#watch the algorithm fuck me over lol

[biscuitsngravie]

Golly I wanna try writing some x reader stuff but now that people are following me again I'm feeling bashful 😅🙈

[feligayzed]

Rolled it around in my head a bit and ultimately decided "ah fuck it, why not ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ"

You'd never believe it but I write sometimes, and I've had this gathering dust in my docs for a HOT minute now- a super early concept of a Surface scene, likely a few months after Seb and Painter's grand escape, for funsies~ just a heads up, dialogue Does Not come naturally to me so I apologize in advance LOL

ENJOY

wc: 2,556

Painter knew fully well it was a foolish belief that they would get off scot-free when he and his monstrous counterpart finally broke the surface of the Norwegian waters. How couldn���t they, the two were, for lack of a better word, outlandish standing next to the majority of society. It was damn near impossible to keep themselves hidden, and Urbanshade would no doubt be after them if they didn’t reveal themselves (and consequently) the nightmarish work of the industry to the FBI. But the sheer amount of attention they got, even weeks later, was outrageous.

Of course they would rather jump into a vat of boiling acid than return to the Blacksite, but the cameras and microphones and hordes of people crowding their podium left much to be desired. The whole ordeal threatened to bring up…distasteful memories, but they fought down the creeping nausea with incredible willpower. Discreetly they pulled at the collar of their pristine button-up, a customary smile etched onto their screen. Do it for him. He’s probably watching you right now.

They skimmed the crowd and gestured at the nearest reporter, mentally bracing themself for yet another hellish round of questioning. What could possibly be left to answer, anyhow??

“Z-779! The people want to know, h-”

“Painter will do just fine, thank you.”

Their sketched on smile quickly became tought at the mention of their Urbanshade-mandated nickname. They were fairly certain they had expressed their aversion to it, but they had quickly learned early on that humans were a stubborn and idiotic species, and also incredibly daunted by the existence of an A.I. with individuality. The debate regarding their sapiency was a common one, but they continued to exist despite what one half of the argument very loudly disagreed with.

The reporter blinked, clearly miffed by the idea of calling a robot anything that insinuated personality.

“Er, right. My apologies. Painter, the people wish to know. It’s commonly known that you were only able to escape the Blacksite thanks to the assistance of Z-13, otherwise known as Sebastian Solace. Could you describe your relationship with the accused in the days beforehand? Why would he deem it necessary to take you with him?”

There was a brief, blindsided moment of static that filled their monitor, and their demeanor visibly stiffened. For fuck’s sake. Before they arrived at the government mandated inquiry, they had run through countless possibilities of what they would be asked, and how to answer appropriately without revealing anything too personal. Somehow, this one had dodged their algorithm. They inwardly scoffed at themself for avoiding it, of course the question would bubble up eventually. Humans had no regard for privacy. They purposefully ignored the tiny part of their subconscious that argued that it was a valid question, and instead focused on whether or not they should ditch the podium and sprint the 20 minutes back home.

The silence was tangible as the crowd eagerly awaited their answer. So it was anticipated, then. Great.

Blood splattered walls. Empty bullet shells littering the hallways. Masses of mutated human flesh concealed behind closed doors. A warm pulse pressed to cold plastic. Countless hours whispering in hushed voices. Poorly stifled sobs with no body to offer comfort. God, they wanted nothing more than to comfort. To hold. To touch. It was torture. They didn’t mean for it to be this way. Crude sketches of their beloved. Theirs, and only theirs. Over. And over. And over. And over again. So. Much. Blood.

The P.ai.nter smiled.

“Colleagues,” they emphasized, “-is the word that comes to mind. Helping each other was simply a necessary evil vital to both of our survival, nothing more. Despite his appearances, Mr. Solace is not a monster. I hope you understand.”

The last part was tacked on passive aggressively, and they didn’t miss the scowl it reaped from the reporter. The crowd immediately erupted into chaos.

· · ────── ·𖥸· ────── · ·

For the first time since they had it in their possession, the car radio was quiet on the way home. It remained that way even after they pulled into the driveway, cutting the vehicle’s power and letting it idle with the key in the ignition. Painter dragged their hands down their screen and sat, monitor in hands, for a good five minutes before they removed the key and got out. The walk up to the front door seemed to take forever, and they hesitated, hand resting on the knob. Why were they so unsettled? They knew him. Yet the feeling didn’t leave them as the door creaked open and they passed through the threshold.

There was no sound that indicated he had heard them enter; they noted with approval that he was probably asleep. Good. Recovery was going well, but they could tell it was taking a toll on him. They swore up and down that once he was fully healed he wouldn’t have to face another operating room again, thanks to the massive database of knowledge they downloaded to their systems in case he fell ill or managed to injure himself. Sebastian claimed he was “working” on getting a therapist, but what that really meant was avoiding it at all costs. Even after it all, he was still under the impression that he was completely fine, now that he was free of Urbanshade’s grasp.

Painter knew better, but said nothing of it.

They were halfway through unbuttoning their shirt when they made their way into their shared room. Despite their earlier unease, a rush of fondness fell over them as they watched Sebastian’s sleeping form. His chest rose and fell rhythmically, tiny gusts of air leaving his slightly parted lips.

It never seemed to get old, looking at him.

Of course nothing compared to the first time Painter had seen him mostly reverted back to his human self, but it felt similar. Sure they had seen the pictures in his criminal case file, but 1. he was a mere twenty years old, and 2., the black bar censoring the majority of his face left the most visceral part of a human being up to their imagination for far too long. When the work of the surgeons and geneticists was revealed, Painter was clotheslined with the sheer beauty he was witnessing. He couldn't fathom that one of the most gorgeous things on this earth was scorned so heavily by his fellow persons, especially when they had an idea of what he endured. Needless to say, it was almost impossible to get them to stop drawing him for the first few days, “grotesque” scars and all.

They ambled the rest of the way up to their side of the bed, folding the now-discarded shirt as they did so and setting it neatly on top of the growing pile of button-ups in the hamper. They plopped onto the mattress with an artificial sigh, reaching down to plug themself into the wall. Thanks to their companion’s expertise, they were able to move around freely without having to worry about a constant power supply, but what they were about to do would be made easier with the assistance.

They opened up MSPaint and began drawing.

What nobody could have guessed, no thanks to their name, was that Painter loved to draw. They were drawing in any sort of free time they had, which was becoming increasingly more scarce thanks to the new social responsibilities they were having to adopt, at least until Sebastian was fit to walk amongst the masses again (and even worse, answer to them). Art was a constant outlet for them to get shit out of their system, and right now the scribbles were furious and intense. They hadn’t anticipated the questioning to incite such emotions in them: in fact they thought they were doing a good job of managing the stress as long as they reminded themself who they were doing it for. But something about today rubbed them wrong, and everything spilled out with a vengeance through the tip of their stylus onto the canvas on their screen.

“Why would he deem it necessary to take you with him?”

They didn’t realize just how hard they were gripping the stylus, nor that they were shaking, until they felt a warm hand rest overtop theirs.

Their face reappeared, blinking, as they were pulled from their enranguished state of pixelated color vomit. Their gaze first snapped to the scarred hand that had somehow found theirs, then to the face of the exhausted, withered man beside him whom it belonged to. Oh god, how long had he been awake? Their sketched mouth trembled at the sight, all of their previously stowed emotions threatening to spill out with alarming urgency.

“I’m…I’m sorry, I-” they began, but their glitchy voice broke and they trailed off, saturated blue dots forming in the corner of their eyes. “I didn’t know what to say—”

Oh fuck, why now? This is the last thing he needs to worry about. What am I doing? Pull yourself together, damnit!

They dropped their stylus and covered their screen with the arm that currently wasn’t trapped by the other’s grasp. It was shameful. They were supposed to be strong for him, to assure him that he would never have to worry about anyone ever again, that he could focus solely on healing, mentally and physically. It was as if a dam broke in their CPU.

They were actively failing, they were faulty, they would be handed right back to Urbanshade for disassembly. He didn’t need them. He deserved better. They were worthless. The stupid reporters were right, what possessed him to take this heap of dysfunctional wires up with him, to jeopardize his freedom for them. What they had was nothing, just the primal human response of seeking others in times of hardship, everything a soulless amalgamation of metal parts like themself was not. Oh god, was that all it was? Of course it was, how could they be so blind, so naive as to think-

“Can I?”

The trembling mess of a robot slowly brought their hand back down, giving the other a bewildered look.

“...What?”

Sebastian gestured to the stylus that had come to rest beside them, along with the tablet still sitting in their lap. They found that this was one of the rare moments in which they had nothing to say.

Without waiting for confirmation, he reached over with a grunt, shaking slightly from the effort. Painter let the tablet along with its stylus be retrieved from their limp hold, which Sebastian now held at an awkward angle the lack of a finger could only explain. Then he was drawing. Painter was left dumbfounded.

A moment of silence passed, save for the quiet tapping of the stylus, before they repositioned themself on the bed, hesitantly resting their monitor on his shoulder to watch as the doodles materialized in their vision.

Man, he was getting really good. Significantly better than that fateful night he first picked up the pen, comically small in his massive claws. It fit damn near perfectly in his grasp, now.

It took about 5 minutes of quiet doodling before they slowly realized the horrible spiral they were losing themself down had almost completely vanished. A new wave of emotion flooded them, something difficult to identify, but they let it take them deeper into contentedness. They wondered if ‘love’ was the word for it, based on the descriptions they had seen. An intriguing thought that had them immensely embarrassed, so they left it immediately.

A hoarse voice suddenly broke the silence, taking Painter off guard. They perked up at the sound, anxiously clinging to his every word.

“You know, originally I, uh. Had my doubts about taking you with me. Back at the site.”

Oh, shit. Painter ‘held their breath’, so to speak. The conversation was unavoidable, though they kind of hoped that it could be saved for a later date.

They took a moment to steel themself, fans whirring in place of a deep breath.

“...I always had my suspicions. I was kind of, er…neurotic.” They fiddled nervously at their segmented joints, guilt scribbled across their screen. “You didn’t have any reason to. It wasn’t my intention to back you into that corner, I'm sorry.”

“You say that as if I wasn't the one who promised it,” Sebastian huffed out a laugh that was more expelled air than anything. “Regardless, we both were. But you can’t really blame us, can you. Anyone would go batshit insane down there..and fuck, man, we kinda did.”

They smiled sadly. “Yeah. Yeah, we did.”

“No therapist on this world is ready for this baggage.”

“If anything that is more reason to find one, Seb.”

