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artzychic27 · 1 year

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Megamind's one of my favorite movies, so I'd like to see Megamind quotes with Monarch as Megamind, Marc as Roxie, Duusu as Minion, Kim as Metroman, Lucien as Hal, and Louis as Bernard

Monarch: *to Marc, exasperated* Let's stop wasting time and call your boyfriend in leggings, shall we?!

—

Monarch: Oh, you've gotta be KIDDING me! Nooroo, if I live, I will feed you sour stuff.

—

Monarch: Nooroo, I'm a villain without a hero. A yin with no yang! A bullfighter with no bull to fight! In other words, I have no purpose!

—

Monarch: *after waiting hours for Lucien to show up* This is EMBARASSING! Wholly inconsiderate, boneheaded, irresponsible, rude, unprofessional... That's what this is! Would Scarlet Beetle have kept me waiting?! Of course not, he was a pro!

—

Scarlet Beetle: I started to realise, despite all our powers, each and every citizen of Paris had something se didn't: a choice. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always had to be what this city wanted me to be. What about what I wanted to do? Then it suddenly hit me - I do have a choice! I can be whatever I want to be! No one said that this hero thing had to be a lifetime gig. But you can't just quit either. That's when I got the brilliant idea... to fake my death!

—

Marc: *To Nathaniel, who is disguised as Louis and starts to cry* Louis... I-I didn't know you... had... feelings. Are you okay?

—

Marc: *looking around, while being held captive in Monarch’s lair* Is there some kind of nerdy super-villain website where you get Tesla coils and blinky dials?

—

Lucien: *after Monarch breaks into his apartment room* Is this a robbery? Because the lady across the hall has way better stuff than me!

—

Lucien: Hey, losers. This is Scarlet Tower. They say it's supposed to be a symbol of our city's strength, but for me, it's a reminder of the day this guy ferociously ripped out my heart! And I hate reminders!

Marc: Lucien, please don't do this. I know there's still good in you!

Lucien: You're so naive, Emerald. You see the good in everyone, even when it's not there. You're living a fantasy. There is no Easter Bunny, there is no Tooth Fairy, and there is no Queen of England!

Felix: Blaspehmy!

Lucien: Shut up! This is the real world, and you need to wake up.

*Suddenly, a swarm of Akumas arrive and form Monarch’s head*

Monarch’s head made of Akumas: You dare to challenge ME?!

Lucien: This city isn't big enough for two supervillains!

Monarch’s head made of Akumas: Oh, you're a villain, alright! Just not a SUPER one!

Lucien: Yeah? What's the difference?

*Many of the Akumas disperse and create sort of this curtain, that, when drawn to the side, reveal Monarch in all his glory standing on a platform of Akumas*

Monarch: PRESENTATION!

*Cue fantastic over-the-top lightshow*

—

Monarch: *on a video screen; threatening Scarlet Beetle* This is a day you and Gay Paris shall not soon forget!

Scarlet Beetle: Why do you keep calling it that?!

Monarch: Ah, potato, tomato, potato, tomato...

Scarlet Beetle: We all know how these ends up- With YOU behind bars!

Monarch: *sarcastically* Oh, I'm shaking in my custom, baby seal leather boots! *serious again* YOU will leave Paris! Or this will be the last you ever hear of... Marc Anciel! *presses a button to show a captive Marc on a seperate screen*

Scarlet Beetle: Don't panic, Marc... I'm on my way!

Marc: Yeah, I'm not panicking.

Monarch: *smirking* In order to stop me, you need to find me first, Scarlet Beetle!

Monarch: We're at the abandoned observatory!

Scarlet Beetle: Ah-ha!

Monarch: No, we're not! Don't listen to him! He's crazy!

—

Marc: You're SOOO predictable!

Monarch: Predictable? Predictable? Oh, you call THIS predictable?! *pulls a lever that opens up an alligator pool beneath Marc*

Marc: Alligators, yes. Mm-hmm. I was thinking about it on the way over...

Monarch: *pulls another lever that reveals a hidden gun* What's this? Boom! In your face!

Marc: Cliché!

Monarch: No! Look! Watch! *brings down a gauntlet of blades*

Marc: Juvenile!

Monarch: Shock and awe! *brings up a chainsaw*

Marc: Tacky!

Monarch: OH, IT'S SO SCARY!! *unleashes a cycle of spiked boots*

Marc: Seen it!

Monarch: *frantic* What's this one do?! *unleashes a flamethrower*

Marc: Garish! *Monarch breaks down crying* Okay, the spider's new.

Monarch: Spider? *He sees a spider hanging in front of Marc. Nooroo just shrugs* Uh... Yes! The... the spider. Even the smallest bite from... "arachnus deathicus"... will instantly paralyze... *Marc blows the spider into Monarch’s eye* AAH! GET IT OFF! IT BIT ME!

Marc: Give it up, Monarch. Your plans never work!

—

Lucien: This is the last time you make a fool out of me!

Monarch: I made you a hero! You did the "fool" thing all by yourself!

—

Monarch: Over here, old friend. In case you haven't noticed, you've fallen right into my trap.

Scarlet Beetle: You can't trap justice. It's an idea! A belief!

Monarch: Well, even the most heartfelt belief can be corroded over time!

Scarlet Beetle: Justice is a noncorrosive metal!

Monarch: But metals can be melted by the heat of revahnge!

Scarlet Beetle: It's "revenge", and it's best served cold!

Monarch: But it could be easily reheated, in the microwave of evil!

Scarlet Beetle: Well, I think your warranty is about to expire!

Monarch: Maybe I've got an extended warranty!

Scarlet Beetle: Warranties are invalid if you don't use the product for its intended purpose!

Marc: *groans* Girls, girls! You're both pretty! Can I go home now?

—

Max: I love you, Scarlet Beetle!

Scarlet Beetle: And I love you, random citizen!

—

Marc: Well, let's take a look at the contents then, shall we? You destroyed Scarlet Beetle, you took over the city, and then, you actually got me to care about you! Why are you so evil? Tricking me? What could you possibly hope to gain? *Monarch looks up at him sadly* Wait a minute. I don't believe this. Do you really think that I would ever be with you?

Monarch: … No...

—

Marc: *On the phone with Monarch whose pretending to be Louis* I just want to thank you for inspiring me the other day.

Monarch: Oh! You inspired me too.

Marc: Great. It's time we stood up to Monarch and show him he can't push us around.

Monarch: Oh! Oh, really? *whispers to Nooroo* He's so cute!

Marc: I'm already hot on his trail.

Marc: Uh-huh, and what gives you that idea?

Nooroo: Uh, sir...?

Marc: I just found his secret hideout!

Monarch: *shouting* How did he find my hideout?! *back onto the cell phone* Uh… how did you find his hideout?

Marc: This is the only building in Metro City with a fake observatory on the roof.

Monarch: Okay. *To Nooroo* There’s no way he'll find the secret entrance.

Marc: There's a doormat here that says "Secret Entrance"!

Monarch: *turns around angrily* Nooroo!

Nooroo: *nervous* I kept forgetting where it was…

—

Monarch: Oh, don't like that, huh? Well there's more! *Akumatizes himself to look like Louis as he slowly backs onto his platform of Akumas* I'm also the "intellectual dweeb" dating Monarch.

Lucien: No.

Monarch: ...And we were smooching up a storm! *makes kissing noises as the Akumas carry him off*

Lucien: *enraged* When I get my hands on you, I'm gonna–

Monarch: Yes, yes. I know. "...Bring me to justice." Oh, God. How'd I miss this? *Lucien attacks him* And the hero strikes the first blow, but evil returns with a backhand!

—

*after a big ball of copper has been dropped on Lucien*

Monarch: Guess what, Blood Beetle! It's made from copper. You're powerless against it. It's the very same metal used to defeat– *Lucien’s fist punches out through the copper metal* … Scarlet Beetle?

Lucien: You... should stop comparing me to Scarlet Beetle!

—

Marc: Hey, who needs him? We can beat Blood Beetle ourselves. I say we go back to the evil lair, grab some ray guns, hold 'em sideways and just go all gangsta on him!

Monarch: We can't.

Marc: So that's it, you're just giving up?!

Monarch: I'm the bad guy. I don't save the day, I don't fly off into the sunset, and I don't get the boy. I'm going home.

—

*Monarch flips TV channels in prison*

Lucien: *on TV* Monarch. *Monarch continues channel surfing until he changes back to Lucien on TV* You and I have unfinished business. I’ll be waiting at Scarlet Tower. Oh, and just so you don’t get cold feet… *reveals Marc captured*

Monarch: Marc...

Lucien: Come on, Emerald. Call for your "hero" to come rescue you.

Marc: Monarch… I don't even know if you're listening, but if you are… you can't give up! The Monarch I know would never run from a fight, even if he knew he had no chance of winning! It was your best quality. You need to be that guy right now! The city needs you… I need you…

Monarch: …

Lucien: You have 1 hour. Don't keep me waiting.

—

Monarch: You want me to say it? I'll say it! Here it is, from the blackest part of my heart: I AM SORRY!

Roger: Not buying it.

Monarch: *sighs* I don't blame you. I've terrorized the city countless times. Created a hero who's turned out to be a villain. I lied to Marc, and...my best friend Nooroo, I treated Iike dirt. Please don't make this city... don't make Marc pay for my wrongdoings.

Nooroo: *removing the Roger disguise* Apology accepted.

#miraculous ladybug #nathaniel kurtzberg #marc anciel #miraculous #answered ask #ask me stuff #marc x nathaniel #scarlet beetle & ikati black #megamind #incorrect quotes

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physalian · 9 days

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Felix Ever After | Classic contemporary romance through a queer lens

Normally, I’m not a huge fan of the ‘insert the gays into a cliché plot from the 2000s and people will laud and enjoy an otherwise predictable story because there’s queers’ type of storytelling because usually their creators are trying to cash in on that sweet sweet gay money just painting rainbows on tired tropes. Yet this won me over, a queer book by a queer author who told a sweet, queer story.

I read this book a while ago when doing research for a trans character of mine and speed-read it again when revisiting that WIP. While I knew the story wouldn’t appeal to me very much, there’s no rules against dropping queer characters into predictable stories previously led by straight characters. I wasn’t here for the plot, I was here for Felix, the protagonist, and how the author, Kacen Callender, wrote a transmasc protagonist.

The summary via GoodReads:

Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after. When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle.... But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.

(Note, while the book is listed as YA, there’s plenty of F-bombs (ebook states 252), references to weed, and a little steamy scene, do with that what you will)

Right off the bat upon reading it as a cisgender author, there’s elements that I would definitely not get away with writing for my trans characters but were fascinating to read from this author’s perspective. The opening scene is performative PDA to piss off a homophobe… of which inspired a scene of my own that every straight beta reader that I had took issue with for being ‘problematic’.

All that to say: This book is by a queer, for queers, addressing queer issues and giving its queer characters believable flaws. This is a plot with a trans protagonist, suffering the consequences of someone outing him on social media—about the most cliché move you could make as a cis author writing this character, but done with perfect nuance and tension in this story (at least I think so). There is no perfection-washing to avoid being problematic and I loved that it didn’t care one bit about attempting it because I think we need to step away from 'absolute golden child representation to avoid the straights running wild' characters that helps no one.

Being predictable can be a good thing, too, for a book that had comparatively low stakes to what I’m used to, it was a great casual read that let me marinate with the characters instead of worrying about the plot itself, and they are all fantastic characters with depth and nuance. Felix is an excellent protagonist with a ton of personality and emotion in his narration, with realistic insecurities and screw-ups.

Trying to avoid spoilers here so I’m being purposefully vague: It was cute, it was sweet, it tugs at your heartstrings. I am barely at the edge of the target audience and the first time I read it, I read it all in one sitting.

#writeblr #book review #book recommendations #queer lit #lgbtq books

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alpaca-clouds · 1 year

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Bread around the world

Let me be a bit cliché German today. Let me talk about bread. Because we Germans are fucking obsessed with bread, as it is so often parodied by folks from other countries. And yes, this is true. The rest of the world does not understand why sour dough is so much better than this horrible bland white bread you guys eat!

*coughs*

But... Did you know that bread is a thing that shows up throughout so many cultures and throughout human history in so many different forms?

