#Obviously I can't explain everything because it's mostly:

[thediktatortot]

Love youre ST art, but if you dont mind me asking, why Billy? Theres just so much about his character I cant get passed enough to like him outside of peoples art.

I appreciate the cordial ask Anon, as most who do not like Billy would not do so: I love Billy for many reasons! Sorry, this is gonna be a fairly long response because I want to encapsulate not only my own points of enjoyment, but ones that a majority of the Billy side of fandom have as well.

First reason being: Billy is WONDERFULLY acted out by his actor. Dacre Montgomery did what is probably one of the top handful of performances on the show (probably rivalling the way I feel about Mason Dye's [Jason Carver] performance.) and that alone gives me some of the first reasons to love Billy as a character.

He's well done. He feels real, he gives depth and complications like real humans! That in part due to Dacre's representation of him. Dacre himself has put a lot of his own experiences into Billy's character, both in just the small things we notice and some of the larger aspects like having dealt with abuse in the home regarding his father as well as neurodivergencies and weight.

I'm a sucker for a well made character!

Second reason!: He's a bombshell, and not in just a 'hot' way. His character draws attention, he wants to be seen and noticed and heard! He's not great at going about it in a way that doesn't cause himself problems because...well he's still a child!

He's bound to mess up, especially in a time that does not see children as vulnerable members of a community, in a new culture (midwest) that he is unfamiliar with and unaccustomed to their social norms as well as being under the rules and obligations of a man who not only keeps him vulnerable but actively undermines him both mentally, physically and emotionally.

I empathize with and for him. I myself have never been abused by a parent, but I know what abuse feels like and it doesn't feel good. I have experience with sibling and spousal abuse, but even then it's not the same as being abused by your support structure, the person(s) who are supposed to be there to love and nurture you.

He has lost one of his major support structures in his life and is damaged for it.

But back to the bombshell title: He fits some of my favorite character tropes, Femme fatale & Antihero.

He's MADE to be destructive, he's an abused bull placed into a china shop by his own father and if that isn't sad, I don't know what it. No matter what he does, he cannot help but break something! His narrative was constructed by the show to always put him in a position of destruction and it's such a sad existence.

My third reason: He's an AMAZING foil to Steve as a character. He's everything Steve both wants and hates. He's 'carefree' and interruptive, he's hot and nasty, he's strong but has a hairtrigger-

He challenges Steve as a character to both think and do better in ways he doesn't realize yet.

These are all just basic reasons why I love him as a character. The fandom as a whole could lead you down a bigger path as to why, but there's a lot to love in Billy.

I can completely understand why someone might not like him, he is brash, rude, destructive, mean- and it can be hard to work around those issues when those things are actually damaging in real life.

But I see him as an opportunity to delve deeper into the "why". Why is Billy brash? Why is Billy rude? Why is he destructive and mean? That's the meat and potatoes.

In the end, I love Billy because he's a character who turned out the way he did, because he lacked the appropriate amount of love in his life, and we can see that by his actions and memories before his death.

He craved touch. He craved closeness and friends. He missed his mother, he feared his father. He had EMOTIONS that deserve to be expressed and heard.

He's what so many people can become, because no one takes the time to just give a shit. That's why I love him. Because I think he, in the real world, would have benefited from that. Just to be seen and heard and understood, even if no one could fix his situation, at least he would have the ability to have a safe place to confide in long enough to get himself out of his situation.

[corkinavoid]

DPxDC John Constantine's How To: Ghost Kids (pt.2)

[<- part 1]

"Oh, yeah," John jerks his head up like he just remembered the fact people are supposed to have names at all. He gestures to the kids, pointing to each of them as he introduces, "Daniel, Daniel, and Danielle."

This time, all three kids flip him off simultaneously. Bruce clears his throat, trying to figure out if Constantine is messing with him and, if so, in which parts. Since, so far, everything the man has said sounds like a poor attempt at pulling his leg.

"I don't think they like those," he cautiously says, and the kids whip their heads at him, nodding furiously. Bruce can't help but be just a little enamored with the way they behave.

"Of, sod off, at this point I don't care what they like," John straightens up with a dismissive, albeit weak, wave of his hands, and rubs his face, "They are menaces. Sometimes by accident, but mostly on purpose. Their grandfather thought it would be easier to handle them if they were not teenagers, and while I agreed with his reasoning at the time, I-" he glances at the kids, who all have displeased grimaces of various levels on their faces, "I have been made to reconsider. I swear that ancient bitch is laughing his ass off wherever he is now."

The kids suddenly grin. They are not very friendly, nor polite smiles - if anything, they look a bit nightmarish. An old grandfather's clock in his study makes a very loud ticking noise.

"See?" John whips his head to look at said clock, the expression on his face bordering on insane. His eye twitches.

If Bruce doesn't do anything now, he might become one of the very few people who managed to witness John Constantine, the Laughing Magician, have a meltdown. So he sighs and decides to solve the problems one at a time.

Which means that no matter how alarmed or suspicious he is, his first move would not be to interrogate either the man or the kids.

"You can sleep in one of the guest rooms, I trust you can find it on your own," he tells John, almost softly, as he catches the girl from slipping away from his lap, "Is there anything I need to know about children before you fall unconscious?"

John slumps with relief, so obviously that Bruce almost smiles. Hardships of raising - or, watching, for that matter - kids, he understands.

"Yes," he breathes out with an air of exhilaration and turns to the kids again, pointing to the middle child, "Danny is the original. He is from this dimension and timeline, that is. Dan," he turns his finger to the older boy, "is in the wrong timeline, he's Danny's future evil self redeemed into older bratty brother. Dani," he switches to the girl, "is Danny's clone, made by his arch-nemesis of a godfather. If she starts melting at any point, wake me up immediately. If any of them start floating, sprouting tentacles, speaking to walls in static, or glowing, don't."

Bruce looks down to the kids. So, definitely metas, that would explain the government trying to get them... Or, no, it wouldn't because he is fairly certain no government is going to blatantly ignore the Meta Protection Acts.

"Don't let them raise the dead, and if you give them food, make sure it doesn't have a face. If you find more than three of them, it means one of them has duplicated, don't worry, they will absorb it back later. Absolutely don't let them touch any guns," Constantine is backing down to the door as he speaks, his gaze flickering from the kids to Bruce and back every second. Like he is leaving a ticking bomb in Bruce's lap, and not three children. "Danny is, comparatively, the most responsible one, the other two are up for any dubious trouble they can get to at any moment. Oh, and their memories are wonky because of de-aging, they remember some things but not others, so if they say something particularly disturbing, it's most likely some random piece of knowledge they managed to keep."

Bruce raises an eyebrow. He did get the part about the kids being, well, abnormal in the matters of their origins, but the disjointed set of rules and advices doesn't help as much as Constantine probably thinks it does.

"Allergies, preferences, ages they were before?" He tries to get at least some more info down before John disappears through the door. Actually, maybe he should send someone to handcuff the man to the bed lest he disappears completely.

"None, but don't let them eat cutlery. Danny likes space, Dani has a thing for exploring, and Dan likes violence." The older kid stirs in Bruce's lap and says something in the direction of Constantine. No sound comes out, but the man seems to get what he's trying to say anyway, "Okay, yes, that was rude of me, sorry. Dan likes... exercise," he ends up with, and that placate the boy enough to slump down and cross his arms. John sighs, "They were seventeen, fourteen, and twenty respectively. Now," he snaps his fingers, and suddenly Bruce can hear the girl - Dani - humming a tune under her breath. So, he lifted the silence spell, it seems.

"Good fucking luck," John wishes to Bruce, earnestly, and all but vanishes away.

Bruce sighs and looks down to the kids.

"Are you hungry?" He tries, and all eyes are on him at once, attentive and unblinking.

"Fruitloops," Danny says, and while Bruce is positive that's the name for a cereal, he gets a feeling that's not what the kid meant.

[infizero]

things get better before they get worse (a chp 4 weird route analysis/ramble)

(AKA how toby somehow managed to make the weird route even more awful and upsetting than it already was)

the weird route's continuation in chapter 4 is genuinely so much more sickening than i was expecting, but the thing that really hurts me is how the events of snowgrave have been recontextualized, and how all of us ended up being wrong about what the "point of no return" is for this route.

obviously, massive spoilers for deltarune chapter 3&4 weird route below.

to really explain the main point i want to focus on in this post, let's first briefly go over where the weird route left off at the end of chapter 2 and how the fandom generally expected things to go from there.

after returning to the light world, noelle assumes (or at tries to convince herself) that it was just a dream. and even if you make kris wear her watch, it's vague enough that noelle could still reasonably try to convince herself that they just somehow swiped it off her when she wasnt looking.

however one of the main things was that noelle vows to figure out why kris has been acting so differently recently.

thus myself and many others assumed that when we next saw noelle, she would be trying to investigate kris's behavior. maybe trying not to act uncomfortable around them, or maybe even making excuses to hang around them (despite the trauma she endured) to try and figure out what's going on with them.

we all also seemed to kinda assume that kris is just kind of stuck as our puppet here. they can't do anything about any of this, they're forced to just stand by in horror as we force them to do these things to her. a captive in their own body.

so when i started chapter 4 on my weird route save file and noelle took initiative to be the one to invite kris and susie over, that's immediately what i assumed was going on. i assumed she was trying to act somewhat normal and was bringing kris over in order to analyze their behavior in her quest to figure out what's going on.

i WAS a bit caught off guard by how really none of her dialogue around holiday manor changed, and i started to almost get a bit nervous that the effects of snowgrave on her mental state werent really being shown like i thought they would.

then she says she wants to speak to kris in private and i thought oh god, ok. this is where it's gonna kick in. she's putting on a happy face in public but when they're alone together she's gonna crumble and start asking why they did what they did and everything.

and this is when the cruelest part of the route hits.

because when we eavesdrop on their conversation, we find out some devastating information.