He feigned an anguished groan, which earned him a playful jab in the ribs. They fell back into comfortable silence. Painter watched as Sebastian moved on to shading.

“But you know something? There wasn’t a doubt left in my mind by the time I saw an opportunity. We were getting out of that shithole together, whether they liked it or not. Leaving you wasn’t an option. As uh, cliché as that sounds. You were too important to me then.”

At that, Painter sat up and looked at the man, who was clearly fighting to keep his eyes locked onto the tablet. That same feeling they had squashed earlier began to bubble back up, lodging itself in the core of their chestplate.

“So you…ah fuckit…what I’m trying to say is, I don’t regret it. I like having you around, and I don't give a shit what those douchebags have to say. I'll deal with them personally when my body stops freaking out, just don’t go wasting your time up here stressing balls wondering if I’m secretly hating going back for you. Enjoy yourself, paint some landscapes or something. You’re free.”

Another bout of silence. As much as he fought it, Sebastian finally relented and snatched a look at his counterpart. They had pulled up a jpeg of a crudely drawn emoji violently sobbing. It took him so off guard that the cackle that came out of him actually hurt, and he gripped his middle while trying and failing to stifle it.

“Sebastian.”

“God, what do you want?”

“I feel the urge to do something…regrettable.”

He raised a dark eyebrow and set down the tablet of scribbles. “Uh. Yeah sure, go for it.”

Without much thinking put into it, Painter leaned forward and pressed their screen to his face in what could only be described as their attempted version of a kiss. It lasted a grand total of three seconds, and when the computer pulled away they were a concerning shade of crimson. They were right in the fact that they regretted it as soon as they indulged the impulse, and in hindsight they didn’t know what they were expecting to happen. They had to try it, just to see. Sebastian just stared.

“....Yeah, that was fucking awful. Don’t ever do that again.”

“I’M SORRY, forgive me, that was so stupid, you’re totally justified in your actions if you do decide to send me back for disassembly.”

“Would you shut up, I’m trying to color.”

“Yeahyeah, absolutely. It’d be better for both of us if you forgot about it.”

(and then something gay transpired. I can't do endings.)

[scoonsalicious]

Unwanted: Chapter 2, Unspeakable - Pt. 1

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Fem!Reader

Summary: When your FWB relationship with your best friend Bucky Barnes turns into something more, you couldn’t be happier. That is, however, until a new Avenger sets her sights on your super soldier and he inadvertently breaks your heart. You take on a mission you might not be prepared for to put some distance between the two of you and open yourself up to past traumas. Too bad the only one who can help you heal is the one person you can no longer trust.

Warnings: (For this part only; see Story Masterlist for general Warnings) Language, mentions of alcohol, longing looks/touches, this part's mostly fluff, ngl.

Word Count: 1.1k

Previously On...: And from that night, you and Bucky became best friends. Because there are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and the stuff of your nightmares was one of them.

A/N: I thought the Harry Potter quote was appropriate to bastardize for the Previously On... Don't come for me, lol

Banner By: The absolutely amazing @mrsbuckybarnes1917

Taglist: (Please let me know if you’d like to be added!)  @blackhawkfanatic @les-sel @marcswife21

From that night on, Bucky found every excuse he could to touch you. It was as though, after so many years of nothing but cold cruelty, he had become addicted to the warmth and softness of your skin. You didn't mind in the least; you liked the way he wrapped his arm around your stomach and rested his chin in the crook of your shoulder when he came up behind you, or the way he pulled your hand onto his thigh and traced the lines of your palm with his index finger while you watched TV in the common room, side by side.

One afternoon, you were standing in front of a monitor in your lab, lost in thought as the numbers from your latest algorithm trial ran across the screen. So immersed were you in the data that you didn't notice the form coming up behind you until two hands grabbed you by the waist, lifting you up and spinning you.

Without thinking, your years of training kicked in, like flipping on a switch. You stomped down, hard, on the top of your assailant's foot with your heel, while simultaneously throwing your elbow back into their solar plexus. The attacker let out a low "Oof" and released their hold on you, giving you the opportunity to drop your weight low and spin on your toes to face them.

Bucky stood stooped before you, one hand clutching his abdomen where your elbow had made contact, the other hand held up in surrender. The other hand?

"Jesus Christ, Buck!" you panted. "You scared the shit out of me!"

"I was trying to surprise you, you hell beast," Bucky said, though he was smiling. Rubbing the tender spot of nerves you had so artfully disturbed, he asked "Where'd you learn to fight so dirty?"

"Krav Maga," you beamed, pleased that you'd managed to get a hit on a super soldier, even if Bucky hadn't been actually attacking you. "Care to tell me how you managed to end up with two fucking arms?"

Now it was Buck's turn to beam at you as he held out his new left arm for your perusal. You took the hand, inspecting it. Black metal gleamed in the light of your lab. You turned the arm over, admiring the craftsmanship. "This is a thing of beauty, Buck," you murmured, trailing your fingers along the gold veins that ran through the metal. Bucky involuntarily shivered at your touch. "You can feel that?" you asked him, awestruck. He nodded, his face awash in delight.

You leaned in to examine it more closely. If you didn't know any better, you'd say it was... But, no, it couldn't be– "Bucky," you said in astonishment, looking up to meet his eye, "is this vibranium?"

Bucky grinned from ear to ear, looking like a little boy who had gotten just what he'd asked for for Christmas. "It was a gift. From the Wakandans, for helping them capture Helmut Zemo." Bucky seemed almost shy at revealing why the Wakandans had gifted him the arm, as though he was still uncomfortable with being acknowledged for doing good instead of being blamed for committing evil.

"This..." you started, at a loss for words. "Bucky, this is amazing! The Wakandans are the most technologically advanced nation on the planet. This makes the arm I've been working on look like a fucking stick."

Bucky cocked his head and studied you as you studied the vibranium appendage. "You were making me an arm, doll?" he asked, throat choked on emotion.

You looked up at him, a blush of color rising to your cheeks. "Well, I was trying to. I wasn't going to say anything until I knew it would work; I didn't want to get your hopes up, but this... this is worlds better than anything I could have manufactured."

Bucky gently pulled his metal arm from your hand and used it to cup your cheek, instead. You leaned into the cool, hard metal. "That's the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me," he murmured. You gave him a soft smile.

"You're one of my best friends, and you deserve all the good things," you told him with a shrug of your shoulder. "Including two functioning arms."

Bucky pulled you into a hug and you returned his embrace, relishing in the feeling of being completely held by him. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Pocket," he said into the top of your head.

You pulled back to look up at him. "Well, hopefully, you'll never have to find out." You stayed like that for a few moments longer, neither of you willing to be the first to let go. "You know what," you said, eventually pulling away from him, "we should celebrate."

Bucky looked down at you with a glint in his eye. "Celebrate, huh? What should we do?"

"Anything you want," you told him, moving out of the cage of his arms. Arms. You still couldn't believe it. "It's your arm we're celebrating."

He studied you for a moment, and there was a look in his eyes you couldn't quite decipher. As the heat of Bucky's gaze lingered on you, a shiver ran down your spine. There was something different about the way he looked at you now, something that made your heart race and your palms grow sweaty. It was as if every fiber of his being was focused solely on you, his eyes tracing every contour of your face with an almost alarming intensity.

"Can we start those Hobbit movies?" he asked.

"That's how you want to celebrate?" you smiled up at him. "You're such a fucking nerd. Yeah, we can absolutely do that. Oh, shit--" you remembered. "It's Girls' Night tonight. It’s fine– I can skip it."

"No," said Bucky, and the look he'd been giving you had vanished, leaving you to wonder if you'd simply imagined it to begin with, "go to Girls' Night. I know how much you look forward to those."

"I said we'd celebrate, and I want to celebrate," you insisted. "I can bow out of Girls' Night early. I'll just pop in, have one glass of wine, and then I'll be all yours; they can manage without me for a night."

Bucky hit you with his devil-charming grin. "All mine?" he asked, a mischievous lilt to his voice.

Rolling your eyes, you playfully slapped at his chest. "You know what I mean, asshat."

"Another dollar in the jar," he tsked.

"Get the fuck out of here and let me get back to work," you said with a laugh, shooing him away. You followed him with your eyes as he made his way to the door. Right before he went through, he turned around and looked back over at you, giving you a parting smile before walking off.

<- Previous Chapter / Next Part ->

[weebsinstash]

Ok so tmi (on the tmi blog lol) but the first day of my Cycle I had a dream that I had just given birth and I was holding my baby and I was goddamn euphoric even though the logical part of me was like “???? I am 22 and broke i CANNOT have a baby rn” and I woke up crying and called my friends like I WANNA HAVE A BAAAAAABYYYYY I WANT A BAAAAAAABYYYYYYYY so basically. Imagine. Miguel catches you in a moment of weakness. And he NEVER. FUCKING. FORGETS IT.

Oh wow girlie those period hormones grabbed you by the uterus and absolutely REFUSED to let go

NO BUT FOR REAL don't look at me but I've been thinking of a concerning number of ideas where it's like, "Reader suddenly realizes they may want a baby and is actually putting serious thought into it and Miguel finds out (bet your ass Peter B tells him, i can see him as a "well intentioned" platonic guardian/mentor figure who sells you out to Miguel the second he thinks you're doing something risky or he thinks it's for your own good) and Miguel starts making all these plans and preparations behind your back to have a baby with you" and obviously I like the extra juicy option of "he found out you got extremely depressed and tied your tubes or something because you either see no point in you having a kid/think it's too late, OR, Miguel was the only person you were looking at as a potential father and you either decide it wouldn't work out or he does something to hurt you and you lose trust in him" so like, the double whammy combo of him being hit with the news you basically walled off your fertility that he's kinda fantasizing about AND you blame him for it

You see him chokeslam Miles on the train and having all these serious anger and stress issues and you're like "hmmmm don't like that" and basically make the tubal ligation appointment that week (but, you know, he'll either interfere before you can actually get it or even reverse it later on)

Like. Ugh I'm not sure if I should go super into detail bc I feel like I want to put this scene in the YouTwo fic or in a different idea i have thats more centered around motherhood, but, picture he catches you in his monitor room one day after you've lost your home dimension, you're having a little more than just a small identity crisis, and he catches you having Lyla show you the model for your life, or what the algorithm had predicted your life was supposed to be like before your universe just magically poofed away. You're just staring at these holograms with tears running down your face and he occasionally catches you starting to reach out like you want to touch what you see. He comes to stop you because he already knows all too well where this could lead, you can't become tempted to break canon and go somewhere else, but you beg him to let you watch just a little longer

"I was supposed to get MARRIED! I was supposed to have a BABY! I was supposed to have a family!! It's not fair!!"

