#although i did end up getting quite used to the writing style and endless describing of landscapes

[endwalkr]

weee

[burnedbyshoto]

indulge me

indulge me: an arrangement

— Being a secret little girl in the modern world is rough, but it becomes much more chaotic when a classmate of yours offers to be your new daddy dom.

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pairing: todoroki shouto x fem!reader

warnings: 18+, smut, nsfw, ddlg dynamic, college!au, modern!au, daddy!shouto, little girl!reader, I am not well versed in this dynamic please do not use this as an educational source, dom!shouto, sub!reader, biting, marking, mating press, nipple play (both), spanking, oral, gagging, choking, praise, degradation, little space

word count: 13,547

a/n: this is a commission for @bakusbiatch​ thank you for your endless amount fo patience as it took me 100x longer than ever to write this

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If there was something you knew now that you completely did not understand at the age of eighteen was the entire dynamics of sex. To be fair, after an adolescence of watching porn, reading erotica, and even gossiping between friends, it was, without doubt, that you were entirely clueless about real, healthy dynamics.

First off, the first time you had sex was super uncomfortable. 

There was no break or even space for pleasure to build in because you had been so tense, so awkward that you remained rigid and still the entire three minutes the guy fucked into you. You remember his sweat-soaked body collapsing on top of you, his eyes seeing galaxies in the stuffy, now smelly room as he breathed out a ‘Woah.’

You had smiled at him stiffly, letting his softening dick flop out of your dry vagina and curled in on yourself as he snuggled into you, praising the world and everything around it for this moment. It was without saying that you left his cum stained sheets and ran back home.

Sex sucked.

But that was when you were seventeen and made the terrible decision on fucking your friend with whom you had scary sexual tension. You avoided sex to your best ability after that, not so much as caring to allow anyone to touch you because that was disappointing. Why would you go through that when your fingers sufficed much better? Why go through that awkward tension when you didn’t have any moments of awkwardness when reading smut?!

Audios were better.

Words were best.

But, as one does, you fell in love against your will to a boy just a few months older than you. His smile was soft, and his words were kind, but oh, did his touch drive you hot and mad. You weren’t exactly sure how long you had lasted, how much perseverance you had kept when the two of you would fall onto his (thank fucking god) clean sheets, his strong hands and fingers keeping your hips close to his as you kissed him as if you couldn’t live without his touch.

“Are you… are you ready?” he had asked, his shirt thrown into the abyss of his room and the button of your jeans undone, revealing the simple set of panties you had on. “I don’t want to—”

“I’m ready,” you interrupt him, your body practically burning from the inside out with the desperate need and lust for him to fuck you. “I’m ready.”

He stills, his tongue peeking past his lips before a slow, chilling grin spreads against his mouth.

“Okay,” he nods, “can I ask you to do something, though?”

You, in your desperation to get his dick out of his sweats and buried deep into your throbbing cunt, nod.

“I have a daddy kink… I really, really like the daddy little girl dynamics,” he breathes, palms pressing to your knees and dragging down your inner thighs in a teasing, near authoritative way. “Can we… are you interested in trying it?”

Now, although you had largely avoided sex, toys and fingers weren’t nearly enough to replace the overwhelming need to be touched, fucked, and worshipped by another human being. You had fucked plenty of people who had always claimed to have kinks and fetishes. Most of the men you had in bed who said they had a daddy kink only liked being addressed as daddy; that was it. There was no true dynamic, just a play on the power the title brought them.

So, in the naive, childish way you were, you agreed.

You listened to his every command in bed, thrilled and keened under his praise for his princess, for his little girl, and you ate it up, thanking and praising your daddy. The sex ended with you cumming so hard you went blind for a moment, so dizzy from your high. As the both of you drifted off to sleep, you had no clue when you woke up in the morning he would present you with a little girl starter package made by him for you specifically. It was then that you realized that dynamics were an actual thing, and as he presented you a checklist of kinks, toys, and rules he laid out, you realized that nothing you had ever experienced — real or fictional — could have prepared you for this.

The two of you went through the list and rules together, your eyes widening and face blazing with embarrassment as he described his expectations and needs with this dynamic. You nodded, so completely lost in this entire thing that you agreed with most everything he offered and wanted.

The one rule you did have didn’t necessarily surprise him.

The dynamic was to remain a secret, you asserted, unable to budge on this thought. You could be his little girl, but it was to stay in private, never in public. And he tilted his head in thought but ultimately agreed with a smile. He thought you’d one day stop being in the closet over this kink, and you thought the opposite.

And time moves forward; it’s rigid and unforgiving. Two years into a relationship, a year and a half into the dynamic, you and your daddy break up, and you, against all odds, are left scrambling for a daddy you never realized you needed.

What was a girl to do?

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Your head is angled downward, and the hood that sits on your head is not concealing your face as well as you would have liked. It was without saying that you were a woman of pride. You took great care of what you did, how people viewed you, and how you presented yourself to the world. Most days, you always exited your small apartment as an excellent student who was always wearing properly done makeup and stylish outfits. 

Your style screamed confident woman (not little girl, you absolutely refused to wear anything cutesy in public), and you walked with your chin raised and eyes on the horizon.

To see that you were in sweats, an oversized hoodie, no makeup on, and perusing the store's area made for young girls and toddlers, was a shock. You had made sure to come nearly thirty minutes before closing; no one would be here to accidentally see you, no one could see you in your embarrassing shame-picking for your dynamic. All because your newest daddy couldn’t afford to buy you new things since your old ones had your ex’s name or brand all over it.

This was for the best; you reminded yourself as you haphazardly threw the items within the basket, face flaming as you ignored the temptation to simply stand in the aisle and flip through the sticker book and coloring book you recently tossed into the cart. You were fine; you already had your plan of action on what to say when purchasing these items.

‘My sister is pregnant again, and she already has a kid,’ you mentally rehearsed, imagining an excited smile on your face because you are excited for this imaginary pregnant sister of yours. ‘It’s a present for the baby and the brat.’

Solid.

Perfect.

Beautiful.

Making sure to quickly take note of what was inside the basket, you spun on your heel and marched your way through the empty store to the deserted register.

You kept your head down as you placed the basket on the conveyor belt, easy peasy, you would be fine!

“Found everything you were looking for?” a voice asks, piercing through your mental rehearsal just in case you got questions. 

You blink, head raising up, exposing your face to the person behind the register.

It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal.

Checking things out at the register wasn’t supposed to be all that embarrassing. I mean, what could top having to buy pads and tampons from a creepy, greasy old man during your very first period ever?! But you had to admit seeing a familiar face behind the register as he began to scan the items in your cart kinda made it a big deal.

Todoroki Shouto read his name tag, and ‘TODOROKI SHOUTO?!’ screamed your heart. 

Oh, how to describe Todoroki Shouto, well you didn’t even know where to begin.

Shouto was one thousand percent a supermodel that has yet to be recruited. He could probably be a top star athlete, good enough to go overseas if he wanted. He was a genius. Someone who was somehow friends with everyone he came across even though he was a man of few words. 

He stood tall behind the register, the tight black high collared shirt sitting beneath a light blue opened dress shirt. His distinctive red and white slightly wavy hair — all-natural, you believe — pushed back in a way that you would bet to hell and back that he had run his fingers through it. For the past three years in university, you had more than a few classes with this stunning man. You two shared the same major, and he often sat at the back of the classroom, but you were nearly hyperaware of everything he did because his voice was liquid honey and sex and everything that was —

“You can let go of the basket,” Shouto cut through your thoughts, and you gasped loudly, suddenly realizing that you had zoned out thinking about him.

Your hand lets go of the basket, and you slap your sweater-covered hands over your mouth; horror strikes through you like a blazing sword. You weren’t wearing makeup, you were in trash clothes, and you were in front of a man you had lusting feelings over!

NO!

“Sorry!” you squeak, your heart and bile rising up your throat at alarming rates as Shouto merely smiles at you in understanding. “This is all stuff for my sister!”

Shouto blinks, his head tilting to the side as he scans a sippy cup.

“Your sister’s quite young,” he remarks easily, trying not to make you feel stupider—probably.

Tell the lie, y/n, you chide yourself as you shift your weight.

“Ah, well, not actually my sister,” you explain, fingers scratching against your scalp. “My sister is pregnant r-right now, and she already has a little one, so I thought that this would be a good… present?”

Nailed it.

Shouto’s eyebrows quirk, a small smile spreading across his face as he scans the plush doll. 

“That’s very kind of you; you must have a good relationship with your sister.”

“O-Oh yeah, we’re very close.”

“And would you say that this is something appropriate to give to a pregnant family member and their child?”

You froze and looked down at the items you had hastily thrown into the basket.

It was a pacifier, sippy cup, baby blanket, choker, coloring books, stuffed animal, candy, and stickers.

You choked, feeling heat exploding in your cheeks all over again; absolutely not. This was not something to give to a pregnant woman.

“My sister is pregnant,” Shouto explains, definitely sensing your poorly concealed stress, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m the youngest of my siblings, so I don’t really know what to buy her.”

“Absolutely the fuck not.”

Shouto blinked, and before you could start screaming apologies over your rudeness, he began laughing loudly. Your face continued to burn in your utter humiliation and shame, but Shouto only found amusement in this all as he began to place your items away in a bag. 

“What are your recommendations then?” Shouto finally asked, his lips pulled back into an easy, teasing grin. “And that’ll be forty-eight seventy-three.”

You shoved your card into the chip scanner immediately, your gaze everywhere but on him.

“I think you should get whatever your sister wants or still needs,” you quickly say, eyes now focusing on the Approved message on the machine. “Every person is different.”

“I suppose,” Shouto agrees, his arms crossing against his chest, and you have to resist the temptation to ogle at the way his muscles become sinfully pronounced. “Well, I won’t hold you up. See you in lecture tomorrow, y/l/n.”

“Bye!” you squawk, grabbing your bag and racing out.

His eyes burn into your back the entire rush out of the store, but you find that you can’t seem to worry about that. You’re much more elated and somehow horrified at the realization that he knew exactly who you were.

Step zero of who knows how many to get Todoroki Shouto to fall in love with you, complete!

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“So, about the upcoming paper assignment, I’m sure you’re all eager to get started on,” your professor’s voice boomed throughout the lecture hall, his arms folding across his chest as he leans against the podium with an easy grin. “I decided that I would be nice and allow for some partnering up!”

Your eyes widened as excited murmurs exploded through the classroom. 

Partners for a ten-page paper? You were going to thank god almighty. 

But, at the same time, you frowned. This was a class where you didn’t exactly know anyone. It was a course outside of your own major, and with your usual friends not in this class, you knew that you were going to have to go out of your way to find a partner. You withered a bit in your chair, not entirely on board with that train of thought.

“There are an uneven amount of you guys in the class, though,” your professor continued, still sporting that easy grin on his face. “And I decided that instead of having too many groups of three, and because I was so nice to allow partner work, I decided to make the partners. Look at the pinned paper at the door for your partner or partners for the group of three! No, I will not allow trades, and no, I will not allow complaining! Be grateful!”

Hopeful and exasperated murmurs sounded through the room as the professor dismissed the class and frantic movement followed after. Even as old as they were, everyone was desperate and eager to see who a random generator assigned them to. Packing up swiftly, you threw your bag over your shoulder and began walking towards the list. 

You wonder who you were gonna get.

“Y/l/n,” a voice spoke softly, lowly by your ear.

You whipped around — one part startled, a second part curious — and came to see Todoroki Shouto standing slightly behind you. His gaze was at the wall for a moment, dropping only when you were looking up at him. He smiles slowly, and you feel your chest tighten.

Oh boy.

“Todoroki,” you smile, attempting to relax completely in front of him. “Any hopes as to who’s your partner?”

“Well, as long as it isn’t Sero, I think it’ll be okay,” Shouto’s eyes crinkle with his deepened smile. “Last time I did a paper with him, we did it completely high—” you choke, eyes widening at the thought of trying to be eloquent enough to write a paper while high. “—It was terrible.”

“Oh, I bet,” you laugh, arms crossing across your chest as the two of you begin inching forward within the crowd, others leaving with proud laughs, curious frowns, or aggravated groans. “But at least it sounds like it was turned in?”

“It was,” Shouto nods, his teeth flashing as he finally tears his gaze from you. “Oh, would you look at that?”

You hum, eyes squinting as you try to read the list through the many heads before you.

Y/l/n, Todoroki S.

“Would you look at that.”

“Seems like we’re partners,” you laugh, relief and horror flooding your body.

“I’m glad it’s you.”

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So, it was decided that with the two weeks given to write the paper and taking Shouto’s job into account, this paper was to be written as soon as possible. The suggestion of working on it together in the same room and not just through google doc was brought up and agreed upon. So with consensus on that, the matter of where it was going to happen was brought up.

“We can do it at my place,” Shouto offered with a shrug, “my house is pretty big.”

“I don’t have a car,” you interject, a frown on your face — you wanted to see his house. “My apartment is five minutes from campus. Is that alright?”

A smile.

“That’s perfect.”

And so, on a Friday afternoon, you found yourself already apologizing profusely as you walked up the staircase that smelled just a tiny bit of cheese. You warned him about the mess of your apartment. About how not to judge you on any and all messes you might have made on your way out! That you would have cleaned up had you known this was happening!

“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” Shouto spoke, attempting to ease your anxiety as you push your key in the doorknob and turn it. “I really don’t mind a messy place.”

“Ha, well, this is it,” you say, your face feeling disgustingly warm as you breach the entrance to your small one bedroom one bathroom place. “Leave your shoes right there, and we can head in!”

Toeing off your own shoes, you scrambled into the apartment, eyes wide as you attempted to make sure that nothing was crazily messy or out of place. There wasn’t any dirty laundry or undergarments anywhere? No, good!

Shouto locks the door behind himself, a chuckle at the back of his throat vibrating in his chest as he watches you skirt about. He looks down at the shoes you were wearing, white sneakers, and smirks at how small they look compared to his. He never really thought he was that tall or big, to be honest. It was a decent size for someone from his family, but it amused him greatly to see his things pushed against yours.

He looked back up, eyes landing on your flustered face as you stood by a table in the kitchen area.

“Ready?” he asked, hands shoving into his pockets.

“I believe so!”

And for some reason, probably the very same reason that had him entranced by you, Shouto laughs and steps foot into your apartment.

The paper itself isn’t that hard.

It’s an argumentative piece mostly on a Green Act proposal that was currently being debated within the government body. A paper that was fifty percent argument was something you were elated to have, but the other fifty percent was using sources and articles to further back your point. It was now two hours into the paper writing, takeout filling the empty spaces between the table as Shouto’s laughter and your ranting filled the open air. It was nice; he was nice to hang out with.

