, take in a deep breath, and with its release, you reveal yourself.
All of you.
Every single animal you've killed to curb your pain, what seems to work and what doesn't, and the previous nights failure. You talk about the number of friends and family you've scared off throughout the years, everything.
“I.. was gonna eat.. him…” You squeak out your final sentence. You've never really said it out loud before. And never in front of someone else. It made your own blood run cold. Not the thought of the act itself, but just sharing it aloud. your eyes stay fixed on your fidgeting hands in your lap when a loud cackle interrupts your anxiousness.
“My word, aren’t you just the cutest basket case? You're lucky to be dealing with a demon of similar tastes.” He hisses his final words, all with a sly smile. He sounds prideful in his admission. His words seem like they're meant to disarm you, and even though he essentially admitted to being a cannibalistic demon, it works.
“Well.. since we have sooo much in common-” Your voice drags, the notion of being similar to this demon feeling strange to mention out loud, “-would you.. help me? With all this..?”
Expecting another laugh, maybe some more teasing, you're met with a confusing expression. His smile is still there, unmoving, but you catch the smallest twinkle in his eye. He stands and faces away. The hope of finding an outlet for your cannibalistic intent starts to dwindle.
Your misplaced disappointment is overtaken by the flickering of lights and the soft tunes of a radio nearby, one that you recognized but were sure had been broken for decades. He turns his head unnaturally, looking over his shoulder to meet you with blackened eyes.
“I would be absolutely delighted.”
-
“Lucky for you, some of your late-night delivery seemed to withstand the flames!”
You follow that transatlantic accent to your kitchen, unamused by his continuous puns and casual speech. This big scary demon friend of yours presents a commically large plate, with a very familiar carcass sitting atop.
He did nothing to make it look any less disturbing than it truly was. the skin was nearly burned off, the smell was just awful, and the shirt was somehow still recognizable through it all.
You cover your mouth in response. The fact that it doesn't smell much different than some of the other carnivorous meals you’ve prepared nauseates you more than the sight of the corpse itself.
“Quite a specimen, very good choice! But, you needed tips, correct?”
All you can think of to respond is a simple nod of your head.
“Then let's get started!” With a snap of his clawed fingers, a sleek black apron covers his suit.
The next few hours were grueling, but.. fun? If you're allowed to call it that. You were given multiple pointers, and sure, they were all quite helpful, but they were in excruciating detail. What certain parts of the body you should pick or avoid was one thing, but discussing what wine pairs with what organs? It's not a conversation you ever thought you'd have.
By the time the meal looks normal, all decorated with spices in a baking pan and in the oven, you instinctively go to do dishes. As you fill the sink and start bringing things over, a little creature has you nearly tripping. You look down, seeing a strange little stitched doll carrying most of the dishes to the sink. No matter how strange it looked, you respond with a curious hum, fully desensitized to it at this point.
“Huh..” is all you can say. You take any remaining dishes and follow suit, plopping it all into the water. The little doll seems to be tugging at your leg when you try to walk off. It's holding its arms up to you, letting out little murmurs that sound restrained by the stitches across its mouth. You hesitate at first, but scoop it up in your arms and place it aside the sink. And it gets to work scrubbing away.
“Damn, you're cute, and you clean? Can I keep you?” You ask it quietly, giving it a quick pat on the head. It seems to smile.
“Quite a delightful little thing, one of my better creations, I must admit.” The response from him seems to scare the poor thing straight. It immediately lowers its head and focuses on cleaning. You scoff at the interaction between the two. if his own toy is scared of him, should you be as well? “That being said, I simply can not part with it. My apologies.”
“Oh, I was kidding. Mostly.” You reply quietly. You hear the first chuckle from him that seems genuine. No ill intent, just a joyous response to your little quip. It felt kinda.. Nice.
-
“So, Mr. Scary Demon Man-” You clear your throat before you speak. “-why are you here, exactly? did I do something to summon you? Or-” He cocks his head to the side at the title, a little twitch to his eye.
“Not at all, my dear. I simply wanted to help you in your little endeavors, from one cannibal to another, Haha!” His tone goes back to that of a salesman. Like he’s trying to convince you he’s something he’s not.
“Well.. thank you, I guess. I don't really understand why you’d want to help me without wanting something in return, though. You don't seem like-”
“-A charitable man? I suppose that’s fair.” He doesn’t give you a chance to reply. “If you’re so desperate to return the favor, why don’t we strike a deal? Just a little one. Between friends.”
You weren’t stupid. His words made it clear that this was his intention from the moment he chose to save your life. You shrunk a bit.
“Sure, between friends.” You let out a sigh, your somewhat chipper attitude immediately fading. He takes no time to be empathetic.
“Good! Now, you seem to have an eye for food. This meal was ideal considering your poor execution.” You can’t stop your eyes from rolling. “And you can’t get meals quite like this where I’m from. How about you keep providing, with my assistance, and I’ll make sure it’s prepared to the best of my abilities. In exchange for all my hard and generous work, I get half the spoils! Seems far more favorable on your end, but I’m feeling rather generous today.”
Where he’s from? You want to question it. You want to know more about him, you want to know -
“What’s your name?” Your sudden questioning leaves him speechless for a moment, but he’s quick to recover his charming smile. “You never told me.”
“Well, considering you won’t need my name if you don’t agree to this little game, how about I throw that in as well? You provide the living flesh, and I’ll handle the rest. And, you’ll get my name.” He stands before you, a bit too close for your comfort, as he reaches his hand out to you. “Call it a deal?”
An ominous green glow surrounds the two of you. It sends some kind of wind through your clothes and hair. His hand is especially bright, and his eyes go back to that frightening black that you experienced previously.
At the end of the day, if this is what you have to do to stifle those damned pains, it doesn't seem all that bad. You extend your hand, instinctively flinching at the seemingly impending danger. But that still doesn't stop you.
“O-Okay.. Deal.” With the touch of his palm against yours, the glow flashes, forcing your body to tense and your eyes to squeeze shut. It only lasts for a moment, though. When you open your eyes, you first examine your connected hands. His hand is huge compared to yours. From this proximity, you can truly take in how unnaturally tall he is.
Attempting to tug your hand back, his grip tightens, forcing your hand to his lips for a quick kiss to your knuckles. An outdated and surprisingly intimate action leaves you a bit flustered.
“My name is Alastor. It’s been a pleasure, my dear~”
-
And so, your transactional deal went on, right until your demise. You used a similar tactic to bring more meals to your doorstep, finding a handful of poor saps online. You weren’t exactly sure what he meant when he offered his assistance, but when the time came, a strength took over your body that you never experienced before. There were no more shaky hands or sympathy. Your aim was always true, and it was just so easy. Any impending dangers or possible retaliations were alerted to you by a subtle whisper, a voice, coming from just behind you. It was startling at first, but quickly became a comfort.
When it came to preparing the food, which Alastor said he’d handle, you’d essentially leave your victim's remains in the kitchen and would come back to a meal ready for the oven. Sometimes, you’d leave the body as is, limp on the couch, or sprawled on the floor, only when you were too exhausted to deal with the clean-up. On nights like that, you’d wake up to a completed meal the next morning. You liked to picture him going through your home, rolling up his sleeves and wearing that apron, cleaning things up, and cooking in your kitchen how he did that first night.
That being said, you didn't normally see his physical form. There was the lent strength and whispers during your hunts, but other than that, contact seemed to nearly cease. Why was that upsetting you? You cursed yourself for being too much of a romantic - for making this seem like anything more than a delusion you conjured up to make this whole action easier for you.
And that pain? That constant hunger that was never sufficed nearly went away. In fact, you’ve never felt fuller.
He did return on especially rare occasions. You never complained, and you attempted to hide your excitement when you'd catch him lurking in the corner of your eye.
Sometimes, it was to cook for you again. Despite the deal being in full swing, you would ask him to show you some of the recipes. Normally, it would just appear, looking delicious and homemade as always, yet you still pestered him to show you how to prepare some things. He always acted burdened by it, but seeing him cooking felt.. Domestic. Like, when he was cooking, he was truly in his element. It made it easy to forget what he was, which you found yourself questioning less and less. It simply didn't matter anymore.
One particular visit was late into the night. He actually woke you up from the racket, which had never happened before. Stumbling out of your bed, expecting to see police raiding your home or something worse, you’re instead met with a swaying radio demon and a shattered vase. Whenever he was around, soft music would play from your busted radio, a contrasting notion to the fumbling man in front of you now.
“Alastor?” You call out, a wave of relief hitting you and bringing the baseball bat from your hands to the floor. “What the hell are you doing? It’s like.. three in the morning..” The realization of the time makes the previous adrenaline seep out of you.
“Ha-ha! Isn’t that an interesting concept? The Devil’s Hour. Throw some religious implications, and it drives people mad! In reality, it’s just when your feeble body is at its most vulnerable.” He rambles on, spilling the drink from his bottle as he exaggerates his actions. He walks to you as he goes on, his body still swaying. “When your little fragile human heart reaches its lowest speed. When waking you would cause.. distress.” He goes on, his words suddenly sounding melancholic.
“Your breathing is erratic.” He adds, staring intensely at your heaving chest. “And you are hot to the touch-” The back of his claws trace the apple of your cheek, where even you can feel the heat radiating from your skin. Because his voice has no filter. You’ve never heard it like that before. You’ve never heard him sound so human.
His hand traces down your face to press against your chest. He’s feeling your heart. And it’s beating erratically.
“Your heart is fast. Are you distressed?” He leans in closer, to the point where you can smell the alcohol on his breath. “Do I make you distressed?”
In a flustered panic, you push him away. His closeness, his touch, it all threw you off guard.
“N-no, I’m just tired. You woke me up in the middle of the night, asshole.” You cross your arms over your chest, watching him laugh and struggle to find his bearings after being shoved. With a groan, you pull him by his slender arm over to the couch. He sits down with a thud, and you sit a careful distance next to him.
“That is what is so refreshing about you, my dear.” He lets out a dreamy sigh, and you pull the whiskey from his hand before he can break anything else. “Why - you have no idea who you’re dealing with, I could be a powerful demon overlord,” He slurs his words. “But, to you, I’m just your sweet radio demon~” He sings out.
Alastor leans into you, uncharacteristically tapping your nose. You swat his hand away, forcing another loud chuckle from him. He stays leaning forward, even seated beside you, he towers over you. Your wide eyes meet his.
“Even your eyes show no sign of fear. How curious.” You stay like this a little longer. His breath still reeks of expensive whiskey, but you can’t seem to tear your eyes from him. You’re terribly focused on keeping your distance, but he doesn't seem to have the same concern.
With a sly smile, he removes his coat and flips to his back, laying his head in your lap. With his long legs crossed over each other and hanging very much off the couch, you’re almost nervous to touch him. He wasn’t especially touchy, only doing so when necessary; fingers brushing against fingers, a hand on the shoulder for a mere second- why can you remember each moment so vividly? Why is it so fresh in your mind?
“Alastor, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you at home? or.. wherever you are when you're not here?” That’s still something you’ve questioned. You weren’t one to pester him so insistently, wery on losing the good thing you have going on.
“Unfortunately, I’m not sure! Be careful with your alcohol, my dear! Ha-haa!” He slurs out with a grin. “I suppose.. I prefer to be here.”
“What? Why? If you’re some powerful overlord, don’t you have somewhere better to be getting sloshed?” You scoff, keeping your eyes away from his head that was still perched comfortably in your lap. He seems to even nuzzle into your thighs a bit, and it only flushes you more. You take an unpermitted swig of his confiscated drink.
“Hm! Well, I can’t exactly get meat this fresh in Hell-” He taps his chin in thought to your rhetorical question that clearly went right over his head. “-besides! It’s not nearly as nice without you.” He sounds so matter of fact, so sure of his words. You hold your breath, suddenly reliving every moment together before this.
