#Tentacles Industries

[gbhbl]

Album Review: Sunbeam Overdrive - Diama (Tentacles Industries / Season of Mist)

Standing out from the progressive metal pack with their interesting touches of 90’s alt-rock.

Founded in 2019 and hailing from Marseille, France, Sunbeam Overdrive mix progressive metal and 90s alternative rock. Their debut album ‘Diama’ is all about elevation, travel, adventure, and energy. It will be released on May 12, 2023, by Tentacles Industries with distribution from Season of Mist. Standing out from the progressive metal pack with their interesting touches of 90’s alt-rock,…

[doomedandstoned]

Atomic Trip Drops Explosive New Music Video, “Bomb #6″

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

One hundred and fifty years ago, cities around the world began to turn on one by one, wired with the wonder of electricity. In 2023, electrified instruments have come to life, raging against the machine that created them with sounds astounding and fierce. Caught under their hypnotic spell, three lads from Lyon erupt in worshipful noise to the almighty Riff.

This is ATOMIC TRIP. The doomed crew have hijacked our eardrums before, contributing big tracks to both Doomed & Stoned in France and Doomed & Stoned: The Instrumentalists.

Today, we witness a 21-minute behemoth from their latest album, 'Strike #3' (2022). Its powerful vibe seems all the more weighty in slow-motion frames and stark black and white. Cymbals tremor and drums rattle, joined by rumbling bass and crunchy guitar tone.

"Bomb #6" lumbers about like some faceless sludge monster from a 1950's horror movie, glowing with irradiated fuzz. Each beat takes the hulking mass deeper into dank surroundings. Atomic Trip turns simple motifs into a psychedelic trip through a slow 'n' low soundscape, crackling with strange fire.

Strike #3 yields two big bombs for an impressive 45 minute run time. Vinyl comes out March 24th via Tentacles Industries (pre-order here). "Bomb #6" fits just right on a playlist with Conan, Bongripper, and Electric Wizard.

This is the Doomed & Stoned world premiere.

Give ear...

WATCH & LISTEN: Atomic Trip - "Bomb #6"

SOME BUZZ

France’s Atomic Trip released their third album this past October and coming this March 24th, 2023, they will have it on vinyl available via Tentacles Industries. An epic two-track doom and sludge marauder, today the band presents their video for the 20-minute closer chef-d'oeuvre "Bomb #6".

"Bomb #6 follows with penetrating feedback and toms rolls, before a brutal silence and the entrance of the absolute anvil, its main riff which is the summit and the summary of the whole universe of the band. The more it goes on, the more the psychedelic heaviness sets in. And the end is just as definitive, with two last leaden minutes that twist your brain, concluded by leaking feedback and a final absolutely definitive drum hit." adds the band.

Fans familiar with Atomic Trip will not be disappointed with their latest album “Strike #3”; the sequel of “Strike #2” and Strike #1, it is even more crushing, and even more “in your face” than its predecessors. “Bomb #5” is full of finesse and heaviness, a fuzz apocalypse, and a cavalcade of mad drumming. “Bomb #6” interjects with penetrating feedback and toms rolls, and psychedelic heaviness. The last two last leaden minutes of it will completely twist your brain.

“We are so proud of our third album. We think that we have pushed all barriers to keep our motto: less is more. With a few riffs, we have made a progressive psychedelic doom masterpiece. Here the most simple becomes the most complex and every single note weighs a ton. A ton of harmonics, of resonance, of feedback. When we first played those tracks live, we were not confident and hesitated, but people reacted so well! From dark basements to the bigger stages at metal festivals, it has always been a total blast, from the top to the final drum hit. To describe Strike #3 in one sentence: like it or loathe it, you cannot ignore it.”

The album was mixed and mastered by Alexandre Borel and the album artwork was done by Jean-Luc Navette. Best served with a couple of brews and a joint, Atomic Trip is providing the soundtrack for a hazy evening and a cosmic trip so sit back and relax.

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

[fox-guardian]

im sad i wanna do a poll on which fear people like the most aesthetically speaking but there aren't enough poll options :(

so i guess rb this and write in the tags which one/s are your fav aesthetically out of the rest, based on canon imagery and whatnot

[yourfaveisleftist]

Squidward tentacles is a wobbly

[alanaisalive]

Slavery ended. It was a multi-trillion dollar industry by today's terms, and it ended. A whole industry and sector of the economy was halted because it was the morally right thing to do, and the government and the people put human rights above profit that one time.

I don't know about you, but it gives me a degree of hope that other morally repugnant industries could someday end. For-profit healthcare can end. Fossil fuel use can end. Prison slavery can end. The world got a little bit better one time, and it could happen again.

