#Ivy Michaels writes

[magentamedicines]

Magentamedicines (Pt.15)

-------------------------

Cori didn't like this whole investigation thing. All the men in suits asking her questions she wasn't allowed to answer and threatening her when she said as much.

She was a child, she was only a child, who were they to tell her nothing bad would happen if she spoke?

Cori was very good at being quiet, she had a lot of practice.

"And they can't find him all the sudden? How do you lose a six foot three brit in the middle of Hurricane Utah!" They were huddled up in Henry's house for now, no one was sure where to go. Tori was upset, so were Michael and Jeremy and Henry, all for various reasons.

Cori had to stay with her cousins Ivy and Sammy while the adults were talking.

Sammy was the oldest, fourteen, a freshman in high-school now.

Ivy was ten, and already in middle school because she was smart enough to skip a grade.

And then there was Cori, seven years old and never having so much as set foot in a school building, after all, school would interrupt her training.

"Well- Michael and Jeremy can stay with me, I've got to much space in that house for just myself anyway," Cori listened through the door as the 'adults', if you could call three eighteen year olds and a man in his early forties such, decided what would happen now that William seemed to have vanished.

"Cori can stay with me then, I. . . I have space for a third," There was a pain in Henry's voice, Cori recognized that.

But she also recognized that thus wasn't what she wanted.

"Nuh uh- I'm staying with Mike." She pushed her way past the door and past her cousins, stomping her foot on the ground for emphasis.

"Cori it's safer this way- you're better off as an Emily than an Afton," Michael fired back, crossing his arms.

"Why does going with you mean I have to be an Afton? I could be an Eliades or a Fitzgerald if you think I won't be able to do anything because of our last name!"

"Cori none of us have jobs anymore!"

"But we do have leftover money- and- and you said Tori could pay for stuff anyway! I heard you!"

"Cori can you please just listen-"

"No! You listen! You and I are the only two Aftons left as far as we know, we have to stick together- I'm not going anywhere without you." Cori emphasized the words with a turn of her heel, storming off toward Michael's car.

"Cori it's late- we aren't even leaving yet- we're staying the night," Michael said with a resigned sigh, Cori's face flushed slightly as she walked back inside.

And she felt worse when she woke up in that dreaded room again, but something was different this time- she could tell.

Normally she wasn't sitting on the bed, and there were no creepy plush-babies or freddles in sight.

Then she looked toward the edge of the bed, where two brightly colored gold ears poked out over the top.

Followed by glassy greyish eyes, then rows of jagged sharp teeth.

"I told you not to tattle, didn't I?" The rabbit spoke in a harsh static cackle, Cori wanted to speak, but she felt as if she couldn't move her mouth. There was a music box esque noise playing from somewhere in the room. It wasn't the same as Ballora's or the Marionette's.

"How did they find out then? Who did you tell? Why did you let them take him away?" Cori felt tears rolling down her cheeks as the creature crept further onto the bed. She shook her head, she couldn't answer.

"Why did you let them take Papa away? Hm? You were the favorite, why did you disappoint him?" Cori covered her ears and closed her eyes, closing in on herself in a desperation to disappear.

She woke up with a start, she wasn't sure which animatronic had gotten to her, but she didn't want to go back to bed. She didn't want to see that- that thing ever again.

Cori was silent for most of the car ride back to Tori's house, picking at the fabric of her overalls.

It was a lonely kind of silence, one that you only felt when nearly every member of your family was dead because of a man you barely recognized.

Papa. . .

She rolled the word around in her head, it sounded to nice to be a good fit for her father, why did he call himself that?

She didn't want to think about it for much longer.

"Alright! I'll get everything settled in, Jeremy can help me out- you two just- I'm so sorry love. . ." Tori pressed her forehead to Michael's, running her fingers through his hair.

"Happy birthday to me, I guess," Michael said with a bitter laugh.

He watched as Tori and Jeremy left to start unpacking boxes, before finally turning to his younger sister on the couch.

"I'm sorry I ruined your birthday Mike. . ." Cori whispered, Michael raised an eyebrow.

"You didn't ruin anything lovebug, it's all father's fault," Michael said, Cori tilted her head.

"Why do you call him that?"

"Call him what?"

"Father- why do you use that word and not another one- like- dad- or- or papa-" Cori fidgeted with her hands, biting her lip as she spoke.

"Father's a formal title, he doesn't deserve casual- casual implies I give a shit about him or he gives a shit about me," Michael said with an affirmative nod, Cori nodded along with him.

"What about the other two?" Cori continued.

"Well- dad is more basic, but still less formal than father- so it doesn't fit him, it's plain, a starter word," Michael said, drawing a breath before continuing.

"Papa's probably the strangest of all of them depending on how it's used, it implies some sort of childish attachment, like dependency, like you need him to survive or something," Michael said. Cori nodded, so that's why he wanted to be called Papa- he wanted her to depend on him.

Words were funny, especially considering how many meanings they could have.

[ghostfacesvalentine]

First time - Multimuse x Fem!Reader

Pairing: Multimuse x Fem!Reader

Warnings: nsfw, dom/sub dynamic, sort of ddlg? No non con, but reader begging to slow down bc overstim, mmm i dunno.

Type: blurp

Request: N/A

Word Count: N/A

Prompt: No prompt, just smut abt when or how reader came to call the muse “Daddy” for the first time.

Notes: I mainly just kind of included muses I would think to be the more dominant ones, at least ones that I could write easily for. Maybe I’ll make another one, idk. So sorry if your fav didn’t make the cut ily.

Michael Myers: Honestly what else was there to call him. As soon as you saw him, the way he towered over you as you looked up to him helplessly. It was no different from when he was tangling his mangled fingers into your scalp, gripping whatever amount of hair he could. Looking down to you through the holes of his mask as you felt him deeper you could almost swear you were going to split. “Daddy.” You repeated like a prayer as he’d hit the right spot, feeling your legs flinch deliciously as your folds clenched around him. Even after creaming all over him, you repeating his new nickname would only cause him to pin you down to the floorboards even if you’re screaming and begging him to slow down because you were overstimulated. Michael would be absolutely feral.

Billy Loomis: Kind of has a softer approach, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be any less torturous. It’s almost like he’s trying to get it out of you. Billy knew when he lusted for you across the classroom that he’d have you in a puddle of your own arousal in no time. Bonus points if you’re shy. He’d be gentle at first, running his finger tips all across your tender spots, watching you intensely, so much so it makes you kind of uneasy at first. Still, to be sitting on a picnic table, exposed to him as you were, there was something so hot about it. When his fingertips plunge into you after almost a half hour of sloppy wet kisses, you were stunned at the self control he managed to have. After a few pumps he traces your arousal around the outer parts of your folds, with a devilish smile when he notices your pout. “Daddy please” You beg, your hand gripping onto his wrist. Something in him flicks, he has you exactly where he wants you. “Please what kitten?”

Patrick Bateman: He’s used to making all the calls, you always trusted that he knew best. Sometimes it felt like Patrick liked to make all the shots more than he lead on, but that didn’t mean he didn’t annoy you at times. “Don’t forget we have that dinner reservation at 7. I don’t like to eat much later than that, it messes with my schedule.” He’d call out from across the room as he worked on his button up. Rolling your eyes as you were trying to make your makeup work. “Yes daddy.” It takes him a second to register before you feel him behind you, his hand wrapping around the front of your throat. He didn’t understand what came over him, but all he knew was that if he wanted to see you pout, he wanted it to be because he was making you hold back your orgasm. Grabbing you by your throat and pulling you back against his chest, his free hand would make of your panties. “What a fucking brat.” He’d mumble into the side of your head as he’d expose you in front of the mirror you were getting ready before.

Poison Ivy: Calling her daddy probably wouldn’t be the best idea, but she would know what you meant. Sometimes it would just slip out and she understood. Ivy would even use it as an excuse to prolong your orgasm. “Daddy, please, I can’t” You’d cry out as you clenched for the fourth time in a row, afraid you had nothing left in you. Lifting your head to see Ivy’s lustful smile as you came undone so pretty, you knew she wasn’t stopping any time soon. “Oh baby, when will you learn that’s not my name.” She’d hush into your neck as her tongue would make work of your sensitive spots. Her free hand would plunge into your open cry-filled mouth to muffle your moans of the nickname. That’s the only time she didn’t want to hear it, but she can’t help but keep you riding your waves of pleasure.

Steve Rogers: He’s already kind of a kinky boy, as soon as he saw you, he was fantasying of you in a short skirt and over the knee socks, picking you up and pounding mercilessly into you as you screamed for him that it was too much, but you both knew it felt too good to stop. It wouldn’t be long for you to find yourself in that position. Steve’s super serum made it all the easier to pick you up effortlessly to keep you from squirming away as you felt his dick plunge deeper into you causing your eyes to roll back into your head. “Daddy, okay- Please-” You’d cry out, not knowing what you wanted, just knowing all you knew was Steve. With every thrust, he just became more unhinged, then when he felt your folds clench around him as you squirted all over him, seeing your eyes fumble out tears, you both knew “Steve” was no longer his name to you.