“I’m just saying we are nearing a universal climate disaster, and I do not want to be wondering when I will die because some fat old men with huge wallets want to continue getting richer!” you yelled, your chest heaving with your lack of proper air. “It’s dumb!”

“I bet if you grabbed ahold of their favorite toupees, they’d fold and agree,” Shouto teases, his grin covered by the mug he’s currently drinking tea from. “I’ll bail you out of prison.”

“I wouldn’t go to prison for that,” you argue, arms folding across your chest as you shake your head in solemn understanding. “They’d murder me and make it look like an accident.”

“Dark.”

“You know it.”

“I’ll avenge you.”

“You better, or else I’ll blame you for my murder.”

Shouto’s jaw dropped, ready to retaliate with something else, but he was interrupted by a loud call from your phone. You frowned, head tilting as you pulled your phone out from your jean pocket and stared at the screen.

Incoming call from: dd.

“I have to take this,” you say apologetically, standing up as you answered the call. You waited until you were in your bedroom before placing the phone to your head, your heart hammering with the unknown. “Hello?”

.

Shouto heard the click of your bedroom door, and he sighed, leaning back into his chair. His eyes looked up at the ceiling, momentarily bored now that he wasn’t with you. He wondered who ‘dd’ was and if you were alright. He hoped it wasn’t anything serious.

Grabbing his water cup, Shouto frowned, seeing that it was empty. He looked over at the sink where you had initially filled up the water cups. You wouldn’t mind if he filled it up on his own, right? Shouto pushed back his chair and stood, the cup resting in his fingers as he walked over towards the sink with a light hum.

He filled the cup slowly, not wanting to make too much noise. But as he stared at the drying dishes on your dish holder, he frowned at the sight of the pink sippy cup you had bought from the store last week. It was cleaned, obviously used, and he tilted his head.

Weird.

The cupboard was open, and Shouto couldn’t help but look into the dark wood and startled once again when he took in the neatly folded bib and the nearly innocuous pacifier sitting on top of it. Untouched, undisturbed, but used — definitely used.

Frowning, he took a slow, long drink of his water as he stared out towards the small living room you had. There, sitting on the wood coffee table, was the coloring book you had also purchased. That wasn’t adding up… if they were for your sister’s kids, why were they here? It didn’t exactly seem like the place to be holding them. 

Shouto thought, trying to figure out just why you had all these things for… well, children.

Was testing products on your own a thing people did?

Well, yes, he supposed so, but these were already licensed products. The coloring book, well, he guesses that was a pretty normal thing! Drawing and coloring were everyday stress relieves — his mother often used that to help herself. But a pacifier, a bip, and a sippy cup? The only thing he could rationalize with that was—

“You’re being fucking ridiculous, daddy!” your voice harshly whispered (maybe ridiculed and mocked) from your room, just loud enough that Shouto heard, and his eyes widened.

Oh.

Ohh fuck.

.

.

.

“You know what, this isn’t working,” you scoff, fingers pinching the bridge of your nose as you roll your eyes to the heavens above. “This was a good trial run, but I’m going to have to end this. This is not what I was looking for.”

“Come on, brat, you know you don’t mean that—”

You hung up, your fingers curled in a fist as you growled lowly at the screen. You wasted no time in blocking the number. What a fucking terrible daddy he was. Didn’t buy you anything, didn’t support you, or help you. There was no dynamic in this relationship. It was just a power-hungry dom with a streak for being called daddy.

A fucking poser at best.

Rolling your eyes, you tossed your phone onto your bed and walked out of your room back to the main area of your place. You looked at Shouto, who was sitting in his chair, his face bored, maybe a bit tired, and his face was concentrated on his phone — he was idly scrolling through it.

“Sorry that took so long,” you apologize, slinking back onto your chair, hands rubbing your face. “I tried to be fast about that.”

Shouto peered past the top of his phone, a comforting smile on his face, “Don’t worry about it; it wasn’t like we were intensely working on the paper anyways.”

You smile, slightly embarrassed. 

“That’s true, um—”

“I think it’s time—”

The both of you spoke over each other clumsily, awkwardly — both of you obviously thinking of something that wasn’t quite in front of you. Your smile feels less forced now, “we’re done for the day?”

Shouto shifts in his chair, his head dropping slightly in agreement, “I think that would be best. We did a lot today, though.”

“We did!” you agree with a laugh, standing up and grabbing the items off the table, assisting Shouto with getting ready to leave. “We’ll meet back up in two days?”

Shouto nods, “that sounds like a plan.”

You help him pack up, insisting that you could clean up the kitchen without his help. It takes a few minutes, but finally, you have him walking out of your place, a light wave on your hand before he exits onto the staircase. You close the door with a sigh.

Jesus Christ.

.

.

Shouto stands in the stairway, his eyes concentrated on his phone where he has a single question typed into his browser.

ddlg dynamics ↳ Let’s talk DDLG, also known as Daddy Dom Little Girl. It’s a submissive/dominant relationship where the dom is known as a “Daddy,” and the submissive is known as a “Little Girl.”

...Interesting.

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Now, you were a pretty paranoid person; you could admit that. 

You didn’t like being paranoid, but you were. Most days, you always triple-checked you weren’t being followed, quadruple-checked you had your school assignments turned in and your things in your bag. With your sex life and part of your social life being introduced to the ddlg dynamic, your paranoia grew even more.

Most people weren’t understanding — they weren’t. They assumed this dynamic was simply calling your dom daddy in bed and getting called princess in return! They always believed that, allowed for that. It was socially acceptable to call your dom daddy in bed, but god fucking forbid any other part of the dynamic come into play.

You remember reading comments in articles about grown women sitting in frilly skirts and diapers as part of her dynamic and watching grown adults tear her apart — skin and bones. That was the reaction you feared, you hated.

There was a reason why you enjoyed sitting in your frilly skirts, in your white and baby pink clothes. You loved having your dom come home, tired and stressed, and ask you, his little girl, to sit on his lap while he distressed. You enjoyed the sippy cups that helped to melt your anxiety, and you enjoyed doing chores under your doms watchful eye.

The praises, the rewards were always so uplifting, and the sex was always on an intensity that made you tremble with explosive satisfaction. If your dom wanted you in diapers, you would negotiate appropriately, and you sure as hell didn’t need a fucking stranger’s opinion on whether or not that was ‘normal.’

But no amount of confidence you had in your dynamic had ever eased the bottomless paranoia and anxiety. 

Hence why after Shouto had left your apartment and you realized in horror that you had left out some damning evidence to your dynamic. The coloring book on your coffee table and the sippy cup that was obviously used were on full display. You wondered for a few hours, nearly spirling with anxiety if he had noticed — if that was why he was partially stiff as he left for the day. You had only managed to calm down when he had sent you a text later that night that he had enjoyed being over and was looking forward to working together the next day.

The praise was needed, seeping warm into your bones as you rolled over in your bed and knocked out.

You thought that you were in the clear. That that was as far as things were going to go, but your paranoia came back the next day in full force as you sat in a group with Shouto.

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“Do you want a sticker?”

That was the beginning of it all.

You had accepted the sticker without a second thought. Your typical barriers down because the lack of a dom in your life was throwing you for a bit. God, you were pathetic. You had smiled brightly, eagerly nodding as you thrust your hands out towards Shouto, waiting to receive a sticker. 

“Good job,” he had said with an endearing smile, “you deserve it.”

It was only then that the weight of what happened settled on your bones, and you froze.

Fuck.

Smiling stiffly, you pressed the sparkly pink star to your shirt and returned back to your assignment, unable to speak up again for some time.

You had hoped that it was going to end there, but it seemed that nothing about your life was going in your favor right now. 

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“Do you have a bedtime?” Shouto idly asked one late night when he was over, and you could not stop yawning to save your life. “I think everyone should go to bed at 10 p.m. on a school night, don’t you agree?”

You had choked on your saliva before disagreeing vehemently. 

“I don’t sleep until… like, um, three in the morning?” you make up, teeth tearing into your lip as you avoided eye contact.

“Such a bad girl,” Shouto murmured, much too low for you to pick up.

“What?!”

“That’s bad for your health,” he recovered with a smile.

“Oh… yeah, I suppose so.”

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“Y/l/n is a sub; she’s a brat about that,” Shouto said to the group you both were assigned to in yet another class the two of you shared.

You had been idly drinking from your coffee cup and was utterly zoned out when he said that. So when you had picked up his words, you nearly choked at the sentence, your eyes watering and your throat burning with your drink and humiliation as the entire table turned to look at you.

“Oh shit, are you okay?!” Mina asked, eyes wide.

“I’m a what?!” you splutter instead, eyes focused on Shouto and your cheeks beginning to burn with unsaid fear.

“You’re a substitute babysitter for your sister,” Shouto remarked, his head tilted as he feigned innocence. “You were telling me about that the other day, remember? Sero is trying to get into the babysitting gig too.”

You wanted to believe him, you wanted so desperately to believe that Shouto was just somehow landing a missile into every paranoid corner of your life without meaning to, but this was getting out of control. This was too on the head, too obvious to not say that he somehow saw your little things and pieced together the dynamic you’ve come to love and thrive in. But you couldn’t fess up; you wouldn’t give yourself to the wolves of embarrassment and shame over something you knew wasn’t wrong.

“Oh,” you say stiffly, smiling over at Sero, “I’m on an app that is used a lot by small families; I can text you the name?”

“I’d appreciate that!” Sero laughs, blissfully unaware of the rising tension between you and Shouto. “I didn’t think that high school girls had some type of business turf thing; they’re scary and aggressive!”

“It’s a serious job for high schoolers,” Mina waved him off, “this is the only thing most of them can do!”

The conversation between Sero and Mina began to drift off as you were staring at Shouto, unable to break the eye contact the both of you found yourselves connected by. You didn’t want to pull away, too bitter and anxious to. You were currently two weeks without a daddy dom in your life, and you knew that you should be able to have a better grasp on your life than this — you knew you couldn’t lean on this dynamic at every point in your life. But you were sad to admit that you were struggling to keep your head afloat. You felt like you were almost drowning, struggling to keep your composure as you needed a play or a simple scene.

But the confidence in Shouto’s eyes that were hidden behind the sheer curiosity and wonder was making your skin itch, making you want to grab him by the collar and bring him in close and demand to know exactly what he was thinking. 

He would not embarrass you.

He would not.

“Can I talk to you, Todoroki?” you asked, practically demanded of Shouto as the group of you began to stand at the table, readying to leave. 

If you noticed Mina’s and Sero’s eyebrows shoot up towards the ceiling, you didn’t say anything as Shouto paused in putting things into his backpack. His head tilted, but he nodded his head, “yeah, about what?”

“Don’t worry about it,” you smile stiffly, tossing your own backpack over your shoulder as you turn on your heel and immediately begin walking. Uncaring if he was following you or not. “Bye, Mina, Sero.”

There’s silence behind you before the heady sound of a chair scraping against the floor is heard and the long, quick strides of Shouto following after you. You exit the cafe you had been in, eyes squinting when the harsh rays of sun fall on your face, but you don’t hesitate or pause even once.

There’s no one outside right now; it’s just you and Shouto. 

You feel him at your shoulder, and you keep your gaze straight ahead, unwilling to look at him just yet. 

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” you finally whisper, your voice low and angry. You nearly spat them out at him, utterly humiliated and horrified that you were probably outing yourself should he just be that dense and annoyingly able to pick at your anxiety. “Stop it.”

“I don’t—” Shouto began, eyes wide and screaming of innocence that could make you cry.

“I know you saw my things, and I know you pieced it together,” you cut him off, your lips pursed tight. You suddenly stop in your tracks, tears burning at the back of your eyes as you turn to face Shouto. “So if you have a problem with that, I suggest that you kindly fuck off!”

Shouto stands next to you, hair hastily swept backward, hand on the strap of his bag, and his face telling you that you had miscalculated something. You prayed it wasn’t about how he knew about you being a little.

“I don’t have a problem with that,” Shouto admits, his hand raising to rub the back of his neck. “I don’t think you’re weird or strange or bad for being into the ddlg dynamic. I’m actually… I take part in it too. I was trying to subtly tell you that I was into it as well, and well, I heard that you and your last dom broke it off… I wanted to tell you that I was interested in becoming your new dom.”

You blink.

“Eh?!”

“I’m interested in forming an agreement with you?” Shouto tilts his head; there’s a sense of seriousness to his face, his eyes innocent. “I need a little, and if you’re looking for a dom…”

He lets the silence fill the rest of his sentence, and your mouth gapes open as blood rushes to your face at the straightforward request.

“I… I barely know you!” you splutter, your heart in your ears as you can barely comprehend what was going on. 

Two weeks ago, Todoroki Shouto was practically a stranger. You knew him about as well as a person knew the barista at their favorite coffee shop. Friendly, but not close. Definitely not close enough for you to say that you would allow for him to see you in your little space, for him to give you a list of rewards and punishments — for possible sex?!

“Most caregiver contracts like this are done between people who know even less,” Shouto shrugs, his arms folded across his chest. “You don’t have to say yes now or even agree, but I like you a lot. I want to pursue a relationship with you, and I assumed that this would be a good starting ground especially if you need it.”

Your tongue sweeps across your lips, unable to come up with a single rationale thing to say. 

“I don’t need an answer right now; indulge me, though,” Shouto smiles softly, his gaze dropping for a moment. “Take as much time as you need. We can do a single scene to test it out, and if it doesn’t work out, no hard feelings. Let me know when you’re interested in it, though.”

You can’t say anything; you can only numbly nod as Shouto smiles at you once again.

“Let me know.”

⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆

Todoroki S.: ↳ If you need a list, I’ll send mine over whenever you want. I have my rules, rewards, punishments, and kinks all supplied in it. [received Today 23:44]

Todoroki S.: ↳ If you need a list, I’ll send mine over whenever you want. I have my rules, rewards, punishments, and kinks all supplied in it. [seen 7 Days Ago 23:44]

You: ↳ Send your points, we can see if we’re compatible. [seen now]

Todoroki S.: ↳ I enjoyed the scene we did today; I hope you did too. I’m interested in making this a real thing if you are too. [received Today 20:44]

You: ↳ I did, too, actually, lol. Um, thank you, first of all! We can work on the contract now. [received Today 20:48]

Todoroki S.: ↳ Okay. I’ve already made the first draft of one; if you’d like to look it over, let me know what you think, and we can edit some things around. [seen now]

⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆

It has been two months since the contract was signed.

Two months.

Two months of Shouto practically living in your apartment with you, a once stranger seeing you at your most vulnerable. He was a steady hand on your back as you slipped into your desired little space, a constant warmth at your side as you went about your day at home. 