You’d chat and joke around in the kitchen, but you’ve really learned more about him than you thought. How he sews together those strange little creatures. And he seems so proud of them, despite their clear fear of his presence. You noticed he always puts some sort of spice in the meals he cooks, and that even if it's too much, you eat it anyway. How he simply hates getting dirty despite his occupation. He rolls up his sleeves, has that dumb apron, and uses those little toys of his to keep clean.
You loved it.
You’ve done nothing but enjoy every moment with him. You don’t need to know what he is to know that.
Wait, did he say Hell?
“You’re from Hell? There’s a Hell??” With a more shocked exclamation than feared, you finally look down at him. He’s too far gone, humming along to the music, he barely hears your questions. With a clearly defeated sigh, you brush his hair from his face. He winces from the action, his smile wavering but not breaking under your touch.
“Ah, I wish I knew how you survive this cozy little life.” His voice is quiet and mumbled.
You.
I can live this way because of you.
He manages to finish off the bottle with one more swig - when did he take that back?
Your thoughts begin to wander, absent-mindedly twirling strands of hair through your fingers, raking your fingers down his scalp, only to startle yourself with the sensation of animalistic ears. And they’re twitching. Whether it be your reaction or his, it seems to force a little yelp from you, so you reel your hand away.
“I didn’t mean to alarm you, darling.. Could you - or.. You can.. Continue. If you’d like.” His voice had dropped that strange filter again. You feel woozy. That whiskey you had shared, maybe it was strong. Or.. it was the middle of the night, you were sure you were just tired. You spiraled to come up with any reasonable excuse other than developing feelings for a Hellbound demon. You wonder if you-
Oh, you’re definitely going to Hell.
But, could it be something to look forward to?
Your intimate thoughts cloud your mind, leaving your hand mindlessly petting a literal demon. Your fingers combed through his hair, delicately clawing up the ears and pinching the softness at the tip of each one. Despite your thorough and elaborate massage, your mind has wandered to how a relationship with a possible hallucination of a demon would work out. But that's ridiculous, isn’t it?
“Alastor, can I ask you-” your words are brought to a halt and your eyes drop. A quiet hum of satisfaction, leaving a barely conscious radio demon, who’s head still sat in your lap. With a curse under your breath you decide you're trapped.
There was absolutely no chance of escape. What, were you supposed to wake him? What if you upset a powerful overlord demon, or whatever he claimed to be? Albeit uncomfortable, you force yourself to sleep. Enjoy it while you can, who knows if it's even real?
You didn't see him for awhile after that.
-
Alastor was a poinient man. He never missed a pick up before. So when you realized the meat you've portioned off for him was still sitting in your fridge, you start to worry. You're not exactly sure why, you’ve pushed any and every intimate thought from your mind.
This is purely transactional.
Even though his portion had gone untouched for a few days.. A few weeks, if you really think about it, you already had a date set with another victim.
It went on as usual. A dumb hunk of meat thinks he’s all that until you’re straddling him. You decide to stick to what you know works; a knife to the heart.
You mapped exactly where to plant it, as he fiddles with your top, and with a raised arm, you go to claim your next victim.
There was no warning.
There was supposed to be a warning.
The next thing you know, you're pinned to the floor, your wrist being gripped so tightly you have no other option than to scream and lose your grip on the knife.
Your date took no time. No hesitation.
The last thing you see is the opposing view. A stranger straddling your body with a knife held high above his head.
It seems so quiet.
And it's awful.
Where was the warning?
If anything, you should've at least heard Alastor's voice telling you how to avoid this. You always do. A slight pang of worry hits you, but it's quickly overtaken by anger.
With a final yelp that's fueled with frustration, hurt, and a broken heart, you met your demise quickly and alone.
By the time you've come to, you're surrounded by a handful of black eyed children. You immediately scramble backward, hitting your back against a brick wall. You’d notice your surroundings if these little scavengers werent eyeing you with an innocent curioustity. You let out a hiss, holding a hand over your eye. A streak of blackened blood comes from it, your palm thoroughly stained with it.
“You must be new~”
“You’re very handsome!”
“How did you die?”
A bombard of tiny voices and questions go straight over your head, a ringing in your ears forcing your mind to go hazy.
“Alright, give ‘em some space, kids!” A sweet voice seems to bring you back. You look down to your seated body. Your skin is a deathly gray, and your top is stained with your own blood. It’s still red. “Don’t overwhelm the poor thing, I’m sure they’re quite shaken!”
Your eyes then trace up the silhouette of a vintage looking entourage, then to a sharp-toothed smile. The woman stands before you, a hand held out to you.
Her eyes are just as black and her skin is just as pale as those children that now whisper and giggle to eachother nearby.
It didn’t take you long to realize your misfortune.
You died.
You’re upset sure, but you find that you’re mostly angry. None of this wouldve happened if you- if he-
“Come on, cutie! Let’s get you cleaned up.” Her considerate smile clears your mind almost immediately. You don’t hesitate accepting her assistance.
-
“He was supposed to help me. He said he would be there for me! I died because of him..!”
A strained smile and a quick nod is the only response you get to your angered rambling. The kind face that scooped you off the streets was Rosie, one of the most powerful overlords in Hell, who just so happens to own most the souls in Cannibal town.
Lucky you.
She did exactly as she said, having her fun and playing a bit of dress up with you. It wasn't exactly your style, but there were more concerning things when it came to your appearance. Your eyes were just as black as Rosie’s. As those children who have been following you around.. In fact, most residents of cannibal town had this feature.
You really are in Hell.
Right where you belong.
Right along side people who are just like you. It almost felt.. Comfortable.
You confided in her, going on and on about some jerk of a demon who broke a promise that cost you your life. How he had been helping you in fights, saved your life a number of times, taught you how to cook, showed up drunk to simply sit in your lap, then just fucking disapeared when you needed him most. Your face was turning red, from anger or the way you gushed about him, Rosie couldn’t quite decipher.
What wasn’t comfortable was the period clothing you were put in. But according to Rosie, it’s Perfect! What a doll!
“Is Alastor. The radio demon?” She completes your sentence with a sigh, standing to tower over you and placing a hand on your shoulder. “I hate to break it to you, hun, but no one’s seen him in quite a while.. If i’m being entirely honest with you, he’s a dear friend of mine.” You instantly tense at her words. You just went on a rant about how shitty he was, only to find out he’s disapeared with no explanation. Maybe it was a good reason. A good enough reason to leverage your own life? You aren’t sure.
“I have to find him!” You finally say, as if a lightbulb switched in your head. He seemed so unattainable all these years, but now? You’re in his house. “Miss Rosie! Can you help me? His name-”
“I can’t say he didn’t wrong you, but he’s a man of his word, hun.. If he’s not holding up his promises, then he might be in some real trouble.. ” You hear her voice crack, yet she doesn't let her smile drop.
Another factor to consider that Alastor might have bitten more than he can chew, yet she still sympathises with you. You nearly knock the wind out of her with your arms encircling her small waist. Your head rests just at her chest. You can’t see her face, but her arms are around you almost instantly.
-
As you got settled in town, you did actually use the skills that Alastor had taught you throughout your lifetime. You understood why he made your previous deal. Demon flesh was just fine, but you really needed to spice it up to be anything special. And even then, it still couldn't compare to fresh, living, meat.
You started off just making and baking your own food. Then, when one cannibalistic child asked to try some, they told their friends, who told others.
After a while, you were cooking for half the town. You had a line every morning out of your own home. Once Rosie took notice, it was time for you to make a deal.
“Why can’t I sign a contract with you? You’ve done so much for me, I trust you with my soul.” You had taken Rosie out for dinner, where you planned to discuss a potential deal. Even with you barely being in Hell for a year, you heard plenty about Extermination Day, contracts, dealing in souls, all of it. You did your research. You talked to some of the townsfolks and saw no real downside in giving your soul away. Your proposal seems to surprise her, though.
“You still have your soul? Didn’t you make a deal with Alastor?” She asks, quieting her voice when she says his name, as if just the sound of it would make you upset. It only makes your eye twitch, though, just at the thought of the whole ordeal.
“I did, but he didn't say anything about my soul.. Was he.. Supposed to take it?” You question.
“Well.. he’s made deals like that before, favors for favors, right?” You nod. “But to go all the way to Earth just for some food? That’s.. Not like him…” Rosie seems to be lost in thought, trying to piece together his intentions. You clear your throat, and attempt to calmly bring her back. You slide a tupperware container of lady fingers you had made just before this.
“I want a restaurant, Rosie. I’ve been keeping an eye on that abandoned shop in the town square. I can feed everyone in town if you’ll let me. And.. protection, of course. Would that work?”
She opens the box with a sparkle in her black eyes, almost immediately popping one of the delicate treats to her lips. With a hum of satisfaction and a snap of her fingers, the glowing golden paper floats in front of your eyes.
“It’s a deal, darling!”
-
You could barely call it a restaurant at first, but you were elated. Rosie granted you some extra hands to make deliveries and assist in the kitchen. Everything seemed to be going your way. Your first extermination day went by quickly. For some reason, angels weren’t destroying everything in town. And you and your little shop were both safe, untouched, really.
You had a steady job, loving customers, and a residency near the center of town. You were almost surprised how having a shared interest, in eating human flesh, can bring people together. And after just a few years, you had a community.
You had a family.
Something you never really though you’d have, in life or death; A home.
Things were going so well. This was supposed to be your happy ending. It had been a few years since you had signed the contract, and you still feel satisfied with your decision. You could really be yourself here.
In Cannibal Town.
In Hell.
It made you laugh sometimes, how much joy the underworld brought you.
On a say that seemed like any other, you had sold out your stock for the day early, and went on to send the rest of yout employees home, when you heard a ruckus near the gazebo.
The screech of a microphone, and a very distant agitated Susan, is all you can truly hear from where you are. You drop everything to join the crowd.
It was the princess of Hell.. You weren’t one to keep up with politics or media, there was no need for you. You entertained yourself plenty just by residing in town. But, you managed to hear her blow up before being dragged away. A tall, rugged figure takes their place, ready to entertain the crowd while the Princess gathered herself.
“Come one, come all! While our little princess is collecting herself, who would appreciate a quick song, hm?”
“There is no fucking way..” You mutter to no one but yourself.
Alastor.
He holds his hand up to his ear, waiting patiently for the adoring crowd to praise his presence before he went on. You knew Rosie was a friend of his, he was a cannibal afterall, but for the entire town to love him just as much? Including Susan?
It’s absurd.
He went on to perform some showtune, one that sounded familiar to you. The crowd excitedly surrounds the pavilion, dragging you nearly to the front. You held a look of disgust. A look of betrayal.
You didnt want to see him, you told yourself. Things were perfect as is, you felt no need to repair a relationship with your imaginary friend you conjured up while alive.
Although, you never thought you had to. He had been gone for years, he nearly became just a passing thought.
An unreasonable part of you stayed put. A part of you wants him to see you and recognize you, to remember what he had forgotten. You stood with your arms crossed, your heart beating rapidly just at the sight of him.
He looks entirely the same, completely unphased. You’ve changed so much visually, and you’re happier now. Bolder. You’re not shying down now.
He catches your eyes.
The music screeches to a halt, sounding like a record player needle dragging across the disc. You’re holding back a smile, almost proud that you were able to stop him in his tracks. This had to be the first time he’s thought of you in over seven years.
And stops singing.
Lucky for him, the princess is finally ready to make her own point. You stick around, not exactly paying attention to her lyrics. You keep your face of disdain strong, stepping away and flinching at any advance Alastor would make to reel in the crowd. He seems to distract himself just fine until Charlie whisks away the crowd. Again, you're firmly planted in your spot.
Alastor turns to you, much more apparent of who he’s dealing with now that you stand alone from the crowd. His ears are flat against his head, and his smile is turned at the corners. His eyes seem to dart back and forth as if he’s deciding whether or not to stay. To be with you.
Oh, he’s nervous.
You’ve never seen him nervous before. It feels good. You’re making the almighty Radio Demon nervous. You smile just slightly. But not a smile between old friends, but a smile in response to his realization that he fucked up.
Despite your delay, Alastor continues on with the rest of the parade. Your body immediately lost all tension once he leaves.