...kris apologized to noelle after snowgrave.

when they pulled the soul out at the end of chapter 2, they went to noelle's house and apologized for everything. they gave her her watch back (if you took it). they pulled the thorn (that becomes the thorn ring) out of her finger. they desperately tried to salvage their relationship with her after we ruined it.

but the thing that hurts the most about this, is that it WORKS.

noelle believes them. she accepts their apology. she's just so, so devastatingly happy that kris is back to being themself.

and we can see that without our involvement, at least for the time being, this is how it stays. if you just select either of the regular options, the aborted route jingle plays and things go back to normal.

i dont think ANYONE really expected that things would be salvageable after snowgrave. freezing berdly was treated as the "point of no return," where things would never be the same and kris and noelle's relationship would be forever tarnished. it was tragic, but it was expected.

but this makes it SO MUCH WORSE. because now we know that WASN'T the point of no return. by some miracle, kris successfully managed to clean up after us and mend things. there is a world where snowgrave happens and things still manage to mostly go back to normal.

which is why it hurts SO much more when we're able to ruin things again - for good this time.

this has to be one of the most devastating lines of the whole thing to me. think of how terrified and confused noelle is. kris had told her that everything would be fine and they were sorry. that they would protect her. and now from her perspective, its like all that was just a lie to get her guard down. it's awful.

this is the real point of no return. because there's literally no coming back from this, even aside from the noelle trance stuff. the first time she was able to trust them, but we've broken that trust forever now. if kris tries to do the same thing they did before, to apologize and fix things, she'll never believe them.

and that's of course not even discussing the presentation of this scene. the way the colors drastically shift and the screen darkens the second you say "me", the way everything sounds, how utterly horrified noelle looks the entire time, the way kris moves towards her and grabs her arm all zombie-like. and of course, when they actually stab her with the thorn... it's genuinely sickening.

the fact that it all happens in her room too just makes it feel so much more awful. this is her private space, where she should feel the safest, and yet...

but i think one of the other major reasons why this chapter's portion of the weird route was so upsetting is that we're finally getting to REALLY see kris's reaction to everything.

in chapter 2, we had the few bits of dialogue like susie's comment about kris looking off and the abort dialogues, and just the general understanding of kris as a character, to be able to determine that kris did NOT want to do snowgrave. they were suffering too, and it really adds to the horror of the route that kris is a victim as well.

but just like a lot of stuff with kris before these new chapters, it was pretty vague. if you paid attention you could get an understanding of what they were probably feeling, but it was very much in the background and sort of just implied.

but here? we finally get to REALLY see how our actions in snowgrave affected kris. and we get to see firsthand just how upset they are and how much they hate us for what we've done.

learning that kris tried desperately to salvage their relationship with noelle afterwards and specifically told her to not mention that they did in order to protect her from us is... i mean it's not surprising, it's what i've assumed they'd want to do all this time, but seeing it actually happen in the game after so long of just speculating... it's really really upsetting. they were trying so hard to keep us away from her.

and then, god. the scene afterwards of them kicking us in the bathroom. i was genuinely so shocked, i had my hand over my mouth when i saw it for the first time. seeing firsthand just HOW furious and upset they were, how loud the noises were every time they kicked the trash can, how hard they hit the soul and how long it went on for... it made me feel so bad that i legitimately whispered "im sorry" at the screen without even thinking about it.

and the fact that even after that scene, we get more moments of kris clearly not being ok. them starting to hyperventilate when theyre made to think of noelle, them getting so angry at us trying to make them "pray for noelle" that they smash the hope candles... literally no one can try to say that kris wanted to do snowgrave EVER again. toby's made it abundantly and heartbreakingly clear just how much they hate what we've done.

there's obviously more i could talk about when it comes to the new parts of the route, but these were the main points i wanted to focus on as i really think these two things (the reveal that snowgrave wasn't the point of no return, and kris's reactions being much more overt) are what make it so upsetting.

and from what we've seen, it's only going to get worse from here.

[capriccio-ffxiv]

... Holy crap

At one point I speculated that Fandaniel's throwaway comment about Zenos being a case where Emet-Selch "finally succeeded" was about Zenos' corporeal aether being as dense as an Ancients'. Not his soul, but his body at least being 2x as dense as the average Source inhabitant (and 14x as anyone from a Shard).

One of the big reasons for the Sundering was that extremely aether-dense people can't interact directly with Dynamis. You can hear Meteion bc your aether is so thin. People turn into monsters bc Dynamis overwhelms and consumes their Aether.

What if Zenos cannot directly interact with Dynamis. At all.

What if THAT'S why everything seems dull and boring to him? There's a whole spectrum of emotion & feeling that he straight up can't feel because his booty too fat his corporeal aether is too thick. But he's still a sundered soul, so part of him still needs Dynamis to feel connected to other people (unlike the Ancients who seem fine?). But his corporeal aether blocks it. The same way that Zodiark's shield kept us from hearing the Endsinger for all those centuries (& by extension the whole universe really), Zenos' thicc aether literally prevents him from feeling connection to others.

This explains why he so easily no-sold the WoL. In addition to supernaturally thick aether, he's also mostly immune to our Power of Friendship crap.

... Mostly.

Because obviously the Ancients still weren't immune to the Endsinger, her effect was just different. They didn't turn into monsters, but their imaginations turned on them, causing their creation magic to manifest ravenous nightmares. In the same way, some part of the WoL's Dynamis was so potent that it broke through. And that's why he became so completely addicted to us. We're literally the only person with powerful enough Dynamis that he can feel any connection at all.

[vesna-v-irkutske]

hi vesna, wanted to know what the apparent letter that artyom sent to ''varya'' says if u have time😭

Hi! To be honest, this whole situation is very annoying and stupid.

First of all, who is Varya? Varya is supposedly a 15 year old girl who wanted to break up Artyom and Daphne. A couple of things: - the photos she sent weren't even hers (and they weren't NSFW); - it doesn't look like Artyom knew her real age. Some more information and rumors from r/IrkutskMolotochniki, most of it comes from a person with an extremely annoying way of talking who communicated with Daphne:

Comments from March 22, May 14 (pic. 2 and 3), May 20 and June 1, 2024.

In early August, Daphne made 2 posts on r/Earkutsk (her subreddit) explaining everything. You can read them here and here.

I have one of Artyom's previous letters to Varya, so I'll translate it first.

"Hello, Varya. I received the letter on September 26. I deeply apologize for such a long reply. I can't physically do it faster. I ask you to be understanding… or not =D O-o-oh, I also missed your birthday. This is somehow completely unjust. I apologize for that too. I understand how you've probably been waiting, but you see — I work at the sewing machine, so sometimes I get completely stitched up¹... =) If we live to see it, I'll do better by next birthday. Probably… =) • I'm not against communication, if you're not against communication in such a leisurely, to put it mildly, rhythm. Nice to meet you, by the way =D Thanks for the photo. You've really lifted my spirits. I spent half an hour admiring and licking my lips X) • Jurisprudence is a good choice, I'm a jurist too². What is the reason for this choice? • I'm doing fine, thank you for your concern. What about you? I fill my free time with a little bit of everything. I write letters mostly. Well, I also read, watch TV, listen to the radio, study foreign languages and do music. How do you spend your free time? • My musical preferences are about the same as yours — genre is not as important as quality. But still, by and large, they come down to heavy and electronic music. Do you have any favorite artists, compositions? • I'm both working and studying. Bad habits?.. o.O Well, let's say I don't smoke³. There's no need to talk about alcohol and drugs — there just aren't even such opportunities =) What else do you mean by bad habits? I don't think I have any, I'm almost perfect =D • My relationship with my mom is good. She doesn't miss a single long visit. • As for the girls, my interest here is situational. I don't gravitate towards any particular type, I evaluate all the details of the personality in the aggregate. As for the situation with Daphne, no comments yet =) Thank you for your congratulations and generous wishes. Even though I'm a month and a half late, I wish you well too, and I wish you all your dreams come true =) Since our communication will continue soon, in conclusion, I'd like to ask you what books do you read and what movies do you watch? Good luck! 27.11.2023"

¹ He meant that sometimes he gets too caught up in his work. ² I'm not sure he has a degree. He obviously wouldn't be able to become a sworn advocate AT LEAST because of his reputation. I think it's a matter of terminology. A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyzes and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal education in law (a law degree) and often a legal practitioner. In the Russian Federation, a jurist can be a person who has received secondary professional or higher legal education. A jurist can provide legal assistance and legal services in criminal, civil, tax, labor, family, inheritance, housing, corporate, administrative and other legal matters. A jurist needs the status of an advocate only to defend someone in a criminal case. In some categories of criminal cases, protection may be provided by persons who don't have an advocate's status. So, basically, as I understand it, MAYBE he can be a jurist, but not an actual advocate/lawyer. Genuinely, whatever, take everything Artyom says with a grain of salt, he likes trolling. ³ Answers this question, I guess.

Now to the letter you sent. 👇🏻

"Varya, hi. I received the letter on November 30. Also, on the very eve of the New Year, I received a photo of you, which you intended to convince me of your coming of age... =) Great photo. You're irresistible =D • Before I get to the main content of your letters, I'll start with the non-main one =) I congratulate you on the past holidays and wish you good health, lots of money, always a great mood, and that everything goes according to plan, and, of course, great and pure love =D Speaking of love. It's a beautiful feeling, isn't it?.. =) It sometimes makes you do rash things, doesn't it? =) That's gratifying that you turned out to be a conscientious girl and immediately after your rash act you wrote to me and repented. This will definitely be counted as a mitigating factor for you in the future¹ =D And who is this girl whose channel² you sent the letter to? What's her name? Any idea why she needs it if she didn't delete it? And here another kind girl wrote to me that it was you who posted the letter in your channel... =) This is probably that misinformation about you. As for the dirt, insults, and threats, who exactly allowed themselves to do this to you? If possible, give at least a couple of examples of people who did this. At least you're not like them, are you? Not being rude or threatening anyone there? =) I don't recommend doing this. Those who do this, especially in relation to those whom I know in a positive light, may not expect anything good from me. • Okay, Varechka. You did something stupid and you did it. Who doesn't? Let's hope that this doesn't lead to more serious difficulties for you, in particular problems with the law. It also happens… Let's finally talk about you. How are you feeling? Not sick anymore? How did you spend the New Year holidays? And what's the news in general? What are you currently studying at your educational institution? You're getting a tertiary education, right? • You write that you go to the gym, well done. What kind of sport do you practice? Or just fitness? You're reviewing photos and videos of me? Well, you have great taste XD I have the same thing with my favorite music artists — I can't get enough forms to list them all =) Well, you know, you saw the playlist³ =) The TV series "Fisher"⁴? Well, yes, I can guess who it's about. Have you watched "The Method"⁵? I think you'll like it too =) • My favorite dish? I wonder why you need this? o.O Mostly pelmeni =D In general, I'm unpretentious in gastronomic matters. As long as it's tasty, healthy and nutritious =) And what's your favorite dish? • As for the cities I've been to, there's not even much to choose from… I've been to Ulan-Ude, Usolye-Sibirskoye (Irkutsk region), Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tyumen, Kirov, Vologda. In the last five of the mentioned cities, I was only in detention centers and saw a little bit of the street from the window of the paddy wagon =) In general, it was difficult to form an opinion about the cities. Well, judging by the data about the cities of the world, which became known to me from wherever it was, then... it's even more difficult X) First of all, I'd like to visit the city of Spijkenisse in the Netherlands⁶. It's a good city, they say =) But Moscow⁷, in general, is not bad either. If you know what I mean... X) • A movie? Perhaps, "Saw." For all time =) And what are your favorite city and movie? • Varechka, what can I sew for you? I can't sew anything but workwear. So no matter what I start sewing, I'll still end up with some kind of cop's or worker's clothes. You don't need that, do you? =) • I'm cool by nature =D There's nothing more to add. • How I feel about trolls on the internet. I don't give a hoot about the internet and everyone who lives in it =) I hardly ever go there, so I don't come into contact with trolls. I was a troll? o.O Where does this information come from?.. Tell me, who is without sin? We all get in the mood to troll. But depending on the skills, the result is different for everyone: who becomes a troll, and who becomes a sad shit X)