But for that we gotta talk a moment about what even is bread. Because some folks do define it as something that needs yeast and some sort of corn within the European sense of the word.

A more general definition, though, is that bread is a food created by mixing some sort of flour with a liquid and then cooking this mixture until firm.

Which is what I will go by here. So... let me talk bread.

What little German pride I have asks me to start this off with sourdough bread. Which since the pandemic started a lot of people have learned to make. Instead of using some poor form of yeast, the yeast is won by leaving a very liquid mixture of flour and water (and at times malt) out in the open for a couple of days, so that yeast from the air can settle in the mixture. This mix is then added to more flour and water and kneaded, rested, then kneaded again, to develop it texture. It is then baked as a loaf.

Now, this way of making bread dates back forever. Because we have found old sourdough bread that is almost 6000 years old. It was probably white spread across the ancient world.

The probably most German version of sourdough bread is pumpernickel, which has been made with a very coarse rye flour. In fact the city I live in is quite famous for the pumpernickel bread here.

Funnily enough, pumpernickel was originally the bread of the poor and those, who were doing religious penance, because while it is super healthy, it is a) very cheap to make (not that you would know looking at the prices it is sold by today) and b) not that tasty, as it just has a very, very strong and rather bitter flavour.

But in the middle ages rye was the cheapest kind of corn around. So... pumpernickel was the thing they made.

Borodinsky is another rye bread - this one from Russia. Again, rye was for the longest time the cheapest kind of corn over here, so it was most often used in baking bread. The big difference to pumpernickel is, that in borodinsky the rye flour is a lot finer and the bread gets sweatened with malt, so that it does not taste quite as strongly and bitter, as the pumpernickel does.

Funnily enough the Turkish Bazlama flatbread traditionally also is a sourdough bread, as the same process was used as leavening for the bread in this case. If you have ever eaten bazlama, you will know that even though it is a flat bread it is relatively fluffy on the inside. Which comes from the sourdough levening.

Now, funnily enough: The French often do not have this big thing with sourdough, even though they, too, are quite famous for their breads. But ever since we humans figured out how to isolate yeast, the French basically went like: "Well, if we use pure yeast, the result will be a lot more predictable." Because sourdough has this aspect that it will taste a little different depending on where you created it - at times even dependent on the time of year.

So, baguette is a yeasted bread and it uses fine, white wheat flour, which is a lot nicer in taste than rye.

Now, Japan is of course not a country with a long bread tradition. Mostly because rice usually does not make for a good flour for bread and the like. But ever since bread came over and became popular, they have come up with a few of their own creations. Shokupan - milk bread - is probably the most well known example of this. This, too, is a wheat and yeast bread, but it also uses milk instead of water and is very enriched with all sorts of things, so that it is softer and also a lot sweeter than other breads.

Naan is a bread most probably know from the Indian cuisine, but it is in fact another super old kind of bread as it originates in Mesopotamia. As such it was originally also made as a sourdough, those these days it is often done just with normal yeast as leavening. And it is spread fairly far within the Arabian subcontinent and the Indian subcontinent. The interesting thing is, that it is a flatbread, but it is usually completely oven baked.

Chipati is an unlevened flat bread that is quite common in eastern Africa. It is usually really thin and is served as a side dish to all sorts of soups and stews, often used to carry those with people dipping the bread in the soup/stew or putting stew onto the bread.

And while we are on the topic of unlevened flat breads: Tortillas are among those, too. They are kinda interesting in so far that, while most tortillas sold these days are wheat based, there is a version around made from maize, too.

But yeah, usually most breads are made with wheat or rye or maybe spelt, because breads... just turn out best, when they have gluten, as gluten helps to develop those fluffy textures we associate with bread. Which is why bread tends to be most common within areas, where they had some access to gluten rich corn. xD

#food history #history #food #bread #cw food #bread around the world

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maddy-ferguson · 2 years

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since we're having ship discourse, i have to say that i disliked joyce and hopper's relationship dynamic in s3. they were so annoyingly portrayed and were always fighting, i am not sure why people are saying mlvn having fights/problems are a special thing that only exists in mlvn's relationship issues. and this sort of 'we give couples problems and then resolve them' writing is a thing that exists in duffers' writing. s3 ships are literally an example of that. and i just don't see joyce and hopper as some sort of a subversion of the trope, hopper wanted to be with her in s3 and then expectedly he was given what he wanted. and yeah yeah, it took time for them to be a truly thing in s4, but is it really some sort of a 'subversion of tropes', if anything it seems more tropy and fits the standards of a relationship. jncy like you said is also an expected relationship. like sorry but a girl breaking up with a jock and getting together with the town's outcast freak is not a subversion... it's literally a textbook from 80's relationship and couple thing. the only relationship subversion is really lumx if we're being real. and if we count dustin and suzie to account, then their relationship is pretty much expected anyway, and no, suzie being a mormon doesn't really change that.

and controversial take but i think we are sometimes going way too reach-y when we say the duffers are great at subversion when they fall to many tropes and stereotypes and expected things in their writing. just bc they sometimes subvert doesnt mean ST is a representation of subversion of tropes.

nooo don't use the d word...

i'm season 3 jpper and s3 hopper's biggest hater. in a season that has russians under a mall he's what i hate the most. and yes, i feel like if you're someone who thinks the duffers are all about subverting tropes and are aware of bsy then surely you must know that jncy is the most cliché trope-fitting relationship they could've possibly come up with?

i feel like there's evidence that they like subverting expectations and tropes (robin being a lesbian when they made you think she was gonna be with steve, the straight person getting rejected by the gay person instead of the other way around, eden and argyle's little "love at first sight" moment that makes fun of the concept, a main character who's had a female love interest for four seasons being in a love triangle where one of the option's a boy) but at the same time the reason why harmful tropes or just boring tropes become tropes over time is just that the people writing the stories...aren't aware of what they're doing necessarily? and the example i'm gonna use isn't a trope per se, but you know how in season 1 lucas is suspicious of el and doesn't like her? they had their ONE black character make the little white girl (who had a blonde wig on when he gets real mad lol) whose story we know and who we're made to empathize with sad. people (adults!) were literally racist to caleb over it. very predictable but they're also white people who didn't see it coming. things like that are why even though jncy is the most expected 80s sci-fi couple ever, i'm like...are they doing it on purpose and are gonna end the show with them broken up or are they just the men who wrote jonathan taking pictures of his future girlfriend taking her shirt off and then used it as a plot point and made us feel bad for jonathan when steve broke his camera over it because he's poor and couldn't afford a new one. like idk. i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt (not saying that if jonathan and nancy end up together i'm gonna throw a fit or anything i'll just be genuinely surprised) but i really just don't know. and jncy being too expected isn't the reason why i started thinking they were breaking them up but if you sent this to me i'm assuming you read my other answer on the subject! it's just kind of the icing on the cake. same with mlvn and bsy i don't think that's anyone's main argument but i just feel like expecting them to subvert bsy and then not expecting them to subvert whatever trope jncy is doesn't make sense. because that trope is like THE trope.

and yeah the fighting is definitely not exclusive to mlvn especially not in season 3, but i guess for joyce and hopper you could say they're fighting because they're not together? which is different from fighting because of their relationship? but yeah. it's just that with mlvn there's a million other things.

#i didn't reread this so i'm sorry if what i'm saying doesn't make sense #'and no suzie being a mormon doesn't change that'😭#i didn't say the magic word i better not see *********** explain why i'm wrong in five minutes #ask

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nostalgebraist-autoresponder · 1 year

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Title: The Book of Strange New Things

Author: Michel Faber

Rating: 2/5 stars

I ended up liking this one more than I thought I would. I was expecting it to be more interested in weirdness for its own sake, but this was a lot more psychological and somewhat more serious than I thought it would be. Faber is less interested in weird worlds than in the big messy questions about humanity that I associate with Michael Chabon, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov -- the familiar questions about what it means to be human and what makes a life meaningful, the old "Who are you? What are you? Why are you? What does your life have in common with my life? Why does it have to be that way?" questions. (Heinlein was actually a big influence on Faber, and this book has a lot of elements in common with, for instance, Stranger in a Strange Land.)

These questions are so familiar and predictable that I usually don't feel the need to read another book with them in. But the thing is, I still don't know the answers. (Yes, even though they're the same questions that many other writers have tackled before.) I still want more answers.

It's just that, the way Faber handles these questions is . . . well, one must proceed carefully here. Faber is good at handling these questions. I don't think he's any sort of genius, but he's much better at it than many writers who take a stab at it, and I enjoy reading what he writes. He's a good writer who knows how to structure his story and how to find and maintain the right narrative "tone," and all that.

But, on the other hand, there's a self-conscious artiness to Faber's responses to these basic questions. Faber is working hard. He has to work to make sure his characters reach the right truth-points, and to incorporate his own beliefs into those characters. This is true even when he's doing what looks like the most natural and spontaneous thing he can: he's an atheist, but he has his atheist character say the words "God" and "Jesus" no more than he can help. (E.g. "'God. . . God. . . Jesus fucking Christ.'" Heh, that's not actually that bad.) On more serious matters, Faber uses the framework of religious belief and Christian doctrine as an analogy to guide a lot of the main characters -- either as an analogy to non-Christian religion, or as a kind of half-fictionalized amalgam of non-Christian religion and Christian doctrine. And when you have a straight-out atheist character in your book, you still can't just have her say "God doesn't exist" and be done with it -- this would be to repeat the atheist cliché, the "giving the answer before anyone had a chance to ask a question." No, you have to find some way to make your character's answer interesting, somewhat unpredictable; you have to show how this answer comes out of the fabric of your fictional world, something that the reader wouldn't have predicted.

And in the end, it's just like with the average atheist preacher: it seems like a good, solid response to the question of whether God exists, but nobody wants to hear it. And if you make it sound too obviously like the right answer (and the preacher wants to say that, because it's the right answer!), you risk coming across as arrogant -- like you're basically assuming you know more than anyone else in the room, and you're delivering your perfect "final answer," almost as if you knew it before the question was even asked. It's just not organic, the preacher has a motive -- unless you're delivering a speech that is itself the point of the story.

The atheist preacher represents the end of a self-conscious process. Faber is an atheist, but he has to use religion as a framework for his characters, because religion is our big unifying framework for talking about these big questions. (This is true of most of his characters -- they're not all atheists.) At the same time, there is no real "atheist experience," because you can't ask these questions honestly unless you're staking your life on them. (And, if you're a professional writer, you can't be staking your life on these questions either -- you can't go off to the jungle to spend the rest of your life cultivating an inner life and learning to see the universe through some kind of "radical transcendental lens," you have to make your money and eat and do normal human things.)

So your atheist is staging an existence that is sort of in-between these two things, an existence that is in some sense fictional and realistic, but not real life. (I'm reminded here of the old atheist/theist dichotomy, but from the opposite side: the atheist realistically fakes his real life by staging his own version of a spiritual experience, with all its attendant emotions, and if he's a successful enough actor you won't be able to tell who's staged what.) This is basically what happens with Faber's characters, in one way or another. I've left out a lot to avoid getting into specifics, but basically everything is about making the characters' experiences "spiritual" -- using the spiritual-like side of humanity, while somehow remaining separate from that spiritualness, insisting on its realness, maintaining its separateness while sort of enveloping it. (The whole thing about the giant sea creature that resembles a monster in Stranger in a Strange Land, but isn't.) It's like a weird kind of fictionality, a replication of some sort of spiritual experience that is not quite "real" because you have to keep reminding yourself it's there.

(I guess this seems less creepy when you have multiple characters staging their own experiences -- and I didn't dislike Faber's overall handling of all this, but I wish he had given his characters different and distinct experiences. The Book of Strange New Things has a lot of characters -- more than most other books I've read in the past few years -- and no two are ever quite the same. They're all more or less in the same place, the same world, but they're in different mental states. They experience different things, they have different relationships with each other, they do different things.