[starryoak]

Hey, you! Do you like nerdy programming shit? Do you like LucasArts’ adventure games? (circa 1990′s?) Did you grow up playing Humongous Entertainment games? Do you love the SCUMM system used for developing games and want to know more about their development? Do you like weird anecdotes about stupid programming jokes?

Then you might be interested in watching my dad’s interviews about his time as a programmer as one of the creators of the SCUMM system and lead programmer at Humongous Entertainment!

My dad is literally so cool you guys, I love him so much and he deserves so much more credit than he receives as one of the people who helped create the SCUMM system, to the point that he was up until recently listed as “And various others” on Wikipedia despite being the only major contributor not named, so I feel I have a duty as the reason he left the industry to be showing off how cool he is to the world.

[ourladyofomega]

Mind- / Psalm 69-era Ministry + Jello Biafra.

🖌️: Winston Smith

[ranvwoop]

the companions to Ran , sort of. I’m making lore. Subgear replaces Cuttlegear as the weapons manufacturer. Jackie is the head creative mind, sort of once again Loosely Marina w the other parts of Marina being Techno. He does tech for Splatfest shows so he’s like, the beloved cute technician that people will point out. Watson is his supervisor.

The text reads Watson: Jackie’s supervisor, executive assistant to CEO, he has some concerns. Jackie: weapons manufacturer for Subgear, social icon — part of splatfest shows

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

FOR FANS OF '70s ROCK, DEAD KENNEDYS, MINISTRY, SPÏNAL TAP, COCK ROCK, & PARODY ROCK.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on complete CD package design for the "70's Rock Must Die" EP by industrial metal/alternative/ punk rock band LARD, released under the Alternative Tentacles label in 2000. Sleeve concept by Jello Biafra.

EP OVERVIEW: "You wouldn't think Jello Biafra would attempt something as anathematizing to him as a turgid, seven-minute '70s rock anthem. But the hilarious title track shows he will go just about anywhere to make an acrid comment.

No kidding, you could slip this baby on any urban classic rock station and the mindless headbangers would eat up its Stones-Aerosmith-Zep-AC/DC cock rock riff like mice who don't notice the trap around the cheese -- until the steel-trap surprise lyrics slam into them! (And even hard rock fans who never notice ridiculously awful metal lyrics won't be able to escape the hysterical chorus refrain.)

Biafra even dons a plausible Axl Rose voice for the occasion. In fact, this sendup is so good, a thousand '80s hair bands in headbands, leopard-skin pants, and muscle T-shirts spring to mind like an outbreak of styling mousse plague. But whereas SPÏNAL TAP was just for cackles, Biafra's loathing is obvious. He decries the ceaseless perpetuation of the vapid rock caricature that punk bands like Biafra's DEAD KENNEDYS meant to crush, while lamenting that the opposite has since occurred.

In any case, this is drop-dead funny. As for the rest, "Volcanus 2000 (We Wipe the World)" returns LARD to its original 1988 industrial footing provided by collaborator Al Jourgensen of MINISTRY, slinging a similar sneer at all the self-conscious, neo-satanic slummers who want to be the next NINE INCH NAILS.

END: The "mountains of trash" in the coda sound too real to anyone who has seen the stink and odious rot of landfill on Staten Island, or gotten a whiff downstream of a passing garbage barge. But it could just as easily refer to your average record reviewer's daunting, decrepit new-CD pile. Finally, "Ballad of Marshall Ledbetter" is a fine metallic-industrial stomper."

-- ALLMUSIC (review by Jack Rabid)

Sources: www.discogs.com/master/8144-Lard-70s-Rock-Must-Die, Allmusic, & Picuki.

[minotaurlover]

Pornstar!reader x monster(s)

Pornstar!reader who takes on packs of wherewolves and becomes one of the best payed in the industry. Who lets their throat get fucked so much that they sometimes lose their gag reflex and swallow cum by default, and it is a lot. Who stopped working with other humans because they're just boring now. Pornstar!reader who ignores using condoms bucause they love being filled with cum. Their throat bulges when they let tentacles down and down, deeper and deeper. Pornstar!reader who almost passes out from the bliss of minotaurs sinking all the way into their tight holes- and actually does pass out for a moment when two really big bulls fuck both holes. Pornstar!reader who---

You know what, I think I need to write a fic series about this o.o

[honourablejester]

I’m realising as I browse around that I really love lore when it comes to ttrpgs, games and game worlds. And by that I don’t mean I like to obsessively learn lists of dates and wars, and the names of leaders of factions, I mean …

I like learning weird, juicy details about the worlds of games. I like finding little nuggets that say things about the set-up and culture and assumptions of the world. I like finding fragments of ideas to hang whole story and character concepts off.

I love that in D&D 5e’s Spelljammer, the Astral Sea is full of the corpses of dead gods that you can fully sail up to in your ship. Just. Floating out there. Waiting for you to rock up to them.