-
“Well, well! I knew I recognized that menu. I was ready to tear apart some poor sinner for using my recipes.” A familiar, antagonizing voice echoes throughout your little empty shop.
You turn on your heels, almost startled by the sudden intrusion.
Almost.
But, you'd be lying if you said you weren't hoping for it.
Just a little.
Of course, he'd come back. Maybe to make another lowly deal. Or to get you to do more menial tasks for him, to flaunt his power and authority.
“Yeah, well.. when you've been left for dead, and all you have is your skills, you do what you have to, to survive.” You snap, turning your back to him to continue wiping off an already spotless counter. “Plus, it never hurts to marginalize.”
“I've actually tried some of your food here.. Hm! And I hadn't the slightest idea who prepared such a meal. You've gotten better, I'll give you that! Such a small world.” He says with a nostalgic sigh. You can hear his heels clicking throughout the empty store, circling the room before eventually approaching you.
How can he speak to you like you were still.. aquitanced?
“I hope whatever kept you busy these seven years was worth my life.” You mutter. You weren't sure if you wanted him to hear that or not. Maybe if he did, he'd finally apologize or-
“Oh, it was! A nice little sabbatical is exactly what I needed.” You quickly turn to see him polishing his claws against his coat and smiling quite brightly. “I will say it is a pleasure to be meeting you here! I'm glad you settled in so easily.”
“You killed me, Alastor! You were supposed to keep me safe.. and now I'm dead! Because you disappeared without a word!” You start to scold him, finally hitting a breaking point. All he does is scoff at you.
“Oh please, I didn't even take your soul. And it's not like you'd end up anywhere else if you were to perish later on.” He speaks so casually about it all.
But, you were ready to cry. To kick and scream at his arrogance.
The feeling of sharp fingers engulfing your shoulders leaves you suddenly tense and puts your murderous thoughts on hold. He's vanished from in front of you and now looms over you, his eyes meeting yours from over your shoulder.
“Plus, you seem to be quite happy here! Why don't we just call it even then, hm?”
He can not be serious.
You pull away from him, the tears welling in your eyes finally letting loose.
“Alastor, stop!” You yelp, turning to face him. “That’s.. so unfair! You broke a promise! And you-” you hold your finger out to scold him even more, but you feel your body simply going slack. “-you hurt me.. I just.. thought that after all that time, after that night, you'd care a little more..” You look up to him, in the hopes of being met with some sort of sympathy. But his unnatural smile goes unwavering. You rub your arm awkwardly, losing your confidence as your words turn more vulnerable without your realizing.
“Oh, I can feel your pain, not to worry dear. I truly meant no harm when I couldn't hold up my end of the deal.” He's smiling and drawing out his words, only setting off a sense of unease within you. You finally let out a shaky sigh.
“With everything you've done for me.. I thought that.. you might've liked being around me…” You let out, your voice running slightly ragged from the previous shouts. “I thought we were having a good time! Then after all this?” You grow an uncertain smile.
A previous sight that made you giddy before only brings you dread now. His ears are flat, his eyes struggle to meet yours. He's losing his composure.
“I wouldn't be surprised if you wanted it to happen.” You laugh through your words, your hands raking through your hair in a stressed manner. In your little pits of passion, you don't get the chance to see his wavering smile, the grimace on his face, any of it. When your words are met with silence, though, that's when you finally look up to him.
He's nervous, again.
“Oh.. my-” your sentence barely starts before he attempts to cover his slip up.
“Now let's calm down, I really didn't mean for- I didn't intend-”
“Isn’t there rules to this? Were you ever allowed to meddle with my life in the first place - let alone - be on Earth??”
“-God! You killed me on purpose?? Just so I could come down here to do your bitch work?” You snap, your laugh becomes delirious and your tears betray the anger you're meant to be showing.
He’s scrambling for a witty reply, his expression finally showing his true intentions for the first time in a long while. He’s speechless.
“I’m such an idiot.. Of course, you never cared. Bastard.” You mumble your words to the room, losing any fear of him hearing your insults.
Your vulnerability sends a strange shiver down his spine. One he’s never felt before, one that makes his chest ache and his muscles tense.
“Well - Now, let's just talk for a moment before you-” Alastor extends his hand out to your turned back, but it never reaches you. A delicate grip takes his wrist, bringing him to a full stop. He stops, unnaturally snapping his neck to see who would dare disrupt the Radio Demon himself.
His ears flatten against his head, and with a sudden disbelief in what he’s seeing, his eyes return to their normal crimson.
Rosie towers over his hunched form, her eyes stern.
♡♡♡
“Al, sweetheart, you gotta go. You're disturbing my client.”
I love when Alastor fucks up and found out
THIS IS A TWO PARTER I PROMISE
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machine-saint · 10 months ago
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i think tumblr structurally encourages pissing on the poor
epistemic confidence: medium. (i always wanted to say that). this is amateur sociology and so should be taken with quite a bit of salt. this is absolutely a just-so story.
i think part of the reason tumblr and other similar social media websites have such a problem with misinterpretation is that conversational repair works differently than other forms of communication.
if you're talking in a group of people (over voice or over 'synchronous' communications like irc/discord that encourage short messages and paying attention) and someone responds in a way that indicates they misinterpreted you, you can interrupt them. and importantly, everyone else in the conversation hears you interrupting them. on a traditional forum with linear posts, you can't interrupt them, but anyone that reads all the posts (which, granted, isn't everyone) will eventually see your clarifying reply.
but on tumblr, if you make a post, X reblogs it with a misinterpretation, and you reply/reblog correcting X's interpretation, you have no way of notifying everyone that saw it from X; people generally don't go back and reread the notes on old posts, unlike forums where you'd typically read the threads you participate in. so the misinterpretation spreads.
and of course there's the whole 'screenshot this post to make fun of it' thing (which i'm not immune to, although i'm trying to do it less). it's obvious that screenshotting part of a post makes it even easier to misinterpret it, and i suspect that at this point for some people the mere presence of the "underwater" filter is enough to prime a "this is a bad opinion, i should disagree with it" reflex! and you can't go "hang on, that's not what i meant".
anyway. don't take this as like an iron law of social media or a thing that is definitely 100% true. but it's something i've been thinking about.
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bonefall · 1 year ago
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So, I'm writing an essay on the whole STATE of misogyny in WC for one of my university classes, and I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of things! No pressure of course, please feel free to say no!
A) Could I reference your good takes with appropriate harvard referencing and links back to your blog?
B) Are there any specific moments from the books that you think should be covered the most?
C) The end result will be a visual essay, so it's like those fun infographics people on Tumblr make on like ADHD and stuff, so when it's done, would you like to be tagged to read it?
(Sorry for anon, I'm nervous lmao, but if you'd be more comfortable I'll resend this off anon)
AAY good topic! You've got a lot to work with. Absolutely feel free to reference anything I've written, and tag me when you're done.
While you're here and about to write something so legitimate, I'm also going to recommend you check out Sunnyfall's video on gender in Warrior Cats. She breaks down the arcs into numbers, directly comparing the amount of lines mollies have to toms, and examining the archetypes women are usually allowed to be.
I think it's a must-have citation in a paper about WC misogyny.
...and, I think it's insightful to look at the WCRP Forum thread about the video. Note how the respondents immediately come into the thread to complain about how the video is too long so they didn't watch it, dismissing Sunnyfall as not being entertaining enough to hold their attention, even whining that she starts with statistics to prove her point, which I'm convinced she did exactly because they would have cried that she "had no evidence" if she didn't.
I am not a scholar, so I don't know how to document or prove that the books have an impact on the audience outside of anecdotes. But I think if you do write a section about fandom, it would be worth mentioning the in-universe and metatextual apologia for Ashfur and its reflection in the real world discourse, the authorial killing of Ferncloud because of fan complains, and the utter defensiveness against the discussion of misogyny you see outside of Tumblr.
You may also want to check out Cheek by Jowl, a collection of 8 essays about sexism in xenofiction by Ursula K. Le Guin. There's a very unique manifestation of authorial bias in animal fiction, having a lot to do with how the author views "the natural world," and it's worth understanding even though Warrior Cats are so heavily anthropomorphized.
So... Warrior Cats Misogyny
I think discussing individual instances can be helpful, but I'd implore you to keep in mind what's REALLY bad about WC's misogyny is framing and the bigger picture.
Bumble's death is shocking and insulting, but it's not just that she died. It's that the POV Gray Wing sees her as a fat, useless bitch who took his mate so she deserves to be dragged back to a domestic abuser, and he's right because the writers love him so much. It's that Bumble's torture and killing only factors into how it's going to hurt a man's reputation.
It's how Clear Sky hitting, emotionally manipulating, or killing the following women,
Bright Stream (pressured into leaving her home and family)
Storm (controlled her movements and yelled at her in public)
Misty (killed for land, children stolen)
Bumble (beaten unconscious, blamed nonsensically on a fox)
Alder (child abuse, hit when she refused to attack her brother)
Falling Feather (scratched on the face, subjected to public abuse and humiliation)
Tall Shadow (thrown into murderous crowd, attacked on-sight in heaven)
Rainswept Flower ("blacked out" in anger and murdered in cold blood)
Moth Flight (scratched on the face for saying denying medical treatment is mean, taken hostage in retaliation against mother for the death of his own child, which he caused)
Willow Tail (eyes gouged out for "stirring up trouble")
Is seen as totally understandable, forgivable, or not even questioned at all, when killing Gray Wing in an act of rage would have been "one step too far" with the ridiculous Star Line.
"Kill me and live with the memory, and then let the stars know it would only matter if a single one of your murder victims was a man."
It's the way that fathers who physically abuse their kids out of their ego (Clear Sky, Sandgorse, Crowfeather) aren't treated anywhere near the same level of narrative disgust and revulsion the series has for "bad moms", even if they're displaying symptoms of a post-partum mood disorder (depression, anxiety, and rage), an umbrella of mental illnesses 20% of all new mothers experience but are heavily stigmatized with (Sparkpelt, Palebird, Lizardstripe).
It's Crookedstar's Promise giving him two evil maternal figures in a single book, while bending over backwards to make every man in a position of power still look likeable in spite of the fact they're enabling Rainflower's abuse. Leader Hailstar is soso sorry that he has to change Stormkit's name for some reason, in spite of leaders being unaccountable dictators the other 99% of the time, and Deputy Shellheart functionally does nothing to stop his own son from being abused or even do much parenting before or after the fact.
It's the way men's parental struggles are seen sympathetically, and they don't have to "pay for it" like their female counterparts (Crookedstar's PPD vs Sparkpelt's PPD, how Daisy and Cinders are held responsible for Smoky and Whisper being deadbeats, Yellowfang's endless guilt for killing her son vs Onestar's purpose in life to kill his own), even to the point where a father doesn't have to have raised their kids at all to have a magical innate emotional connection to them (Tree's father Root, Tom the Wifebeater, Tigerstar and Hawkfrost).
It's less speaking lines and agency for female characters, being reduced to accessories in the lives of their mates and babies, women getting less diversity in their personalities, with even major ex-POV characters eventually becoming "sweet mom" tropes.
You could zoom in on any one of these examples and have an amoeba try to argue with you that "Oh THIS makes sense because X" or "Ah well my headcanon perfectly explains this thing" or "MY mother/girlfriend was abusive/toxic/neglectful and I've decided that you are personally attacking ME by having issues with how a character was written or utilized," but the beleaguered point,
That I keep trying to hammer in, over and over, across books worth of posts,
Is that these are trends. More than just a couple one-off examples. It's the fabric that has been woven over years, showing a lack of interest in, or even active prejudice of, women on behalf of the writers.
LONG STANDING trends, which have only gotten worse as the series progressed. From Yellowfang being harshly punished with a born evil son who ruins her life in TPB and the mistreatment of Squirrelpaw that begins in TNP, all the way up to the 7 Fridgenings of DOTC and Sparkpelt's PPD being a major character motivator for her son Nightheart.