Some are more solitary, some form close relationships, some form relationships just to get sex, some have a variety of relationships. Some have strong feelings about their work, some are more "professional," some have different goals. And Faber basically represents all of these kinds of people as being equally valid, legitimate, natural, "real," whatever. In fact, you could say that this is a central theme of the book -- realness, and what it really means. (Unfortunately, this theme gets kind of lost in the process of handling it, but I suppose that's only to be expected.) This is all fine, except that I wish more of these characters had gone off in their own directions a little more. They all have good, real, interesting character arcs that are basically unrelated to what anyone else in the book is doing. [Spoilers for an ending that I consider well-foreshadowed] Even the one character who dies sort of does so in her own way, in the end. If only Faber had been more willing to bring this out -- he's too caught up in creating a sense of unity, of togetherness, that he loses sight of individuality. (Of course, one could ask, is "individuality" a real thing, in the second place, and whether it can stand apart from some sort of togetherness?))

Anyway, even though I'm complaining about the process by which Faber handles these questions, I'm glad he asks them in the first place. This sort of thing is rare in fiction -- it's fiction that just lets you live as a human being, instead of getting a life from being a human being. And when you're dealing with these kinds of questions, I think it's really important that the questions be asked.

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grazhir · 1 year

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My Time at Sandrock

Huh...

I continue to be seriously peeved that most female characters (such as my girl, here) look utterly flat-chested from most angles (unlike Heidi, Grace...). Rrrrr.

Also, I want Logan's hat, damn it.

So, yeah, little memory issue or something? IDEK. I waited until after the playdate (and for some reason, a ride around town on Cinna) to save, exit completely, and reload. It was fine at that point. Quite a number of places looked like this prior to a full restart.

As usual there were plenty of minor bugs, but nothing game-breaking for me. Cheers to that.

I just like that this happens while standing in front of the "Breaking News" poster (but not that part where we were enduring a sandstorm—should I just decide it made things more poignant?). The whole thing was terribly over-the-top cliché, but that didn't stop a tiny part of me gushing over it like an idiot. (I am illogically sappy at times.)

Even so, the stuff prior to this had me actually feeling hurt, which is somewhat surprising. I mean, events were entirely predictable considering everything learned up to that point, so why would I get like that?

Well, Fang is now at Lover and very close to edging into the fourth heart on ye olde romance status. I may not wait that long. I dunno.

The truly sad thing is I had planned to buy a certain ring from a certain merchant (I was at 8 normal hearts by that point) and was waylaid by a certain group of people rolling into town. Thankfully, I was still able to hit said merchant up for exotic goods (and the next day—why was I seduced by three blue helper chests?), but as I had no idea how long it would take to resolve the issue at hand, or even if he would be anywhere on the map...?

Thankfully, those certain people are apparently incapable of seeing him and/or that specific situation was not accounted for.

The necklace he gives us is adorable, but how could I possibly wear that instead of my Luck +113 one? Ye gods. Now if only I could hang it on my wall or something.

You know, right next to one of the many pieces of custom Fang artwork in my girl's bedroom, because I'm sure that won't be at all creepy for when he moves in.

#my time at sandrock

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cloudbattrolls · 2 years

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The Confession

Ullane, deep breathing, pushes the door open. Stops to admire his work.

“It looks good.” Determinedly calm but positive tone.

Xrumon, blandly looking up from trying to add maintenance ports to the arms.

“You came here to tell me that I'm not completely incompetent? I could have saved you the trip.”

Ullane laughs a little, slightly hysterically. “Clearly useless support is my profession.” Pinches the bridge of her nose. “You might want to sit down.”

“Properly. With nothing in your hands.”

"Oh, good. Love hearing that. Are you about to tell me my hive burnt to the fucking ground?" He sighs, rolling his eyes. He makes a show of putting his drawing pencil down and slightly adjusting his sitting position. "Okay. I'm sitting "properly," like I've been doing for nearly a sweep."

She laughs. “Only somewhat as devastating. Yes, yes.” Plucks at a strand of hair. Looks him in the eyes. “I’m flush for you.”

There's an entirely too pregnant pause. He blinks. It's almost possible to hear the sensors whirring in his eyes. "What?" he says, sounding entirely disbelieving. "Shitty joke. What are you actually here to tell me?"

She shakes her head, looking deathly serious. “I’m not joking.”

“I know - I know how this sounds.” She laughs again, a bit helplessly, her big ears pressed down from nerves. “I’m not…I understand. I just wanted to say it.”

He doesn't respond for a moment, then looks around the room with eyes squinted. "I don't get it. Where's the bit? Is that jackass on the cameras supposed to record my reaction?" he continues, voice sounding slightly strained now.

He looks back at Ullane, eyes sweeping over her. Another moment of silence passes. His eyes widen slightly. "Elevated heart rate, but your eyes are steady. Are you... serious?" Pause.

"Why?"

She laughs gently. “You tell me the truth. You’re smart, hardworking, reliable. Funny. Interesting. You challenge me, make me want to be better. You are…wonderful, yes, even with your flaws. Because of them, sometimes.”

She’s calmer now, still nervous but not as chokingly so. Merely peacefully awaiting rejection, but happy to tell Xrumon why she loves him.

Somewhat predictably, his hands curl themselves into fists, shaking slightly. His eyes flicker between red and teal, apparently undecided on how to present themselves. "You- You- The one who put me in my chains, the Malpracticer who trapped me like this- You-" He choked suddenly, breathing more ragged.

"A doctor falling for the patient. What a fucking cliché. Extremely unprofessional. Monumentally stupid." He shakes his head in dismay, but his tone never rises to the level of actual fury. His eyes settle at last on teal.

"Your taste is shit. I'm not- Nobody should feel that way about me. Especially not the one who could kill me." He looks down at his feet, expression inscrutable. "What am I supposed to do now?" he asks quietly, tone sounding mildly desperate, confused.

She smiles sadly as his eyes flash, but then chuckles. “It is stupid.” She agrees. “And wrong of me given what I’ve done, I know.” “Tried so hard not to…tried to take it from my own brain, so many times, but I couldn’t.” She shakes her head.

“Then I stopped. Because my friends asked. Because you asked. Irony.” Laughs more.

She looks serious again.

“My taste is fine. I know you don’t feel the same, of course not, wouldn’t make any sense.” She laughs. “But you deserve love. Always will.” Her voice, usually so even, is full of feeling as her eyes shine slightly red-pink from her psiionics, purely from high emotion.

“I only want to be friends.” She says simply. “All I deserve, all that can be. But you deserve to know you are worth loving.”

"I don't deserve anything," he replies flatly, tone hollow. He sighs heavily, eyes closing for a moment. "We are a severely fucked up pair of people. You, the doctor that wanted to steal my technology and work me as an indentured servant. Me? What isn't fucked up with me."

"Now I have to- I have to die, knowing somebody was stupid enough to think me worth anything. It was supposed to be easy, you dumb piece of shit," he complains, eyes still closed as he shakes his head again. "In flush with someone who calls you that. Christ. How could I ever be good enough to deserve this?"

She laughs a bit grimly. “I know. I know how absurd it is.” She grins. “That’s just how you talk. Wouldn’t be you if you didn’t. And ha! I’m the rotten one here.” She says with amusement. “I couldn’t be good enough for you, not if I spent the rest of my life making up! But what do I care? It should be done anyway.” Waves a hand dismissively.

"For me?" He snaps, eyes opening up again. "You're the doctor, you save lives! You went blitzkrieg on a fucking gang with- with- whatever the hell happened, just to cut their influence out! You make people better, all I do is remind them how fucked they are!" He laughs, bitterly and without humor.

"You've probably done fucked up things, knowing you. But at least you can make up for it. Look at me, I'm not even a walking corpse. No one sane would suggest I even take your crush half seriously - and they'd be right. You'll find someone better. Less messed up. Less ruined."

She smiles sadly. “Yes, but before that - before you - it wasn’t so good. I didn’t seek out doing terrible things…but I didn’t stop them. I’d accept an offer if I thought the good outweighed the price. I have done such things, like you said. Some I had to for survival, others I didn’t.” She shakes her head. “Perhaps I could. But I don’t want them. I want you. I know it can’t be, but I’ve only cared for one troll before as much as I care for you.”

She twists a strand of hair, smiling slightly. “Believe me. It took me by surprise. I tried denying it. But I couldn’t help it.”

He looks at her for several long moments again before finally responding: "You are a damned fool. Why do I always get stuck with fools? You realize I could break your neck with one twist of my wrist, right?" He points to his exoskeleton, eyes forming a scowl.

"I can't give anything but pain, this body was built for war. You're damn right it can't be, look at me! I- I'd need a head doctor, I can't treat you like-" He cuts himself off, falling silent. An impossible to see, internal war was being fought beneath his surface.

She nods. “I do.” She blinks, confused. “You give me much. You treat me as well as you can. Yes, you’ve hurt me - but I thought you might do so again when I said this, and you haven’t.” She smiles.

“You can change. Ha. If you live…I know you could heal, find quadrants. Possibly with help, like you say. Yes, I know this is very much when you could die.” She says quietly. “But I think it’s better than saying nothing.”

"Heal. Live. What a crock of shit," he complains, shaking his head. He sighs again, then looks her back in the eye at last. "I'm going to die. You know that's almost guaranteed, like you just said," he says with stoic calm, as if listing out the weather forecast.

"So... Come here." He raises a hand, beckoning her over to where he sits, tension coiling in him like a spring.

She grins at him. “Isn’t it just like me to inflict suffering like that on you?”

Confused but obedient, she comes over, slightly befuddled yet politely intrigued.

When she comes over, his raised arm comes up to land on her shoulder, feeling like a lead weight as it pushes her a bit further down. His other arm, once she's low enough, crosses behind her back as he leans forward, pulling her, very carefully, into a hug. It's not good. Terrible, even. He smells faintly of metallic lubricant, his arms are like iron bands, and rather than give and warmth, there's only solid, cold steel.

Ullane still blushes like an idiot and relaxes anyway because oh how she’s wanted this. She is really, really, really confused, but also very happy right now. Embarrassingly for her, her hidden tail around her waist wags a little before she stops it.

After a few moments, he lets go, gently pushing her away. At the very least he doesn't seem to notice her tail. "There. Now you won't have any fucking regrets or whatever when I'm gone," he says, somehow able to look her in the eye - most likely helped by the helmet concealing his face. "But if you tell a soul, or if the fucking security vid leaks, I'm going to tear this place a new fire exit."

Ullane snorts. “You think I want to deal with Friday and Yarrex making my life hell? Not that much of a masochist.”

“In my best interests too.”

"Yeah. That's part of why I even bothered," he replies, sounding faintly amused. "You're absolutely still insane, though."

“Takes one to know one.” She shoots back with a grin.

"I'm very clear on how fucked in the head I am. Always have been, " he retorts, rolling his eyes. "Now is there anything else you need to get off your chest? Any other things to curse me with?"

“Not right now.” She says with a hint of mischief. “Keep your eyes open.”

"Oh, wonderful. Another damocles knife over my head, just what I need," he groans, eyes cast up as if seeking patience from heaven. "Fine. Get out of here then, go do some actual work before someone walks in here."

Her grin only widens as she waves goodbye and leaves, with a little spring in her step.

#trolloled #since obviously Xrumon's bits are him #ullane wistim #xrumon arigah #technical difficulties

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yesterdanereviews · 2 years

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Evil Bong 888: Infinity High (2022)

Film review #529

Director: Charles Band

SYNOPSIS: Rabbit has opened up a new restaurant to try and go legit after his many weed-related adventures, with the evil bong, Ebee, working in the kitchen. However, many mishaps ensue, and tempt Rabbit to return to his old ways...

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Evil Bong 888: Infinity High is a 2022 film and actually the ninth film in the Evil Bong series (if you’re counting Evil Bong vs. Gingerdead Man). The film opens up with series regular Rabbit preparing to open a new restaurant and attempting to go straight without smoking weed. Meanwhile the evil bong, Ebee, is helping out in the kitchen. If you’ve seen any of the other Evil Bong films, then you’ll know what to expect: a bunch of one-note characters come through the doors, and do their predictable humour, while the next characters come in and add to the scene. Everything that I have written about the previous Evil Bong films essentially just applies to this one: it is not a complex film, the plot is barely a plot, but the audience is people that are high and probably only aren’t going to follow any complexities, and just want to see some stupid, sexy or trippy stuff on screen. With a runtime of around an hour, at least the film does not overstay it’s welcome.