I love that in Sunless Sea, the king of the drowned is the way he is because he fell in love with an eldritch sea urchin from space, and successfully married it. His niece is an angry sentient floating mountain whose mother is a goddess-mountain and whose father is a face-stealing humanoid abomination. This is fine and normal.

I love that in Starfinder, there are mysterious bubble cities in the surface of the sun that the church of the sun goddess discovered and cheerfully occupied despite having no idea who the hell built them or for what purpose.

I love that in Dishonored, the entire industrial revolution that has built the empire we’re in the midst of saving or destroying was built on the properties of whale oil harvested from eldritch tentacled whales that live half in the oceans and half in an eldritch void personified in the form of a weird-ass black-eyed shit-stirrer of a deity who was formed from a murdered and sacrificed child. And this is largely a background detail.

I love in the Elder Scrolls that the dwarves up and fucking vanished, as a race, at some point in history and absolutely nobody has any clue what happened to them or where they went, but their technology is so insane that ideas like ‘they time-travelled’ or ‘they erased themselves from existence’ are absolutely on the table.

I love that in Numenera, so many incredibly advanced civilisations have risen and fallen on this world that it’s absolutely littered with bonkers science fiction artefacts that have caused the current medieval-esque society built over top of them to develop in bizarre ways, and also you can find a mysterious artefact that absolutely baffles and delights your character, but that you the player will fully recognise as a slightly-more-advanced thermos flask.

I love that in Fallout, an irradiated post-nuclear apolocalypic hellscape, there’s a cult that worships the god of radiation as they have come to understand it, and they are mysteriously immune to radiation with absolutely no explanation whatsoever. They’re not ghouls, the usual result of fatally irradiated humans with some resistance, they’re perfectly normal humans who can somehow just tank rads all damn day. It could be a mutation, but Lovecraftian gods apparently do also fully exist in this setting, so it’s also possible that maybe they were on to something with this Atom thing.

I love that in Heart The City Beneath, there’s a mass transit train system that they tried to hook up to the eldritch beating god-thing buried under the city so that they could metaphysically chain the stations together more easily, which went horrifically and metaphysically wrong in entirely predictable fashion, and now there’s a whole order of train-knights who have to keep people safe from the extradimensional weirdness magnet the network has become.

That, and all the fantastic little details you can stumble across. There’s a biotech augmentation in Starfinder called an angler’s light that gives you a little angler-fish bioluminescent antenna on your forehead, and it was developed by asteroid miners who needed light but also both hands free for work. In Dishonored there’s a festival that everyone pretends is outside of time so nothing you do during it can be held against you. There’s a god of snuffed candles mentioned in a single line from Heart The City Beneath who has pacifist cannibal priests, and that is literally all the information you get on him.

While things like the history and geography and timeline of a world do also fascinate me, I’m not really here to memorise stuff like that. I’m here to find weird little nuggets of information and worldbuilding and delight in them. Give me funerary customs and weird myths and oddly specific circumstances and baffling little objects and absolutely bonkers cosmological implications. Give me the corpses of dead gods, and aesthetic movements with highly specific backstories, and bureaucratic fuck-ups of titanic scale, and mysterious things that seem to break all other rules of your setting with absolutely no explanation because people in-universe have no fucking clue how they work either. Why are the Children of Atom immune to radiation without ghoulifying? Not a clue, but Confessor Cromwell has been cheerfully standing in that irradiated pond that kills the player character with about 10 minutes of exposure for the last year and he’s still absolutely fine.

I just. I really love lore. I like my settings to have some meat in them, some juicy details to dig into, some inexplicable elements to have fun trying to explain. Particularly that last bit. I feel like a lot of people when building worlds feel like the rules have to be absolute and everything has to have an explanation, but nah. Putting some weird shit in makes everything immediately feel bigger, more real, because we don’t have even half an idea of how our world truly works, there’s always something we just don’t fully understand yet, and you can put that in a fictional world too. Some mysteries, some contradictions, some randomness, some weirdness. There’s a line, obviously, this depends on execution, but a little bit of mystery really does help.

Lore is awesome. And weird lore is even more so. Heh.

[pseudowho]

Deadly Nightshade

(help me find the Suguru artist in the banner, for crediting and thanks/permission!)

A Suguru Geto "sex pollen" fic.

Suguru swallows an aphrodisiac curse, and finds the reader when his entanglement becomes too much to bear.

Warnings: *MONSTERFUCKING*, Loss of control (Suguru), rough but consensual, throat-fucking, Suguru's cursed technique...but sexy, tentacle shibari, cum as cure

(AU!Adult Suguru who never left Jujutsu High timeline)

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

"Will be late home. It's a big one. Go to sleep without me, baby. You'll be tired."

