#James Crocker

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

JAME: Yeah, I suppose I’d say I’m nonpracticing female. I was raised female but I don’t really believe anymore, y’know?

[twilightzonecloseup]

1.01b A Little Peace and Quiet

Director: Wes Craven

Writer: James Crocker

Cinematographer: Bradford May

Opening Narration:

“Wouldn’t it be nice if, once in a while, everyone would just shut up and stop pestering you? Wouldn’t it be great to have the time to finish a thought? Or spin a daydream? To think out loud without being required to explain what exactly you meant? If you had the power, would you dare to use it? Even knowing that silence may have voices of its own.. to The Twilight Zone.”

Summary: 

Penny (Melinda Dillion) is at her wit’s end. Between four hyperactive children, a husband who acts like a fifth child, a dog whose mortal enemy is the telephone, and all of the cacophonies of modern suburban convenience, she can’t find a single second of peace. One typically loud suburban afternoon, while at work in her garden, Penny uncovers a small wooden box containing a golden pendant. Later, while wearing the pendant, Penny discovers that it has the unique ability to stop time when the wearer utters the magic words: “shut up.” She quickly starts using (and slightly abusing) this power to complete her daily tasks unbothered. The backdrop of her chaotic suburban life is the looming threat of nuclear war. Penny makes light of the idea of “World War III” and repeatedly refuses to give much thought to the bomb. Unfortunately, one night, while Penny luxuriates in a bubble bath, giggling to herself over her plans with the pendant, that threat presents itself at her doorstep. He husband frantically calls for her to hear the news that a bomb is headed straight for them. As Penny huddles on her bed with her husband and son, she cries out “shut up” in a last-moment litany. Now frozen in the moment before certain doom for Penny and the life she was only now finding contentment in, Penny walks the streets and spots the bomb hanging still in the sky.

More about A Little Peace and Quiet:

A Little Peace and Quiet was an original idea and teleplay by James Crocker, who was primarily a producer for TZ ‘85. Surprisingly, prior to this series, Crocker’s work in television, both as a writer and producer, skewed more toward the episodic detective genre. Following TZ ‘85 though, he worked on major speculative TV series such as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), The Outer Limits (1995), and the second reboot of The Twilight Zone (2002). 

It wasn’t until I sat down to write up the summary of this episode that I appreciated how densely packed the storytelling is in A Little Peace and Quiet. Specifically, Penny taking the bomb too lightly is reiterated at a regular pace throughout the runtime, starting with minor background elements that you might overlook, then growing into Penny’s outright rejection to engage with a pair of clipboarders. The episode is so laden with quirky frozen-time tableaus that you as the viewer become just as distracted from the worsening geopolitical situation happening in the background as Penny is. So, when the big finale comes, it’s a big gut punch to the viewer as well.

Perhaps the most obvious TZ ‘59 episodes to compare to A Little Peace and Quiet are A Kind of a Stopwatch (S5E4), an episode with a similar MacGuffin, or Time Enough at Last (S1E8), where the protagonist longs for some peace and quiet himself when he’s suddenly faced with an apocalyptic event. But, I think an additional companion episode to consider would be The Shelter (S3E3). In comparison, the changing attitudes of mainstream America from 1961 to 1985 really stand out—specifically attitudes toward the suburbs and toward the possibility of The Cold War turning hot. Whereas in 1961, it was subversive to suggest that the American suburbs were not, in fact, a place of harmony, by 1985, it was already a commonly-held opinion that suburbs were anything but peaceful. The protagonist of The Shelter diligently prepares for the potentiality of nuclear war while his friends and neighbors are woefully unprepared. Our protagonist in A Little Peace and Quiet, however, is framed as relatable in her lack of concern, maybe reflecting a growing indifference in the duck-and-cover generation after decades of Cold War.

Though this doesn’t specifically relate to The Shelter, another updated attitude reflected in A Little Peace and Quiet is the perception of the homemaker. I appreciate this story popping up so early in the reboot since Serling got a lot of flack when TZ ‘59 was on the air for how he wrote women. It’s something he tried to rectify in earnest, and it gets progressively better across the original series’ run. Here in Dillon’s Penny, we have a common Serling-like protagonist in that she is dissatisfied with her current lot in life and generally put upon. However she’s also a frustrated homemaker, who, in some of Serling’s less thoughtful stories, would be nagging the protagonist rather than be the protagonist. In A Little Peace and Quiet, Penny is framed as a character the viewer is meant to relate to—though whether one relates to her or not is obviously relative. All around, I guess what I’m getting at is that this installment feels heavily influenced by the original TZ, but thoughtfully contemporized and seasoned with an interesting reversal of archetypes.