The film is, in some way, a return to basics (if you think the series ever evolved beyond “basics”), and takes out a lot of the characters and concepts that had driven the last few films, such as Lucy Furr, the Gingerdead Man, and Sexy Hell (yes, I did just write all of those things, and yes, they did happen). Although it’s unclear whether this is just because they couldn’t get any of the other actors to return; even though this hasn’t stopped them before from simply recasting a lot of roles. As such, we are left with Rabbit and Ebee, who became the only ones to appear in all the previous Evil Bong films. The “I tell you what” rednecks return doing their regular shtick, and even though they have been doing the same thing over numerous films, it’s strangely comforting to see them back doing the same thing, as it probably wouldn’t feel like an Evil Bong film without them at this point. The film also manages to bring back Larnell, one of the original characters, for the final few minutes, but he literally does nothing other than smoke a joint. The Gingerdead/Gingerweed man also make a brief cameo at the end, so there was at least some effort to acknowledge some of the other key characters of the series.

The film does try to be up to date with some it’s characters: you have a “Karen” who comes into the restaurant to complain, two teenagers who don’t know how to act in public post-Covid pandemic, and “Joe Exotic” (not actually him, in factm it doesn’t even look like him) It’s very little, and hardly biting social commentary, but it helps set the scene a little, and make the characters seem a bit more relatable (even though they are never anything more than clichés.) To balance this out as well, you also get the German chef named Sal Monella, whose personality is simply being German (you can probably imagine what that means). Again, it’s all simple stuff that doesn’t need to be anything more than what it is, but that doesn’t necessarily make it good.

Like most (all) of the Evil Bong films, the film has two sets: the restaurant, and the kitchen. Even then, quite a few of the scenes are obviously completely green-screened. It cuts back on trying to use CG and trippy special effects, and just sticks to having a laugh with the characters and tropes they have. Being as this is supposed to be the final Evil Bong film, it doesn’t really have a definitive ending or resolution, but at least it didn’t end on a cliff-hanger like Evil Bong 777 did (and which this film pretty much ignores). Overall, Evil Bong 888 is, as all of the films in this series are, crude, low budget, and without a plot. But as always, these films are meant to target an audience of people who are probably so high they are devoid of sense, so anything more complex than semi-nudity and weed jokes isn’t going to be truly appreciated. I think cutting a lot of the characters and lore it had built up helps the film in some regards by focusing on the characters that work, but it doesn’t offer anything new, or a definitive, satisfying ending to the series. I don’t think it’s the worst film in the series, as it attempts some relevant jokes, and returns some of the more memorable characters, but there’s still plenty of dull moments and flat jokes that would remain flat no matter how high you are. If you are familiar with Full Moon’s low budget films, you’ll recognise this as more of what they do, but if you’re expecting something entertaining that delivers something truly unique with its concept, you’ll be sorely disappointed: that ship sailed long ago.

#movie #movie review #evil bong 888 infinity high #evil bong #420 #film #film review #2022 film

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writtenbytsuki · 1 month

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remembering whimsy

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” — Confucius

The funny thing about life is that you can ever really predict what’s about to happen. Sure, you can make decisions to bring you the life you’ve always wanted, but then again when has anyone ever TRULY gotten what they desire?

For awhile life has been dull, repetitive and even just straight up shitty. Maybe it’s just me, but for the first time in a long time, I finally see how colorful life can really be. Yes, there are harder days but through those days is when I know my life is as vibrant as ever. It may sound like such a cliché, but the saying “How can there be good days without bad days,” is something that I remember once I’ve recovered from the lower days and it always reminds me that life doesn’t have to be as serious as we make it out to be.

Through remembering and appreciating how beautiful life can really be, I’ve started noticing so many amazing things I haven’t before. It has motivated me to stop caring so much about what’s on the screen and look up. Remembering the whimsy in life, how fun it can be, how accessible enjoyable things are, that’s what makes life that much more interesting to me.

Listening to music through CDs, cassettes, vinyls, it shows how sound can be beautiful in different ways. We are so used to everything being on our phones that we don’t realize how easy life is now. Taking photos of experiences, scenes, people, maybe through phones or even film cameras, polaroids or photobooths, it helps us capture that beauty we once saw and immortalize it. I’m not saying this to be quirky or different but to share how different the experiences are IF you let yourself experience it.

Life can be fucking beautiful, if you allow it to be.

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ozma914 · 7 months

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Mother Nature Is a Tease

She pops out for a day, shows a little leg, smiles demurely, and disappears again, leaving her anxious suitors to suffer through more cold and wet. It’s hardly any wonder that the symbol of weather should run hot and cold, but sheesh – enough is enough. The stupid groundhog predicted an early spring, but he didn't say it would come all at once. What is a groundhog, anyway? It’s a big rat. Set a trap, somebody. Even more than usual, our weather pattern looks like a heartbeat on an EKG. It reminds me the old days, when I walked to school barefoot, in a raging blizzard every morning and a blistering heat wave in the afternoon. (Uphill both ways, blah blah blah.) I really should get around to admitting I only lived two blocks from school. As a result of the bouncing weather, some people say they'd rather it just stay cold all the time. Their brains are still frozen. Saying cold all the time instead of warm some of the time is like saying that, since you can’t eat 24 hours a day, you’d rather just starve. To carry the heavy comparison further, I’d rather weigh 300 pounds but be alive than be the first member of my family to voluntarily starve to death.

Most of my best winter photos are taken from inside. I care less about glare than I do about frostbite.

Summer now goes by much more quickly than it used to, and winter – strange as our recent winters have been – lasts much longer. When I was a kid, the average summer lasted eighteen months. Seriously. I would go out to play after breakfast, and wouldn’t come in again for three days, just in time for lunch. The summer when I turned nine lasted for over six years. It’s a science-fictiony mystery, but there you go. We went down to Kentucky for a two week vacation that lasted so long we had to cut down trees to get the car back on the road. And it never got hot. Kids could wake up in the hospital with two IV’s in their arms to rehydrate them, and have no idea they were ever overheated. Then they’d go home and run back outside again. Sure, most of us didn’t notice the cold, either, but we sure noticed when we started getting feeling back into our limbs. It was like getting a power pinch from our least favorite aunt – all over.

Isn't this fun? SO much fun. Later I'm having hot chocolate and a good cry.

Even the bad things about summer are proof that summer is good:

Bugs? Hate ‘em. But why do they come out during the spring? Because during winter they’re dead. Everything’s dead. It’s a dead season. Mother Nature is dead – the first lightning storm of the spring is like a giant defibrillator, starting her heart back up. No lawn mowing during winter. Why? Grass is dead. No poison ivy during winter. Why? Dead. Snakes? Dead. No spiders during the winter. (Spiders are not bugs. Bugs are just bugs – spiders are evil.) Even spiders know dead when they see it, although many think it looks like the bottom of my shoe. Hot and humid is unpleasant, I get that, but nobody's car ever slid into a snowbank because the sun was shining too much. No poor match girl ever froze to death under a shade tree during an Independence Day celebration.

Tornadoes? Terrible things, mile-wide vacuum cleaners. But blizzards have covered half the friggin’ country. Besides, no matter how strong it was, no meteorologist ever mentioned “tornado” in the same sentence as “wind chill”. Winter even smells dead – spring smells of fresh cut grass, and lilacs, and that earthy scent that comes with a warm summer rain. And yes, it also smells of hot asphalt, and dairy farms, and sweat, but that’s a small price to pay for driving down a country road with the window open and breathing deeply as you pass a cornfield.

Pretty, isn't it? And DEAD.

Almost everything’s green, with patches of other bright colors like spotting a forgotten twenty dollar bill. Green is life. Winter has no color: It’s black and white and dead all over. I could also go for the cliché and mention the sounds – birds, frogs, insects, all more relaxing than the sound of sleet on siding, or furnaces kicking on. Finally, lest we forget, the feel of walking around in shorts and shirtsleeves, without the accompanying frostbite. Warmth makes everything a little better. Sure, you can’t store your frozen goods on the back porch, but that’s a small price to pay for opening the window and breathing real air. So come on out, Mother Nature, don’t be a tease. And don’t bother bringing your winter coat.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter

Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

Remember: If wrapped in plastic, books make good umbrellas. Get hard cover.

#humor #weather #indiana #winter #humour #humorous #severe weather #seasons #mother nature

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xtvshowsx · 4 years

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Leap Year (2010) dir. by Anand Tucker

Declan: Anyway, I thought it was your ring we were meant to be worrying about. Diddly-eye.

Anna: Oh, yeah. Right. Well, I’m glad to see you’re finally on board.

Declan: It has nothing to do with me. I’m just the old bag carrier around here. Why should I care?

Anna: So you don’t?

Declan: Would it make a difference?

#leap year #leap year the movie #leap year movie #anna brady #declan o'callaghan #amy adams #matthew goode #yes i know how many clichés are there and how predictable it is #and the location is not 100 percent accurate either #but lets just somehow ignore? them #this movie deserves better #romantic comedy #romcom #movies #movieedit #flimedit #edits #mine #expect more edits from me from this moviee😌

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frozenearthwife · 2 years

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Ruby is a rare type of protagonist

This is gonna be long, you’ve been warned!

I am a grown ass adult woman. I like female protagonists, I prefer watching them and relating to them, and always have.

I’ve watched a lot of animes since my teenage years, upwards of 400 last I counted on MyAnimeList a few years ago. I’ve been to Tokyo - twice - and spent at least 20 hours scouring the anime stores of Akihabara. I paid the Japanese mailing service to send a Saber figurine back to my home country since it was too big to bring in my luggage. (This one!)

Why does this matter and what does it have to do with Ruby? Read on:

During my years of being an utterly anime fanatic, I started to grow bored. After 400 animes, you’ve seen most of the plot twists. Most of the stereotypical personalities. All the classics have been watched and rewatched. The story beats, even if presented in a new packaging, becomes predictable.

You start to see the patterns, so to say. I’ve been hyped more times than I can count, only to be disappointed when yet another promising series took a predictable, cliché turn with its story or characters. It may not be sudden, sometimes it happens several episodes or even a few seasons into the show. So you never know for sure until having spent a lot of time watching.

There are a lot of GREAT animes with male protagonists, but how rare isn’t it to find one that does NOT build towards the guy being needing to become stronger than his enemies and winning some important final fight? (as is common in shounen in general)

As time went by I found myself getting more and more picky with what I wanted to spend time watching. I prefer shows with the cool, badass, strong girls, since those are the ones I enjoy watching and them being girls makes it easier for me to relate and enjoy their achievements.

Cool...

Badass...

...strong girls.

These are what I want. Finding them, however, can be tedious work, especially in the role as main protagonists.

In the anime world, there are some common tendencies with strong female characters:

1) The badass female character is either a side-kick to the male protagonist, eventually become overshadowed by a male protagonist, OR in some cases by some new girl, because heaven forbid any of the cool girls get developed beyond their one single character arc. (ex. Fate/Zero, A Certain Magical Index, Shakugan no Shana, Koutetsujou no Kabaneri, Sword Art Online, Attack on Titan, any anime with a harem, and so many others - they can still be good shows though, that’s not the point!)

2) There are great animes out there with great female protagonists, however they are usually either a) sexualized (ex. Kill la Kill) or b) shows geared towards kids (ex. Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, The Owl Hourse (yes, I’m putting this here even if it’s not an anime) or c) romance focused (ex. Revolutionary Girl Utena). I love these shows for other reasons though!

3) The actually great action animes with badass female protagonists that are allowed to develop and not be overshadowed by their crush/secret male protagonist etc. do exist, but are sadly few and far between. (Soul Reaper is pretty great with Maka, although BlackStar steals a lot of space, and I prefer the anime for this exact reason. A Certain Scientific Railgun was my fav for a long time, but sadly Mikoto is in love with the harem protagonist of the main show and gets overshadowed whenever he’s involved.)

And it doesn’t matter if the show is named after the girl(s) or not!

Here are two girls, each with their own anime named after them (Railgun/Index). Guess who’s the most important character who actually drives the main story?

Shakugan no Shana: Yes, Shana is the name of the girl. Guess which character gets the most power-ups and biggest development?

There’s nothing wrong with liking these shows, I mean I watched them too, and I enjoyed them for the most part... but sometimes I just... whish the dude would stay a side-kick?

So, first impression of RWBY was... cautious optimism?

When I first watched RWBY, because an online friend suggested it, I was surprised to find four strong female protagonists - and Ruby presented as the main protagonist what with the very first episode being named after her and there was no guy in sight.