Suguru finished tapping, looking up to the abandoned industrial site with wary interest, slipping his phone back into his pocket. He felt beckoned into this concrete jungle in a way he found unsettling; the Curse was clearly disguising its true potential, hiding in plain sight...but calling in back-up (likely Nanami or Higuruma at this time of day) would only put them at risk. And, they were tired.

With an internal spiteful sting at having lost his evening with you, which Suguru suppressed, black eyes flat and expressionless, he stepped onwards into the plunging lush foliage and exposed steel beams.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+---+-+-+-+

Suguru's apologetic text filled you with disappointed longing. Loneliness and worry quashed your appetite. All your hopes and plans for a soft, touch-filled evening curled up on the sofa with him, were wiped.

Sighing, lovelorn and resigned, you took yourself to bed, your face snuffled into Suguru's pillow and the soft-spiced smell of him, to lull you into sleep.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Suguru staggered through the door, leaning back to close it, gasping, sweating, clawing his jacket and shirt off his body. He burned from within, like the nine circles of hell.

After swallowing the curse, the roiling forest had disappeared with it...but Suguru soon felt its many limbs stretching within him, caressing the deepest parts of him, blighting him with this ungodly pain--

--no...not pain, Suguru thought vaguely, now naked except for his hakama, beads of sweat dripping from chest to belly as he teetered towards the bathroom. White-knuckled hands clasped the sink-- Suguru caught himself in the mirror, ripples of desire thrumming through him with every frantic beat of his heart, his raven hair free of its tie and framing febrile eyes--

Suguru retched, his shoulders heaving with exertion, retching again, his rigid cock crushed against his thigh as he collapsed forwards, seeping pre-cum and shaking and moaning, thinking of you in your bed you in your bed you in your bed--

Out of control I'm out of control got to take it back got to--

Something in Suguru snapped.

The lights flickered out one by one, from bathroom to corridor, as an eldritch forest clawed its way back out of him.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

You awoke in a fever dream, your sigh condensing and hanging heavy and humid in the earthy hushhushhush of a tropical forest, teeming with life.

What a strange dream, you thought. You did not notice how this set you apart from true dreamers, who would not find anything unusual about waking on a bed of moss and monstera. The duvet felt warm and springy with foliage beneath your fingertips, your toes, your body.

You had slept, and these uncanny tropics had grown up around you. Not one surface was free of queerly animated vines, yawning tropical flowers, and thick verdant leaves. Unable to see where one room began and another ended, your little home suddenly stretched for miles and closed in on you all at once.

You stepped gingerly off the bed, your feet settling on dewy leaves, splitting the fine low mist that clouded there. As you stepped to the doorway, you did not feel the hissing black tendrils, more creature of the deep than plant, that reached longingly after your feet.

Led only by curious patches of bioluminescence, eerie and golden, you moved to the living room, blinking, certain you were ill. A familiar voice, soft and dangerous, came forth from the shadows.

"You're awake. Good. I'd have fucked you while you slept, but they wanted you squirming."

With a gasp and a cry, you felt yourself become intangibly bound and suspended, feeling the rush of smooth tendrils snaking around your chest and bare thighs, wrists and ankles. Wrists tied behind your back, and legs folded up until your heels touched the backs of your thighs, your legs spread, you hung at face level to Suguru, who stalked out from a patch of hazy light.

Suguru had always held a haunting grace, a soft, untouchable masculinity, an unwavering abstract sensitivity. But, approaching you now, his black eyes were flat, sharklike, predatory. He had not hunted you, but had, instead, waited for you on the outskirts of his web.

In only his hakama, fine black tendrils tattooed his skin, animating him as he panted, desperate and sweating. The tendrils seemed to be soothing him, stroking, constantly moving over his rigid cock, his chest, his throat. As your own tendrils began to offshoot from the black wet-velvet vines that bound you, creeping under your clothes, circling round your nipples and creeping towards your core, a whimper broke free from your throat.

"Shhhhh, shh, shh, I need you wet if you're gonna do this for me, sweetheart."

Suguru stepped to you as if you catch your voice in his hands, sliding one finger into your mouth, pressing down on your tongue. He shivered in contrary to the inferno inside him, gripping his weeping cock with a roughened moan. As Suguru stroked your tongue, he reached down to undo his hakama, letting the coiling vines pull them from his body.

Suguru pressed against you now, lifting your top so he could rut his weeping cock against your belly, still examining your mouth with his fingers. You felt them tremble against your tongue. The last shreds of your Suguru were the only thing holding him back from taking you with bruising force. The vines coiled through your top, your underwear, shredding, removing, until you were naked, suspended, entwined.

Suguru's black eyes feasted on you, one hand stroking his cock with an iron grip, pre-cum wetting his fingers, and the other hand grazing over you, stroking the peaks of your breasts, your ribs, slipping between your puffy lips to see how ready you were for him. Carnal instinct took over, and he pressed himself back against you, his cock leaping in his hand.