It had been weird at first; your anxiety still wouldn’t let up, nearly convincing you many times that this was all but a prank. That Shouto would pull away from you when you least expected it and would expose you to the world. There had been many times where he would hold you on his lap, his arms warm around your back, your favorite stuffed animal sitting on your lap as he promised you that you were wrong.

“Daddy is here to protect you, sunshine,” Shouto murmured in your ear, his warm lips pressing to the small behind your ear. “Daddy would never do that to my baby girl. That wouldn’t make me happy.”

“I-It wouldn’t?” you sniffled, your nose face nuzzling further into his neck as your sobs had finally stopped. 

“No, not at all, sunshine,” Shouto smiled against the crown of your head. You felt his lips press a soft kiss there, his warm hands stroking up and down your back. “Do you remember what makes Daddy happy?”

You blink, your wet eyelashes heavy and sticking together as you peer at his jaw as if it could possibly tell you.

“I can’t… I can’t remember, sorry, Daddy,” you sniffle again, suddenly terrified that he would be upset with you. You were such a terrible baby girl.

“What makes Daddy happy is seeing his baby girl smiling, happy, protected, and safe,” Shouto easily relays, pulling you away from his shoulder, his calloused fingers rubbing the tear streaks that still stain down your face. “I promise that I will never do anything to cause you harm, sunshine. I only want you to be happy; you being happy makes me happy like nothing before.”

There’s no stopping the way your bottom lip trembles with the pleasant weight of his words, the way it warms you from your belly and curls to your toes.

“Pinky promise?” you whimper, somehow out of breath.

Shouto looks at your curved pinky that is extended out for him to hold, to seal the other half of a promise he has no intentions of ever breaking.

Smiling softly, Shouto wraps his pinky with yours and twists it gently, locking the promise.

“Pinky promise,” he affirms, placing a kiss to your knuckles.

.

.

He was so good to you.

So sweet, gentle, patient, and kind.

He tended to spend the night Mondays through Fridays, giving you the weekend to be on your own. He only ever slept in your bed with your given consent (which was every single time), and there was just something about wearing the silver chained choker on your neck that he bought for you. Dainty and cute, nothing too crazy to draw overwhelming attention.

It had a tiny cherry blossom that was engraved with Shouto on the back.

It was a constant and calming reminder of what you had during the day.

The arrangement was going better than you had assumed it was going to be.

Shouto made for an excellent daddy, but there was one grievance you had. With two months of extreme kinship, so many nights of being curled into his side, getting near-daily cuddles for following his orders perfectly, and a few spanks because you were careless even after he warned you — you had assumed that the sexual part of the dynamic would come out. 

You had okayed for him to be able to fuck you, regardless of whether or not you were in little space! You reached your little space more often than not around him because he was so well, but now you were bordering desperation. You wanted your daddy to please you more, to give you the reward you wanted most: his cock.

“I’m home, bunny,” Shouto called out, his voice hinting exhaustion but mostly satisfaction at being home again.

Per your rules and regulations, greeting Shouto with a cheerful ‘welcome home, daddy!’ when he arrived home was a must. It was a clear indicator that not only were you home but that you wished to indulge in the dynamic for the rest of the day.

But you sat at the coffee table wearing an unapproved, not chosen outfit for home.

You were wearing an off-the-shoulder white cotton shirt that was big and soft, pink lace shorts that barely covered your ass but was hemmed with lace and pretty frill. You had thigh highs on as well that were the same pink as your shorts. There was a pacifier in your mouth, your gaze focused on the Disney coloring book in front of you as you colored in Sleeping Beauty. 

You turned your head, eyes looking at your daddy with a vague look of disinterest before turning back to your coloring.

“I said ‘I’m home,’ bunny,” Shouto restated, giving you the benefit of the doubt of whether or not you heard him. Typically you were excited to have him home, going to his side immediately and asking a million questions as to what he had been doing and why he was home so late. 

“Hmph,” was your response as you placed a sticker onto the coloring page.

Shouto’s eyebrows furrowed; he toed off his shoes and began walking towards you, assessing what was happening. 

“Is my bunny mad that I was a bit later than I had promised?” he asked, sitting on the couch behind you, his fingers brushing across your clothes as if he was trying to remember if he had selected this outfit. But the sudden touch that you were craving in a way like no other made your head spin just so, and you resisted the motion of caving.

You wanted to be a brat! Your daddy should be taking care of all your needs! He promised he would be taking care of you better than you took care of yourself! He should know when you wanted his cock!

“Hmph!” you hrmph again, and you lean out of his touch even though you craved it. 

Although you couldn’t see him, you could feel the slow, calculating blink Shouto took at this action. There’s a moment of silence before the couch sounds under his shifting weight. You freeze at the feeling of his warm palm on your spine, a whisper of danger. It feels partially like a threat, a reminder of impending consequences.

“What did daddy say about bunny using her words?” Shouto asks, his voice stern, low, commanding. 

It should scare you, but the threat in his voice makes your heart stammer and your cunt wet. So, instead of doing what’s right, you stand up, ignoring him yet again as you stick your nose up to the ceiling and try to walk away. 

Well, you try to, that is.

Before you can go too far, Shouto’s fingers are wrapped around your wrist, keeping you in place.

 “You know I don’t like it when you don’t speak, right?” Shouto asks, his eyes digging into your cheek as you refuse to look at him. Yet another rule he has in place. You had to look at him when he spoke to you or when you spoke to him. It was to help make sure that you behaved properly in public — to make you the best baby girl ever. “Use your words and look at me, princess.”

The word princess rolled off his tongue, and you bit down on your tongue to keep the breathy moan from expelling from your lips. He typically only used princess when you were on the verge of genuinely displeasing him, when he was warning you one last time before a punishment was given. Your daddy was two months without jacking off, exhausted from work, and now dealing with you, his bratty baby girl. There was no way this wasn’t going to end with him forcing you to suck him off or to use you as an onahole (something you had said was okay unless you used your safeword, of course).

You shook in his hold, teeth biting your lip as you stared at the wall, refusing to heed his command.

“I’ll give you to the count of three to look at me and address me,” Shouto says, his thumb stroking the innard of your wrist. “One.”

There was no way you would cave.

“Two.”

The silence between the two of you was heavy.

“One.”

Excitement shot through you at the thought of him finally fucking you into your mattress.

“No dessert tonight,” is what Shouto said instead, and you froze.

You whipped your head towards Shouto, fury, and humiliation painting your face as your jaw drops, the pacifier falling onto the floor.

“No!”

“No?” Shouto repeats, his eyes narrowed, unhappy with the challenge. “Do you want me to take away your video games too?”

“No!” you shriek, hands clawing at your face because this was not going the way it was going. “I want my dessert and my video games!”

“Too bad, princess,” Shouto states sternly, unaffected by your growing tantrum. “You lost them both for tonight.”

“No! Give them back! I haven’t done anything wrong, daddy!” you scream, throwing your arms in your hysterics as Shouto stands up to his full height, looming over you without a single issue. Tears prick at the back of your eyes because you’ve messed up somehow; your daddy doesn’t want you — doesn’t love you the way you love him.

“You’ve been misbehaving this entire time I’ve come back home,” Shouto retorts, his other hand grabbing your wrist and managing to place them both close to his chest, limiting your thrashing actions. “Don’t think I didn’t notice the new outfit.”

“I don’t want those punishments, daddy! I don’t want t-them,” you wheeze, your eyes locked on your hands that are bound so tightly in his hands, and you whimper loudly. “You’re hurting me, daddy!”

“And you’re trying to hurt me,” Shouto calmly points out. “I can’t have you doing that, so I’ll hold onto you until you calm down enough. I’m doing this because I care for my little brat.”

“You don’t care! You don’t c-care!” you sob finally, unable to keep the hot tears from your eyes. “Daddy doesn’t care about me!”

The effect is evident and instant.

Shouto’s grip on your wrist lessens altogether, and your pounding fists finally connect with his chest as you collapse against him.

“Daddy doesn’t c-care…”

“That’s not true,” Shouto breathes easily, his fingers brushing against your sides before his arms wrap around you. “I care so much for you, baby. What’s wrong? Tell me what I can do to make things better.”

A loud sniffle emits from you, and you fist your hands in his shirt, your head shaking. 

“It’s been two months, and daddy won’t let me have his cummies,” you whisper, terrified that he would reject you. “Am I not good enough? Attractive enough that daddy wants to reward me with his dick?”

There’s a shift in the air.

“My little doll wants her daddy’s cock, is that what?” Shouto murmured against the top of your head. “My precious, innocent baby girl wants something filthy like that.”

“Mmn,” was all you could manage, your face burning at the implications, the suggestion in his voice. 

“And instead of using her words, as we practice, she decided to act like a little brat to get her way,” Shouto’s voice is low, raspy, and deep. Its tenor is just right that it makes the room instantly hotter, your body brimming with excited energy. “I think… my beautiful doll has broken too many rules for me to just give her a good reward. She deserves to be my little doll as punishment for now. I thought she was grown enough to ask for things she wanted.”

You gasp as Shouto’s warm, calloused hands drop down to the minimally exposed flesh between your booty shorts and your thigh highs. It sends an entire wave of goosebumps down your skin, and you shudder as they rise upwards, slipping under your shirt and resting on the soft skin of your stomach. 

“Your punishment will be what daddy wants it to be, doll,” Shouto states, his fingernails brushing over your clothed nipples, and you mewl at the touch. “You’ve given up your right to speak right now, and because daddy can’t trust you to not be a brat, you will suck daddy’s dick until I see it fit. You will stand on your knees like the beautiful doll daddy knows you can be. Silent, obedient, and so beautiful.”

The words are a goldmine you’ve wanted to hear this entire time, but you’re upset — rightfully upset — that it took your daddy so long to figure it out! He needed you to spell it out for him to act on it!

“I don’t like sucking dicks!” you complain, trying to wiggle out of his grasp. “That’s yucky!”

Shouto raised an eyebrow at that, his eyes flashing dangerously as he absorbed the implications of your actions. He knew he was going to earn this just as much as you were.

“Excuse me?” Shouto says calmly, a single eyebrow arched. “Do you want to repeat that?”

“You heard m-me,” you stammer, trying to remain steady under his steady stare. “If daddy couldn’t catch that, maybe I should be the one giving out the punishments.”

A hot, predatory smirk pulls across his face as his grip on your wrist tightens, and he yanks you just slightly closer towards him.

“Oh really?” he chuckles so coldly you shiver. “So you think you’re in charge here?”

You nod slowly, your pupils wide and blown. Your eyes were transfixed on his mouth, his pretty plump lips practically calling your name. 

His tongue swipes across his front teeth, and you watch him in awe, horror, and damning horny anticipation as he sits back on the couch and takes you down with him. You struggle for a bit, terrified as you feel unbalanced, ready to tumble to the floor. But your stomach is pressed heavily against his knees, pleasurable discomfort spreading through your body as you recognize this easy, beautiful spanking position. 

“I’m going to give you ten spanks,” Shouto announces, his hand rubbing smooth circles over your soft shorts. “You will count every one of them and thank me for each one. If you mess up, if you misbehave, you will get more until you do as I demand.”

You struggle against his hold, thrashing and twisting as his fingers push the shorts higher up your ass, exposing your flesh to him. But as he did so, you remember that you’re not wearing panties, and Shouto sees that too.

“Mm, you’re not wearing panties,” Shouto says, his voice trying to keep the undying want and lust from bleeding through his tone. “My precious doll is that desperate she couldn’t fully dress herself?”

“I can d-dress— aahhh!!!!”

Your interjection was interrupted by the sharp, well-practiced spank that Shouto delivered to your round ass. You arched against his lap, your skin tingling and feeling pathetically good. 

“I said you were my doll right now, and dolls don’t speak unless given permission to,” Shouto clipped, his hand circling your now tender flesh. “You didn’t count, so let's try again.”

SLAP.

“Oh my god!” you shriek at the contact, your head spinning at the craved touch. It wasn’t like his typical spanks, the ones that came down not to hurt but to remind you, to correct you to be better. These stung with power, reminding you that you were getting what you craved, and you felt your toes curl and your cunt beginning to seep with the knowledge.

Fuck, you wanted this.

THWACK.

“Again.”

THWACK.

“Daddy can spank your pretty little ass all day, doll. Do as you’re told if you want daddy’s cock.”

SPANK.

“O-One, thank you, daddy!”

WHACK!

You threw your head back at the sensation, your eyes crossing and your hips bucking backward as you shriek with pleasure. You don’t count, your head swimming with unfound energy, and Shouto tsks.

“You’re so terrible at following directions, aren’t you?” Shouto asks, his mouth hovering by your ear, and you nearly melt when his teeth tug at your cartilage at the same time he serves another heated spank to your perky ass. “Such a dirty brat, getting off on her punishments. But let me tell you, if you don’t start following what I instruct of you, I’ll fuck your mouth and leave you without any cummies.”

You gasp loudly, sobbing as he delivers yet another solid spank for your undoubtedly bruising ass. And so, with a pathetic, desperate nod, you agree.

You count to ten, thanking him each time with a beautiful sob that makes the bulge in his pants obvious to you. Your lips are swollen, bruised, and sheen with saliva from holding back your louder sobs. Your ass seems to be imprinted with the shape of his hand against your skin, and you tumble off his lap at the final thank you.

There’s slick gathered on your shorts, soaking through the pretty pink fabric turning it dark. 

“I forget that my beautiful baby girl is a masochist,” Shouto sighs as he stands up in front of you. You gasp on the floor, your head swimming with the building heat between your legs, and you hear an all too familiar, always exciting, sound of a belt being undone followed quickly by a zipper and rustling fabric.

“God, you’re so wonderful, doll,” Shouto sighs as he pulls out his hardening cock to where you’re already on your knees with wide, curious, hopeful eyes. “Already on your knees, ready to choke on daddy’s cock even though this is a punishment.”

You can barely register his words, your eyes focused and fascinated — scared almost — of the cock Shouto has. It’s fucking huge, and it’s thick, slightly curved upward with a pretty flushed tip and bulging veins. You were sure if you could even manage to take more than a few inches in!

“I think I remember something about how you don’t like deep throating,” Shouto hums contemplatively. You freeze, your heart stopping for just a moment at what he’s implying. “Well, it’s a good thing this is a punishment.”

His fingers press into your mouth, making you choke, and with your lips spread wide, mouth open for taking, Shouto guides his cock into your parted lips with a dangerous moan. 

There's an immediate ache in your jaw, the size, and girth of his cock overwhelming you without so much doubt. You gag immediately at the weight of it pressing on your tongue, filling your mouth. Heat hammers in your cunt, and you heave against him.

Shouto sighs as if he was in heaven, his hands grabbing the back of your head and slamming your head as far down his cock. So far that your nose brushed against the skin of his stomach, before pressing against it completely. 