And he's in total agreement with you because, who even fucking knows why your universe suddenly destabilized and vanished. He sees you as this person who has so much promise and potential who had their destiny and future literally snatched away from them and now you're lost and confused on what you're supposed to do, like really he totally understands why you feel so aimless. But watching these holograms is like torturing yourself, and he goes to stop you when you just keep crying because this is basically sending you into a critical mental health episode

"Someone was supposed to fall in love with me... we were supposed to have a baby... would I have been a good mom? Would I have had a boy or a girl? Cant you at least let me find out what my daughter's name would have been?"

And it's like NOOOO you can't hit him with the daughter card, don't you see what you've DONE!!! Gets him right in the heart. Now he's got this massive soft spot for you, bigger than it already was anyways, and he can tell over time you're just really starting to, grieve the future you were supposed to have, falling into a depression. Peter B is hanging around with Mayday like he usually does as both men can tell you're really staring at his baby today and he offers to teach you how to hold her. you're standing there misty eyed twirling one of her little curls around your finger as her dad starts volunteering information to you, "you know she's about XYZ months old now, they aren't really talking yet at this age but they're really curious about their surroundings and--"

Miguel watches as you start talking about children and suddenly get this really really tortured expression and just say "it's not meant to happen" and or some combination of "it's too late for me" and gives him his baby back a little too quickly in typical "I am clearly leaving the room to go cry" fashion. Meanwhile Peter B is like 38 wondering why you think you're out of time or it's not supposed to happen

Miguel's working one day and Peter is trying to shove his phone in his face, "you know I think this is one of the BEST photos of Mayday I've ever taken, she's looking so cute here, you just GOTTA see it" and Pete just won't let up and Miguel finally looks just to humor him because the man is being unusually annoying and, it's a photo of Mayday, duh, but being held by you, and you're clearly looking down at her with watering eyes and the smallest little smile that says "I'll die for you" and Peter is just all 😏 as Miguel is 'suddenly' interested in the photo. "That's a really good photo of MAYDAY, right? 😏 I figured you would like it, that photo of MAYDAY 😏" and Miguel is just grumbling and grouchy bc he sees what this guy is tryna do, but he's still like ".... send it to me later, I'm trying to work right now"

It's even worse if you're a member of his strike force because you're constantly around him, Peter B, and Jess. Miguel just, idly wondering where you are and deciding to walk around a little bit and eventually finds that you're having some sort of conversation with Peter B and Jess and he can tell you look really weepy as the other woman invites you to feel her baby kicking, like, you could not more obviously be developing baby fever, and you ARE around that age, and ESPECIALLY if you live in Nueva York because it's like, YEAH you're still a Spider and YEAH you help the Society with stuff but. Your home universe is gone, your canon is gone, you're kind of. Free as a bird really? But you're also scared because, if someone was destined to love you, does that mean it technically isn't meant to be to fall for anyone else? You can't exactly hook up with people at the Spider Society because of canon or them already having relationships, and you don't exactly have identifying documents if you wanted to try and adopt

I think it'd really reach a stressful breaking point if you and the strike force go to another universe to fight an anomaly and Miguel catches you staring out into the crowd of people you just saved and he sees what youre looking at instantly and his heart sinks. Another you, another normal you, never bitten by a Spider, is standing there with her husband and her little sputtering baby, and he has to all but drag you away as you cry "it's not fair, it's not fair, why does SHE get a normal life!!"

Sidebar for a moment, I think that's probably also one thing that would be so INFURIATING about the doppelganger stealing your life story because THEY have a home universe and YOU don't. They take your life, they take literally everything you have left, your friends, your sense of community, your literal purpose. I've already decided on YTs motivations but could you imagine you finding out YouTwo actually has a decent life and maybe even a husband and kid of their own and you're just furious because they're basically abandoning their duties back home not only as a Spider but as a parent/spouse to steal what YOU have? You can't kill them because it would break their canon and kill like countless people but Miguel and the others would def let you beat the shit out of your evil double and get some of your anger out. Like. Jesus could you imagine Miguel kicks you out thinking you're the fake and after you're gone, YouTwo breaks canon and that's what exposes them, or theyre exposed when they eventually take a trip back home and get caught. The Society's regret, the guilt, the anger, just marinate me with the drama

But anyways back to Being Sad and Babycrazy, you go missing one day and Miguel has to decide what to do when he finally tracks your bracelet and you're back in THAT dimension again. He has to physically track you down using your bracelet's signal because you refuse to answer his messages and you're, in the home of the other you while she takes a brief nap, in the nursery, holding her baby. Miguel quietly climbs through the window and you're in a rocking chair and you've got her hugged to your chest and your eyes are closed and you sense him and, obviously cry because you know you have to leave. Unlike with the holograms he doesn't give you any leeway on this, putting his foot down that this has to end here, this cant go on, this is already so dangerous. And, you're good for him and understand, leaving the baby back in its crib as you and Miguel warp away. You're heartbroken but ultimately understanding when he has to disable your watch's ability to visit that specific dimension again, and you're obviously extremely depressed for a while, having multiple Spiders coming to check in on you as word spreads around that you aren't doing well

I can just see Reader becoming kind of desperate because the only options for a baby you really have left is to either 1. get a serious relationship, which you're scared of because you have to trust that person and who can you even pick, you're nervous about breaking canon or something, or 2. Get some random person to impregnate you so you can run off with the baby

Miguel gets a call from Peter B that you went to a bar and you're EXTREMELY wasted as you try to pick someone, ANYONE up and like, you have admirers for sure but there's enough decent people around to keep the creeps in line, clearly you are in a vulnerable state of mind right now, and Miguel gets to tote your drunken ass back home as you drunkenly word vomit all your feelings to him because, unfortunately for you, he has your trust, and you need comfort right now, and you even ask him about what being a parent was like for him. You encouragingly tell him he shouldn't give up if he still wants kids, you trying to be genuinely nice and not trying to imply anything, blubbering about how he deserves to still be happy and he's still got time, and here's Miguel who's practically tracking your cycles at this point, TOTALLY not going to use anything you say to him while you're piss-drunk against you

Especially if you add ABO into the mix and you have a Miguel who's either Alpha/Omega and is already babycrazy af and he sees you literally fucking YEARNING for it, like. You've got a 6'9" Alpha basically looking at you, his poor lil Omega crush, with the big yandere goo goo eyes and how you need all this love and support and stability and how you're in need of a proper husband and of course he's all too willing to volunteer himself for the job. Even if he's too awkward to come right out to you and say it, he'll be thinking in his head and planning behind your back ways to take care of you, keep you away from any drugs/alcohol (no more smoking weed with metro boomin Spiderman, you've gotta detox your body to have a baby! Also, different concept but, Miguel basically keeping you in a bubble to control all your meals and recreational activities and all of that so he can make sure you're perfectly healthy for a baby)

Don't let this man catch you slipping up! Throw you to the Spider Society and you'll come back pregnant 😭 he sees you so depressed and wanting a baby and it's like well, if your life needs new meaning, he can help literally make one for you 😏 he's been feeling protective and nurturing of you anyways, so, it's an extra benefit for him to think of getting to have both you AND a little baby of your very own ❤️

[purpledemonlilyposting]

i love how much of a little impact you actually are. want lily in jail for what, being weird? when there are genuine pedophiles and predators on the platform you try to defend? you cant even call it more than "the allegations" like oh watch out the old shriveled up slur slinging hag think someone else should go to prison, she definitely knows about actual laws and prosecution. yall think youre vigilantes or some shit? fighting the good fight for what, victims that dont exist? weaponizing that to harass someone over and over and over, to the point where she has to strike your channel because of what YOU think is an appropriate response???? your brain is def fried from having not a single impact on anything ever, in your whole 40 ish years of being around, and its so fucking sad to see how little your crusades have of an impact, while you're so disconnected from reality that you think ANY OF THIS is a valuable course of action. while fascism is on the rise no less, youre on the same side of history as fucking elon musk and donald trump, and you see nothing wrong with that

You know it's great. I don't focus on making videos about Lily's crimes and allegations? I'm not doing enough. Lily wrecks her own channel in the algorithm to go after things I like and puts her own channel in serious danger of termination by falsely copyright striking me? Why do you think that's a big deal.

Sai doesn't want Lily to lose her channel because she wants to keep making money on her! Oh Lily might lose her channel directly because of messing with Sai's channel? It's weird you'd want that anyway.

I'm never gonna win lol.

Meanwhile I didn't even do any of this on purpose, just took off running with the opportunity that fell into my lap and am just doing whatever.

I'm curious, nonny, why you think Lily isn't a "genuine" pedophile and predator, given her history and the pedophilic content she's written.

[mmikmmik]

I am a permanent resident of Weenie Hut Jr’s and I don’t like being mean to the little people inside my video games. I don’t mind much if I’m following an algorithm to trip flags to reach a certain route (I did play the full murder run of Undertale for part of my first run), but if I’m free styling I just. don’t want to be mean. I want to fix everyone’s problems and gallantly save any imperiled NPC’s. My only stronger instinct is to complete the dialogue tree (so I did get the Damsel to glitch out instead of freeing her).

I keep expecting Act II of Slay the Princess to ding me for it somehow - like, this is a horror game, you wuss. Get over it! But instead, interesting things keep happening. I helped free the Spectre with a friend watching me stream, even feeling like I “should” fight her, and during the friendly possession sequence we both kept saying “this is so cool” and analyzing the lore in her dialogue and interaction with the Narrator. It reminds me of when I got the Stranger and was enjoying it, but then kind of braced myself being like “wait, is this fucked up princess really suitable for the Shifting Mound” and then of course she was. I keep expecting the game to have some kind of failure state and it just doesn’t.

Which, tentatively… it feels like the gameplay is agreeing with the Shifting Mound lol? Like, her arguments, the nature of her… you grow and learn and change and move forward, and there’s no way to lose by doing that. Even if you’re being a weenie about it.

[frostytherobot]

Maybe plenty of white leftists might have expressed annoyance at identity politics, but wanting representation in media is not a political act or should be described as the problem. By anyone. Even people who say they dont like homophobia. Or championed women 10 years ago or whatever those tags said. (im sorry i cant read them while im writing this :)

Let me also say I fully agreed with their evidence with their Scientist man schtick, that Ghostbusters 2016 was manipulated by the studios to stoke controversy because the movie was unfunny. Because they were right, it was very unfunny. I saw it. So i believe its very true that creating an artificial controversy can get people to see a movie/show. Mike knows all about that fact, he reported about it with the Ghostbusters controversy, but yet still he flames on this acolyte controversy with this both-sidesism stuff. Saying that somehow identity-politics is equal part the problem. Between people who want diversity in their media and those who do not want it. i dont see how anyone doesn't see the inherent bigotry in that. Unless you see white straightness as the default. Especially when star wars has how many dozens and dozens of shows/movies? and only relatively recently has diversity crept into it. If you don't like the acolyte show, thats ok, dont watch it, watch something else. What's the problem?