Bucky Barnes: Kind of similar to Steve, but not so much. He’s a tiny bit more gentle. Bucky would rather have you coming undone onto him, watching your eyes beg for him to keep going, hitting that spot his fingers graze when they curl a certain way. Seeing you clench your nails into his arm as you cream for the third time and whimper out “Daddy” with swollen lips and tear-filled eyes, not looking away from him. “Come on baby, another one for daddy, you know I love your pretty pies” Dirty words would flow effortlessly from his lips, he’d leave so many pretty marks on your neck as you whined out his new nickname.

Loki Laufeyson: He’d catch you in a vulnerable position, mainly focused on making you orgasm. “What is it sweetheart? Like that?” He’d almost mock as you nod, indicating his fingers were helping you. “Sorry what was that?” He’d ask, frowning as he’d look to meet your eyes, when you wouldn’t, he’d take his hands from your core, causing you to whine. “No, daddy, please I need it.” You’d beg, grabbing onto his wrists and pulling him back to where he was. Any other time this would be unacceptable, but he wanted to see you undone so bad. More than that, he wanted to hear you again, so he’d work with his fingers, then remove them, or slow down only to hear you whimper out “Daddy-” Your frustration causing you to meet his eyes, almost angry “I wanna cum on your hands.”

Cloud Strife: By no means would it be intentional, but when he’s pounding into you, your face digging into the mattress as his head is hitting your g spot, you couldn’t help but whine out “Daddy, like- like that” Which only makes him grab your hips and bring them closer to his, digging his dick further into you. He must be doing something right if you’re breathlessly crying out. Not to mention, he’d take it as praise and I would infer that he has a praise kink. When you wouldn’t moan any more, he’d grab a fistful of your hair and bring you back up to him “Do I stop?” He’d tease as his face met your damp cheek.

Bruce Wayne: You’d be begging to get his attention, crawling onto his lap, usually you weren’t this demanding, but you yearned to feel his warm hands on your body, it didn’t matter where. He put up less of a fight, you both knew climbing onto his lap or trying to get his attention while he was investigating was a big no no. Somehow you felt like maybe he wanted you to keep going too. You felt your sensitive spot graze onto his lap as you pulled yourself closer to him. “Daddy, please I wanna play.” You mumbled out, not knowing what his reaction would be, then feeling an abrupt shift, his hands landing onto your hips, planting you onto his bulge. You saw the twinkle in his eye, not knowing where it really came from until he’s pushing his dick as far as your fold would let him, bent over his desk in the bat cave “thought baby wanted to play?” He’d mumble to you as he’d pull your hair all together in a fist to pull you back by.

Jason Todd: Honestly, just meeting him and you kind of knew that was him. It was when you were giving him the silent treatment that he pulled you onto his lap, holding you still against his growing bulge “What’s wrong bunny?” He’d mumble as he would try to find your eyes. This being your first time being handled by him, you felt your center puddle, then throb when you felt your sensitive parts grind so gently against his bulge. Pursing your bottom lip, you found the courage to look him in the eyes only to see his lips curl into a smile. Jason would nonchalantly rock your hips back and forth on his lap, acting as if he was still trying to get an answer out of you. “Did I do something?” He’d ask as if he didn’t know what he was doing. “Daddy please-” You’d surrender, pleading to feel anything else but your arousal stain your clothes.

[aglennco]

I've got a little 3 page comic about objects, tea, and memory debuting in Hungry Zine's Issue 07: Funeral Foods, which you can pre-order now.

Hungry Zine's Issue 07: Funeral Foods, features 60 pages of writing and art by: Jessica Truong, Cree Stoney, Virginia Boudreau, Elisia Synder, Ryan Lacanilao, Kyla Pascal, David Kahane, Marco Melfi, Jin He, Wendy McGrath, AGLENNCO, Jeff Ku, Meghan Klak, Sophie Gareau-Brennan, Michael Filtz, Ivy Lerner-Frank, Emmanuelle Chateauneuf, Brotherhood of Plates, Haley Pukanski, Andy Rubio “No-Body:)”, Marie-Eve Bernier, Christine Wu, Carmen Smith, aina z. paguergan, Hailey McCullough.

[brok3n]

⭑ ˙₊⁺𓈒 ࣪LOOKING FOR DISCORD 1x1 PARTNERS⭒ ִֶָ˙ 𓈒˙₊⁺

hi there! i’m looking for some new rp partners to write with on discord. i tend to write in third person paragraphs and ask that my partner does the same. also, please be 18+. under the cut are a list of parings i’d like and the bolded characters are who i would play. like this if you are interested!

american horror story:

mallory / michael, kyle / zoe, & violet / tate.

anyone but you:

bea / ben.

bottoms:

hazel / pj, isabel / josie, & brittany / isabel.

boys, the:

annie / hughie, kimiko / frenchie, & becca / billy.

bridgerton:

anthony / kate, edwina / frederick, violet / edmund, charlotte / george, benedict / sophie, penelope / colin, eloise / sir philip, & eloise / theo.

caraval:

scarlett / julian, donatella / legend, & evangeline / jacks.

corpse bride:

emily / victor.

daisy jones and the six:

daisy / billy, camila / eddie, lisa / warren, & karen / graham.

dc:

dinah / helena, harley / ivy, harley / flag, selina / bruce, diana / steve, & raven / beast boy.

disney:

tink / peter pan, belle / beast, jasmine / aladdin, rapunzel / flynn, tiana / naveen, ariel / eric, & anna / kristoff.

five nights at freddy’s:

vanessa / mike, chica / foxy, & charlie / elizabeth.

folk of the air:

jude / cardan & taryn / locke.

grishaverse:

alina / darkling, shadow summoner oc / darkling, nina / matthias, kaz / inej, & nikolai / zoya.

invitation, the.

evie / walter.

knives out:

marta / ransom.

lisa frankenstein:

lisa / creature.

mean girls:

janis / regina & cady / aaron.

never have i ever.

ben / devi, trent / eleanor, aneesa / fabiola, & lindsay / paxton.

once upon a time:

emma / killian & august / ruby.

percy jackson and the olympians:

annabeth / percy, sally / poseidon, & thalia / luke.

ready or not:

grace / daniel.

red, white, and royal blue.

henry / alex.

rick and morty:

jessica / morty, unity / rick, beth / jerry, & tammy / summer.

scream:

chad / tara, danny / sam, ghost face oc / ethan.

teen wolf:

lydia / stiles & cora / isaac.

vampire diaries:

hope / landon, lizzie / landon, lizzie / mg.

[the-last-rat-standing]

NCIS S21E02- The Stories We Leave Behind

Is that too harsh? Maybe it's too harsh.

Let me preface this by saying, I can only imagine how hard it must've been to write and film this episode. It's one reason why I don't write DeathFics, and those are only fictional people. Writing the passing of a real person, a friend and a colleague? Must be one of the hardest things to do as a writer.

So maybe that's why this felt so incredibly flat. Maybe trying to find that balance between dealing with the death and moving on dulled the emotional punch of it all? Because beyond the opening and closing, this was barely more than a clip episode shows throw in the middle of a season to save money. And of those flashbacks, we could only get ones with 3 characters who are still on the show, because Knight, Parker and even Torres didn't really know him. (I'll mention the Gibbs flashback in a second.) So you had this random assortment of clips that were supposed to engender emotions, but did the opposite in a way- because they weren't immediate reactions (they were memories), it actually lessened the emotional impact. You know what flashback would've been a kick to the gut? How about someone mention Cate, and then show us the clip of Ducky and Cate together? Then you would've gotten the one-two punch of 2 beloved characters now gone. Because if you're going to show a scene between Gibbs and Ducky that no one was present to see (using Ducky's journals as your 'out'), you could've shown Cate or Jenny or Ziva.

By not showing the funeral, fans missed out on a proper send off and a true tie-in with the past. I know Brian Dietzen said they didn't want it to be crammed full of guest stars, but the only guest star we got was a 3 minute cameo by Michael Weatherly?? If they'd had a funeral, they could've filled the church with faces we remembered and given characters/actors a chance to pay their respects. Imagine the nostalgia in seeing Hollis Mann, Jordan Hampton, Gerald Jackson, Ziva David (would've made sense since they brought Tony back), Abby Sciuto (I know, there are off-screen problems w/PP), Rachel Cranston, etc. I know Jessica Walter has also passed away, but what about the rest of Ducky's detective group? What about Jack Sloane? Yes, I know these may have added more storytelling time (particularly Abby and Jack) but did we need McGee's poison ivy flashback?

