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rosesloveletters · 11 months ago

Text

all is fair in love.

Pairing: 1971 Willy Wonka x Fem. Reader

Word Count: 10,261

Warnings: sexual content / smut.

Summary: The holidays are Wonka's busiest season and his work keeps him away from reader much more than either of them would like. After hours, the two spend a passionate night together as they both make the necessary arrangements to be attentive to each other's needs and empathetic of the complexity of maintaining a healthy romantic relationship that neither reader nor Wonka are accustomed to.

Author's Note: my smut fics are always between 6-10k haha so enjoy. I edited this the best I could, but for some reason I kept switching between first person and second person pov for reader (I don't know why since I always write in second person pov.) I think I fixed most of it, so if there's any parts I missed, I'm sorry. Also, I'd like to mention that Christmas isn't inherently important to the events in this story. It is used as an element only to convey why Wonka is so busy during this time of year, because most people like to buy chocolate and candy as gifts. I know Gene was Jewish, even though I believe he said he wasn't exactly religious. I have no intention of trying to be offensive/belittle/make light of anyone's religion or beliefs and I apologize if it comes across that way because it is without a doubt not my intention.

Edited.

divider created by @/saradika on Tumblr.

You’ve always believed that if you truly love someone, then you keep it a secret.

You would let that feeling freeze me down to the core – to love the way a person is meant to, but it is that same love that, inevitably and irrevocably, suffocates.

You cannot satisfy that craving the same way one might satisfy a sweet tooth. Once given a taste, it seeps down into your skin, infecting both body and mind, pierces the heart and tears it wide open.

The thundering beat inside your chest cannot be silenced. The fingertips of fate trace the spider-like, lightning-strike veins that split your heart right down the middle.

A broken heart takes love like a beating.

It all comes boiling to the surface, bubbling up and out in the breath of a second.

The truth always comes out, one way or another.

Because if you don’t let the heart have its’ way, then it will tear itself right out of your chest.

***

The days were short, but the hours were long.

You spent much of your time by yourself, as this season kept Willy preoccupied. Time marched onward and the weeks themselves seemed to drag; it was nearing Christmastime and that meant very little to you in the grand scheme of things, except that you’d be seeing less and less of your lover.

Traditionally, the holidays were a time of celebration and joy, gifts and laughter shared between friends and families alike.

However, you lived a nontraditional life now, and Willy had unwittingly shown you that the life of a chocolatier was a solitary one. You knew that the busy holiday season was what pulled him away, but his lack of attentiveness made you wonder…

The only thing that kept these thoughts at bay was the way in which he looked at you when he was around.

Willy was a difficult man to read. Whether that was intentional or not, were you still trying to determine. The only dead giveaway were his eyes – startlingly intense and piercingly blue – that bore no resemblance to subtlety.

The vastness of the heavens, it seemed, were contained within those swirling galaxies. On dark nights when the cloud cover was too thick, you traced the constellations in his eyes to guide you into his morning light.

You could see yourself peeling back the layers of his heart to get to the source of how he truly felt.

Deflect from it all he might – “I’m a trifle deaf in this ear. Speak a little louder next time–” you saw right through him and sometimes that only made him steer clear of you for longer.

It wasn’t that he did not care for you; it was quite the opposite. Perhaps the extent to which he cared was a bit overwhelming for him at times. He immersed himself in his work during these times, else his mind inevitably carried him to places he would rather not visit.

Willy Wonka’s mind was not a place any person, sometimes even himself, should ever go without a guide or a distinct way back.

Though anyone with half a brain could tell that the amazing chocolatier was a troubled man on occasion, his true nature shone through in his creations. Something about this season’s batch of chocolate was a touch sweeter than ones previous. It would go undetected by those who did not have a refined palate, but like the saying goes, a true artist would put their blood, sweat and tears into their work and Willy Wonka was a mastermind.

He knew exactly what he was doing and what he meant to convey, if only between himself and one other: the world’s most famous chocolatier was in love.

***

You sat on the plush sofa in the personal wing of the factory, a book in one hand and a mug of hot chocolate in the other. You were nestled beneath a thick-knit, purple blanket as you read and waited on Willy to return to your den for the night.

You saw less and less of him the closer it got to the holidays, but such was the nature of his business. Christmastime was one of the busiest seasons and the one in which he made most of his money (the second being Valentine’s Day.) People bought exorbitant amounts of candies and chocolate during the holidays and so Willy was forced to expedite production (though never sacrificing quality) and work long, difficult hours preparing new and exciting treats for the public. In fact, it was no well-kept secret that Willy Wonka unveiled his newest creations around this time of year and that very news was plastered in every newspaper, magazine and bulletin across the world as people anticipated the exciting, brand-new sweets there would be to try.

You knew the excitement and rush of the season fed into Willy’s own excitement over his work. He was thrilled to be working on new ideas and expressing himself through his creativity and imagination. It meant the world to him and so you did your best to stay out of the way. You did not want to make the situation about you and, after all, he always made it up to you.

He was aware that his absence bothered you and he tried not to think about the fact that he may or may not be doing irreparable damage to your relationship.

Not every difficult time or situation was an attack against you. It wasn’t personal, nor was it anyone’s explicit fault. Willy had a factory to run, Oompa-Loompas to manage and ideas to manifest into reality. Sometimes, your relationship would take a backseat and if you were serious about being with him, then you would have to be alright with that and you were, although that did not mean that it didn’t hurt from time to time.

It would have been nice to relax and enjoy the season with your lover without his work getting in the way. You would have loved to curl up with him, sitting at opposite ends of the couch and enjoying lots of hot chocolate and hours of warm conversation. If you had your pick, you’d gladly have him here with you now, trading the book in your hands for his warm body, his fingers linked perfectly into the spaces between yours.

You reasoned that this was just how things would have to be for now. No sense in adding more pressure on him by complaining. He was aware of how you felt, but sadly there was nothing to be done about it. You never would have dreamed of asking him to pick between his work and you. That would not have been fair or right. You could handle this, for now, but deep down you missed him terribly.

Even if you chose to spend time with him inside the factory part of the building, he would be working the whole time. There simply was no time for much of anything else. He did like when you would drop by because you were his faithful little taste-tester. Better to try it out on you before selling it to the masses – that would seem cruel, knowing that his candies have had certain negative effects on people in the past, but rest assured, Willy had never given you anything that might harm you.

Any candy which made its way to you had been tested and re-tested to perfection before it ever passed between your lips.

He wanted feedback on his candy before it left the factory and you were more than happy to offer it to him, to which he was enthusiastically grateful. The only problem was, true to inventor fashion, he asked for feedback on everything. He wanted your opinion and was asking for it increasingly often these days. When you didn’t show up to the inventing room on certain days, he’d bring a whole box back to your shared living space and eagerly watch you with anticipation of your positive remarks as you were asked to try every piece.

He was always so grateful to you for that and, honestly, you didn’t mind. You liked candy and chocolate, so there was no reason you couldn’t afford him this act of kindness.

The only thing you really felt like you were missing was him and it plagued your mind most often while you were alone, which was of course very often. You kept yourself busy and occupied your thoughts with other things as much as you were able, but when you settled in for the night, your loneliness crept in and took up the space beside you that would have otherwise been occupied by your beloved chocolatier.

You didn’t mind your alone time, but too much of it was not ideal.

Too much of a good thing came with a price and now it seemed you were paying it with interest.

The sound of a door opening and shutting pulled you from your thoughts. You glanced down at your book to realize you’d just had it propped open against your knees this whole time and hadn’t read a bit. You marked your place and closed it with a huff, setting it down on the end table beside you, your mug of half-drank cocoa with it.

A quick glance at the clock hanging on the wall – thank God he hadn’t cut that one in half – showed that it was ten minutes after midnight.

It did not come as a surprise that Willy was so late. It was only your wildest guess as to what he had been working on, but that point was moot. You did not really care what he was working on.

That thought seemed harsh and you frowned; no, you were adamantly against resenting him for his work. That path was one you would not let yourself go down, a trap of codependence, you told yourself, but why couldn’t he just be a little more present with you? Surely it wasn’t too much to ask.

Perhaps you would ask.

It would make the most sense to be upfront with him about how you were feeling and to be as direct as possible.

You did not move from the couch. You waited on Willy to come and find you, unlike the many days and nights when you might have greeted him at the door.

Several quiet moments passed between yourself and your thoughts before Willy entered the room. He had shed his purple coat at the door, as well as his hat and cane, “there you are, my dear,” his gentle tone made your stomach clench as warmth pooled in your abdomen. Even troubled with doubts, you were still delighted to see him.

You watched as he approached and dropped himself on the opposite end of the couch. He nudged your knee with his, silently asking for a bit more space which you politely gave, “I would have been back sooner, but I’ve been so busy, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“Yes, it is that time of year,” you replied coolly. You didn’t want to jump into the meat of the discussion too soon, otherwise he might take offense where there was none.

He seemed in a good enough mood that perhaps this would be the perfect time to strike.

“Yes, my dear, it’s the holiday season which does wonders for my business and I couldn’t be happier.”

His pride in the work he was doing warmed your heart. You listened to him for a while as he recounted what he had been working on that day.

He cared so much and spoke so passionately, yet your mind began to wander.

“Is everything alright, my dear?”

His tender voice captured your attention and you blinked slowly, “yes, I’m fine. But, there is something I would like to talk to you about.”

His lips hitched into a faint smile, then flattened into a serious line. It bothered you, not being able to read his face.

“There is? Well, you know that you can always talk to me about anything on your mind.”

You didn’t want to overwhelm him, not when he was already so fully immersed within his work. He needed time and space to focus. He did not need you hindering his creative flow by hanging all over him and demanding more attention. He already gave so much; how could you even dare to think that he owed you more?

“I know you’re busy this time of year, but do you think it would be possible for us to spend a little more time together?” My voice cracked as I added, “I…really miss you, Willy.”

You hadn’t meant to speak with words that were laced with such pain, but in fairness you did miss him terribly. By the time he made his way to you most nights, you were already in bed or heading there and in the mornings before you’d woken up, he would be gone. It bothered you to not see him and you wanted him to hear it. He needed to know the truth if you meant to be honest with him, you only hoped he’d be able to understand that you didn’t blame him.

Conversations like this always made you second guess yourself.

By this point, you realized that he had not responded. He was probably just thinking about what he would say, but usually it didn’t take him this long to reply.

“Willy?” you gently urged him, reaching out to place your hand on his arm.

Whenever he felt the gentle graze of your fingertips against the fabric of his shirt, he glanced down, admiring the tender touch with a wistful smile on his face before he looked up at you and the emotion held inside of those ice-blue eyes was almost enough to send you over the edge and into uncontrollable sobs of relief.

You felt the tension in your shoulders beginning to dissipate. Good, he felt the same way.

He was still staring at you like there was something more on his mind. That was the way things were with Wonka and you’d be lying to yourself if you hadn’t thought on more than one occasion that it’s a good thing you weren’t a mind reader because there were things that went on inside his head that should stay there. It was better that you didn’t try to trace his Machiavellian ways or make sense of the enigmatic man who so frequently surprised you with small glimpses into how he really thought and viewed the world. It was fun getting to know who he was, but the true wonderment was in not knowing him at all.

He tested your mind and all your senses, but never pushed your boundaries. He could knock you off your stride in seconds, then act as if nothing had happened. You were playing his little chess game and he was already three or more moves ahead. It had only been a matter of time before you had fallen into his hands like this.

Things were as they were because Wonka wanted them to be. His quips and wisecracks often went over people’s heads, especially because of how well-versed he was in literature and culture. He could make the whole world fall in love with him at once, then forget him as soon as they were no longer in his presence, but you believed the world adored him much more than he liked to think it did.

“I didn’t say anything sooner because I didn’t want it to seem like I was being insensitive, since I know you’re not intentionally ignoring me.”

This statement made him smile for some reason, “where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; where little fears grow great, great love grows there.” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet.)

At first, you didn’t know what to say. You had a bit of trouble discerning what he meant sometimes, missing the larger picture for deciding why he chose a specific quote at a specific time.

Seeming to read your thoughts, he let out a polite chuckle, “This is to say, even in love do the smallest doubts scare you, but when you are afraid of such little things, you are still in love, too.”

His explanation seemed to help, if only for a second.

It was true that you had your doubts, but those doubts only stemmed from love. That fear which grew inside of you had taken root, but when enough time had passed, it was the love which had bloomed from it.

Both the fear and love would come with a connection as strong as this one.

In the beginning, Willy had never dreamed of having a romantic partner. His solitary lifestyle simply lacked the means necessary to cultivate a long-term relationship. He had never desired romance or human connection of any kind. He had his factory and the Oompa-Loompas to look after; he was stretched thin as it was.

It was with sickening rapture that he sought the reason for why his heart seemed so content within your hands. He had to know the true meaning behind what he felt, even if he had to wade out in to the wild, dark depths up to his neck. He was barely treading water, sinking still, feet kicking desperately and hands reaching, clawing for purchase but there was nothing for him to grab onto. No way to steady himself as his soul careened toward what he had been running from for so long, a runaway train on the track towards trust and away from self-preservation.

At first, you wanted to be the one in control. You had your fair share of demons and setting the pace for the relationship yourself was very important to you, but neither of you wanted to go too far too fast.

You became acclimated to his world quite quickly.

You just seemed to fit right in and, with time, Wonka found himself closer to you than he had ever been with another person.

The two of you had been together for quite some time now and the red string of fate binding your hearts together was pulled taut.

It seemed that you both knew you were in the right hands and the love that grew here was stronger than any fears or doubts which gripped you.

“What scares me the most is that you’re pulling away from me,” you confessed to him, and that revelation made his eyes widen perceptibly, “sometimes I think you don’t even realize that you’re doing it.”

The conversation had shifted and Wonka realized that you were no longer just discussing his absence in light of the holidays. There was deeper emotion and meaning laced within what you were saying to him now.

He was used to being alone, as were you. The only difference was that while you had never lost hope that the right person might come along, he had done everything he could to close himself off. His heart was a precious thing and that was what the world had been after. Yes, he had closed his factory because of theft, but he put his whole heart into his work and, if anyone were to steal his heart, then there would be nothing left for the one whom it belonged to.

He made sure he guarded his heart all these years, even if he didn’t know the reason for it. It was easier to deny the very fact that love was something every person desires, even ones who have become so layered and complex that it would be difficult to imagine what a true love might look like for them.

Wonka was not afraid of anything.

However, if one thing made him apprehensive it was the idea of anyone finding him out.