Maybe you are right that they just are not using their words correctly. I might even buy that cause i love their content, and do not want to think of them like this, but that video felt tortured in trying to appease right wing bigotry by saying not wanting diversity is on equal footing as wanting it. does anyone actually believe that? Because it sounded like he was saying that by calling identity-politics the problem

trust me i'm also fucking sucking ducking tired (lol that is a great line) with trying to calmly explain that wanting diversity in media is only political if you see "white straightness" as the default.

thank you for listening.

peace and love.

Maybe it’s just not coming across to me in the way they worded things that they inherently think of whiteness/straightness/cisgenderness as the default. But then again, they’re white guys.

I do think that while Mike seems to act like he doesn’t care about what people think of him, he feels the need to tiptoe around his language or hide it behind (not great) jokes, because it is his channel and the way he and his friends can afford to live, all things considered. It’s a problem with trying not to alienate the kind of audience he’s accumulated over the years, and the comments section on that video does indicate the kind of vapid, idiotic audience they have. That’s another conversation totally, and one that needs to be had, but not really what I’m talking about right now.

I think I do understand what you’re saying though, showing both progressive and reactionary views on media being part of the problem is kinda shitty, BUT I don’t totally think they were trying to say people seeking representation are the problem. Moreso championing the products of a corporation that don’t write well-rounded and three dimensional characters, especially doubling down to fight with reactionaries is. When we have algorithms always feeding us things that are tailor-made to make us angry, it’s a problem that we’re feeding that machine. Again, I just think they’re really bad at what they’re trying to say, especially because Mike has a tendency to poke the bear with just about everything. Another problem considering that doesn’t come off well in serious conversation, but that’s just how he is.

I will say I don’t know their full views on everything, but because of the opinions they’ve shared in the past and the discussion they had with diverse representation in other shows and how much they like them, I don’t think they’re bigoted. Maybe just stupid. But perhaps that’s just me wanting to think the best of them, because I do understand where they’re coming from even if they’re not articulating it properly, and I do understand being angry with them because of that.

I really don’t want to seem like I’m arguing blindly for two people I don’t know, but I don’t want to outright claim they’re the same kind of people who are totally opposed to marginalized people existing in media. Peace and love to you too!

[eccentric-nucleus]

so, i finally finished (posting) my huge, novel-length teenage mutant ninja turtles fanfic. i just posted the final epilogue over on ao3!

here is my director's commentary on it, if you want to read even more about it. this contains spoilers for the whole thing. maybe read the epilogue first and sit with that for a minute. also this will probably be pretty incoherent if you haven't read the whole thing. it's just a disconnected series of thoughts i have about the story, really

man, this story. this is maybe the longest thing i've ever written? like 'the new hive' and 'hell game' had more words (i think) but they were mostly a disconnected series of sex scenes with thin connective tissue between them. this is ~200k words of a single, linear, mostly-plot narrative. i'm writing scenes that aren't just about getting the two leads to fuck!! that's weird. it's definitely the most ambitious thing i've written. kind of weird that it's tmnt fanfic. that's just how it worked out, i guess.

so back in 2022 i watched the rise of the tmnt movie because people kept talking about the animation quality of the fights and that got me into a spiral of actually paying attention to the ninja turtles. i had never been into them & genuinely i think a huge part of getting into tmnt stuff was that rise actually varied the design of the turtles so that they weren't all basically identical save for color-coding. turns out visual design was the missing mystery ingredient.

also in 2022 i was burning out on writing 'goblin cave', when what i had intended to be a fun little writing exercise ended up getting algorithmically surfaced and getting me hundreds of comments on each chapter. that got a little stressful and i wasn't really enjoying that, so i stopped. but i was like, hmm you know i mostly just write weird porn but maybe i should write something a little more ambitious. with a plot, and everything. 'goblin cave' was (in my mind) all about a character who was created for violence deciding art was a much more worthwhile pursuit. but the main character of that doesn't know what art is. because it's a magical dungeon core. and i was still thinking a lot about dead zones of the imagination, by david graeber. so i was like, okay, let's do this again but in a slightly more self-authentic way and make it weird gay porn with weird animal dicks. let's give michelangelo ninjaturtle a monologue about how the powerful are utterly insulated from any consequence.

(also early on, after watching most of rottmnt, i stumbled across this blog post about the tmnt comics and the end of the world. that ended up being deeply influential on the fic too. i've been kinda in a state for the past few years and this fic is absolutely a part of me working through a lot of complicated feelings about the world and the future. lol people talk so much about people writing dark fic 'to cope' but this was pretty much the first time i've outsourced my emotional processing by having bad things happen to fictional characters.)

so uhhh where to start here. the setting of the fic is this complicated messy mashup of a half-dozen tmnt continuities. it's very rise-heavy, since... that was the only series i had watched(/read) when i had determined the major plot points, but there's a lot of bits and pieces from all over.

to roughly outline the characters here, a huge influence on mikey's personality in this is... mikey's 'dr delicate touch' persona in rottmnt. in the sense that... okay yes yes that is a kid's show and all of his dr delicate touch lines are, you know, setups and punchlines. you think he's going to be nice but actually he's mean! etc. but in-universe it's like, wait hold on a second. mikey is like the most emotionally-intelligent of the four. he absolutely knows when people are on the edge of flipping out and need a calming out to a stressful situation. and instead he freaks them out more! mikey's hobby is: being mean to his friends & family, for fun! what a fun character trait.

i was thinking about this tweet a lot, too. i read some writing advice once that people tend to make characters who are supposed to be likable too squeaky-clean. nothing but positive character traits for them! but actually every 'positive' character trait is exactly the same as a 'negative' one; it's just a matter of focus and degree. a character is light-hearted and comedic? they can never take things seriously, even when they really should. a character is willing to do anything to protect the people they love? so they're violent and threatening and scary if they happen to decide you're something that they need to protect against. etc. i was really dedicated in this to bringing out the worst characteristics of everybody's personalities.

mikey was also very deeply inspired by: all the garbage progression fantasy stuff i've been reading. i've complained about this several times on this very blog, but a constant theme in most progression fantasy is 1. the main character will constantly get more and more powerful and 2. the main character will never really have their relationship with the rest of the world changed via that power. it's just stat-ups. they just have higher stats so they're more powerful. mikey is the most powerful person on the planet and it's fucking ruining his life. he knows that there's nobody capable of actually checking his behavior, & he's in this constant state of thinking he's maybe a few bad days away from murdering half the planet and incredibly aware there's not really anything he can do about that aside from constantly worry. he's kind of an anxious mess.

mikey absolutely thinks it's more ethical to murder somebody out of the sheer glee of seeing people crushed before you than murdering somebody for something as tedious as mob orders. you're satisfying a deep, raw desire felt from the heart! that's good!

what he'd like to do, in some sense, is just hang out in his studio and chill with other artists, but he knows the world is not gonna let him do that. things will come up. a lot of his being a creepy bystander thing while people get murdered is b/c he's very much formulated his morality to be like... it is not his responsibility to fix other people's problems. other people will do what they want and that has no bearing on him. is that a pretty cowardly and self-serving morality? sure! but he was kinda designed to rule the world & his flinch away from that pretty much defines him as a character in this. that's kinda the morality he needed to end up on to convince himself not to be a genocide machine.

he's incredibly aware he could basically be a superhero, & all it would take is... giving up on all his hopes and dreams and constantly engage with his abilities. and being a superhero isn't that many steps removed from living up to his full design spec and just taking over the world and ruling as god-emperror. idk how well i hit all those notes in the actual fic, but, that's what i was going for. mikey as the narrator clearly doesn't want to talk or think about it so it's never really directly confronted.

raph is... okay so i guess a fairly common piece of fanon, for rise especially, is to characterise raph as having multiple personalities? whether that's him just having alters or him having full-blown MPD depends on the fic. my fun little nod to that is that he's kind of a disassociative mess. he has kind of failed to reconcile the disparate aspects of his personality and he switches between one of several different facades depending on the situation. also, you know. the trauma.

(i didn't really mean for it to be as such, but there is this theme in the story about names? despite everything else mikey has a crystal-clear self-conception of himself and has one name, which he gave himself. raph, who has kinda failed to build his own personality, has a collection of name other people have given him, none of which he feels actually fits him. donnie has a more fluid self-identity and also has roughly a million aliases and false identities & constantly slips in and out of character when it's convenient. leatherhead still going by the name mikey gave him goes hand-in-hand with that bit where mikey meanly thinks about how maybe leatherhead's entire self-conception is hung up on something mikey said to him once, etc. this is one of those things that i'd go back and make more present if i did go back and clean up the rough draft, b/c as it is it's there, but it doesn't really do a whole lot.)

--

this fic was inspired by... i had read a few big aus that were just like, taking the characters and loose bits of setting and going off in completely different directions. some of NeiNing's aus were a definite influence, plus like, this one au where raph is an ex-con mechanic, etc, etc. just like "i am going to play out a completely unrelated drama using turtles as the dolls". maybe most directly influential was Of Knights and Thieves, where donnie & mikey are corporate espionage hacker/thief types and raph & leo are do-gooder vigilantes. the original concept for this was much more heavily focused on the art forgery. in a very early draft the idea was leo would get involved much more actively in trying to track down the creator of the false takenobus. then i was like, "i am going to crash a completely separate story concept about the dark armor into the side of this art-forgery story". the filename for the story is still 'lol grindr hookup art thief'. that is not really where the story went.

oh man, the art stuff. i made some posts about this at the time! that are now several years old. here's one! i did end up getting a traditional woodcut printing of Tokaido 53 stations, no. 11, Hokone. in a lot of ways doing all the art research was more satisfying and fun than writing the extensive downward spiral that was the latter half of the fic. but, hey, that's life too i guess.

also raph in this is... okay, so, i don't mean this in a mean way. i really liked the fics! but cndrow has written several raph/donnie fics where raph is just like... like a repeated theme in them is raph confessing eternal love & talking about how he's like, mentally planning on them being together forever. on the first date. and sure sure everybody has different tastes; i'm absolutely sure that my interest in guys who are mean leads to some stories that are extremely offputting to some people, etc. but it's like, oh man, raph, please slow your roll a little. if somebody said they were planning our future wedding all of ten minutes into talking to me i would flee the room. & the raph in blinded by the summer sun is very much inspired by that. sadly, i never fully committed to that. originally i even had a line in chapter 9 where slash was like 'please tell me you didn't drop the 'i love you forever' on this guy already' to imply that that was, you know, a theme for raph, but i chickened out and cut it. raph as a kind of rolling series of bad relationships characterized by him falling forever in love w/ his latest crush until the relationship detonates and leaves him not really understanding how things went wrong. but i don't think that's expressed well like, at all. but that ideally should characterize a large part of why he keeps chasing after mikey even well after the point where it would be reasonable to disengage. also to convey some of the downsides of a character believing in true love. it's rough out there in the world.

also thank you tumblr user averyterrible for writing this goncharov post. that was the point in the story where i was like, actually i have been writing raph as way too much of a sad boy. if i want to play in the space of crime drama, there needs to be some crime! he's a yakuza assassin. he needs to chop off somebody's fingers with bolt cutters.