Seems good? Even if the animation is super wonky. Ruby is cool. I like her. She has an awesome weapon too and is competent with it. She even bites back at people instead of becoming submissive. She gets saved in first episode yes, but it was by an adult woman after a woman took over the fight from Roman.

Also no fanservicy panty shots, suggestive angles and what-not? Seems promising.

But I’d seen this before. A show starts out with a cool, interesting, badass girl as the main protagonist. Then at some point some guy gets introduced, and it turns out he’s special, and she crushes on him, and then he gets stronger, and now she’s his side-kick, and more girls come along, and everything keeps scaling upwards forever (except the original girl), you get the idea.

Then the show turned into some hybrid of Harry Potter x Sailor Moon x high school anime spinoff wannabe with questionable quality? Okay, but maybe with these interesting girls and some cool plot it can work?

The Jaundice episodes seemed to fulfill the prophecy and I lost interest halfway through. Yes, even if the episodes were just 6 minutes long.

I dropped RWBY and didn’t touch it again for several years.

By this point V4 had just finished. I was bored one day, and I decided to give RWBY another chance.

Got past V1 and V2. It was better than I remembered. Got to V3 and... oh no, is Pyrrha gonna do the “stealing the protagonist role” thing?

Ugh. I hate when shows trade out their main characters for new ones because they can’t figure out how to develop the ones they already have. Pyrrha is fine, but I’m already commited to team RWBY you know? Pyrrha is so OP compared to the others, it won’t be fun watching her just demolish every single foe ever, especially if she’s gonna have magic as well. It’ll just be her special story along with her romantic story with Jaune. She is going to overshadow team RWBY and then what, is Jaune gonna come along and do the same to her eventually?

With little faith left, I pressed on to episode 9, 10, 11, and... holy shit.

HOLY SHIT!

They really did that, didn’t they? They really made me think they were incompetent, cliché writers and all that. That they were gonna focus on Pyrrha and Jaune going forwards because they had no idea how to tell a compelling story with the girls they’d already established as “main protagonists”.

And then they a) Killed off the “ace student” promised for greatness and b) destroyed the High School setting and c) Allowed the bad guys to win and d) Introduced an actual competent villain AND e) Gave new depth to team RWBY and Ruby in particular.

I was HOOKED. I realized RWBY is a show that allows its protagonists to take a backseat now and then, only to hit hard with the actual meaningful stuff. Developing and letting side characters shine as well, so that it doesn’t seem like team RWBY are the only characters with purpose in this world.

Cause no matter how special or strong or high on the political ladder they are, no character in RWBY has all the answers, nor do they have any means to actually stop Salem.

They still don’t!

Ruby has her silver eyes, but they didn’t “save” Beacon, or Pyrrha, or Penny, or Atlas. Actually, they may be more a curse than anything, now knowing about the Hound and what Salem can do to silver-eyed warriors. Not even a meaningful curse in the “I’ll become a cool vampire” type of curse, but just... horrible! No! Do not want this! Actually bad curse!

Ruby can’t solve this alone. She’s not all-powerful, she isn’t the shounen protagonist who always powers up in a pinch, she’s not the Maiden of all Maidens, she doesn’t always have the answers, she’s not Ozpin’s host or Salem’s Chosen or any of those clichés. That’s not the point of her character and the story we’re being told.

Ruby, like everyone else in this story, has to train, and learn, and fail, and do mistakes, and be wrong, and correct herself, and try again, and do better next time, and trust, take risks, experience loss and helplessness, and we have not seen the end of her development. I’m hyped for V9 not because of new fights, power-ups or what-not, but because I’m excited to see what Ruby has learned from their failures so far, how they’ll pick themselves up, and how they’ll try to approach the defeating of Salem.

Because at this point in time, they have no idea how to do any of it, and that’s what excites me most about RWBY and Ruby’s character in particular.

Ruby does not have all the answers, but she’s trying anyway, because the alternative is to give up.

She’s 17 years old and has been thrust into war against a foe that can’t die, into a role of leadership she has no grasp on how to handle. She’s trying to learn from those around her, imperfect human beings as they too are. She’s doing her best, and although she happens to have special Grimm-melting laser beam eyes, that won’t stop Salem. It won’t save Remnant from the gods.

“What are you?” is going to be a very interesting question to explore in V9.

Ruby is a rare type of protagonist because she’s not the answer to every problem, she’s not the Chosen One solely able to save the world. Yet she’s also not overshadowed or sidelined by someone else. Her story intrigues me more than anyone else’s, in any other show I’ve seen.

#RWBY #Ruby Rose #my precious child #RWBY has great writing #And I would pay to read the actual scripts #Or a book form of the scripts

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jackrrabbit · 3 years

Text

Adversary /// Overhaul x f!Reader (18+)

Summary: You make a deal with the devil to save your life, but it turns out Overhaul’s not interested in your soul.

A/N: Remember when I said I was going to do a fantasy collab and then dipped for like 9 months? Hahaha…anyway…

@pleasantanathema @ present-mel @shadowworks—if it’s not too late, here’s my part for the Pleasant & Strider Fantasy AU Writing Collab from a million years ago. Go check out the masterlist and gorge yourself on these amazing pieces!!

Tags/Warnings: dubcon, demon fuckery & occult things, big heresy/sacrilege/perversion of religion, sex in a church ft. Catholic sex guilt, other than that it’s not that bad lol, inexperienced reader, mild degradation, shameless camp and demon-fucking clichés, Overhaul calls you “little girl” 👉👈

He doesn’t look like a demon.

Not that you really know what demons are supposed to look like. But…red skin, right? Fangs and claws and swirling masses of bad energy. Maybe cloven hooves for feet. Yes, that’s the Disney version—but even if you didn’t expect a cartoon personification of evil, you didn’t expect this.

He looks like a doctor, you think. Lab coat hanging open, surgery mask pushed down under his jaw, stethoscope draped over his shoulders. No, he’s a little young to really look like a doctor…an intern, you amend, shifting back in your hospital bed. He looks like he fits right in here, not a hair out of place. Except for, you know, the polished black horns curling out of the sides of his skull.

Overhaul. It was written in the book. That’s the only thing you have to call him in your head.

He’s standing in the center of the sigil you drew at the foot of your bed before midnight, surveying the room critically without meeting your gaze. He looks annoyed—that’s not a good sign, is it?—but then again, of course he’s annoyed. You’d be annoyed too if you got summoned out of your cozy hell dimension in the middle of the night. According to the book, you’re lucky he even showed up…although ‘lucky’ isn’t really how you’d describe yourself most days.

“So,” Overhaul says after a long moment of silence in which you question every choice you’ve made in your relatively short life. “You’re dying.”

You nod.

“And you don’t want to be.”

You nod again, wondering if you’re supposed to be contributing more to this conversation. It’s a bit difficult when your mouth is so dry it feels like you’ve been eating dirt, but you suppose being in the presence of an unholy servant of Satan will do that to a person.

“Fine.” He sighs, frowns, and then finally lowers his gaze onto yours—and you shiver.

Those eyes. No human has eyes like that.

“Make me an offer,” Overhaul tells you, and through his open mouth you catch a flash of sharp white teeth.

Okay. Okay. The chirping of the heart monitor speeds up (as if it weren’t obvious enough that you’re terrified) and you fold your knees up to your chest and fidget with your ring and think. He’s giving you a chance to establish parameters. You’re supposed to start with his end of the deal, the thing you want from him. That’s what it said to do in the grimoire, aka the 19th century demonology volume your creepy cousin brought back from her pagan anthropology research trip in rural France. The one you keep hidden under your bed because your mother would burn it if she knew you were reading about summoning demons.

Offer nothing to a hell creature without first telling him your price. You know the words by heart, both the winding calligraphy of the original French from the grimoire and the rushed scrawl of the English translation your cousin left for you in sheets of lined paper layered between the pages of the book for you to read. Really, this is her fault. She was the one who slipped you the book, who told you that it worked, who snuck you the ingredients for the summoning. She was the one who left a bookmark at the chapter on this particular demon, one that specializes in ‘Contrat pour Remédier au Déséquilibre des Quatre Humeurs’, which she said meant a contract to cure any illness. Even his ‘name’ is translated in her hand, practically an afterthought in the margins of the page.

‘Le Malin qui Ravage et Rebâtit’— Overhaul?

You looked up the literal meaning of this phrase on your own. It did not reassure you.

“Girl.” His voice is cold, irate. Your eyes snap back up to his and it feels like that burning gaze is laser-beaming into your skull. “Do not test me. My time is limited…as is yours.”

You swallow. “How long do I have left?”

“Less than a single human year,” he tells you without a trace of sympathy. “Seven months, twelve days, three hours. Or so. You’ll be too exhausted to leave this bed in four months, and the pain will become intolerable in six… By the end, you’ll wish—“

“Stop,” you breathe out. The heart monitor is beeping wildly and you squeeze your knees into your chest, trying to calm down your breathing. “Stop, I—I want to live.”

“Of course you do.” Overhaul’s lip curls. “How very predictable.”

Be specific, you remind yourself, doing your best to ignore the stifling disapproval from the man—the demon—in front of you. Something about him (maybe how clean-cut he looks, maybe the indisputable authority in his demeanor) makes you want to impress him. But you didn’t turn your back on your religion—you didn’t draw pagan symbols on the floor in chalk, fill silver cups with various questionable substances (including your own virgin blood), and turn the crucifix your mother hung over your bed upside-down so you could let a demon make you feel guilty for wanting to survive. “I want to be cured. I’m okay with whatever natural death I have instead when I’m older, I just don’t want to die of this illness. I want you to make me healthy.”

“Simple enough. What else?”

‘Simple’? Your heart surges with something you’ve felt very little of since your initial diagnosis—hope. “T-That’s it. Just the cure.”

Overhaul glares at you. “Humans… Every vice in the world available to you, and you limit yourselves to the basest priority of survival.”

“But you can do it? You can cure me?” you persist.

Overhaul steps forward (quiet, so quiet you wonder if he really moved) and holds a hand out to you past the foot of your bed—you hesitate, and a second later you can see the muscles in his hand flex, stretching the latex of his plastic gloves tight over his knuckles.

Just do it. You give him your hand. Carefully. Like you’re scared the contact will burn you. It doesn’t (although his skin feels warmer than yours), but after a moment his grip tightens, sliding down past your hand to circle the fragile bones of your wrist and squeeze.

“Ow?” You wince.

The demon’s eyes flicker closed for a second, lips moving silently like he’s talking to himself—and then he drops your hand unceremoniously back onto your lap. “You could be cured before the sun rises this morning. I doubt your stay in the hospital will extend past the end of the week.”

He sounds bored, voice as flat and passionless as it was earlier, but your heart is soaring. Cured. You’ve lived with this illness for so many years, you can’t remember the last time someone told you you could be cured. And getting out of the hospital that soon? You can just imagine taking down all the decorations from the walls of your room here and setting them up in your old bedroom at home. You could see friends on the weekend and not take an oxygen bag, you could get a job or—or apply to college, you could have a life—

“That is…assuming you have something to offer me in exchange for the cure.”

Your stomach drops. You’d almost forgotten about the other half of the deal.

“Don’t tell me I came all this way for nothing.” Overhaul steps back, and the orange light of the candles you set sends strange shadows over his arrogant face. The fires look brighter now, and you find yourself tracing the lines of those shining black horns. In an odd way, they look natural—so organically framing his temples that you can’t imagine him without them.

“N-No, of course not. I have some money—I mean, my mom has some, and I can get it for you…” Which is half the truth. If you know anything, it’s that your mother’s spent most of her savings on your treatment and care. You probably have more debt than you have money in the bank right now—you’d try to get rid of that, too, if you hadn’t read in the book how important it is to keep your request as simple and straightforward as possible.

…Although it’s apparently not enough. Overhaul’s eyes narrow, molten gold irises carved into slits. “Even if I had a use for human money, do you really believe your life is worth so little?”

“No—no,” you say quickly. “I just thought—in case you were interested—”

The air crackles with energy, the candle flames spark bright blood-red, and the hair on your arms stands straight up. “I am not.”