Shouto moans louder than your panicked gags and chokes, his hips swirling and twisting as he looks down at you with lovesick eyes. “You’re so good at this,” Shouto praises, his fingers wiping away the tears that prick at your eyes. “So good.  Daddy’s so pleased with you, taking my cock so well. So beautiful even when you cry on my dick.”

Your throat spasms around his cock, your lungs burning severely from the lack of oxygen. Not a single part of your body able to relax as you desperately sought to breathe. It hurt, but it felt so good. Saliva began to pool from the corner of your mouth, dripping down your chin and drooling on your clothed breasts.

Shouto took notice and hummed contently.

“Daddy’s going to count to the number ten,” he informed you, rolling his hips further into your mouth, shoving his cock even further down your throat than you thought possible. “If you can keep your pretty nose pressed to daddy’s stomach the entire time, daddy promises you he will give you the best orgasm you’ve ever received.”

You made a squeaking noise around his cock, your fingers that were buried into his shirt gripping tighter as he suddenly lets go of your head.

“One.”

Resisting the urge to pull off him completely was a near-losing battle.

“Two.”

Your body shook with intensity, the scorching need to properly breathe slamming down on you.

“Three… four…”

Shouto’s hands began to pet your head, soothing the worried lines on your face, brushing away your tears.

“Five… six… fuck, you’re so gorgeous, baby girl.”

You whimper around his cock, and Shouto moans liquid gold in return. He smiles deviously, fingers brushing down your throat.

“Seven… eight…” you choke loudly when his fingers press against your throat, tightening your already spasming throat around his cock, furthering the burning sensation all throughout your body. “Nine…”

You look at him with pleading eyes, wordlessly begging for mercy, for something as he pauses for more than a second between nine and ten. His hips lazily jerk into your mouth, his free hand combing his hair back, messily styling it as he smirks. Your saliva was dripping uncontrollably now, pooling at the back of your throat, on your tongue, past your lips. Shouto sighs, his eyes bright with power, with the knowledge that you were so obedient.

“Ten.”

Immediately, you collapse from his cock. Saliva and pre-cum connecting your coughing mouth to his hard dick still. Your lungs ache, and your breathing is frantic as you try to regain a sense of composure. Your tears meaning nothing so long as the inferno between your thighs is tamed. 

“You did so well, baby girl,” Shouto praises, and despite the pain in your lungs, you puff up at the praise. “You did exactly what daddy asked for you, so daddy believes you deserve a reward. Do you agree?”

Unable to speak, your belly tight and warm, and your throat aching slightly, you nod eagerly.

“Use your words, angel,” Shouto coos; he steps out of his pants before squatting before you, his fingers grazing your chin. “Daddy loves it when he hears you speaking.”

“I would love a r-reward, daddy,” you whimper softly. 

Your eyes swim with want, with inexplicable needs and desires. Shouto softens when he notices you nosing into his palms; he brushes a strand of hair out of your face.

“Look at how politely you asked that,” Shouto praises, kissing you softly on the corner of your mouth. “Daddy’s so proud of you, sweetheart.”

You keen some more, your wet eyelashes batting in your excitement and undying love for him.

“Now, daddy wants you to go to your room and take off all the clothes you want. Once you’re ready, I want you to call me in, and then daddy will take excellent care of you, okay?” Shouto commands you, his lips pressing softly onto your cheeks, eyelids, and finally softly onto your lips.

You gasp loudly at the touch, your eyes wide but looking incredibly drunk at the touch.

“Okay!” you giggle, pressing forward and taking his lips into another kiss.

He hums before assisting you to your feet, and you breathlessly laugh as you turn around and skip away towards your room. 

Your room is neat, as is required of Shouto. Your bed is neatly organized; there’s nothing on the floor or on your chair. Everything is put away correctly and cleanly. Grinning, you take off your shirt followed by your bra, shimming off your shorts, you toss away your clothes into your hamper, leaving only your socks on.

Hopping onto your bed, you grab a stuffed animal before turning to face the door and sing.

“Daddy, I’m ready!!!”

You squeal after saying that, excitedly staring at the closed door, eagerly anticipating the way Shouto would walk in. Your eyelashes flutter when you see the doorknob twist and in comes Shouto, who, unlike you, is completely naked.

Now you knew he was fit, even with your mind beginning to sink into your little space, you knew that Shouto was a handsome, fine man. He was built, muscular, and toned. He was tall, his head nearly hitting the top of the door if it wasn’t for the fact he was leaning against the doorframe. There is a slight smile on his face that screams of his pride, his joy of seeing you like this. And his eyes rake like hot coals against your body.

You shudder.

“Aren’t you cute,” Shouto murmurs, pride evident in his tone. He walks towards you, tongue slipping between his lips as he reaches the foot of the bed. “Such a beautiful princess, but now… what does princess need?”

“I need my daddy to take care of me,” you whisper, eyes hooded and mouth turning dry as he begins leaning onto the bed. “I want my daddy.”

“Such a dirty girl,” Shouto says with a chuckle as you begin to lean back onto your bed, your legs spreading for him. “Such a dirty, gorgeous girl.”

Your breathing stutters as the bed moves under his weight, and you’re practically panting as you watch his body slowly crawl over yours. Shouto looks down at you, his eyes deceivingly bright even with the shadows, and your eyes flutter as he leans down. 

You’re expecting a kiss, craving the feeling of his smooth, plump lips on yours. But you gasp in shock, betrayal, and in lust when his lips press against your earlobe. He trails his kisses everywhere, kissing every inch, every centimeter of your face, but never once your lips.

“Daddy, stop teasing!!” you whine loudly, feet kicking on the mattress and hands burying into his hair.

“I’m not teasing you,” Shouto objects, but the grin on his face says otherwise. “Why do you think I’m teasing you? What do you want?” 

“I want daddy’s kisses! Give me your kisses!” you cry with a pout.

With a burst of cheerful laughter that warms your heart and makes your belly flip, Shouto presses downward, capturing your lips with his. The contact is blissful, everything and more that you need. You eagerly kiss him back, making noises that are both sinful and so blessedly innocent as your arms wrap around his neck.

Shouto kisses you back with matching intensity, one elbow resting by your head, the other resting on your hip as he allows your tongue to press into his mouth. He lets you greedily take what you want, his thumb on your hip drawing nonsensical pictures. But as you shudder against him, completely overwhelmed by this all. Shouto probes his tongue into your mouth, gliding his wet, hot muscle against the roof of your mouth and the back of your teeth until your panting, unable to do anything but absorb him.

“So pretty, so cute when you’re like this. A beautiful doll for her daddy,” Shouto whispers into your mouth, and you can only moan in response. 

“I need daddy,” you speak, your glazed eyes unable to even look at Shouto. “I need daddy so bad.”

“Where does my princess need me?” Shouto speaks, his lips trailing down your slick chin and neck. “Right here?” he asks, sinking his teeth onto your neck and sucking softly.

“A-Aahhh~,” you shudder, your eyes rolling to the back of your head as he continues to place hickey after hickey on your neck, your collarbones, and the spot right behind your ear that makes you melt. “Yes, I need you everywhere… I need daddy’s mouth and cummies in me.”

“Your boobs are so cute, baby girl,” Shouto whispers, and you nearly jump out of your skin when you notice that he’s nosing against your breasts. “So pretty, better than anything I could have hoped for.”

You whine loudly, your body arching off the bed as his hot tongue dips out and licks a pebbled nipple. You pant as he licks again, your fingers burying into his hair.

“Such beautiful nipples, you make your daddy so happy,” Shouto praises, and you gasp loudly as his mouth envelopes your nipple. Your cunt throbs with intriguing want, your socked feet traveling up the line of his leg as his teeth graze and move your nipple in his mouth. “You make me the proudest daddy ever.”

His fingers card down your stomach, trailing and lingering around your cunt, and yet never once touching it. It’s tactical, teasing, and mind spinning. Your clit spasms with needed attention, angry with the teasing, desperate for contact — for attention. You make a noise, something not quite human, unable to pull yourself from your growing fuzzy head as Shouto moves from one nipple to the next.

Shouto chuckles, his eyes of blue and grey flashing up at you dangerously, knowingly.

“Don’t tease me, daddy,” you whisper, hips circling, thrusting into the air where you wish his fingers were.

“Okay,” he promises, and as if he could read your thoughts, his teeth gently bit down on your untouched yet demanding nipple. Your head slams against the mattress, your chest once again feeling alive as if you had been electrocuted. He sucks your nipple, teeth tugging on the sensitive flesh, warm tongue, and spit sinking into your nerves. His fingers taking care of your lonesome nipple, keeping it company with gentle, purposeful rolls as he has you sobbing his name. And when you thought the teasing couldn’t get worse, his fingers finally land where you want it most.

On your clit.

“You’re perfect, angel; I love you so much.”

It happens then, like a warm blanket being placed over you — comforting, warm, making the pain in your body hum with only pleasure, and your body trembles with peaking need.

“I wanna… I wanna do more,” you coo, eyes heavy and feigning intoxication as you look up at your daddy. “I wanna please my daddy!”

Your daddy blinks at you, head tilting before a knowing look flashes across his eyes, and he smiles softly, fingers abandoning their spots to press gently against your cheeks. You don’t even mind, so excited and happy that he’s holding you.

“What do you want, sunshine?”

“Can I please suck daddy’s nipples?” you ask with a hopeful face, “He made me feel so good, and I — I wanna make my daddy feel good too!”

“You wanna suck daddy’s nipples? Okay.”

You giggle loudly as the world spins, and you gasp when you’re suddenly sitting straight up, your wet cunt pressing against his hip bone. You laugh lightly, a bell-like giggle, and your hands press to his chest. “That was so fun!”

“Was it—?”

Your daddy can’t finish his sentence because you caught sight of his dusty brown nipples and launched forward, capturing the soft tissue in your mouth. 

It tastes like your daddy, the salt and unique taste he has. And your tongue lashes at it, your cheeks hollowing as you suck at it some more. It hardens in your mouth, a sensation that has you breaking away from him with a beautiful gasp.

“Am I doing a good job?!” you ask, looking at the pretty pink flush on your daddy’s face as he heaves slightly, flustered and a bit out of breath. “My nipples do that when you do a job, daddy!”

“You’re doing so well,” your daddy informs you, and you laugh excitedly. “Do you want… do you want daddy’s cock now?” 

“Daddy’s cock?” you question, heat rushing to your face at the naughty word. “W-What does that mean?”

“Daddy’s cock is how I can make you feel good,” daddy explains, his fingers trailing up and down your thighs, playing with the hem of your socks. 

You giggle as he snaps at it playfully.

“You’ve been doing such a good job, sunshine, and daddy’s cock hurts and wants to be in you.”

“In me?”

“Mmhm, and when it’s in you, you can get daddy’s cummies,” daddy smiles softly. “You want daddy’s cummies, remember?”

You think about it, unsure if you had wanted it, but then you remember that you had said it.

“Will daddy’s cummies help me? My stomach feels funny, a-and I feel wet.”

Daddy nods fast, his body shifting so that he’s in a sitting position and your wet chest presses against him. It’s a sensation you’re unfamiliar with, and you make an embarrassing squeaking noise at the feeling.

“I promise it’ll make you feel better, sunshine.”

You think about it some more, your arms wrapping around his neck as you think. But soon enough, you find yourself giggling and nodding, “I trust my daddy!”

“I’m so glad you do. Daddy’s so glad his baby girl trusts him.”

And the next thing you know, you’re back on your back, and your daddy looms over you, spreading your legs wide apart. You look down at gasp at the sight of daddy’s cock.

“It’s so big!” you shriek, “Where is that going, daddy?!”

“This is going right… there,” daddy emphasizes, pressing two fingers into a part of your body that has you speechless. It’s an intrusion you’re almost unfamiliar with, and yet it makes your head spin and your body hot with need and action from him. “I promise it’ll feel so good; I’ll make you feel so good.”

“O-Okay,” you whimper, watching your daddy pull something against the length of his cock before pressing the swollen head to the entrance that made you feel funny in a good way. “I’m ready, daddy.”

“I’m so glad,” your daddy smiles, and with a gentle kiss to your temple, he presses his cock into you.

“DADDY!” you shriek as his cock pressed into you, filling you out and stretching you out completely. The sensation is overwhelming, piercing pleasure slamming through your body as your arms and legs wrap around him in a vice-like grip. 

Daddy’s arms wrap around your waist, pulling you in close as his hips begin rutting in and out of you. The sensation, the rhythm, is constant and is intoxicating. The creak of the mattress and the loud, grateful cries of your mouth into the crook of his neck fills the room. And then he shifts you just a bit, his hips able to thrust further, more profound, into you, and a wanton, nearly voluptuous noise escapes your mouth. 

“Kiss me, daddy!” you cry, head thrusting back into the mattress, pleasure saturating so deep in your brain you can’t think anymore. “Kiss me, please! Kiss me, kiss me, kissmekissmekiss—”

His mouth is over yours, hot pants and wrecked breathing is passed between open parted lips. Your tongue pushes against his teeth, unable to find his tongue as your hips swirl and thrust up into his thrust cock. Every thrust sends daddy’s cock deeper into your pulling, demanding cunt, stretching you out, sending you further out in an unimaginable way. Your walls spasm uncontrollably, clenching and tightening without a single input. 

But soon, daddy’s shifting up onto his knees, and you can only wildly cry out for him when his arms shift from keeping you close to pressing behind your knees and shoving your knees into the mattress by your shoulders. The most primal, deranged moan rips from your mouth as the stretch sends his cock to a place in your cunt you never could imagine existing. You shake like a child against him, fingers scraping at his back, tearing his skin as your heels dig into his back. The head of his cock buries and brushes against your cervix, making you cry and see colors you’ve never seen before in your life. Your praises for your daddy are endless, and his powerful pounding sends the headboard of your bed crashing against the wall harder and harder.

“How are you feeling, bunny?” Daddy grunts, his face contorted with pleasure and the need to look at you. “Do you feel my cock in you? Can you feel daddy’s cock hitting your cervix?”

“D-Daddy, I-I — ohhh my god!” you sob, your hips pathetically rutting up and down against his cock, stupidly furthering how deep his cock can go, your cervix melting with pleasure, making you oh so dizzy. You can only blabber. “Daddy’s cock is so big, it’s so good! It’s making my stomach feel so funny! I’m so scared!”

“Don’t be scared,” your daddy pleads against your neck, though his speed and strength doesn’t lessen. “Your stomach feeling funny is a good thing; it’s supposed to happen! I promise you, this is how it's supposed to happen. Okay?”

“Okay, daddy, okay, okay, okay,” your voice lessened to a senseless babble. Your sentences blurring together, and your cheek pressed into the mattress, and drool pooled from your lips. 