Suguru shivered again, skin to skin with you. He knew, instinctively, that the itch at the base of his skull would not-- could not-- become dormant until he had completely spent himself inside you.

"You know I wouldn't ask more of you than I know you can take," Suguru cooed, soft and persuasive against your lips. You felt a tendril slip over your mound, slipping between your wet folds and coiling snugly around your clit, massaging it, rolling it. You mewled into Suguru's mouth, and he swallowed it down hungrily, kissing your sighs and whimpers off your lips.

"Oh fuck, baby-- you feel so wet--"

With a jolt, you realised that Suguru's hands clasped you by the hips, nowhere near your core.

"You can't feel tha-- how can you--" Suguru bit your lip, punishingly hard and you squeaked as the tendril that pleasured you so tenderly squeezed your clit in reprimand, simultaneously.

"They're mine," Suguru hissed, "just like every godforsaken curse I swallow," and he pulled you lower so your core settled on his cockhead, the vines acting in symbiosis with him to drag your thighs apart, "just like you're mine. And you'll help me...won't you?"

You felt a thicker tendril snake up the inside of your thigh, ghosting at your entrance. With savage force and a growl of warning, Suguru ripped it aside, pressing his cockhead inside you just enough to prevent any other intrusions.

Suguru's orgasm hit him with obscene force and he collapsed into you, stuttering his hips just once, before cumming with a shout, his seed spattering into your entrance and puffy lips, dripping down your bound thighs in thick white streams. Suguru's moans elongated into staccato whimpers, before descending into a hiss of unbridled rage.

"That did fucking nothing," he growled, tangling his fingers into your hair, yanking your head to the side, sinking his sharp canines into the front of your throat. His cockhead still leapt just inside you, spurting weak trickles of cum, and Suguru almost cried to feel absolutely no relief from the burning need throbbing through his body.

You felt the vines squeeze around you, your nipples clamped and rolled until tears filled your eyes with ethereal blurred lights. Suguru reached his long arms behind you, grasping the tops of your shoulders to slam you down against him, impaling you, gasping and wildly overstimulated, onto his cum-lubricated cock.

The tendril rolling and flicking over your clit picked up speed, and you came, twisting against your restraints, crying Suguru's name. Suguru stared hungrily down to where he bottomed out in your pussy, watching and feeling it clench around his cock with shuddering bliss.

As the tendrils continued to work on your nipples and clit, your pleasure becoming frantic and painful, making you squirm and pull away from them, Suguru landed a stinging slap to your arse.

"Fucking take it. What good are you if you can't milk this thing out of me? More." Suguru lifted you just once, cruelly slamming you down again, warning you against your squirming, needing beyond need for you to clench around him again.

"Suguru-- please-- it's too much--" Your needy cries broke off into agonal gasps as you came again and Suguru's head dropped back, jaw slack as he felt your pussy clench and contract, sucking cum from him, surely enough to relieve him, surely--

"No, I-- no--" he panted, his eyes frantic, watching his seed leak out of you, now floppy and malleable in your corseting vines. Digging both hands into his hair, scratching at his own scalp, then moving his fingertips to his tongue to suck them with a ragged groan, Suguru grasped at straws for any stimulation to purge him of this monstrous need.

As he gripped himself, clutching and agonised, his eyes feverish, you could only moan stunted little moans as the vines around you lifted and dropped you, thrusting you savagely onto Suguru's length, still impossibly hard. You leaned forwards, kissing Suguru with urgency, trying to claw him back to you as his vines fucked you against him. He nipped at you, biting, no longer the gentle man you knew.

"Not hard enough-- shit, you can-- can do better than that--"

Finding some strength again, Suguru's hands dropped to your hips, kneading the plush fat there, trying to squeeze you around him, and he added to the strength of his vines, lifting and slamming you back onto him.

So lost were you both in chasing his release, neither of you noticed the forest around you gradually withering, fading and dying. The bioluminescence waxed and waned, throwing strange, marionette shadows around the room.

You were thankful for the embrace of the vines, unable to count how many times you had peaked from the constant stimulation of vines, masturbating you while Suguru kept your cunt and belly constantly filled. Suguru gasped and murmured into your neck, all unintelligible, unreasonable demands of you, and pleas for release.

As Suguru came with a ragged cry again, filling your aching pussy to the sound of wet, squelching thrusts, you felt the tendrils around your breasts and clit wither away, leaving your buds swollen and tender.

Suguru could barely stand, supported by a few remaining vines, still staring into you, so hungry but so spent. You felt him pull his cock out of you, dripping with his own seed, and you cried out to feel his cock replaced by a thick-tipped vine, pressing against your cervix, shunting his seed up into your belly.