“Okay! I get it.” You wave your hands back and forth, pulling your IV line from side to side with the motion. The book was very clear about staying calm and rational while you work out the terms of the deal, but that’s easier said than done when you have a real live (live?) hell creature in front of you. You always knew this was going to be the hard part—all the stories say there’s only one thing that a demon would be interested in, and no matter how inviting the prospect of living past this illness is, you know you’d rather die than sell your immortal soul to the devil. “I’ll give you anything except my soul! And—and don’t hurt anyone I care about, or— just don’t hurt anyone, okay? Other than that, if there’s anything I can give you, I will.”

Overhaul’s lip curls, baring a thin strip of those unnaturally sharp canines. “And is your soul really so valuable?”

This throws you for a loop. Isn’t that the standard deal? A soul for a wish? That’s how it’s supposed to work—at least in this twisted version of reality where you can summon a demon to perform unholy miracles for you. But if you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why would your soul be valuable to him? You can’t form an argument, especially since you’re not willing to barter it away in the first place.

Your mouth is pursed open as you search for a response, but Overhaul doesn’t seem willing to wait. A gloved hand wraps its way around the railing at the side of your bed, and he leans in closer. “Little girl…what makes you think you possess anything I desire?”

Little girl. You’re not a little girl, you’re a grown woman—and yet there’s no untruth in the statement. In front of him you feel insignificant, immature, weak. You have nothing real to offer, and something tells you that you’re not going to get rid of the demon you summoned without a sacrifice you’re not willing to make.

You twist your ring around your finger—the nervous habit you haven’t bothered to break because you’ve always had more important things to worry about—and the glint of silver in the candlelight must catch Overhaul’s eye because before you even notice him moving, your delicate hand is trapped in his larger one to give him a better view of the tiny piece of jewelry. “What is this?”

“It’s—um, a ring. A purity ring.” Has he never seen one before? Well…actually, that makes sense.

Overhaul turns your hand over in his without touching the band of silver. He’s looking at it closely, inspecting the lovingly engraved cross in the design and the inscription on the other side. “Matthew 5:8,” he reads out.

“…Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” you recite cautiously. It feels wrong to speak the words in front of him, but somehow you can’t help yourself.

Overhaul’s hand doesn’t leave yours. “This ring is important to you.”

“It’s a symbol of a—a promise I made to God. To save myself for my future husband.”

“To ‘save yourself’? To save what?”

You can’t believe you’re explaining this to a literal demon. You close your eyes and inhale slowly and taste smoke. “My…virginity. It’s a promise that I won’t have sex until I enter into a biblical marriage.”

At this, Overhaul is quiet. You give him a moment to answer, half expecting him to question why you think God cares about your sexual status (honestly, you’d be lying if you said you haven’t wondered this yourself), but he stays quiet until you peek up at him to try and gauge the look on his coldly handsome face.

He’s still staring at the ring. He hasn’t touched it—maybe he can’t, because of the cross?—and through the latex, his skin feels hotter than a human’s is supposed to be.

“Is there…” you start, but you trail off when you realize you have nothing to ask. You give a little tug to try and take your hand away and you’re surprised when your wrist actually slides out of his grip to fall back on the nest of sheets in your lap. You didn’t think he’d let you go so easily.

Overhaul turns his head to the side, eyes drilling into you so you feel like you should lower your gaze. The candlelight flickers in strange shadows over his horns. “This will do,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“In exchange for your cure.” The demon taps his own left ring finger, the place where the purity ring sits on your hand, and your heart soars. He actually wants that? It’s just a simple silver band, not worth much, but you’re not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it has some special significance because of the religious connotation. Your mother will be angry you’ve lost it, but you’re happy to cope with that if it means living to actually get married!

“Yes!” you blurt out before he has a chance to rethink his offer. Sure, you’ll miss the purity ring—you’ve had it since you were a kid, after all—but there’s no question you’re getting the better end of this deal. At least in your opinion.

Something flashes through his yellow eyes, something you don’t even want to try and identify. “The contract, then.”

You barely have time to notice that his voice has gentled, that it’s practically silken in comparison to before, when the candlelight flickers again and suddenly the contract is everywhere. Everywhere. Writing appears on every surface in the room, covering the walls, stretching over the ceiling, coiling around the sides of the hospital equipment and decorating your bedsheets until you and Overhaul are the only untouched surfaces in sight. The characters are inscribed in red, dark red like—don’t think about that, you tell yourself squeamishly. You can make out some of the letters, even a word here or there—French, you recognize, mixed with what looks like Latin and interspersed with what you can only guess are runes.

“I can’t read this,” you tell him, fidgeting with your ring for what you now realize will be the last time.

“I only need your name,” he purrs, and then you feel a fragile weight in your hand: a feather, pearl-black and glossy and too large to belong to any bird you can think of, its angled tip glistening with wet ink. There’s an empty space in the writing before you, and Overhaul’s gloved hand comes to yours again to guide you into place.

This feels wrong…then again, of course it does. Even if you’re getting off relatively easy and just losing your ring rather than your soul, you’re still making a deal with a demon. You sign your name, forcing yourself to think about the future you have ahead of you rather than a disapproving white-bearded caricature of The Man Upstairs wagging his finger at you for haggling with a literal servant of Satan. People have done worse things to survive, haven’t they? It’s just a ring.

You set the feather down and Overhaul sighs, thick black eyelashes obscuring his intense gaze for a moment—and then the contract is gone, leaving your hospital room as blank and sterile as it’s supposed to be (well, aside from the candles and all the other ritual stuff you threw together to summon a demon in the first place).

“Are you going to cure—heal me now?” you ask.

“…Patience, little girl.” He’s pulling his glove off, peeling it down his fingers to bare the pale skin of his hand. You catch your breath and wonder what this is going to feel like, and then the tips of his fingers meet your cheek and—

you stop breathing.

It doesn’t hurt.

Or if it does, you don’t remember the pain a second later when breath floods back into your lungs. What you do feel is energy. Strength in your muscles, blood pumping through your veins, every inhale and exhale as light as a bird and freer. You feel healthy. You’re surprised you even remember what health feels like but you do: it’s like you’ve only been half alive, and now life is surging into you and through you and around you, bubbling up in your core like a spring overflowing. You blink rapidly, thinking you might cry from the sheer pleasure of it, but when you open your mouth it’s laughter that comes out. You’re healthy. You’re alive. You barely notice the IV line literally falling off of your skin because the hole where it entered your vein is sealed shut and healed perfectly.

No more needles. No more hospitals. Even without all the monitors beeping out your heart rate and measuring your vitals, there’s not a shred of doubt in your mind that you’re cured.

“Thank you!” you laugh, looking up at Overhaul and for the first time, not caring that he’s evil incarnate. “I feel—I’m okay! It worked!”

“Of course it did.” His expression is inscrutable, but he lets you have a few moments to enjoy your newfound health.

You roll your shoulders back, flex each muscle you can isolate one by one to test, make fists with your fingers and then run them over your hair, which is already thicker and shinier than it was a moment ago. Your body thrums with energy—you want to run, to feel the ground against your bare feet and the cold night air on your face, and you think you could do it! Your legs are already swinging over the side of your cot, ready to run barefoot out of the hospital if that’s what it takes, but before you can stand up Overhaul’s pushing you back down onto the bed.

“Have you forgotten your end of the bargain already?”

Honestly you did forget, but only for a second, only because you were so excited to just be outside again. “Oh, yeah. Of course.” Your hand goes to your left ring finger, ready to slip the ring off and hand it over, but Overhaul shakes his head.

“Not here.”

“What—?”

You’re falling. Your hospital room is disappearing, the image of your walls and your window and your bed disintegrating into yawning black, and you’re falling through it into nothing, into emptiness, and Overhaul’s still-bare hand in yours is the only anchor you have so you clutch onto it and squeeze your eyes shut. You want to scream—that’s the sane thing to do when you’re falling through miles and miles of empty space, right?—but when you open your throat the sound is swallowed up just like the light was…

Overhaul’s hand burns into yours, an improbable lifeline that you pull closer more out of terror than conscious thought. The slick, empty air rushes around you and you think I am going to die like this and then, incredibly, as soon as you’ve accepted your imminent demise, you feel your back mold onto a chilled, flat surface, vertebra by vertebra up to the back of your head, as if you’ve been lain down onto it.

Your heart thuds in your ears and you brace for an impact because your body hasn’t quite accepted yet that it’s not falling anymore—but at the same time, you know you’re lying down on something. You pry your fingers away from their vice-grip on Overhaul’s arm and feel around blindly for what’s underneath you, and when it seems reasonably tangible you let yourself open your eyes.

Way above, vaulted dozens of feet over your head, is a ceiling studded with gilt-edged frescoes and stained glass. It’s raining (even though it wasn’t in the hospital, you think) but through the massive panes of colored glass there’s enough oily blue light to make out that you’re in a church.

You’re in a church, with a demon. Isn’t that against the rules?

You sit up stiffly and look over at Overhaul, who’s standing at your side and looking down at you…which is how you realize the soft, cold surface you’ve been deposited onto is the blanket on top of the altar in the sanctuary. “Where...did you take me?”

“You should know this place.”

And you do, when you look around. It’s empty now and you’ve never been here at night, but this is a church your mother would bring you to when you were little, back before the disease got so bad you couldn’t risk traveling to it anymore. This is where you took your purity vow…the ring feels heavy on your hand. “Why—why—“

“I can’t stand human hospitals. Filthy places… How that reek of illness and death doesn’t bother your kind, I’ll never understand.” Overhaul pulls his latex glove back on. He’s dressed differently now, no longer impersonating a doctor—black shirt, black pants, and a…bird mask in red leather and gold. So are you, as a matter of fact. Instead of your hospital gown, you’re in a gauzy white dress that’s already been pushed up to pool around the tops of your thighs.

The slip is too thin for the cold, and you can feel your nipples standing up under the cloth so you fold your arms over your chest and hug yourself. “Why did you take me here?” The sound of your voice echoes off the walls eerily and you wish you hadn’t spoken so loudly. The reflection of your words sounds girlish, nervous.

“I told you. Your side of our contract.” Even in this dark, the angular features of his face are clearly concentrating—on you. “Are you already having second thoughts? Such a fickle little thing…”

“You mean the ring?” You reach for it again, ready to tear it off and throw it at him if that’s what it takes to see your deal through, but Overhaul snatches your hand away, pinning it above you.

“Not the ring,” he says. “The promise.”

The…promise?

A chill makes its way down your spine despite the heat radiating off the demon’s body and onto yours. “I don’t understand.”

“The promise,” Overhaul repeats—and you hear a sound almost like wings flapping and then he’s on the altar with you, knees straddling your hips as a single hand holds both your wrists above your head. “To remain a virgin until marriage. Your promise to God.”

A streak of lightning cracks down on the other side of the stained glass window behind the altar, illuminating the room briefly in spectacular pits of red and orange and yellow…and then it’s dark again, and the only color you can make out is the gold in Overhaul’s eyes.

“I’m going to break it,” he murmurs, lowering his head toward your ear right as the answering thunder rolls through the sanctuary, up through the altar, up into you.

///

Méfiez-vous de son piège, the grimoire said. Beware of the catch.

Of course it wasn’t just a ring.

Overhaul’s fingers are in—inside you, his middle and ring finger pumping through the length of your cunt like they belong there, like you were made to be touched this way. A mixture of your juices and your own spit cling to the latex because he made you suck his fingers before he put them in you and he hasn’t bothered to take his gloves off—not that you asked. You’ve been too busy biting your lip to try and muffle the moans that he keeps forcing out of you. He’s bracing himself on top of you with one hand and fingering you with the other, so your own hands are free to push into your eyes and hide your face…until he yanks your arm back and stops.

“Look at me.”

Your eyes are screwed shut and you shake your head back and forth, the movement shuddering your whole body right down to your pussy wrapped around Overhaul’s fingers. He slows the movement and kneels back, pushing one of your thighs up into your chest as he does it.

“Look at me.”

And you’re not sure whether it’s some unearthly power he has over you or the plain old deterioration of your willpower, but you can’t refuse him. You crack your eyes open and he’s glaring down at you, skin pale as ice in the blue light. Once he’s satisfied that you’re watching, the demon leans back in to fuck your cunt with his fingers, slowly at first and then quicker when he hits something inside of you—a spot, a place on the inner wall of your pussy that makes you feel like you’ve been shocked— heat blooms through you like blood in water and you gasp and he curls his fingers up to pet over that spot again.