• The question about Zonatelecom's⁸ tariff seems to have an underlying reason... =) I haven't used this tariff, because I haven't used phone calls on a regular basis yet. I called with permission, which is not given as often as I'd like. So what's the point in me figuring out these tariffs? And even when you call regularly, I personally don't see the point in them, because if you get a cheaper call than usual, it means you're losing something, because for free pleasure, as they say, someone also has to pay. Thus, the cost of a telephone conversation decreases because the quality of connection deteriorates. And I treasure the connection with my loved ones =D • Oh, I got to your second letter. Hi, Varya =) Things, mood, well-being — everything's all right. And you? I'm glad to know about your dog =) I don't remember what a Yorkshire Terrier looks like, so if you want, you can send me a picture. • Well, Varya, I can't give birth to a story out of the blue, but when it's appropriate in our dialogue, I'll definitely tell you something. Be patient =) All the best! 06.01.2024"

¹ It's not me, it's him writing like an idiot. For a second, he imagined himself as a priest, to whom people should repent of their sins. I mean, this checks out. You know what they say about Christian priests. It's noteworthy that he uses the word "девочка" (little girl) instead of "девушка" (young woman), which would mean a more mature age. 🤮 ² On Telegram. I doubt it exists now, but who knows. ³ A few years ago, Artyom wrote a long list of songs that he listens to, and someone made a playlist on Spotify. ⁴ "Fisher" is a Russian thriller TV series. The plot of the 1st season is based on real events — serial killer Sergey Golovkin, who operated in the Odintsovsky District of the Moscow region from 1986 to 1992, had the nickname "Fisher." ⁵ "The Method" is a Russian crime drama TV series. Some of the characters were loosely based on real criminals, including the Academy maniacs. ⁶ Daphne, Artyom's fiancée, is from the Netherlands. ⁷ Varya probably said that she lives in Moscow. ⁸ Zonatelecom is an app for communication with prisoners. You can call them, write letters, send postcards, money.

Письма на русском для тех, кто хочет прочитать их в оригинале, но не хочет разбирать почерк Артёма. Орфография сохранена.

"Здравствуй, Варя. Письмо получил 26 сентября. Приношу глубочайшие извинения за такой долгий ответ. Быстрее физически никак не могу. Прошу отнестись с пониманием… или не относиться =D О-о-о, я ещё и день твоего рождения пропустил. Это уж как-то совсем неправосудно. Прошу прощения и за это тоже. Понимаю, как ты наверно ждала, но видишь — я работаю на швейке, так что иногда совсем зашиваюсь… =) Если доживём, то к следующему дню рождения исправлюсь. Наверно… =) • Я не против общения, если и ты не против общения в таком неторопливом, мягко говоря, ритме. Приятно познакомиться, кстати =D Благодарю за фото. Очень подняла настроение. Полчаса любовался и облизывался X) • Юриспруденция — хороший выбор, я тоже юрист. Чем такой выбор обусловлен? • Дела у меня в порядке, благодарю за беспокойство. А как у тебя? Свободное время я забиваю всем помаленьку. В основном письма пишу. Ну а так ещё читаю, смотрю телек, слушаю радио, занимаюсь иностранными языками и музыкой. Как ты проводишь свободное время? • Музыкальные предпочтения у меня примерно, как у тебя — не столь важен жанр, сколько качество. Но всё же по большому счёту они сводятся к тяжёлой и электронной музыке. У тебя есть какие-то любимые исполнители, композиции? • Я и работаю, и учусь. Вредные привычки?.. o.O Ну, скажем, я не курю. Об алкоголе и о наркоте и говорить не приходится — тут просто даже возможностей таких нет =) Что ещё подразумевать под вредными привычками? Пожалуй, нет у меня таковых, я почти идеален =D • Отношения с мамой хорошие. Она не пропускает ни одного длительного свидания. • Что касается девушек — тут мой интерес ситуативен. К какому-то определённому типажу не тяготею, все детали личности оцениваю в совокупности. Что касается ситуации с Дафной, то пока без комментариев =) Благодарю за поздравления и щедрые пожелания. Хоть и опоздал на полтора месяца, но и тебя тоже с прошедшим и желаю сбычи всех мечт =) Коль скоро наше общение продолжится, в заключение хотел бы поинтересоваться, какие книги ты читаешь и какое кино смотришь? Удачи! 27.11.2023"

Второе письмо мне пришлось разделить на 2 блока из-за лимита знаков, поэтому там внезапный разрыв. 👇🏻

"Варя, привет. Получил письмо 30 ноября. Также в самое преддверие Нового года получил твою фотографию, которой ты намеревалась убедить меня в своём совершеннолетии... =) Отличная фотография. Ты неотразима =D • Прежде чем я перейду к основному содержанию твоих писем, начну с неосновного =) Поздравляю тебя с минувшими праздниками и желаю здоровья, много денег, всегда отличного настроения, чтобы всё шло по плану, ну и, конечно, большой и чистой любви =D Кстати о любви. Прекрасное чувство, не правда ли?.. =) Оно порой толкает на необдуманные поступки, да? =) Отрадно, что ты оказалась совестливой девочкой и сразу после своего необдуманного поступка написала мне и покаялась. Тебе это в дальнейшем обязательно зачтётся, как смягчающее обстоятельство =D А что это за девочка такая, в чей канал ты отправила письмо? Как её зовут? Есть предположения, зачем ей это нужно, если она не стала его удалять? А мне тут другая добрая девочка написала, что это ты в своём канале выложила письмо... =) Наверно это та самая деза (дезинформация) о тебе. Что касается грязи, оскорблений, угроз, кто конкретно позволил себе такое в отношении тебя? Приведи по возможности хотя бы пару примеров лиц, кто это делал. Ты-то хоть им не уподобляешься? Не грубишь там никому, не угрожаешь? =) Не рекомендую этого делать. Те, кто так делает, тем более по отношению к тем, кого я знаю с хорошей стороны, могут ничего хорошего от меня не ждать. • Ладно, Варечка. Совершила глупость и совершила. С кем не бывает? Будем надеяться на то, что это не обернётся для тебя более серьёзными трудностями, в частности, проблемами с законом. Бывает и такое... Давай лучше наконец о тебе поговорим. Как самочувствие? Больше не болеешь? Как провела Новогодние каникулы? И какие в целом новости? Что сейчас проходите в вашем учебном заведении? Ты же высшее образование получаешь? • Ты пишешь, что в зал ходишь — это ты молодец. Каким видом спорта ты занимаешься? Или просто фитнесом? Фото и видео со мной пересматриваешь? Что ж, у тебя отличный вкус XD С любимыми исполнителями музыки у меня такая же фигня — всех перечислять бланков не напасёшься =) Ну, ты знаешь, ты видела плейлист =) Сериал "Фишер"? Ну да, догадываюсь, о ком это. А "Метод" не смотрела? Думаю, тебе тоже понравится =) • Моё любимое блюдо? Интересно, зачем тебе это? o.O В основном пельмешки =D А вообще я в гастрономических вопросах непритязательный. Лишь бы было вкусно, полезно и питательно =) А какое любимое блюдо у тебя? • Что касается городов, то из тех, в которых я был, даже и выбрать как-то не из чего... Я был в Улан-Удэ, Усолье-Сибирском (Иркутская область), Новосибе, Омске, Тюмени, Кирове, Вологде. В последних пяти из упомянутых городов был только в СИЗО и видел немного улицу из окна автозака =) В общем, мнение о городах составить было сложновато. Ну а если судить по тем данным о городах мира, которые стали мне известны откуда бы то ли было, то... ещё сложнее X) В первую очередь я бы хотел побывать в городе Спейкениссе в Нидерландах. Хороший, говорят, город =) Но и Москва, в общем-то, неплоха. Если ты понимаешь, о чём я... X) • Фильм? Пожалуй, "Пила". На все времена =) А какие твои любимые город и фильм? • Варечка, ну что я могу тебе сшить? Я кроме спецодежды ничего шить не умею. Так что, что бы я ни начал шить, на выходе всё равно получится шмотка мента какого-нибудь или рабочего. Тебе же такое не надо? =) • По характеру я клёвый =D Больше и добавить нечего. • Как я отношусь к троллям в интернете. Да мне по барабану этот интернет и все, кто в нём живёт =) Я-то там практически не бываю, поэтому и с троллями не соприкасаюсь. Я был троллем? o.O Это откуда такие сведения?.. Скажи мне, а кто без греха? У всех у нас бывает настроение потроллить. Только в зависимости от умений результат у всех разный: кто становится троллем, а кто — УГ (унылое говно) X)

• Вопрос о зонателекомовском тарифе, кажется, с подоплёкой... =) Я таким тарифом не пользовался, потому что вообще телефонными звонками я ещё на постоянной основе не пользовался. Я звонил по разрешению, которое даётся не так часто, как хотелось бы. Поэтому смысл мне разбираться в эти�� тарифах? Да даже когда звонишь регулярно, я лично не вижу в них смысла, потому что если звонок тебе дешевле обычного, значит ты чего-то лишаешься, ибо за бесплатное удовольствие, как говорится, тоже кто-то должен заплатить. Таким образом, стоимость телефонного разговора снижается потому, что ухудшается качество связи. А связью с близкими людьми я дорожу =D • О, добрался до твоего второго письма. Привет, Варя =) Дела, настроение, самочувствие — всё в порядке. А у тебя? Рад узнать о твоей собачке =) Как выглядит йоркширский терьер, не помню, так что, если хочешь, можешь отправить фотку. • Ну, Варь, на ровном месте родить историю я не могу, но когда это будет уместно в нашем диалоге, я обязательно что-нибудь расскажу. Запасись терпением =) Счастливо! 06.01.2024"

[baruque-ya]

Headcanons

Headcanons | COD [Call Of Duty]

CW: None. Well maybe fluff in some parts, it depends on the reader pov.

Characters: Simon 'Ghost' Riley (SpecGru), König (Kortac).

GN!Reader.

A/N: (Remembering that these headcanons are how I see them, and it's only sometimes, If you think it's unrealistic or has nothing to do with it, please don't read it, but in my head, neither of them would be abusive or cry if you yelled at them [A very direct indirect message to König's fangirls], Anyway, I wrote it to relax, I hope you like it)

ঐSimon 'Ghost' Rileyঐ

જ⁀➴Things he likes to do

Coffee, he simply loves making coffee in the mornings for himself and for you. He places the mug in front of you and caresses your hand quickly. It is an indirect way of saying that he loves you, since he can barely express himself with words. It's not that he's shy, it's just that everything is very new to him, but he'll get the hang of it over time.

Sleeping WITH you, he simply can't sleep away from you anymore, unless he's on a mission, Simon is very paranoid and sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night thinking that the base or the house is being invaded (once you woke up dazed with him "hiding" you under the bed)

When he gives you gifts, mostly simple things like pendants, little letters or even a candy that you like... he watches you from afar while you open it, to see by your expression if you liked it or not.