His pace is completely irreplicable now; every maddening powerful thrust of his hips sends the headboard into the wall. The wet slapping echoing throughout the room when he pierces into you almost drowned out both of your senseless cries. 

It almost scared you, the sensation foreign, but his gentle reminder that this was normal, that you would be okay, kept you from spiraling. Slick erupts in your cunt, an overwhelming heat that throbs right in your core, coating your thighs and your stomach, and with every slam of his hips, it grows only more. 

Intensifying. 

Exhilarating. 

The temperature of your body sizzles off you in immense heat. His lips press against yours, a maddening escape of lust and need exchanging between your parted lips. Your saliva is everywhere, covering both of your faces — connecting them even when you part. But that didn’t stop him; it only fueled him to kiss you entirely, wordlessly praising you, engulfing you with his mouth, daring you with his tongue.

You were barely keeping up with his snapping hips, your mouth begging for more when he suckled on your tongue.

“It’s feeling so funny!” you suddenly cry as your daddy’s fingers pinch and rub against something between your legs that sends electric waves throughout every nerve in your body. “I feel like Imma pee, daddy! I can’t stop it! I can’t stop!”

“It’s okay, let it happen,” your daddy grunts into your ear, and with that, the calming steady of his voice, you let the heat, the tightness in your stomach you feel like is piss, slam through you. 

A tingling, white noise power sensation slams through your entire body. You arch into your daddy, your scream dying on your tongue as your body thumps with a full-body heartbeat. It sends your toes curling, your fingernails scarring his back, and a pathetic, pleasure-derived sob released into your daddy’s sweaty neck. 

His thrusting keeps up for a bit, letting your clenching and relaxing cunt finish him until his thrusts border sloppy, and with a final thrust that has your fingers trembling, he stops, collapsing onto you.

You don’t know what happens next, only that for one moment too long, it’s silent with only heaving breathing and incredibly warm body heat. Your eyes close, and you’re out before you even know it.

.

.

.

You open your eyes to a dark room.

Shouto is next to you, his eyebrows furrowed slightly as he holds a wet, warm cloth to your body, gently cleaning you up.

“Holy shit,” you murmur, your voice scratchy and nearly blown. “Did I drop and pass out after cumming?”

Shouto jumped at your voice, looking up at your face with a tired but satisfied grin, “You did.”

You laugh softly, not quite humorlessly, not entirely because you were amused. You sit up, groaning at how your lower body screams in pain; well, it seemed that your drop really did hide any pain.

“That was fun,” you grin, eyes closing as Shouto presses the cloth to your neck, cleaning the sweat and saliva there. “Glad I decided to speak up on that — ow!”

You pouted as Shouto retreated his pinching fingers from your ribcage.

“You didn’t speak up; you acted out and then spoke up,” Shouto chuckled, sighing as he leaned backward, allowing for you to stretch your tired limbs.

“I still managed to say my truth,” you grin, taking the wet cloth from his hands and focusing on his body. Shouto sat there, still and silent, as you gingerly cleaned… everything off him.

“Well, if we’re saying our truths, can I ask something?” Shouto murmurs, so unlike his typical confident demur. You pause for a moment before nodding, continuing to clean the broken skin on his body. “Would you like to be my girlfriend? I-I know this is cheesy and all, but I feel like I want you outside of our arrangement, outside of the dynamic.”

You can’t help but laugh, making Shouto look panicked, even if for a bit.

“I thought I was the only one.”

.

.

.

“Sero, psst, Sero!” Mina whispers loudly, hitting her friend in the back of the head with an eraser.

“Shit, what?” Sero hisses, a slight annoyance in his face from being hit.

“Look!”

Sero follows Mina’s pointed finger over where you and Shouto sat, in the middle of your own world despite it being smack in the middle of the lecture. He scanned your bodies more intensely and froze at the sight of purple and red bruises on both your necks.

“Is that—?!”

“YES!!!”

“HOLY SHIT! WE CALLED IT!”

“Sero!” boomed the voice of Aizawa, their scariest professor ever. “Is there something you would like to share with the class?”

Sero freezes, an awkward smile blooming on his face as he shrugs, “I’m just noticing some hickies today, that’s all!”

There could have been no casualties in this admittance; after all, Aizawa didn’t give two shits about hickies on university students. But the loud, panicked “shit!” coming from you was undoubtedly damning. 

Shouto snickered, his fingers tugging at the collar of your shirt as his fingers brushed against the collection of bruises, “I think they look nice.”

[tinycartridge]

Approaching Infinity ⊟

[Guest writer Caroline Delbert brings us a fully unexpected article that manages to be both philosophical exploration and interview-based journalism, at the same time. I couldn’t be happier to share this piece! Find more from Caroline at her Twitter and Medium. -jc]

We live in a golden age of computing power. Our games are filled with giant procgen worlds and RNGs and thousands of ticking background variables. The math is surpassing human ability far faster than we can grasp, and we’ve, I think correctly, put it to work making the grass in Stardew Valley so fun to swoosh through with a sword. But the idea of infinity horrifies people more than almost anything else and remains as confusing and terrifying as ever. As our games get closer to endlessly detailed, I chose four designers who’ve worked on four of my favorite games of the last few years, all with totally different ways of using space, time, and more to give the feeling of an infinite playspace. I’ve also been spelunking the idea of infinity itself and why it makes us feel so uncomfortable and intrigued.

We Contain Multitudes

What is infinity? We aren’t born with an understanding of the idea of something that never ends. Psychology researcher Ruma Falk put together existing studies about infinity. “[C]hildren of ages 8-9 and on seem to understand that numbers do not end, but it takes quite a few more years to fully conceive, not only the infinity of numbers, but also the infinite difference between the set of numbers and any finite set.” You could spend your entire life counting out loud and get to 2 billion. But in calculus, which is all about approaching infinity, a billion is rounded down to zero. An average 2019 computer could count to a billion in about two seconds, depending on the code you wrote. That’s how tiny a billion still is. Falk calls the distance between our human billions and the idea of infinity an “abyssal gap.”

When I talked with Immortal Rogue developer Kyle Barrett about this project, he mentioned Jorge Luis Borges’s famous short story “The Library of Babel.” Borges imagined an infinite-seeming library of books filled with random combinations of letters and punctuation. He sets out 25 total characters and 410 pages. I averaged a few lines from David Foster Wallace’s primer on infinity, Everything and More, which had 57.5 characters per line. For just two lines of, say, 50 characters each, there are over six googol possible versions: that’s a 6 with 100 zeroes after it, for just two lines of a book of 410 pages. The largest math Excel let me do was for about four lines total, which became 3 with 300 zeroes after it.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett has spent decades writing about how humans think about problems and ideas. His 2013 book Intuition Pumps is filled with helpful analogies, including a spin on the Library of Babel. “Since it is estimated that there are only 10040 particles in the region of the universe we can observe, the Library of Babel is not remotely a physically possible object,” Dennett explained. But despite containing far more books than the possible volume of our entire region of space, that number of books is still a real number, not infinite! The takeaway from all this, and then I swear I’ll stop talking about math, is that nothing we can measure in real life is truly infinite. Infinity is a pure concept reserved for mathematicians and philosophers.

Playing with Time: Immortal Rogue

In Kyle Barrett’s 2019 mobile game Immortal Rogue, you begin in prehistory and fight your way through progressive eras in chunks of 100 years. But time is a flat circle, and eventually your progress is bombed back into preagricultural oblivion. The mechanics of Barrett’s game are fun and satisfying and I can’t recommend Immortal Rogue strongly enough, but the framework of endless time is what got my attention.

“It’s not really infinite,” Barrett explained. “It’s a matrix that loops every time you reach the end of it. There’s an x-axis that’s based on time, basically—it goes from agricultural to pre-industrial to the industrial era to the computational era and space age, so time based on human technological development, and if you get too far into the space era you’re gonna destroy the world and go back to the preagricultural era. Then there’s a y-axis that is based on authoritarian control in the world, so at the bottom you have anarchy, at the top you have fascism, and if you go too far into fascism you’ll get anarchy because people will rebel.”

I said I wouldn’t talk about math again, but Barrett brought it up this time. A matrix is just a grid. The Matrix is something else, but if you’ve ever done a “Sally has a blue hat and wasn’t born in March”-style logic puzzle, you’ve used a matrix. There’s also a proper math definition of a matrix and a whole field of operations we do to those matrices, collectively called abstract algebra.

Barrett’s matrix of time and authority determines the overall feel of the levels, but each one is procedurally generated after that. His day job is in mainstream game development, and he originally shopped the idea for Immortal Rogue as the system to power an AAA game. “You can imagine any AAA game with that kind of variety in environment would cost just too much money to make,” Barrett says. “It was a game concept that I had pitched to studios earlier as a sort of introduction piece—not necessarily to make the game, because I know that doesn’t happen, but as far as getting into the industry.”

The way Barrett combined his basic variables means Immortal Rogue does feel endless. My longest life so far is 800 years, and Barrett says a complete cycle in which you beat the game can take anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 years. I’d love to tell you I believe I’ll beat the game at some point and see that full cycle. I’ll keep trying, at least.

Immortality and Endless Time

Would you want to live forever? This is one of the major philosophical questions that underpins western thought and especially the Christian form of the afterlife. Heaven and hell are each presented as an eternity, but again we run into Dr. Ruma Falk’s findings about how humans conceive of an infinite period of time. “One does not get closer to infinity by advancing the counting sequence because there is no way to approach infinity. Nowhere does the very big merge into the infinite.” If the lifetime of the planet Earth were condensed to one year, humans have lived for less than 30 minutes. We balk at the length of lives of record-setting elders who were born just a few years after the 19th century: imagine living that entire time and then living it again and again for literally forever. Our earthly understanding of time, and how our earthly brains process information, just isn’t compatible with thinking about living forever.

For many people, God or another higher power is the only way that infinity can make sense. In turn, a much longer afterlife helps to also make sense of how tiny and fleeting our earthly lives can feel. In the potentially infinite scale of time, our lives are the meager billions. They round down to zero, and it definitely feels that way sometimes. Falk cites 17th century mathematician Blaise Pascal, himself a late-in-life convert to Christianity and the trope namer of Pascal’s Wager. During Pascal’s lifetime, infinity was still a scandalous idea and a wedge issue for mathematicians and theologians. “When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in an eternity before and after, the little space I fill engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified,” Pascal wrote. “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”

In her memoir Living with a Wild God, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich describes grappling with the same problems as an isolated teenager in the 1950s. “I didn’t think much about the future when I was a child—who does?” she writes. “But to the extent that I did imagine a future, it held an ever-widening range for my explorations—more hills and valleys, shorelines and dunes. […] The idea that there might be a limit to my explorations, a natural cutoff in the form of death, was slow to dawn on me.”

Randomizing Infinity: Alphabear & Alphabear 2

Game designer Pat Kemp worked on both 2015’s Alphabear and 2018’s Alphabear 2 at Spry Fox. Both have the same core word game, a fresh take on the classic Bookworm where you have to spell words from rapidly deteriorating letter tiles. Unlike in Scrabble and its knockoffs, rare letters don’t have higher point values. And into the mix you throw dozens of different collectible bears, each with a total score multiplier and a specific boost like a bonus for 5-letter words or preventing all Xs and Zs. Both games are free to play with in-app purchases. In Alphabear 2, Spry Fox took the mechanic of the first game and added a linear story, multiple difficulty levels, and a host of other features. Playing the game feels like getting an upgrade at the rental-car place and realizing you have heated side mirrors. I didn’t ask for them, but I love them and now I need them. But why did the second Alphabear get so much bigger?

“I hope this answer isn’t disappointing to you, but the first Alphabear, although it’s a lovely game we’re very proud of and was critically well received and we got lots of features and good reviews, wasn’t much of a financial success for us,” Kemp told me. So Spry Fox went into development of Alphabear 2 with goals to convert more users into purchasers and more purchasers into multiple-purchasers. “The decision-making around making it into a world, and a linear campaign, and building out all the different features […] was creating this rich, interwoven progression system that players can feel invested in and value. Basically how you monetize a free-to-play game is, people play your game for weeks and months and come to really value things in the game.”

In the first Alphabear, each chapter had a set of collectible bears that quickly eclipsed the power of the previous chapter’s bears. “And you would almost never go back and use bears from earlier chapters, just because of the way it was set up,” Kemp says. “So you had this weird ‘disposable’ feel to bears. It was cool when you unlocked them, but the game was telling you, ‘You’re done with that bear, here’s some new bears.’” Now, the bears accumulate over time as one big group, and you can continue to level them up as high as you want, but your progress is paced by how quickly you regenerate in-game energy in the form of honey.

After a certain chapter in the Normal campaign, players can begin again on Hard mode, and then after a later chapter, they can begin Master mode. I don’t know the full length of the basic campaign, but I’m probably 100 levels in and somewhere in chapter 9 on Normal mode. The scope of the whole thing including all three difficulties is staggering, and the game had been out for just seven months when I talked with Kemp. “Have people finished the amount of content you’ve made so far?” I asked. “We know of at least one person who’s completed the master-level campaign,” he said. When I said I was surprised, Kemp said, “Every game developer I know has this experience where they’re surprised by some small portion of their fanbase that is just so into it that it defies all expectations.”

In this case, the fastest player ended up lapping the development team. “It was so far off that we had planned to build whatever happened when you did that later on,” Kemp said. “They sent us a picture of their screen of the campaign board, and all it was was just a black screen, because it was trying to load the next campaign board, which doesn’t exist. We were like, ‘Oh my god, we didn’t even put anything in there, and it looks kinda like you’re in purgatory or something.’” Spry Fox plans to replace the Sopranos non-ending.

Purgatory or Something

Earlier this year, I talked with my friend Tristan about his existential dread. He’s pretty fresh out of college and still figuring it all out. “I was going to write about games,” he said, “and as I entered my last year or so, I was going to write about movies. I don’t know if I’m still going to do that, so that’s a large part of the dread. Not knowing what I was actually doing.” Humans can’t conceive of infinity using numbers, but we can use our pessimistic imaginations. Our set of plausible options is no match for what we dream or panic about.

Christian existentialist Søren Kierkegaard wrote about dread and fear of the unknown in his 1844 book The Concept of Anxiety, where the Danish word angest could be translated as “anxiety” or “dread”. Using the story of Adam and Eve, Kierkegaard posits that anxiety dates back to a fraction of a second after original sin. “The terror here is simply anxiety,” Kierkegaard writes, “since Adam has not understood what was said.” In other words, like a pet in trouble, Adam didn’t know what was being told to him, but he understood it was bad from the tone of voice.