Suguru's eyes rolled back to feel this bizarre vicarious pleasure, lazily letting the vine thrust his cum back into you, as the others twisted you, tilting so your back was parallel to the floor, your head tipped back, mouth level with his cock, still so red and aching.

"Is your throat tighter than your pussy?" Suguru pondered aloud, drunk and swaying with divine ecstasy as he fingered the sides of your jaw, slapping his cockhead against your lips and tongue. When you stuck out your tongue invitingly, swiping its tip across Suguru's slit, he gasped, shuddering and gritting his teeth.

"Let's find out," Suguru hissed, sliding his cock into your mouth, letting you taste your combined arousal, before thrusting with an injured moan into your throat, squeezing you, feeling the ridges of his cock move inside you as you gagged around him.

Pulling out enough to let you breathe, Suguru gripped you by the head and neck, grunting as he rutted into you, his pleasure doubled by his vine fucking his cum back into your pussy. Suguru's eyes fixed, fascinated, on the wet slip of this extra appendage inside you, how you reflexively humped against it as if it was his cock, how you mewled and whimpered at its intrusive tenderness.

As you twitched and shuddered, convulsing with overstimulation, Suguru came for the last time in a soundless gasp, his knees almost buckling beneath him as wave after wave of please rolled through him, washing away the dreadful, burning itch running through his brain and spine, leaving him exhausted, but finally un-fogged, finally in control.

With little warning, you were released from your bounds, and Suguru caught you, cradling you against him, and lowering you with a fractured groan to the floor. He sunk onto you, his mouth on your neck in prayer, kissing and soothing, blessing you with his relief.

"Would've died," he insisted, kissing your hair, your eyes, your nose, spooning you against him as the last remnants of this unwelcome forest embered away, rising like ashes on rising heat to fade into the night, "would've died-- died if you hadn't--"

You shushed Suguru, plaiting his fingers with yours across your chest as he shivered and heaved against you.

"Not...not your fault," you yawned, leaning into his kisses, "but like I keep telling you...you can't eat all of your problems away." Suguru laughed softly, nuzzling you.

"No...can fuck them away though, apparently."

Sticky and intertwined together on the floor, Suguru surveyed the cracked floorboards, the walls rended by vines, and trickles of damp running down from the ceiling. Lips puckering in dread against your neck, Suguru whispered.

"What, uhm...what do we tell the home insurance company?"

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

By far the most unhinged thing I've ever written. I'll see myself out.

[hotvampireadjacent]

amazon is too fucking big. why do i get free delivery on grub hub bc i connected it to my dad's amazon prime? it's a nice bonus in theory but i dont like the implications of amazon being huge and having a tentacle in every industry

[seat-safety-switch]

We are in sort of a crisis, you and I. Amazon has its tentacles in every industry across the globe. Once, we cheered the death of the old gatekeepers of retail, only to find ourselves now not knowing who to trust. When you order a part from KZYBYG Tools, how do you know if it's any good compared to POIYAT?

Reviews won't help: they're run by teams of millions of robots, swarming on each new brand. After enough actual humans get mad at their two-swings-and-you'll-miss-it hammer, they simply wrap up the brand entirely and buy another thousand cybernetic evaluations. Be that as it may, I still left reviews when I was wronged by a tool.

Early on in childhood, I discovered that I have a unique power to make those in authority insanely angry for no good reason. Book reports, field trip reports, court stenography: these were all theatres for massive conflict in my younger days. I bring this power to the Amazon reviews now. My words puncture egos half a world away.

How do I know that it actually makes them angry? Because I've lured out the engineers. That's right. My technique is two-fold: one, call out a technical detail of the tool, and two... get my facts wrong. They can't resist responding to that. Then I just ignore them. Eventually, some pencil-neck cost-reduction asshole shows up on my front lawn, demanding to debate me about whether or not external-Torx security screws are in fact weaker than the regular kind.

This can't last forever. Eventually, the tool manufacturers are going to realize that all their prize cheap-ass engineers have mysteriously disappeared after taking an unannounced rage vacation to my property. By that time, though, me and the dozen or so engineers that I've trapped in my basement are going to have our own garbage tool brand all over Amazon, slamming their sales down. Customers can't resist: the shipping is slightly quicker. We might even try to make a store or something, where you can come in and buy it. Same day. We'll have them on shelves. Just ignore the handwritten notes inside, pleading for help or at least food and water. That's what we call a quality guarantee.

[opal-owl-flight]

can I ask about the poster "agent 3" kids story?