Other issues:

What happens to Nicholas Mallard? You know, Ducky's half-brother.

What happens to Gibbs' house?

What was the actual proof that the senator was dirty? I mean, real forensic proof? I didn't seem to hear anything other than Parker reading off the autopsy report and the Marine. Or I guess we're just meant to think that ruined his career? Because they didn't charge him with murder or anything.

The entire story hinged on McGee remembering one of the pictures hid a safe? Like Ducky's only clue to an important case was a cryptic line in his journal? smh

This was... this was just not good. One of, if not THE most beloved character on this show and we got a clip episode.

Which brings me back to the Gibbs flashback: As soon as they showed the picture of Gibbs and Ducky on the bookshelf, I knew we weren't going to see Mark. And that disappoints me more than it should, really. After tonight, we should never, ever see Gibbs on this show again, because there will be no bigger reason for him to return than Ducky's death, and he didn't show. Any reason after tonight will be bullshit and a slap in the face to the fans who supported and fell in love with the Gibbs/Ducky friendship. I'm so bitterly disappointed.

[lolahauri]

✎ Introduction ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

Mainly writing for characters and/or themes i really want to read about, but have little to no content.

I do take requests. (Fic only. No RPF)

I don't have an anon list but I can start one if anyone wants to be labeled or become a regular anon.

DNI: Map, Zoo, Pro-Para, Pro-Ana, TERF, Zionist, Bigots, Minors, Antis, Discourse Blogs. Block me if you don't agree. ❤️🖤🤍💚

Things I Won't Write:

Sex crimes of any kind, super extreme kinks, violence/abuse used as a kink, anything most would consider "gross/weird" (ex: puke, shit, ddlg, pet play, age play). no exceptions, and no hate to dead dove writers, i'm just personally not willing to write these.

Things I Will Write:

Pretty much everything else i guess? Daddy/Mommy kink, Cheating, CNC/Dubcon, Sex Pollen, Legal Age Gap, Yandere, Power Dynamic (Prof/Student, Boss/Employee), Foot Fetish, Piss Kink, Breeding, Any regular/non-extreme kink (ex: Cock Warming, Dry Humping, Voyeur, Orgy, 3somes, Sex Toys, etc...) *if you aren't sure, just ask!*

Fluff, angst, smut, lewd, platonic, hurt/comfort.

HC'S, mood boards, one shots, short multi-chapter fics, imagines/drabbles.

Canon-friendly, Au's, Canon Divergence, Out of Character.

Ch x Ch / Ch x Reader / Ch x OC / Poly Ships of any kind.

F/F, M/M, F/M, GN/F, GN/M, Poly Ships of any kind.

Fictional Other (F/O) Imagines: +18, no names, they/them only.

Now that that's out of the way, here's the list of fandoms and characters i'm familiar with and will happily take requests on! (you can request others from these fandoms, but it will prob take me longer)

FNAF Movie: Vanessa, Mike, William/Steve. Turning Red: Ming Lee, Jin Lee. YOU: Joe, Love, Beck, Peach. Encanto: Isabela, Bruno, Dolores, Julieta. Regular Show: Mordecai, CJ, Benson. (Human Ver.) Attack on Titan: Armin, Eren, Mikasa, Sasha, Levi, Hanji, Annie, Historia, Reiner, Erwin. BNA: Michiru, Shirou. Stardew Valley: All adult humans. Total Drama: All season 1 contestants, Chris, Chef, Blainley. SheRa: All adults (except Rogelio). King Of The Hill: Hank, Peggy, Luanne, Nancy, Dale, John Redcorn, Kahn, Min. American Dad: Francine. Shameless: Lip, Fiona, Kev, V, Tony. Riverdale: FP Jones, Jughead, Veronica, Hiram, Betty. Creepypasta: Ben, Jeff, Jane, Eyeless Jack, Laughing Jack, Slenderman, Masky, Hoodie, Toby, X Virus, Nina, Clockwork, Splendorman, Kate. Gravity Falls: Stan, Ford, Soos, Giffany Steven Universe: Jasper, Amethyst, Blue Diamond, Peridot, Lapis, Garnet, Rose, Bismuth, Greg. Adventure Time/Fiona and Cake: Princess Bubblegum, Marceline, Marshall Lee, Winter King, Candy Queen, Simon, Ice King, Fiona. COD: Konig, Ghost. Desperate Housewives: Bree, Gabby, Edie, Mike, Lynette. DC: Batman, Harley, Joker, Ivy, Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenburg). Slashers & DBD: Brahms, Ghostface (general), Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, Pyramid Head, The Spirit, Wraith, Huntress, Trapper, The Trickster, Pearl, Carrie White, Jennifer Check, Stu Matcher, Billy Loomis, Tiffany Valentine, Leatherface, Bo Sinclair, Vincent Sinclair, Eric Draven. Nintendo: Link, Zelda, Peach, Daisy, Rosalina, Luigi, Waluigi, Bowser. Squid Games: Gi-Hun, Sae-Byeok, Ali, Sang Woo. Rick and Morty: Rick, Beth, Jerry. Stranger Things: Robin, Billy, Eddie, Chrissy, Hopper. Bee & Puppycat: Bee, Deckard, Cass, Toast. Princess & The Frog: Shadow Man, Tiana, Lottie, Naveen. Ratatouille: Collette, Linguini. The Nanny: CC, Fran, Maxwell. Full House: Danny, Jesse, Joey. Big Bang Theory: Raj, Leonard, Amy, Penny. Spiderverse: Miguel, Hobie, Jessica Drew. Teen Titans (OG): Beast Boy, Starfire, Raven. Black Dynamite: Honeybee, Black Dynamite. Breaking Bad: Skylar, Jesse, Walter. National Treasure: Benjamin Gates, Riley Poole. Superstore: Jonah, Amy, Dina, Cheyenne. Spongebob: Man Ray, Dennis. Tangled: Flynn, Rapunzel, Mother Gothell. Elemental: Wade, Ember. Mean Girls: Regina, Gretchen, Karen, Janis. Lisa Frankenstein: Lisa, Creature, Taffy. Jane the Virgin: Jane, Michael, Rogelio, Petra, Xiomara, Rose, Luisa. Young Sheldon: Mary, Connie. Twilight: Edward, Carlisle, Alice, Charlie.

Beverly Goldberg (The Goldbergs) Fujimoto (Ponyo) Thomas Magnum (Magnum, P.I 1980) Doug Remer (Baseketball) Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park 1993) Rose Tyler (Doctor Who) Moe Doodle (Doodle Bops) Astarion (Baulders Gate 3) Trevor Phillips (GTA5) Shaun Murphy (The Good Doctor) Georgia Miller (Ginny & Georgia) John Doe (John Doe Game) Paul Blart (Paul Blart Mall Cop) Napoleon Dynamite (self titled) Fezzik (Princess Bride)

[antiterf]

Wow, a transphobic researcher (Michael Bailey) that published a book about trans women without their consent has had his research article [different from the book] retracted twenty years later after again not asking a different group of trans people for consent.

"The Publisher and the Editor-in-Chief have retracted this article due to noncompliance with our editorial policies around consent. The participants of the survey have not provided written informed consent to participate in scholarly research or to have their responses published in a peer reviewed article. Additionally, they have not provided consent to publish to have their data included in this article. Table 1 and the Supplementary material have therefore been removed to protect the participants’ privacy." "The authors disagree with this retraction"

Yeah because transphobes don't like when they can't use trans people as research subjects without consent. He'll probably write another article on 4thwavenow about suppression when he has tenure at an Ivy League University and should know the bare minimum of ethics.

[lara635kookie]

My Ship Ranking:

Okay so a few warnings about this:

1-I added all the ships I could find. If there is any missing, let me know and I'll add later.

2-This is my opinion and it isn't meant to be offensive to anyone. You can agree or disagree and it's totally fine. If you wanna do your own rankings, I would love to read it.

3-It's a long post that I've been writing for weeks. I made revisions but if something passed through me and you guys notice, you can tell me.