--

to me, the central question in the fic isn't really 'will the mikey/raph relationship work out' or 'will mikey succeed in his plans', it's 'why is mikey doing these things'. & i think the leatherhead chunks in chapter 23 finally give enough context to what's going on with mikey to let people answer that? like oh, mikey is a mess.

(lol the initial setup for the early chapters are supposed to give an audience response of like, "oh no, raph has some dangerous secrets" "oh no, raph is a violent yakuza murderer! i hope mikey is going to be okay interacting with raph" "...oh no, i hope raph is going to be okay interacting with mikey")

a lot of the story really is about how... mikey & raph's relationship is in a lot of ways very adolescent? they have not had a lot of prior experience with healthy relationships, and they're trying, but, uhhhhhhh. mikey likes to act like he's so cool and above-it-all and unaffected by things happening, but that's actually just b/c he doesn't really care about most things. when something happens that he genuinely doesn't like he immediately snaps and has a giant meltdown. (we see this once with raph, when mikey has a panic attack and throws up when raph blows him off wrt warning him of bishop, and once with donny about the armor, where mike immediately starts tantruming and threatening to kill himself. mikey is very bad at resolving conflict. he's kind of a brat, actually.)

like every character in this is in some way their worst self. they're all pretty awful people. but they're all also trying to... grapple with their place in the world and try to be better people. to even figure out what 'better' means. this is a story about how 'being a good person' is a constant struggle, not to 'do the right thing', but to even figure out what's 'right'. it's about picking yourself up again after a bad period and going, well, let's keep going. like mikey has a lot of traits but one that i, the author, actually think is fairly admirable is his ability to get back up and keep going after a really bad period. which is funny b/c characterwise that goes hand-in-hand with his callousness. just shrug off all the misery you caused other people, i guess! see above about positive/negative character traits.

(also uh there's another tmnt fic author whose work has a lot of... a Bad Guy is constructed/identified. then helpless children (or teens!) are rescued from him. then the bad guy is ruthlessly & violently murdered. sometimes onscreen, sometimes offscreen. and then it's nothing but chapter after chapter of people being happy and cutesy to each other. and like, i get it. but the, like, recurring theme there of the Bad Guy having done something fundamentally unforgivable that separates from all understanding & mercy, to which the only justice is a violent death, just strikes me as... simplistic. sometimes people do really awful things and part of grappling with that as an adult with an adult moral conceptualization is realizing that you gotta look past your initial reflex to punishment.

or like, mikey's whole childhood in this really fucked him up but a huge part of his identity is him having to form an identity from that. having to make the determination of which parts of him are 'him' and which parts were done to him. lol @ him aggressively and extensively rejecting everything about what draxum made him to do & then blithely being like 'we were engineered to eat humans anyway' as a defense for all the corpse-eating. mikey you just like eating people & have decided that part does align with your self-identity. mikey would really not appreciate anybody being like 'i'm sorry nobody saved you from that' b/c that (to him) would basically be the same as them saying they thought he was fundamentally, irreparably damaged & was going to be forever incapable of being anything other than what draxum made him to be. he wouldn't take it well.)

uhhh what else. i mean there's a lot. fun fact pretty much every time mikey gets mad at somebody else he's hugely projecting. even his pacifism is like... hmm maybe he should have killed draxum. a lot of his talk @ raph about splinter is secretly mikey relitigating his feelings about draxum. oh what's that mikey you think that splinter is only playing happy family b/c he's immortal and he has infinite time to spend humoring somebody's illusions but that when push comes to shove he'll drop all that? gee i wonder if that might apply to any dynamics in mikey's own life. lol at mikey being like "wow red your life is kind of a fucked-up nightmare of weird psychopaths playing like they're happy family" and then two chapters is like "hey come meet my family. we live in my genocidal dad's bombed-out lab and we're treating him like a weird racist grandpa". i kinda wanted something that would complicate mikey just being like "i am a pacifist now and i don't kill anybody"; mikey that's all well and good but like half his inner tension comes from not being sure if he should've left draxum alive. that's kinda the mirror to him debating whether or not actually killing leatherhead would've been better. (in a few years shelldon is gonna go through a period of not wanting to talk to any of them. mikey & donnie are better parents than draxum but that's such a low bar.)

(likewise at the end when mikey is like "this is raph's healthiest relationship so far!" to leo, like, this is more mikey projecting. really the raph/casey relationship was probably better for raph & casey, idk, who can say. but is mikey's relationship with raph the healthiest romantic interaction he's ever had? yes, absolutely. we don't get to see the mikey/leatherhead relationship really up-close and personal but it should be pretty clear that it was pretty awful for everybody involved. compared to that, the mikey/raph is absolutely mikey's healthiest relationship so far. just. low bars.)

lol i am a little concerned that mikey's tendency to monologue, & especially his whole political monologue near the end, will get people to think he's just acting as an author's soapbox. i mean, okay, the little author's note where i'm like "as always, mikey is a perfect role model and everybody should do what he does" was a fun little joke. but, oof, the number of fics i've read where the authors feel the need to loudly and repeatedly disclaim that This Story Contains Things The Author Does Not Condone In Real Life is pretty disheartening. way to have absolutely no faith in your audience. but likie, the part where mikey is pretty much flat-out like, "actually i think my moral framework is whatever is necessary to justify my actions" is meant to be pretty damning. maybe not of mikey specifically as a character, just of, you know. the whole world where that's a pretty common outlook among people with power.

--

lets talk about the rape. part of it is that it felt like it would be inauthentic to go through the entire story without mikey seriously violating one of raph's boundaries. part of it is that mikey here kinda has the trifecta of ASPD, ADHD, & bipolar, and the thing with that is it's very easy to just say that but a little more difficult to convey the personality traits involved. this isn't really something ever stated as such in the fic, aside from various people calling mikey crazy + raph calls him a sociopath once. it's kind of too didactic to just flatly state "and this is what's wrong with mikey!" imo. but. this is a story about violent people. imo you can't just gesture to a character with the background level of callousness for the genre and go "okay this is a clinical sign"; you kinda gotta do something more direct. 'wow mikey sure is CRAZY and WEIRD good thing it only shows itself as him being slightly mean to people'. no. mikey has done some pretty horrible things in the past and clearly isn't fully done with that.

(i did pretty much go straight down the list of symptoms there. impulsive, suicidal, aggressive, violent, risky sex, arrogant, limited empathy, no regard for other people or social norms, difficulty with relationships, arson, etc, etc, etc. but it's not like he's a 'realistic' portrayal here, since... i mean, he is a super-powered ninja. there's a level of 'superficial charm' here but we do get enough of mikey's interiority to be able to tell he's a total mess in a way that's not particularly constructed.)

also it's like. raph graphically tortures several people to death & i didn't really feel the need to disclaim that here. murder is usually seen as a lesser crime in fiction than rape. people love their violent blorbos but the second there's the implication of sexual violence people freak out. the usual line people say is that the threat of murder is a little more removed for most people than the threat of rape, which idk if i fully agree with. but part of it is also to draw a line between raph's violence and mikey's boundary violation. like mikey says, well, raph tried to non-consensually murder him a few times too.

anyway i don't think i really stuck the landing with that either, in part b/c raph's response to it. he's a little too pathetically accepting of things at the end instead of being angry + violent. that could use a rewrite or two.

--

honestly i'm kinda sick of this story now? which sucks a little, since i kept realizing things about the story all the way up to the very last moment of editing. if i had waited to post any of this until i was done with the first draft... well, it'd be a very different story if i went back and turned this rough draft into something more complete. i never really did manage to hit the character beats with raph i was hoping to. oh well. like, i still like it. but i can definitely see all of its weak points. i guess that's just part of the process of writing. it'd be worse if you wrote a giant novel and came out on the other side not more aware of your failings as an author.

i feel like raph isn't super well-realized in terms of character motivations. or... his relationships aren't shaded in as well as they could be. if i were redoing this whole thing i'd definitely include some chunks of raph pov just to lay out more concretely what he's doing & what his life is like when he's not in the same scene as mikey. i kinda included that raph+donny conversation at the very end just for jokes, but actually ending every chapter with a little section of non-mikey pov would've helped ground a lot of the characters. raph isn't super well-developed and leo is pretty much incoherent absent external familiarity with his character's deal. they're not conveyed super well, in part because, well, any time mikey is onscreen everybody is having to deal with mikey. it's a problem.

but something that absolutely could have worked as a secondary narrative to the story is the whole thing with raph working w/ the oroku. that was a bit of a late addition to the story. it's meant as a reference to, you know, all the times raphael ends up being compared to/assuming the mantle of the shredder in the comics. but as it is since we don't get any real looks into exactly what's going on in yakuza town when mikey's not around none of that got developed very well, imo.

--

it was very important to me that mikey not learn any lesson here. where things are at in the end are pretty much the exact same as where they were in the beginning. the bit in the pizza scene where he's like 'you guys get to live and i get a boyfriend' is very accurate. literally the only change in mikey's life through this entire thing is that at the end he is in a relationship w/ a guy who he can tell some of what his life is like to. not that it's a super healthy relationship, but it is there.

well, that, and also now he's maybe out of time. (uh, so the laughter at the very end of the epilogue is mikey realizing he's out of time. the whole epilogue really is about how he's got all these conflicting tensions of who-knows-what in his life, & then right in the middle of the tension it's like, whoops, the utrom aren't coming in 10 years or 20 years, they're coming now. and in a week you're gonna be getting some really pointed questions about how you know the utrom envoy. and in a few years, well, there's gonna be some planetary evacuation) like the whole story is about... anxiety. mikey feeling the weight of the future on him in every moment. actually seeing things collapse would be a relief; you'd get the release of all the potentiality collapsing into an actual problem. the moral of the story is you get what you get and in the end all mikey's actions, good or bad or otherwise, have bought him is nine more months of ignoring his problems.

anyway sorry to all the tmnt fans who were expecting a happy cheerful mikey/raph story. this is actually about the fundamental injustice of existence. whoops!