Watching the sunrise, sometimes you wake up at 5:00 in the morning and see Simon staring out the window, focused, drinking tea.

Being hugged from the front, if you don't want to get elbowed, don't hug him from behind, and if you do, call him first before hugging, then he will relax his body and accept it normally (it's not his thing, anyone would be scared to be hugged from behind out of nowhere)

Receiving affection, yes, Ghost is a soldier, but he is also a human being... affection was something he really didn't have in great quantity in his childhood, and receiving it from you would be like filling the void he had.

જ⁀➴Things he would hate

Spoiled People, he simply couldn't live with someone who would cry or sulk just because they heard "no" or didn't get something when they wanted it.

People who are not committed to their work, Simon likes to spend time with you, so he would finish the work as quickly as possible and would try hard, but if you didn't do the same and were the lazy type, he would give you a lecture, from Lieutenant to private.

If you use any type of narcotics, or illicit drugs, Simon had his childhood destroyed due to his addicted father and brother, seeing you using something like that would always remind him of his own father, contrary to what people think, Ghost would hate drugs.

A person who didn't know how to respect your personal space, Simon explained from the beginning of the relationship that he didn't like too much contact and it would take time for him to touch you, but if you touched him even after the explanation, he would feel invaded and upset (he would probably break up with you, And no, it wouldn't be a tantrum on his part, me and no one else would like to be touched even after giving a warning that they don't like to be touched.)

People who demand affection or touch from him, as I said before, Simon has past traumas in relation to this, so touching or giving you affection would be in HIS time if you still demanded it... he would feel bad and upset that you don't understand and also that he can't give you that, even if he wants to.

જ⁀➴Relationship

Relatively normal? He wouldn't be a prince, but he wouldn't be horrible either, it would be a normal couple with its ups and downs and he would respect you A LOT and obviously expects to receive the same from you.

He would like to stare at you, it may seem strange, but whenever you were distracted, he would stare at you in some way.

He doesn't like to push things, but if you respect him, explain directly that you understand him, because he would feel neglected if you just silently stopped everything out of nowhere, Simon tends to be paranoid.

He rarely kisses you, it's not that he doesn't like you, but he can't make the first move and is afraid of bothering you or that you think that he's being too clingy, so whenever he wants to, he stares at your lips.

You both have a small skull pendant on your wrist, it's something he wanted to wear instead of a wedding ring, and you never take it off

He wouldn't like physical contact that much, so understand and don't force it, cuddling won't soften him up, in fact it would make him feel bad, because you want contact but he doesn't feel comfortable giving it yet, so he would end up giving in out of pure pressure and would probably feel bad afterwards

Since he doesn't like physical contact at first, he would show that he likes your presence, simply by sitting next to you wherever you are, or staying by your side in any place or occasion.

Your first contact was holding hands, this was in your room, when Simon was worried about a mission and you gently intertwined your hand with his, he didn't pull away and just remained staring at your hand while he breathed softly.

He loves sleeping next to you, your presence itself makes him comfortable, so when he is very tired he sits or lies down next to you and sleeps right there.

ᥫ᭡.Königᥫ᭡.

⁀➴༯Things he likes to do

Irritating you, yes, if you are the type of person who doesn't get angry easily, he would irritate you until you got angry like: Poking you, staring at what you do VERY closely, to the point of putting his head in your field of vision to see better, and he would laugh whenever you stared at him like: "really?"

Simply making light jokes with the younger soldiers he commands as a way to lighten the mood, due to his strength and height when you left the base during the afternoon, you saw König lifting the soldiers one by one and throwing them into the river (this was at their request obviously)

Eating lasagna, König loves it when you make lasagna and if you let him, he'll eat the whole dish by himself.

He loves sleeping on top of you, which makes things complicated since he's tall and very heavy. Once you woke up short of breath and it was simply him using you as a pillow.

You and he already agreed to wake Horangi up with a bucket of water in his face, you ran a lot after that, König would even stay still because he wouldn't suffer at all, but he ran along while laughing due to adrenaline.

Playing games on the cell phone with you, multiplayer games, when they're not doing anything of course...you laugh a lot because König uses his index finger to write something, like a 60-year-old man, which makes him take a long time to answer someone. (This is only when he is relaxing, when he is on missions he type quickly and normally, he is not a boomer)

He is very competitive, he is like you sometimes, for example betting that if he did something better than you he would win, until you said: "Ah, König, I'm not good at many things. And the only thing I'm really good at, you want to be better than me, so It's unfair right?" After that he laughed, and loudly, he kissed your cheek and apologized (still laughing)

He is not a soft boy, he would love affection and cuddles, but he would not cry if another soldier yelled at him, in fact he would yell louder and ask for respect for being a colonel, depending on what the other person said, he would even throw a punch.

He really likes slow kisses, as he doesn't have much time with you, whenever you meet he kisses your lips slowly to absorb and remember the texture of your mouth.

જ⁀➴Things he would hate

If you tried to take off his mask before he felt comfortable taking it off, he would simply grab your wrist and say in a low voice: "Mach das nie wieder" (Don't do that anymore), he wouldn't talk to you until you apologized.

If you disrespected him among others or even in private conversations about work, he could be your husband/boyfriend, but he was still your colonel and was above you, so if you made jokes trying to be liberal (In the sense of speaking badly of one of the soldiers, or wanting to act like a know-it-all about his rank)...he would give you a good lecture in front of everyone, and alone in the room too.

You wanted to go on any mission he went on, if you weren't qualified, he wouldn't let you, and if you threw a tantrum to go just because you wanted to be "close", he would say: "You're not qualified for this, honey, if you go... you'll die" he would say this with pain in his voice, the last thing he wanted was that, so he would leave you alone in the room and go on the mission, he would talk better when he got back.

That you would make light of his social anxiety, for example, laughing in his face when he said he doesn't like places with lots of people, and if you said: "Ah! There's no need to be shy", he would explode, that would be the height of antipathy, and he would probably go away and leave you standing there.

If you asked him to ease up on the training or simply go easy on you in any task, he would give you a big "no" and tell you to never ask him that again, because if he went easy on you, you would become weak and behind others over the years and would no longer be useful to the general, and in the end he said: "Is that what you want, schatz?" He spoke softly and you denied it, he apologized after that but said it was just the truth.

That you would talk a lot with some soldier who probably wants to be with you, he is not the jealous type, he is mature and understands that jealousy is insecurity, but he would be angry because you simply do not see or pretend not to see the soldier simply eating you with his eyes, he would call you to talk alone and would explain to you, if you understood... it would just ruin the man's buzz, but if you said that he just wants to be "friends" König would be upset and would not talk to you for a few hours.

જ⁀➴Relationship

It would be stable, but he would live a little far from you due to his duties as Colonel, but he himself explained that his love would not change due to the distance, so rest assured.

He would hug your shoulders and even sleep with his face resting on it, he is always tired, that is, wherever he leans, he sleeps.

The first person to ask you out was you, yes, YOU, he liked you too but he never made the first move, he just gave you signs...so you got tired and asked him out right away. (A few days after that, he apologized for not having taken action in that part, but you quickly forgave him saying that there was no problem at all, that the important thing was that it was mutual love)

He would like to walk around places that aren't so crowded, he's not afraid of people, but crowded places make him uncomfortable...mainly because people stare at him because of his size (He is not a giant, but he is still taller than the others, and it is normal to look at someone when they are tall, but he does not like people staring at him)

He is a very light sleeper, he wakes up at any moment, once you changed position in bed and when you looked at his face, his eyes were open and he had a serious face...but out of nowhere he closed them and went back to sleep (that day you got a huge scare)

König has social anxiety, he is NOT shy, if he were shy he wouldn't even have become a colonel or join the army, which is a place that demands a lot of communication between soldiers, he would probably be shy at the beginning of the relationship because he's not used to “love relationships”, but that would pass after a few weeks/months.

Germans and Austrians are known for being extremely honest people and saying what they think about others, so if he didn't like something, for example an outfit you wore or something like that, he would probably say: "I didn't like it very much", but he would apologize later.

Your relationship is a secret throughout the base, you barely speak to each other outside the walls of your room, and you always act coldly towards each other, König has already explained and to his delight, you understood...exposing your relationship like this would draw attention from both soldiers on your own team and the enemy team, who would probably mark you on any mission to kill you and make König more fragile, that is something he doesn't want to.

He would give you a handmade red polka dot bracelet to replace the ring, you didn't say no and thought it was nice of him, and he thought you were amazing for being understanding.

You gave him a King's crown stamp, in honor of his name, it was the worst thing you did because he started stamping EVERYTHING, one day you saw him walk past a soldier and use the stamp on his face and he simply walked back with a serious face, you and the soldier were judging silently of course.

@baruque-ya

[mysunshinetemptress]

Killeagh

A/n idk what this is, writing is shit, plot is mid at best so im really sorry, i really don't know what this is i might delete it in an hour.

Leah Williamson x reader, Katie McCabe x reader (platonic),

The rain had a way of finding you in Killeagh. Not a harsh, driving rain, but a persistent, soft mist that clung to the air and settled on everything. The kind of rain that doesn't seep into your bones but causes your clothes to stick to your skin and send a chill down your spine if you stand still for to long.

It's a rain that falls on the outskirts of London too, across Sobha Reality training ground, the type of rain that causes the girls to groan because it's not wet enough to bring training inside but wet enough that after an hour of training their jerseys clinging to their backs, the chill setting in despite their exertion. That same frustrating, clinging dampness that promised nothing dramatic but delivered a slow, steady discomfort.

Yet you never let out a groan as you run chasing the ball your legs purple and red both from the cold and exertion, and they feel a chill run down their backs just watching you and your quite endurance.

It's something that sets you apart, that quite endurance, that mentalitly of "just get on with it" even when you look closely you can see your lips turning a slight shade of purple as the wind carrys a chill across the pitch.

They watched you, a mixture of exasperation at the conditions and a quiet, almost bewildered, respect for your unwavering focus. They saw the slight tremor in your hands when you paused to catch your breath, the way your lips were indeed starting to take on a faint, cool shade of blue. They saw the discomfort that mirrored their own now as they stood amongst the spectators and the discomfrot that mirrored theirs across the Irish Sea, yet you never outwardly acknowledged it. There was no stamping of feet, no dramatic shivers, no muttered complaints under your breath. Just the quiet, relentless pursuit of the next touch, the next pass, the next drill.

They looked around at spectators here also standing in the rain, theres enough to fill the stands of Meadow park a testament to dedication, both theirs and yours, the childern stood shouting not in discomfort for the rain or the breeze that was setting in, but for their team, for you to push on, to socre another point, to challenge the goal keeper for a goal. Some wearing County jerseys some wearing Killeagh jerseys but all shouting for attention mostly from you.

It's Alessia that turns "Explain it to me again." she said, her voice low but clear, cutting through the general chatter and the persistent drumming of the rain. "She's an athlete, obviously. A brilliant one. But she's not a professional athlete like us."