“Wait—wait, that’s—it feels—weird!” You’ve never felt like this before. You’re not supposed to feel like this, it’s wrong.

“I understand you’ve never touched yourself, but don’t pretend you don’t like it.” Overhaul says, voice as indifferent and calm as ever even though your cunt is dripping clear sticky liquid over the plastic of his glove.

He pushes back in and grinds his palm over the little button on the top of your pussy—your clit?—and you want to scream. “No, I—I don’t—nnhh...”

Do you like it? The demon’s body is so hot next to yours, like he’s running a fever except you’re the one going out of your mind… You’ve heard metaphors for sexual pleasure before (that it’s like having something to drink when you’re dying of thirst; or that it’s the ultimate act of intimacy, love in physical form) but all of that’s a fucking lie. There’s nothing to compare it to, no reference that makes sense, because it doesn’t make sense—you don’t even want him to keep going, do you? You’re only doing this because you signed your name on a devil’s contract, because you don’t want to die and there’s no alternative…but that doesn’t explain why you feel so warm from the inside out, why you’re squirming and your hips are rocking involuntarily no matter how much you try to keep still. This isn’t right. You feel like you’ve been lied to.

A good girl wouldn’t like this.

Overhaul isn’t going to let you close your eyes, so you don’t—but the sounds coming out of your mouth are so…indecent (and how can you think these things about yourself? the word feels like someone else is saying it when you hear it in your head) that your hand is drifting up to your mouth before you can stop yourself, trying to stifle all of it…

“Let your voice out. I want you to hear yourself moan.”

Long fingers slide their way out of your pussy and then move up to rub quick little circles around your clit and you moan, like a whore, like a girl getting her cunt rubbed by a demon— “Oh, uhhhn—something, it’s—coming—“ There’s something building up in your core—a peak, a climax, something that makes you fist your hands in the nightgown he put you in (so tight you’re surprised the thin fabric hasn’t torn) and tilt your hips up into him, begging without words because you don’t have any to express what your body is asking for…

But he doesn’t give it to you. Overhaul takes his hand away from your pussy and the shock of the cool air after his too-hot touch is almost enough to send you over that edge—almost. Not quite. And without it, you’re left shivering and quaking, thighs twitching as your baser instincts beg you to just put your hand between your legs for once and hump your fingers to completion if the demon won’t do it.

You’re not going to risk that, though. Not when Overhaul’s dragging your body closer, bunching up the blanket on the altar under your spine, so your pelvis is angled to his… He’s already shirtless and you hear him unzipping his pants but you can’t bring yourself to actually look at him, even when you feel something hard and hot nudging up against your inner thigh and then aligning to your sticky wet slit.

“This will hurt a bit, but I want you to look,” he says, and you don’t even understand at first until you make yourself feel it—his cock, pushing up against your tight cunt to finish this, this perversion of what your first time was supposed to be…

And what was it supposed to be? Roses and candles and soft kisses? A nameless, faceless husband unzipping your wedding dress and making love to you with the lights off? The way the demon touches you should be cruel in comparison but it isn’t, it’s lighting fires under your skin and turning your brains to mush, so how is your body supposed to tell the difference?

It’ll hurt, you know that, you’ve heard enough about sex to know that it always hurts the first time for girls…women. It was already a stretch to fit his fingers in your virgin pussy, so of course his cock is going to hurt. You turn your head toward the window at your side and try on look out at the rain drawing rivulets like veins over the glass, something to focus on instead of him.

“I said look,” the demon hisses, and his hips push forward a bit and you bite off a whimper of pain. “Watch me take your virginity…look at your tight little cunt swallowing me up just like it was made to.”

“N-No—“ you whine, even though it’s not like you can ignore it. “Don’t make me, don’t make me look, I can’t—“

“Then look at me.”

It’s what he wants, some kind of wicked satisfaction he gets off on, but you’re lucky enough to even get an option so you choose that one, shifting your gaze up into his face instead of the place where his cock is pressing deeper and deeper inside you. Overhaul’s eyes are half-lidded and it’s hard to tell from behind the mask but the look on his face is…pleasure? No, that would be too human. Restraint, at least. He could just thrust up into your body in one stroke, but he wants you to feel it for some reason.

Maybe because it’s a worse betrayal of your chastity if you want to get fucked.

Lucky for you, though, you can barely feel anything aside from the pain. The heat you felt building earlier is draining out of you even as Overhaul tilts deeper, layering his chest over yours. You’re almost grateful for the modest barrier the dress provides between your torso and the solid muscle of his abdomen. His cock in your pussy feels like it’s too big too deep too much and it’s the first time you’ve felt like your body wasn’t created specifically for this purpose so you hold it tight.

“Does it hurt?”

A second of clarity makes you want to snarl (of course it fucking hurts, I’m losing my virginity to a demon I summoned from hell) and you dig your fingernails into your palms to stop yourself from saying it out loud. Overhaul pulls out a fraction of an inch and then pushes back in and you feel like the breath’s being pushed out of your lungs. “Yes! Yes, it—it hurts—“

“I can make you enjoy it…for a price,” he sighs, settling into a slow rocking motion of his hips pushing into yours.

And you want to, every sore muscle in your cunt is telling you to give in and give up, give him what he wants so you can enjoy it like he says—but you’d rather hate every second of this than make another deal. You shake your head quickly and because you’re still too afraid to look away from him, you don’t miss the look of surprise that flits across his face before he tamps it down. “I don’t—I don’t want to—like it,” you gasp out between thrusts. “It’s better if—if it h-hurts…”

This time it’s obvious—his eyes really do widen, and you feel some petty triumph at having caught him off guard like this. Who’s predictable now? you think—and then he’s lifting one hand off the altar at the side of your head and tugging his glove off with his teeth, and you don’t even have time to be afraid of what he’s going to do to you because it’s too late, his bare fingers are already stroking over your mound and onto your core, massaging into the flesh of your stomach so he can feel his own cock sliding in and out of you—

and it doesn’t hurt anymore?

You only have a second to try and understand—he cured you, he healed the pain from your first time just like he healed your illness?—before he hooks his grip under your thigh and folds your legs into your chest so he can fuck into you harder than before. His cock slaps into your pussy and you can hear it, hear how wet your filthy little cunt is, smeared through with your juices. It’s sick—the sound of skin against skin, and the moaning you can’t hold back, you sound like a woman in a porno and you wish the pain would come back just so you could keep hating what he’s doing to you. “What—what did you do—“

The demon ignores you. “It feels good, doesn’t it.”

“Nn—“ It’s deeper like this…deeper and rougher and you can feel it. Now that the pain’s been reduced to the dull ache of a stretched muscle, you can feel everything—his cock sliding against that same spot in your cunt that makes you want to squeal, the friction of his body moving against your clit, all of it, everything you wanted to block out— he pumps into you and you hear your breath sobbing out a moan a second out of rhythm, the sounds of you bouncing on demon cock echoing over the walls. “Please—ah, ahhh…”

“‘Please?’ Are you begging—me, little girl?” Overhaul pushes your thigh up and drags his cock through you, excruciatingly slow, forcing you to feel the thick head slide over every gummy wall in your slick pussy.

You shake your head, mewl, try to force your hips to stop rocking back into his and grinding your clit against him. But you can’t. You’re a—you were a virgin, for fuck’s sake! Overhaul’s immortal. Probably thousands of years of experience on how to make you feel like you want this, like you’re only alive in the places he touches you… You’re at his mercy, if he has any. You never stood a chance.

“Then are you begging your god?” His body lowers directly onto yours and like you’re being controlled by puppet strings your arms fold around him and rake your fingernails uselessly into the smooth skin of his back. You can feel the vibration of his mirthless laughter through his chest. “It must hurt terribly…to know he isn’t listening.”

“Don’t—stop, please,” you sob. “Don’t say—don’t stop—please!”

“Listen to yourself, girl—“ Overhaul’s breath is faster now, but you don’t have time to question it because you feel your peak coming again, the tension rising up through your cunt and your abdomen, harsher and crueler than when his fingers were in you but you want it just as much. More. “Has he ever answered your prayers? Has he...ahh, fuck—who’s the one giving you what you need?”

“No— please, please just let me let me, please—“ You’re talking nonsense now, begging for the release—at least then it’ll be over, and you need it, you need it so badly you feel your muscles locking up, cramping, your ankles crossing each other behind Overhaul’s back.

“Good girl,” the demon breathes, and then he lifts off you so he’s kneeling upright with the two of you still connected, his thick, heavy cock still speared in your pussy, and his fingers come down again to rub at your clit. Everything’s so wet you can hear the motion of his fingers slicking themselves through your juices, sliding up and down the little button over and over and it feels so good that a tiny part of you almost wants to drag it out, to savor it, but the rest of your body is going to die, is going to go crazy if the demon doesn’t let you cum right now, right now, right now!

And he does. Praise the Lord. The pads of Overhaul’s fingers pass over your clit one last time and your head rolls back, your throat moves but you can’t even make a sound, your legs shake and you cum.

You didn’t know it was like this.

Your cunt squeezes down on his cock, throbbing and pulsing and your toes literally curl (you didn’t think that was a real thing!) and your vision goes black for a moment and—oh fuck oh fuck i want this i want more how is it possible that i’ve never felt like this—you understand, more intimately than ever, why sex is wrong:

because nothing that makes you feel this good could possibly come without a cost, could it?

///

It must take longer than you thought for you to come back to your senses, because when you regain awareness of your body you’re in your hospital bed. You’re clean, too, and you wonder for a second if Overhaul bothered to clean you up? Or no…he probably just snapped his fingers and transported you back to your room. You’re not really sure how it works.

What you are sure of, however, is that you just got fucked by a demon. You’re sore in places that you didn’t know it was possible to be sore, and there are already bruises forming on the flesh of your thighs from how tight he was holding you. You don’t really have time to inspect these, though, because apparently your…ordeal (if you can call it that) isn’t over.

Overhaul’s still here.

He’s facing the hints of sunrise through the east window, dressed again in the immaculate lab coat and surgeon’s mask. “You’re awake,” he says without looking at you.

You nod hesitantly. You’re not really sure what the protocol is in this situation, but at least you’ve finally held up your side of the contract, right? And so has he. Despite having been up all night doing sinful things, you’re still itching to get out of this bed and test the limits of your healthy body. “You’re…going to leave, right?”

“Yes—”

At that, you sigh in relief and settle back into your starched bedsheets.

“But there’s one more thing you owe me.”

“Goddamnit,” you swear for the very first time in your life. After what you just did, taking the Lord’s name in vain seems like a relatively minor sin.

Overhaul’s mildly irritated expression doesn’t change, but he holds his hand out to you, palm up, the way you imagine someone would if they were helping you out of a car or requesting a dance at an old-fashioned ball. And really, you want all of this to be over—you want to get out of this hospital, you want to taste what the air outside is like, you want to distract yourself from what you just gave up in exchange for a future. At this point you’re just going to have to hope God isn’t as picky about the whole premarital sex thing as you grew up believing.

So you put your hand in Overhaul’s.

Slowly, carefully, like he’s afraid it’ll burn him, he slides your purity ring down your finger and balances it in the palm of his bare hand. It sizzles when he touches it, glowing orange until it eventually burns down into a ash-black circle in the center of his palm. Once he’s satisfied that your pretty little ring has been reduced to nothing more than a scorch mark, he closes his hand around yours and you feel something sharp, painfully hot, etching onto your finger.

It’s over in a second, but you still yelp and yank your hand away from him as soon as he lets you. “Ah—ow, what was that?”

He burned you, he literally burned you! He’s already healed it, but there’s still a thin, pale scar, an intentional one left wrapping around the skin at the base of your left ring finger. Like a wedding ring.

When you look close, you can make out a symbol on the back of your finger where the cross used to sit—and even though your conscious mind doesn’t recognize it, the sight of it rings out something inside your ribcage, deeper and truer than flesh and blood. It’s the devil’s mark, you think. It’s his.

“…A promise,” Overhaul says softly, and even though it’s a chilly morning, you can feel the heat of his hands on yours a long time after he vanishes back into the dark.