1-Red Crackle:

Is that even a surprise to anyone? Red Crackle is my whole life and owns my entire soul lol. But jokes aside, these two are just so linked and have a foundation not even time and space can separate. Even when they're apart by circunstances, they meet again. They always comeback to one another. Duane Capizzi said in this interview Carmen and Gray "will definitely meet again":

https://youtu.be/PIjX9rGvUmk?si=4paV3k7alKrt-B4f

And I haven't seen other interviews yet but in this specific interview the person just says Duane said Carmen doesn't see Gray in a flirty light and brushes it off asking about Carulia. Then Duane just talks more about Julia's character and then says, "if it's there, it's intentional" which indicates, from what I got, that the double meaning is there, you can choose how you see and interpret it. They could have made the carulia interactions more clear and chose not to do so on purpose. So I imagine the same thing applies to Red Crackle, Carmivy, Jeantonio, etc. The show ended so now is up to us to interpretate with what we have. Even if Duane, and the whole crew of the show overall, ship something, we can ship something different. As the show is not romance focused, we can choose from what we have. And no way there's no people who ship Red Crackle among the show staff. Michael Goldsmith(Gray's voice actor) seemed to ship. This guy seems to as well(not sure tho) considering the way he directed the holy trinity of Red Crackle episodes:

Gray's character is fundamental for Carmen to be the person she is. Can you picture Carmen jumping from the plane with El Topo, Le Chevre or Tigress? She trusted only Gray enough to do that. Without him she wouldn't have jumped, and would not realize what V.I.L.E. truly is about. And if so, a lot later, maybe too late. And at the end, they could have chosen Devineaux, Zari, Julia, or even Ivy to save Carmen with the A.C.M.E. machine. I think it would be kinda nice if it were Ivy so she would have an interaction with evil Carmen, like Zack had at the ferris wheel, and would impress A.C.M.E. instead of just randomly joining it with Zack out of nowhere at the end. But I'm glad it was Gray and then Shadowsan finished the job. The thing that gets to me is that she looks to the crackle rod on the floor and screams:"Gray!". The person she always prioritized the safety of the most was "dead", by her. Then she asks what has she done and I think here she could have also shown some concern for Devineaux and Julia. Specially Julia. Because Devineaux was there, standing, and depending on the impact of the thing that fell on her head, she could have died. And she seemed to faint under a curtain that also could kill her by asphyxiation if she didn't wake up on time. But the only thing she cared about was Gray. She could have remembered on screen she hurt other people too by seeing the crackle rod, but she only remembered Gray and I was like:"But what about Julia? Aren't you worried about her? Carmen is not gonna care about her at all? Really?" "That's it? That's the ending?" I believe that if there was no red crackle shipper there, the show would be a lot different. Gray's character wouldn't be so important as it was if that was the case. Speaking of which, I want a red crackle week because I never participated in one and I want to write an AU about what would have happened if Gray decided do join Team Red on the train to Paris and on the Himalayans and red crackle week is the perfect excuse for that. Also one if Carmen decided to go back to V.I.L.E. on the train to Paris to destroy them from the inside. If we have a Red Crackle Week it could be in December with a Christmas-themed vibe, @redcrackle-week ? Christmas is my favorite holiday and Red Crackle is one of my favorite ships, perfect combination.

2-Carmivy:

Again, no surprises. I've got nothing to say about this two that I haven't said before. They are so in love and they have my heart. I'll never understand why they are so underrated, they deserve more appreciation.

3-Jeantonio:

It's almost a crime that they aren't first place, but they were so close. They are like, the only ship the whole entire fandom agrees it's canon and I got mad respect for them for being able to unite the shipers because everyone likes them and wants to protect them(specially El Topo). They were clearly dating and were romantic boyfriends and I would do pretty much almost anything for them.

4-Cleobellum:

The same thing with Jeantonio, they are just a little bit lower because they don't have the general consent and less moments but to me they are a married couple.

5-Chasari/Zarineaux:

I think they would be the greatest girlboss and malewife ever. Devineaux is a dumbass but he would be Zari's dumbass. The little they interacted I could tell they would be an amazing couple. I just can see it. I can picture all their interactions perfectly in my head. When Zari fell into his arms, and the way Devineaux held her. Zari telling Devineaux not to be in her way and slowly getting softer to him with time, like, they would be such a good storyline. I wanted them together so badly so they deserve this place at my top 5.

6-Chasulia:

These two are a little bit lower because I'm not sure about them. At the start, they are a definite no. But after the fourth season Devineaux was prasing Julia the way she deserves to be praised and treating her better, redeeming for his past actions towards her and actually listening to her. He admited that he was wrong with Julia and did better. They are such adorable dorks together and while I love them as a platonic ship, I feel like they could also work romantically. It would be an interesting plot. I feel like most people think romance and friendship can't coexist but it can and it should. These two combined are one of the factors that make a good and healthy relationship and I feel like Devineaux and Julia have potential to be that way. I would like to know more about their Interpol days like why they were partnered together and how did they got to Carmen Sandiego, etc. So because of their wholesome platonic relationship that may or may not be affected my romance, they are a little bit lower but they are amazing and I love them.

7-CarChase:

This one, I did not expect to be this high up. First, the ship name is just as funny as "Red Crackle". Carmen and Devineaux did have quite a few number of car chases. Second, I'm aware that they have a 12 years age gap but I have a pretty high tolerance for age gaps. While I would rather not have an age gap too big for romantic relationships, 17 years age gap or less I don't mind. It bothers me a little, but it's not that big of a deal. If it's 18 years or more, it bothers me because I go like:"They could be their dad/mom." I just think they would be so funny together. The idea of them is surprisingly good. It makes me laugh when I think of Coach Brunt calling him handsome and Carmen being so done and after maybe going like:"He ain't ugly"(Carmen Sandiego is that kind of show that the animation is so pretty nothing and no one is ugly). And Carmen not wanting to see Devineaux because it's "really not a good time" and then seeying him even more to the point she doesn't mind it and even starts appreciating it. They would be a hell of enemies to friends to lovers story. They interact more than Carulia, but not as much as Chasulia so seventh place sounds about right for them. Not my favorite but I approve.

8-SpinTrap/FlyKick:

I don't know what their official ship name is but they are assigned partners and that, by V.I.L.E. standards, for me, usually means they make out. I wanted more development for both of their characters, which we don't know much about, so eighth place sounds nice. They clearly work well together and have a great harmony so I would say they are a cheaper version of Red Crackle. Like: "Kid:Mom, I want Red Crackle. Mom:We have Red Crackle at home." And they are the Red Crackle at home in question. Still, it works. Of course they are nothing compared to Red Crackle, but they still work. In the, idk three times we saw Spin Kick and Flytrap, you can tell they have the chemestry to convince people they are a romantic couple so this place is well deserved for them.

9-Dokusan:

No, you haven't read wrong, it means Shadowsan and Lady Dokuso. Just hear me out:I can picture it perfectly:They meet at V.I.L.E. academy, they fall in love, they start dating. But then, Shadowsan is promoted to a member of the faculty, a position Lady Dokuso also wanted, but she was happy for her boyfriend anyway. Then, it ends up not working out a faculty member dating a mere operative and then they break up but still love each other, but their relationship was full of ups and downs and they are both bitter and salty about it. Then, Shadowsan backfires V.I.L.E. and joins Team Red and Lady Dokuso can finally have a chance as a faculty member but at the cost of destroying Shadowsan. The drama, the angst, the complexity of loving each other but being different and being in two sides that can't collide or meet in the middle. If you stop to think about it, they are basically a toxic version of Red Crackle that went wrong(Yes, I use Red Crackle as a parameter to measure other couples because they are the standard). So why are they so high up? Because a sad ending love story can also work. Representativity matters and tragic love stories deserve to have some spotlight sometimes.

10-PaperTiger:

It wouldn't be me if these two didn't make it to the top 10. I know Paper Star is a psycho so she can't actually feel love or empathy for anyone other then herself, but hooking up without commitment works for these two. It would also hold some drama like:Paper Star and Tigress start being passive aggressive to each other, then they start being assigned to even more and more missions together and get to know each other better, Tigress falls in love for Paper Star and Paper Star starts caring for her a little bit more than the others and they start confiding in each other and telling things about themselves they wouldn't tell anyone else, and they try a secret relationship because Tigress accepted Paper Star's condition, but they end up not working out because of the V.I.L.E. work and the missions that they put in first place other than the relationship because they aren't El Topo and Le Chevre, unlike them, Tigress and Paper Star have other priorities and other things to worry about than each other. As you can see, I really love some angst, and they had the chemestry for that. Their versatility could also hold some fluff and funny moments like:Tigress judging Jeantonio for cuddling then doing the exact same thing with Paper Star, Tigress saying Paper Star isn't that bad to them(she is bad to everyone else tho, she would only be "soft", in her strange way, for Tigress), them trying each other's clothes and weapons, them teaching each other stuff, going out on dates, they would be V.I.L.E.'s IT couple like evil Carmen and Crackle were people, there's no way around it.

[hrwinter]

20 questions game

Thank you @luthordamnvers for the tag!!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 10 on AO3. many deleted on FF-net.

2. What’s your total AO3 words count? 309,689 which is like, wow, not that much. especially given that one story accounts for 105k of that.