Katie, standing beside her, nodded slowly, her gaze locked onto the field. She was from Ireland too, though from a different county, and the structure of Gaelic Games was ingrained in her in a way it wasn't for her friends, her teamates. She clapped sharply as a tackle went in, Killeagh winning the ball back with a determined drive.

"But she's at the top level?" Victoria chimed in, pulling her hood tighter around her face.

Katie turned slightly, finally breaking her intense focus on the game, though her eyes still flickered back towards the field every few seconds. "She is," she confirmed, her voice carrying a note of quiet pride. "She plays seniors here for Killeagh. That's her club team," she gestured towards the green and white jerseys dotted in the stands, "and she's on the county team," a nod towards the red and white. "For Cork."

She paused, watching you surge forward on the pitch, your legs pumping rhythmically despite the conditions, a defender glued to your back. "You can't get any further than that, here. Club and county. That's the pinnacle in Gaelic football."

Alessia frowned, trying to reconcile the concept. "So... she plays for her town? And her county? And that's the highest level?" The idea felt almost quaint compared to the international, highly professionalized world they inhabited.

"Yeah," Katie said, a faint smile touching her lips, a hint of the vast difference in sporting cultures in that simple affirmation. "And they train... hard. Multiple nights a week, maybe gym sessions, travel all over the county, sometimes the country, for games. All while working a full-time job, or studying."

Leah didn't speak; she just watched and listened to her teammates. Of course, she had questions, a swirl of 'hows' and 'whys' that she couldn't seem to find the words to ask. How could someone reach such a level of physical and mental conditioning without being solely dedicated to it? How did that kind of commitment work alongside the rest of life? It felt like a different planet.

Out on the pitch, you tracked back, your focus unwavering. The ball was loose, bobbling on the slick surface. A larger, stronger opponent bore down, but you anticipated her move, a low, sharp tackle sending the ball spinning away. There was a cheer from the stands, a distinct pocket of noise from the Killeagh faithful.

You didn't react, didn't look up. Your lips were indeed a faint shade of purple in the cold air, your hair plastered to your forehead, but your eyes were bright, fixed on the game. The discomfort was there, a constant hum beneath the surface, but it was secondary. There was a job to do.

Leah couldn't help but admire you. You played as though it were the final of the Champions League, only it wasn't. It wasn't even a cup final. The fact that you had work tomorrow, that this wasn't your primary job, that you weren't being paid to play at this level, yet you were still playing so hard, was mesmerizing. Every sprint, every challenge, every recovery run was infused with a dedication that felt almost sacred.

It was the resilience forged on wet, windy pitches in Killeagh, the quiet strength honed through years of juggling training, work, and life, that manifested here, under the persistent rain. It wasn't about the pay cheque or the accolades; it was about the love of the game, the commitment to the jersey – whether it was Killeagh, or Cork. And as you battled through the rain, a silent, unyielding force, Leah couldn't help but watch you smile at the kids, who seemed to have the same love for your sport.

Leah doesn't take her eyes off you, the swirl of her earlier questions settling into a profound sense of awe. This wasn't just about being a gifted athlete; it was about something deeper. It was about connection, community, and a love for the sport that transcended any professional contract. You were physically drained, visibly cold, yet you stood there in the persistent rain, giving your time and energy freely.

Katie nodded, her own gaze fixed on the scene by the fence. A complex mix of emotions crossed her face – understanding, pride, and a touch of something that sounded like guilt when she finally spoke. "I feel guilty," she admitted, her voice quiet. "That I get paid to play the sport I love, and she comes here, plays her heart out, stays for hours after signing things and taking pictures, making sure that she inspires the next generation... and tomorrow she will wake up and just go to work."

You turn looking at the group your eyes brightning even as your muscles begin to stiffen and exhaustion flashs through your eyes. You turn to the kids asking them to give you a minute.

You walked towards them, the wet grass squelching softly under your boots. The cold seemed to recede just slightly as you approached. "Hey pal." Katie pulls you into a hug and your legs nearly give out "Hi" you mumble into her jacket.

You push of Katie turning to her friends "Hi guys."

Katie wipes the hair off your forehead "We were watching you," she said, her voice quieter now. "The way you just... kept going. Even when everyone else was feeling it. Even when you were clearly freezing." She hesitated, then the confession she'd voiced earlier resurfaced, tinged with that same guilt. "It makes you feel... I don't know. Spoiled, maybe? That this is our whole life, and we get paid for it, and you're here, putting everything into it, just because."

You looked at her then, your gaze steady despite the lingering fatigue in your eyes. "It's different," you acknowledged. "Different worlds, I guess. But it's not less demanding, just... demanding in different ways." You thought of early mornings, late nights, squeezing in gym sessions between shifts, rushing from work to training and then home to prepare for another day. "It's just... woven in. It's part of life, not the whole thing. But it's a big part."

Leah, who had been silently observing as her stomach twists and flips watching, finally found her voice, a hesitant question on her lips. "But... how? How do you train like that, play like that... and then just go to work tomorrow? This isn't... your job."

You shrugged, the simple movement sending a fresh shiver down your spine. "It is the job," you said, though not defensively. It was just a statement of fact. "It's just... unpaid." A small, genuine smile touched your lips. "It's just what you do. You train, you play. Because you love it."

You glanced back towards the fence where the children were still gathered, their faces alight. "And for them, too, I suppose," you added softly. "To show up. To give something back. It's part of it."

Leah doesn't move "You guys did it for so long, you do it for so little compared to the mens game."

"For the parish." Katie says nudging your shoulder, your head tilts back as you laugh, hard, your body shakes and leah can't help but smile as she watches you "Yeah pal for the parish."

Leah realised then that the twisting feeling in her stomach wasn't just awe. It was something softer, warmer, and infinitely more complicated. It was slow, and quiet and it scared her especially after the last time but it was there.

[dogswest]

Friendly reminder that Viktor is asexual (mostly) canonically

EDIT: I also strongly suggest reading the comments as it explains why its not a 100% valid and/or canon thing. Don't forget to view both sides of the matter!

Co-creator of arcane had said that they'd seen viktor as an asexual and had written him in a way where, although theres love involved between Jayce and Viktor, its represented in a way that doesn't have to be sexual (is the best way I can summarize it) *TLDR summaries will be mentioned.

Something similar is said in reddit post below which also links a vod from where it was said by the co-creator

reason why I say mostly is because they worded it in a weird way and—although its mostly confirmed based on a bunch of other sources also saying this and proof is sourced—its in German and I cannot confirm if it was said, but based on a lot of other posts and that they linked a vod, it sounds valid. feel free to take it with a grain of salt*, but (TLDR:) I'd strongly advise it (Viktor being ace) be considered when writing, drawing or implying anything related to Viktor and his love life, even if its an implied canon and not a written canon.*

ALSO a reminder that asexuals can feel love and still be in relationships

Its stupid I have to say this because asexual and aromantic are obviously two different words, but a lot of people—even the co-creator made it sound like they dont know what they're talking about entirely—always mix up the two for some actually stupid reason. JUST because someones asexual doesn't mean they (for example Viktor and literally any other asexual–including me) can't be romantically involved. (TLDR) So let this be a reminder that asexuals can still feel romantically towards others. This means that Jayvik is also still heavily implied to be canon.

also asexuality is a spectrum. Look into it, I can't tell you everything. I'm just a mostly biased teen online, take shit as you will 🗣🔊

[sillyguystrawb]

Normally I talk about TicciJack in a poly-ship setting where Toby dates both Eyeless Jack and Clockwork, but this time I'm just gonna be thinking about Eyeless Jack and Ticci Toby as a monogamous couple because that's also cute to me too <3

Hey @reddetur this one's for you

Ok Ticci Toby X Eyeless Jack ramblings, thoughts, ideas, etc. because I have problems and I'm gay and my stupid and gay serial killers and cannibals are so mmmmmm sweetie pies in looovvvveee!!! Entirely sfw and doesn't contain commonly triggering topics, but it is messy and all over the place, no thought is baked more than half way.

Ticci Toby X Eyeless Jack Time!!

An idea I had for Toby and Jack to get together was Toby and Jack being friends for a long time and Toby being completely romantically inexperienced and terrified of rejection and cannot read what's somebody liking him as a friend versus romantic where Jack just thinks Toby knows how Jack feels and doesn't feel the same way (idiots who can't communicate due to being socially inept). At some point Toby cracks a "Forever alone nobody loves me" joke and Jack is just genuinely confused like "What?? I've been in love with you for like a year though, I thought you knew that?" and Toby is like half trying to explain it was a joke and half trying to clarify that Jack just confessed to loving him and anyway they're idiots <3

Jack is like ... a fucking tall guy, terrifyingly tall. But that means he gets BIG CLOTHES, and Toby steals them. All the time. Jackets, shirts, underwear, socks, pants, it's comfy and he feels safe and like Jack's hugging him when he's not around and it's baggy and lose on Toby and super cozy. Jack only gets his clothes back when Toby wants them to smell like Jack again.

Jack shows love with acts of service mostly, and will literally do everything for Toby from make food (Toby does not let him, DO NOT let Jack near a toaster and then walk away, lest the house catch on fire and he blame the "way the kettle boiled" for it), to literally sitting beside the tub and bathing Toby, to stitching his wounds (with intense annoyance at the fact Toby should be careful), to cleaning his room, just ANYTHING. Toby says the word and Jack gets it DONE.

Toby shows love with physical affection and words of affirmation. Toby's a pretty brutally honest guy in the vast majority of situations, and this extends to the way he talks to Jack. Jack cannot get Toby to shut up about how much he loves Jack (not that Jack ever has wanted him to, or would want him to), and Toby will often find Jack and beg for attention when he's busy (deliberately when Jack is busy) to tell him that he's the most important person in Toby's life.

When Toby learned that Jack liked being touched (not even in a sexual way, just as a romantic affection thing!) he was over the moon. Jack isn't very inclined to initiate physical touch, because he much prefers it when Toby just does... affectionate Toby things? Toby will burrow into Jack's hoodie while Jack's wearing it and claim it's for warmth reasons to which Jack replies "You can't feel temperature" and Toby says "Can't feel I can see just fine and I can tell you're pretty hot". Jack especially likes it when toby decides that the only acceptable way to get around is by making Jack give him a piggyback ride, or the only acceptable chair is Jack's lap.

Toby is obsessed with finding new random excuses to initiate any physical touch with Jack. Like "Hey is my skin warm or cold I can't tell if my body needs a blanket" and then just shove his face into Jack's neck and nuzzle him, when they both know that Toby's temperature is far from concerning in any way and that Toby just wants a big hug. Which Jack obviously provides.

For like the first month of their relationship Toby referred to Jack as a full title in EVERY POSSIBLE CIRCUMSTANCE. "Jack, who is my perfect boyfriend" was inserted anywhere in any conversation because Toby was so excited and happy. Jack thought it was fucking adorable. Toby eventually asked Jack why he didn't talk about how excited he was that they were together, and Jack's reponse was "Why spend time talking about how much I love you to people who won't understand just how much I mean it anyway, when I can spend that same time showing you, the person who matters most."