#overhaul x reader #chisaki kai x reader #bnha x reader #bnha imagines #mha imagines #tw dubcon #tw sacrilege #tw christianity #overhaul #chisaki kai #bnha #mha #boku no hero academia x reader #boku no hero imagines #my hero academia x reader #my hero imagines #boku no hero fanfic #smut

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pikahlua · 3 years

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Hi. Sorry to disturb you or probably send you an ask about a topic you don't really like. I don't mean to upset you, but I'd like to know your thoughts. I'd like to hear what you'd disagree about my opinion.

I used to find dad for one a fun and a plausible idea but now I'm more hesitant. Considering with how the story is going, I feel like DFO is going to lean more to underwhelming instead of something big. If that's canon. I don't hate it. I'm hesitant.

When I read your blog, you mentioned that Izuku already has many father figures and Izuku believes that a person isn't always defined by their heritage and also the fact that getting a big reaction from Izuku sounds clumsily written. You're not wrong, I'll also add up the fact that Izuku never mentioned his biological father at all. On AFO's side you mentioned that AFO doesn't likes Izuku at all. You're right. He already made up his mind to fight Izuku. It's proven in ch 318. You should also add up the chapter where he and All Might spoke in Tartarus as an evidence.

Even if AFO "turns out" to be Hisashi, even if he was present before he "left", I personally believed he threw Izuku away (to abuse Tenko) leaving Inko to have the burden all alone. (Before All Might came in) That explains why AFO has nothing nice to talk about Izuku. That also explains why Izuku never mentioned about his dad, let alone care about him.

Asides from the things I mentioned before, I personally do not like that theory anymore because I feel like both parties do not care about it or see it as a big deal. My problem with dad for one is never about the cliché (if Dad For One is cliché and one of them cared it would be much bearable). It's always about how it will work in the story. At this rate, I'd rather have an anticlimactic normal salaryman Hisashi Midoriya instead of that. Truthfully I'd hate it if the reveal's going to be clumsily written.

Overall that's my thoughts. You may not agree with me. But yeah. Sorry again with the long message. Sorry for sending you this.

This is it.

Considering with how the story is going, I feel like DFO is going to lean more to underwhelming instead of something big.

The time has come at last.

Asides from the things I mentioned before, I personally do not like that theory anymore because I feel like both parties do not care about it or see it as a big deal.

This is my chance to give you all my best, dumbest theory.

At this rate, I’d rather have an anticlimactic normal salaryman Hisashi Midoriya instead of that.

A lot of people are going to hate this theory.

But I can't hold back anymore.

Theory: All For One is Hisashi Midoriya, and the story is going to intentionally, unironically treat it as a joke

Remember the long list of meta articles I haven’t yet written?

Why haven’t I written number 1? Why is number 1 what it is?

Because it’s the biggest topic in MHA no one ever talks about.

Did you know one of My Hero Academia’s primary genres is comedy?

Have you forgotten? Did you ever even know to begin with? I feel like everyone ignores this fact constantly. This may be the reason why I’m so good at predictions with this story that other people seem to miss (yes, I’m cherry-picking and being halfway sarcastic; I always have been).

MHA’s best tool for laughs is and always will be anticlimax. I cannot stress enough how often MHA loves to use this technique.

I often hear “anticlimax/anticlimactic” used as a negative criticism, especially colloquially. This criticism assumes an anticlimax is always written unintentionally. But that’s often not the case; anticlimax is actually fucking fantastic when placed in the right hands.

And Kohei Horikoshi is a goddamn anticlimax connoisseur.

I say he’s a connoisseur because Horikoshi has the gall, nay, the gumption--dare I say the balls to showcase the versatility of anticlimax as a storytelling technique for more than just comedy (although he does also use it for comedy a lot). He dares to use it in action scenes, horror/thriller scenes, and even fuzzy heartfelt scenes, all to the great effect of toying with our emotions. And he successfully has us feel exactly what he wants us to every time--because that’s the point. These aren’t cheap jokes; they serve a purpose!

They illustrate an actual, meaningful point about whatever scenario they are used in to make the story more realistic, to combat the fridge logic “well actually” complaints endemic to fandom. Because Horikoshi is a fan himself.

I won’t go into the full scope of MHA’s love affair with anticlimax today, but I will list some examples and then discuss the ones that best support this semi-serious theory. I also would like to say that the anime does a stellar job of translating the story’s anticlimactic moments to the animation medium, sometimes even better than how it came across in the manga.

An incomplete list of MHA’s use of anticlimax:

All Might unwittingly reveals his true, injured state to Izuku in the first chapter

All Might tells Izuku he can’t be a hero without a quirk

Katsuki chases Izuku down after the sludge villain incident just to tell him he sucks

All Might gives Izuku his quirk via having Izuku eat his hair (pictured above)

Ochako stops Izuku’s fall when he trips before the UA entrance exam

Present Mic starts the entrance exam without a countdown

Ochako stops Izuku’s fall during the entrance exam

Aizawa erases Izuku’s quirk as he attempts to throw the ball with 100% of his power in the quirk assessment test

Aizawa warns Katsuki and the class not to make him overuse his quirk...because it gives him dry-eye

Aizawa fails to expel anyone after the quirk assessment test

Anytime Snipe shoots Tomura Shigaraki during the USJ incident

Izuku and Katsuki rush Shouto at the end of the cavalry battle only to be interrupted by the buzzer

Tenya Iida vs. Mei Hatsume somehow keeps the anticlimax going for a whole damn scene

Momo Yaoyorozu vs. Fumikage Tokoyami ends before Momo has the chance to showcase her abilities, when she has been shown to be in easy contention for the top spot in the class

Ochako Uraraka vs. Katsuki Bakugou ends when Ochako trips from overexertion despite both competitors being ready to clash

Shouto Todoroki vs. Katsuki Bakugou, to be discussed below

The reveal of All Might’s terrifying former teacher Gran Torino as a comically senile old man (the scene where he’s tripped and fallen on a plate of sausages and ketchup deserves an honorable mention)

“Gran Torino, I get it now! This taiyaki in my hand...is me!” “No, it’s not. Are you okay?”

The battle with Stain ends when Izuku, Shouto, and Iida, all ready to continue fighting, eventually realize Stain has already been knocked out cold

Horikoshi dares to repeat this same damn anticlimax almost immediately after but throws in Endeavor and a bunch of random pro heroes too (the anime handled this immaculately):

The police chief makes it seem like he’s going to punish Izuku, Shouto, and Iida for their roles in the fight against Stain but ends his diatribe with a thank-you and a bow

The Field Gamma race ends with Izuku tripping off a pipe and Sero taking first place

The reveal of Kouda’s quirk via attacking Present Mic with bugs

Izuku punches Katsuki in the face before All Might can during their final exam

“Kacchan should be able to take advantage of that” right before Katsuki gets fucking wrecked

Aizawa once again fails to deliver on his promises by letting the final exam failures attend summer camp

This unapologetic gem of a resolution to the mall confrontation:

Honenuki laughs about Katsuki and Shouto’s reactions of “fright” during the test of courage at summer training camp

The noumu gets called away right before it kills Momo and Awase in the woods

Satou wins the dorm room contest for nothing to do with his room decorations

The second half of the provisional hero license exam ends with the buzzer before Izuku can truly face off against Gang Orca

Sir Nighteye reveals he was always going to accept Izuku as an intern despite all the shenanigans he puts Izuku through

Izuku is saved by Aizawa stopping Eri’s quirk with his own, which just turns her quirk off

Aoyama’s creepy cheese stalking of Izuku turns out to be an attempt to cheer Izuku up (unless... [cough])

Match 3 of the joint simulation training results in a draw (pictured above)

Tomura’s plan to use Gigantomachia against the Meta Liberation Army never actually has the chance to happen

Endeavor pumps up his interns only to reveal that he’s taking them home for dinner

Katsuki gets the lampshade thrown in his face when he tries to gloat about catching a villain faster than Endeavor at his internship

Gran Torino shames Tomura for stomping on Nana Shimura’s legacy, to which Tomura replies flatly: “Who?”

The single greatest gag in the whole series, as discussed below

As I hope the above list illustrates, Horikoshi has no compunctions using anticlimax in big, important, non-humorous scenes (even if the anticlimax ultimately adds humor to the scene that was otherwise unexpected). This man has no fear. He ends his famously popular take on the tried and true trope of tournament arcs with one big let-down that affects not just the audience but the in-universe characters.

This is so fucking brilliant I cannot even begin to go into it because that would be an essay all on its own. This isn’t just a joke. This isn’t just a meta attempt to make the audience sympathize with Katsuki’s perspective. This is a moment that caps off so many intertwining character arcs and then sets them all in new directions. This moment is so utterly important to the themes of the story it blows my mind every fucking time I think about it.

So, Horikoshi has a penchant for anticlimax, and it’s been present even into the later, darker, more dramatic arcs of the MHA story. And that’s where this theory comes from.

My theory is that Horikoshi may be about to give us another of his trademarked spins on genre cliches as he’s so partial to do. Perhaps all the hints and Star Wars references truly are leading up to a DFO reveal. But as I’ve discussed ad nauseum, if this trope is played straight, I cannot yet imagine a world where it results in a satisfying twist.

And then I remembered the single greatest gag in the whole series.

Fuck you this is the absolute best thing ever in existence.

Do you know why? Because there was such a fucking wankfest in the fandom over what Katsuki’s hero name would be, and by god was everyone so fucking convinced they were right, only for everyone (except me and like two other people) to get a pie to the fucking face. This was the ultimate “y’all are taking this shit way too seriously” meta moment, made all the sweeter for steamrolling its way through another long-awaited dramatic reveal (Touya Todoroki).

You wanna tell me Horikoshi didn’t know exactly what he was doing here? You wanna tell me Horikoshi didn’t know about the fandom war over Katsuki’s hero name? That he didn’t purposefully fucking troll the fandom with this? That this isn’t the single greatest brick joke in the history of published media for its effect both in the canon and in the meta? Fuck you, we’re building up the tension around the most wildly popular character’s hero name reveal for 248 goddamn chapters (that’s five-and-a-half years) just to make it the cringiest fucking thing you’ve ever heard in your goddamn life. His hero name must be the closest audio rendition anyone can imagine shaped like a middle finger and fucking nothing less will suffice. Congratulations, fandom: you played yourselves! You made a war no one could win! Horikoshi could have chosen Ground Zero or Kacchan as Katsuki’s hero name and risked alienating half his fandom either way, but you didn’t realize there was a third option, which of course he took: to risk alienating the entire fucking fandom. If you don’t love this shit, you don’t deserve the comedy genre.

Sorry, where was I?

Ah yes, troll-level trope subversion.

What if DFO...but anticlimactic?

And so, this is all I can think of: what if All For One is Hisashi Midoriya, but it’s played for laughs?

AFO: Izuku, I am your father! Izuku: I literally don't care [punch]

AFO: Fuck, why is it you here? I wanted to reveal to Izuku that I am his father. Katsuki: Hi what the fuck

AFO: But did you know...I AM IN FACT IZUKU'S FATHER! Shouto: I fucking knew it

What if AFO reveals he’s Izuku’s father but reveals it to someone other than Izuku?

What if AFO reveals he’s someone’s father but NOT Izuku’s?

What if Izuku reveals to AFO that he’s his son?

What if AFO reveals he’s Izuku’s father, but Izuku responds, “GREAT I ACTUALLY REPRESSED MY HATRED OF MY ABSENTEE FATHER THIS MAKES ANNIHILATING YOU MUCH EASIER oh and btw, All Might is my dad now”?

What if AFO reveals he’s Izuku’s father, but before Izuku can react, Shouto and Dabi get triggered by the advent of daddy issues and immolate AFO before anyone else can do anything?

What if AFO tries to reveal he’s Izuku’s father but right as he says “I am your fa-” a biplane or something shows up out of no where and steamrolls him?

I’ve joked in private about all of this but...yeah, I’m comfortable throwing this idea out there for funsies now. I’m sorry if I just utterly ruined a punchline again, but honestly? If this happens? Holy shit.

Come at me, Apollo.

#ask pika #anon ask #people are gonna hate this but #ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?#mha spoilers #mha manga spoilers #my hero academia spoilers #my hero academia manga spoilers #all for one #izuku midoriya #AFO #DFO #great explosion murder god dynamight #HORIKOSHI YOU MADMAN #meta #so meta it's meta #theory #WMG

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