Not that there was any chance of that; no one was able to think quite like him. But if anyone came close, that meant he’d cling to them forever, holding on for dear love.

His gaze shifted down to your hands that were folded in your lap and reached for one. Long, delicate fingers gently wrapping around your right hand as he brought it to his mouth.

A kiss for each finger, you counted, one two three four five…

Then, his lips made contact with your inner wrist. The sudden and unexpected brush of lips against your sensitive skin made your breath hitch.

“I promise to be more attentive,” he whispered on your skin, his hot breath tickling the inner area of your wrist, “the only one pulling me anywhere is you and I am only moving forward.”

“You’ve got to go forwards to go back.”

He had believed that, in more ways than just one, in relation to his factory and to people, but there was no going back now. Even if that were an opinion, he wouldn’t have wanted to.

Within half a second, he dropped your hand and tilted his head, leaned in close and pressed his warm lips to yours in the most sensual, tender kiss your lips had ever known.

Your heart fluttered in your chest like butterfly wings beating against your ribcage, desperate to free itself and get to his. Your soul sought the kind of connection that your mouths were getting and jealousy was an understatement.

If this was his way of making it up to you, then let it be known that you wanted nothing else for Christmas this year than a clear mind and the taste of your lover left over on your cupid’s bow.

It was all electric, body and soul alight, glistening brighter than fairy lights strung up for the season.

He tasted sweeter than his own candy and you smiled into the kiss at the very thought. He ate a lot of his own sweets, if only to test the taste, and you couldn’t help but enjoy the sugared kisses, your sweet tooth craving satisfied only by his honeyed lips.

Somewhere in the haze you found the opportunity to grip handfuls of his tawny tresses, fingers digging into the soft curls that drove your heart mad with desire. You loved his hair and so infrequently did he let you touch or comb it. It was about as unruly as he was, wild, untamed and free, just like the man it belonged to.

Your gentle tugging on his hair elicited a soft grunt from him and his lips attacked yours more feverishly, taking on a more aggressive quality now that you had accepted and encouraged him.

There was no rhyme or reason for anything that occurred while you were with him, except what was happening now.

Wonka did everything on a whim. Sleeping, eating, working…no schedule, no routine, no nonsense.

“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”

Perhaps the most nonsensical thing that had ever happened in Wonka’s factory was your fear that he might leave you.

Strike that. Don’t reverse it.

You didn’t want anything to change. There were more twists and turns in this man’s head than there were in his factory and you had lost yourself trying to find your way out. You never left his mind, not once. Even while he worked or spent time alone, you were in his thoughts, whether it was subconscious or not.

Your own mind didn’t register your movement as you crawled closer and sought out more of his sugary sweetness which was more potent than any nectar of the gods. Your lips devoured his, tasting every inch of the same mouth that poured prose and poetry into your ear each night that you laid with him.

He hummed pleasantly against your lips. His gentle sounds teased you; so rare was it that he ever made a sound during these moments of intimacy. Oh, how you tried, and your futile attempts filled him with great satisfaction. He had more discipline than you ever imagined; living alone for so many years without the warmth of another had taught him to go without, but desperation clung to his bones and manifested through each fervent, heated kiss.

Willy wouldn’t have described himself as needy, but he appreciated physical intimacy when it occurred and sometimes it was as necessary as any other proper communication. He wanted more than a quick romp; he craved human connection. It was completely unfounded for someone like him to want to share a connection with anyone, but here he was asking for it with his mouth on yours and your reciprocation of that same need meant everything to him.

You tested the waters, grazing your teeth along his bottom lip to determine how far he might be willing to go. He didn’t stop you. His lips simply parted, allowing entry of your tongue.

The only sound he made was a little gasp, which you swallowed as your tongue delved in to taste the inside of his mouth. Your hands were still holding the sides of his head, fingers buried deep within his unruly curls.

He helped maneuver your body closer to his, unabashedly bringing you to sit on his lap. As you settled on top of him, one of his large hands moved down to the small of your back and held you firmly in place.

You could feel the heat of his hand through your shirt. You had no grasp of how long the two of you continued to kiss like that. The passage of time, though a precious thing, was unimportant in the current moment. The only thing you demanded more of was him and you would greedily take all that he had to offer you.

You were enchanted by him. He surprised you at every turn and, if it had been anyone else, you’d have questioned where you stood with them, but wasn’t that the point? The less anyone knew about Willy Wonka, the more exciting it felt to be in his presence.

It was impossible to know whether the things he revealed about himself were true or not and there was beauty in that alone. If beauty was in the eye of the beholder, then he had the upper hand here.

You did not stop to see why his hand had suddenly been removed from your back, but any questions you might’ve wished to voice were answered when you noticed him reaching for one of the top buttons on his vest.

The steady progression of events had led you here and you were too immersed within the moment to stop him, but you wouldn’t have wanted to anyway. You were entranced, enthralled, enraptured by the whole of him and his heart belonged to yours.

The wet graze of your tongue against his cupid’s bow spurred him further, lips tangled tantalizingly with yours as his fingers worked open the buttons on his vest.

The threshold had been breached.

The moment was yours for the taking, if you wanted it and you knew that you did.

Lost somewhere between drunk on lust and in love, you began to help him unbutton, starting at the bottom of his vest and continuing until your hands met in the middle of his chest. You followed this same pattern for both rows of buttons.

Coincidentally, this journey ended right above his heart, but another one was merely beginning.

Your hands were shaking with anticipation as you looked up to notice him already gazing at you lovingly. A tender smile curved his lips like a crescent moon and the sunlight bleeding out through the cracks in your soul made the stars in his eyes sparkle.

You cupped his cheek and pressed a gentle kiss onto the bridge of his nose. His arms encircled you, holding you flush against him and his shirtsleeves rode up on his forearms, exposing just a fraction of skin with a fine dusting of sand-colored hair.

You let him hold you to him as his lips attached to your neck. You imagined when he pulled back that there would be an imprint of lips, a tattoo of his love painted across your collarbone, signifying that you belonged to him alone.

You tilted your head to give him better access and he thanked you by delivering a loving nip to the column of your neck.

You hadn’t forgotten your intention.

With hands still shaking, you reached for his vest and pulled it open. His lips detached from your neck in an instant and long, elegant fingers wrapped around your wrist, effectively stopping you from undressing him.

His eyes were crystalline pools of skylight, airy and substantially quantified by the depths within them. They had a mirror-like quality and you could see yourself reflected in them as you held his gaze for a heartbeat too long.

“Only if…this is something that we both want…”

Willy’s words of brevity filled you with wonder.

“If I’m being honest with you, Willy…I don’t think I’ve ever wanted something more than I want you now.”

That single sentence melded with and fused into his soul. In a breath-to-breath admission of consent, your words had tied his tongue with cursive letters.

He breathed a sigh of relief and held within that exhale was his own consent. You had granted him permission, assuring him that you were not offering yourself out of obligation or for complacency’s sake and that thrilled him perhaps as much as the act itself would. He felt the blood rush to his groin and he moved beneath you, shifting your body weight more onto his thigh.

Willy nuzzled your cheek, dragging his nose along your soft skin. His arms had yet to unravel themselves from around you; he wanted to take his time. However, he was increasingly aware of his own sense of desperation. It had been some time since he had last gotten into bed with a lover.

Actually, the last time he had gotten into bed with anyone was with you.

Willy had a low sex drive, but on occasion it would crop up and remind him that he was, in fact, human and had needs, whether it was simple biology or heightened by the desire to connect with the one he loved.

Whenever he thought of a lover and what had previously been just some nameless face at the forefront of his mind, that vision was now you. Yours was the love he sought; your hands were the ones meant to hold his heart.

He let go of you and shrugged off his vest.

Your lips captured his once again and he imagined this was what dreams tasted like.

He went to stand up and you quickly took the hint and moved off his lap. He got up and began unbuttoning his white undershirt while you watched. He could see the fire burning in your irises, your pupils dilated with desire as you watched his delicate fingers pop open each button.

You knew better than to rush him; a treat as sweet as him was meant to be savored.

You took this opportunity to slip your own shirt off your body. With your skin exposed, his eyes traveled across your midsection and his fingers hesitated, fumbling the button he was on. His breath hitched and you swore you heard him whisper the word “beautiful” as he gazed upon you.

Once he had recovered, the swiftness with which he finished removing his undershirt made your head spin. In his haste, he had forgotten to remove his bow tie and unbutton his sleeve cuffs, which made you giggle. He seemed flustered, his cheeks reddening once he realized, and perhaps this was the first time you had ever witnessed him with a blush on his cheeks.

You reached out to help him and a soft chuckle dripped from his lips like maple syrup, “It would appear I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself, my dear.”

You chuckled as well as his bow tie and undershirt were removed, “well, I’ll take it as a compliment…that you seem so eager to have me.”

Your words were spoken as if in jest, but his response was anything but.

“Doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt that I love,” he quoted, his smooth baritone steeping you in the tea of his desire. (William Shakespeare, Hamlet.)

It was enough to quiet your mind and when he said it, you felt your entire world get a little smaller. Your heightened senses had inflated your soul and carried you to the clouds. You were a runaway balloon stuck in a tree and his words were the hand that enclosed around your string. You had seen vast lands and known love in its many forms, but never until this moment had you felt so much in the presence of one.

His heart knew yours better than it knew itself and the cracks left by heartbreak were filled in by your endless love for each other.

You moved in to kiss him again and his hands cupped your warm cheeks. His breath tasted as sweet as the chocolate he made, which only made sense because of how often you saw him sampling it. He kept a bit in his coat that he’d pull out and nibble upon and often would you go sifting through his pockets for little treasures and treats that he had left over. Sometimes you found such delights that it had to have been no accident that they had been left behind. No, he knew your guilty pleasure was his chocolate and he made sure to satisfy your cravings, both for chocolate and for him, as often as possible.

Your tongue slipped inside his mouth and he finally graced your ears with a very delicate moan.

His hands moved down the length of your arms to finally grab your hips. He pulled you in, your pelvis against his, and you could feel the hard press of his bulge against your thigh.

While you kissed, he began to walk you backwards toward your shared bedroom.

You could not have torn your lips apart to look where you were going even if you wanted to.

You trusted him to get you there safely, perhaps more than you had ever trusted another person or at least you hadn’t trusted anyone this deeply in a very long time. Too many others had taken a hammer to your jawbreaker heart and smashed it to more manageably sized pieces, but once broken, it could never be put back together without its’ once-pristine surface now marred with jagged cracks.

At least the breakage let the light of your soul pour out into his hands…

Willy was stained by your brokenness, his heart bruised the color of your trauma.

He had been burned before, broken in a very real way, and therefore it was never a question of if you would trust him, but how much and when. He knew how long it could take a person to truly open up if they wanted to, but for you, he was willing to wait an eternity and then some.

Time stood still and Willy had the presence of mind to remember how it felt to cradle your body to his when the only things that cemented your souls was an equal share of trust and love for one another and the mutual decision to take just one more chance.

You sighed with relief when the backs of your knees connected with the mattress.

Willy didn’t push you or press for more. His lips left yours in favor of your neck and several chaste yet sweet kisses were left along your collar bone as if his lips were asking for permission without the accompaniment of words.

In between you, you reached for his belt.

He felt your fingers wrap around the waistband of his trousers and a gentle smirk crossed his features, “after something, are we?”

His coy response made the tips of your ears get hot and you huffed, “well, it isn’t my fault that I’ve gone and gotten all excited…”

“I hope you’re not implying that it’s mine,” he replied as his smirk widened.

“I wasn’t implying anything,” your time spent with him had sharpened your wit, “I’m saying it.”

His eyes shared in your mirth, twinkling with laughter at your response. He wrapped an arm around your lower back and pulled you in. With his cheek to yours, lips near your ear, he whispered, “shall we make use of your excitement, then, dear?”

You felt a shudder run down your spine as he spoke to you, the dulcet undertones of his honeyed voice pierced you like a knife through the delicate flesh of an orange. You wanted to sink your fingers into his heart and peel it apart to devour the pieces, sustaining yourself on his love.

You nodded and he deemed it appropriate to continue. He gently pushed your hands from his belt and took on the task himself. He pulled it from the loops and laid it on the chair nearest to him.

When he turned back to you, you were already removing your pants. He smiled to himself, stopping in his tracks to admire you as you undressed. He almost wanted to help you, but held himself back. Mutual trust came at a price and he would not want to overstep any unspoken boundaries. You had not explicitly told him not to help, but you hadn’t told him to do it either and so he decided it was best to let you indicate what you wanted from him and how comfortable you were with the situation.

Neither you nor he were particularly trusting individuals. Your experiences with people who took advantage of others made you wary and skeptical, through no fault of your own. Maturity and wisdom came with age and while you had both grown and learned, you had built walls around yourselves both figuratively and literally, in Wonka’s case, to guard your hearts and protect them.

Now, you were bearing your souls to each other.

It was an unlikely thing, but you were both ready. You had known Wonka for a long time now and you had no doubt that you and he were meant to be in each other’s lives. There was a reason that you were here. Even though you might have needed a bit of reassurance from time to time, it was never because you truly thought he might leave you. Giving word to that unreasonable fear set you free, because in your heart of hearts you realized that you were not afraid at all.

You were lonely.

You had forced it down for years, but acknowledging it now was cathartic, because never again would you find yourself isolated like you had so many years before.

Willy was no stranger to isolation either. Though he had reasons other than your own, he empathized.

It was difficult, at times, for the two of you to find a rhythm. Both of you had been alone for so long that it took time to become acclimated to sharing your lives with each other, but in this moment you both knew that there was no person you would each rather share a life with than each other.

Willy was never at risk of pulling away. He was simply learning how to love you.

As soon as you pushed off your pants and stepped out of them, he was kissing you again. In a flourish of limbs and bare skin, you fell backwards onto the mattress with him. His hot lips descended over yours as his fingers linked into the spaces between your own. In all ways except for one, your two bodies were unified and, if either of you could help it, that would soon be remedied.

The mattress dipped and shifted beneath your shared weight as Willy crawled on top of you. You held his hands for as long as you were capable of doing before you needed to feel him more solidly at your fingertips. You dropped his hand, grabbed his shoulder and dug in your nails to hear him hiss into your ear and nip at your neck.

He couldn’t even finish undressing because you demanded every ounce of his attention.

Your spirits were engaged in this battle of carnality and you had consumed him, corrupted his mind and possessed him body and soul, but all’s fair in love and war, both of which you had waged fervently on his senses.