✨Support✨

[dukeofriven]

To Ravel-Out The Weaved-Up Follies: The Decline and Fall of Homestuck^2

[I first started this essay a few months ago during a strange, brief resurgence of Homestuck^2 discussion that vanished almost as quickly as it began. Because my brain is A Wretchedly Uncooperative Thing this essay has stayed in draft form, being picked at, until—naturally—Homestuck^2 surprised us all by relaunching with a completely new team at its head. I’ve decided to push myself to publish this anyway, because I still think the core of my thesis is correct. So, keeping in mind that this leaves the starting gate slightly later than I would have wished (not knowing I was in a race), let us commence.]

___________________________________________________

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. -Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965 “Once upon a time there was a Boojum——" the Professor began, but stopped suddenly. "I forget the rest of the Fable," he said. "And there was a lesson to be learned from it. I'm afraid I forget that, too." -Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, 1893

Several posts about Homestuck^2 have started to crop-up… adjacent to my dash. I'm not attaching myself to those posts because it seems rude, but their points are largely an attempt at revisionism of the fate of Homestuck^2. Understand I'm not using the term ‘revisionist’ pejoratively: it is common, even sensible for artists to look back at failed projects and try to pick up the pieces and derive some value from them. I’ve done it myself, many times. Nobody likes to say "I entirely wasted my time, my passion, and my creative energy for [X] days, months, years.” It is important to look at a failure and see what you did right, treasure the parts that were worth treasuring.

But equally I don't want to go too far in rehabilitating what was, undeniably, a failure. There's a lot of critical theory being brought-up, a lot of talk of Homestuck^2 from a standpoint of post-modernism, or post-post-modernism, trying to engage with what Homestuck^2 was as a platform for ideas. A habitus, if you’ll forgive the jargon, what Bourdieu famously called (in a Hussie-like masterwork of language) “the structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures.”

I get it. I get what the Homestuck^2 team was trying to do intellectually: where their minds were at, the hostility they faced, the vitriol they were harmed by. I get it.

But that's not why Homestuck^2 failed. Homestuck^2 did not fail because it dreamed too big, or was too intellectual. It did not fail because its themes were not worth exploring, or because its lens was too meta: for most of its original run, after all, Homestuck is nothing but an interrogation of Homestuck. Its brains were not why Homestuck^2 failed. The problem was its execution. The problem was its heart.

There's a lot to be said about not giving fans what they think they want. The internet drowns in coffee shop AUs where everything interesting about a franchise's characters has been vulgarly ripped from the text, leaving a drama-less, tension-less pablum where everything is stagnant and unchanging, everyone gets along, all the romances are cute and smooth, and you can burrow in the comforting ooze of artistic and narrative death. Give fans exactly what they want and frequently nothing creatively meaningful will result. Fandoms famously resisted both The Empire Strikes Back and The Wrath of Khan when they first released because they pushed characters to change, and yet they grew to be beloved as fans realized that what they thought they wanted and what it turned out they could enjoy were not as alike s they assumed. There's nothing wrong with showing fans that there can be more to a story that just doing the same thing over again, retrenching into the pablum wastelands of growth-free comfort fics.

But when asking whether Homestuck^2 did or did not gave fans what they wanted or needed, we must first raise an important establishing question: which fans? That is to say: who was its intended audience? Who was Homestuck^2 written for?

At its peak, Homestuck Classic had millions of readers and a million page-hits a day. There was a whole contingent of fandom who came only for the trolls (in some baffling cases actually skipping the first four acts of the story to jump right to into Act 5). There was another contingent who loved the video game parody, there were Problem Sleuth junkies, and in the early acts there were the suggestion box obsessives: all of these were readers who were fans of parts of the story but largely stopped reading Homestuck as the story got more concerned with the complex nature of stories and narrative itself. Homestuck^2 is clearly not for them—as indeed Homestuck Classic itself had not 'been' for them for much of its run. Homestuck^2 is also not for new readers: if you haven't read the Homestuck Epilogues through at least twice, if you don't remember all its major plot points and the plot points of Homestuck Classic, it makes no attempt to onboard you and is, probably in-arguably, outright impenetrable to those not already in the know. It’s not impossible—there were SBaHJ fans who onboarded with the first context-free SBaHJ and went ‘yeah, I can vibe with this’ and never knew or cared that it was a reference work for something else— but it doesn’t seem likely that many people ‘jumped on’ the Homestuck train with Homestuck^2. I think Homestuck^2’s writers would agree that Homestuck^2 expected you to know the lay of the land. So: nobody new was likely going to read Homestuck^2, and (given its density of Homestuck call-backs) neither was it for more casual Homestuck fans. Homestuck^2 was not even for the truly otiose Andrew Hussie diehards: Hussie was only tangentially involved in the project, they weren't writing it, and there's seemingly no references at all to Barty's Brew-Ha-Ha or Inappropriate Time for Ham, so that's a full seventeen readers it also likely turned off (sorry, comrades. One day…)