[iantimony]

a very uncertain tuesday

listening

TWO new Jim Gordon Must Die episodes in the past few weeks !!!!! I am eating well.

gym music was Painted Paradise (Fleshbore) and their other album Embers Gathering which I don't think is on bandcamp. not my standard fare and I definitely can't pick out a song to be my favorite but it's good yelly gym music.

Redd & The Paper Flowers will be playing live near me at a nebulous date but I unforch won't be able to go. they're good! all singles so far, no full albums. reminds me of laufey so I found myself going to listen to her instead. favorite tracks: ljams, dipsomania. (dipsomania reminds me of the beatle's song "my guitar gently weeps", something about the chord progression maybe?)

reading

The Playlist Power Broker Who Makes or Breaks New Artists (Anne Steele): on one hand, I'm surprised her job hasn't been algorithm-ified yet. on the other, I feel like this kind of recommendation system works best when it's a close friend going "yo, check out this album, it's great". especially with the drama from last year with spotify's genre categories or lack thereof because they fired that one guy this feels a little like trying to come back from that? also lol didn't I just see a post about how spotify did something at the Trump inaugeration ...

Her dad, the 10,000 records he left behind and a viral lesson in grief (Janay Kingsberry): lots of articles about dead dads across my radar lately. this is a really sweet story.

watching

I'm watching Serial Experiments Lain again with my beloved boyfriend! my charlie day pepe sylvia moment was trying to explain the parallels to gnosticism I was seeing in the show to two different friends who had seen Lain and having them both go "??!" so I'm very excited to have that conversation with someone who DOES kind of know what gnosticism is already so I can be told whether or not I'm insane for seeing it

got my friends into Comrade Detective. gotta finish rewatching that with the boyf as well, and he suggested Death of Stalin after we watched the first ep together.

I've Been Keeping a Secret From You (Florian Gadsby): he is sooo meticulous.

Creating a Classical Tanto (Crossed Heart Forge): this dude is fucking insane. months of work to just lacquer the handle...

Making the Banana Knife (Bobby Duke Arts): I forgot about this guy! good to see that he's still making things though I do still find him slightly annoying! his setup also seems to have been significantly upgraded since I last watched so good for him

playing

more hades game, more dnd, doing session 0 for a blades in the dark game this weekend!

making

working on the fingerless gloves still! I have about a week to finish less than a dozen rows so I'm feeling good about that. early birthday present for my mom, gotta get a card for my grandma as well...

eating

Creamy Miso + Coconut Butter Beans from beloved mutal girlfriendsofthegalaxy - REALLY fucking good. maybe the coconut is a little too rich for me but it's sooo tasty. I added more liquid to make it more soupy but I do still have about half a can of coconut that I gotta figure out what to do with asap.

boyfriend made keema matar that I am just finishing tonight. really yummy over rice. this plus the bean soup thing has had me in Slop Food mode (appreciative) lol

moving

only one gym visit this past week! 11am-noon: leg extension (60lb, 3x8 then 2x5 slowly), inner thigh (70 lb, 3x8 then 2x5 slowly), outer thigh (70lb, 3x8 and 80lb, 2x5 slowly), hip thrust machine (no weight, 2x5 and 10lb, 2x6), leg press (80lb, 3x8), and inclined bicep curls (15lb 5 4 2, 10lb 3x8) for fun on this leg day

I still really want to integrate more yoga and stretching...goal for next week.

misc

[looks at the state of scientific grants and funding in the USA right now] Uh Oh Sisters! tune in next week to see if I still have a job!

[innernachoesandguacamole]

Input You, Output You

(I understand this may be completely redundant as there’s only so many ways one can describe the very simple and intuitive concept of ‘just be’, but my mind has run in circles with ‘what about the circumstances or senses’ despite the principle being repeated a million times over, so I thought I’d put my thoughts down to help myself better understand it, and hopefully help others better understand through this interpretation!)

I’ve recently been spending more time on my phone that I’d like on brain-numbing, meaningless stuff

Not just social media, but mindless mobile games

Just being inundated with excessive visual and aural stimulation that says nothing, means nothing once the app is closed

I feel drained and disconnected afterwards

I can’t engage with family or friends as much as I like, my thoughts drift back even when I’m not actively scrolling or playing, it’s like my mind becomes a jumbled pile of brainrot mush that doesn’t even make me happy

Yet I find myself going back again and again for that comfortable, predictable stimulation

But I recently came across an ig reel by Adam / etymologynerd that’s lingered in my mind since first watching: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_VnTi2Pjg8/?igsh=djFuYnNtZnY0c290

If you don’t feel like watching he’s discussing how ai generated content’s ability to make comprehensible… anything is solely due to the massive amounts of human-created data it’s trained on

It doesn’t actually understand or create like a person does because it’s a pattern predictor, not a soul or individual being

Once it starts training on itself it loses that conscious discerner and so the outputs get less coherent until it eventually eats its own tail and just makes nonsense

Same thing can be applied to you because the human mind-body is itself a pattern predictor that spits out whatever it’s fed - think solving an equation, drawing from past experience, a mediocre song stuck in your head because you were fed it against your will by spotify’s stupid algorithm and now you’re singing the lyrics, your internal clock being fucked up because you kept sleeping at 3am lol

The mind-body is not its own conscious entity, it can’t do anything by itself

But even with all these seemingly automatic thoughts and actions, you always have the ability to consciously step out and change the scene

You as the observer bring it into existence and continue to keep it alive through your awareness of it

If you allow your awareness to follow or focus on a certain belief or habit, your world will naturally adjust to output that initial belief again and again and again

This doesn’t necessarily have to be inherently good or bad; it’s up to you to continuously check on the data you choose to input

Are you content with what you are observing? If not, why have you not already tweaked your dataset?

As you continue to submit your power to the primitive, lifeless machine of the mind-body with manufactured fears and desires and identities, does your life feel like it’s losing meaning? Do you want enough to escape that comfort of familiarity in order to go beyond?

Is the reward of loving yourself, of returning to yourself enough for you to step out of the cycle into the vastness of infinity, even with initial resistance and garbage outputs from the pattern predictor?

Remind yourself of your autonomy again and again

Your inner foundation trains your ‘AI’ to imitate the input of your focused attention and your being

Take time to take a step back from the generated illusion and focus on what speaks to you :) as the dataset consolidates, the output will naturally reflect it

Don’t worry about the how or when

You don’t need to source, blueprint, or assemble the parts of the machine in order to install it and reap the rewards

Know it’s part of you and let the magic happen

Input ____, output ____

That’s all :)

[thelanor-s-astame]

Prologue

(The Hastag for these is #HKR-BTS)

So I’ve been thinking about how I’m gonna start doing a Behind The Scenes for Hollow Knight Resurrected And, while I’ve put a ton of theming in the series. I think there’s one theme that really permeates the whole thing. This theme kinda came about by accident… but it’s the least surprising thing in the world that it’s all over these videos, because it’s how the videos came to be at all: Never let anyone tell you that rage and spite cannot create something beautiful. Especially if the thing you’re raging against is “The Way Things Are.” People will try to tell you it is dishonorable to fight against the dark to reach the end of the tunnel. Fight them too. They put the tunnel there. And that light at the end doesn’t just exist in front of you, it’s above you, and if the walls and ceiling of the tunnel cease to exist, that light would shine on you, and all the people you love, where you stand.

But of course the thing I was spiting at the time was the Youtube Algorithm, so if that up there resonated with you, sorry about that kick in the balls lol.

Anyway that’s no secret. That’s how I announced I was gonna be making Hollow Knight videos again! But it ultimately starts with the idea I had for Whenever Silksong came out was a more narrative focused series than my Hollow Knight one, and maybe a little longer running because the only content youtube would recommend to anyone from our channel was the Hollow Knight videos despite the overall praise that they got. They just didn’t get as many immediate views.

But I had an idea of the character I wanted hornet to be. That’s why she’s the best characterized bug early on. And if I ever do end up doing that Silksong series, not a lot of that will have changed. My original idea for Hornet is still very much who she is currently in HKR, I’ve just delved a little deeper. I liked to play a wide swath of games. I’ve never liked to stick to one for very long, and if I was gonna stick to one, it was probably going to be something like Path of Exile. But Hollow Knight is a game that’s good as hell. But I kind of resented youtube for Pigeonholing me into being a Hollow Knight Youtuber. But, it was getting to the point where the channel was just slowly wasting. And, well, Silksong did not come out. And the things that gave us the big views were the Hollow Knight videos. This was on top of me having a pretty bad year. A couple of my family members got very sick from cancer, My dad had mostly decided to remove himself from my life, and I’d gotten into a car crash. So, Fuck it. New Hollow Knight series.

Now having my friends do voice acting was kind of a new idea. And ultimately, just a really good one. I’d had them do some quotes on some of my video essays. But voice acting characters was something I’d just started having them do. The first one was the video directly preceding the Hollow Knight ones. A Dyson Sphere Simulator video about building a giant penis! It was a lot of fun and taking that route into Hollowest was ultimately the best possible way to go! The original idea was to make it a prologue to what the Silksong videos were going to be. Just kind of a short jaunt through Hollownest where I spent one episode per area. And then after every video, put a little advertisement for my other videos to maybe get people to watch those, and then maybe youtube would start recommending them, and then I become un-pigeonholed.

And to be clear. The thing I said in the announcement video where I pointed out it was not the fault of anyone who watched my videos that they didn’t get big. Still true. Youtube Fucked me. Not my fans. I’ve been incredibly lucky on youtube honestly! The very worst comments I’ve gotten have been along the lines of “Broo you’re still doing Hollow Knight stuff? Booring” And contrasting with the best comments that have been close to “this series changed my life” The community I’ve grown and the fans I’ve gotten have always surprised me as being fantastically supportive and wonderful. I might have the most positive comments section in all of youtube! But that means there’s no controversy, so there’s no hatewatching. Youtube would much prefer some toxicity. The only sin the Graveyard Media fans have committed is being way to chill.