At risk of ruining the moment, he pulled away and got up to finish removing his trousers. Your chest heaved as you took a moment to catch your breath, propping yourself up on one arm.

“And here I thought…we were just getting to the good part,” I quipped. A teasing smile bloomed on my face as he turned to look down at me.

“And I thought you liked my kisses,” He replied without missing a beat.

His lopsided grin made you giggle, but the sound of his zipper being pulled down tore your attention away from the witty banter. The fire of fierce need had begun to burn bright inside your belly once again after being extinguished to mere embers only seconds ago.

You watched him kick off his trousers and make no move to pick them up.

He moved back down onto the bed and leaned into you. You met him halfway and pecked a chaste kiss onto his lips. Your bodies fit together like two immaculately chiseled sculptures whose delicate features appeared to be made of something much softer than stone.

You knew what he wanted from you now and you felt goosebumps rising on your flesh as you anticipated his caress.

He cupped your head, holding you to him as he lowered you back against the pillows. He liked to take charge of this part himself and you let him, despite the anxiety you felt at relinquishing control over yourself. You didn’t like feeling out of control, especially of your body and Willy knew this. He tried his best to make you feel comfortable and safe, never moving forward without verbal consent.

“Shall I touch you, dear?”

You reflected on his question before you nodded, swallowing thickly before you could make a sound, “yes.”

You knew that he would check in with you frequently to make certain you still wished to continue.

With your consent, his fingertips grazed the length of your arms. His warm touch sent pleasant shivers through you and you fought the urge to arch into him. He had a way of making you feel everything he wanted you to feel with just one touch. It was like magic, the control he had over your body and sometimes you wondered if his creative abilities branched into other realms as well.

His hands slid down your sides, massaging your warm skin and admiring your supple curves, the angles and indentations of your hips. Before he traveled lower, Willy wanted to devote some appreciation to the rest of your body first. His hands moved to your back, working underneath you to swiftly unclip your bra. He had a way of doing things so fast that you barely had time to register what he was doing before it was done. Perhaps it didn’t seem possible, but impossibility did not exist where Willy Wonka came from; if there was a way to do the impossible, he had already figured it out and told no one.

With your unclasped bra no longer pulled taut, he delicately pushed the straps off your shoulders and plucked the hindersome piece of fabric away from your chest. It dropped unceremoniously to the floor and his blue eyes glittered with mischief when he looked upon your exposed breasts.

You wanted to cover them, but he held your arms at your sides. True to the creative genius he was, he had to admire beauty where and when he saw it and you were a masterpiece. His tight smile had relaxed as he gazed down at you beneath him and he practically cooed with appreciation for your form.

“You’re very beautiful,” he whispered heatedly, like it was almost difficult for him to get the words out. He was overwhelmed with all his attention focused on the body before him.

You wanted to thank him for the compliment, but all that came out was a soft squeak.

He chuckled at your little sound and bent his head. He placed a firm kiss on your left breast and you sighed in pleasure at the gentle touch of his plush lips on your pillowy skin. His lips traced the curves of your breasts before encircling one of your nipples, suckling lightly as if it were a piece of candy.

You mewled and arched into his mouth, desiring more from him and as quickly as possible, but Willy liked to take his time with you. He never left you unsatisfied, but you could expect nothing to be fast paced.

His fingers wrapped around your hips to hold you in place as he moved to your other breast and did the same thing. His hot tongue teased your candy pieces to hardness and he hummed his appreciation, sending waves of pleasure down to your core.

You squirmed in his grasp and whimpered pathetically, “please, Willy,” you begged him, “I want you now.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll have me, dear,” he reassured you, his thumbs rubbing placatingly against your hips, “when I’m ready for you to.”

His teasing remark made you huff in irritation until his fingers dipped beneath the waistband of your cotton panties and paused you in your tracks.

You whined as his fingers barely breached the fabric barrier before he removed them. His hands moved to your inner thighs and spread your legs apart for him to nestle in between them.

All you could do was watch as he leaned closer and pressed a kiss to your navel, just below your belly button. His kisses traveled lower and lower down your pelvis to your pubic bone and finally to your core. You writhed in pleasure when his mouth found its way to where you wanted it, but your panties were still in the way and you groaned with frustration.

Heat emanated from your core due to your arousal and the crotch of your panties were damp with your wetness.

Your head dropped back against the pillow as he used the tip of his nose to brush lightly against your clit through your panties.

You were so pliant to his will and responsive to his touch that he almost felt powerful. If it had been anyone other than him, he would have, but all he felt in this moment was an overwhelming feeling of love. The fact that he could give you a comfortable experience of vulnerability and pleasure perhaps did enflame his ego a bit, but he loved you even more for it. To see you enjoying yourself because of him was almost too much for him to handle and he could feel his cock swell to attention.

He placed a couple of open-mouthed kisses to the crotch of your panties before he dragged them down your legs. He would have liked to tease you more, but he was already beginning to lose patience and he didn’t want to rush through too quickly.

With your panties removed, he could admire your glistening folds and the sweet juices that had dribbled out of you. His mouth watered as he delved in for a taste, his tongue tentatively flickering against your opening.

You let out a cry and bucked your hips, desperate for him to fill you. You needed friction and fullness to achieve release and Willy knew you couldn’t get either of those things without his compliance. He smirked at that and lowered his head between your thighs.

Your hot core pulsed as more of your honey leaked onto his tongue. He moaned in satisfaction, savoring the taste of your sweetness and the delicious sounds you were making for him. He had never tasted anything this sweet except for his chocolate and if he could have only one of those two things right now he would have picked you without a second thought.

It was almost too much for him to pull his mouth away, but he knew that he must if he were to indulge in the ultimate act of pleasure with you. You both wanted that more than you wanted air to breathe. A greater craving than candy, your existing love and soul connection a stronger aphrodisiac than chocolate.

With a final flick of his tongue against your clit, he dragged his mouth off you. You whimpered at the loss, but in the back of your lust-flavored cotton candy mind you knew that your shared night of pleasure was just beginning.

He got off the bed again and opened the nightstand drawer. He withdrew a small tinfoil packet and a small clear bottle of lubricant.

You were still sprawled out on the mattress, your hair a halo around your head. The darkened room made it difficult to see what he was doing, but your eyes had adjusted enough for you to see movement.

You felt eyes on you and before you glanced up from the object he was holding, his voice broke the silence, “are you comfortable continuing?”

Driven by lust and lover’s greed, you nodded your consent. Willy did not respond at first, waiting on your actual acknowledgement and proper agreement. Your voice was shaky as you replied to him, but you knew what you wanted and were certain in your response, “yes. I want this. I want you, Willy.”

The sincerity in your voice convinced him and he tore open the condom wrapper.

Excitement thrilled you and coursed through your veins, carried into your heart by blood. Your body was singing with sensation as you wanted nothing more than his solid body atop you, his hard length buried in your tight heat.

You watched him with barely-concealed enthusiasm – well, perhaps the only concealment was from the darkness in the bedroom – as he took off his underwear and rolled the condom on. He then squirted a generous amount of lube onto his fingers and coated his cock.

You could hear him jerking himself off and the obscenely slick sounds from the generous amount of lube. He had yet to give himself any physical stimulation up until this point and you were eager to repay the favor.

In the dark, your reached for him and he came to you, ready to meld together and fill you full of himself.

He positioned himself on top and guided your legs around his hips. He propped himself up with one forearm flat against the mattress so that he wouldn’t rest his entire body weight on you and the other guided his condom-covered tip to your entrance.

He gave your forehead a tender kiss as he pressed in. Your lips parted at your sharp intake of breath and your muscles tightened and seized around him. Willy kissed your face, calming you and keeping you still and relaxed until he bottomed out.

He nuzzled against your cheek and moved his free arm behind you to cradle your head.

You tilted your head back and captured his lips. The two of you kissed lazily for several moments as your bodies adjusted to one another. Your walls twitched around his cock, sending jolts of electricity down to his toes, into the pit of his stomach and behind his eyes. Everything felt fuzzy and seemed out of focus except for you.

The one thing that was clear to him was his love for you and the appreciation he had for you being a part of his life. If he could not trust a single soul with his legacy, he knew that he could trust you with himself and that was more than enough.

For once, nothing made you question Willy Wonka; his intentions were clear.

Your fears were just that: fear. It was irrational and based on nothing of consequence. However, the very fact that you were afraid let you and he both know how much you cared.

You would never take Willy, and he would never take you, for granted.

He would reassure you that though he was not used to sharing his world with another, that you were his world now and you would share in every aspect with him and reap the rewards of a unique and whimsical life with perhaps the greatest chocolatier who ever lived.

Take out all the fantasy and spectacle and you were left with only love and imagination.

All these people thought the most fantastical thing about Willy Wonka were his creations, but what took your breath away, and had since the beginning, was the man behind those creations.

You had fallen in love with him as much as you had with his brain and his intellect, his body, his soul. You wanted to dip your fingers into him like if he were made of melted chocolate. You would lick the essence of his existence off your fingertips to taste his candy-coated soul and sugared thoughts. There were not many candies or chocolates of the Wonka brand that you hadn’t tried, but none were sweeter than the man himself.

If he existed only in your mind, then your mind was alive with the thought of him.

All too soon, your thoughts abandoned you as you felt him begin to move.

He slowly pulled out, angled his hips and pushed back in.

The sudden movement jarred your body and you clung to him tighter.

As he began to set a pace, you rolled your hips down onto him each time that he pushed in. This seemed to please him, witnessing you thrusting with him, your bodies moving in unison toward a shared release and reciprocation of pleasure.

He grunted softly in your ear with the effort of thrusting into you. His soft curls tickled your cheek and you bit back a giggle. A particularly rough thrust ripped the sound from your throat and you laughed aloud.

His brows furrowed in amusement at your laughter, but he grinned with you nonetheless.

His thrusts became harsher, deepening as you adjusted and conformed to the rhythm and pace he set that was creating a delicious friction between your legs. You moaned shamelessly into his ear and he thrusted harder, encouraged by the sinful sounds you were making.

Willy kissed you, his lips feverishly moved against yours as he held you in his embrace and your skin blazed with red hot fervor. A thin sheen of sweat clung to your bodies and you could feel the heat rolled off him in waves. Sweat beaded on his upper lip, but it didn’t bother you as you kissed him harder, demanding more intensity out of your shared intimacy. Your core pulsed, muscles gripping and clenching tightly around his cock.

Your moans began to take on a higher pitch the closer you got to your release. Willy could tell that you were close now and he was eager to send you over the edge. Sex was, at least for him, about mutual enjoyment and gratification, not domination, exploitation or manipulation. It was about individuals who loved each other enough to put aside their individuality and become one, just for a moment of bliss.

His forehead pressed against yours as he thrusted into you harder than before, his pace becoming erratic the closer he came to his own release.

As he panted, you felt his breath fan across your face and he smelled of chocolate.

You balanced on the edge of oblivion as your feverish coupling would soon send you into orgasm.

After a few more hard thrusts, Willy slipped a hand between your legs and gently rubbed your clit. Your release seized you, your body shaking violently with hurricane force winds of equal parts pleasure and zest. It was as if the air had been knocked out of you and you were falling down into his waiting arms. Ecstasy radiated from your core, carried in waves throughout your body.

You were alone with your pleasure, waiting on your lover to join you in the afterglow.

You cried out his name as he thrusted into you through your orgasm. He lasted several moments after you came before he released, filling the condom with several hot bursts of his seed.

He had just enough strength left in his body to pull out and collapse beside you. His harsh panting soon turned to gentle sighs as his heartrate decreased and his body cooled. His strawberry blonde curls were plastered to his forehead with sweat and were sticking out at wild angles except for the top which was always a bit flattened from the way he wore his hat.

You reached out and petted his frizzy hair, your fingers delicately massaging his scalp. He let out a quiet little moan and you smiled at him.

With a deep inhale, he sat up and peeled the sticky condom off his softening prick. He tied it up and tossed it in the wastebin, then snatched his underwear off the ground. He picked yours up as well and handed them to you for you to slip on.

You got off the bed and put your panties back on, then crossed the room to the bathroom. A few moments later, when you returned after you had cleaned yourself up, you found him lying in bed waiting for you.

He smiled at you as you approached and extended an arm out to let you curl into his side as you got back on the bed with him. He already had a blanket laid out to pull across your nude bodies so that you could cuddle in modesty and without getting a chill.

He looked down to watch you settle in and you met his gaze for a moment, appreciating his features. His gorgeous blue eyes were like pools of galaxy speckled with stars. His aquiline nose, which most people thought was too big for his face, looked proportionate in your opinion and beautiful just the same. He had the softest features of any man you had ever seen, slightly chubby cheeks, a round face and curved jawline. He was exquisite in every sense of the word and just looking at him made you fall more deeply in love.

As attractive as he was to you, his personality spoke to yours in a language only the two of you spoke fluently.

His appreciation for literature and culture was unique and inspiring and, because it tied in with your own, you learned a lot from each other. His quick wit and casual snide remarks that often passed over other people’s heads made you laugh as though you were enjoying your own little joke with each other.

During your private appreciation for this man, you concluded that you had no reason to ever think he might be pulling away from you.

In surreal Willy Wonka fashion, he seemed to read your thoughts as he finally spoke, “I’d like to see you in the Inventing Room with me tomorrow. I want you to be as involved with the holiday busy season as I am.”

He addressed your insecurities by offering a solution to the problem and your heart felt a bit lighter. He wanted you to be involved in his work so that you didn’t feel so isolated or lonely. He had promised to be more attentive and he intended to do just that, but you could offer him aid and visit him while he worked. True love was buoyed by compromise; you’d see to it that you did your part to keep your relationship strong.

“Forgive me for not being as attentive as I should be,” he continued, “I’ve been so busy, not to excuse myself.”

“I understand,” you replied.

He seemed surprised for a moment, as if he half-expected you to still be upset, “and it isn’t entirely your fault. I should come around more if I’m missing you. We’ll find a solution. We have time.” Willy put his arm around your shoulder and pulled you close so he could kiss your head, “time is a precious thing, my dear. Never waste it.”

Between his words, you heard what he was not saying.

And while he had a point, what you did have was now.

You could agree just to exist for a moment, sharing in the silence of the universe and listening to nothing but your dreams and the sounds of your hearts.

You would fall into each other the same way that you fell in love: accidentally and achingly slow.

One day you would both look up and see how far you had come, but for now, you still had a way to go.