So who, then, was Homestuck^2 for? Its intended readers seemed to be those who read the Epilogues and loved them. This is a complicated issue: for those who weren’t there, the Epilogues were… controversial. I defended them at the time: I liked them, even admired them, partially because I believed with the fervor of a zealot that there was still something else to come. I called this final entry ‘Pumpkin.’ Homestuck, a story that always rejected binaries, surely was not meant to conclude with over-the-top Candy and/or grim, dour Meat. I knew in my heart that Pumpkin was coming, where John rejected both of these dark and crazy futures and found a third way in which his friends grew up and matured without losing themselves and their friendship: not a story without conflict, but surely the prime timeline as existed in general fandom imagination could not accept Dirk’s grotesque, manipulative suicide, breastfeeding Gamzee, brutal civil wars, and Dirk and Jane becoming so cruel and hateful. Surely that was set-up to pay-off a better future later: after all, like its author, Homestuck abhorred a binary.

But Pumpkin never came, and now I look at the Epilogues and I find lot in it (for lack of a better term) ‘edge lord showboating.’ It feels like reading 90s comics all over again, including the bits with cannibalism. A lot of bleak and miserable things happen in the narrative, and I find myself asking ‘do they happen because they should, or just because they could?’ (And how many times can one franchise treat Jade Harley like absolutely garbage?)

But if the Epilogues had a true and golden virtue, it was their framing as intrinsically being fan-fiction: Meat or Candy, this was not the 'true' continuation of the franchise (as much as that means anything), this was speculative futures, not much different from Doc Scratch’s story of the Vriska/Noir battle. A one-shot, in other terms, an elseworlds: not a definitive statement about What Homestuck Was From Now On, but an experiment in tone and structure. How far can you push Homestuck before it doesn’t feel like Homestuck any more? (Turns out not nearly as far as you might think.) A lot of people didn’t notice, however, or perhaps simply didn’t care: the Epilogues ripped the Homestuck fandom apart. Homestuck Classic often did things in bad-taste as part of its odd charm: Gamzee’s codpiece, Jack playing dress-up after slaughtering a nice couple on a date, Caliborn’s cartoonish misogyny. Some bits land, some don’t, but for fans—I think for many, if not most—the Epilogues crossed a line that they were not comfortable with.

In some quarters the Epilogues are reviled, and I honestly can not fault people who found them off-putting. They are: intentionally so, provocatively so, and it should be okay for people to be put off by them without insisting that the haters ‘just didn’t get it.’ Often they did: they ‘got it,’ they just didn’t like it. It ‘squiked them out’ as we used to say, and the writers had to have known it would: discomfort is the nature and partial purpose of provocative art.

(Sidebar: Epilogue writers, you wrote a plot-line in which 16-year old Homestuck Act 6 protagonist Jane Crocker grows-up to become a racist dictator who has a cuckolding sexual relationship with Gamzee Makarra that involves kin-play involving public breastfeeding.

Sorry Andres Serranos acolytes, that’s not going to go down super-well with the majority of people, not because they are uptight suburban prudes but because they liked Jane Crocker and felt this outcome was not grounded well in the character they knew: only the obtuse would act shocked and try and argue it was due to a lack of sophistication. You took a gamble, you took a risk, you faced the outcome. You fucked around with ICP Hitler breastfeeding cuckoldry and you found out.)

So: who was Homestuck^2 for? It was for people who had read Homestuck multiple times, had read the Epilogues multiple times, and wanted a sequel that involved those Epilogues.

That is… a small audience. A very small audience. I counted myself among them, but had no illusions that its reach was ever going to be very large. Homestuck^2 was never going to be the Second Coming of Homestuck as a sui generis cultural phenomenon: seemingly by design, it was deliberately written for an insular audience who liked a controversial and difficult interpretation of a famous story and wanted more of that interpretation. So the Homestuck^2 team wrote for them: they came to the table with big dreams and big ideas. They came to the table with lots of critical theory under their belts: they knew their Barthes and Baudrillard, they could reference queer theory and the legacy of post-structuralism, they were the sort of people who knew how to situate Homestuck in post-post-modernism and what that meant for the nature of its exploration of stories.

They had an audience, and they had a plan. They were going to give the fans what they wanted.

So after much hype and fanfare, after interviews and the Tumblr equivalent of a press-junket—which saw the new team saying how excited they were to tackle Homestuck’s legacy, how many great ideas they had, how much having a diverse team was going to see Homestuck ‘done right’—Homestuck^2 first published on the 25th of October, 2019, releasing 32 pages.