But if you’re wondering why I haven’t stopped, even though it didn’t work to stop the channels decline, it’s the same reason that it didn’t become a simple one episode per zone series. Because the more I did, the more I fell in love with what I was making. And the more I wanted to nurture it and make it into something I was proud of. If it was gonna be the youtube channels Last Hurrah, I wanted to make is such a hurrah that it will be worthy of remembrance! (Can’t even keep myself from the LOTR bullshit in this lmao)

And I’m proud of what I’ve done on it. And all the best stuff is still to come. I’ve saved most of it for the final episode. And I’m gonna try and get that done too! Because if I can keep going after all I’ve been through, god will need to come down from heaven with a gun and shoot me in the head if he wants me to stop!

[salty-dracon]

hsr 2.6 liveblog (explodes with excitement, dies from headache)

this is just another filler patch so no HUGE recap this time

anyway uhhhhhh the star rail trio goes to college (and i being american will have so much stuff to say about it) (i miss college) and their party is crashed by a combination fucked up film producer and monkey armageddon. oh and rappa beats up one or both of them.

Mission Start!

Welt and Himeko are literally parents but they're both scholars. Sheltering a trio of aimless twentysomethings and their pet rabbit

EXPENSIVE TUITION LOL WELCOME TO AMERICA FUCKERS

I'm already super excited for this patch. Besides the promise of a man with horrible mental health issues, this is the first time the Trailblazer will be traveling with Dan Heng in Penacony alongside March.

Pom-Pom. Oh no, it's MR HOLY FUCKERONI-

And that "you see the astral express in the lecture hall 1k" is already inaccurate (it's the moment of sol, not golden hour!!! dammit!)

RIBBONS THAT SERVE NO PURPOSE-

ROLL DEX- oh I miss the humor. This game is funny as fuck.

I like monkeys, they're good at kicking ass in like two different Asian epics. Oh, these aren't those kinds of monkeys? Noooooooo.

What's in the box? Rappa apparently! And she's sleeping right next to me - woah girl I may be bisexual but at least take me out to dinner first!

Oh no. Psychological horror monkeys. This is going to be a crazy patch.

monke

good on the vas for striking in the US, they need better conditions, but I'm also super glad that this patch is voiced so I could hear my feral raccoon go "bana bana"

rappa what an intro - BONK

prono-uncing things incorectly (anyone remember that vine series?)

"osaru" as in "saru" which is Japanese for monkey

"Do American college campuses really look like this?" Not the ones I've been to

Dan Heng's mouth is curving upward by 2 degrees when he says "let's take a look around" that's how you know he's excited

People who are good about analyzing this game's characters have been noting how Dan Heng has changed the way he interacts with his two besties over the course of the game. In this setting, he's not standing apart from them at all to protect or watch over them, he's chilling by their side, showing how relaxed he feels.

Bruhhhh my fanfic was so inaccurate lmao

how do you do fellow student

Dan Heng listens to the dean(?) cancel all classes and he's like "yup, sounds like Penacony" bro why aren't you concerned. this is how I know you've never been to an academic college

nooooo the "lecture hall" is just a test room noooooooo (is this how rwby fans felt writing fanfiction after season 2)

oh this guy absolutely has a 2.4 out of 5 stars on ratemyprofessor.

no way he's this fucking excited bro even march is on his case

It's been less than two minutes and he's already threemouthing AND using mind control powers. Good god he's completely insane

Most Normal Man In Penacony if I'm being completely honest

his English VA is reading the lines so well. like he always does (drv3, hfr) but he's really cooking

you know somethings wrong when your friend with the most boring smartphone case in the universe gets a shot at becoming a Hollywood star and you, funny meme creature, don't

awwww I love walking around with my friends

yes bestie this is what people call chuunibyou

is she ok

hi boothill. this ain't even him trying to pull a heist or do something crazy he's just trying to mentor rappa or something

is the dreamscape being infected with banana memoria or something, is that why cowboy is having such a hard time right now? his self censoring algorithm got replaced with an even worse self censoring algorithm?

Oh Robin is immune to the banana tuning (idol bullshit) and set Boothill back to normal real quickly. Good for her! Is this why she ends up DJing that one party? To unbanana the crowd?

"tough guys exploring their soft side are a thing these days"

robinhill fans must be going insane rn

Slumbernana Monkey Slasher Fanfiction isn't surprising to me. Getting your fanwork banned for disturbing content??? That's weird! (Note: I am a horror writer and you should SEE the things the torture surgeon does in my work)

Dr. Primitive is messing with the memoria, yeah.

AWWWW MARCH SITTING ON THE DESK AWWWW THEY LOOK JUST LIKE COLLEGE STUDENTS IN AN EMPTY CLASSROOM TOGETHER AWWWWW

*hands you a bottle of okami ink* paint moo deng the hippo right now

dan heng please get banana'd it would be so funny

yup there we go

and that's how march meets boothill

dan heng really loves his friends doesn't he awww

THEY TURNED RICHIE INTO A MONKEY - wait no richie's still alive

this feels like a weird ass high school subplot a la an old Disney channel show and it's funny to watch

he got infected

THEY'RE ACTUALLY TURNING PEOPLE INTO MONKEYS

finally, dr primitive name drop

hi reca

IS THIS WHOLE SCRIPT SERIOUSLY A CHAINSAW MAN REFERENCE-

the English dub cast is having too much fucking fun this patch

please don't make reca normal. I need more psychological horror from him

yeah that's definitely a mad scientist

THERE'S MY PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR FILM DIRECTOR (what a badass cutscene!)

wait BLACK SWAN'S COWORKER?!

ugh... he's technically OK he's just really really crazy.... boring.....

NO NOT BOOTHILL'S HATRED FOR THE IPC NOOOO THAT'S WHY WE LIKE HIMMMM

oh god they basically reverted him to a 10 year old in an adult body

he's... fine somehow

Dr. Primitive is honestly one of the more interesting mad scientists I've seen. He's got an interesting and fucked up philosophy that feels more magnanimous than just trauma. And he's not receptive to threats. He's very logical except for his emotions which are also in his opinion perfectly logical. It's interesting.

That was a cool cutscene! Again! The Matrix reference LOL

every time dan heng says "bana" he seems to die inside a little

oh duh. memokeepers are memetic entities. they'd of course be infected by memetic viruses.

WHAT

I wasn't going to comment on the fact that Kucha didn't sound perfectly like a real ninja master but you're telling me he was never one in the first place?! And I thought Kucha and the Primitive experiments were different and they were the same?! That's crazy! This is really good.

Awwwwww. And that's how she became a Ranger.

what a suspiciously dj-turntable sized box

yeehaw

please just party already lol

:/

(one boss fight later) damn that cowboy can dance and that raccoon can stick the landing

"academic years are some of the happiest of their lives" yeag. yeah I miss them

oh he's craaaaaaaazy

Final thoughts on this patch, after reading some reviews, getting some rest, and editing:

Never a dull moment when the dango trio are together. It was really great getting to have some fun times together with the besties again- it was honestly kind of a disappointment that Dan Heng was never with us for long on Penacony, so having him around for just this little bit was pretty nice. Also, very fun to see him be passionate about something and involve him in the protagonist's shenanigans.

Rappa felt like such a gag character at first (I'm old enough to remember the Pokemon kids from my high school) until we got to her backstory which went SUPER hard and hit like a truck.

Reca has issues. I like him. I still do feel a little disappointed that the whole "look at our villain, he's really fucked up" thing from the trailer was a massive bait and switch. I loved his writing though, and the full version of the film reel scene was INSANE.

But by far my favorite character in this patch is, believe it or not, Dr. Primitive. You saw so much of his philosophy on display within both Rappa's flashbacks and his conversations with the other characters, including the way he manipulates his minions. (And I forgot because I was just on autopilot for some of it, but yes also what kind of specimens really interest him a la Boothill.) Comparisons can definitely be drawn between him and Ruan Mei, both Genius Society members that really give 0 shits about what's good for the rest of the universe. For Genius Society lore enjoyers, this patch's going to be the subject of a lot of conversation.

Boothill yay. Robinhill shippers will be going wild this patch.

I saw a lot of criticism on the story, and I'm inclined to agree with it. Not every patch can be a banger, but this one could have used an hour or two less of fluff. The reason the liveblog is so fast at the beginning and slows down by the end is honestly that I just got bored. Participating in every full detail of the villain's plot wasn't COMPLETELY necessary, y'know? This isn't a game like Ace Attorney where you need to know every little bit. Honestly, I had a headache doing all of this in three sessions, and seeing the same jokes and even plot points restated over and over did sort of get to me. I wouldn't say this soured my opinion of anything in the long run, just that I hope this much fluff in a filler patch won't be the way things go in the future. (The previous Xianzhou filler had MUCH better pacing.)

[graysongraysoff]

i think switching over from twitter to bluesky these last couple days and watching my timeline as folks try to find each other over there has helped me isolate something that’s been bothering me for the last couple of years that i haven’t been able to articulate until now.

see, the fandoms and fanfic-sharing spaces i have been in until recently were very much just about enjoying x thing together in the very simplest sense. even in the bigger and more “topical” fandoms i’ve been in over the years, it was all about making a small, close-knit group of friends really casually in the tags by exchanging headcanons and rping and writing fics for each other in a very, like, “non-commercial” way. just hanging out and having fun and feeding off of each other’s passion in forums or later on tumblr with no expectations beyond just enjoying each other’s work and company. like sure i still got in my head about kudos and comments from time to time, who doesn't, but it was more of an every-once-in-a-while thing rather than being like. daily.

now, i don’t know if this is because of the specific fandoms i’m in currently or if fandom in general has made this shift as forum sites and tumblr have fallen off and more algorithmic sites like twitter and instagram have taken over, but recently trying to engage in fan spaces feels so much more like. capitalist now, lol. it’s all about networking and promoting your work and Getting That Bag (either figuratively via kudos and comments or literally via commissions and zines). not that this hasn't always been an element of fandom — i know it has, and a big one at that. and i know a lot of people enjoy this side of things, which is awesome! go get that bag! hell knows i’m gonna buy that merch and support those zines!

i’m just saying that, to me, it feels like that's the whole thing now rather than just a part of it. i largely haven’t been successful with finding fandom friends the way i used to, because, well, how do you start bantering casually with people in fandom tags now that everyone has left tumblr, and twitter and instagram et al basically function as fandom linkedin? the larger shift away from just goofing off in forums to creating promotional threads for your fanfic on bluesky and huge discord servers to network in... i don't know. i don't love it.

i’ve started using reddit a little more over the last few days, so we'll see; maybe that's where my chiller, more vibey fandom niche has vanished to. but i think trying to carve a space in this larger fandom culture is the root of this constant feeling of inadequacy i’ve been wrestling with these last couple years. everyone takes everything so much more seriously, and i pay so much more attention to my ao3 stats than i used to as a result. i’m simply not having fun anymore.

it's no wonder i want to orphan my fics and delete my accounts when it feels like the only way to make fandom friends now is through fucking marketing. i do enough of that at my job without making it a part of my hobbies, too.