You knew his heart belonged to yours and that was enough to keep trying. Once the busy season calmed down and you had more time to focus on the two of you, you would ease into it like lovers were meant to, but right now you had an obligation to yourselves not to let the fear of failure drive you apart.

It might seem fatalistic to ruin a relationship before it had run its course, but you’d seen it happen and the last thing you wanted was for that to be yours.

You knew deep down that it wouldn’t happen.

Your love was as strong as your imaginations were wild and no mind would ever dare dream the two of you apart.

#willy Wonka #willy wonka and the chocolate factory #willy wonka 1971 #wilder!wonka #willy wonka x reader #willy wonka imagine #willy wonka and the chocolate factory imagine #gene wilder #biblio :: 📖

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vvatchword · 1 year ago

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In Defense of BioShock Infinite

Although I had preordered BioShock Infinite with all its bells and whistles, I did not actually play it until January 2023. And lordy, I had me another Experience with a capital E. How the hell a bunch of urban Yanks could capture my experience as a queer democratic-socialist atheist struggling with her roots as a rural evangelical-cum-fascist is kinda magical, honestly. As to the game itself, it didn’t hurt how good it looked—the kickass skyhook gun battles—that novel setting—the complex characters—that delicious historical setting—that bloodthirsty critique of America—and to top it all off, they had pulled yet another Cassandra. Hell, speaking of which—not only was the game fun, it was fucking smart. It was intelligent, memorable, and meaningful in a way I hadn’t experienced in video games for years.

Now, back in 2013, when I had realized that I would be spoiled for Infinite, I left the BioShock fandom. After completing the game, I headed to Tumblr to re-engage, wagging my whole body like an excitable golden retriever, only to discover that BioShock Infinite was remarkably absent, and when mentioned, brutally derided.

“I hate BioShock Infinite and all my friends do, too,” someone said in the tags under a post.

I was utterly befuddled and deeply sad. I wanted to talk about BioShock Infinite! I wanted to dig into it, uncover unexpected ideas, learn new things, talk shit, make new friends—the full fandom experience. And instead I kept stumbling into hateful diatribes and super-charged disgust.

Obviously, I first looked at myself and my own judgment. Had I missed some obvious problem or misread some theme or dialogue? This wouldn’t be the first time I’d snapped down on a hook. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

There are two parts of BioShock Infinite that are unquestionably terrible: the fridging of Daisy Fitzroy and the false equivalence of violence between haves and have-nots (lol what are the have-nots supposed to do, ask nicely?). Additionally, one could look at the use of real Native American tragedies as tasteless. Personally, I do not—in the same way that I don’t find it tasteless that real war victims were used as inspiration for Splicer deformities. This is what really happened; this is commentary on events that really happened to real people.

At this point, I’m sure I don’t have to explain why two of these themes are Unequivocally Bad.

Anyway, I thought that perhaps these were the reasons BSI had been condemned to Super Hell.

I was wrong.

How Criitcsim Werk

This wasn’t the fandom I’d made friends in over 2010. Hell, this wasn’t the fandom of 2013. This was a fandom made up of Babies. They were making their first coltish stumblings into media criticism and with it, dredging up the same brain-dead bullshit from Tumblr circa 2008.

Suddenly I was brought face to face with people who seemed to think that if a character couldn’t be likable or good that the story itself couldn’t be likable or good; that one bad element means the story is unsalvageable (lol u pussies); the implication that one is bad for liking it; the destructive juvenile insistence that media accurately measures its fans’ moral qualities en masse like an astrological sign. This goes far beyond simple like or dislike and plunges head-first into Puritanism: praying loudly on street-corners instead of quietly in a dark corner where God might hear you.

At one point I had a kid go off about how they wouldn’t take time to understand Booker DeWitt’s perspective because he had (fictionally) taken part in a genocide. (That same person said the Native American element had been employed for shock value, a thought that sometimes keeps me up at night, because it is legitimately one of the dumbest criticisms the game has ever received.) At another point I saw someone acting personally offended that (fictional person) Dr. Suchong’s (fictional) data was being stolen (in a fiction) by a (fictional) racist who would (fictionally) take credit for (fictional person) Suchong’s (fictional) inventions “while calling him slurs”. Sure, a better question would have been, “Why would the creative team opt to do this” rather than assume intentional racism from a Jewish creative director with an in-office multi-ethnic team in the year of our lord 2013, but why not handwave the choice with prurient moral dismay so your audience won’t beat you to death with bats?

It was as though fans were treating these completely fictional characters as real people whose personal gods had opted to torment them, and that their tormentors merited the kind of censure that psychopaths should receive. As I hope all of you understand, this is fucking madness.

More than once I saw people posting about hating the studio or the creative director in ways that seemed intense, unreasoning, and excessive—notably an “I Hate [Irrational Games creative director] Ken Levine” stamp (rofl the more things change amirite). People get so performatively moralistic about it that I started wondering if I missed something big along the way. Was there some secret Voxophone I missed swearing fealty to baby Hitler or some shit?

Double Standards

At the same time, I was utterly confused. BioShocks 1 and 2 both featured some absolutely ghastly bullshit based on real-life horrors and a thick mix of complicated human beings—many of them victims who have become monsters. The fact they are grounded in historical tragedies is a huge part of their appeal. Hell, I don’t think those games would have had half their meaning without World Wars I and II and the threat of a third.

A gay man who feels so cursed by his orientation that he is incapable of intimacy and systematically destroys his ex-lovers—including the man he loves the most. A Korean who survived Japanese occupation and a Jewish Holocaust survivor repeat the violence and traumas exacted upon them and their people, subjecting a new generation to agonies unthinkable. Chasing the shadows of Bolsheviks, a Russian citizen becomes the brutal tyrant that he loathed. A rich lawyer with an easygoing drawl designs a concentration camp and systematically harvests hundreds, if not thousands of political prisoners, selling them out to medical testing for a quick buck.

But a Native man who destroys his own people and class to ensure his own survival and social acceptability is too far? This character is where people drew the line, so much so that the entire game is disavowed? Hell, if you’re just talking about Booker (rather than Comstock), he doesn’t have anywhere near the largest bodycount. If we were to judge on the metric of human misery alone, Booker wouldn’t even hit the top ten.

Keep in mind that the most-discussed BioShock game on Tumblr is BioShock 2, and that one of the biggest fandom favorites is Augustus Sinclair—the easy-talkin’ Georgia lawyer who sells your character into horrors past all human comprehension, as he sold hundreds before and after you. Sinclair is a motherfucker so vile that BioShock 2 gives you no choice but to murder him. But Sinclair is also pleasant; good-looking to some; spends the whole game making sweet love to your ear; is one of the only true positive experiences you experience in a horror story. Unlike DeWitt, a man who is brutal and awful from step one, Sinclair is smooth and sweet. Unlike DeWitt, Sinclair’s victims are faceless, completely fictional, and carry no political or social baggage.

People fuckin’ ship this guy with Subject Delta, his explicit victim. He’s usually described as a squishy cinnamon roll. In most fanfiction, he often gets to escape to the surface and fuck Delta while helping raise Eleanor as Dad 2. It is rare that I find fanfiction that acknowledges his monsterhood in all its glory. In fact, I can only think of two.

Literacy Comes in Levels

My problem with the over-the-top hatred of BioShock Infinite is along the same lines as my confusion at Twilight and Harry Potter hate: there is so much worse out there (how much do the haters actually engage with media if they think this is that bad—yes, even considering the shitty creators themselves!), the hatred far outweighs the sin committed (in BioShock’s case, the truly bad bits are not central enough to derail the larger narrative), people don’t seem to hate it so much as they want to be seen hating it, fans want to enforce an unspoken rule hating it (bitches this is poison. Stop this), and there’s something about the hate that stinks of poor reading comprehension.

A great metric for general literacy is the newspaper. In journalism, you’re writing for the lowest-common denominator, which for years here in the USA has been about a fifth-grade reading level (about 10-11 years old, for my non-American readers). The AP posted an article a couple years back about how the general reading comprehension of Americans needs to be dropped to a third-grade one (8-9 years), and baby, I’m here to say it’s true.

Most of the problem is that the American education system is shitty as fuck. The rest of it is from an extremely American disdain of intellectualism and the arts. People are not taught how to interpret art or literature—a difficult and subtle skill which involves accepting such truths as “multiple contradictory readings can exist and yet be simultaneously correct”, “the author can be a complete tool and still be right about things”, “the author can be a great person and still write horrifyingly incorrect bullshit”, and “worthwhile works can be ridiculously long and it really is your fault for not having an attention span”.

Media criticism must be learned through trial, error, asking questions, confidently swaggering into a public space to announce your brilliant insight only to have your ass handed to you (usually by your older self ten years later), being willing to admit you swaggered confidently into a public space to state bullshit and then amending your bullshit only to produce more bullshit, and otherwise making a complete and utter cock of yourself. We are taught to fear and flee pain and failure, despite the fact this is how we learn and improve. Because we judge our value by whether or not we are “smart,” we are afraid of displaying that we don’t know something or might be mistaken–better not to try at all than to reveal ourselves to be fools. And yet the best way to learn is to crash up against someone else and be proven wrong!

American parents are terrified of hurting their children to the point that they spare them cognitive dissonance of any kind, disavowing difficult art—without any appreciation for the fact that art is how we provide safe spaces to explore key human experiences, better preparing us to face those difficult subjects when there are real-world consequences (sex, gender and social expression, grief, violence, predation, illness, interacting with people of different ideologies, whatever new issue is pissing off some smooth-brained old motherfucker somewhere).

If parents and teachers aren’t teaching us how to interpret art, we’re probably never going to develop the skill at all, or crash unsubtly into it in a piecemeal fashion (hello it me). Another unfortunate side effect is that these readers tend to be blitheringly superficial: they are literally intellectually incapable of reading deeper than the uppermost layer of a text. The curtains are always blue.

And let’s not forget the role moral performatism plays in media criticism, which although faaar from new, has reached hilarious levels in the age of social media. What’s important isn’t understanding something, it’s finding something to symbolically burn at the stake so everyone knows God loves us: please keep loving me, please don’t hurt me, please don’t throw me on the fire—for performatism is not for outsiders. We long for human connection so fucking much that it’s more important to destroy what might point out our fallibilities than it is to let ourselves stand in the furnace and burn out the dross.

What do you think the point of BioShock Infinite was?

Emotional Machines

Let’s face it. Human beings give a lot more credence to how something makes them feel than they do its complex invisible reality. We are not logical creatures; we are emotional ones. Our logic is too new a biological mechanism to override something as powerfully stupid as our primal lizard brains.

Knowing this, let’s take BioShock’s most popular characters. The first two are Subject Delta and Jack Wynand, the protagonists of BioShocks 2 and 1, respectively; and why not? They’re the characters we play. In the first two BioShocks, whether or not you kill Little Sisters determines the ending you receive. In other words, Delta and Jack can only be as “wicked” as the players are.

How do people want to see themselves? As good. What do people want to see around themselves? Good. (What is “good”? Uh, well,,,,,,) What do they want? Simple moral questions with simple moral answers. And in the first two BioShocks, what is moral is obvious: don’t kill little girls. It’s actually kind of insulting once you say it out loud.

In-fandom, Jack and Subject Delta are almost never painted as murderers or monsters, but as victims and heroes; I saw someone musing about putting Subject Delta on a “gentle giants” poll and I nearly choked on my own tongue. I only saw that musing because someone put Subject Delta and Jack in a “Best Fathers” poll. Nobody in-fandom really considers the “evil” or “complicated” endings as canon choices, despite those versions being fully understandable alternate readings, with a story that doesn’t make sense without them. (I don’t believe Burial at Sea is necessarily canon; in fact, I would bet good money that it is a huge middle finger lol, mostly because a number of brain-dead motherfuckers won’t take unhappiness for an answer.)

Most fandom art and writing is gentle, sweet, good: the symbolic healing of the damaged, the salvation of innocents, the turning of new leaves. These things are not just saccharine sweet—they tend to be unrealistically sweet. Now, far be it from me to demand these works cease. There’s a reason they exist. People write them because they need hope and happiness; I have enjoyed them greatly myself and intend to enjoy them in the future. But if y’all get to have your dessert, I demand the right to have my dinner.

The Colours Out of Earth

Let there be media where the opposite can also be true: where everything is unbelievably complicated and unforgivably fucked-up. Let there be characters who slide slurs into their speech without thinking. Let there be characters who destroy themselves in a thousand different ways, not all of them obvious, some of them horrifying. Let there be well-meaning people struggling with all their mights to do what is right only to destroy everyone around them and then completely miss the fact it’s all their faults. Let there be wickedness painted as goodness, superficial appearances accepted over essential and inherent values, denial of change and transformation, failure to accept that what is old must die and what is new must live, human stupidity and short-sightedness and cruelty in all their flavors. Let’s smash it all together and see how it plays out.

Oh, badly? No shit! But “badly” isn’t the point. How does it play out?

Let there be a world of gradients—a place I can float from color to color, hue to hue, value to value, while attempting to figure out where, why, how, and by whom they transform—to taste concepts in a hundred different ways, test their textures by a hundred different mediums, insert them into a hundred different contexts. I need to understand why I feel the way I do; I need to understand morality in all its hideous, fragmentary glory. For I have been sold to a ideology of blacks and whites, and let me tell you: it prepares you for nothing, and it will always destroy what is most precious about human life.

I can no longer believe in a world where what is lost always returns, because that world does not exist. I have a reflexive need to come to terms with Finality: what I have lost, what I have destroyed, what will never return, what will never be better. I have a reflexive need to understand Transformation: what I am now, what is as of the present, what has risen shambling from the ashes, what turns to gaze upon me in the darkness. I need to understand what is wretched about me as much as I need to heal myself. How can I heal if I can’t understand how I have hurt and been hurt?

I need to shine a light in the dark. Not to remodel it, not to destroy it—because I also can’t believe in a world where the wicked is destroyed forever—but to behold it, to learn from it, to view my own impact upon it, to accept how it has become a part of me, to learn how to do my best (because that’s all one can do). I must learn to love people more than causes, I must learn to love people rather than the act of winning, I must learn to love people rather than battle. I need to stand in that endless black with the lamp off and my eyes closed, letting the agony roll over me, burning with a fire that throws no light, rolling back and forth from an intense self-loathing to a fury at a society that destroys what is most valuable because it didn’t make them feel the way they wanted.

The Unforgivable

I believe that there are only two differences between Booker DeWitt and his equally cursed cohorts.

In the Hall of Whores: The Unmarked Slate

First, unlike the previous two games, where you enter the world as a tabula rasa and might roleplay as what you perceive as a good person, you are explicitly put into the shoes of a monster, and nothing you do can save you.