We start in the glittering majesty of space. The camera swoops in among the stars, barrelling towards a rushing spacecraft (every frame of Homestuck^2 looks great, the visual arts team's work is its unquestioned highlight). We aim at a viewport in the spacecraft’s hull and slowly the Muti-Narratively-Dimensional Ubervillian Dirk Strider comes into view. Fresh from his triumph in the Epilogues, continuing his wicked schemes, he looks right at the camera, and—speaking directly to the audience—he voices the first line of dialogue in Homestuck^2:

"Surprise, bitch."

…

There is…

…

… there is no coming from back that.

There is no saving it.

It is the 25th of October, 2019, and Homestuck^2 launches with its own death-rattle. It stumbles out of the gate like a beautiful racing pony catching its delicate hoof on the sharp, treacherous edge of an unwieldy analogy and tumbling into the indifferent soil of hard reality, shattering all four legs and immediately marking itself for teary euthanasia at the hand of the devastated young girl with the violet eyes who raised it from a foal and dreamed of making Nationals.

We have established that Homestuck^2’s potential audience was small. The people who were most likely to like it were already an insular, distinctive group who had bought-in to what much or all the Epilogues had to offer. Homestuck^2’s opening-day crowd did not need to be sold on the word of the Lord—they already believe it: they came to see their first glimpse of the promised land.

And in its very first conversation with that audience, in its very first words, Homestuck^2 makes the most spectacular miscalculation of tone since 2013's DmC: Devil May Cry—or for those of us of who remember the 90s: ‘Dirk Strider’s about to make you his bitch.’

There's nothing wrong with starting a story with a villain, there's nothing wrong with a villain being a contemptible heel to its audience, but Homestuck^2 spends its opening 32 entries—which, at over 7600 words are longer than the prologue to the Homestuck Epilogues—jumping between Dirk’s smarmy conversations with fellow characters and a monologue to the audience, pages infused with an arrogance and condescension that is downright enervating. The text is frequently dense, so dense it feels like chewing your way through a plank of wood. It is actively tiring to read: I bailed on my first attempt at reading Homestuck^2 when it originally dropped because I just did not have the energy to squint at my screen and read that much orange-on-off-white text.

It is, to be clear, contemptuous. Dirk did much the same in the Epilogues, but the locus has changed. In the Epilogues Dirk taunts the reader with the changes he is making to the story: he knows they object to his manipulations, and he preens as good villains do. But in Homestuck^2, Dirk speaks not of his changes but of the very existence of Homestuck^2 itself. He treats his audience as inherently hostile to the entire existence of the work they have just shown-up to read (or even support via a Patreon), a hostility that culminates when he ‘opens’ a suggestion box and receives the suggestion ‘Dirk: Stop Making Homestuck,’—which he at-once rejects and goes on to monologue some more.

Dirk is talking to an audience who isn’t there. He is speaking to everyone who didn’t like the Epilogues and objects to Homestuck’s 'sequel' directly following them: but that audience isn’t reading Homestuck^2. They bailed in advance, and any who did try and keep an open mind likely jumped ship the moment the comic started by calling them a bitch and implying they’re idiots. The only people likely to read past the fifth page are those who already bought-in to Homestuck^2’s plan: and they are greeted with some 32 pages and 7600 words of the comic’s villain re-litigating and justifying that plan over and over and over again to people who nominally already agreed with him.

It is draining. It is annoying. It is boring to read.

There’s so much you could critique about Homestuck^2’s choices: from Rose cheating on Kanaya to impregnate Jade to Jane Crocker going full Trump and keeping kids in cages. Equally there’s arguments to be made that Homestuck^2’s very premature cancellation inhibits any ability to judge the story fairly: like any serialized narrative stopped mid-way, we have no way of knowing what narrative payoffs were supposed to be. Decisions that seemed baffling on page 8 might prove brilliant and bold by page 8000. But we never got to page 8000, because Homestuck^2 made one crucial error:

It started by telling its audience they were fools for not being smart enough to appreciate how brilliant Homestuck^2 was going to be, and then spent a majority of some 7600 words repeating itself like the worst self-pitying incel you’ve ever had the misfortune to be trapped with at a party. If only the ungrateful could realize how smart, handsome, and well-educated I—Homestuck^2—am, the love I deserve will come flowing in. I’ll show them all.

Homestuck^2 never recovered from that first, fatal error. The rest of its choices, good and bad, are almost irrelevant in the face of that opening broadside, that hostility, that tedium. Homestuck Classic earned its walls of text and at least knew how to space them: Hometuck^2 took its audience forbearance as a given and opens with a lecture on its principles and quality like an unusually snide abstract on a sociology paper. Homestuck^2 essentially began by telling its audience to leave unless they were willing to give it carte blanche, to roll over for its brilliance from the first, to accept in advance that its intelligence and virtue were first rate. So the audience did leave and it never came back and eventually the whole thing collapsed via artist infighting that was so rancorous and possibly subsumed by NDAs that to this day no one has ever halfway adequately explained what happened at the end.