Toby's assigned side of the bed is whichever side Jack is already on. Toby lays on top of Jack, and Jack acts very annoyed at this but Toby knows Jack can't sleep without the equivalent of a weighted blanket on him. Toby once slept on his own side of the bed only to be woken up an hour later by Jack telling Toby he couldn't sleep, and that their usual sleeping accomidations were a necessity for his physical wellbeing as sleep is an incredibly important routine to maintain, and the weight Toby provides is a physical importance to this due to the relaxing effect Toby has on his emotional state and the anti-anxiety properties of sleeping with a weighted object or entity. But because Toby was half asleep he was just like "So you wanna cuddle because it gives you good dreams?" and Jack's like "... yes."

Jack knows Toby likes to collect rocks, so he carves hearts into cool rocks he finds on his own and leaves them on Toby's desk to find.

[the-ace-with-spades]

Someone posted about Jake having a sister who is deaf and uses ASL (I can't find it, sorry) and it woke up the fic idea I had some time ago from hibernation

An AU where shortly after Carole's death, Bradley starts losing his hearing. At first, Mav thinks it's just a lack of focus and him being inside his head too much (which, normal given the mourning/depressive state of Bradley's emotions at the time). But then he and Ice notice it only happens when they're on his right side and start to get worried.

A visit with a family doctor and a visit with an audiologist later, and they find out his hearing loss is expected to progress, they just don't know how far — it can stay mild, it can get worse over the years, or it can get worse quickly. It's probably been happening for some time already, they might have not noticed because so much was happening (which Mav will forever feel guilty about).

Mav and Ice are left to explain all that this implies to Bradley. Mainly that Bradley will never be able to become a pilot with hearing loss, even if it stays mild. And even at thirteen, almost fourteen, all he's always wanted to be was a pilot and they have to break the news to him — even if his hearing doesn't get worse, he won't be able to join the Navy in any deployable role.

Obviously, it doesn't go well. Bradley is in denial, rebelling against anything related to the hearing loss — won't go to the SLT, to the audiologist, won't wear the hearing aids.

Until he starts high school after the summer break and realizes he can't hear the teachers well — not in the front seat, not when the classroom is silent. Turns out, the hearing aids are not enough — he needs a new set up already.

Mav takes out a sabbatical and they start everything from the beginning. New audiologist appointments, new hearing aids, new ASL lessons for the two of them, and some extra ones for Ice as well, lip reading lessons, SLT. Bradley doesn't have a choice, his hearing is getting worse and either he will adapt or his life is going to get difficult — and they're in a good enough situation, financially, and with Mav and Ice caring enough, that he can adapt as much as possible.

By the time he's in junior year, his hearing loss is severe. Their options are either sending Bradley to a boarding school for deaf kids or having him have an interpreter at school. Bradley feels strange about the boarding school so he has an interpreter for the rest of high school — which doesn't get him many friends...

College-wise, he doesn't know what to do. There's a few colleges in California that offer programs with support for deaf students, but the degrees are limited. Eventually, he decides to enroll in the Rochester NTID for aerospace/mechanical engineering and it kinda changes his perspective a lot.

There are other deaf students on campus, some even on his course, and it shows him so many different ways life can be still okay — he's never met anyone deaf his age before and being friends with people who either lost their hearing like him or were born deaf and had been involved in the Deaf community for years is amazing eye-opening. He stops being so bitter about life, even if he'll never stop feeling sad about not realizing his dreams. It teaches him to not care about what others think he is capable or not capable of doing and just do his own thing.

The Institute also has great support, also including the newest hearing aid tech. Cochlear implants only became widely available when he was finishing high school and despite many people celebrating being Deaf on campus, there's many people who also opted to have surgery or implants to help restore or conserve their hearing.

By the time Bradley gets the cochlear implants (funded mostly by Mav and Ice), he's not that set on having them, actually, not as much as he was when he was seventeen and they just came onto the market for kids. In fact, he only wears them for the purpose of work (he gets a civilian contractor job for the US Air Force of all places...) and prefers to have them off when he's at home or around people who know ASL (which is most of their family now). Being deaf is part of him, a part that is bigger and more settled than the part that used to wish he was 'normal'.

He only swaps the implants for a newer model sometime around the early 2010s because they can actually meet the FAA regulations and at the age of twenty-seven, Bradley is finally able to get his pilot license and then a commercial pilot license.

Now the hangster bit...

TG:M happens — Mav is there with the team obviously but Bradley is kinda around him because he's been contracted by the Navy the past few years (kinda like Charlie) and working with Mav in China Lake before.

Bradley shares the office with Mav and they hang around whenever Mav isn't training the Daggers — the whole group is kind of speculating on who he is — and Jake actually meets him once when he's looking for Mav and comes to the office.

He makes an ass out of himself (because this is Jake Sersin we're talking about) and basically shouts at Bradley, who is not wearing his hearing aids at the moment (he's doing paperwork, near the airfield, it's easier to focus if he doesn't hear ever single aircraft taking off) and gets super humbled when Bradley looks at him and only then clicks his very visible external processor on, and then asks him if he needed something.

After the mission, Mav and the Daggers stay close, work and outside as well (trauma bonding, even though Bradley calls them his little ducklings). This means Bradley is around them a lot, too.

Around the Daggers, Bradley wears the cochlear implants almost all the time, just for the sake of being able to be part of the conversation and having a better grip on the background noise and to know what is happening around him.

Now, this is when Jake gets a little... enamored.

Bradley is objectively cool, okay? He's deaf, but he's a commercial pilot and a stunt pilot on the side, he likes to jump out of planes (for research), he volunteers as an ASL interpreter and is certified to interpret. He's hot as well and Jake's brain overheats anytime he answers his half-flirty remarks with the same, if not bigger, force.

And Jake is a bit smitten, but Bradley never really makes a move. He's obviously contemplating making a move himself — Bradley is chill, even if it was a no, he'd not make a big deal out of it — but he's also his CO's kid and the COMPACFLT's kid and like, Jake doesn't wanna be the one to cross the line.

It's Mav who tells him — when he notices him staring at Bradley playing piano (and isn't that super cool? he's deaf and he can play piano better than anyone Jake knows) — that if he wants it, he should go for it because Bradley is too shy to make the first move, ever.

So one evening when they're at a barbecue at Mav's, Jake stays late, basically the only one left, and he is helping Bradley bring the dirty dishes into the kitchen, and Mav leaves them alone (giving him a goddamn wink as he steps out...)

The second Bradley begins with, Look, I'm flattered, he knows he's in a losing position, but tries to negotiate anyway — because he can see Bradley does like him, and for whatever reason, he just needs to point out it's enough and that he can see they have some chemistry and he promises to treat him to a good time if he gives him a chance.

So Bradley tells him how it is — he hasn't dated anyone who isn't deaf/hoh since he was nineteen and he doesn't plan to. Jake is great and he's sure they'd have great chemistry, but he's not the type to do the casual bit and he's pretty sure Jake will never make the effort he needs him to make because he doesn't understand how big part of Bradley being deaf is.

Jake denies it — so Bradley starts signing at him the alphabet (the first thing people learn when they learn ASL usually) and Jake just blinks at him dumbly, proving his point.

Obviously, Jake doesn't get it and says exactly what Bradley expected him to say, Well, I don't really need to know it, you've got the hearing aids.

And to Bradley, it proves that he's either not thinking of them as something long-term or that he just doesn't get what Bradley being deaf means, long-term, for his life. You realize I don't wear them all the time, right? Not at home, not around family, not around most of my friends. Wearing them constantly is exhausting. What will you do when I take them off? Or do you just expect me to never take them off?

Jake goes home and that's it, really.

It's sometime later, a few weeks or a couple of months. Jake's never brought up going on a date again and Bradley made peace with that — he was right and Jake either didn't want to commit or the effort was too big and he's no longer interested in him. Shame, but it's not the first time it happened — mainly why Bradley doesn't date people outside the deaf/hoh community anymore, they don't understand, he's cured or acceptable kind of deaf to them, because of the implants but when they come off — he's deficient.

The Daggers are sitting down with Mav when Bradley comes home and they're in the middle of a conversation and Bradley doesn't want to interrupt Bob so he just asks Mav via signing if he ate dinner already. Before Mav answers, Jake says out loud, We ordered in, leftovers are in the fridge.

And fair enough, Bradley goes to the kitchen and he's unpacking gyro from the plastic container when it hits him — Jake just understood his signing. And like, what the hell.

He doesn't want to make a scene so he waits until Jake is a little bit more alone (not really possible with their group).

When Jake notices him staring, he just goes, Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have something on my face?

And Bradley feels a bit stupid, but he signs the same thing he asked Mav before and waits for some kind of answer and Jake just says, Shit, and gets all red in the face.

So Bradley just starts signing. How long, why didn't tell me, what the hell, and all that. Because why didn't Jake told him he could understand, that he knows ASL?

And Jake just stares at him. You're going way too fast, I'm not that good at it yet

And Bradley stops and stares at him dumbly. Yet?

Sheepishly, Jake's face gets even redder, and he's avoiding Bradley's gaze as he says, I was gonna tell you once I can actually communicate and not just know a few words and phrases.

You know it's going to take months, right? I took me months and I was learning for hours every day and practicing with my dad all the time.

Well, I assumed you meant I need to know it if I want to take you out so, y'know...

And Bradley just looks at this dumb dumb man and just maybe falls in love a little bit. You don't need to be fluent in a whole new language to date me, just acknowledging you'll have to at least try is enough.

It's actually more than enough. Maybe Bradley is a bit fond of Jake, sue him, but it's more than enough to give him a chance.

Oh, is all Jake says, okay then.

And Jake clears his throat, steps a little bit away and takes a minute to revise in his head, and then signs,

DATE-YOU-WANT-GO-WITH-ME

It's a little clumsy and a bit slow, but Bradley takes his time to slow down and just signs YES in reply

[dark-lord-of-awesomeness]

Hey, I don't know if this is already on that ever growing list of cat shorts, or if you feel up to adding to it, but mabye a version of the chapter 54 multi- ford, but with Bill wins Stan and Ford instead?

I was interested in this one for a while because i was interested in how the fords would react to each other, but thought it would probably be similar to the original so didn't ask. But for some reason it kept bugging me.

The reason hit me suddenly earlier today. Sure, how the other ford's reacting to bill wins Ford compared to cat Ford might be interesting, that's not the most interesting part.

It's how Bill wins Ford would react to the situation that's much more interesting and probably different.

I mean, for one, I'm not sure Bill would even try to contact this world in 2012. Ford stabbed him, so many times. If I were Bill I'd pass on that one unless it's revenge related. But he might.

Either way, this is a Ford that probably still walks with a Lazer gun, has unicorn hair sewn into both his and Stan's and probably the kid's clothes now too.