“Anxiety can be compared with dizziness,” Kierkegaard goes on. “He whose eye happens to look into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason? It is just as much his own eye as the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down.” Those who think about Dr. Ruma Falk’s “abyssal gap” between the finite and infinity may be dizzy forever with the uncertainty of what they’re pondering. “A persistent pursuit of the infinite may bring the individual to a blind alley, both emotionally and intellectually,” Falk writes. His analogy isn’t an accident. A blind alley is like another famous philosophical idea, Schrodinger’s cat: without shining a light, we can never know if the alley is empty or full, terrible or fine. And we can never shine that light.

Infinite Reality: Telling Lies & Her Story

At 2018’s E3 conference, Sam Barlow appeared on a panel about the future of narrative. “People will write to me and say, ‘I haven’t played a game in twenty years, and I played Her Story,’” Barlow said. “Or ‘My daughter installed it on my iPhone for me.’” It makes sense: Her Story’s core mechanic is as simple as a YouTube search, and the game is set in 1994, with a Windows 3.1 aesthetic to match. The game also fits with Barlow’s career arc. His 1999 XYZZY-winning interactive fiction Aisle gives players just one chance to type any command before reaching one of the game’s dozens of endings, placing players in a finite setting that even feels claustrophobic, but setting before them seemingly limitless possibilities. He was a natural fit to lead two Silent Hill games after that, and he views Her Story as the surprisingly successful “one chance” he had to make a successful indie game.

“This is something I’ve pitched so many times to publishers, with the rationale that in every other medium, crime fiction, police procedurals, murder mysteries, detective stories—if you have a TV channel and a film company, you’re gonna have a few stories in that world because it consistently works,” Barlow told me. “Games publishers were never into the idea. They felt like the things that sold in video games were power fantasies and superhero stories.” Barlow chose to home in on the interrogation room both as a convenient single setting and the place where his interest in crime stories was naturally drawn. “I wasn’t trying to do the police chases and locations and all those elements which would be expensive, but also, I was zooming in on the dialogue and the interactions and the human side of it,” he said, citing the groundbreaking ‘90s show Homicide: Life on the Street and its Emmy-winning bottle episode “Three Men and Adena.”

“I did a ton of research, reading the interrogation manuals for detectives, academic studies and pieces about the psychology of the interview room, a ton of crime books, movies with notable interrogation scenes and police interviews. This was slightly ahead of the true crime wave that we’ve had since, so I was discovering there’s so much footage online of real-life interviews and interrogations that has been released or leaked,” Barlow told me. “One day, as these things do, I woke up and went for a walk, and my subconscious—which is far cleverer than I am—put all the pieces and all the research I’d been doing together. [T]he detective’s sat at a computer, and there’s always the twist where they stay up all night sat at the computer and then they find that one little bit of information or the one piece of evidence that will break the case.”

Her Story is made of hundreds of discrete video clips, divided into main character Hannah Smith’s answers to an unseen detective’s questions. For his upcoming game Telling Lies, Barlow brought the setting forward into the Skype era and is introducing new mechanical twists to match. “To some extent Her Story was about giving you the writer’s perspective into a story, and here it’s giving you some of that editing room insight, where you spend so much time with the footage, choosing whether to cut out on this frame or that frame,” Barlow said. Instead of separate clips, Telling Lies gives you long, uncut videos that show both sides of a Skype call that you can scrub through—meaning drag the progress bar searching for highlights. “Not only are you coming at these stories in a nonlinear way, but also within a given scene you might end up watching it backwards.”

The text side of searching has also evolved. Because the videos aren’t separated into clips, searching for a specific word drops you into a video at that exact place. “Those conversations are split into two parts, so you can only see one side of a conversation at a time. You have the full seven minutes in front of you and you get dropped in to the point where someone says the word [or] phrase you've searched for,” Barlow said. “So early on, if you search for the word ‘love,’ you get dropped into a moment when Kerry [Bishé’s] character says, ‘Love you!’ and hangs up.”

Including Her Story and now Telling Lies in a group of very big-feeling games runs into a funny obstacle, because they’re both made of a very finite number of minutes of video. Her Story even has Steam achievements linked with what percentage of the total clips you’ve discovered and watched. “Something like 20% of people 100%-ed it. For most games you’re lucky if 20% of people finish the game. It had a display that showed you all the clips you hadn’t seen—that was an incentive and somewhat maddening if you could see there were clips you hadn’t seen. My approach with Telling Lies was to make it so big and huge and messy and colorful that it would feel less like something you could 100%, because I really wanted people to lose themselves in just the joy of exploring these characters’ lives.”

Just Out of Reach

Even with the incentive to find all the clips, in Her Story I found myself revisiting clips I’d already seen as I tried to find new keywords or listen for clues, and I maxed out just past the 75% achievement. The rest eluded me. With Telling Lies, this one kind of mystery will be removed, and that’s a blow against infinitude. In the perfect world of pure mathematics, having one more item just out of reach is one of the fundamental ways we can make proofs of infinite ideas. This structured approach also helps us turn the overwhelming idea of infinity into, at least right now, the one step in front of us. It’s infinity in the form of a child asking a parent for just five more minutes of sleep, then asking for five more, for eternity.

In Daniel Dennett’s book Intuition Pumps he uses this idea as an illustration for why infinity just can’t exist in real life. If every animal evolved from another animal, then there are infinity animals stretching back into infinity long ago, always with one preceding. We know that’s just not true. On the other hand, a study of how children process infinity showed that knowing the names of some large numbers made children think those were the largest numbers. Learning named ideas pushed out the very idea of having unnamed ideas, which makes sense given how large and robust our language brains are. Being strong, clear communicators has shaped our brains and the societies we form as humans. If we all became existentially troubled abstraction peddlers, I don’t think that would necessarily be a step forward.

To consider infinity with a finite mind is a paradox, and as Dr. Ruma Falk explains, “Mathematicians and philosophers are often no less addicted to resolving these paradoxes than some adolescents are to experiencing the limits of existence.” Like the Library of Babel, an infinite world is made mostly of incoherent and random nonsense, compared with a human mind that can only remember its own history in cohesive story form. My friend Martin has a rich life and a beautiful family, and he told me, “My personal greatest fear is probably losing my mind. The idea of being unable to make sense of the world is horrifying.” In fact, studies show that we’re more able to tune out conversations we can overhear both sides of than those where we can hear just one side—this is how deep our need for clear narratives runs, and it’s why we’re not made for an infinite world.

Infinite Liminal: Sunless Sea & Cultist Simulator

In February of 2019, Alexis Kennedy addressed something that had grown beyond his reach, and his post was the catalyst for what eventually became this essay. On the Weather Factory blog, where the developer typically shares updates to 2018’s Cultist Simulator, Kennedy described an alternate reality game (ARG) called Enigma that he’s built into his work—not just Cultist Simulator but 2015’s Sunless Sea and even 2009’s Fallen London. In the Enigma post, he sums up the appeal this mystery seems to have to fans: “If you’re working through things and looking for meaning in your life, then all the hidden meanings in this project may look like they add up to something more important than they actually do.”

I love Kennedy’s work—if we’re friends, you’ve probably heard me talk about it—and while I’ve never mistaken him for a guru, his games have affected and stayed with me more than anything else I’ve ever played. He’s gifted with language, stuffing his work with plausible and evocative neologisms or uncommon historical terms. But his more powerful gift lies in what he chooses to reveal and how long you must wait for it. I’ve thought often of something my friend Diana said nearly twenty years ago, about traveling with other people and seeing their luggage: “They wonder what I’m taking, but I wonder what they’re leaving behind.” I constantly wonder what Alexis Kennedy is leaving behind.

“Gamers tend to be—to borrow a phrase of Mike Laidlaw's—more like dogs than cats in the way they consume content. If the core loop is even moderately compelling, they'll gorge on content and rush through it,” Kennedy told me via email. “As soon as players are doing that, they'll skim text, and if they're going to skim text, text had better not be your A feature. I constantly skim quest text in games, and I'm a narrative junkie. So pacing is a way of saying: hold on, appreciate this, take your time with it.” In both Fallen London and Sunless Sea, one variable shuffles what day it is, so you receive different flavor text or events even when you’re repeating actions or storylines. “I don't think I ever quite recovered from the initial terror, back in 2009, of seeing players consume Fallen London content literally ten times as fast as I expected,” Kennedy says.

Like Sam Barlow, Kennedy reached for inspiration outside of what’s traditionally in the purview of a video game. I asked how he chooses end goals in games with such wide-open mechanics—Cultist Simulator is even more open than Sunless Sea in some ways. “I come at those stopping points from two directions. One is 'what sort of emotions and experiences are we aiming for?' The other is 'what sort of activities would a character in a novel, not just in a game, do in this setting?' So in Sunless Sea, we want people to be thinking about loneliness and survival and discovery, and we also want people to be aiming for the kind of things they'd aim for in Moby-Dick or Voyage of the Dawn Treader or HMS Surprise.” The only ending I’ve reached in Sunless Sea is the most basic one, where you amass some money and retire. In Cultist Simulator, I’ve managed to live a normal working life and then retire, which is considered a minor victory. And still, the game wonders what I’m taking, while I wonder what it’s leaving behind.

Pure Abstraction

“The study of infinity stretches human abstract thinking to some of its loftiest possibilities,” Dr. Ruma Falk writes. “By definition, it calls for modes of reasoning that transcend concrete representation.” What I’ve found most interesting as I researched this piece and talked with these gifted game designers is how thoughtfully they’d constructed gameplay loops that continue to feel fresh and challenging. The games themselves couldn’t be more different in terms of genre or lack thereof, revenue models, or mechanics, but all feel large and immersive inside to an extent that I instinctively ignored whatever seams I might end up seeing.

I asked each designer to share a game that felt infinite to them as players. Sam Barlow answered the question before I even asked it, though. He described wanting Telling Lies to feel like a huge place to explore. “My only go-to reference, which is somewhat ambitious, is the way I felt when I was playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the way that Nintendo made me feel, where I could just go off and explore in any direction and I could let my curiosity guide me and I would always enjoy myself. I would always find something interesting.” He called this kind of freedom a form of magic. “To some extent, Her Story was me trying to get some of the magic and—again, this wasn’t a conscious thing—some of the magic of the old text parser games.”

Pat Kemp also chose Breath of the Wild. “The world feels huge and dense in a kind of unusual way even amongst all the other open-world AAA experiences that are out there. There’s this big mountain and you climb up it, and on the way up you encounter two or three little unique-feeling things, and you make your way down and encounter a bunch of other little things, and they’re all handmade little surprises. It feels like the world is just brimming with delightful little nuggets of story or interesting challenges or encounters. It’s really a remarkable achievement and it’s also one of those things where, as a game developer, I can recognize what a monumental task it must have been to create that world,” Kemp said. “Every inch of it feels handcrafted by someone who cares about that itch, which is just incredibly daunting. It must have been so expensive to do.”

Alexis Kennedy chose Elite: Dangerous, and I enjoyed how his answer mirrored how I feel about his games, where some amount of suggestion makes it easy and fun to project the rest with your imagination. “I put a hundred-plus hours into Elite: Dangerous because I so enjoyed the sense of jumping through galactic-size simulated space. I knew perfectly well that the procgen systems were largely identical in all meaningful ways, I knew the space between star systems isn't simulated and you're just jumping between skyboxed instances, but I've spent 47 years learning how space works IRL and I still carry over those assumptions if the sense of resource cost lets me.  I need to feel like I'm working to cross the space and have something that will run out or need balancing.”

Kyle Barrett pointed out that, infamously now, No Man’s Sky sold itself as an infinite game. “The game definitely feels infinite. It also has the effect of what infinity would feel like, which is empty after a while. It teaches people that lesson,” Barrett says. It brought back to mind something he told me before about deciding how much to procedurally generate within Immortal Rogue: “If it’s pure random, I think it normally fails. That’s something designers find pretty quick. So it’s like, what’s the right amount of random and what’s the skeleton that can make the random meaningful?” He mentioned Dwarf Fortress as a game with infinite-feeling possibilities, and Minecraft as something that marries the two. “It feels infinite in scope and the amount of possibility feels infinite, which is why it’s probably one of the best games ever,” he said.

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” Kierkegaard wrote. “Freedom now looks down into its own possibility and then grabs hold of finiteness to support itself.” The games we love might feel infinite, but we only hang around in them long enough to realize this because of the hard work of building structures and feedback loops that make games fun to play. We study infinite math from the security of offices with comfortable temperatures and lighting. As Alexis Kennedy put it, “So it is a design choice, but there's a reason I made that one design choice rather than a million others.”

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[nounicornhorn]

a unicorn tale

Follows is an account of my triad as briefly as I could manage. My ex-girlfriend has betrayed and lied about us, and I have long needed to get my truth out there.

So I knew she was controlling, but I had sympathy for her. I saw her feeling trapped in a marriage that didn't quite suit her and had put too many responsibilities on her shoulders. I knew they were trouble and that I had become a battleground for this. I cried myself to sleep on their spare bed wondering if I had ruined them.

He and I had a hard time staying away from each other. I thought he was doing this because we were allowed. When I asked him about it I found out we were not. We continued to have a problem with this, and although she was angry at him, this was far more to my disadvantage.

I knew she thought I was too into him and it was off-putting for her, but I also knew she was jealous. Her jealousy over someone she seemed to feel trapped by was difficult for me to take. But not without reason, I hoped that she had a disordered attachment style. I saw her to pushing both him and I away so that we would fight to get her back.

I have struggled with what emotional abuses to describe and which to skip. Suffice it to say, it is impossible to please my ex-girlfriend. She has always been ruthless and manipulative. I have never in my life been more motivated than I was when I was trying to protect us from her reckless and selfish destruction. Despite it, I always saw her as a vulnerable person and hoped we could be harmonious if we worked to earn her trust. We shared an amazing conversation dynamic and many mutual interests and had so many great moments, even close to our end.

He was my emotional rock, as I'm sure he was also hers. He and I seemed to have a loneliness and a devoted nature in common. I worried about her attitude with him and when he said she was like that when I was not there, I trusted him. I thought he and I could give each other a firm at home bond with little ambivalence. I thought I could give her my time and attention and a safe amount of freedom from him. I thought I could help them, but I knew it would be hard.

I spent tons of time with her, as a triad and a couple. I considered her an essential relationship in my life. I kept trying to earn my place in hers; Her stated reason for breakups was often her lack of interest in me sexually. I tried to argue for a label such as nonsexual romantic or queer platonic, but she insisted that sexual connection was imperative, so I kept trying.

Throughout, I had been considering myself a one-sided primary partner to both. I knew that I was only a secondary partner to them. In our talks, I'd tell him I was concerned she didn't love me and was only using me to bench him. Each time he'd patiently have me turn around and I'd feel encouraged to try to win her over.