So, I would stress that in your paper, and structure it less as "the Sparkpelt slide" and "the Yellowfang slide," and more as "The paternal vs maternal abuse" slide, and "the violence against women" slide. They're really big issues, there's tons of examples for each individual thing.
Anyway to leave off on a funny, look at this scene in Darkest Hour that I find unreasonably hilarious,
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"Everyone who matters to me; my truest friend, my sensible and loyal warrior, the wisest deputy I've ever known, and 2 women." -Firestar, glorious idiot
He can't even think of a single trait for either of them what the hell does "formidable pair" mean lmaooo, when I finished a reread about a year ago this line killed me on impact.
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cursedcatvibes · 5 months ago
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WORLD RECORD!
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re4r!incel roommate leon x roommate reader
word count: 3.6k
summary: Incel leon who thinks he’s above women and thinks he’s an alpha male. he’s an absolute piece of shit too.
tags/warnings: 18+ minors DNI! Smut, many many mentions of misogyny. He literally can’t find the clit. P in V, he wrapped it before he tapped it! Incel 😧. quick mention of abuse but it’s not super relevant to the plot. not proofread!
a/n: not much to say other than i cringed so bad trying to write leon’s character, but i was committed, i looked through incel forums on reddit and even got chronically online real quick. also i’m on vacation! so i’m not able to write as much as I want! :( i’ll probably post small drabbles but i will most likely have another full story up in a month considering I cranked out a whole 7k page fic and then now a 3k one. DONT QUOTE ME! Also maybe agent leon x agent reader next. @gettingsilly (my sweetheart who was so hyped about this! here you go my love!)
songs:
pussy - rammstein (highly recommend them)
behind blue eyes - limp bizkit (fun fact; this was the og title of the story!)
rape me - nirvana (this was going to be a non con but i changed my mind)
norwegian wood - the beatles (literally burns the woman’s house down cause she don’t want him😭)
happy reading!
。゚•┈୨♡୧┈•゚。
Handsome. Is the first thing that came to mind when you first opened the door to greet your new roommate, Leon. 
-
The rent was getting out of hand these days and you figured it was a way better deal to split the rent instead of living paycheck to paycheck damn near.
The only downside were the horror stories about roommates and even just random strangers too. It made you feel a bit queasy, but what else could you do, a recently single woman and at the ripe age of 25, technically you were in your prime for all types of creeps and weirdos to try and pull something, especially if you live alone.
So you bit the bullet and put up a craigslist ad, putting it at the back of your mind for now while you went back to getting rid of your ex-boyfriend's belongings. 
You only remembered about it when someone responded to it and after a few messages back and forth you gave the address to him and told him he could move in tomorrow. Feeling a bit proud of yourself for even being able to organize such an arrangement.
-
The first thing you noticed was how absolutely built he was, he definitely went to the gym and it made you feel a little insecure for a brief moment, before you stepped to the side to allow him to enter. “Welcome to your new home!” You beamed, happy with what you’ve done to the place. Completely missing the way his eyes ran up and down your body lewdly. 
He only wanted to have a girl roommate because he figured she would give it up easily or at least flaunt her body off to him, much to his dismay you were wearing a hoodie and sweatpants, not a single ounce of skin showing where he could sculpt your body out. “Prude.” Is what ran through his mind.
“Thanks.” He replied stiffly. “Where is my room at?” Leon asked as he looked around, he was kinda pissed off you didn’t show him any goods. He hated girls who didn’t show off their body, but he hated girls who showed off too much, thought they were just whores looking to get some attention.
So what if he catcalled them? Obviously they were dressing like that for attention and got all pissy when he gave them that attention.
You were oblivious to Leon’s degrading thoughts, too focused on trying to make sure he didn’t try to kidnap or murder you. When he spoke about where he would be staying you perked up and showed him the room while also giving a quick tour of the apartment.
You were even sweet enough to help him unpack all his things once they were all brought in! He owned some interesting objects, a bit uncomfortable to watch him unpack as he had a whole box dedicated to just sex toys. Fake pair of tits that were way too big to even be comfortable on a woman, fake mouth, fake ass, and multiple fake pussy’s. That wasn’t even the worst part of it. 
It got all too freaky when he pulled out hentai figurines that had little to no clothes on, all in lewd poses with lewd expressions on their faces, more specifically ahegao. You could feel the initial attraction from him sizzle down to a mere speck of a flame.
How could someone just own all this stuff so casually, flaunting it like it was a toy race car collection? But Leon didn’t care, fictional cat women were so much better than real women. They couldn't reject him or deny him sex. (Because they quite literally couldn’t, they're inanimate figures.)
He had the straightest deadpan expression on his face and you got the heebie jeebies thinking about what he could’ve possibly done with all these weird toys.”So,” You cleared your throat awkwardly, suddenly feeling like every object of his you touched was just icky. “Where did you say you lived before this?” You asked curiously.
Leon glanced over at you, wondering if you were gonna pull your hoodie off and finally show him your tits if he answered all your questions, he was growing frustrated. Dammit woman! Show him something! He thinks this is the longest he had gone without jerking off or watching a porno. If you weren’t gonna entertain him sexually why were you still bothering him?
“My mom’s. She said something about me needing to move out because I'm too old.” He grumbled out, this gave you a major ick, didn’t this guy say he was 27? He wasn’t struggling to get money when clearly he can afford expensive sex toys and other items. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” You replied quietly, to which Leon grunted in acknowledgment.
Once you finished the box you were unpacking you decided the best course of action was to just walk away from this conversation. “It seems like you can handle the rest on your own, I don’t really wanna break any of your computer monitors and stuff.” You said as you stood up from the floor and brushed your hands against your pants.
 “Okay.” Leon hummed, disinterested in  conversation. All he really wanted to do was hurry up and set his computer up so he could jerk off in peace. You leaving his room was a bonus. He didn’t want to be downright rude and kick you out, after all, he is totally a nice guy. Plus he got the opportunity to stare at your ass as you walked out, he could see it jiggling underneath your sweats which was enough to rile him up.
-
You wish you could say it improved from there but unfortunately it did not at all. It only seemed to worsen. Like who the hell is watching porn from the moment they wake up to the moment they fall asleep. It’s all just yucky. The loud and over exaggerated moans that were definitely done for performance and not real. 
The only time Leon would leave his room was to eat or grab some water, he always looked so dazed too, it made you wonder what he was doing in there, you’ve never seen him go to work so it made you curious. 
Leon on the other hand was always so dazed or flustered in the face from the amount of jerking off he does all day. He once ran his dick dry enough to start cumming clear, rubbing himself raw damn near. It’s not like he tried not to get laid, he definitely did. But it never worked.
The way he carried himself was creepy, flaunting the fact he was a nice guy who could give a girl a good time. News flash! If you have to say you’re a nice guy, you're definitely not. Girls often avoided him in middle school and that followed him throughout highschool and even college. So he naturally drifted towards animated women.
He was hot but his personality quite literally sucked, it's like he would attract women because of his looks and as soon as he started speaking they lost interest. But you? You still greeted him every time he came out of his room with a polite smile on your face, offering to cook him something but he always declined because the mere thought of having a woman do something trivial such as cook for him like a traditional woman should, made him hard on the spot.
He had the normal views on life, such as all men do. Women are baby makers, they belong in the kitchen, they should treat their man like a king. It’s not like anyone could change his opinion either. He’s so far into the rabbit hole that his other incels praise him like he was a god, thus only further bursting his massive ego. 
-
You didn’t think much of Leon, not in a harsh way, you just didn’t really know that much about him because you two never spoke like that. All you did know was that he watched porn, maybe a bit too much that was considered normal. It's not like you're shaming him because you watch porn too, but you have some decency, a bit of dignity and pride.
Yet your opinion of him instantly sours when one day he comes out of his room, which reeked with the smell of cum and sweat, the room was humid too, which confused you when you first noticed it. He wore an angry expression on his face as he stomped, yes, like a toddler would, towards the fridge to guzzle down a can of soda. 
You, sitting on the couch mindlessly scrolling through your phone waiting for the time to pass on your off day, you planned to go to a club and slut yourself out to help remind yourself that you’re in fact hot and your ex missed out. Yet when he slammed the fridge door closed that caught your attention, perking your head up like a puppy.
“Uh, you alright?” You asked aloud, watching his eyes snap towards you with a frustrated huff. He figured if you put up with him this long then you must see the same misogynistic views he does about women. “No!” He scoffed out, dragging himself to sit on the couch next to you, like directly. Knees touching and everything.
This piqued your curiosity, maybe you could learn something about him? “What’s wrong?” You questioned as you shut your phone off, sitting up a bit straighter now, putting some distance between the both of you on purpose by grabbing a throw pillow.
Leon then started to rant and you’ve never been more disgusted and horrified in your life before. “I’ve been talking to this really hot chick and we were hitting it off, even had phone sex once or twice but when she asked me who my ideal woman was she ghosted me! Like what's wrong with saying women belong in the kitchen, or doing laundry, or even just cleaning. Women are only here to serve us alpha males.” 
Your nose scrunched up while your face morphed into genuine horror mixed with disgust. Is this seriously his mindset? It must be a joke or something of the sort because no way in hell. “Is.. is this a joke?” You asked, feeling puzzled as you looked around for a hidden camera. Out of all the people you got stuck with, you got stuck with an incel of all people.
Leon stared at you with the most serious face he could muster, he wasn’t kidding, in fact he was getting a bit upset that you were thinking he was joking. “Women are what's wrong with this world! You’re all too soft and so ditzy. You all think men’s feelings are a joke.” He grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest and you swear you can make out a dried cum stain on his clothes. 
You felt so sick and also tickled, you’ve never heard someone or have been around a real life incel before and unfortunately this one came in the form of a super hot guy that wasn’t looking so hot anymore 
“Ew..” You stood up from the couch and stuck your tongue out slightly. “Is that how you see women? No wonder why she ghosted you, you’re a fucking incel.” You scoffed out, to which Leon got offended. “So?! What’s wrong with that?!” He shouted, the tips of his ears turning pink. It was different being scolded by a woman in person rather than over the phone because  he knows they can't hurt him physically but rather verbally. Plus it’s much easier to insult someone online versus real life.
“Do you actually hear the words leaving your mouth?” You questioned, staring him down intensely. Leon tried not to shrink in on himself, it reminded him of his mom telling him that he had done something wrong and now he was in trouble. So he doubled down and sat up straighter too, staring up at you. 
“Yeah, and what about it? Why do women get so butthurt over every little thing?” Leon grunted out, rolling his eyes like a little kid would. You were just astonished that he was willing to keep going even after being confronted with the fact, but you weren’t oblivious to the way his ears were turning red from embarrassment. “Fine, if that’s how you’re gonna be.” You murmured as you sat down on the coffee table right in front of him. His eyes follow your form curiously. If he was being honest the only reason why he actually moved in with you was because he thought you were really hot from your profile picture and even the photo you sent of yourself to prove that you were real, per his request. He jerked off to both photos for hours. (Plus his mom really did kick him out.)
Leon went to question you in hopes of turning the table around to make it backfire on you. Yet as his mouth opened to make another snide remark about women you spoke up first. “Let me be the first one to tell you this, and I mean this too.” You paused as you stared right into his eyes. “No woman is ever gonna have sex with you if you have this mentality and mindset.” You watched his eyes widen a bit and felt some joy come from it.
Leon balled his hands up into fists in genuine anger, a deep part of himself knew she wasn’t lying but the other part was so adamant on her being wrong. Obviously she didn’t know what she was talking about, women never do. “You’re a liar. You’re just jealous.” He scoffed out, narrowing his eyes into thin slits.
You were absolutely not lying.
Far from it actually.
The closest Leon had came to a pussy is on a computer screen, let’s face it. No woman on earth would wanna sleep with such scum such as him, not even prostitutes themselves want to take on such a tedious task. They’d rather kill themselves or have their pimp abuse them than sleep with him.
“Really, name 5 women you’ve had touch you in a romantic way.” You countered, staring into his eyes with an intense expression. Leon opened his mouth to try and smugly name a woman until he realized the answer was 0, he had no names because no one wanted him like that.