With other shitty BioShock characters, you are passively watching other people, and you are able to hold yourself apart. Sure, everyone else is crazy as fuck from using biological Kryptonite, but you’re too smart to end up a crazy fucking asshole like them! Sure, you are now technically a mass murderer, but those fuckers deserved it, damn it!

“Look at this crazy bastard!” you say, rolling your eyes at the Steinmans and Cohens and Ryans and Fontaines. “It sure is a great thing I’m not a crazy bastard!”

You are able to escape acknowledging that you, too, in certain circumstances, might be the crazy bastard. You are being challenged to stand in the body of a person who has committed unforgivable sins. Imagine if you yourself committed those sins. Imagine what sins you have already committed. Imagine what brutalities you cannot take back. Imagine what horrors you have wreaked just by breathing.

“Ahhhh!” said players, probably. “What do you mean I’m not allowed to be good?”

Because that’s what the game was designed to do. Because “good” is a fucking cop-out and if it’s how you live with yourself wait until you find out you’ve been doing horrifying bullshit all your life without question. You can be evil by association through no fault of your own.

Original Sin

Second, the plight of Native Americans is a sin that non-Natives will always carry, and the socially conscious are aware of this even if they don’t know how to put it into words. The state of affairs being what it is, it is unlikely that First Peoples will ever be treated humanely, much less have their land returned. They must struggle for scraps of what is rightfully theirs while we lounge on their corpses. We cannot help but benefit from their destruction; we are made unwitting partners with our forebears; we steal the fruits of their lands and make mockeries of their faiths and identities. We have destroyed part of what made this world fascinating and unique and most of it can never be returned. Even if everything were to be made right tomorrow, their genocide is a sin that we will carry until we die, because the only reason we could be here at all is because they were killed.

The obvious solution stands before us, but the powers that be are so much greater than we that we are effectively powerless, and achieving anything less than total restoration smacks of anticlimax.

This is unbearable.

How can one think of oneself as a good person if one sees the good that must be done, but cannot achieve it? If one’s actions are meaningless? Goodness without action is pretension.

We are all Booker DeWitt. We have all set fire to the tipi. We swept the ashes away, we ignored the sizes of the bones, we built a CVS on their graves, and then we made statues and holidays commemorating Native Americans like the world’s cheapest “Thinking of You” card. We have de-fanged them, transformed them into cardboard cutouts, and set them up as cute little side characters in our sweeping American dream.

Booker is not a man. Booker is America and Americans—and America and Americans are monstrous: one part hypocrisy, two parts incessant violence, three parts constant peacocking, and four parts dumb as a stump.

The Monsters We Make

Outside of the message about “choice,” an enormous part of BioShock’s thematic ensemble is the creation of monsters. How are monsters created? Who or what is responsible for creating them? What do the monsters think made them the ways they are? Can a monster be saved? How? Is it enough to acknowledge you did wrong and want to be a better person?

Maybe most people are aware on some instinctive level of what facing one’s own monsterhood means. No one wants it. It’s not fun. It hurts. It’s embarrassing. It’s destructive. It’s admitting you don’t have it all together and might never, ever—that despite your best actions, you can have it horribly wrong at any point. In an age where we demand moral perfection, it demands vulnerability: you must admit that sometimes you’re the racist, the transphobe, the sexist, the nationalist, the classist, the homophobe, the violent, the wrong, the dumbfuck.

Human beings are not built to be moral; human beings are built to survive. We so rapidly learn how to deal with our contexts at such young ages that we don’t have the time or capabilities to question why those contexts are the ways they are or why it is demanded we perform the ways we do.

In a very real way, BioShock Infinite demands vulnerability of us. It demands you look in the mirror and see what is monstrous in you—how you have been created—manufactured—a tool, a machine, a trained animal. It asks you to recognize that you can be a monster simply by association. And if we can’t look into the mirror and truly acknowledge that monsterhood, we run very real risks of becoming or enabling those monsters in one way or another.

Worst of all: perhaps monsterhood isn’t optional. Perhaps the monster was inside of us from the very beginning. It’s not a matter of if you become a monster, but when, under what circumstances, by whose hand. What is more, believing the “right” moral stances will not save you. Monsterhood can afflict anyone, in any ideology, any political stance, in any social movement, in any faith. The only element that can save you is to truly love other people, and even then, you can fail, for there can be states where there is no winner and ways to misread how best to treat another person.

Environment and Society: Context Will Not Be Denied

BioShock 1’s original ending is Jack-as-monster, regardless of how many children he saves, regardless of your feelings as player. He passes through the gauntlet of Rapture, but he has supped of its poison. And he wasn’t poisoned when he entered Rapture the second time—he was poisoned the minute he was conceived. He was born of it. He had no hope of ever escaping it—he never could have—he’d never had a choice to begin with.

No matter what choices you make in BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth will always kill you. Why? Because she has seen every world—every context—every limitation—every boon. And there is no way to stop what has been; there is no way to undo what has been done. The minute you have committed to a decision, you have split the universe; there is no telling what kind of person it will make you. In fact, there’s no telling which of your decisions will matter at all. Only Elizabeth can see because she is the unlimited future: your offspring stands before you, judge and jury, and you will have no choice but to accept her verdict, for despite your name, you are incapable of controlling how you are interpreted.

Elizabeth sits across from you in the boat and stares without blinking. She sees a million million similar Bookers. Some are a little bit taller, some a little bit shorter, some a little heavier or lighter. Some more-resemble one grandparent or another. They have different colored ties. This one blinks when rain hits him in the eyeball. That one took a brutal beating back on the airship and one eye is swollen shut. That one can’t stop shaking; this one is unable to speak at all; one hasn’t yet lost hope, although even he doesn’t realize it.

They all lowered the torch to the tipi.

The baptism determined Comstock; what determined Booker?

Why Booker Is

In BioShock 1, characters are often stand-ins for larger concepts. Thus Ryan stands in as Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Ubermensch; Bill McDonagh as Andrew Ryan’s conscience; Diane McClintock as the citizenry of Rapture; Captain Sullivan as law and order; Frank Fontaine as the truest expression of Objectivism in its distilled form.

Who is Booker? Most importantly: why is he?

Booker is a fictional character with a brutal background based on historical events, alternative and true. Booker might be Lakota; Booker might have undergone forced Anglicization; Booker might have been ripped from his parents; Booker is a product of violence, perhaps literally. Booker is American exceptionalism distilled. Booker is the past in constant judgment of itself, unable to live with itself and unable to die. Booker destroys what is best in him and around him in exchange for belonging. Booker has sold the future to absolve his sins. Booker has sold his daughter because he is a fictional character in a work of fiction who needs to be propelled.

Booker is a shell, a sluice, an environment. Booker is the broken shape you are meant to fill, horrified. His internal shape should torture you as it has tortured him: the messy slaggy soul of a shitty tin soldier.

Does Booker take the baptism and become Comstock? If so, it might be his second one. His last name literally means “the white.” His first name can mean “author.” It is most likely his second name: an attempt to rewrite himself. And when he was unable to rewrite himself the first time, when the cognitive dissonance boiled at the edges of his skull, he found there was only one way to cleanse himself the second: to remake the world entirely. To force transformation on everyone else. To take vengeance on a world that could never love him, never want him—to create a world that has no choice but to love him. If he can’t change the world’s mind, he’ll change the world.

Note what he opts to do: to take the fight to the environment–to the unyielding universe.

Context Is Everything

It is no mistake that BioShock Infinite occurs in 1912: the sinking of the Titanic is often credited with ending an unfettered optimism, a period when the Western world believed technology had brought the human race into a golden age. With World War I—which would follow a mere two years later—came modern warfare and all the horrors thereof, not the least of which was the realization that humans had created a kind of war that could destroy the entire world. World War I also seeded the rise of the United States: much of the wealth of warring Europe—itself fat on the blood of subjugated peoples and stolen lands—would rattle into America’s coffers.

It is also no mistake that BioShock 1 directly follows World War II. With WWII came a heightened terror—that this war is not the last war, that there will never be an end to war, that war will go on expanding and expanding until it has consumed us all. World War III would not be denied: prettily packaged in the ideals of its children, it simply followed the utopians down to their underwater tombs. According to BioShock 1’s original ending, World War III is not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when.

But even more important than the history in the BioShock games are their settings. Mute leviathans, Rapture and Columbia determine all of your behaviors: from where you can exist in space to all of your desires and goals to how you choose to present yourself to how you opt to behave. Isolated in extremism—whether that extremism is the crushing depths of the ocean or the unbearable lightness of the air—most of their power is that they simply cannot be escaped. You can’t outrun them. They are everywhere. They are everything.

Like Lovecraft before it, BioShock acknowledges the greatest horror of all: you cannot escape your context. Your context does not only involve your immediate surroundings. It is also historical; contains zeitgeists from various cultures and subcultures; is filled with pressures both personal and impersonal, human and nonhuman. Many of these forces can hurt you. Many more can destroy you. What you do to survive depends very much on where, when, and with whom you must live.

Human beings are not built to be moral.

The Death of the Future

In the film Operation, Burma!, a soldier asks Errol Flynn: “Who were you before the war?”

“An architect,” says Flynn.

Who were you? Because that “you” doesn’t matter now. That “you” is irrelevant. So you’re an architect. What the war does to you; what these deaths mean to you; your past, your education, your loves and desires and forward motivation, the you that could have been outside war, the you that slogs alone into the brutal future—all completely irrelevant. Your forebears don’t care so long as you can bleed.

Children are the manufactured tools of their creators—helpless before the enormous strength of their elders and the zeitgeists that enclose them, poisoned by their parents’ insecurities and flaws, utilized like weapons regardless of the cost—often with great love.

Consider something more than the traumatized culture: consider the society filled with traumatized children; consider the traumatized society. Consider channeling children through that trauma over and over and over again, if you can. Poisoned—poisoned—poisoned—all of us poisoned. Poisoned by those who loved us most. Poisoned by the people we trusted. Poisoned by the people who meant to make a better world.

I believe it is notable that creative director Ken Levine is Jewish; I have read from multiple accounts that the European Jewish diaspora was uniquely traumatized from the Holocaust and passed that trauma down upon their own families. I sometimes wonder if he saw that firsthand.

The fathers eat sour grapes; their children’s teeth are set on edge.

Choice: Player Expectations and Entitlement

For players who experienced BioShocks 1 and 2 with their multiple endings (Good, Bad, and “ok bye then I guess” respectively), it must have been jarring to suddenly reckon with being a monster. How often I see players grousing that nothing they do will change their wicked pasts! These players completely miss that the only meaningful choice had already been made, that it had nothing to do with the player at all, and even if they had been there, DeWitt was still unforgivable. The only way to go on was to bow out and allow the future to redefine herself.

Nobody was ready for that shit.

Like it or not, BioShock 1 had set a precedent. Not everyone’s going to read up on creator intentions. If any keyword came blaring through the noise, it would have been “choice.” Most players only recognize choice by the ability to make it, not the absence of it, and most of them weren’t equipped to recognize that its lack was the point. The meaningless choices were commentary, and they were as much about the player as they were about DeWitt himself. Not every choice will be meaningful, will it? And there will be choices you make that will be momentous, but they will seem very small when you make them.

Because most players had experienced what they thought was a basic moralistic tale in the first two games, and would see Infinite not as reflection upon America’s destructive personality, its obsession with a meaningless Good/Bad duocracy, and the infinite, cyclical nature of violence, they saw Booker’s death as corrupted artsy claptrap.

“I did the good schuut,” they say. “I want the good schuut end. Where happy end??? Where treat :(”

Bitch the future is here.

Time to die.

It’s Not Me, It’s You

Generally I despise essays that end with, “But the real fault lay with the clueless motherfuckers who played the game!” Often, if enough people complain, there’s something to it; the message has been obscured somehow. Details or explanations weren’t clear or intuitive enough, some mechanism isn’t working somewhere, some character needs to talk more or less, some setting needs to be transformed. O artist: stop whining and get cracking. If everywhere you go smells like shit, it’s time to look under your shoe.

But sometimes it’s true that a piece of media is on a level folks aren’t equipped for. Think of every literature and art class you’ve ever had, if you’ve been fortunate enough to have one. There’s always someone scoffing in a back row, like here are all these jokers making more of something than they should. Similarly, some of you have been arguing with me this entire time, saying: “I just wanted a video game. I just wanted to shoot something and feel better and instead I get this bullshit ending that makes no sense.”

First of all, smart bullshit (and even fucked-up attempts at smart bullshit! Hi BioShock 2) gets to exist on this Earth along with Gmod and Roblox or Schuut Big Tits 84 (there are 84 tits and you must shoot them all. They explode into smaller tits) or whatever-the-fuck-else you think is a worthwhile gaming experience. Second of all, miserable bullshit also gets to exist, and what did you fucking expect if you played through either BioShocks 1 or 2? When you hear a football player quavering out in the darkness for his mom to pick him up, how’d that make you feel? What did you think was going to happen to Jack after pounding back the entire Plasmid library, the cancer cocktail that explicitly destroys the fuck out of its users? Third of all, if you missed the smart bullshit going on in BioShock 1 and didn’t think BioShock Infinite might be larger in scope in more ways than one, that’s on you. Fourthly, if you were simply satisfied with saving like, 15 kids from a violently-perishing city of thousands and call it good, I mean… is that really where your thoughts end? Are you really that fucking small?

It’s Not You, It’s Me

You ever meet those motherfuckers who talk shit about Shakespeare or modern art? And you’re just left there staring with dead eyes at this poseur who mistakes playing devil’s advocate for intelligence, cheek resting on your fist, thinking about the fanfic you’re writing, wondering who it’s for, remembering that all your smut-writing friends get ten times the viewers, and considering throwing yourself in front of a bus.

Yeah, there’s a personal element to this: the fact that BioShock Infinite is the kind of art I like and long for and want to make myself, the fact that the game was successful and yet the studio was closed, the way its DLC was so rushed that the story plopped out like half-baked mystery meat—realizing that the same forced rush was at 2K’s behest for BioShock 2, as well, and wondering how good art can ever be made in this unforgiving capitalist hellscape. The game was weirdly niche and I’m not 100% sure I’ll ever experience anything quite like it again. And with the whiners in this fandom, the loud ones controlling the narrative, some fresh brain-dead exec in some brain-dead publisher might be like: “We must keep it safer and simpler for these fuckin babby adult!”