When she got a steady boyfriend, she stopped breaking us up. Our quad almost seemed it might work out. Yet she spent way less time with me as soon as she met her new boy, which is why I lost hope of meaning anything more to her.

They had always massively overspent, so I wanted to work to pay for his uncovered medical needs. Years later, I was devastated by my lack of savings. I was working 60+ hr weeks merely trying my hardest to relieve us from her financial abuse. I had to look back and say all my hard work and effort to give them space had only enabled her. She had only become more demanding, abusive, and contradictory and would attack if held accountable.

I got fed up with it and started getting ready to leave, but he needed me and begged me to stay. So I warned them about the conditions where I would not stay: She must lift veto. If her boyfriend left she would not return to her previous behavior of excluding me from sleeping in our bed. She agreed to and told me she loved me, and I was elated. Yet despite everything, her boyfriend left and she immediately wanted to exclude me from same bedroom where I had always been while we were a quad. So I left them.

The next day, I met him and we talked. I agreed to return if he could smooth it over with her and she could re-commit to the rules I set about where I can sleep. I asked for a mutual primary relationship with him equal to hers and for him to stand up for me if she wanted to exclude me or unilaterally break us up. He agreed and returned home to talk with her and I was planning to later join them if it went well.

Instead, that night she hurt him terribly and crossed a very clear line. He fled the house, I picked him up. I was shocked she took her abuse that far. His sullen comments toward me added to my developing fear he resented me for getting tired of her shit.

In the few days after, she kept calling us back to take care of our dogs or other things she needed because she wouldn't do it herself. When we arrived to help her she screamed and unfairly berated us. For reasons such as: I refused to deliver her food once. She accused me of leaving her to die. (She threatened to kill herself if she didn't get what she wanted quite a lot.) Once I returned for medication we all needed and she actually hit me, scattering it all over the floor. "That doesn't belong to you," she said, even though I bought it for us all to share, took a portion and left her more.

When he went back again get our belongings, her aggression and screaming was was horrifying. Her being recorded deterred her none. In the footage, she complained that their unicorn was supposed to be for her and expressed her rage that he was my favorite.

She stole everything I owned that he could not get. She also took much of technically their mutual property really rightfully his, such as his collectables. She seemed ready to keep their dog from him forever, so we took the dog which she left outside with no people at home. (we left her their other dog) We cut contact when she wanted to harass everyone we knew over the dog. She then lied to the police and tried to get him in trouble for things he did not do. She had left her job and could not afford to keep the lease on our home and her dream house, so she totally trashed the place for our return. In court, she throws tantrums and even takes out her rage physically toward people who are there with her to support her.

He and I did not last as a couple to no one's surprise but my own. With her gone, I was no use to him, and I spent some months exhausting myself making sure of this fact.

I feel like I have learned a lot from watching someone I love abuse myself and someone I love. I hope it's given me a unique perspective that some people have expressed interest in. On the chance you have not found this boring and would like to be a beta for further writing, please let me know.

[stipulatedconflict]

Band interview with NEGATIV(Oslo/Norway)

NEGATIV from Oslo, Norway

 NEGATIV is a new hardcore punk from Oslo. This band makes me feel that it will bring something exiting to the Oslo punk scene which is not just about Oslo punk scene but it is more involvements from punk scene in other countries. It’s maybe also by the vocalist Skunk’s own hard works for label and bookings, and NEGATIV is deeply involved in it as well. Thus this band makes me feel something will happen! I have seen them couple of times and the latest one was at Barrikaden with SIEVEHEAD. Once they started playing, the band immediately grabbed the entire atmosphere in the moldy underground space and delivered its manic primitive energy thoroughly. Their sound is based on 80s hardcore with weird mixture of Scandinavian hardcore punk, some Japanese flavor, light distorted guitar sound which sometimes sounded even rockin and the edge of thrash hardcore. Their groove is undulated with its manic groaning vocal but still has some sharp edge of thrash hardcore here and there. Their groove completely smashed the space and whole live space was undulated by the crowds and its sweaty moist heated air. It was a great show.

This time I could get a chance to interview them.

  Check their sound Here:

 Bandcamp: https://negativ1010.bandcamp.com

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

  Interview start from below;

  -So, who is in the band? is there any band which any of you have played or been playing before or currently playing beside NEGATIV?

Skunk: I do vocals, me and Sig used to scream against each other in JENKEM WARRIORS before and I'm also part of a noisy hardcore band called INTERNT OPPGJØR. Sig used to play drums in DISCUNT and has a electro band called HYSJ.

Møkk(Kenneth) plays guitar and has been in bands since I wore diapers, MORTE CEREBRALE, 2:20 and currently KNUSTE RUTER just to name a few!

Our drummer; Erik has probably had the most musical projects than I can count! He originates from Death Metal but is very comfortable with anything rockin' and-a-rollin and grabs punk songwriting better than most; maybe it's because he's so untouched by all the genre-wanking bullshit that's been going on. I think his most noticed band was FILTHDIGGER, he also had a hardcore band called STRUKTURELL VOLD which is coming out on 7" sometime this year..

  -Is there anyone who is involved in any DIY punk activities like running label, writing zines, taking pictures, designing, organizing shows etc in NEGATIV?

Skunk: Møkk is the mastermind and fingers behind ENDLESS STUDIO which is where we record and practice, we just moved into a new space so it's still under renovation. I'm gonna do my label work from there as well.

Sig has always been super busy with Queer and LGBTQ activism in Oslo and used to be the editor of the feminist radio RadiOrakel!

Erik does sound on a regular basis in our squatted venue; Barrikaden.

I've been running a small hardcore-punk label for about six years now called BYLLEPEST DISTRO and been doing booking at Barrikaden for pretty much the same amount of years. I've done sporadic designs for covers and posters but wouldn't really consider myself a designer in any sense. Just a complete hc-punk dweeb who spends too much time on punk stuff.  

We all do shows!

  -How did NEGATIV start in the beginning? how did all of you get together?

Skunk: Me and Sigrun had some aspirations to start a japanese-style hardcore band in the veins of stuff like GAI, EEL, LEBENDEN TOTEN etc. but had really big problems finding people in Oslo who were interested in playing that primitive and distorted. Sig was supposed to play drums originally, then guitar when Erik joined in on drums. We had our first rehearsal with a complete line-up including MØKK on guitar , which resulted in Sig playing Bass.

Møkk and Erik brought their own inspirations along and it ended up like something completely different! Kenneth wanted to bring influences from Italian 80's hardcore like NEGAZIONE and IMPACT, I think.. Although we try to avoid it I think we can't remain completely untouched by roots of Norwegian hardcore like KAFKA PROSESS , SISTE DAGERS HELVETE etc...

It was a really cold winter and all our other band project were on complete Hiatus.

   -How do you describe the sound of the band by your own words? 

Skunk: I think Sorry State Records described us the best; so I'd rather not describe our sound in my own words! They wrote; "After starting with a primitive SOA-style banger based around a punishing polka beat and snare rolls as jagged as a prison shiv, Negativ settle into a pleasantly thrash-infused take on 80s hardcore." It's originally about the two first songs on our EP; Automatic Thoughts but I think it describes our entire sound pretty well.

It's primitive and banging steadily! Sometimes we jazz out completely into weird atmospheric parts, but it always remain primitive to the bone.

  -Is there any specific bands gave influence/inspiration to the band sound?

Skunk:  Anything 80's hardcore but I think we all come from a bit different directions!

All the mentioned above and so many more! I listen to too many hardcore punk records... For the past year I've been quite inspired by the vocal style in UPRIGHT CITIZENS from Germany and early DEAD ENDS from the Philipines. The foundation for me has always been japanese bands from the 80's though.  Sigrun is mostly inspired by american hardcore , anything from MINOR THREAT to SICK FIX to L.O.T.I.O.N to LIMP WRIST; I know there's also a great deal of EMBRACE and other mid-era SST influences in there... I know for sure that Erik is inspired by the roots of punk like THE GERMS, SEX PISTOLS and BLACK FLAG while Kenneth gets his groves from anything technically aggressive and JIMI HENDRIX!

  -What kind of elements/influences do individual members bring to the band to sounds like NEGATIVE? 

Skunk: Everyone in Negativ are practically professional musicians besides me, Erik brings a lot of discipline and force to the band which makes us evolve faster. He's also the father of the term "S-Beat" which is his most common beat inspired by SLAYER and old school death metal like that, it adds a great foundation for primitive hardcore punk!

Sigrun gives our songs those bass lines that makes the songs stick out, there is always a minimalistic melody or harmony that gives the songs a certain drive. I guess it's from that post-hardcore stuff I mentioned above but I dunno haha! I think Kenneth truly gives us that 80's sound with the way he plays in general and he's also a genius at making simplicity sound massive!

  -How did you decide the band name? Is there any special meaning? something negative?

Møkk: We where talking about how things seemed upside down in the world.

That the ruling class of the world is mentally ill, but they act as they are the healthy ones. That right wing racist tyrants claim the role as victims, while refugees have lost everything, that capitalists are talking about ecology and “saving the world” while they are the ones raping it. When its more hierarchy, social and sexual abuse in the punk community than in the rest of society? What the fuck is going on!?!?! Its upside down isn’t it?! We where thinking of calling us “The Negatives” Like a photo negative. Where everything is inverted. But, since we`re all quite pessimistic, and having more experience with depression and negative thinking than we would like, and the double meaning with the upside down status of things at the moment, we cut it short and went for Negativ. The meaning is the same.

Its no secret that we dig Negative Approach either. Hehe!  

  -How's the punk scene in Oslo?

Møkk: Oooh, its like a roller coaster! Haha! Its ups and downs.. But yeah, oslo is a “bi-polar” city. We usually have very cold, long and dark winters. But still we have hot and sunny summers, the sun is up almost 24/7.

So when the winter is letting go, it seems that people are becoming manic, its good! But its definitely manic. Hehe!

Everything happening at the same time, everybody is ON and its a million things to do.

And of course, people are depressed during the winter. Getting “winter depressed” is as common as getting a cough here..

All that affects the punk scene, how the spirit is, if we are fighting each other or fighting our real enemies, or fighting for keeping our spaces, fighting for a better world. We are a small scene, everybody knows everybody, we aren’t very split into fractions. At least not in the same degree as other cities in Europe where I see more fractions and more homogenic communities. And I feel that the punk scene in Oslo is gonna be a good place to be in the future. Seems like people is starting to see what we have in common, rather than what we don’t have in common with each other. I think it has been a bit of a down period lately, but it looks promising at the moment. But hey! Its the month of May right now and maybe I`m just optimistic and manic at the moment?  

   -How do you think about playing in a band in Oslo?

Skunk:  I think we only played five shows in Oslo during the year we have existed. It's a small city and even though there are always some punk gigs, the quota of local bands is always a variable. We've only done five shows here or so for the past year and we're gonna keep it at a minimum just to keep shit interesting...

The best thing about playing in a band in Oslo would have to be the access to studios, venues etc. We run our own label and studio directly in the center of Grønland and can pretty much play how much/how little we feel like and still be sustainable. I

The worst part is probably that a lot of great bands from Oslo doesn't get recognized abroad because we're so far away from everything and often drown in the shadows of bands from Sweden and Denmark!

  -Which bands are you playing together a lot? any bands you feel sympathy as in a same scene?

Skunk: We played a couple of shows with Terrorstat, they're probably my personal favorites in Oslo. All good mates and half the band played with me and Sig in Jenkem Warriors. Terrorstat is a true freak accident of a fusion between Boston hardcore and Svart Framtid. They always deliver and is just such a hard-working, no bullshit band! All the members are also involved in Punk shit in Oslo outside of the band! Båndtvang is also a sick new noisy gang that I love to bits! Can't wait to see what direction they're heading, but it kinda reminds me of if Crucifucks would play Noise Punk!

We also did a two of our gigs with BLOOD SUCKERS, which is probably the only puristic USHC band in Oslo at the moment. Håvard from that band has put up quite a few gigs for us as well with the SVART SAMTID collective!

  -Is there any bands you feel sympathy for the sound/attitude outside of Norway?

Skunk: First off, I'd have to say Arggh! Fukk! Kill!!! that we played two gigs with in Germany, they've helped us out a lot and are great guys; we are doing a UK tour with  manic D-beaters in Split-Veins in the end of June, Carlos from that band has done some artwork for us and is generally a super sweet guy! We had a good session with PMS 84 in a club in Oslo not long ago and we hope we'll get to do some US shows with them in 2018!

  -Is there any good bands out there in Oslo which we should keep our eyes on in these days?

Skunk: Besides BÅNDTVANG, BLOOD SUCKERS and TERRORSTAT; I would strongly recommend everyone to check out MODERN LOVE, URBANOIA, PURPLE X, and OUTER LIMIT LOTUS! Oslo is not really a big enough scene to segregate genres, so the bands on this list varies from post punk to hardcore to power pop! We all play together!  

  -How do you guys compose songs and lyrics? some specific members are dedicated to it? or more like bring some riffs and developing it by jamming?

Skunk: Most of the flesh on our songs is hammered out by Erik; our drummer; then the rest of us puts our flavor on it. This is not a rule though and I think all of us bring ideas to the table!

  -Have you played outside of Norway?

Skunk: We did a short European tour about 8 months into NEGATIV's existence where we toured Denmark, Germany, Holland and Belgium. We got to meet old and new friends and I think it helped us define how we want to tour in the future.

  -What was the most impressive/unforgettable show NEGATIV had so far?

Skunk: The craziest shit ever for sure was to see the kids in Die Friese, Bremen singing along to our lyrics! I never expected that on our first tour!

  -What was the craziest things you had as NEGATIV?

Skunk: For me it must be the positive receivement we've gotten from the international punk scene. I've been playing in bands for about five years now where we've practically been having to beg for shows; with NEGATIV things've just fallen into place and the record has almost distributed itself. We're getting so many requests for shows, interviews etc. it's actually becoming stressful! We're extremely thankful to the punk community in it's completeness!

  -What is the further plan for NEGATIV?

Skunk: We're just about to embark on a UK Tour with Split-Veins and if things go as planned we wanna record our side for a four way split we're doing in Sheffield! We are also working on material for an LP and would love to tour the US in 2018 if shit go as planned!

Møkk: We just played together for a year, so i have the feeling we have some crazy things happening in the future! Right now there’s just some small stories involving chocolate in Amsterdam, stalking in Copenhagen, Latin American punk sieg-heiling in Rigaerstrasse. So, can`t wait for the real crazy stuff to happen! Haha. Ugh!

  -Is there any specific goal/aim for NEGATIV to achieve?

Møkk: At first it was just a goal to create a vent for frustration. Just to let it out.

The ambition was no ambition. It still is I guess. Some kind of therapy.

Right now we want to make an Album, we have a lot of stuff we want to sing about, and musical ideas to dig into. So no.. No specific goal at the moment.