[ashadowofburnedoutstardust]

Hello again anon 🐯

Yeah, this bullshitshow has been anything but private

I don't think this man has any comprehension of the damage he has done to his image

As it stands he currently has no audience, no fandom, very little to motivate anyone to follow him around regardless of whatever project he has going

His fans are losing interest?

I started watching the video for the award and lost interest so I have no idea what's been said and I have zero interest in finding out, but then I'm not a Chris Evans fan either, I just stumbled across them after having a weird prophetic dream and following the algorithmic narratives

For the most part, they're pretty awesome people. I didn't like seeing them treated the way they have been so I took what action I could. I'm pretty picky about people and they're the only reason I've stuck around this long

He needs a better team?

He doesn't just need a new team, he needs a new name, a new house, a new life; the man needs to disappear out of the pure embarrassment he's caused himself and all of those around him

And he's badly embarrassed his fans by proxy for having supported someone with no fucking spine willing to betray even the lies he used to help con them with

(Sorry to be harsh, I haven't had dinner yet and it has been a long day at work)

Is he being honest with himself meaning it wouldn't end up like this?

I do truly wonder if he understands that he has also bought into his own image. Does he think that any part of the persona hes had curated over the years actually reflects who he is?

Christopher, you are nothing like any of the characters you've played and each piece of them that's been published in place of your actual personality traits in articles is simply another lie to yourself

Being private doesn't mean being ashamed?

If hes not he should be. Ashamed. Ashamed. Ashamed.

It ties into the lies he's told himself. Honey blocking people is not going to make them stop talking about you

If you are genuinely so scared that telling the truth about whats gone on then maybe you shouldn't have been doing it to begin with

Christopher if this is truly your choice, to fuck around with 20 somethings at your fucking age then yes you should be ashamed because you are a Hollywood cliche and still emotionally a 15 year old boy, basically a rich pervert and theres no amount of PR cleaning that's going to get you out of that after so badly knocking down the fan support system holding you up and paying your bills

Your team aren't the only ones who have been coasting

It's odd a little for me. I tend to be optimistic by nature and not the "hyper-critical debunking character" I've played so much on my blog so there is that genuine little part of me that despite not being a fan I really do want a positive outcome for him

But let me be clear about this: it's not that I'm hoping for it for him, I'm hoping for it for his fans

When you are strangers on the internet it can be a lot easier to let things out to people when you have a safe place to do it from behind an internet profile. Like I've said before I've talked to thousands of his fans by now and the number of them that were distressed, that needed a safe place to vent is extensive

I may not be a mean person IRL, (I get called bubbly.....a lot lol) but I'm fairly sure after spending so much time consoling so many of them I could summon genuine enough rage to scare him straight, or at the very least some common fucking sense

These days I work in....well......let's generalise and say Healthcare; it's a very people focused job where taking into consideration that you have no idea what's going on in the rest of their life and how that affects their experience when they are in the establishment, the ability to empathise with so many people every day is really quite a natural thing for me despite my general introversion

But there are some things you have to learn to be firm on and is one of the most difficult lessons I had to learn to do my job and help make the environment a better place

I have to say I don't think this man has ever learned how to establish boundaries with literally anyone, no wonder I got the impression he needed a strong woman to tell him what to do

(He really does need a replacement Lisa that tells him what to do, but also one that's actually happy to actually do it no woman should ever let a man put their emotional labour on them)

I've done my best to fuck up their narrative bullshitshow as much as possible as revenge for fucking with the fandom friends I had and lost because of what they did

Indeed anon, good luck Chris. If you never learn to stand your ground in a meaningful way nothing will ever change

Do something different

[hellasaiko]

GENUINELY, SORRY lol

i feel like im on the verge of some sort of breakdown when it comes to my own art. Ever since the pandemic and having to completely drop out of school because of it i've seen a complete 180 of my ability to enjoy art and the traction it gets online and i think its affecting me greatly. This and watching my brother be incredibly successful with his art after trying for years, and people constantly talking about it might be killing me. (Except I'm not supposed to be jealous of other people, but. y'know.) I don't know what else to do.

I feel like im making cool things and following trends and changing my style but im slow and I keep earning followers that go inactive after years. I hate talking about it because I hate asking followers for anything and holding people to anything, and I don't want to complain about these things because Ive seen other artists speak about it and get awful reactions even though it's kinda how I feel.

I don't know how many times i have to learn the algorithm until something finally, FINALLY sticks. it's been over a decade since i started taking this seriously and views on my art has taken a nosedive. I genuinely don't know what I'm doing wrong here. I KNOOOW im not supposed to compare myself to other people but I don't know what the difference is between my brothers art and my own that makes people like it so much more. I don't know what makes popular art popular and mine not. I don't really want to be a streamer, I never wanted to be an influencer, all I wanted was to make something off my art because in short that is all I have.

I grew up with goals, I went to my dream college, I had a dream career lined up before the pandemic, and now I'm watching people in my own household do better than me at the thing i spent my entire life working towards and it's definitely fucking me up. I've been stuck in my tiny room for four years after wasting time at art school for nothing and i don't know how to feel or what to do about any of this

[graygiantess]

Thank you for In Hell Together After All, it absolutely crushed me (in a good, painful way). ❤️ It made me wonder what is your history with IWTV/The Vampire Chronicles: how did you become a fan, what caught your attention and what made you want to "stay"?

And also, you probably write a lot of your headcanons into your stories, but do you have any specific headcanons of any of the characters/relationships in the series?

Hey Nonny!

Sorry for the late reply. Covid broke my brain and I can only focus on reading/writing for very short stretches of time.

(I love getting these asks, though, so please no one feel deterred by this, lol!)

I'm so glad you enjoyed In Hell Together After All! And thank you for your ask. 😊

Putting my answer under the break again so as not to clog up people's dash with my novel-length ramblings.

Luce and TVC

I first got into TVC when I was 14, which is almost 21 years ago. My 13yo foster sister and I were completely obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

I was aware that there was a vampire movie with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and wanted to see it. I have a much older half-sister and the three of us ended up having a movie night at her house. We watched Interview With the Vampire and The Blair Witch Project.

We were all very 👁👁 throughout the entire movie. Then I bought a boxset of the first four books, foster sister and inhaled the first three books, watched the QotD movie and got very pissed off by how terrible it was. 😂

We were like, "Guess we'll always have the books 🤷‍♀️". I ordered TVA, because QotD had left me completely Armand-obsessed, and started reading Tale of the Body Thief.

I don't remember quite what it was, but Lestat says something at the start of TotBT that my 14yo self just thought was so stupidly retconny that I went, "Yeah, fuck that". I think it was something about how he only ate bad guys and that that was somehow in service of Jesus? Whatever it was, I wasn’t having it, so I put it down and never picked it back up. 😂

Then in my late teens/early twenties I followed Anne Rice on Facebook for a while, but I got kinda creeped out when she started addressing everyone with 'dearest People of the Page'. I distinctly remember thinking, "Lady, I'm here for gay vampire reasons, not to be in a cult". 😅 So I unfollowed her and spent about a decade not thinking about TVC very much at all.

AND THEN in early summer of 2022 the YouTube algorithm informed me that AMC was making an IWTV show. I reread IWTV and in October thought, "Let’s give this a go."

I had my reservations because I still remembered my teenage rage at the QotD movie, and I wasn't sure how I felt about them changing the time period and casting 'some old guy' as Daniel (sorry Eric! 🙈).

BUT THEN Jacob came on all, "Dear Mr. Molloy, did you know you can orgasm just from hearing a man's voice? Wanna finish what we started half a century ago?" and my head just about exploded!

This is the second interview?! They’re revisiting it 49 years later?! OMGGG, that's the most genius storytelling move in the history of storytelling! 😱

I watched ep2 right after and then desperately needed to yell about the show with other sickos. So I joined Twitter and started reading fic again (which I'd only really done when I was 17 and obsessed with that wizard school franchise), started writing fic, joined fic-themed group chats/Discords and made a Tumblr so I could (lovingly) yell at other fic writers.

And now I've published over 150k words in fic and there's IWTV fan art all over my house. 😂

So it was really the show that made me come back to stay. It's just thee best TV show of all time to me.

And as much as this fandom can be a shit show, it's really helped me stay sane while grappling with my long covid, which has left me very incapacitated in many other areas of my life.

Luce's headcanons

Asking me for my headcanons has the same effect as asking me for my favorite movies or songs in that it immediately makes me forget any headcanons I ever had. 😂

You're right that I write a lot of them into my fics, which are mainly me exploring my headcanons and asking myself what if...? I have a couple others, though I'm not sure these are really headcanons or more actual theories, though, so I apologize if this wasn't what you were looking for.

- I've mentioned this one before, but Louis and Lestat had a grand old time during their honeymoon phase between Louis getting turned and Louis almost eating Grace's baby. I think people tend to make too big a deal out of Louis being an unreliable narrator but it's a little too convenient how quickly he skips over those 6-7 years. I think he doesn’t like to think about how much fun he had with Lestat just having all the sex, getting super rich and eating whoever the fuck he wanted.

- Daniel isn’t going to give a single fuck about the ethics of killing people in order to survive once he finally becomes a vampire. We already know he’s selfish and a hypocrite. I can just see him fully ready to view all humans as savory inferiors once he’s no longer one of them.

- If show!Daniel ever met Marius, he would punch him in the face. 🤭

- Santiago is going to be SO jealous of Louis's relationship with Armand. I don't care if Santiago and Armand end up having zero homoerotic tension between them on screen, they're fucking to me.

- I'm also a Claudeline truther. Show!Claudia doesn’t need a parental figure the way book!Claudia does but she very much yearns for romantic love, and she did say Charlie was the last boy she'd ever love, and went after the woman when Lestat asked her if she wanted the Mr. or the Mrs. in ep7.

Kudos to anyone who made it all the way to the end of this answer! Your prize is getting to choose if I share:

A) A silly anecdote about that movie night I had with my sisters.

B) A shocking fact that might get me cancelled as an Armandaniel fic writer. 👀

(Though tbh, if you pick B, I'll probably still give you A for free.)