But that ending was preordained from the beginning, for the balance was hopelessly incorrect.

So to anyone trying to write a revisionist history of Homestuck^2 in which its downfall was the fault of readers who simply didn’t ‘give it a chance,’ who didn’t appreciate its themes, who couldn’t grasp (or didn’t care to grasp) its intellectual bonafides (not to mention its extraordinary self-assurance that it was going to be queer Homestuck ‘done right,’ which is a whole essay about a priori reasoning in and of itself)... in other words, a history in which Homestuck^2' downfall happened because people just didn’t ‘get it,’ I’d like to sum up my counter-argument succinctly:

People didn’t like Homestuck^2 because you wrote it bad.

[Afterwards:

There is something bitingly funny about the ‘return’ of Homestuck^2 with the announcement that, from what I can gather, seemingly every person involved with the original project was fired (or, as they’d probably insist, refused to come back). Dirk’s preening, overwhelming arrogance, that ‘Dirk: Stop Making Homestuck’ prompt, will forever haunt the original team’s unwieldy vision. “I’d bet you just looove for us not to make Homestuck anymore” the team said, with all the confidence of an entrepreneur dismissing safety regulations before climbing into his homemade submarine, and boy were lessons learned. My problem with the return, however, is that I don’t know who genuinely wants to see the story of Homestuck^2 finished: the remaining cadre of die-hard patrons who still have enough goodwill to want the promise of the story’s finale fulfilled is microscopic. I’d argue there’s more people waiting for the conclusion of Wizardy Herbert, and I’m the only person I know who has ever read it. What I mean is: as a choice to revive a struggling franchise it doesn’t make much sense, and further—if it is not clear—I don’t think this is a story worth finishing. What is to be salvaged? Jane-the-Dictator, Rose’s cheating, Obnoxious BabyVriska, Dirk Strider the monster? The problem with Homestuck^2 is that Pesterquest happened, and those who played it went ‘this—this is the kind of story we were hoping for, not your edge lord showboating.’ And we only got one Pesterquest and Homestuck^2 limped on for another year reviled, ignored, and eventually forgotten. When it died, most people didn’t have any idea, because the drama never crossed their screens: nobody was talking about it any more. As my best friend noted, give us more Paradox Space. Give us more stories with joy and some sense of fun, something not written by people who often felt like they had an ‘End of Evangelion’ style hatred of Homestuck, or at the very least took the old joke that Hussie was ‘trolling’ his audience at face value. (Writing a good story with twists, set-backs, and tragic moments is not trolling, it is just writing a good story.) Homestuck^2 never felt like it understood that: it was rude and iconoclastic for no more compelling reason than it thought that was meaningful. But then I think the legacy of Epilogues has been extremely toxic—part of the positivity towards Pesterquest was that it let the Epilogues go, featuring a triumphant moment where YoungDirk confronts his Epilogues self and goes ‘I don’t have to be a huge wanker, actually, I can stay a character people can stand and even love again.’

Do that, new team. Pesterquest is named-dropped on the new site more than once, and my dream is that its cast arrives and overthrows the corrosive toxicity of the Epilogues, banishes it to the far realm of underbaked elsewhere ‘what-ifs’ along with every DC cannibalism story and that time Peter Parker’s radioactive semen gave MJ cancer.

The Epilogues and Homestuck^2 are, at this point, not worth salvaging—but I’d happily see them formally buried.]

[r0semultiverse]

Classpects & Canonicity (an observation & speculation)

Vrissy isn't the same classpect (thief of light) as Vriska or just can't have a classpect due to this timeline lacking canonicity; alternatively, the difference in classpect is in part due to the timeline falling outside of or (in other words) beyond canon.

Is that part of why Vriska can tell it's phony? The lack of Vrissy having her own classpect? Or is Vriska cosmically tuned-in somehow to knowing something is wrong? I mean some of the stuff that has happened is pretty wonky, but I feel like this is part of her powers as a character. She's always been a key point in moving things forward & now that things aren't moving much at all in regards to canon, she is here to steal the spotlight & shed some light on this whole thing.

When/if Vriska fixes the canon, will Vrissy vanish along with the other characters or become changed? Similar to the hypothetical dream sequence we see near the end of Adventure Time Fionna & Cake, perhaps. Alternatively, will classpects suddenly be thrust upon all the new characters & their existence as well as their personalities remain??

There's much to think about here, let me all know what you think! 💜

[davekat-sucks]

So if Eridan's arc is an allegory for Obama's Presidency and WhatPumpkin made Jane Crocker in HS2/Beyond Canon represent Donald Trump

Who is the Joe Biden in HS2/Beyond canon? Karkat?

[bullet-prooflove]

Anyone up for NSFW Alphabet?

Dirty A-Z headcanon game

Send a letter for more information on my muse’s likes and dislikes! Inspired by kinks discussed around the internet. The (explanations) are mere guidelines, feel free to elaborate as much as you’d like!