No matter that he has no translator, and that it's probably obvious with just a bit of observation he hasent been through the portal. Even though there are feral and battle scarred fords in the same room.

You can't tell me he wouldn't see something even remotely related to Bill, much less a Bill warlock, and that he wouldn't be the only Ford there to immediately lose all cool and go for the throat.

I can add it on! He'd definitely an interesting Ford.

Although I think the best version of multi Ford with Bill wins ford would not have Stan there at all. If Stan's there he can keep Ford mostly level and stable, as he's his designated emotional support cat. Ford might get snappy and hovery, but mostly just very twitchy and suspicious with everyone. Any Ford who's first reaction to Bill is violence can be explained away as normal if more severe Ford Bill truama.

Bill wins ford who gets shoved into the multiverse with no Stan there to either keep him calm or at least explain the situation would immediate go off the deep end again. He's full on tackling people here, desperately screaming for Stan and looking for awnsers how he got into the multiverse and how to get back to his home dimension. The moment he's left to his own devices he's stripping the walls for parts and restarting his weapons manufacturing, as he keeps emergency unicorn hair on him at all times.

The bill cultists opens the door to give him a translator and Ford is already going for the jugular. Doesn't care about freeing the other Fords he's on a one man quest to kill everything Bill related and find his Stan. Because obviously his Stan must be around here somewhere! Otherwise he's back at home alone and away from ford where Ford can't protect him!

Which is exactly where Stan is.

Cue maniacal laughter as Ford loses it. Again. Only comes back for the other Fords because theyre him and they must know how to get back right? Right? And if they don't then what even is the point of them?

So look forward to Ford loses it part 2: the multiverse.

[corkinavoid]

Hey i just reread the whole ring of rage and was wondering if you had more of it? I loved it

Hey! It's been a while since I've written that series, and, unfortunately, I didn't (and don't plan to) write any more of it.

However, here's some snippets and vague thoughts that you might like!

It takes a bit of adjusting, but eventually, all the Bats learn that the best way to deal with any kind of magical bullshit is calling Danny. Or, well, calling Tim so he calls Danny. The latter is fine with it the first few times, but after one very eventful week, when they've managed to summon him nearly twenty times in a row, he ends up introducing them to Sam. She doesn't like it, but she teaches Bats a few ways to use magic anyway. However, Tim is the exception here — Danny will never ever say no to his summons, and helping Tim can't be annoying no matter how many times he calls or how small the problem is.

One time, Alfred brings up the fact that Tim and Danny are not married legally. Not in the mortal realm, at least. To which Tim says that they are, he's actually filed all the documents about a month after they've started going out on dates. That starts a whole new level of chaos because, one, why didn't he ever mention it, two, everyone wanted a party and a wedding reception, and is it too late for that now? It later turns out that they accidentally got married in an alternate timeline, not in this one. To be fair, neither of them even realized that until Barbara wasn't able to find the records of their marriage anywhere.

Out of all the Bats, Danny's favorite — aside from Tim, who is obviously the number one — is Duke. He loves how the boy is probably the most unhinged out of all of them, and yet no one has a clue. Which is why Duke also gets a free pass to summon him whenever he needs to. His least favorite is, surprisingly, Jason, and it's mostly because Danny holds a grudge against him for attempting to murder Tim in the past. But also because Jason is liminal enough to notice and avoid the harmless (by Danny's standard) pranks that he sets up to keep the Bats on their toes.

Steph gives Danny a whole collection of manga on his birthday. Later, Tim tracks her down and starts a fight, during which he doesn't say a single word, and his face is so red he looks like a tomato, and Steph won't stop laughing. Tim doesn't talk to her for a month. Since then, every time Steph summons Danny, he comes in a form of half-man, half-octopus (think Ursula from My Little Mermaid), and they both break out in giggles spontaneously from time to time. Tim absolutely hates it.

None of them bother to explain shit about the whole ordeal to Constantine, and it's definitely on purpose. It eventually leads to the memorable day when John ends up watching Batman draw a summoning circle and successfully call on the High King of Infinite Realms with no trouble. Despite everything, the only reaction they get is Constantine sighing and muttering, "So, he didn't file for divorce, then."

[teambuddie]

when i started to watch 911 i already liked buddie, but i wanted to give b*ckt*mmy a chance, i really did, but honestly, i just couldn't and i'm gonna explain why.

1. eddie was haunting the narrative.

after watching 6 seasons of buck dating women i'm not gonna lie i was pretty excited to see him flirt with tummy because yay bisexual buck!!! and the very first scene i was filled with joy until... eddie was in every corner of the relationship. i know, the writers were using buddie as a diversion, they wanted to surprise us that hey he was jealous of tummy not eddie! but then they kept eddie haunting the narrative through the whole relationship. every bt scene eddie was there or was mentioned and obviously the writers did that on purpose, because we're supposed to keep thinking about eddie, we're supposed to know buck is still thinking about eddie even if he's dating someone else. to me the writers made bt impossible to exist separated from eddie and buddie and that made it impossible to me to truly give bt a chance even if i was already biased.

2. tummy is BORING.

look, i was so happy buck was gonna date a man and figure out his sexuality, i really was, but holy shit tummy made it almost unbearable to watch some scenes. how can a man be so boring??? he has zero personality, zero charm, zero everything. every LI from both buck and eddie had at least SOMETHING going on, you know? even natalia and ana had more personality than tummy and that's a bit insane like how a character who showed up for like 5 episodes is more well developed and interesting than you?? and again, to me the writers did that deliberately, they wanted us to feel like something was missing, they didn't want us to get attached to tummy because he wasn't going to be a constant, he was a plot device and he was treated as such. no personality, no complexities, nothing, a blank state.

3. the acting.

this is probably gonna sound mean, but i have to be honest. one of the things that made it even more impossible to enjoy bt was l*u's acting. imo 911 has fantastic acting, like ANGELA BASSETT is on the show, the bar is high guys! even side characters act really well throughout the show and yeah sometimes there is overacting, but mostly is really good and expressive. and then there's l*u... he's so stale, so unexpressive, so bland is like watching a sixth grader acting on a broadway production (but a sixth grader would do a better job probably). i can't take tummy seriously as a character because not only is he boring but i don't feel like watching a "real" character, just a person pretending to be a character and i know that's what acting is but good acting makes you forget that what you're watching is fiction and makes you feel for the characters. l*u's acting achieves none of that.

4. b*ckt*mmies.

i understand when b*ckt*mmies say they can't enjoy buddie bc of the fandom, i do bc they just pushed me even further away from bt. the way they reacted to the break up was... something. some of them had valid reasons to be upset and ofc they were gonna be emotional about their ship breaking up, but the whole "this is homophobic/biphobic" discourse was too much. first they decide to simply forget michael was also an elder gay and say that bt was the only gay couple that showed someone older can be happy... like, are you serious???? "oh but michael wasn't a main character" but his storyline was very well developed and it just as a representation as bt. even better than bt bc no one was saying how he wants the other to have daddy issues (that irked me so much god WHY WOULD HE SAY THAT????). calling ostark biphobic bc he said he wants buck to sleep around again??? as if he said that bc he's bi when it's obvious he said buck should sleep around bc he's buck. ostark showed nothing but support to bi buck and he was always so excited about the storyline, but since he wasn't too onboard with bt and said he'd like for his character to sleep around a bit suddenly he's biphobic???? the way they decided to interpret what tummy said as him saying buck isn't sure of what he wants when it's clear he meant that buck should explore more his sexuality not to be sure but because that's what he probably did and he knows it's healthy and normal to get with new people to figure out what you like and what you want. nothing about the breakup and what ostark/tim said was prejudiced and while i understand feeling hurt and interpreting some stuff with a negative light, i don't think they were being fair to the writing and the crew.

maybe i'm biased bc buddie was already my ship even before i watched 911, but honestly i think if they wanted us to root for bt they'd make their relationship more compelling, they'd give tummy more personality, they'd not make eddie haunt the narrative, but that's not what they did and you may think that's "unfair" to bt and tummy, but honestly it was a warning sign b*ckt*mmies ignored... the sign that said: "this is not meant to be". when tummy called buck evan it wasn't without a deeper meaning, it showed us he was the odd one out, it showed us he didn't belong. and so, he's gone.

[thewadapan]

Insane that the last Team Fortress 2 comic came out, and perhaps more insane is how effectively it resolves the themes of the story, considering the whole thing spun out of some silly gag comics for a first person shooter, which had a bunch of lore back-ported onto it, with this particular issue having spent nearly eight years in development hell...

I love video games, and I love trying to rationalise the insane logic of how they work using fiction. Or not even to rationalise, just to kind of like... take it at face value? There's a great bit in one of the Team Fortress 2 comics where the mercenaries are going to be fighting an army of robots (in the game's PVE mode) and, at that point in the story, Mann Co. is bankrupt, so they're not getting paid—but they're mercenaries, so why are they fighting? And Ms. Pauling just comes right out and says, "For reasons I can't comprehend or explain, the robots run on piles of money. Destroy them and whatever falls out is yours." Risk of Rain has a similar conceit, where the aliens explode into currency, something that's diegetically acknowledged in the in-game logs.

The comics also deserve serious credit for genuinely pushing the limits of the comic medium, by explicitly using the fact that this is something people are reading on their computers. You see Webtoons currently are doing something similar, optimised for phones with their infinite scrolling. Well, here everything's landscape, and you advance through the comic using the arrow keys or whatever, and there's all these little gags that rely on hiding a speech bubble at first, or tweaking a panel, or doing a jump-cut, which are borderline impossible to replicate in print (the closest thing traditional comics have as a tool is the page-turn, which some writers do use to great effect).

It might just be that Team Fortress 2 was one of the things that heavily informed my sense of humour at a formative age, but I still come back to it and think it's the funniest thing in the world. And a big part of what makes the humour work, for me, is that it is just barely grounded in the real world. When someone gets their hand cut off and it's played for laughs, they've still just had their hand cut off. All the blood and guts is right there to see. Characters like Spy and Ms. Pauling frequently ground the story in these bureaucratic material concerns—like, someone is having to go around burying all the bodies.

Which means that when the story takes something which genuinely started as nothing more than a joke, and uses it for pathos, those beats can actually hit home. The big example is the joke about Spy having sex with Scout's mom, which in the comics morphs into this running thread about Spy probably being Scout's father, which in turn plays into these themes of regret and cycles of violence... and that was obviously never planned from the start, even the early examples in the comics are very much within the realm of plausible deniability, but over time they're clearly like—well, what if that was the case? What then? It's such good yes-anding.

Certain characters—the Pyro and the Engineer—do get pretty short-changed, which I think is mostly because the other characters just lend themselves much better to the extremely dialogue-dense style of comedy. The Engineer spends most of the numbered issues completely sidelined, looking after the Administrator; I mostly played Engineer when I played the game, so I do find that a bit disappointing. I don't think the Sentry Gun even gets a look-in! But still, nine playable characters plus the supporting cast is a lot to keep track of, and I think they chose the right ones to focus on (Scout, Soldier, Spy, Heavy).