Nah bitch nah. Naaaah. Cry some more while I enjoy me my fucking dinner. I’ll eat it while making loud smacking noises and keeping unbroken eye contact. Come here. Let’s look at each other. It’ll be like Lady and the Tramp but we want to punch each other. What truer form of love can there be here in the modern world?

I keep having to remind myself that this response isn’t new. I keep having to remind myself of my place. I keep having to remind myself why I write, why I read, why I like to experience art to begin with. It’s not for the reasons other people do it. Oh, I want the same emotional release as everyone else, I want the same rollicking plots, I adore the same tropes. I seek out everything and anything for a good time; I’ll read Moby Dick today and a smutty 5,000-word abortion with the world’s most suspect grammar tomorrow. I don’t give a shit if it’s low- or high-brow; there are all kinds of ways to have fun and there are all kinds of ways to engage with art, and lord knows I’ve done my share of smooth-brain criticism. The problem is that I’ve always wandered off by myself, sunk into an all-consuming reverie, on tracks that no one else ever seems to be on, and then looked up to talk excitedly about something only to realize I’m alone. And whose fault is that?

By the same token, maybe I haven’t talked enough. Maybe I spend too much time with my mouth shut. Maybe I haven’t stood up enough for things that are worth our time, worth talking up, worth setting on pedestals.

I tell you, BioShock Infinite will stand the test of time. It’s too good for this. It’s too good for you, warts and all. Some of you will grow to understand that; some of you won’t; many of you will shrug and go on with your lives (and this is fine; it is only a video game). But I’ve truly not seen anything like it. I can’t believe a mainstream video game was allowed to be so fucking brutal about the American juggernaut, and what’s more, that it sold like hotcakes. Plus, I can’t think of any works in recent memory that have struck me so close to my own heart. No creative work has made me start beating a monster’s face into a washbasin for ten hours only to lift her by the scalp and see my own eyes looking back.

Look into those eyes. See your own stupid impulses pouring out. Your own stupid excuses, your violences, your sins—your claws, your teeth, your costumes, your hilarious attempts at interpretive dance. The beast doth protest too much.

O, monster—behold thyself—and tremble.

#bioshock #bioshock 2 #bioshock infinite #bioshock infinite burial at sea #booker dewitt #subject delta #jack wynand #augustus sinclair #essays #video games #spoilers #vvatchword #vvbsreceipts

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dapper-lil-arts · 7 months ago

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So uh. My freelance work here is kind of dying.

I thought i'd keep my long-term followers on the know-how, so i might as well write about my current circumstances here, give y'all an update, so to speak.

So, for several reasons, most of them not even my fault, i've been getting less and less commissions, almost none, actually, and the ones i get are usualy on the cheaper side, which is bad concidering that this is my livelihood, commission money pays my bills, my groceries, and my taxes, and now i sure as hell am strugling to imagine this will sustain me for long. Twitter is a sinking ship ever since elon went over, Specificaly for people like me. I had just broken into 12k followers there, a huge milestone for me, and then i got shadowbanned, and for the last few months i've gotten *nothing*. It's completely dead, i'm stagnated there, all my arts are censored, and there's no way for me to undo it or fix it, and so i've gotten less and less comms out there, which sucks because its the only reason i was even on that stupid site. Here on tumblr, meanwhile, the CEO went on a massive transphobic streak, and a lot of lgbt folk (which composed a lot of my following,) decided to jump ship, and i sure as hell dont blame them, but sadly that's more potential costumers that bailed, and there's no proper website to go to. Anywhere i'd go, i'd be starting from scratch again, which would be utterly disheartening and frustrating, and there no website that is kind to artists, with no algorythim, that also have a messaging system (the latter being ESSENTIAL to the way i do comms) So i'm kind of stuck. I just. have nowhere to go, and nothing to do. And last but not least, my own fault, I've just been drawing and creating what *I* specificaly want, on an hedonistic streak this year. That's why theres so much pony bs on this blog now, and why i was straight up posting poetry a while back, and have written hundreds upon hundreds of fanfiction pages in the last few months; Which, unfortunately, is a terrible business decision if your intent is making money. Which I surely should have prioritized, but in the end, its not up to me, its up to the costumers... So now i'm a bit stuck. I've enjoyed the things ive drawn and written more than anything i've ever done, and yet, i've never been less successful on the actual business side. I'm still considering my venues, my possibilities, but there's not many. Trying to get a job would certainly pull me away from creation, and i'd hate it regardless of what it was, and on another venue, theres no guarantee that going back to furry titties would bring me money.

and that's whats heartbreaking about it too. no matter how much effort i put on my work, theres no guarantee of sucess, so why even spend time trying to craft a masterpiece? why not just follow trends and make a tiktok account or whatever the fuck makes money these days. I'd rather not, frankly. And i wont. Well, that's about it. Thanks for reading this update, that's how my life is goin atm. i'm going to continue doing as i am right now, but yknow... I'm not sure what i should do, if you want to give me suggestions, feel free.

#Also sorry for not streaming lately #my throats like. DESTROYED with a small cold #I sound like a chain smoker atm #Also this poll will not affect my decisions in the slightest #i just thought it was funny

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sprachgefuehle · 5 months ago

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So recently tumblr has been telling me that this blog is now 6 years old and that's a good moment to say that I really don't what to do with it.

When I made it back in 2018, I was studying several languages at university and tumblr had a vibrant linguistics community that I wanted to join. Lingblr is now technically dead and I haven't really studied languages in years. My academic focus has shifted significantly and my target languages have become languages that I use in my day to day life.

To be honest, I haven't even thought of myself as a student in quite some time now either. This time of my life is over and I only feel resentment and anger towards this capitalist meat grinder called academia that I used to love so much. Not because I didn't succeed in it but because I saw this institution eat up people I love and I don't wanna go down the same path.

I was ok just reblogging stuff here based on vibes though, because I care about this blog. Not because of any follower count or whatever but because of the people I met. Some are now some very, very dear friends but I also had countless other small interactions that I loved. Even if we never really talked, some people here have been following me for years and it would be weird not to see their urls anymore on the regular. Some people even told me that this blog was important to them when they were learning german and that honestly still feels crazy to me in a good way.

But this is also exactly the reason why I am making this post now. I never intended to be a "german" blog but somehow ended up in this role. And that was okay for me. But the election results for the eu parliament is just the final nail in the coffin. NSU, Hanau, Halle, police violence organised in far right networks, "remigration" plans, refugees who are dying at european borders... It's too much. I don't want to be thought of as "the German blog" anymore. I don't want to feel like I promote "germaness", even if it is not an outright right wing nationalist variant but the cutesy upper middle class erasmus cultural exchange one. And I don't care about that anymore either. I haven't for some time, to be honest.

Because Western society is still deeply racist, imperialist and colonial to its core and it's getting to my bones. Because nationalism is killing people, people like my friends. Because nationalism is putting them in danger, is putting me in danger. Not only because of who I am but because of my work as well which puts a target on my back for helping vulnerable people.

I don't know. This is me rambling. I am just just tired and angry and hurt from the daily reality. I am not deleting this blog though. To be honest, I don't know what to do actually. I am just very, very tired and needed to write down my thoughts.

#I feel like shit since sunday #but those are also thoughts that have been brewing for some time now

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isdalinarhot · 3 months ago

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on the state of kholin haterism on tumblr

this is gonna be a long one, so bear with me.

one thing i think that has changed in the tumblr fandom in the three years that ive been in it is that the culture in 2021 was ALSO at a largely anti-Kholin sentiment, but there were two key differences.

the first is that most people making critiques of such characters would use the tag #kholin critical, which was useful either if you were sensitive to criticism of one of the kholins for whatever reason AND if you wanted to read analysis of some of their faults by many different users under one tag.

the second is that said kholin critical criticisms were... less stupid? like a lot of it was talking about reddit fandom hypocrisy where dalinar was held up as righteous and badass and could do no wrong even though he had tons of personal and political faults that other characters (largely people who WERENT extremely powerful nobles) were demonized for. also a lot of stuff like "adolin is kaladins friend now but i dont think just categorizing it as simple enemies to besties is fair because adolin WAS being overtly racist to kaladin at the beginning there". a lot of discussion about how the Kholins treat darkeyes and characters of lower dahns where the bigotry there was being downplayed by fans in favor of the characters being painted both by fandom and in the universe of the books as Always Right All The Time. stuff like that.

that's not to say the whole kholin crit tag was all, like, stuff that isnt bullshit. people have been dunking on elhokar for being a whiny failking since the beginning of time. but the vibes were a lot different.

kholin critical kind of fell out of favor as a hashtag because most of us realized hey on a doylist level either the things we're criticizing the kholins for are purposeful character flaws that make for richer, more realistic, more engaging characters; or they're oversights from the moderate liberal Sanderson, in which case, why are we complaining about Dalinar doing this, when we should be complaining about Sanderson doing this. so this whole thing is stupid. and also by then the atmosphere on tumblr was way different, this was by and large the Moash Website and while people were haters about characters they did not put the hate in character tags so people largely avoided each others haterism. and there was peace for like a year and a half, i guess.

things are way different now. for context. i track the #dalinar kholin tag. so whenever my dash is dead im checking my tracked tags, and thus i see every original post about dalinar that someone decided to tag #dalinar kholin. and boy howdy, things have devolved. this used to be a chill experience for me, i'd see first time readers go OH MY GOD HE DID WHAT?????? during oathbringer and "[some philosophical shit dalinar said]" -brandon sanderson. follow for more inspiring book quotes" about three times a day, fanart once every couple weeks or so, stuff like that. but now a solid 75% of the posts in dalinars tag are like. hate. not literary criticism, but hate. sometimes about justified things, sometimes about unjustified things, but still, extremely negative.

in a bubble, that's fine. god knows ive been a hater on my blog before and ill be a hater on my blog again. and its not even like im opposed to reading well thought out criticism of my faves on any level because, like, dalinar is kind of a rat bastard! but like. listen. you don't put character hate in that character's tag. you don't do that. the people who are checking a character's tag are fans of that character and fandom is for fun. being a hater directly reaching out to the lovers for comment is rude as hell.

also a lot of the things people dislike about dalinar tie back to his neglectful fatherhood and his alcoholism which is, like, a thing i understand people would have strong negative feelings towards him for having because Neglectful Alcoholic Dad is like one of the top 10 kinds of abusive dads out there so lots of people have very visceral very personal experiences related to that. but when posting about this in any form whatsoever it feels like im having to go back to Treating Addicts Like Human Beings 101. like i feel like ive made a billion posts to the tune of "okay kids, you can do bad things while drunk and you are still responsible and you can also get drunk at inopportune times and you are still responsible, but the act of being addicted to alcohol does not make a character ontologically evil". and like thats. um. a personal thing but also oh my goodness.

i dont really have a conclusion to this. im just thinking goddamn its bleak out here right now.

#luke.txt #the stormlight archive #cosmere #dalinar kholin #just thinking #long post

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shirekai · 28 days ago

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Fan art GI x PJ Part 1

Since I have free time, a love for Percy Jackson, a nascent obsession with Genshin Impact (to the point that I spoiled the entire story and I'm barely in Liyue, finishing Act I, so I'm sorry if it's inaccurate with canon) and a very crazy head that won't leave me alone until I get this out of my head, here is my fanart combining GI x PJ.

Starting to present the characters and the lore that I invented, there is Dionysus, who would be Venti with some changes. Before Dionysus, there was Hermes as the first anemo archon (I couldn't leave out my middle child) Dionysus got the position just a few years after Hermes, who died in the war against Khaenri'ah by orders of Celestia (which here would be Kronos), Dionysus never got to meet Hermes, but he did learn his stories from the winds as soon as he became archon Also Dionysus being the god of madness, I definitely see him as someone who would encourage Monstadt to live as freely and happily as possible, and he is also the reason why Monstadt's parties and festivals are so legendary throughout Teyvat.

On the other hand, the next archon is Apollo, geo archon for several, several reasons... (I blame every post on ao3 and Tumblr by @apollosgiftofprophecy and @tsarinatorment, they put a love for Apollo and mythology in me that I appreciate, except here because I thought more about Apollo than mythology half of the characters XD)

First Apollo has some control with Zeus regarding law and order, god of civilization, and is in some way seen as the protector of tombs and cemeteries, it is wonderful that Zhongli (archon Geo in Genshin Impact) works in a funeral home, is related to the law as the god of contracts and has watched over Liyue and its inhabitants, having great influence on its people and how it grew as a civilization In addition to that he also has some influence on sailors and ships, as the patron of sailors, so Liyue being a port city, well discarded and taken Apollo was Zhongli's turn As also the god of knowledge.

I love being a rat so he is the only living archon in this UA who went through the war of the archons, Khaenri'ah and until today, who would take the role of Guizhong would be Jacinto naturally (dead, shipped with Zhongli / Apollo) and who would take the role of Xiao would be Nico di Angelo (dwarf, traumatized... is perfect) plus I can keep the dynamic of Dionysus as Nico's therapist (something that is a little different from canon, Xiao does not receive therapy from Venti, but rather he purifies him) but that would remain as a separate thing from their relationship Also, as an extra Zhongli reviews the future of Liyue to bring a guide on how to prosper (Apollo and his mastery of prophecy), for certain reasons (Artemis) is that he would decide to retire as archon and continue working at the funeral home discreetly with Nico, occasionally hanging out at the orphanage with the children.

Respect to Artemis I will talk about her in her fanart, and her relationship with Apollo along with what happened here

Nico on his side has been with Apollo since the war of the archons, as his right hand (previously he had other companions, similar to the adeptus who serve Rex Lápiz) the most notable is Commodus, who went crazy killing corrupt gods, beings of the abyss and the cherry on top was Apollo's rejection for his feelings, still hurt by the death of Hyacinth (with whom unlike Guizhong, he would be god of flowers) but they would have spent almost as much time as Zhongli and Guizhong together (close to 1000 years if I'm not mistaken, I appreciate the corrections) so he would continue fighting with a broken heart.

(PS: I also thought of Branchus as Guizhong but, Guizhong fell in the war, Hyacinth did not die a peaceful death then... well, tragedy with tragedy).

Continuing with Nico, he would be mourning for his companions but with Apollo they decided to take it easy, and he was in Apollo's retirement plan (who says that with stone and an archon's influence you can't make a fake corpse?) and he has been improving with the mourning and trauma of the war with the help of Dionysus and the passage of time.

Lastly Meg, because she is the strongest daughter of Demeter she couldn't just be left as an extra, no, no, no.