A - Alone time (how do they get off when they’re all by themselves? do they watch porn, is it all in their imagination, do they jerk off, do they use toys?) 

B - Bondage (do they like it? do they not? do they prefer to be the one being tied or the one doing the tying?) 

C - Crying (is it a turn on? a turn off? do they cry during sex? have they cried during sex? what was the reason?) 

D - Dominance (do they prefer to dominate, or be dominated? do they have experience as a Dom? Do they have a Dom that they trust already? What kind of things do they enjoy as/with their Dominant partner?) 

E - Extra info (any other fetishes? feet? leather? role playing? blood? fantasies that they might want to experience not on this list?)

F - Food play (do they like using food in the bedroom? are there any foods they prefer to use during sex or foreplay? any they’d like to try?)

G - Group sex (would they have a threeway? four? an orgy? do they put on a show for spectators? or do they like to keep it just between them and their partner?) 

H - Humiliation (does degradation and insults get them hot? do they get off on humiliating someone else? what kind of humiliation is good for them?) 

I - Impact play (here’s where talking about things like spanking, paddles, canes, floggers and the like.) 

J - Jelly (what kind of lube are they using? is it flavored? have they tasted it? do they prefer to use something other than real lube during sex?) 

K - Kissing (what parts of their body do they like having kissed? what parts of their partner do they enjoy kissing? do they like leaving marks / having marks left on them?) 

L - Lighting (are the lights on? off? do they have some kind of mood lighting set up?) 

M - Masochism (do they like pain? scratching? biting? being bossed around? spoken down to? choked?) 

N - Not yet (orgasm delay? orgasm denial? do they tell their partner not to touch themselves for a certain amount of time or under certain circumstances? do they delay or deny other things like bathroom usage or food? do they need to beg first? do they like being denied / delayed?) 

O - Outdoor sex (have they ever done it in public? would they? where?)

P - Photography (are cameras allowed in the bedroom? do they send nudes? do they ask for nudes? would they ever record themselves having sex / being caught up in a sexual act?) 

Q - Quiet please (what’s the volume like in the bedroom? are they quiet? do they scream? do they like a loud partner? do they prefer if their partner is more soft spoken?)

R - Routine (do they have a routine when it comes to picking up one night stands? do they have scheduled sex with their partner? are things spontaneous or planned ahead of time?) 

S - Sleepy sex (do they give oral to wake their partner up? do they like receiving oral to wake up? do they like fucking their partner awake? being fucked awake? how about being fucked to sleep at night? do they have lazy morning sex?) 

T - Top or bottom (self explanatory…) 

U - Underwear (what kind of underwear do they put on in the morning, if any at all… do they own any sexy underwear or lingerie?) 

V - Voyeurism (do they like to watch, or are they more hands on? are they more of an exhibitionist?) 

W - Water (pool sex? bath / shower sex? are they into watersports at all?)

X - X-dressing (do they crossdress as a part of teasing / foreplay? does crossdressing turn them on? turn their partner on? do they prefer to do it or watch their partner crossdress instead? do they use other costumes? cat ears, tails, etc?) 

Y - Yes, Master (what kinds of names are used during sex? do they like being called master / mistress, daddy, etc…? what names do they call their partner?) 

Z - Zones (what are their erogenous zones? what spots on their body should be touched, bitten, kissed, when someone wants to get them in the mood?) 

[serfuzzypushover]

btw what's the most popular name for a transmasc jane!

I'm thinkin evil things... (/evil things being an alpha and beta kids lineup)

[hyperfixation-hopper]

I (BEGRUDGINGLY) SPIRTED THE B(ATTERW)ITCH >:(

More :( vv

[fnvminorcharacterpoll]

FNV Minor Character Poll - Preliminary Voting Round 6-B: NCR Brass

First image, top left: Dennis Crocker, NCR Ambassador at the NCR Embassy. —"I started my career over twenty years ago back in the NCR as the local mayor and worked my way up from there. I managed President Kimball's first run for a seat on the Council. I suppose that's why I have this ambassadorship."

First image, top right: Maj. Dhatri, NCR officer at Camp McCarran. —"[My former commanding] major froze up [during the Bitter Springs Massacre] and we couldn't get another word out of him. I took over and salvaged the situation as best I could. For my effort, I was promoted to major. Not quite the way I'd have wanted it."

First image, bottom left: Cap. Gilles, commanding NCR officer at Bitter Springs Refugee Camp. —"If this isn't a crisis situation, you'd better have a damn good reason for interrupting me."

First image, bottom right: Col. James Hsu, commanding NCR officer at Camp McCarran. —"On top of everything else, I can't send a patrol on a bathroom break without it being ambushed by someone who heard they were coming. So somebody's getting the word out."