3. What fandoms do you write for? supercorp for AO3. i've definitely entertained the idea of writing for other fandoms, but haven't made it to an actually completed document yet. i've thought a LOT about writing for harlivy.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Mrs. & Mrs. Danvers, Fidelity, would you forget me (do i know you?), i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart), and What I Do When I Have Writer's Block. i have writer's block a lot.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? i always try to respond to comments! i get that other people may not, so no judgment, but i figure if someone took the time to write to me, i can take the time to write back to them. it just seems like it fosters more community and the idea that we are all big fans, even just consumers, and appreciate artists of all types.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? i don't really write angst ending fics, but i've fleshed out a somewhat angsty 'No Way Home' spider-man AU that is pretty angsty.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? probably i carry your heart. faster than a speeding date is also the closest i think i've ever come to fluff.

8. Do you get hate on fics? it's not common, but it's happened. i try to remind people to engage with the content they want to read. everything is tagged on ao3. there really isn't an excuse to be reading 7 full chapters only to then leave a comment like 'i hated this.' then what are you doing here? and if someone is pointing out something they believe to be problematic in my writing, i do my best to fix it. i've had both bad faith and good faith comments, and i really appreciate the latter. m&m au is a bit of a tough one because the original movie is QUITE problematic. that's where i've gotten these comments the most.

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind? like many, i'm sure, i've tried. i'm not sure if i've succeeded. i'm really impressed with the skills it takes to do so. i think people massively underestimate how hard and vulnerable it can be.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? i have never written a crossover.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? yes.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? yes.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before? no, but i think that would be really fun.

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship? i've had a lot of ships that i'm going to list here: harry/ginny. snape/lily. jack/juliet. selene/michael. buffy/angel. buffy/faith. mulder/scully. alison/emily. santana/brittany. villanelle/eve. kara/lena. poison ivy/harley. adora/catra. i've never written as many fics for anyone as i have for supercorp, so i guess it would have to be that.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? there was this sex positive krypton/exchange student au prompt that i got so long ago, years ago, where i fell in love with the concept so much, i developed an entire original novel about it. the novel is absolutely a rip off of supercorp with different names because i didn't want to give DC my worldbuilding for krypton. i have about 60% of the plot written, but i am SO BAD at writing original stuff that i'm worried i'll never get it done. sometimes i've thought about just writing the god damn fanfic because at least then y'all would get to see it. i'm so obsessed with that story. it's absolutely insane.

16. What are your writing strengths? i've been told action and dialogue. a kind of "movie like" description or pacing.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? i'm going to say the same thing as the person who tagged me: Actually writing.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? it would be really cool! i just don't speak any other languages well enough to write in. i don't mind people who want to translate at all though.

19. First fandom you wrote for? harry/ginny. basic.

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?  eternal sunshine au. i wrote it in less than 30 days, which has never happened again. and i felt like, even though i didn't at the time, that it actually captured both the essence of the movie and supercorp perfectly. it's one of those stories that is so HEAD canon to me, that sometimes i forget none of it happened in the show. i wish it had. i was so unimpressed by the explanation of why kara lied to lena, even though the 100th episode dangled the potential of it so close to our faces. in my mind, i just erase that, like my story, and imagine my version instead.

Tags, but no pressure: @littlemousejelly @shaolinbynature @coffeeshib @inkedroplets

[dostoyevsky-official]

How Merve Emre became the hottest — and most divisive — name in literary criticism

Wherever Emre goes, for better or worse, she tends to turn heads. "Merve is the kind of literary 'it girl' of the moment," the senior editor, who's worked with Emre, said. "Everyone's jealous of her because she's extremely prolific, extremely productive, extremely beautiful. And she also is very polarizing. And I think that she is polarizing in great part because she is so prolific and so beautiful." 

[...] "She's somebody who shows you why you might really love something rather than show why you shouldn't love it at all," Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, said. Reading Emre on an author she loves is like listening to someone describe the honeymoon phase of a new relationship — her criticism has an erotic charge to it.

[...] Over the past few years, Emre's reach has grown such that she has the power to represent her field in the public imagination much the way Alison Roman has become shorthand for "cookbook author" or Frank Gehry for "architect." It leaves her in both a prestigious and precarious position, with seemingly as many people in the cutthroat literary world cheering her on as rooting for her to fail. "Academics can't bear it when someone does popular work," her friend the philosopher Jason Stanley said. The stench of misogyny, too, is hard to ignore. As trite as it is to dismiss someone's haters by saying "they're just jealous," her friend Anna Shechtman, the writer and crossword designer, noted, "it may actually be true when it comes to Merve."   

Courting an audience and wearing one's ambition as openly as Emre does is "a complicated variable for a lot of academics," one Ivy League professor noted. "It's a moment where your weird little closed world suddenly gets cool on the outside, and is it gonna get cool in a way that ruins what you love about it?"   

[...] Emre sees her role as part of a larger mission to democratize criticism beyond the walls of the academy. She wants to be "the Avon Lady of criticism," she joked.

[...] Emre is the eldest of three girls born in Adana, Turkey, to two doctor parents who emigrated to the US when she was 3. [...] In 2007, she graduated from Harvard and went to work as a management consultant at Bain & Company in New York. She made a lot of money and was "very, very, very bad at it," she said. 

Her ex-colleagues remember it differently. "Of all the people I've recruited to Bain in the 30 years, and this is in the thousands, she is one of the brightest," said Chris Bierly, her mentor at Bain, who called her "other-level intelligent." Still, he said, "she was impatient with learning the job from the bottom up." When she was toying with leaving the industry a few years later, he asked her why. "She said, 'I want to do your job. I just don't wanna do all the jobs in between,'" he recalled.

After a year and a half, Emre fled the consulting world and applied for a Ph.D. in English at Yale. "Going to graduate school in literary studies was a form of rebellion," she said. "I suspect I got as much pleasure from it as I would have been if I'd been getting wasted in high school." [...] It was there she developed the sociological approach to criticism that informs much of her work; her thesis, "Paraliterary," was about the idea of "good" and "bad" readers and how literary critics need to draw the circle wider in order to keep their field relevant.  

[...] She reads as many as two books a day. For every book she writes, she gets a tattoo of its call number in the Library of Congress on her side. 

[...] She moved to Montreal to teach at McGill in 2016, with Nakarado and 1-year-old Aydin in tow. "The students loved her. She had a line outside her office door," her former colleague Ara Osterweil said, recalling the excitement that surrounded her glamorous, brilliant colleague who wore stilettos to her lectures.

She also rubbed some people the wrong way. "She thought she was Beyoncé coming into the department," one former colleague said. "She didn't want colleagues or students. She wanted an audience."

Even more so than in consulting, there is a fixation in academia on bureaucratic rank that Emre has little patience for. "I was never someone who was going to be comfortable with highly hierarchical and patriarchal institutions," she said, explaining that one of the reasons she never learned to drive was because she couldn't tolerate being taught by her father. "So now my husband drives me," she noted with irony. 

[...] "She should not be in academia because there is a measure of burying your own opinion in order to mentor, and she does not have that capacity," the colleague who thought she acted like Beyoncé said. "She liked to talk about the money she was getting for the book on personality traits, and that was just so hilarious to everyone, because she was so un-self-aware of her own personality."

[...] But not everyone liked Emre's way of doing things. Last year, someone sent an anonymous note about Emre to half a dozen professors around the US with no return address. It's titled "ME, a short biography" and reads: "Daughter of rich doctors with vacation homes in different countries claiming poor immigrant status tears through Ivies like the Ivy pricks she denounces finds tall, useless pretty boy husband to have some children to lie about." Typed out in flowery word-processor cursive, it continues: "Lives eats breathes shits on social media for a decade, wanted by no university in the United States, writes click bait books to become filthy rich to buy followers and bribe half her profession to pretend the emperor has clothes on, badmouths every place she's worked" and "still cannot shake the absolute thirst." 

[...] "People in this business can be really weird," [Michael Berube, a professor of English at Penn State] said, though he noted that they generally don't resort to real violence. "They just tend to be sort of textually obsessed."

Emre was shaken by the incident. "It was hard for me to imagine how thwarted" someone must feel to send something like that, she said. Still, she tried to have a sense of humor about it. "The author probably meant to use the word 'slake,' not 'shake,' since thirst is not something you shake." She has no idea who's responsible. "My sense is that only an academic could imagine that essays on James Joyce or Simone de Beauvoir were driving The New Yorker's advertising revenue," she remarked, noting that the postmark on the envelope suggests it was mailed from near Fordham University. At least, as one of her friends noted upon receiving the letter, "even your haters can't deny that your man is hot."