It was a blow to his ego and it showed on his face. If he wasn’t such a loser with terrible opinions along with his shitty personality then you would’ve felt bad but you didn’t. It was his own fault.
“That’s not fair.” He grumbled, staring up at you with a slight hurt look on his face. He wanted to get back at you. Make you regret and eat your words. How? Well that problem was quickly answered as he grabbed your wrist and pinned you beneath him on the couch. A yelp leaving your mouth at the sudden movements.
“What the—“ You were suddenly cut off by Leon’s hand slapping over your mouth, he smelled of cum and sweat, it made you wanna gag and throw up on him. “I bet I can make you cum so hard you’ll forget that you were mean to me.” He hissed, his fragile ego was broken because of you!
You furrowed your eyebrows before rolling your eyes. “Whatever.” You said underneath his palm, voice coming out muffled.
Leon smirked and moved his hand off your mouth, gazing lustfully at your body. He seemed confident but on the inside he was screaming at himself. He’s never touched or seen a woman in such an intimate manner in real life. This wasn’t a screen this time.
He gulped and hooked his fingers on the waistband of your sweatpants, he was determined to make you cum if it was the last thing he ever did.
Once he removed your sweatpants he found you commando beneath it. His breath caught in his throat, your mound was glistening beneath the light in the living room. It wasn’t even wet because of him, but he was dumb enough to not know the difference. He stared in awe before looking back up at your face when you cleared your throat awkwardly. “You gonna stare or what?” You questioned.
Leon shook his head before putting his hands on you, gently rubbing your inner thighs. Making you think that for a brief moment he might actually know what he was doing, right up until he pressed his thumb against your lower lips and started rubbing them.
Completely missing your clit.
He felt so aroused and a bit cocky now that he was touching your pussy, his eyes laser focused on your face to see if it was feeling good. He even tried dirty talk too. “Yeah? Does that feel good? I bet it does.” Literally hyping himself up.
You found it hilarious and decided to nod, stifling a laugh as you let out a fake over exaggerated moan he hears in his crappy pornos. Leon let out a soft groan at the sound, his hips bucking up into the air while his cock twitched.
Now, Leon had seen enough porn to know that he needed a condom and lube, obviously they never showed the actors prepping the girls' pretty cunts, they just stuck it in. Spoiler alert, foreplay is hot! None is not.
While Leon ran to his room you took the opportunity to finger yourself, even if you were sure he wasn’t packing much you wanted to be somewhat prepared for a small stretch, you groaned silently, throwing your head back in pleasure, clearly favoring your hand over Leon himself.
When you heard his footsteps you quickly pulled your hand away and watched as he excitedly took his pants off. Wow, so much for knowing how to pleasure a woman. It was funny to watch him struggle to keep it together when he kneeled back between your legs.
“I’m gonna put it in now.” Leon announced, squirting a generous amount of lube on your cunt before (attempting to) rolling on the condom. (You definitely had to help him. The last thing you wanted was to get knocked up by some dimwit.)
He put some lube on his cock, jerking off a bit while looking down at your pussy. Not your face. When he stopped masturbating he slapped the tip of his dick against your clit a few times, your body jolting in pleasure at the sudden sensation.
This immediately boosted his ego and you were in awe he was able to make you feel partially good. He was just daydreaming of how tight and warm your hole was going to feel. His dick wasn’t that big either, it was average length, average size, average balls. Just.. underwhelming and average.
“What’re you waiting for?” You murmured, snapping him out his trance briefly before he cleared his throat. “J-Just trying to brace you for my cock, it’s big right?” Leon questioned, feeling a bit insecure but he wanted you to make him feel better, feel like a man. That was a woman’s purpose after all.
“Yes (no).” You sighed out breathily, keeping up your act, dragging your nails down his body gently, causing him to shudder and nod with a smug look on his face. He pushed himself in fairly easily, considering your ex-boyfriends cock was much bigger and overwhelming, accidentally clenching down around Leon’s sad excuse of a penis which riled him up, thinking you had came.
You definitely missed his dick and now was stuck with some crappy one attached to a misogynistic freak. A soft sound of discomfort left your lips and Leon took it as a sign that you were enjoying it. You must love it! He was so confident in himself!
So confident that after 5-6 thrusts he spilled inside the condom, talk about a minute man. He was a millisecond man. His whole body spasmed from euphoric bliss, he had never cum this hard in his life before, burying his face in your neck, sloppily kissing at your skin because he couldn’t kiss for the life of him.
You were stunned someone could cum so quickly, that had to be a world record or something. Quickest man to cum after sticking it in or some random ass title, you hadn’t realized you had zoned out about the Guinness record book until Leon pulled his cock out from inside you, feeling good about himself.
He was panting softly from the intensity of his orgasm, leaning back against the couch to gaze at your pretty pussy, he wanted to eat you out too, wanting to show you he was good orally too.
“Was it good? Did you cum too?” Leon said as he stared into your eyes, wanting to hear you sing his praises and take back your harsh words that hurt his feelings. Almost like a puppy waiting for its owner to praise them for pissing outside the house instead of inside.
You grabbed your clothes and put them back on, smirking as you stared him dead in the eye. “No, I didn’t cum.” You snickered as his face dropped, kissing his forehead quickly. “Sucks to suck, Leon.” You said casually, getting up to go to your room and nap.
Leon sat on the couch stunned beyond relief, his cock kicking against his thigh as he watched you.
He swore under his breath that you were lying and you did cum, after all, delusion is key, and delusion is what made him become your roommate to begin with.
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the-hydroxian-artblog · 7 months ago
Note
Are Merch Mimics capable of using assimilation offensively against humans, for self-defense and otherwise? Like, if someone tried to break a toy/game/etc they were inhabiting, could the Mimic instead pull them in?
To a degree, yeah. I should mention though that Victor isn't "in" the TV in any magical sense; spoiler alert: he's the controller Vance is holding! Hence, the eye on the controller reacting to the dialogue. The Victor on the screen is actualy a model he rigged for a homebrew game he coded the old fashioned way, which responds to whatever inputs the controller sends to the Wii.
He actually is an active member of the homebrew community, and loves to mess with electronics the old fashioned way. Almost no one on the forums knows he's a toy bird, but are impressed nonetheless with his little projects, various rail-shooter games, and weird obsession with snarky anthropomorphic birds.
Victor could technically "jump into a game" on a tv screen, but it'd be a bit of a weird process if he doesn't know how to mod the game, so it'd look more like a shitty greenscreen effect rather than anything coherent. He'd need to learn in real time how the game is coded, how to inject arbitrary code into the system while it's running, etc etc. He CAN do that because he's a fucking NERD, but it wouldn't be a quick process at all.
I should also mention, mimics have an inherent ability to create dreams, since they come about from processing the thoughts and ideas of humans. If a human bonds with a mimic, such that the mimic now knows how the human thinks, they can pull a (somewhat) willing human into the dream when the human sleeps. So to wrap this all up: what Victor could do for a game he understands inside and out is pull a human into a dream that happens to match whatever he himself experiences as currently going on in the game. Basically the ultimate VR experience, with the mimic as a middle-man. Which might be something that'll happen in the comic soon....!
So that all seems a bit convoluted, right? Here's even more worldbuilding about matter assimilation by mimics below the cut. Stop here if you don't want a headache.
The reason so many hoops would be needed to pull a human into a game world is that assimilation is much easier on inert, inanimate objects that are not currently "in use" by a thinking thing, or something that relies on constant electrical signals to function. This can be something with brainwaves, or some other kind of animation like a normal robot. A mimic can convert a CRT TV that's turned off somewhat easily, but a TV that's turned on, with particles of every kind constantly moving into and out of it, is much harder to convert.
This means that humans and biological creatures in general are also trickier to convert, though it can still happen if done gradually enough. Hence, Victor wouldn't be able to rapidly convert Vance in one fell swoop, it'd be a whole process. It's easier to just pull a human into a dream instead, and if a mimic understands a video game, or a story in a book really well, they can basically make the fictional world into an extremely lucid reality for whatever human tags along with them.
I often describe mimics as just "jojo stands if they were corporeal and could just get up and move around on their own with no user"; you know how in jojo stand battles or old stories about magic curses, if you break the curse or kill the stand before its effect becomes permanent, all of the damage is magically undone? Like if you kill Green Day, the mold stand, all of the molding just instantly stops?
Mimics who use their powers of assimilation offensively work similarly; they can project their influence to a certain range, and partially assimilate matter in that range. If you knock out or kill the mimic, however, everything reverts to normal. A human who doesn't want to get converted can basically just turn around and walk away most of the time, or shoot the mimic, so the mimic in question needs to pull off some trick to get the human to stay within range for the assimilation to fully stick. A human can still break free and get out of range even if fully converted, but it's much harder, as assimilation usually means the mimic gaining greater control over the converted object in question. The exact range and effect mimics have is again like jojo stand ranges; it varies.
Different mimics have different affinities for different things. Victor can assimilate cheap electronics fastest because he likes them and understands how they work (it's why he's a toy bird mp3 player). Az can assimilate guns, and turn ammo into weird anomalous ammo with weird effects. Zachary is a genius who can assimilate any matter, including biological matter, faster than anyone... but he's also extremely picky and hates the sight of blood, so he only uses assimilation on things he really, really likes.
If I could somehow make another read more at this point, I would. It's gonna get messy:
What a weird power and setup though, right? Why? The true nature of mimics is unknown to most of them, but the deepest lore is that the first mimics were constructs made by a people long ago, who first made them as highly advanced machines that'd recognize the thoughts of their masters to fulfill any practical desire. Need a road built? Done. Need a ship repaired? Done. With physical needs all met, the people began to turn inward, and use the mimics to illustrate their own artistic ideas. Eventually, the will and consciousness of these people were assimilated and inherited by mimics, who themselves became people. Mimics spread, altered themselves, duplicated, deviated, fused, split, and wandered around. Getting into recreational wars, manifesting horrors and delights into reality because they could.
Somehow, after the dust settled, the strongest mimics, the angels, decide to set their sights to the stars, and observe other lifeforms develop technology and their own art. Did mimics come to earth millions of years ago, and simply watched humans grow, evolving with them in-tandem? Or did humans make the first mimics, and somehow became undone and set back to the stone age? The answer to this mystery is currently known only to the oldest of mimics. Except Zachary. He's old, but didn't care to remember.
This is generally why mimics seem so compatible with humans; they were made by either them, or people who were, for whatever the reason, very much like them, flaws and all. The ability to assimilate is basically the conversion of matter into a more malleable state of information. A virtually magical power, but this was achieved not through prayers and spells, but a very human-like obsession with developing technology to the point of exerting control over molecules, then atoms, then the lowest planks of matter. The obsession with scaling every mountain and crossing through every valley. To rip the natural world apart, and hopefully, put it back together before it's too late. Angels seek to ensure humanity walks the right path there, but with human's own desires and intent honored, for better or worse.
To answer your question: yes. A mimic of Mario can pull you into the game and you can jump with him and eat shitty low poly spaghetti with him.
The process for doing that is just convoluted and complicated, and you need to get to know each other a bit first. If he tries to use it as an attack though, it either won't work, or it might just wind up giving you mild brain damage.