First image, top left: Ranger Jackson, NCR ranger in charge of the Mojave Outpost. —"Thanks, I appreciate it. Come back here when you're done, I might accidentally 'lose' some supplies to pay you with."

First image, top right: Cap. Marie Pappas, head officer of NCR Military Police. —"I hear you've been meeting with Mr. House in the Lucky 38. I bet you think you're pretty special, don't you? Special or not, stay out of trouble and more importantly stay out of my way."

First image, bottom left: Cap. Parker, NCR commanding officer at Aerotech Office Park. —"This here's where folks go when their luck runs out. Drifters up from the Republic, locals that can't turn a dime, drunken reprobates from all around. If you don't have the caps to get onto the Strip, odds are you'll end up here."

First image, bottom right: Maj. Joseph Polatli, NCR commanding officer at Camp Forlorn Hope. —"If the brass back home could get their heads out of their asses long enough to send support, we could turn this all around."

(Preliminary Voting Round masterpost)

[spilladabalia]

Cockney Rebel - Tumbling Down

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

JAME: Ever since I came out, my dad has been saying, “Are you winning, son?” every time I’m playing a game. 

JAME: It’s slowly evolved into saying, “You winning, son?” and then, “Winning, son?” 

JAME: Yesterday he dropped me off at a friend’s house and just said: 

DAD CROCKER: WIN.

[twilightzonecloseup]

1.02c Chameleon

Director: Wes Craven

Writer: James Crocker

Cinematographer: Bradford May

Summary:

In orbit above the earth, a spacewalking astronaut notices a strange blue light flashing off part of the space shuttle Discovery. When the shuttle returns to earth, two engineers, Brady (John Ashton) and Gerald (Steve Bassett), are asked to inspect one of the exterior cameras after it malfunctioned in orbit. When Brady removes the camera, he is engulfed in blue light and disappears—leaving just the camera. The camera is moved to a sealed observation lab where a team of NASA scientists can securely examine it. Dr. Curt Lockridge (Terry O’Quinn) and his team try to reason through what happened while they wait for consultation from a higher ranking scientist, Dr. Vaughn Heilman (Ben Piazza). 

The camera flares up in blue light again, but now the observation lab is occupied by, what appears to be, Brady. “Brady” pleads with them to let him out. They attempt to reason with him, but “Brady” becomes increasingly irate. In a fit of desperation, “Brady” shape shifts into the form of Brady’s wife, Kathy (Lin Shaye). Kathy then pleads the case to the scientists to let “Brady” go home. This reveals that when this shapeshifter absorbs someone, it also absorbs their knowledge and memories, as the real Kathy is safe at home. 

The scientists catch the shapeshifter up in its misunderstanding. It morphs back into its Brady form and begins to lash out. They decide to forcibly sedate the Brady-Thing, and Heilman enters the room to examine it. The Brady-Thing wakes up and absorbs Heilman. Rather than taking on Heilman’s form, it morphs into a bomb with a clock counting down to detonation. As it turns out, Heilman used to work in weapons R&D. Lockridge decides to enter the room himself as a sign of trust, to reason with it and set it free. When the countdown reaches zero, another flash, and out of the room runs the shapeshifter, now in the form of Heilman. 

Lockridge chases after it, out onto the tarmac of the airfield. The shapeshifter explains to Lockridge that it ended up on earth out of pure curiosity and assures him that Heilman and Brady are not being held prisoner. Unable to explain its nature in human language, it offers Lockridge the opportunity to merge with it as well, and travel the universe. Lockridge declines and the shapeshifter transforms into a swirling ball of light, launching itself into the open night sky.

Closing Narration:

“Imagine yourself a visitor to many worlds, drifting on the solar wind, a thousand voices singing in your memory. Now imagine you're this man, who can only guess at the wonders he might have known, wonders that exist for him now only as a riddle... from The Twilight Zone."

More about Chameleon:

Chameleon was conceived and written by supervising producer James Crocker. On the DVD commentary for this episode, Crocker explained that his inspiration for writing this story was simply that he liked shapeshifter stories. It was refreshing to hear to be honest, as sometimes producers who envision themselves as creatives build up grandiose creation myths for their creative output. Anyway, I think that this approach worked out well for Chameleon as a Twilight-Zone story. Crocker successfully took inspiration from  preexisting stories about shapeshifting alien beings and synthesized something original from it. (My assumption is that his inspirations were The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Thing (1982) (or The Thing from Another World (1951)), and maybe just a touch from the Star Trek TOS episode “The Squire of Gothos.” But, that’s just my speculation!) 

Superficially, Chameleon reminded me more of a story that might appear on The Outer Limits. However, the shorter runtime of the episode gives it a Twilight Zone-y flair of presenting the viewer with a strange premise for them to mull over on their own. That is, Chameleon is relatively fantastic, rather than explicative, which would be more in line with the more sci-fi leaning Outer Limits. 