[...] As Emre became increasingly frustrated with academia, she began pouring herself into her writing career. "When I imagine the way that Merve thinks, it's like the spreading branches of a tree — everything can take you somewhere," her friend the writer Sarah Chihaya said. "She's not always interested in getting from point A to point B but rather in helping to open up all these expanding questions." She did the edits for her first New Yorker web piece in the hospital the day after giving birth to Altan back in 2017. Other academics resented seeing Emre's byline everywhere. There was a bit of a feeling, like, "Why does she get to write for The New Yorker?" her friend Anna Shechtman said.

The media world first really started paying attention to Emre after she panned writer Durga Chew-Bose's 2017 essay collection, "Too Much and Not the Mood." That piece "put her on everybody's radar," said the critic Christian Lorentzen, which is "rare for something in the Boston Review." In it, she laid out her concern that today's personal essayists are concerned not with judgments about "the formal or stylistic features of prose" but with "pretty phrases that mean nothing and teach nothing," whose only purpose is to confirm the "author's status as a beacon of complex selfhood."

Emre was blasted for being anti-feminist; Lena Dunham, a friend of Chew-Bose, tweeted that the review was "rude, patronizing bullshit." Nowadays, Emre is trying to move away from writing about books she doesn't like. "The easiest way to get attention is to have a kind of contrarian take about another female writer," she said. "It is not challenging to get people not to read something. People are not reading things all the time."

[...] The discussion segued to her Twitter presence. Did she feel there was any tension between her philosophy of criticism, which encourages the evacuation of the personal, and her more confessional use of social media? "These are two totally different genres that we're talking about," she said, as we scaled the steps outside the Yale Science Building. The idea that "high-quality criticism" and "canny self-promotion" are trade-offs "seems to rely on an error, which is the belief that just because something is popular, or is marketed well, it can't also be good."

"But the other thing is like, I don't actually think that the work relies on the evacuation of subjectivity," she continued. "It is impossible. So then I think the question becomes, what does it mean to make style charismatic through an act of withholding access to the personal in one genre, and then giving or creating the appearance of giving people access to the personal in another kind of genre?"

"So are you saying this is all a calculated dance?" I asked.

"Everything's a calculated dance," she shot back. "It would be foolish for anyone to think that what happens in a form of writing, whether it's a long-form magazine piece or 140 characters, isn't in some way calculated. I wonder what pure authenticity would even be."

[...] Emre's calling, as she sees it, is no less than the wholesale reform of higher education from the ground up. She is preoccupied with two interconnected crises. The first is an economic crisis of the humanities: Higher education is overpriced yet underfunded, there aren't enough jobs, and college degrees are increasingly devalued. The second is what her friend John Guillory has dubbed a crisis of legitimation within the profession: that literary criticism has become trapped in English departments, talking only to itself, rendered useless and separate from the reading public. Her goal is to make the practice of teaching criticism, which she sees as a public good, accessible to the wider world.

"I understand the purpose of literature as a kind of meeting place between reader and writer. It's the romance of that imagined meeting place, and it's the romance of all of the possibility that still lives there," Emre said. "One very cynical way to think about life is that it's a series of reducing possibilities. And one way to think about what criticism does is that it's a place where possibility is left really open-ended."

[...] These grand ambitions, she suggested, are why she has let herself be profiled, despite her distaste for the endeavor; she's savvy enough to know that building a brand is necessary to her larger mission. Twitter, for instance, "is a way of addressing a very different kind of public" than one gets to address at Yale or Wesleyan or The New Yorker. "We are people who are supposed to be preservers and disseminators of literature or literary culture, and we're not actually engaging people to read," she said. "If you're not trying to get people excited about it, then why are you doing it?"

[transhuman-priestess]

The single worst aspect of "good rep/bad rep" as a method of media criticism is that it's perfectly tailored to dovetail with the popular conception of "death of the author" in the absolute worst way.

A trans woman villain written by a trans woman is no longer a way of the author exploring morality and the human condition through a familiar lens, it's "bad rep" and therefore can be discarded out-of-hand without any critical examination.

Meanwhile, a trans woman written by a cis person, who is ancillary to the plot, but without agency, such as a shopkeeper or a bystander, can be considered "good rep" simply by not doing anything. If "representation" is all that matters, then the most moral inclusion of a marginalized identity is one in which that character functions, not as an actual character, but as a prop, an object that exists solely to make the author and the audience feel better about the story being told.

I don't want to write stories with cishet villains and vaguely trans minor characters. I want to write stories about queer people. I don't write every character with the intention of them being trans, but every character I write could be, and when that is the baseline for a story, sometimes characters who are part of my in-group are going to do things which are morally repugnant.

I get it, it's uncomfortable to think of your in-group as containing anything other than "good people", but the world isn't cleanly separated into the morally pure marginalized blorbos and the evil 100% privileged evildoers. But I'm just so tired of every queer character having to be a paragon of pure incorruptible pureness. It's boring, and worse, it's a terrible way to tell a story.

[sarcasticsciencefictionwriter]

Got tagged by @lanistas --aww, thank you so much! 🤍

url song game

rules: write one song for every letter in your url, and then tag as many people as there are letters in your url. okay? okay.

Oh boy. Oh man. Okay. The lack of variety in the letters.

s - Safe and Sound (Taylor Swift and the Civil Wars)

a - A Million Dreams (P!nk)

r - Rise (Katy Perry)

c - Centuries (Fallout Boy)

a - Alive (Sia)

s - Shake it Out (Florence + the Machine)

t - To Build a Home (Cinematic Orchestra)

i - I Will Come (Alpha Rev)

c - Colors (Halsey)

s - Savage Daughter (Ekaterina Shelehova)

c - Counting Stars (Simply Three Cover)

i - Immortals (Fallout Boy)

e - Elaina's Theme (Tom Player)

n - Natural (Imagine Dragons)

c - Carousel (Melanie Martinez)

e - Enemy (Imagine Dragons)

f - Fight Song (Rachel Platten)

i - Ivy (Taylor Swift)

c - Could Have Been Me (the Struts)

t - The Story (Brandi Carlile)

i - Into the Unknown (Idina Menzel)

o - Open Up Your Eyes (Emily Blunt)

n - Noble Maiden Fair (Emma Thompson and Peigi Barker)

w - What a Time (Julia Michaels)

r - Running with the Wolves (AURORA)

i - In My Blood (Shawn Mendez)

t - The Chemical Worker's Song (Colm. R. McGuiness cover)

e - Experience (Ludovico Einaudi)

r - Running Up that Hill (Placebo)

--

Okay, so 29 tags isn't happening, but I'll do my best.

No pressure tagging: @crazymcwritesalot, @ladyelysandra, @galactic-pirates, @chartreuseian, @theleotorrio, @truedairship , @starbuckxcarter, @sam-jack-loveforever , @a-welsh-spoonie, @wittywallflower, @amphytrionwrites , @dorothyoz39 , @janzan , @enigmatic-mystery-777, and @tina-mairin-goldstein.

[collecting-dustbunnies]

Obey Me Nightbringer Theory Time: MC is an Unreliable Narrator

What if the MC knows more than they are letting on? What if the MC's motives is different from ours, as the player?

(Disclaimer: Long post. Different from my meme content. Contains spoilers for all of NB and OG content. Also I may wake up tomorrow and cringe at this, but hopefully you can enjoy my delirium?)

OG = Obey Me Original

NB = Obey Me Nightbringer

It all starts from the beginning

We can see traces of this from when we first launch the game, with MC's first text messages with Nightbringer. And I'm not talking about the messages that we saw when the game first launched, but the new re-write of those same messages. You can compare the differences between the old texts and the new texts on @impish-ivy 's post here (thank you for allowing me to discuss it here). I'll include some of their screenshots as reference.

Let's take a look at the new version of the text exchange. Now, I don't know about you, but I have no idea what Nightbringer is talking about. But Sheep-chan apparently does! If MC answers that they think they understand what he's talking about, they get to keep their memories when they get sent to the past. But if MC says they don't have a clue? The game assumes that they have lost their memories. This seems like a strong indicator that MC knows something that we, as the player, do not know about Nightbringer and their powers. This exchange is very different from how things played out in the original version of these text messages where:

Yes I know them. Really well, actually = MC has their memories.

I don't know who they are = MC has no memories.

[The official reason for this change was "to make the game more enjoyable for new players", but I don't buy that. In the original version, it was quite clear which option you had to pick to signal to the game that you have not played OG. While in this version, it's way more convoluted, since the player will have no idea what Nightbringer is actually talking about. It just causes people who have played OG to accidentally signal to the game that they haven't. Why change the text to be even more confusing, when the original version would have sufficed for newer players?]

Now let's follow this line of thought for a moment. Nightbringer states that the MC has received "a second chance at a fated meeting", and MC has to answer that they think they know what this means if they want to keep their memories during the time jump. If they don't, then Nightbringer assumes that they have lost their memories.