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batmanisagatewaydrug · 6 months ago
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hi, im an 18 year old pre-transition trans guy and ive grown up in an incredibly repressive fundie household which has caused me to really struggle both socially and with my sexual development. ive been homeschooled nearly my whole life and am currently getting everything set up to enroll for college this fall, this will be my first time living away from my abusive household and im very nervous about it..
anyhow, im in a really really weird situation right now. because of my shelteredness ive always been extremely isolated irl, ive never had a consensual romantic or sexual experience irl and all of my friends are online friends. well, one of my online friends (a cis guy who i knew from an online forum) and i started fooling around a bit, flirting and then eventually very explicit conversations, trading nudes and sexual video calls. we were extremely emotionally close and the relationship was pseudo-romantic but we both agreed we didn't want to do online dating after both of us having a bad experience with it previously.
this whole situation allowed me to experiment sexually more than i ever have, and i really felt more sexually confident than i ever have.
when we met, he told me he was freshly 19. and for the whole relationship i was under that impression, he didn't give me any reason to doubt it. but two days ago he couldn't handle lying anymore and revealed that he was 15. needless to say that was an incredible shock and i dealt with it as responsibly as i think i can.
the reason i'm coming to you about this is because i feel really weird about the whole thing, i dont blame myself for believing him and im not mad at him because i understand what lead him to those choices, but now i feel really awkward about all of the good things i got out of the situation before the reveal.. this was my first time ever really doing "real" sexual stuff with someone (beyond just texting i mean, i had never exchanged nudes or done vidoe calls like that before) everything sexual i encounter now makes me feel awkward because of all of this, its really weird and uncomfortable and i don't know what to do :(
im not sure what im hoping to get out of telling you this but i can't really talk about this to anyone else i feel like, so i guess i just wanted to get it off my chest
(if anyone responds to this accusing me of taking advantage of him or not handling the situation correctly, firstly you have basically no context and secondly you don't know what i did to take care of the situation. let me and my close friends be the ones to judge how i handled it, this is an extremely complicated situation for me to be in and you being judgmental does nothing positive for it.)
hi anon,
oofah doofah, what a sucky situation.
I totally understand feeling grossed out by the reveal; those feelings are real and deserve recognition. it's not nice to be lied to, especially when the truth casts all of your previous experiences in a totally different light - and a much scarier one, since you could very well have been breaking the law by exchanging nudes with a 15 year old, depending on where you live! this person could have gotten you in huge trouble by lying, which makes this whole situation that much worse.
having said that, you don't need to feel good about having had a good time and having gotten some positive experiences out of this dynamic. you were enjoying a relationship that you had every reason to believe was above board and it did great things for your sexual confidence! that's not retroactively untrue just because you were being misled; all of the good things you felt are still real.
think of it this way: when a couple breaks up there's often a urge to feel that they've been wasting their time together, that all of the energy and devotion they brought to their relationship was ultimately a waste because they didn't die together in bed holding hands at the tender age of 107. but that isn't true! no relationship is a waste of time, and even when things don't work out, that doesn't mean the good things didn't count. every time those people made each other laugh, everything they encouraged each other to try, every new thing they experienced together, every time they had sex, every meal they shared - all of these are real and matter and helped shape them for the better, even if they ended up parting ways as romantic partners.
the same is true for you. take your time to sit with your hurt at this loss and betrayal of your trust, but don't throw the good out with the bad. this wasn't ultimately a good relationship for you, but that doesn't mean it brought nothing of value into your life, and you can carry what you learned about yourself forward with you as you seek more appropriate partners :)
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cheesecakethots · 1 year ago
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i can just imagine a very lonely and sad reader scrolling through internet forums and random group chats trying to find some companionship. even at its more superficial level and with that “friendship” barely lasting a few conversations before it’s back to ghosting, yet you’re desperate to cover up this emptiness that you’re willing to take whatever you can have.
then this is where chrollo comes into the picture. can’t really get into the logistics of it, but at some point you’re in some deep dark part of the internet. somewhere you’re not supposed to be in, but you’re feeling daring that day and an extra level of misery. suddenly you stumble upon a listing of an obscure book published a long time ago, somewhere on the black market that’s going for an absurd amount of money. you feel confident enough to comment something like, “a million for this shit? a freshly harvested liver isn’t even worth this. lower the price.” you’re itching for a fight. then in just a few hours, you didn’t expect to debate about books and other eye rolling shit over the internet with some dude who thinks he’s better than you.
he, chrollo but you don’t know him yet, is so pretentious you want to gouge your eyes out. but out of spite you are not backing down. he’s debating you on proust or whatever his name is. you don’t read a whole lot anyway, so you’re pulling out of your ass. he finds you funny, witty, and endearing in your own weirdly charismatic way. and you find him irritating because he never shuts up. it’s this weird dynamic of back and forth banter that has no apparent end. should you be glad that in the years you’ve been searching for a friend, this one has managed to stuck with you this far along? how long has it been since you two have started talking? a few weeks at least, and the argument is still fresh and it’s about philosophy now, which is even more mind-numbing. but this guy knows how to keep a conversation going at least. you feel more annoyed that this asshole is the only person willing to talk to you, instead of any other rando with manners and actual substance to their personality. but you can’t really complain, at least you have one friend.
it’s mostly him who hits you up, not you. and it’s mostly at unusual times. he has a pattern of texting you around midnight to early in the morning, even if you tell him not to disturb you a billion times, so you don’t respond right away. but when you do, he’s sent a myriad of long paragraphs of some shit you can’t really bother to comprehend. you respond with and eye rolling emoji and this headache responds instantaneously. it’s no brainer that sooner or later, he’ll be interested enough to track you down and find every piece of information about you.
anon go write a fic NOW
i love this sm like becoming kinda frenemies with chrollo online, seeing him as this dude who is really annoying but also charming in a way? you’re constantly drawn back to conversations with him because they’re just so enriching, especially compared to the boring chats you’ve had with the very few ‘friends’ you have.
soon enough he starts debating over things you like. huh, he also reads that really obscure manga that has a total of 100 reads? cool! oh wow, he’s played that one game you’ve played so much you can practically quote it word for word? nice!
it gets weirder the more you talk, but you don’t really notice all that much, and if you do you choose to ignore it. he’s one of the first real friends you’ve had in a long time.
you’ll come back from work into your lonely and quite shabby apartment, making sure to place locks on your door. it’s a bad neighbourhood. huh, it’s a bit chilly. you could’ve sworn you shut the window? well… nothing looks to be stolen. weird.
you’ll sit down, and ready up your old and dying laptop, grinning a little despite the tiredness in your bones and bags under your eyes. the friend you speak to online, chrollo, is usually on around this time. it’s always nice to have a chat with him after you get in. you seemingly haven’t managed to rile him up, but you swear you’re getting close.
just got back from work. what you were saying about that passage in chapter 27 is totally wrong, btw. you should maybeeee get ur facts straight before trying to debate with me about it >:)
you miss the sound of a soft chime behind you after you send the message, opening up a streaming service so you can watch an episode of something before bed.
a message pops up on your screen.
how about a debate in person, [name]?
your eyebrows crinkle together. what a weirdo.
as you put on an episode, your monitor goes black for just a moment, but that’s all you need to see the reflection of a figure looming behind you.
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tothechaos · 1 month ago
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hey tell me abt the threshold fear thing in museums
im about to become an unskippable cutscene
disclaimer: this is undergraduate level museum studies adjacent stuff, like bare bones museum studies, as well as other information from my degree that is tangentially related
so threshold fear is not something like a phobia or Genuine Fear. threshold fear in the arts is referring to the fact that because the arts are 1. held in high esteem and 2. not always very accessible to people, a lot of people are hesitant to engage with the arts because there is a fear that they will somehow do it "wrong." this is a really common barrier to entry! so it is a combination of creating programming that is approachable to those that are unfamiliar with the arts, as well as work on the part of arts organizations and institutions to do work to not be seen as some sort of ivory tower, and be more accessible.
in museums specifically, which is my area of interest, one of the common things that contributes to threshold fear is the outward appearance of a museum. a lot of museums built in the 18th and 19th centuries in western europe and america have a greco-roman style look to them, because of the heights those cultures were held at. it plays quite literally into the idea of museums as temples rather than forums (which is a whole other topic). so due to this outward appearance, it can intimidate infrequent visitors especially out of engaging.
this all plays into both the idea of museum universality and the ideal visitor. museums should be responding to their environment, and the fact that they are a result of their contexts means that they should be more heavily considering their community as well as their audience. the audience oftentimes ends up being this "ideal visitor," the experience seeker, the frequent visitor, who knows the best way to get around, knows what they like and what they dont. most people are not this ideal visitor! this again comes down to programming and knowing the community.
bringing it back to threshold fear, there are also other conceptual as well as physical barriers. conceptual barriers can be that programming is aimed primarily at academic audiences, a lack of diversity among staff, or a promotion of aesthetic over community design. physical barriers can be that open hours are not feasible for most of the community, accessibility to the space itself, or a lack of public transportation and a rise in admission fees (which contributes to the perception of the museum as a special destination). both of these, especially conceptual barriers, are internal things for an institution to work on. whether it be hiring a more diverse staff, making changes to programming, or even reevaluating the strategic plan, these are changes that are much easier to facilitate than building a parking lot, or changing the facade of a museum. lower costs options for physical barriers could entail changes to the building to make it more accessible, but acquiring funding for projects like that is not easy.
and this is all just museums! there are other threshold fears in the performing arts as well, and while some of these issues are unique to museums, the broad topics cover a lot of the arts and culture sector as well. dont even get me STARTED on how governmental cultural policy plays a part in it
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vicsbasement · 8 months ago
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So, @azealiax asked for an explanation about the Monza incident (and then Singapore) in Charlos lore. I'm trying to rack my brain with all of it, and I'll just bullet point the important parts of it. If anyone needs to add anything feel free to reblog this and correct me if I'm wrong. I'm going to be talking about how the press took that Monza podium but I can't recall where the bad press came from (I think it was british) so if anyone else needs to add anything, you're free to do so!
Carlos did pole. It was amazing and the Tifosi were roaring with excitement.
During the race, Carlos' car ate the tyres because he was defending from Checo. (Who ended up passing him and he got stuck with P3) (Max P1, Checo P2, Carlos P3, Charles P4)
Ferrari pitted Charles near the end of the race, giving him priority over the pole-sitter (Carlos) which rubbed many people the wrong way (at least Carlos' fans were miffed about it)
Since Charles had better and newer rubber, he took the fight to Carlos near the end of the race.
The fighting on track was on the limit, and they almost collided a few times, but, to be honest, it was an amazing fight and at least Charles sounded like he was having a lot of fun fighting Carlos.
Carlos defended beautifully but his tyres were gone by the middle point of the fight. So he asked for team orders, which Ferrari ignored and just said "fight but no risk" (basically don't take each other out pls but let's give tifosi a show)
Carlos kept defending until the end and remained on P3, so basically he earned that podium bc he fought for it really hard.
Some announcers (and some press) said that Ferrari put the wrong car on that podium. (Implying Carlos didn't deserve it but Charles did)
Some fans (Carlos') took that fight really badly. And so did Carlos' mother, who liked a tweet about Charles having no honor.
Charles cheekily responded liking a tweet from a fan that posted a picture of his win at Monza 2019 with the caption "honor"
Still, when he got out of the car, Charles looked elated. Like, he'd never behaved like that. He was so happy, playing around, teasing Fred, answering questions about the fight and saying he had done it for the tifosi to give them a little bit of a show.
Carlos was rattled, of course, but he seemed to be fine by the end of the race and happy to had fought Charles on the limit. They both gave similar replies to the press, that it was a fun fight, on the limit, and they were never at any point near collision (which didn't seem like it from the espectator point of view but you do you, boo)
Monza is basically a Ferrari ground, so to see a Ferrari driver on the podium was mayhem. They chanted Carlos' name the entire time and were pretty damn happy about Carlos' P3 (even though some Charles-solo-stans made it seem like they weren't happy about Carlos getting that P3, but we have video proof that they were damn near about to drown out everything from the podium that didn't have anything to do with Carlos with their screams and their chants. They even chanted Carlos' name during the national anthems and drowned them out so much that the TV people had to mute the microphones to keep that from feeding into the streams)
As an add-on, Carlos' birthday was around this weekend.
The thing is that well, the whole bad press-Carlos' mom-fans reaction thing kind of rubed off on the drivers. There was some unmistakeable tension between them the week after this race. So much so, that, during the fan forum the week after (Singapore), someone had asked about liking your teammate (with the mortal enemies Esteban and Pierre right next to them) and Carlos replied that he really did like his teammate, with Charles looking visibly relieved. Of course this is mere speculation on their body language, but it was... iffy. To say the least.