I understand than Neuvillette is the hydro dragon reborn as her own offspring, here Meg would be the remains of the essence of Demeter, discovered by Artemis who thought she was a child of an endangered species and raised her, when what happened with Artemis happened (the same as with Rukkhadevata, but whoever reads this and is part of the PJO fandom will not know) Apollo took her under his custody with Nico and now she works with them, apart from living with them, in the funeral home .

Speaking of the designs, I tried to make the clothes as faithful as I could, Apollo with Liyue clothes, some Greek and Sumeru for his sister (the moon earring that he has is Artemis's), with white eye shadow (also for his sister that I designed with white locks), a book, a random kid from the orphanage with long hair in a braid (courtesy of Meg who wanted to practice and Nico doesn't let him).

Nico with long hair (because he lived with Apollo for so long he started to like to wear his hair a bit long, also in reference to ancient China and the custom of not cutting his hair), his usual dark circles and his hidden vision on his back.

Meg with a Sumeru bird (coincidentally called Peaches) somewhat more Sumerian clothes and a spear, she is trying to learn to fight with other weapons apart from her classic twin swords.

And Dionysus with a good bottle of Dandelion Wine, classic from Monstadt, and more Monstadt clothes too.

#fanart #pencildraw #Genshin Impact #Nico di Angelo #Nico di Angelo fanart #Percy Jackson #Percy Jackson fanart #Meg #Meg McCaffrey #Meg McCaffrey fanart #ToA #Dionysus #Apollo #Apollo fanart #Venti #Zhongli #Xiao #Pencil

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beautifulpersonpeach · 11 months ago

Note

I’ve been reading your blog for the better part of the year and it’s helped me rethink many things. This year was weird for me and I’ve been reflecting, I finally got courage to write this confession and I only feel comfortable sending it here. It’s okay if you post it. I think there are other people like me.

My Confession:

I’m an Orbit-Blink shooter who used to fight with an Army shooter daily until she died during the earthquakes in Turkey this year. I didn’t realize how much of my life and fan experience was tied to her until she died BPP. The way I got into shooting was through my Blink friend who introduced me to Loona when they debuted. At first I thought I was defending Loona and then defending Blackpink, but at some point shooting on its own for any reason became addicting. I would jump in on a ratio, throw insults and post gore and graphic images to people’s DMs for any small reason.

There was one Army shooter I hated because she was always there with screenshots or videos to drag Blackpink. Whenever there was a fanwar I knew I would see her there. And times when she wasn’t in the fight, I would use another account pretending to be an Army to tell her what was happening so I could rile her up to join the fight. I didn’t know it at the time but I loved fighting with her. She made me feel alive. The way she was passionate about BTS made me want to get some of that passion directed at me in any form.

Now, after months of reflecting, that’s what I realized. Because when the earthquake happened, I didn’t know she was dead. I kept checking her account for days, sending DMs from my fake Army profile, wondering why she was not replying. I even created a new scandal for Taehyung in our shooter group but she didn’t tweet. Then 2 weeks later her cousin tweeted from her account to say she died in the earthquake. BPP, it was like my whole life stopped. I became extremely depressed and dealt with extreme self loathing. I couldn’t look at any fandom fight without thinking about all the things I did to her. I hated myself and wanted to die. I went through that Armys profile and saw how her love for BTS was genuine. After months of therapy now I understand more why I acted like that, but it’s something I’ll forever be ashamed about.

In the depths of my depression I deleted Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. After some weeks of missing what’s happening, I got Tumblr and found your blog talking about fandom behavior. In so many ways you’ve saved my life BPP. The way I was shooting was more for other shooters than Loona or Blackpink or even myself. I realize now there’s a whole subculture of kpop shooters and I think what they have is an addiction. I notice the same things with how solo stans behave. They think they’re doing it for the idols but it’s for them and other stans they’re fighting. It creates destruction. Life is short. Why spend it on something destructive?

I’ve changed everything about how I behave online. Through therapy and reading your blog, I realize people use fandom to express themselves, and if that expression is mostly negative, there’s deeper problems with that person that needs solving. Now I curate my space and avoid shooters and fanwars completely. I now focus on what I enjoy which is good lore and good music (I still enjoy a good fight but I now satisfy this need by getting engaged in Munk Debates in my city). Loona’s lore was the reason I was interested in them, so after weeks of stalking that dead Army’s profile, I learned that BTS has lore too. I fell down the BTS rabbit hole and officially became an Army on Jimin’s birthday (after reading your blog I’m now Yoonminkook biased hehe)

I’m a very new Army but an ‘old’ kpop fan and reformed shooter. I’ve committed to live a life that’s critical and compassionate. Because of how I’ve become Army, some things I’m seeing in how fans of diff fandoms act has a different meaning to me. I still struggle with shame and sometimes when I see fanwars or see solos trending hashtags and things, I remember me from what feels like long ago. I remember that Army shooter who feels like someone I owe my life to. I remember how so much is going on in the world and we could do with more kindness but people use fandom to be awful assholes. I was one such person, attimes I still have to bite my tongue. But what I do now is log off, go do something physical and positive that makes me tired, or scroll through your blog archives.

There might be people like me trying to get away from the shooter mindset and struggling because it’s hard. It’s like an addiction. I want those people to know it’s doable. Recognizing the problem is the hardest part for real so if they are at that point, it gets easier from there.

Thank you for having this blog BPP. I hope you stay here in 2024 as well.

***

Happy to hear you’re in a better head space than earlier this year.

Take care of yourself. Really.

#bts #kpop #kpop fandom #fandom behaviour #BTS army #BTS fandom #bts solo stans #fandom shooters

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thasorns-moved · 4 months ago

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tag game ✨

I got tagged a long time ago by a mutual who went private... it's friday night and look at that I HAVE some time to do it :)

1. why did you choose your url?

just look at Emi and then we can talk again. Have you seen her? <3

2. any sideblogs? if you have them name them and why you have them.

juhotonin - is a kpop blog (even though I neglected it a bit)

alexreggies - yes, sometimes I reblog different things on this (thasorns) blog but this one is specifically for western things

kaiosmichiru - anime

I have another one where I only post gifs but never told anyone about it

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

probably since 2009. I used to have another blog but moved to my current one in 2012

4. do you have a queue tag?

used to have # queue to my life, # queueing things bc its quarantine things but now I'm just using q. bc I’ve become lazy

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

before this blog I was a dedicated fanblog about marko marin and sideblog was very multifandom and then I moved and stayed multifandom

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?

buttercup is THE mvp

7. why did you choose your header?

a tale of thousand stars do I need to say more (if you didn't watched it, THEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE)

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

this, mind that I was a beginner in gif making and you can see that in this

9. how many mutuals do you have?

maybe I forgot one or two but the last count was 79 love you all 💕

10. how many followers do you have?

more than i would expect and deserve but I appreciate every each one of you 🥰

11. how many people do you follow?

I'm surprised that after 12 years I don't follow more but I also go on a unfollow spree sometime anyway it's 372 people

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

no. don't think so. I used to say a lot about shows I watch. does this count as a shitpost? Idk

13. how often do you use tumblr each day?

is that really a question? like? every day

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once?

no i'm staying in my bubble and be happy

15. how do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this’ posts

i dont do it to be oppositional

16. do you like tag games?

even though I try to participate as much as I can and not forgot about it I'll do it because they're fun and it's nice to see other perspectives or opinions on things

17. do you like ask games?

I rarely do it because I think no one would send me asks

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

the first which comes to mind is sabrina @moonkhao

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

what does crush even mean?

claire @clairedaring @poomphuripan is such a cutie. The way she does so much for the msi community but at the same time highlights other lakorns and find the strength and time to gif it, so other ppl on here could watch it. always so nice and patient ❤️

an honorable mention: cata @kittychicha because I would've never thought that we would become friends and talk on a regular basis about everything and it is fun and lovely to talk with you and get to know you 🧡

Another honorable mention would be vish @morkofday because have you met her? Her mind is already enough. The way she thinks and sees things in perspectives - a reason to fall in love. Not even joking. Our dead friend forever days were precious for me 💕

20. tags?

@morkofday @itsallaboutbl @clairedaring @pondsphuwin @patchanons @milkpansa @kittychicha @jimmysea @loveisactivated

#tag game #I’m even surprised that I could find the time to do it #I had the need to add vish to the crush mutual because it made me think back to our dff days #mind you it says in the last one mutual and not mutuals yet here I am

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felixlovesprinces · 3 months ago

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Refuge [Daryl Dixon & gn!reader] [platonic]

This fic was requested by anon! My requests are still open. Summary: (gender neutral!)reader has told themselves they wouldn't get attached to people again after they've lost their loved ones so often. But they couldn't stop other people from getting attached to them.... Or: Daryl gets worried when reader gets shot. Word count: ~1.5K Side note: still getting used to Tumblr formatting! Help is appreciated! This was also posted on my AO3, under the same username

If there’s one thing that y/n had gotten used to ever since everything went to shit, it’s that the only person they could count on were they themselves. Groups of fellow survivors did come and go, periodically. The ones that y/n could tolerate, they would travel with. Some accompanied them longer than others, but in the end they all wound up the same; dead.

When y/n came across these folks, there was no reason to suspect that this would end up any different.

It’s difficult to tell exactly how long ago it was when they first stumbled across this group, but judging by the change of the seasons it must have been half a year. It all happened in a blur when y/n first moved into Alexandria.

In a matter of days, they went from being a dirt-covered survivor, biting and clawing their way through every single day, to being a citizen. A citizen with a fresh haircut, their own shower and the ability to let their guard down – which they rarely did.

The people of Alexandria were trying very hard to fit y/n into their community. Y/n tried very hard to be appreciative, but after so many years out there, alone, it’s hard to believe that anything might be permanent again. Just because this safe haven exists today, does not mean that it will exist tomorrow.

It’s better to be a loner, better to not get too attached. You can’t lose friends that you don’t make to begin with, after all.

Of course, there’s the occasional missions. Mostly patrols. Whenever those come to pass, there’s a bit of obligatory chatting. Y/n does more listening than talking and only shares anecdotes from their past if it’s strictly necessary.

When today, for the first time, they were assigned to go hunting, y/n was extremely pleased, because of whom they got to go hunting with.

One of the men at Alexandria responsible for making sure there’d be game to eat is a fellow outsider; Daryl Dixon. He’s been with the people who run Alexandria since the start of everything, but for most other Alexandrians he does not have a lot of patience.

Perhaps that’s why the two of them got along so well. Not because there’s much conversation to be had, but because there wasn’t any need for conversation in the first place. Going hunting with him was relaxing because of that.

It’s a cast over sort of day. Rain clouds loom overhead, promising nasty weather in an hour or two. Daryl walks ahead as he always does, analyzing the ground and the low-growing plants. It all just looks like dirt and leaves to y/n, but Daryl clearly sees more than that, and thanks to that they’ve been able to track a deer for the better part of an hour and are starting to close in on it.

Y/n, completely lost in thought, startles when Daryl holds his hand up and abruptly stops walking. Y/n stops as well, barely able to stop themselves from bumping into the other. They know better than to speak, so they just give Daryl a questioning look.

He points his middle and index finger at his eyes, then at an opening ahead of them. Following where he points, y/n spots the deer. It lays limply on the ground in a pool of its own blood. Once majestic antlers are half stuck in the ground, and make its head lay at an odd, unnatural angle.

A man with a rifle stands beside it with a cigarette between his lips. He’s just standing there, idly, perhaps waiting for someone to help him transport it. Y/n doesn’t recognize him at all, and judging by the fact that Daryl doesn’t either, y/n assumes it must be someone from the rivalling survivor group who have been up Alexandria’s ass for the past couple of months.

It infuriated y/n. “That should have been ours,” they whisper, barely audible. “We can threaten him and take off with it.”

Daryl half considers it, then shakes his head. “Nah.”

As much as y/n appreciates Daryl’s company, the man’s stubbornness could seriously test their patience. If he doesn’t want to go after this deer, that’s fine. But y/n is getting their hands on it one way or another. It’s two against one, after all.

Daryl picks up on what they’re about to do and blocks their path towards the deer. “It’s not worth it,” He grumbles. “Don’t bother.”

Right when y/n opens their mouth to protest, they hear the familiar click of a rifle reloading.

They have been spotted.

Y/n drops down to hide behind a shrub and grabs their pistol right as Daryl reaches for the crossbow on his back. He signals for y/n to stay put and adjusts his position to get a clear shot.

However, y/n already has a clear shot. Right through the shrubs there’s a tiny opening allowing them to aim right at the man’s left bicep. They take it.

From one moment to the next, the man drops both his rifle and his cigarette and curses loudly, reaching for the place where he had been shot.

“Nice aim,” mutters Daryl with an earnest that y/n doesn’t hear very often.

Together they get out of their hiding spot and approach the stranger who quickly picks up his weapon which then dangles from the hand attached to his good arm, essentially useless. He spits at the ground in front of them. “Negan will hear about this.”

“Don’t doubt it.” Daryl approaches the dead deer while y/n holds their revolver still aimed at the stranger. “What’re you waiting for? Piss on off.”

The stranger grins, and at the very same time a truck approaches them. All of a sudden, the minor scuffle turns into a full-blown conflict. Two more Saviors arrive on the scene. Shots are being fired. It’s kill or be killed, and y/n refuses to end up the same way all of their friends have.

Y/n gets one of them, Daryl the other two. Still, in the kerfuffle, one of the bullets hit the right side of y/n abdomen and they sink to the ground, panting.

Daryl is thoroughly pissed. He yanks the arrows from the heads of his victims, muttering something to himself about Saviors and trouble. Not until all his arrows are back in their quiver does he circle back to y/n.

“Get up,” he snaps, punctuating the sentence by firmly grabbing the collar of y/n’s shirt and yanking them off the ground.

Stabbing pain once again flares up in y/n’s abdomen, an involuntary yelp escapes them and their legs give out beneath them at once. In a flash, Daryl puts his hands on y/n’s upper arms to hold them upright and then gingerly helps them onto the ground. His expression is infinitely softer as he looks them up and down. He curses under his breath and positions himself in a way that allows y/n to lean against him. “You should’ve listened to me,” he mutters. “Told you that the deer wasn’t worth it.”

Y/n winces and slightly adjusts their position so they could sit without the pain becoming overwhelming. “I see that now,” they hiss. How could they have been so stupid? For a moment, they remove their hand from their wound, only for it to come back a deep, scarlet red. Their stomach sinks. This is it, isn’t it?