Which leads me to believe that Sheep-chan is not entirely an innocent victim who was unwittingly sent to the past. Instead, they were a willing participant of the time jump. Maybe they have some understanding on how Nightbringer's powers worked and wanted to meet the brothers again. Maybe they too were curious to see what their ideal world looked like. With this idea in mind, let's re-evaluate everything MC has said and done in NB.

MC's interactions with Nightbringer (and Michael, I guess)

After the intro, the next time MC directly interacts with Nightbringer is in Lesson 12 of NB, where they get sent into a coma after breaking the rules at the Fountain of Knowledge. Let's look at what he says here for a moment.

The first thing Nightbringer asks MC is what they think of this world, a rather unusual thing to ask someone who is kinda sorta dying. If MC says they want to go home, Nightbringer expresses some confusion as to whether the brothers of this world are not to MC's liking. It makes sense for him to be confused here, since he sent MC to this timeline under the impression that they would like this world (or at least, view this world as a stepping stone to reach their "place of joy").

(Then again, if MC responds that they are enjoying this world, Nightbringer is even more perplexed that they can remain upbeat in such a precarious situation. But knowing what canon Sheep-chan is like, why is this surprising?)

After this, he explains that his motive is to lead MC to a place that will "bring [them] joy like no other". This fits what he had said in the beginning of the game:

"Shall I take you someplace you will be happy? Somewhere that will bring you more joy than any other."

"A world you desire, and where you will be desired."

- Nightbringer, intro text message

He then goes on to emphasise that both he and MC want the same thing. He comments on how MC has done a splendid job getting closer to Lucifer and his brothers. This is where I feel that Nightbringer was never MC's enemy, as both parties have similar goals, and they need each other to some extent. MC needed Nightbringer and other mysterious forces to set the gears in motion so that MC can become closer to the brothers, forge pacts with them, and reach their "ideal" world. Nightbringer wants to bring MC to this place of happiness, and he sees MC forming pacts with the brothers as the way to get there. In this case, Nightbringer is a co-conspirator here.

This idea then gets brought up again when MC sees Michael in Lesson 13, when he saves MC from their coma. He warns MC that the Celestial Realm would be less willing to tolerate their behaviour if they ally themselves with Nightbringer (which, is exactly what MC has been doing so far). Is Michael afraid of the MC trying to forge their ideal world together with Nightbringer? Or is he afraid that MC is getting tricked by Nightbringer?

This also explains why Nightbringer never interacted with MC again after this incident. Everything MC had done in NB was what Nightbringer had wanted as well. Nightbringer didn't need to intervene because everything was going according to his plan.

Comparison of MC's actions in OG vs NB

When we consider the fact that MC may have actually wanted to go back to the past and meet the brothers again, a lot of their actions (and even their inaction) makes more sense. When Solomon tells them they need to make the pacts to get back to their own time, MC is in no rush to obtain these pacts. In fact, they don't even think about making those pacts until Season 2 when they are faced with an ultimatum to make those pacts, which is, they have to forge the pacts before MC and Solomon lose their connection to their original time. This is different from the usual behaviour in OG, where they were extremely motivated to make a pact with every brother from Beelzebub -> Asmo -> Satan and employed help from multiple people to acheive this goal. They even took the initiative to ask Lucifer for a pact on the day before they left the Devildom, when they had no reason to do so.

This is very different from how Season 2 of NB played out, as MC simply waited around until each brother went beserk (in the case of Mammon, Asmo and Satan) before they even thought about proposing the pact. In Lucifer's case, even though MC (after much prompting) spoke up about needing to go back to their home, it was Mephistopheles advocating for MC that ultimately convinced Lucifer to let MC go. And later on, MC remained on the sidelines and let the other characters take the reign in rescuing Lucifer from Cocytus. Compared to the original game, where MC takes on a more active role in forming their pacts, MC is more passive in Nightbringer, simply biding their time until the opportunity to make a pact falls onto their lap. Is this how somebody who desperately misses their home and wants to go back ASAP would act?

Regardless of how you choose to play the MC as, they always express some hesitation in leaving behind the brothers of the past. No matter how many times you try to make the MC say they want to go back home ASAP, Lucifer will gaslight-gatekeep-girlboss MC into admitting that they do not want to leave. Simeon in Lesson 35 of NB even reaffirms this by saying "I'm sure you really feel that way deep down inside. Even if you don't realise it". Bruh.

But why? MC should know that their home is with the boys of the present timeline. Why has the MC never considered the repercussions of staying in a timeline that they don't belong in? Or even considered how Solomon could lose his powers for good because of MC's hesitance? Why had MC never once stopped to consider how the demon brothers they had left behind would feel about their absence? This shouldn't even be a dilemma.

Unless... this past was the place they wanted to end up in the first place. That, like Nightbringer had said, this place will bring them joy like no other.

As an aside: One of the few insights we get about Sheep-chan's inner thoughts is the nightmare they have about the brothers trapping them in the attic and preventing them from leaving (in Lesson 33 of NB). Which has horrific implications, considering the attic still did not exist at this point of time. Was Belphegor's imprisonment and the Lesson 16 incident so traumatic for MC that the attic is the place that they associate with imprisonment?

Note how some of the brothers keep suggesting that THIS is the outcome that the MC really wants. But this also provides another possible reason for the MC's hesitation to leave: The fear of how the brothers' of the past would react. The fear of brothers turning against them, despite everything MC had done to protect them. Speaking of what MC had done to protect them...

MC forging their place in the past Devildom

MC hasn't taken active measures to forge their pacts to return home, but you know what they have shown to be more interested in? Asserting their place in the Devildom of the past, and spending time with the past version of the brothers.

The best example of this is Lesson 11 of NB, where the MC hesitates to promise to Solomon to protect humanity, but with no hesitation, promises to take care of the brothers even with full knowledge that they would be punished for doing this. If we remember Lesson 35 of OG where MC, Solomon and the demon brothers went to the reaper's cave to break Beel's curse, Solomon was surprised that the demon brothers' punishments for breaking the reaper's rules (turning into a Little D) were so mild. It was implied that without MC unconsciously protecting them with their magic, the brothers could have died or been wiped out from existence upon breaking the rules.

A weakened MC of the past who retains their memories of this incident in the reaper's cave would know just how severe the backlash would be if they make promises in the cave. But this did not stop them from doing so anyway. This shows where MC's allegiance truly lies: Not with humanity, not with any mysterious forces at play, but with the demon brothers. It's hard to tell what the MC hopes to get out of making such a dangerous promise.

The most optimistic take is that they felt forced to prove their loyalty to Lucifer and his family by taking such a drastic action. After all, MC is used to sacrificing their life for the people they love. Throwing themselves at death is nothing new to them.

The most cynical take would be that this bold decision was actually a calculated move by the MC to assert their importance and their role in the demon lords' lives. To show just how bad things can get without them. To guilt-trip Lucifer and Belphegor who had doubted the MC's allegiance, so that they never doubt MC again.

Regardless of their motivation, the MC's actions showed that they are inseparable from Lucifer's family, and this incident served to further cement the MC's importance to them. This allowed MC to strengthen their bonds with the brothers once again. So that they can create a world they desire, and they will be desired.

Putting this all together

Obey Me: Nightbringer paints the image of a MC being ripped from their home and being thrust into an unfamiliar world. Yet, the MC's actions in NB tell a different story. It shows us that Nightbringer is turning the gears so that MC can go to a place surrounded by people that they love, and who will love them no matter what. Because it wouldn't be enough if the characters of the present were hopelessly in love with them, but the characters of the past should also feel the same way. Even if that is a world the MC does not belong in.

All I'm saying is, Sheep-chan is sus as heck.

[zahri-melitor]

Casspoll!

Okay I really had to think about this one and I quickly dipped into the runs I have not touched yet rather than just using their reputations:

Kelley Puckett – It’s Puckett. He created Cass. Some of her very best stories happened here – the first two Shiva fights, delivering a man’s final wishes, Nobody Dies Tonight, Thicker than Water. The absolute heart that Cass cannot allow people to be killed hits hard here. She’s still learning about what a society is.

Dylan Horrocks takes Cass and her growth and lets her mess up and brings Bruce and Barbara more into conflict over what Cass needs, but also allows Cass to be in conflict with them over what she wants. It has the Ivy twofer “The City is a Garden/The City is a Jungle” which I think is Horrocks’ best plot. It has Tough Love, where Bruce and Cass have their conversation over what the Bat means to Cass. It has Cooking the Books, where we see the abrasive side of Barbara’s personality come out and hurt her relationship with Cass. It has Cass taking her first steps into relationships, with her attraction to Tai’Darshan and Kon. It’s a messier, more complicated time.