Then comes Singapore. And this is the run-down of what happened:
Carlos gets pole position again
Charles decides to help defend him from Russell who was P2 (it was his own idea, nothing to do with Ferrari strategy at all) and he starts the race on soft tyres. Charles was P3, and he overtook George, getting P2 early on the race.
Max starts the race along the back because he got screwed over during Q2 I think, but the fact is, he started the race P11.
Checo started P13 and had contact with Yuki.
There was a yellow flag in which the Red Bulls didn't pit, so they had older hard tyres which made them vulnerable to the Mercedes.
The Red Bulls were able to reclaim P5 (Max) and P8 (Checo) during the race.
Charles had a fumble in the pits and was passed by the Mercedes (he was P3 and dropped to P5 because of it)
Lando managed to pass everyone and he found himself in P2
At the end of the race, Carlos decided to use a DRS strategy to keep Lando on his tail to defend himself from the Mercedes drivers, who had newer tyres. This way, Lando had to defend his position thus defending Carlos' P1 in the process.
Whenever he'd get too far ahead Lando he'd drop a few seconds time and got closer again.
Final lap: Russell clips the wall and crashes so Hamilton overtakes him.
Carlos led the entirety of the race and showed a brilliant mind and strategy defending with Norris.
It was his second ever win after the British GP in 2022
This was the only race not won by Red Bull the whole year
Fan speculation (based on a very ridiculous comment from Russell, I'm guessing after he saw Charles was on soft tyres) led everyone to believe that "Ferrari had sacrificed Leclerc". The fact is, he had a fumble in the pits and lost his P2 to Norris at some point, so he stayed behind. In any case, he seemed okay with Carlos' win, they even hugged after the race and it was actually a very cute interaction. He was, understandibly, angry that the pit timing had cost him a P2, so people were just talking about him being angry after losing to his teammate two races in a row.
You just have to take into account that some fans like to pit them against each other constantly, but they've never had any public falling out or anything that could lead anyone to believe there's bad blood between them.
In any case, this was Monza and Singapore 2023. As I said if anyone needs to add anything else from the charlos lore archives, feel free to do so.
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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 8 months ago
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It ain't over 'til the Old Crow sings.
This is the concluding story to go along with the Two Ravens at the Writing Desk blog event! Please note, I was not able to respond to all interaction requests, as many were submitted after the period of acceptance and/or disregarded other event rules.)
Does Two of us make a Murder of Crows? … Or an Unkindness of Ravens?
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The Newspaper Club's office was a hub of activity. When its door was cracked open, the smell of fresh paper and ink would greet visitors. The murmurs of concentration and furious keyboard clacking of its members, the organization's calling card.
Raven was fond of it.
She tended to skitter on the outskirts of the club, observing as students drifted in and out, sometimes lugging supplies or equipment with them. Too shy to ask if she could pitch in, too scandalized at the thought of the boys staring at her if she entered.
And so she remained, watching.
Raven peered around her secretive corner. Today, there was a cluster of club members outside the office, caught up in a heated debate. One of them--the leader?--had a thick packet in hand and a frown on his face.
"We can't print this," he was saying, waving the papers around.
"If we don't, he'll be on our asses," protested another member. "Let's just suck it up and send it into the printing press."
"Where's your journalistic integrity, man?!" a third demanded.
"We've put out crappier stuff before," a fourth shrugged. "Remember that article about the seven greatest unsolved mysteries on NRC campus? As if most of us don't already know."
"It's not the same thing," the leader shot back. "That was one piece. This is an entire issue. You really want to flush down our rep?!"
Oh dear, it looks like they've run into some sort of trouble. I wonder what's wrong...? Raven leaned a little closer, cupping an ear.
"What are we going to do" The club leader worriedly paced around. "We don't have much time before the deadline comes up on us... Oh, hmm?"
He cocked his head, noticing a flicker of movement around the corner. "Is that...?"
Raven startled. I've been spotted!
"Excuse me!" To her horror, the club leader approached and called out to her. "You are... the headmaster's something-or-other, right? Someone who can speak to him on our behalf."
"Er, yes. I-I suppose that's true." She tried to control her nerves by smoothing out her skirt, but found herself anxiously wringing the hem of it.
"Great! See, the headmaster proposed running a special edition in the campuswide newspaper. In honor of NRC's founding month, he said," the club leader explained. "Front to back, the whole works. The only problem is... well, see for yourself."
He offered his packet. It was about the width of a modest novel and bulged with additional sticky notes and photographs shoved inside of the stack.
One glimpse at the cover page, and Raven instantly understood what was happening.
Oh, Uncle. You just can't stay out of trouble, can you?
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"You wanted the school newspaper to have a Crowley-themed edition for March... Have you gone mad?!"
"I thought it would be an earnest and approachable way for the student body to get to know their headmaster," Crowley faintly defended himself. "And you did tell me to pen some writing by my own hand. Does it not make sense to publish those works in a publicly accessible source?"
Raven held her head in her hands. A migraine was coming on, steady but piercing.
"Please do not impose your agenda on a student-run organization. It is meant to be a forum that promotes freedom of expression, not for personal vanity projects!!
"There are other avenues you could use for publications if you want an 'earnest and approachable' image. For example..." She produced her phone, pulling up Magicam via an app. Personal blogs, social media accounts... There are many other places.
"Oh." Crowley cupped his chin. "I was not aware."
"Many students are on Magicam, so if you want to be relatable this may be a good starting point. Perhaps it's not the best for posting written works, but surely you could take pictures of your daily activities and briefly caption them."
"Well, why didn't you say so sooner? Nothing could be simpler, my dear niece!" The headmaster beamed, displaying his pointed, pearly canines.
“I wish you’d explored these options first,” she sighed. “Then we could have avoided this almost-disaster altogether.”
Her guardian was already preoccupied with his own phone now. Typing in information, fishing up the most photogenic pictures from his album to slap on. A few minutes into setting up his account, Crowley paused. He eyed his child the same way a hawk might eye a scurrying field mouse.
“… What is it now?” Raven asked, dreading the worst.
“Oh, I was just thinking about what my first post should be. Something that says a lot about me and where my values lie. I know exactly what to use: a family photo!"
She raised a brow.
Crowley shoved the rejected proposal packet back into his niece's hands. He then shuffled next to her, holding his phone out--the camera, flipped--and made a peace sign with the other.
A bolt of panicked realization raced through her. "Uncle... you don't mean--"
"Fufufu. Say 'cheese', Raven-kun!"
CLICK!
The headmaster's first post would go up around midnight. Under the picture of a jovial crow and a befuddled raven was a very telling statement.
So glad to have such bright young minds steering the way to the future~ Proud to be the headmaster of NRC 🐦‍⬛
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haunted-xander · 1 year ago
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The scene w the twins held hostage in Tertium is probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire game (which says a LOT). It's a very good portrayal of their characters and their dynamic to each other.
The scene starts with Alisaie trying to kick the door open, despite knowing she's better off staying put until we get them out. Point 1: Alisaie is reactive. Alphinaud then responds to this by explaining that, while he also hates this situation, they're better off staying put like we told them to. Point 2: Alphinaud internalizes.
Alisaie walks to sit by the wall like he is, and then kinda shyly scoots closer to him after realizing she's sitting too far away and he's not moving any closer, and puts her head on his shoulder. Point 3: Alisaie displays affection more freely (if a bit embarassed by it sometimes lol) while Alphinaud is a bit more reserved with it, typically waiting for others to initiate.
Alisaie starts to vent about her frustration regarding both the current situation in Garlemald and with Fourchenault(and the Forum as a whole), while also understanding where it all comes from. Alphinaud responds by looking at the people in questions views and feelings on the circumstances, while still agreeing that yeah, it sucks. Point 4: Alisaie is openly emotional (frustration being her typical form of expression) and tends to personally involve herself with most things, while Alphinaud takes things from a more distanced and factual point of view (while still expressing his own thoughts in a polite and professional manner).
After this they start to discuss the focal points of their respective characrer developments. Alisaie remarks that one's will and wants should be their own and not an extention of anothers, in the same way her character arc revolves around her finding her own reason for wanting to help the people of Eorzea, which she later admits that she has found. Alphinaud talks about how Varis' ideal of a single, united nation bereft of dividing factors was similar to his own ideals in the beginning, which he now admits is pure ignorance and will solve nothing but doom everyone to misery.
They make affirmations of their shared conviction and such, but the part that really hits this whole things home, is Alisaie asserting that she will stand by Alphinaud as he takes the lead. Because she has her role as an activist, she is the one who acts on what needs to be done and does it, whereas Alphinaud's role is as a leader and politician, to make it so that what needs to be done can be done. Alphinaud is a bit unsure if he can do it, because he's already failed so many times, but he won't give up and neither will Alisaie let him. She states as much with her typical dose of gently scolding love sprinkled in there.
The scene packs in so many details of them in such a nice way. Alisaie is outwardly emotional, typically unleashing her feelings in the moment and then calms down afterwards, while Alphinaud internalizes everything, holding on to his feelings for a long time and let them simmer down to a more managable level. When Alphinaud expresses his feelings more clearly, Alisaie is typically the more collected one(this is shown a lot in stb, like when we first meet Hacock and Alphinaud is instantly defensive, while Alisaie is the one to suggest at least hearing him out) and vice versa.
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wisteriasymphony · 5 months ago
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Inceldrien!AU - Dead on Arrival
(co-written by @pyrusinc )
DISCLAIMER: offensive and derogatory language, homophobic slurs. These guys are 4channers.
“Fuck you, you— dumb bucket of festering discharge!”
A silence cut through the room, slaughtering the tension with it. As the argument laid dead and bleeding on the floor, Adrien looked into Claudia’s eyes for what might’ve been the first time. 
“…You’ve read Homestuck?” He asked. 
They somehow spoke it in unison: “Past me is the dumbest bucket of festering discharge I ever fell ass backwards into.”
A few more breaths as they studied each other. Then, Adrien sat back down on his couch. He felt like he was going to fall over, maybe even through the floor. Suddenly he had no clue where he was, or what he was doing. And yet he was curious.
“You didn’t tell me you read Homestuck.”
Her tone matched his in its humble honesty. “You never asked,” she confessed, sitting down beside him. “How far along are you?”
For what had to have been a good half an hour, Adrien had the first real conversation in his life about something he was interested in. Gabriel would never really be able to understand half of the things that Adrien could talk about anyways, and it wasn’t like people were ever clamoring for these sorts of opinions from him. All of his accumulated knowledge of Homestuck and MLP and such could only ever be expressed on image boards or forums, and it was only now that he realized it felt so much better to say these things out loud. He was making her laugh—He, Adrien Agreste, was able to make someone laugh from something he said!—and she was responding enthusiastically, like she knew everything he wanted to say before he could even think it himself. He leaned back onto the couch as he kept talking about the best classpects, Claudia would lean back as well and prop up her chin with her hand, and for a moment she even tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and he noticed it as it happened.
 It was only as Adrien reached for his Mountain Dew that he realized just how wrong and stupid and disgusting this was. Why of all things did he have to be enjoying her company? Claudia’s company?
He set down his drink as soon as he picked it up, turning his face away from hers. Adrien didn’t want to make it clear that he was panicking. 
“Get out,” he interrupted in the middle of one of her sentences that he wasn’t even listening to anyways. “You should go.”
Claudia’s words caught in her throat. Goddamn her for letting her guard down, for actually letting herself talk to Adrien. There was no reason to even be upset, and yet there she was, body suddenly numb as she scrambled to figure out just what she said that Adrien was suddenly so mad about. It’s not like she had a reason to care anyways—Why the hell would she ever give a shit about what he felt? It wasn’t like she was having a good time, that simply wasn’t possible. At best, Claudia was humoring that idiot, there was no way she was enjoying herself, there was no way that she found his smile something worth looking at when he talked. Adrien Agreste was the most irritating, pathetic, retarded putrid fuckwad she had ever met in her life. And it was a blessing that he was finally cognizant enough to give her the chance to leave that she’d clearly been itching for, even if it didn’t feel right to stand up after sitting still for all that time. 