Yes you can and here it all is!! Presenting…

tldr: She comes from a family of big name actors in the industry, and shes been raised from hatching to continue their legacy. Its…a lot of pressure to put on a kid, especially one who just wants to make her (impossible to satisfy) family proud. Despite being surrounded by impossible standards, the fakest friends chosen for her, being given everything she can ever want (except what she really needs), and putting on a hundred masks for everyone in her life for survival’s sake in a cutthroat industry, she chooses to be kind.

more details under the cut!!

Her name is Sariwa, which means “fresh” . Named for her spring green tentacles and as a blessing from her parents that shed stay youthful, beautiful. a hope that she would be seen and be adored (as freshness implies coolness/popularity in sploonworld).

Shes hatched into the acting industry, with both parents being big in the industry. From hatching she was expected, trained to be an actor like her mother is. The media adores them, this “sweet little family”, but no one knows how nefarious everything is when the cameras are off.

The dad is neglectful, disappearing into meetings most of the time. The mom is a helicopter parent to make up for it. Pointing out every flaw that Sariwa apparently has in either performance or appearance. Never giving praise. Except when she performs “well enough” on stage. This instills in the child this need to make them proud. to…to make everyone happy. She becomes someone whose dependent on other peoples’ praise to function.

Shes given everything else, dont get me wrong. Every material thing she’ll ever need. all the big popular “friends” chosen for her. But…shes not allowed to turf. yknow. biggest event in an inkling’s life here in Inkopolis. and shes not allowed to go to school either. shes too busy memorizing lines for adverts or-

The second she turned 14, she was chosen as the lead role for Cuttlegear’s brand new show abt Agent 3. She looked exactly like the legendary hero, according to the sources. All her time went into this project. Thankfully, unlike at home…her co-actors were very kind. Her parents didnt choose for her this time. She was meeting actual people who dont put on masks beyond their job. the actor they got for Cuttlefish, in particular, is a very kind soul, defending her when the directors get too pissy with her performance. (Those are the only people she fears, tbh shes fearful of most authority figures.)

*Cuttlefish is also depicted as kind and supportive in the show. and in most games. Unlike the real Cuttlefish, which is kind of a loony old man who pushes ideas on young inklings. He still gives more support and kindness that 3s dad ever gave, but thats only RELATIVE to how little he gave in the first place. One can only imagine the longing this inspires in the real 3.

Sariwa…since shes hatched shes had to put on an act. Be the perfect little doll for her parents. For the world. But her friends here, they inspired her to…have fun with what shes doing again. To take off the mask (mostly beyond the clock). Breathe life in the character when she can. (But lets be real…shes getting 3 spot on with how many parallels they have with each others lives.)

But what is she beyond the mask, her role? She wasnt allowed to do anything beyond this. She was forced to depend on her abusive parents and their associates. She cant live alone beyond them. Not allowed to turf bc shes “a prim and proper young lady; above such violent drivel that only delinquents participate in”. They gesture to 3, whos one of the faces Squidforce uses in their promotions, and say (ironically.) that she must not become that. Face ripped to shreds and eye mangled.

No one knows they got that from the real war that Sariwa is pretending to show.

The show does its best to be an accurate telling. Child friendly, to a point. Horrifying things still get kept in somewhat. Things that will horrify a child on stage.

If Sariwa is terrified of the props, can you imagine how it was for 3?

————————

And once she realizes all of this. Once she gets out of this situation thanks to Callie, Marie, and 3 themself. Does she feel guilt? Guilt for depicting the horrors in a way that glorifies it instead? A part of a project that aims to make people complacent to the real horrors that churned below?

There is one thing Sariwa feels about 3, that I am aware of rn.

“Im glad, that out of every story I couldve told, Im glad it was yours.”

Just like 8, she sung this tale in her hearts. Just like 8, she used this to break out of this terrible situation, answering the call of the ones who promised her safety. A better life. Like the way she stage broke through that prop in the choreographed Octavio fight, she broke through the influence of those around her.

*She actually went off-script a bit in that scene. After she beat down Octavio, she held out her hand. Mostly to help the actor up. But then, without realizing, she spoke, she spoke of making things better between the nations. That maybe he doesnt have to steal the zapfish anymore.

Her time with the octoling actors, and hearing the stories from the ex-octarians, made her aware and know the fact that theyre people too. The directors kept it in. They knew that if they released this as they have planned it, there will be fuckign riots from the ex-octarians or the Inkling “sympathizers”.

She saw the value this story held, despite the subliminal messaging that she wished wasnt implemented. That she wished she wasnt a part of. She saw that its a tale of hope. A tale that inspires one to become the hero of their own life. A tale that inspires one to make the world a better place.

————————

So she was hatched and raised to make people smile, singing her songs and dancing their dances. Much like the clan singer that was 4, except the tradition is much more healthy compared to industry standard. And she didnt become as mean as the people around her, at least not internally. She put on a mean mask but she felt the void within. When she was given kindness for a long enough time, she put her walls down.