Part of what made Team Fortress 2 always appeal to me above and beyond any other first-person shooter was its obvious awareness that the fighting is not, in fact, good, or just, or meaningful, or anything other than a pointlessly cynical greed-fuelled slaughter over nothing. It's just these drab industrial sites and bodies being thrown at one another, on repeat, forever. I think if you want to take a multiplayer game like this and build up a narrative on top of it, it's kind of the only honest approach you can take. Seeing similar stories in this and in RoosterTeeth's Red vs. Blue around the same time left a big impression on me as a teenager.

Contrast Overwatch (of course), which always billed itself as a superhero story, which had clearly-defined good-versus-evil flavour, which purported to depict a global conflict of world-shattering stakes, where every single piece of fucking tie-in media was a saccharine sentimental little snoozefest where characters will say things like "Oh no!" unironically. In Overwatch, the playable characters come from all over the world, they're these collar-tuggingly direct stereotypes, and it's like... wow, the military-industrial complex is so inclusive, you guys! Meanwhile, Team Fortress 2 has stereotypes of its own, but the intent is so completely different. Sniper, Heavy, Demoman, Medic, Spy have these clearly-defined national backgrounds, but they've shed all nationalistic ties, civilized human society would shun them, and now all they can do is kill for money they will never have cause to spend.

And the supporting characters invented for the comic all support this theme of bitter, cynical hate, of pointless bickering and petty feuds. Brothers Redmond and Blutarch turn themselves into monsters trying to outlive each other solely out of spite, not even just to enjoy their lives for as long as possible! When Gray Mann offs them, his characterisation sees their mindless, stupid schemes replaced with cold rationalism, to match the Administrator's own ruthless efficiency, but the substance of their conflict is no different. Wait, is the moral of the Team Fortress 2 comics just... old people bad? Look at the Team Fortress Classic guys...

I don't know. Overwatch was heavily billed on the quality of its worldbuilding and writing and characters (I was always like, what worldbuilding? What writing? What characters?), and like the many, many MCU films which nobody thinks about or talks about or cares about any more, I don't think I've ever seen someone actually talk about that media as art, except to point out its shortcomings. Nobody will remember any of it. Oh god, I just remembered about all the Overwatch porn. Okay, people will remember it, just not for the right reasons.

Meanwhile, I've known people over the last eight years who routinely joked about the final Team Fortress 2 comics never coming out. For something so ancillary, so inessential, to have made such a big impression on people, is something that in this case speaks to its success on a creative level. If anything, I wish it was less of a transmedia narrative, that this was just a single book I could pick up off the shelf and give to someone like "read this!" and that's all they'd need to know. Maybe I should try to compile some sort of reading list, hmm.

[venusplan]

How jjk men treat you on your period

an: I really hate periods so here's a post about what the JJK men treat u during yours <3 challenging myself with the one because I've never wrote for Geto, Nanami, Choso, & Toji.

Somehow I made Gojo's the longest??

cw: blood (obviously) period sex, All characters are 18+,

Satoru Gojo

Would probably get you chocolate to share 💗

We're talking about Gojo, so you know it means wayyyy more than you eat. If you are it all you'd probably get sick honestly. Somehow he doesn't though??

Would definitely take a picture in front of the feminine products and send it to you asking "What size pussy do you have?"

Somehow I think he has warm hands, instead of a heating pad he'd probably cuddle with you warming your stomach honestly.

Definitely bought ice cream.

Period sex would probably be a thing tbh (it's kinda half and half for me idk, could see it but at the same time maybe not)

Doesn't wanna leave you when it's the time of month.

If you leave the house and like to go buy groceries and eat something he'll walk behind you. Looking out for you know, blood in case if it seeps through the back or something. (He'd mostly do this for if you use pads instead yk)

I low-key see him knowing what a period is 🎀 because I mean 💗 yeah thinking about it. So you wouldn't have to really inform him.

Suguru Geto

Gosh it's hard to think URGHHH. 💔

Sighhh, honestly if we're talking about adult Suguru I think it's more off he'd know because of Mimiko and Nanako to so.

It gets BAD when all three of his girls get synced up.

He'll make sure to buy like dark chocolate, keep stocked up on pad (&/or) tampons.

Also makes sure we you're comfortable 💗

He'll buy the two heating pads and stuff you know

Meanwhile he'll buy you one for when he's out and about.

Otherwise he also holds his hand on your stomach.

Nanami Kento

Makes sure you're always comfortable.

Also like makes you some warm coffee/tea whichever you prefer.

Wants to help you through the hellish week.

He'll make sure to wash the sheets if you ever get blood on them accidentally.

Tries to keep you warm.

Bought you your favorite chocolate and gets whatever you're craving🎀

Toji Fushiguro

Bro's broke.

He can't buy pads/tampons, etc.

Honestly though hear me out, he'll take on a really quick job from Shiu and buy you some stuff.

Maybe some chocolate and a pack of pads/tampons.

He'll come back to you with it and then hand the bag to you.

After that he'll either hold you from behind, or his head on your stomach maybe.

Honestly there could be period sex, but he's noticeably not as rough, or anything.

Stays with you the entire time 💕

Ryomen Sukuna

Asshole.

But a nice asshole.

Would make Uraume go out to get your stuff.

Laying in bed, or sitting on his throne he'll put his massive ass hand on your stomach.

Makes sure no one bothers you much.

If you catch an "attitude" with him trust he'll fuck it out of you.

PERIOD SEX. He literally kills people, he is not going to be afraid of blood on his penis(es).

You mostly just stay around him during it (like you do even when you're not) that or you're in your room (his)

Choso Kamo

Scared the first time it happens. Like, "why are you bleeding?!?"

You'd have to explain the whole thing to the poor baby :(

He'll ask questions which you answer.

Later he'll come back to you with everything you need 💗

Doesn't wanna leave you.

Makes sure you have like a whole damn grocery of your pads/tampons.

Would probably get you some sweets.

(he asked Gojo to help him buy it.)

Lays his head on your stomach 🎀

[strawberry-shotcake]

2 , 8 , 13 , 15 , 16 , 19 , & 29 for the ask game ( ≧∀≦)

I'm.. so very sorry that you asked for all this !! You are now going to get an entire light novel about me talking about myself an my interests !! (p≧w≦q)

2. What is your Jirai Kei unpopular opinion?

Uh.. I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion, but I think you should be allowed to call yourself Jirai even if you do not dress in Jirai fashion. I for one look like the Franken Hooker and I find that Jirai/Landmine describes me very well. Which isn't to say that I don't love the fashion and aesthetics, I just don't have the money and I prefer to shop sustainably (pretty much everything I get is bought from thrift/second hand stores and there is not going to be any Jirai stuff there, at least not where I live)

8. What is Jirai Kei to you?

To me, since I don't dress the part of Jirai Kei, it's a community of mentally ill individuals (mainly teenagers) who engage in self destructive behaviors and support one another !! I'm not good at explaining things in words, I have more of a feeling for how to describe this.. I promise I'm not a fake !!

13. What healthy coping mechanism do you use?

I have a journal that I write in sometimes.. Mostly when I don't have anything to be chronically online on, because other than that I just pretend I'm not real, and my computer definitely helps with that !! Also c.ai and reading x reader fanfics..

15. Favourite game?

You are a horrible person for asking me this, sigh.. Bioshock is definitely one of my favourites because it was one of my first introduction to actually playing games myself (before that I just watched my uncle or dad play games !! I used to force my dad to play Darkest Dungeon for me when I was like 6 so I could watch) and I love Sanders Cohen !! Skyrim is another one of my favourites and it was all I played for a long time, Cicero is my favourite in that one.. I love WATGBS but I haven't finished it yet, mostly because I accidentally deleted the game and I'm scared it doesn't have any of my save files anymore, I also love ITGG but I actually don't know much about it, I'm just insane over Ivlis. I own pretty much all of the Resident Evil games but my favourite of those is RE Revelations for the Nintendo DS. I obviously adore Guilty Gear !! But I suck at playing strive and I can't play any of the other games because I don't have the correct consoles (I reallyyy want GGXRD, Accent Core R+, and Isuka.) Dishonored is also amazing but I haven't ever finished it.. I'm not good at finishing things. My favourite gacha game is obviously Honkai Star Rail !! I love it so much, it's so enjoyable to play but it also gives me extreme crashouts.. But it just doesn't hold the same sentiment as console games to me, I also love WuWa and ZZZ, I'm less into Genshin now that I've completed Sumeru though (Dottore is my absolute favourite Genshin character !!) I love a lot of the Indie Otome games you can find on Itch.io, Killer Chat is especially one of my favourites, my shitty Ronin fanart is still my most liked Tumblr post of all time, sadly.. But 14DWY is another one of my favourites, I love any of the Yan dating sims, they're pretty much all I play in terms of computer games apart from games made by Funamusea. I'm also a huge Shin Megami Tensei enjoyer, I'm still playing through IV Apocolypse, I have the Switch exclusive game but I sadly can't play it.. Also, if you like Persona, know that all the Persona games are spinoffs of SMT !!! I also love the Silent Hill games but I haven't finished any of them, I have waaaayyyy more to say on this topic, but I've already written enough..

16. Are you in a relationship or currently crushing on someone?

No I am not !! I don't think I'm crushing on anyone, but romance and romantic feelings are just very difficult for me, I don't understand them and I don't really know when I'm feeling them (apart for when it's for a fictional character.) For a large number of reasons interpersonal relationships are very very difficult for me, I get very volatile in romantic relationships (I hate people who are overly understanding and I will force my partner to be extremely toxic towards me or else I'm afraid they'll leave, which only makes them want to leave more..) and I can be very manipulative, I've had some horrible romantic relationships that have just fucked me up worse than before !! So for my sake, and the sake of others, hope that I don't have a crush and if I do that I can resist wanting to enter a romantic relationship with them !! I can have extreme platonic relationships where I feel like we're soulmates who are made for one another though !! I have found otherwise that it is easy for me to have a "crush" on my fp but that's just because I equate an obsession to being a crush !! I do have some tumblr obsessions though lolol, but that's mostly just an intense urge to be friends !! I go about it horribly though..

19. Who would be on your "hear me out" cake?

Oh god I'm going to have to shorten this list.. Uhm, Gabriel from The Mandela Catalogue (I really wish Angel Engine wasn't AI slop or I would have loved to get into it..), The Red Pyramid Thing from SH2, and Sanders Cohen from Bioshock !! I have way worse than this but I'm not dropping those here..

29. What is a random fact about yourself?

This is kind of gross but I've mentioned before that I used to be pretty much an auto-vampirist, that being someone who drinks their own blood, so I used to saw into my gums until I started bleeding and I would suck a bunch of blood out then spit it into a container until I had enough that I could drink it. I stopped doing the spit method after an incident where I had left it in the container for a few minutes too long and I was left with cold, congealed blood.. And I drank it and I will never forget that taste, thinking about it makes me want to vomit. I did continue to drink my own blood, just I stopped spitting it out.