So it didn’t catch her off guard. Nor did it hurt.
“Fine,” she spat back, grabbing her things. “I’ll go. You’re an asshole anyways.”
Adrien knew that Claudia could’ve shut the door harder, maybe even slammed it shut. But despite that... it was the loudest he’d ever heard that door get shut in his life. The last echoes of it lingered for hours after she was gone. 
There was a certain silence that fell over the places the two would normally argue. The traffic died down significantly over the next week, as if a solemn understanding had somehow made its way through without actually being shared, and the whole site was in an awkward phase of mourning. Claudia stopped posting entirely, and that included her short stories—no creepypastas, no jokes, no snide retellings of conversations. She knew he’d be able to read anything she posted, no matter where it was, and that sucked out all of the joy. Adrien made it clear he didn’t want to hear her thoughts, so she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her share them. Radio silence. 
Adrien would click through every board until his fingers ached. General, Paranormal, Music, Anime, News and Politics—Somewhere there had to be something. The faintest whisper of activity, a muttered comment or snide chatter of her voice, something she would try to hide from him in vain. Adrien couldn't tell exactly why he felt this pain in his chest as his search continued to draw blanks. He felt like shit, but there was no reason for it. No justification for that gnawing, rolling discomfort settling in his stomach that made it impossible for him to focus on himself or even get up from his chair: Adrien had every right to kick her out. He couldn't put a finger on the cause of the pain, but he could put his fingers on his keyboard. And so he continued to look. Not eating, not sleeping. Just searching for something.
Click, click, click. 
He doesn’t want to admit he knows, but he does. Maybe the screen will eventually burn through his retinas and he won’t have to put effort into thinking about why that flash of hurt across her face when her mouth snapped shut mid-sentence wouldn’t exit his mind. Maybe the ache in his fingers will distract from the image of her hands (which had been animatedly gesturing the entire conversation in what can’t be cute, but instead the most annoying thing in the world) suddenly freezing and falling to her lap. Maybe he’ll just die on the spot from all this, and he won’t think about missing her presence. 
He wasn’t going to apologize.
He wasn’t going to apologize.
He wasn’t going to apologize.
[email protected] sorry. -a.a. [email protected] i don’t want to talk to you
Adrien found it hard to look at the screen. It was just an arrangement of pixels. Letting out a sharp breath, his fingers flew to the keys without really even thinking. 
I SHOULD BE THE ONE WHO DOESNT WANT TO FUCKING TALK TO YOU CUNT YOU REALLY THINK YOU CAN ACT LIKE THAT?? DO YOU HEAR YOUR STUPID FUCKING SELF?? YOU FUCK WITH ME LIKE THIS ALL THE GODDAMN TIME THIS IS CALLED KARMA YOU DUMB FUCKING SLUT
Delete, delete, delete. The cursor flew back to where it was, erasing everything. Adrien took his hands off the keyboard and clutched his head, sighing as his palms dug into his eyes. 
He didn’t actually think any of that. None of it was true, and he didn’t have it in him to convince himself otherwise. It wasn’t her fault that she made him feel so horrible, even if he wanted to want to feel that way. Adrien just felt so tired staring at the screen, at those seven little words—“I don’t want to talk to you”, so much stupid pain somehow in just seven words!—and he couldn’t understand why, not consciously. In his gut he could feel the reason, though. He did deserve to feel like shit for what he said, and for everything he’d ever said to her. Adrien had called her names, berated and belittled her, insulted her very existence. It was only the crime of causing that distraught look on her face that brought even the notion of wrongdoing to him. Somehow, he’d been horrible to her so many times, and it was all fine? It didn’t mean anything tangible. It was fun.
There was nothing fun about the way the light in her eyes dimmed.
[email protected] i deserve that. but you can still talk -a.a. [email protected] even if it's not to me. -a.a.
God, as if she needed his fucking permission for shit. Did he really think that everything she did online, anything anyone ever did online, was just for his entertainment? She wrote for herself, damnit, not some greasy failure who thought the world revolved around him just cause his daddy brought home a big paycheck. If she wanted to get off the internet forever, she could, and Adrien wouldn’t be able to do shit about it. Claudia wasn’t just going to give him more of her stuff to look over just because he was so benevolent as to approve it. 
But also, if this was the first time he’d ever apologized for something in his life, Claudia could believe it. When would anybody ever ask for an apology from Adrien Agreste, heir to the multimillion enterprise that was Maison de Mode Gabriel? Claudia couldn’t imagine him in a positon where he was required to repent. Plus, given his caustic personality, it’s not like he’d ever freely debase himself with an apology to any random person… So what did it say about him, about her, that he was willing to reach out on his own like that? Make an entirely new email just to reach out to her?
And, well… what did it say about her that she’d even checked? She rarely used creepytan@aol anymore. How did she know that it was him?
She just wouldn’t think about it too much. Maybe it was sweet, in some twisted way, but that didn’t have to mean something to her. It was nice to just be able to breathe again, to post the next creepypasta she’d been holding onto for a few days now. Claudia knew he’d probably be one of the first to see it, maybe even within seconds, but that wasn’t necessarily a new thing. Obviously Adrien had been stalking through her shit online. That was how their whole shtick went. As she cues up the Paranormal board, Claudia decides she doesn’t care if he sees her talk again. Whether she believes herself is a different story, a story she doesn’t want to listen to. Either way, the boards are revived, and traffic flows once more on those shared spaces. There’s a silent sigh of relief, all in understood unison, by the denizens of those foul internet crannies that the silence was over.
Still, though... something must have happened. It’s unusual for Creepytan and Richfag to not cross paths for this long. Minutes, hours, then days. The concept is unthinkable: They’re practically all over each other, like rabid dogs clamped shut on the other’s tail, running around in circles. They’re both posting, sure, but there’s been no interaction…
File: [wtf.png] CREEPYTAN V RICHFAG LOLFEST DEAD?  Anonymous 02/10/12 No.275607 >bros >wtf happened
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choiceofgames · 3 months ago
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Author Interview
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https://www.choiceofgames.com/2024/07/new-author-interview-drew-morrison-bootlegger-moonshine-empire/
I think this is your first time writing interactive fiction, but you’re rather an accomplished playwright, I gather. Tell me a little about your background and what brought you to Choice of Games.
I started writing for theater in middle school, and got my Masters in Playwriting at the University of New Mexico. Dialogue has always been my favorite part of writing, and theater offers such a great way to get together with friends and tell a story. I worked for a devised theater company in Albuquerque for about five years, and I really got attached to the camaraderie that develops around putting up a play, especially when it’s done without a lot of financial resources. It means everybody learns different tasks, and shifts around with each show: sometimes you’re a writer, sometimes an actor, director, technician, or shadow-puppeteer. The whole thing ends up being this wonderful process of collaborative problem solving: How do we make what we want to make with what we have? Those limitations spark more interesting ideas than the ones you’d have if you could just pay problems away.
I was introduced to Choice of Games by a friend who had worked for the company as a cover artist. I’d never written anything like this before, and it was a steep learning curve, but the Choice of Games forum and community is such a vibrant scene of supportive people that it’s been really exciting to work on. As a writer, it’s so easy to get sucked into the lonely process of submitting to distant strangers and contests, rarely getting any feedback on your work. The opportunity to have people engaged and willing to respond to your drafts is an invaluable resource, which was my favorite part of working in theater.
What did you find most challenging about the game design and using ChoiceScript to craft a narrative?
Pretty much everything? I was so proud the day I finally submitted a full draft that you could play through from beginning to end that it’s fueled me through the whole editing process since. Having finished a CoG game now, it’s amazing how many tips and tricks you pick up along the way that would change how you approach writing another game.
There were a lot of really fun challenges purely at the level of the prose. For one, second-person/present tense is such a fun, propulsive voice to write in. As someone who didn’t grow up with tabletop roleplaying games, it’s a relatively new voice for me.
Also, as a playwright, my plays are often structured around reveals and buried secrets. When lights come up on a play, we don’t know the people on stage, and revelations about their pasts, motives, relationships, and shared histories are part of what fuels the drama.
In an interactive fiction novel, the reveal isn’t as useful, because it will only work for the first playthrough. This completely changes the notion of suspense as a storytelling technique–a returning player has already seen behind the curtain. Plus, in the main character’s case, the player needs to know (and decide) all major backstory decisions from the outset, so that they can make informed decisions. This was really fun for me; as a writer I couldn’t rely on old tricks. It feels like I usually write as someone watching from the audience, and this was like going on stage and whispering in the main character’s ear.
Bootlegger is set during such an interesting period in American history. What about the period, and about Prohibition in general do you think modern readers may not know about?
The intersection of coffee and alcohol is really interesting to me. Part of the reason people drank so much pre-Prohibition was because alcohol was one of the only reliably safe ways to drink water. It would be much lower alcohol content than we associate with booze today, but people would drink the entire day. Coffee and tea were new forms of safe ways to drink water, so people went from being mildly drunk all the time to sober and caffeinated. The intellectual and political ramifications of that are massive.
The period is great for anecdotes, and I love all the methods people came up with to get away with drinking. Speakeasies would install levers that, when pulled in the case of a raid, would dump their entire liquor display down a hidden chute, shattering the bottles and draining the booze. Alcohol had been determined to have no health benefits, but during Prohibition that suddenly changed: whiskey could be gotten legally with a prescription for all sorts of maladies.
For me, it’s also a really interesting time of how people respond to a ban. For many, Prohibition was an attempt to stop some truly devastating habits, such as poor workers and farmers blowing their full paychecks on the way home, before even getting to their families. You can see how the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League could see alcohol and the people who sold it as criminal enterprises. At the same time, the complete ban on it meant that many people saw a market, and exploited it ruthlessly. With Bootlegger, I wanted to explore the sudden emergence of a new market that’s illegal, lucrative, and slightly absurd; something that was legal a few short years ago is now a violent, thriving industry.
Do you have a favorite NPC, one you enjoyed writing most?
I’ve never written any kind of gangster story, so writing Capaldi was a lot of fun. Writing a villain in general is a lot of fun, actually, but especially in this case, since Capaldi can be a villain or an ally depending on the play-through. That type of character, alternately frightening and endearing, is so rich and prevalent in gangster movies, and I like that in interactive fiction you might only see someone’s worst side when you’re on their worst side, which is just a terrible place to be. I think one reason we get into stories like The Godfather is because we see two sides of people, while the other characters in the story only see one: loving family member, terrifying murderer. It seems impossible that they can be one person.
If you were transported to the world of Bootlegger, what kind of underground shenanigans would you be best at? Distilling, smuggling, or imbibing?
I think I’d be good at distilling. I know I’d be terrible at being in charge of an operation, I have neither the economic wherewithal or ruthlessness. But I was a barista for a long time, so I think I’d be good at tending a still. I don’t think Prohibition had much of a “craft rotgut” scene, but I imagine I’d be able to get to the point of describing the flavor notes to my customers, which could maybe help me work my way up to get the kind of clients who could afford to care about the quality of their whiskey during Prohibition. But I’m also too trusting, so I’d be very easy to rip off. So, if I could find my way into an operation run by someone like Sam in Bootlegger, who takes care of their own, I’d make a very good worker.
Do you have a favorite tipple or are you a teetotaler?
I do love the occasional bourbon or an old fashioned, but generally I stick with beer.
What else are you working on/working on next, writing-wise?
I’m currently getting my Masters in Political Science, so I’m writing several essays, mainly focusing on the global impact of the film industry. I recently had a staged reading of a new play, Wildlife, which focuses on the illegal wildlife trade, as part of an ongoing project for my classes focusing on climate change. I am also working on an audio drama, called Ambrosia’s Big Break, with the hopes of releasing it in podcast format. Over the process of revising Bootlegger, I’ve had more ideas about things I’d like to do in this medium, so I’ve started to sketch out ideas for another interactive novel. This one would take an interconnected series of science fiction stories I wrote, and adapt them into one big world for the player. It’s one of those narratives that I’ve been attached to for years, but haven’t found the proper form for yet.
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