Andersen Gabrynch has the best conversation of Fresh Blood with Tim over their life goals and their reflections on War Games. He has Destruction’s Daughter/Blood Matters and everything that comes with the culmination of that storyline. He gives Cass her first taste of civilian life. Gabrynch is the ‘how far will Cass go’ writer.

Adam Beechen: you’re all mean! Oh Beechen. He screwed up first time around, no question, but I continue to maintain he did useful things with Cass in Batgirl 2008. He brought in the chance to parallel Slade and Rose’s relationship with David and Cass’. He worked hard to find fixes for the mistakes he made. And if Fresh Blood set up the situation where we saw Tim and Cass become closer and start establishing a sibling-like relationship, then Beechen solidified it to the point that it was expected from that point onwards.

Joe Kelly: oh, Justice League Elite. You are certainly a story. I think the most important thing Kelly actually did in JLE was when Cass stabbed Kendra. It broke her. There is some beautiful writing in JLE surrounding Cass basically sobbing to Bruce over this incident, and Bruce promising her that she doesn’t have to stay undercover, he’ll pull her out, her happiness is more important to him than this mission, and Cass refusing to be extracted. And Ollie remaining there the whole time to keep an eye on Cass on Bruce’s behalf. It’s such a good paternal moment on both Bruce and Ollie’s parts, and they so very rarely get them in concert. It’s also a moment of growth in Cass that is rarely referenced, because as I must repeat, it happens in JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE.

Bryan Hill: I have heard good things! And immediately on picking it up and going through the first three issues I saw the exact thing I’d enjoyed and wanted more of from Dixon’s 2008 BatO run – Tatsu working with and mentoring Cass – which is a solid recommendation in itself. Will 100% be coming back to this when I get up to this era in my reading.

Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad: I dipped into #1 and #14. It suffers from the modern era problem of light and bright fluffy content without a solid base behind it. Also the fact that the writers didn’t initially realise that two of the characters they were assigned were ADULTS and were writing them that immaturely is certainly not reassuring. Um. I also know I’m not fully across modern era Cass yet, but #14 seems to miss something that’s basic to my understanding of Cass – talking can be hard but READING is harder. Cass not talking but having reading comprehension showing up constantly? It feels off. (Also I’m fascinated in how an issue like Batgirls #1 manages to be that off while still managing the Cass shower robe scene, which to my eye echoes and references the BatO 2008 Cass shower scene. Suspect they just got lucky and I’m reading too much in)

Mariko Tamaki: okay I have not yet read Shadows of the Bat: The Tower, but I have read Sounds, so I’m basing on that. Tamaki really seems to get Cass, her hand with the character work in Sounds hit some very fundamental parts of Cass’ character and struggles, and I really enjoyed it.

Overlooked: ALYSSA WONG. Wong’s work with Cass in Spirit World not only has been busy recanonising a bunch of things from Batgirl 2000, but is touching on some central aspects of Cass’s view of killing and death in beautiful resonance of things originally established by Puckett. Also it’s given Cass some narrative space back on her own, and while I think Cass’s relationship with Steph is important, I also think she’s more functional and useful to DC writers when she’s not assumed to be part of an automatic pair.

Plus a plug for Scott Snyder for Gates of Gotham and giving us proper insight into the Reborn era Cass relationships with her brothers.

[sad-ghost-of-garbage]

Ivy Act V

Author: SadGhostofGarbage

David x G/N reader and Michael x G/N reader

Warnings: MDNI! TOXIC relationships, DARK fic, swearing, cheating on a partner, torture, mental manipulation, pet names, David calls himself daddy but like he’s not wrong. Mentions of sex. Reader having insecurities. 

This is the last part of the Ivy series, unless I decide to write the extra stuff floating around  in my head. 

ACT V WINTER 

You’d do anything for him.

“Nervous?” Paul asks as he helps get you ready for the big night. 

“More excited than nervous. Excited for the first part, nervous for the other part.” And it was true you couldn’t contain how excited you were. The night David set up for the two of you was going to be perfect. He promised, and David never breaks promises. “But I am a little nervous. I… I don’t want it to be like, with him.” Paul puts a hand on your shoulder and turns to face him.

“Hey with David it won’t be that way, trust me babe! With Davey it will feel like bliss, take it from someone who’s been there.” With a wink and an eyebrow wiggle he pats your shoulder and finishes helping you get ready.

The air was cold and the wind carried the smell of the ocean with it. The lights twinkled beautifully laid out with precision to light up the beach and set the mood of the ceremony. Walking down onto the beach with Paul guiding you down the aisle. Tears filled your eyes as you saw the beach set up with lights and an arch covered in white flowers. Standing in the middle of the arch was David, his figure imposing against the backdrop of endless ocean and night. But he made your knees wobble and a smile sprout on your face. 

Perfect.

Just like he promised.

Heat flared on your skin and it made you wince, he was watching you. You hated how his gaze made your skin burn, you didn’t like Michael; he made you uncomfortable. There was something there when you looked at him, a feeling you didn’t recognize and it made your skin crawl. You knew something happened that made Michael attack you. He hurt you, you knew that much; David had to comfort you though nightmares of what Michael did to you. But what caused it you couldn’t remember, David had said that Michael had lost control of his thirst and you were the closest human. Your head starts throbbing and you push your thoughts back to your future husband and sire. David could not keep the smug smirk off his face, as if he was the cat that got the cream. Michael looked to be in pain with tears welling in his eyes, David had said that Michael was sorry but you still chose to avoid him at all costs, preferring to stay by David at all times. Not that the blonde minded, anytime you clung to him or hid in his coat he’d accept you with open arms, gentle teasing and a chilling kiss that left you wanting. You wanted nothing more than to be embraced into his cold arms and spend an eternity there. 

“Don’t worry beloved, you will be soon enough. But we have to get through the ceremony first.” Reading your mind he gives you a heart stopping wink he grabs your hands and turns to the officiator. 

He had to watch.

Had to watch as you looked at David as if he was god, with so much love and admiration. While you cringed and recoiled when you looked at him. Michael thought he had known pain, but watching you kiss David and giggle as the blondes hands wandered all over your body was a hell he wished upon no one. David had done monstrous things to punish Michael for seducing you away, and this was part of his eternal sentence; to watch his mate be blood bound to David forever. The wedding was just a show, meant as part of his punishment. Having to sit through a ceremony where you and David would show how much you loved each other. It was David’s way of rubbing his failure in his face, while getting to flaunt you around like a prize. He wanted to be angry and fight against the sadistic bastard, but he couldn’t not after… not after the first part of his punishment. David was his pack's leader, he was the Head Vampire and Michael couldn’t resist him no matter how much he wanted to. And David knew it too, he got off on the pain he was causing him, he wished David would kill him but that would be too merciful. Michael wanted desperately to warn you, to tell you what David did, but he would never get the chance. Once David embraces you into immortality the bond David created would be near impossible to break. 

The wedding was everything and more. David had insisted you wear white, it didn’t matter what, as long as it was white. He said something about staining it red by the end of the night. Paul had helped you pick out the perfect outfit to wear, and helped you fix your hair. The ceremony had you in tears that David graciously wiped away. 

Perfect.

After the official ceremony is over David pulls you into his arms and begins leading you away. Giggling as the vampire carried you away from the party “bridal” style you ask still giggling,

“Where are we going?”

“I’m taking my mate away from prying eyes, unless you prefer we ‘consummate’ our love in front of the boys. I know they won’t mind.” Even though you knew he didn’t mean sex hearing him say that made a blush heat your entire face as you went to bury it into his chest. “Hey now kitten, no need to be shy, it’s just us.” Murmuring into his chest,

“You say it like we’re going to have sex.” His laugh reverberated throughout his chest tickling your nose as he gives you a cheeky wink,

“I never said I wasn’t going to fuck you senseless.” Gaping up at him you stutter and try to come up with something to say, but David just laughs as you pout.

“You said I would be too tired to do anything after you em-em… uh changed me.”

“The term is Embrace kitten, the change I provide is exactly that, an embrace of my love remaking you into my childe, giving you immortality.”

“You said I’d be tired.”

“I didn’t say we weren’t going to have sex before I changed you.” Your heartbeat quickens and you feel more nervousness wash over you, it wasn’t that you didn’t want to be physical with David, you definitely did but what if you weren’t good enough for the literal god you married? “Relax beloved, daddy’s going to take care of you. You trust me don’t you?” Without hesitation your nodding, 

of course you trust him.

He’s your everything.

“Good kitty. Now let's truly make you mine.”

Winter was your favorite, there was a time when you were tempted by the summer, but David would be there for eternity to remind you that the cold was comfortable and safe, with winter there was no fear of fire. Winter is your favorite.

Taglist: @britany1997 @henhouse-horrors​ Thank you for the support on this series it means so much to me! Props to anyone who can figure out where the lyrics fit into the story lol!