And just like the real 3, she underwent through the horrors of expectations she had to hold up, and trying to make uninterested parents proud. They dont see her as their daughter, shes just a means to an end. She had to wear a hundred masks to survive and it made her lose her sense of identity. She had to be mature, she had to take the shitty behavior of adults who expect her to be like one too. It made her lose grip of who she is beyond this role. Hell, they made her so dependent on their handouts that shes not sure she can exist beyond this hell. Much like how 3 struggles to know a life beyond their duty.

And much like 8, she used the story she was telling to break out and get herself in a better situation. She met with the real Agents 1 and 2 (without her knowledge) and asked. Begged. for help, after her show ended. (3 also kind of pointed the two in her direction. Bc cod knows how horrifying this industry is. Shes lucky she didnt get any of the grosser horrors ~~its bc I didnt feel comfortable writing such topics~~)

And then shes faced with the same problem all the real legends faced. What comes after the end? When the dust clears, what happens next? She wasnt given a damn choice, she wasnt allowed to try to learn things beyond this role. to be beyond an imagined agent 3. a soldier for the screen. who is she now, that shes out of that battlefield?

little does she realize that the real 3s asking the same question for themself.

[tossawary]

Honestly, I don't think the Ents were scary enough in the LOTR Jackson films when they attacked Isengard. Like, it's great! It is great! It was amazing to see the first time; the effects are incredible for their time and they still hold up pretty well! I don't need to be told that they had various animation limitations. (More size variation in the Ents could have been nice. They could have been even bigger. But animation limitations and time constraints and such, I know!)

It's just that a lot of the camera shots were looking down on the battle (they're using bigatures and such, I know), so the Ents looked tiny, stomping on tinier orcs, or the camera is sitting with Merry and Pippin on Treebeard's shoulders, and that angle doesn't really get across how HUGE and NON-HUMAN trees are. I think the best shots in this battle sequence are the ones from the perspective of the orcs, where it's just utter chaos, and then some walking tree appears out of nowhere and it's ANGRY WITH YOU. Ideally, I think it would have been great if the storyboarding had leaned more into that bewildered and terrified human perspective more, getting more into the dirt of things, before then zooming out for the overview of the Ents overtaking Isengard for the end of the sequence. The boarding in the film does a lot of jumping in and out in regards to size and what's happening.

Like, have you ever been next to a massive tree in a windstorm? The sort that looms over the roofs of houses? When the whole tree starts swaying in the wind, hundreds of branches twisting like some kind of tentacled beast? And the rustling starts to sound like a dull roar? And you think to yourself, "Oh, if that tall tree ever goes down, it is taking that entire house down with it, cracking open the roof and bashing down the walls. It would smash that car flat. It would crush me easily and I don't even know how I would begin to get out of its way as it falls, because its branches and leaves would just swallow me."

And if you're ever in a heavily wooded area during a windstorm, it's even worse, because the old trees all around you are bending and shaking like they're about to pull up their roots and start walking. Like, you didn't forget that they're alive, did you? And it's beautiful, of course, but it's also dangerous. It looks like they're dancing in their own way, but the amount of wood being thrown around means that one good branch breaking could seriously hurt someone. And it's just a branch to the tree, the tree might be fine, it might just grow another, but that branch could easily be longer and heavier than a person.

It is cool to see all of the other Ents coming out of the woods to back Treebeard up and then go marching forward. But it does raise the question of "Wait, how did the other Ents get there so fast? Aren't they kind of slow?" (If there is lore explaining this, general movie audiences will not know it.) So, it would be fun if Treebeard made his call and the dramatic speech, all alone, and then we could cut away, so we have the plausible deniability of a time skip. There's also the tension of: "Oh, no, is Treebeard going to attack Isengard alone?"

And THEN we could pick back up with orcs on the walls of Isengard, boredly watching the industry below, before the ground starts shaking and the stone beneath their feet cracks. And a huge shadow looms over the wall as a MASSIVE TREE climbs over, basically falling over, and letting its sheer weight take down everything in its path. Followed by dozens more of these creatures. Making the machinery of Isengard look and all the orcs within feel very, VERY small.

If Ents are ever depicted again in any visual adaptation, even an illustrated version of the novel or a graphic novel, I feel like it should be a goal to really capture that feeling of being small and mortal by comparison. Some of the earlier interactions with Merry and Pippin and Treebeard get this feeling well enough. The LOTR films are over and done, obviously, and they did pretty well. But it could be better! I want to LEAN into those moments of smallness just a little more in future adaptations of Middle Earth. I would love to keep the camera LOW as much as possible and utilize advancements like more detailed models and better leaf animation. (Like hair, leaves are hard!)

We are not the Ents here. We are just witnessing them. You have to go out into a forest and ask yourself, "What WOULD it be like if trees walked around me?"