“Hey.” Daryl pushes y/n’s hand back onto their wound, pressing hard. “You’ll bleed out if you don’t keep that there.”

Most infuriatingly of all; even if they live, there’s no way they can get the deer back to Alexandria like this. Going back later is no use either, as walkers are likely to come across the carcass before they have the chance to take it with them. All of this for nothing, then. Y/n forces themselves to stand up, clutching at their wound. At the very least, they’d get themselves home.

Daryl, without a word, slings y/n’s arm over his shoulders so he can properly hold them up. Both of them are well aware that there’s no use doing anything else. Y/n needs medical care as soon as possible. “This ok?” Asks Daryl.

Y/n nods vaguely in reply. Their abdomen is on fire, and every step makes it flare up more, but there’s nothing to do but bear it.

“I could carry you,” he says, half-joking.

This makes them laugh a little. “Don’t you dare, Dixon, I can handle this.”

“If you say so.”

Y/n winces once more, setting their mind on just putting one foot in front of the other. All the while they grapple with the realization that, despite their best efforts, they’ve ended up having someone care for them again.

#twd x reader #twd x you #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon x you #gender neutral reader #non binary reader #fic request

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vodkassassin · 6 months ago

Note

I feel that I should clarify, that when I said I'd hunt them for sport, I meant that in a derogatory way because you don't deserve to be treated that way.

Is this regarding the “stop commenting like you assume the author is dead” post? I’m not seeing your addition for some reason (then again, it’s tumblr, so maybe I’ll see it in five years lol).

Your thoughts are appreciated, but tbh all I really want is for people to stop feeling so entitled to authors’ works. I feel like there’s been an uptick on young people coming into the fandom scene and not really understanding that they can’t treat fanfic authors the same way they treat content creators who make income off the content they make — because the fact is that fanfic authors don’t make money, they legally can’t make money, off their work.

In my assumptions, the majority of the people who comment “update now please :)” grew up in the era of content creators, and they therefor have a certain mindset on how these things work, and they don’t understand that it actually doesn’t work that way — not for fanfic authors, and uh, not in real life with real people too (but that’s another issue altogether that deserves its own separate post).

Then again, that’s a generalization and those are in and of themselves unfair. Im sure that there’s plenty of people of the older brackets too who know full well what they’re doing when they word their comments to instigate pressure on the author, and they don’t care. I want people like that to just stop commenting entirely.

I almost quit writing once because of comments like these so even though I’ve by now learned to ignore them, I guess I just feel incredibly protective of all other authors who might get these comments. The creative act of writing for oneself is an enjoyable hobby and they are kind enough to share the results of that hobby for free for anyone to read. It just upsets me that people think they can treat us that way. It’s disheartening.

Anyway, while I don’t condone the violence, that original post I made was a hope that it could reach those people who make comments like that and educate them on why it’s actually NOT flattering or a desirable comment, and hopefully encourage them to stop.

I just hate the thought of an author seeing those comments and thinking of quitting like I once did, or worse: actually quitting and guillotining all the potential wonderful stories that live inside their beautiful, brilliant minds.

#ao3 etiquette #ao3 authors #reader engagement #the rules of engagement

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cleolinda · 2 years ago

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Varney the Vampire: Chapter 7

Chapter 6: Cousins.

Chapter 7: Originally posted on Livejournal on December 14, 2010, in the same entry as chapter 6. Revised and expanded for clarity. Also, I removed a couple of old links to TV Tropes because what the fuck, y'all.

Previously on: A back story sidebar. The Bannerworth family is in genteel decline; houseguest Mr. Marchdale is financially independent and ambiguously related. We can never, ever move because a guy rescued Flora once. Back in the day, Henry's father Marmaduke Bannerworth II died suspiciously right after not saying where the treasure is buried. We might or might not ever hear about this again. However, it's perhaps notable that Someone wants to buy the house, presumably with that hidden money, out from under the Bannerworths.

CHAPTER VII.

THE VISIT TO THE VAULT OF THE BANNERWORTHS, AND ITS UNPLEASANT RESULT. -- THE MYSTERY.

Hey babe, how's it going? Flora has had a long delicious sleep with nary a vampyre upon it and is doing much better now. We're not going to hear about that, of course, because we could be following her brothers around while they drop paid-by-the-lines pearls of wisdom, such as:

"A visit? Where?"

"I much regret it."

"I comprehend you, Henry."

"True, most true."

"Do so."

"It has."

"Indeed."

"Yes."

If only this worked for term papers.

Wanting to keep Tumblr up to date with his adventures, Henry recaps to George,

"You know that at present we are not only led to believe, almost irresistibly, that we have been visited by a vampyre, but that that vampyre is our ancestor, whose portrait is on the panel of the wall of the chamber into which he contrived to make his way."

"Contrived" being the operative word here. Henry, despite his perpetual distress, has decided that they need to check the family burial vault for Sir Ancestor von Spookyportrait: fair, valid, reasonable. It has only taken the Brothers Bannerworth fifty-four pages from Flora getting bitten to arrive at this. I don't mean arrive at the vault, I mean arrive at the idea.

"Then let us go," said George, "by all means." "It is so decided then," said Henry. "Let it be done with caution," replied Mr. Marchdale. "If any one can manage it, of course we can."

Christ almighty. Someone, I genuinely cannot determine who, suggests, "Why should it not be done secretly and at night? Of course we lose nothing by making a night visit to a vault into which daylight, I presume, cannot penetrate." The problem is that they're working off the Norwegian page in the vampyre atlas, and they haven't heard that a vampyre is not going to be in its coffin at night. If Sir Runnagate (ca. 1700s) is really dead, sure, you'll find his moldering skeleton, everyone goes home, and... well, actually, that's worse, because then you won't have the first clue in hell what's going on. But if there's nothing in the coffin... all you've proven is that there's nothing in the coffin. Anything could have happened to the vault/remains in the course of a hundred years. Robbed, vandalized, disintegrated, you don't know. You're supposed to go during the day so that if the ancestor isn't dead, he's at least asleep and there and you stake him, I thought you people had read about vampires.

Of course, God forbid I was one of these characters, because a dissenting viewpoint would make this discussion go on three times as long. OH, THE THRILL OF LOGISTICS. Let's go! By all means! With caution! Of course! Let's go at night! But won't we have to ask the church if we can open the vault? No, it's your vault, you can do what you want! But certainly we will be seen! But that's why we're going at night! But what if we get caught? LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOO

All this being arranged, Henry proceeded to Flora, and told her that he and George, and Mr. Marchdale wished to go out for about a couple of hours in the evening after dark, if she felt sufficiently well to feel a sense of security without them. Flora changed colour, and slightly trembled, and then, as if ashamed of her fears, she said, -- "Go, go; I will not detain you. Surely no harm can come to me in presence of my mother."

I found this interesting if only because it reminded me of Mrs. Westenra staying up with Lucy in Dracula. And that… that did not end so well.

"And Flora does not seem much alarmed," said Marchdale, "at being left alone?" "No," replied Henry, "she has made up her mind with a strong natural courage which [no. too many words]." "It would have driven some really mad."

Says Marchdale, I presume while looking directly at Henry.

"And I fervently hope that, through her life," added Marchdale, "she may never have such another trial." "We will not for a moment believe that such a thing can occur twice."

Okay, it's a vampire, not lightning. And let's not even get into the logical point that a vampire is more likely to return to a previous victim—well, actually, let's. Our vampyre knows that Flora is as tasty as the spring, he knows how to unlatch her window, he knows which walls are good for jumping and falling his ass over, he knows where the best patches of moonlight for when he gets his dumb ass shot are—why the hell would he go somewhere else and start all over again? Do you have any idea how long it takes to case an ancestral gothic joint like this? So yeah. You leave that gun with Flora. "Not believe that such a thing can occur twice" my ass.

Then we get two hundred words about arming Flora against the thing that they do not believe can occur twice. I want you to understand that when I say there are so-and-so many hundred words of something, I am not exaggerating. I have Varney the Vampire in a Word document; I can highlight a passage and Word will tell me how long it is. When I say "two hundred words about arming Flora," I mean it. You've heard of a drabble—a short fanfic that was originally meant to be exactly one hundred words? This is Tumblr, of course you have. There are people who have actually written complete stories in half the amount of space it takes the Henry to get Flora a gun (but not from his bedroom, because that's where you keep swords and crowbars).

Out in the heathy moon-clouded landscape en route to the family vault, we run into Chillingworth ("Hilloa!" he cries, because Rymer found a way to lengthen hello, somehow) in the middle of THREE HUNDRED WORDS ABOUT FORGETTING THE MATCHES. "I forgot the matches!" "But you said you'd bring the matches!" "How could I have forgotten the matches!" "I despair at not having matches!" "Oh, but I have matches!" "So do I!" "I say! The matches I forgot were by far inferior!" "Indeed! I made these matches myself!" No, he did, with a li'l asbestos bottle and everything:

"Make yourselves easy on that score," said Mr. Chillingworth. "I am never without some chemical matches of my own manufacture, so that as you have the candles, that can be no bar to our going on at once."

If I had been writing this, I would have then had someone cry out, "But I forgot the candles!"

[The church] was an ancient building of the early English style of architecture, or rather Norman, with one of those antique, square, short towers, built of flint stones firmly embedded in cement, which, from time, had acquired almost the consistency of stone itself. There were numerous arched windows, partaking something of the more florid gothic style, although scarcely ornamental enough to be called such. The edifice stood in the centre of a grave-yard, which extended over a space of about half an acre, and altogether it was one of the prettiest and most rural old churches within many miles of the spot. [Words.] In Kent, to the present day, are some fine specimens of the old Roman style of church building; and, although they are as rapidly pulled down as the abuse of modern architects, and the cupidity of speculators, and the vanity of clergymen can possibly encourage, in order to erect flimsy, Italianised structures in their stead, yet sufficient of them remain dotted over England to interest the traveller.

The traveler. To interest the traveler. The traveler. WHAT ABOUT THE FUCKING VAMPIRE GODDAMN.

(He generally prefers Gothic architecture, the Fucking Vampire Goddamn does.)

"And now, the question is, how are we to get in?" said Mr. Chillingworth, as he paused, and glanced up at the ancient building. "The doors," said George

I just want to pretend for a moment that this sentence ends right there.

"The doors," said George, "would effectually resist us." "How can it be done, then?"

Why, with 235 words of poking out a windowpane!

That accomplished, Marchdale starts to feel a little queasy about Tampering with the Secrets of the Tomb, on principle. Chillingworth is having none of this—although, of course, he refuses to believe in vampires anyway:

"Nay, my dear sir, it is high time that death, which is, then, the inevitable fate of us all, should be regarded with more philosophic eyes than it is. There are no secrets in the tomb but such as may well be endeavoured to be kept secret."

Ah, yes, there are no things that are secret except things that should be secret. The sheer circularity of this statement did me so much psychic damage that I just sort of stared at a houseplant for a moment. Decomposition smells bad, is what Chillingworth is getting at.

"Ah, your profession hardens you to such matters." "And a very good thing that it does, or else, if all men were to look upon a dead body as something almost too dreadful to look upon, and by far too horrible to touch, surgery would lose its value, and crime, in many instances of the most obnoxious character, would go unpunished."

Now that I'm reading this for a second time... this is actually a really, really interesting thing for Chillingworth to say. Just mentally tuck that away for now.

"If we have a light here," said Henry, "we shall run the greatest chance in the world of being seen, for the church has many windows." "Do not have one, then, by any means," said Mr. Chillingworth.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MATCHES?!?!?!

"A match held low down in the pew may enable us to open the vault."

OH THANK GOD WE DID NOT BRING THEM IN VAIN

"Here is one of my chemical matches," said Mr. Chillingworth, as he suddenly irradiated the pew with a clear and beautiful flame, that lasted about a minute.

I'm not familiar with church vaults, but apparently there is room to have a trap door to a whole-ass crypt in front of the family pew. Maybe the idea is that the Bannerworths are the feudal landowner family of old, it's "their" church, and the pew is at the front, with plenty of room below for one (1) family's ancestral dead? I'm wading through two hundred entire words about loosening screws right now, I'm not operating at full brain power here.

"Let us descend," said Henry. "There is no further obstacle, my friends. Let us descend." "If any one," remarked George, in a whisper, as they slowly descended the stairs which conducted into the vault -- "if any one had told me that I should be descending into a vault for the purpose of ascertaining if a dead body, which had been nearly a century there, was removed or not, and had become a vampyre, I should have denounced the idea as one of the most absurd that ever entered the brain of a human being."

I'll give you that one, George. The thing you have to remember is that, unless the characters make post-modern references to other horror classics, you have to assume that those characters are unaware of them. In other words, characters in a book don't know they're in a book, and you can't expect them to know—unless they are genre savvy and adapt real quick to the idea that their life feels a lot like fiction right now—what they're supposed to do. They don't know the rules; they don't know there are rules. All we know at this point is that the Bannerworths are vaguely aware, thanks to some travelogue, that vampires come from Norway, or maybe the Levant, and can revive in the moonlight. They don't even think the same things are true about vampires that we do. So I have to stop and remind myself of that now and then.

(Back in the day, I used to refer to this idea as People In Dracula Don't Know They're In Dracula, which apparently picked up some currency as a phrase. I have a legacy!)

"Now for one of your lights, Mr. Chillingworth. You say you have the candle, I think, Marchdale, although you forgot the matches."

We're never going to get over this, are we? Twenty years from now—"Don't ask Marchdale to do it, he forgot THE MATCHES."

Marchdale took from his pocket a parcel which contained several wax candles, and when it was opened, a smaller packet fell to the ground. "Why, these are instantaneous matches," said Mr. Chillingworth, as he lifted the small packet up. "They are; and what a fruitless journey I should have had back to the hall," said Mr. Marchdale, "if you had not been so well provided as you are with the means of getting a light. These matches, which I thought I had not with me, have been, in the hurry of our departure, enclosed, you see, with the candles. Truly, I should have hunted for them at home in vain."

WELL, FUCK A DUCK

HE HAD THE MATCHES THE WHOLE TIME

SOMEONE CALL M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN

That's the end of the chapter. That's the end of the chapter! "Mr. Chillingworth lit the wax candle which was now handed to him by Marchdale, and in another moment the vault from one end of it to the other was quite discernible." WHAT'S DISCERNIBLE IN IT? Well, save up another penny for the dreadful and find out next week, I guess.

(Chapter 8 will go up on Tuesday, April 4.)

#the chapter about the matches #varney the vampire #vampires #people in dracula don't know they're in dracula #vampire studies

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