No specific episodes of the original series immediately come to mind to pair Chameleon with, which is a good thing. If every episode had an analog in the original series, this reimagining of the series wouldn’t be showing much imagination! However, if I’m pressed to pair it, I’d go with The Lateness of the Hour (2.08) for depicting the panic response of suddenly not comprehending who or what you are or The Invaders (2.15) for depicting a fundamental difficulty in communicating between people from different planets. While this isn’t a Twilight Zone episode, The Outer Limits episode Corpus Earthing also came to mind when watching this story for the first time.

✨Support✨

[homestuck-but-worse]

Jane: can I please just bake in peace

Alpha Kids surrounding her in the kitchen: no

[anachronistic-falsehood]

I'm having a "think about the omega kids" kind of day so I figured I'd ask: What are your thoughts on the kids in candy timeline?

GOD the answer 2 this is late yet again.... been having so many thoughts about everything all the time i simply cannot keep up BUT I RLY WANTED TO ANSWER THIS BECAUSE I LOVE THE CANDY TIMELINE KIDS!! I think they're overall really interesting characters to add to the story, and while the epilogues do have their Problems, I do love the omega kids and i hope the new hs:bc writers take them in an interesting way. i think they were a great addition to the candy timeline. they make it feel more like homestuck, you know?

because like. ok. lemme explain real quick. Homestuck was a story about growing up. it started with these kids who were just entering teenagehood and had no idea what they were doing. they struggled, they learned, and they grew!!! Homestuck 2 and the epililogues would have been worse if it didn't have any kids in it. The epilogues kind of split Homestuck's theme of growing up into two: Meat has the childish villain, the one who's too stubborn to see past his own faults, (and Ult!Dirk is especially interesting to me because he was a protagonist of hs canon and is now an antagonist, and in his mind he never left Sburb and has barely grown up at all let's be real but ANYWAY), and the stories of kids who are growing up and still have so much left to learn. AGH i could talk about the themes of growing up in homestuck for ages but ANYWAY

BASICALLY: i really like the omega kids overall, they all have such fun personalities and dynamics with each other, and i think if hs:bc in the candy timeline veers its focus a little more towards the kids, it could make it feel more like homestuck, you know? i want a bunch of teens struggling through interpersonal issues and drama and trying to survive while the world ends please!!!

[davekat-sucks]

Vrissy ♥️ Harry and Vrissy ♠️ Tavros is confirmed! Homestuck Beyond Canon says incest is also okay on Earth C!

[bullet-prooflove]

Thursday ‘She Keeps Me Up’ Radio Prompt List

Please check the updated character list on my pinned post to see who I am writing for before submitting a prompt!

Also read the rules and do not forget to put the entire prompt into your ask!

I've been losing so much time

Wishing I could paint my scars and make me whole

I love when she says, what's wrong with right here on the counter?

our faith can be broken, and our hands can be bound, 

Tell me all the ways you need me

I'm just the one that keeps you up at night, you love the most

Murder lives forever and so does war

See the devil at my door

Love her even though I'm not supposed to

'Cause these are the days worth livin'

And I don't know why I can't keep my eyes off of you

I know where she's been 'Cause it's on everybody's faces

I need her so bad Sometimes I feel like I can taste it

I felt the heat that enveloped me

Maybe you could be the one to make me stay

She's more than worth it I swear she smells just like a flower

Spend my days cursing my soul

Another ticking bomb to bury deep and detonate

She keeps me up (I keep you up) All night 

I'll be the sun, I'll be the waves, I'll be the one you love the most

I know I can't fight the sad days and bad nights

See you watchin' and you blow me a kiss

One more day we'll spend together

Oh, just grant me one more day Oh, my love please don't give up

Maybe you could cause a girl to change (her ways)

To save somebody's life and have it blow up in his face

'Cause she's what everybody chases

My friend told me to keep clear of you But something drew me near to you

I can't keep up, and I can't back down

And these are the moments, these are the times, Let's make the best out of our lives

I don't know where to go from here

I'm not afraid of God, I am afraid of man

But my love I won't give up

I'll change my ways if you would stay

But I never asked for your help

I never knew where evil grew

Hidden behind shirts, ties and marriages

Come in closer, are you readin' my lips?

No, we don't belong together

 I should have steered away from you

Prove you got the right to please me

 I like the way you smile at me

I don't like the tension, the misapprehensions

With nothing to stop us, is it not worth the risk?

Little crazy is what I like

Nothing to prove

I'm not the only one who finds it hard to understand

We can't go on thinkin' it's wrong to speak our minds

Yeah, we can be bad as we can be good

There's something about you now That I can't quite figure out

I'm tripping on words You got my head spinning

We started something,

Everything she does is beautiful