But that can change as Byllepest Records is making a compilation called “infection”.

I think the goal is to infect society with punk rock. And make punk rock a very dangerous contaminating disease.

 Skunk: Our goal is to keep up the fight and make sure it doesn't end anytime soon! Fight in Progress!!!

[thecloudlight-blog]

New Post has been published on Cloudlight

New Post has been published on https://cloudlight.biz/ios-if-you-3d-touch-call-from-phone-app/

iOS: If You 3D Touch Call from Phone App

Our iPhones have quite a few terrific functions, and Apple probably doesn’t have the time to tell us about all of them. The 3-D Touch characteristic is one of these things that’s so deeply engrained into iOS now that Apple doesn’t communicate approximately it much. Sometimes a new movement will appear apparently out of nowhere.

That’s just what took place this beyond weekend when a fellow Redditor mentioned that you may 3D Touch name from within the Phone app.

What Is This 3-d Touch You Speak of?

In case you missed it, three-D Touch is a function of the iPhone 6S and more modern that detect whilst you’re pressing harder than common on something in iOS. For example, you may 3-D Touch an app icon, and get a contextual menu of options the developer has introduced in.

You can also 3-D Touch hyperlinks in Safari to Peek on the page that link will take you to. It’s all very cool and useful, however, it’s not thoroughly documented. Sometimes you just must play around with it to accidentally discover things that work.

3-d Touch Call From the Phone App

Type in quite a number within the Phone app after which 3-D Touch the green Dial button. Three-D Touch springs into movement. When you 3D Touch call from the Phone app, you get new quick actions. You can name that quantity typically or place a FaceTime Video or Audio call to it. If the wide variety doesn’t guide FaceTime, you gained be capable of pick out the options despite the fact that they’re gift. Furthermore, all you may do is place a phone call if the number isn’t in Contacts to your iPhone.

Why Bother When We Have an Address Book?

This is one of these functions that’s quite great, however, I marvel how useful it truly is. Do people nonetheless memorize phone numbers and dial them by using a hand, alternatively of choosing them from Contacts? I realize that I don’t, however perhaps some nevertheless do. I would like to study what your take is on this feature inside the feedback. Is it beneficial to you? Or is it simply any other little element that Apple painstakingly consists of whilst most iPhone proprietors ain’t ever use it?

Wickr for IOS Users

It is not always viable to live secure as well cozy on-line mainly at the same time as in a non-public verbal exchange. Communication or messaging apps, social network, and e-mails are the diverse means that are certain to depart the imprint of private facts. Government organizations, organizations, and criminals can access this records. This may be deadly to person exposing to numerous on-line threats. For this very cause, there are numerous other methods which can be used to changing messages. In order to preserve privacy users are searching out apps that erase records or that disappear after studying. A new app through the call of Wickr is delivered for iOS users. Let us find out more approximately Wicker.

About Wick

Wickr is a messaging app that provides the advantage of self-destruction to enhance security levels of private messaging. This app is to be had free of charge and is designed for iOS customers but is now additionally to be had for Android customers.

This app is up towards Snapchat and Poke which might be already popular among kids. However, there is a major distinction in terms of message safety. Wickr is the best one to provide you with a safety feature of disappearing message quickly after a person has read them. This is enormously useful for those who have a concern related to protection. You will be without difficulty able to keep your personal messages far from prying eyes. There are apparently few predominant variations between Wicker and Snapchat.

Wiki Vs Snapchat

As some distance as messaging goes it’s miles assume to be a communique this is personal however it isn’t constantly so. While Wicker gives you highly advanced secured communication there are areas in which Snapchat legs in the back of. Let us examine both and find out.

• Wiki gives you the safety that is tough to breach as the sharing, spreading and a forwarding alternatives are difficult to enable. For example, while you receive a touchy photograph that might end up everlasting on the net then those won’t be available with share option. Even in the case, you obtain a textual content message with the sensitive content material it will disappear soon after you study it. This manner the message isn’t always handiest unavailable to person for spreading but additionally deleted from the servers. Hacking and illegitimate get right of entry to is absolutely out of the question because the data isn’t always available. There is not any way that even government agencies can be able to retrieve it.

 How 3D Laser Printers Will Change Our Lives Completely

 Lately, we are seeing an explosion of an actual mania for the three-D Laser Printer.

People write approximately them inside the newspapers, speak approximately them on television, prepare seminars and exhibitions dedicated to the concern, they submit books and at the least at the net are increasing dramatically the assets available.

Although it’s miles now after 30 years given that their first introduction, the three-D laser printers are still a novelty.

How a 3D Laser Printer works

The 3-D laser printers are capable of reproducing a 3-dimensional object from a virtual report and from any kind of material: from plastic to metallic, even to human cells. With this background, the usage of this type of technology can variety from the fitness quarter to style, to the car, building, and lots extra with the possibility of endless applications.

The method is easy: from one digital drawing file or ‘blueprint’, the three-D Laser Printer transforms the digital statistics right into a bodily object staring successive layers of fabric until the complete item is prepared.

So some distance the process seems easy, however, the real magic happens whilst he joins the three-D printer with digital technologies of the Internet of Things. The end result is an explosion of technological and social innovation. The advantage of being capable of play digital circuits or understand materials much like every different, but with one of a kind properties in a short time, substantially velocity the implementation instances of the objects and deliver a lift to this sector.

What are the maximum progressive sectors for the 3-D Laser Printers?

Currently, we already carry style add-ons, video games, and small objects by using 3-D Laser printers, but through 2020, we are able to be capable of creating houses and internal organs in 3D.

The maximum investments and progress on this form of generation are developing in those fields:

1. Reconstructive surgical operation 3-D

The potential to play back complete human organs is one of the maximum important clinical revolutions of our times. The development on this subject are super and will eliminate the lengthy instances and lists of transplant. Recently in Russia, they construct the primary thyroid tested on mice, with the aid of the usage of a 3-d laser printer. Considering the massive amount of sicknesses related to this organ, we can imagine the superb implications of this task on human beings. And this is simply one instance…

App Review: I Can’t Wake Up! Alarm Clock for Android

Waking up is a massive trouble for me. There had been mornings in which I even have hit snooze in excess of 20 times earlier than ultimately uttering a swear phrase, stretching, and forcing myself to rise up. I am the kind of individual who wakes up hours when they supposed to until there is a few motivation for me to rise up.

The app I am about to describe eliminates that. As an end result, I type of hate it, however only due to the fact I love it so very a lot.

Miklos suggested the I Can’t Wake Up! Alarm Clock app to me earlier than mattress the other night time. Having to test a barcode in order to shut the alarm off? Excellent concept. I hopped onto Google Play and downloaded it free to my Android phone. (There is a paid version, but I think the best difference is that it doesn’t run advertisements. Don’t quote me.) Well, it surely did not close off the first morning. I had decided on Memory and Barcode as wake-up techniques. Memory did a terrific sufficient activity of creating me want to stab my eyes out even as the alarm rang. I had but now not found out I’d deploy the barcode scanner one after the other (Menu > W.U.M Preferences > Barcode Method > Method config data), and, of the path, pick which barcodes to test.

… Listen, I was worn-out when I downloaded the app.

After shutting off my cell phone to silence the internal, apparently infinite racket it changed into making (proclaiming that the barcode scanner changed into no longer established and simultaneously stressful I scan a barcode), I fell lower back asleep.

I turned into skeptical. Of course, I had not given I Can’t Wake Up! An honest shot.

The subsequent night, I configured the Barcode method, scanned my barcodes and added the Pairs method. Now my wake-up application was a fail-secure random ordered Memory/Barcode/Pairs mixture. I could clear up all three. Surely I’d be wide awake via then.

[symbianosgames]

It’s no secret that I love visual novels. Part of the reason has to do the vagueness of the term which, perhaps not surprisingly, works similarly to how “anime” describes a medium more than a genre. Visual novels take all kinds of forms, after all. Even if many of them share the same RenPy interface, little else links them; many have an anime aesthetic but not all; many have a relatively low difficulty level, but certainly not all (play Long Live the Queen for a taste of what I call a “bullet hell VN”). That diversity deserves a unified showcase where they can be compared side-by-side. 

Love Conquers All Games’ Christine Love agreed and spearheaded the creation of a new addition to the Indie Megabooth at PAX East this year: the Visual Novel Reading Room. It featured her own game, Ladykiller in a Bind, which was already a novel take on the medium with its approach to dialogue and sexuality, and last year’s successful We Know the Devil by Date Nighto. But while these served as familiar anchors of visual novel-dom, there were new up and coming releases available for play as well, one of which really demonstrates the flexibility of the medium.

Dev or Die’s Date or Die, Accidental Queens’ A Normal Lost Phone, and Lettuce Waltz’s Spirit Parade are a tour through the medium’s potential and how it can be so thoroughly realized through inclusive design that tells strange new stories. 

If there is a through-line that links visual novels it’s romance. Most VNs have branching paths through the game’s narrative called “routes” which are invariably named after the object of your character’s affections. Experiencing them all is how VN completionists satisfy themselves. VNs often as not succeed when they say or do something new with the idea, however.

Ladykiller, for instance, was an instant classic for its groundbreaking portrayal of BDSM as both achingly sexy and deeply human--and its take on relationships was starkly mature, delving into the nature of love, “fucked up fantasies,” and abusive dynamics. VNs endure when their romance is either unique (Ladykiller) or not what the game hinges on for its distinction (e.g. Black Closet).

A Normal Lost Phone eschews the route system entirely, however, instead providing a microscopic examination of relationships under the stress of a double life. Available for both computer and mobile platforms, the game is best enjoyed on your phone as its entire interface is that of a lost mobile phone you rifle through in an attempt to discover who it belongs to.

A Normal Lost Phone

Like so many excellent mobile games, Lost Phone works optimally when the device you play it on feels like an artifact of the game world itself. It presents you with a standard stylized smart phone interface with different applications you have to access in order to uncover the truth about Sam, the enigmatic owner of the phone. Sam has gone missing, apparently, and his phone holds clues as to why. Unlocking new apps requires one to solve puzzles, such as assembling different clues to get a wifi password that’ll allow you to log on to Sam’s dating profile.

There’s much that could be said about privacy and personal space here, but for now it’s enough to say that like so many games that diegetically simulate this kind of keyhole-peeping, it’s very engrossing. Our appetite for the inner lives of others is something Lost Phone unapologetically plays with, making of Sam’s phone a digital Greenbriar house that demands exploring. For the moment, who you are, and what the ethics are of you invading Sam’s life like this are for you the player to decide on.

Speaking of ethics, or a woeful lack thereof, Date or Die sees you take on the role of a nameless character dragooned into an evil reality TV show. You are “matched” with one of six other contestants by a beguiling villain who calls himself The Host. The last two people left alive after a series of challenges will--the Host promises--live happily ever after. After all, he wants to prove that some people are truly devoted to finding their one true love: devoted enough to kill. It’s delightfully twisted and seems set to be a delectable bit of horror. I could only access the intro, but Arden Ripley’s dark creativity still entices.

  Once again, the game offers a sideways take on relationships, using the insight of the medium to tell a new story that goes beyond a simple anime fantasy while still hitting those buttons. As is often the case with early previews like this, much remains to be seen. But the prologue available at PAX East gave a good enough sense of the characters that I feel a cautious optimism about what’s to come later in the year when Date or Die releases. They all feel distinctive, like each could make a uniquely intoxicating brew when mixed with your character. Evidently, even the Host is romanceable, though this is explicitly written as an unhealthy relationship where ugly dynamics are fully explored.

After all, Ripley promises us a game about “the horrors of love.”

It takes me back to Hanako Games’ Magical Diary, the inaptly named tale of a young woman at a Hogwarts-style magic school, learning spells and drowning in teen drama. The story has routes that involve romancing a teacher or romancing a murderously abusive young man; neither is played up as a straight morality tale but each explores the unsettlingly ugly nature of each relationship without glamorizing or ironing over everything wrong with each situation.

This is all to the good, so far as I’m concerned; we need to be able to indulge in forbidden stories. Christine Love did this well in Ladykiller as well; not every expression of romance is safe or “unproblematic,” but then neither is love and sex in the real world. The best visual novels explore that territory without apology, instead of regurgitating the same masturbatory fantasies. The latter can be fun in their own right, but they do nothing to advance the medium.

***

The display at PAX East was charming, taking up only two booths worth of space, with economically arranged tables and screens to display every title (Lost Phone’s mobile capability was a huge boon here), while Ladykiller was discreetly tucked behind its usual elegant screen to protect the modesty of PAXgoers. 

Nearer to the crowd was the large TV displaying Spirit Parade, which was perhaps the most traditional visual novel on offer in the Reading Room. I didn’t get anywhere near as much time with this one as I wanted, but it still catches one’s attention with its premise. A polio-stricken 17 year old girl is suddenly transported to a spirit world populated by demons celebrating a weeks-long festival. You have to help her find her way home. 

Spirit Parade

The protagonist, Nara, is described as “cynical” and deeply suspicious of the intentions of others after years of being patronized and pitied for her disability. Her time in the Spirit World is meant to be a reckoning on how she approaches life: “Will [Nara] be able to get over her bitterness borne from the past, or will she be engulfed in hatred and lose sight of what's truly important?” asks the game’s ad copy. It’s an interesting hook, but I could see this going badly very quickly given longstanding stereotypes of people with disabilities as embittered complainers who are in dire need of inspiration. 

There is certainly a lot of merit to the reasons for Nara’s bitterness and mistrust, however. The empathy required to write that in a way that centers her rather than the able bodied people in her life leaves me cautiously optimistic. A lot depends on how the narrative shakes out, and how the promised “good” and “bad” endings are framed.

Spirit Parade also grabs your attention with its striking artwork, and there’s the novelty of voice acting to boot. Whatever else it may be, it is a beautiful VN whose presentation, like a traditionally staged opera, cleaves proudly to the fundaments of its medium. It may be the least avant-garde or daring of all the Reading Room offerings but it seems to do what it does quite well and has a lot to offer anyone who enjoys VNs.

***

“Spirit parade” is a pretty apt way of describing the PAX show floor, with an endless river of colorful costumes, personalities, and lost souls alike flowing past the wild, almost magical booths. To say there’s always something to catch your eye is an understatement. But every time someone asked me that standard icebreaker question at the convention, “what stood out to you the most on the show floor?” I found myself always mentioning the VR Reading Room.

It’s quite possible that I might not have noticed it so quickly if Christine Love, whose work I’ve long been well disposed to, hadn’t put her name behind it and taken the initiative to create it. But I’ve always loved visual novels, which gleefully traipse into territory most other videogames are quite shy about. They’ve been vehicles for porn, romance, narrative-emphasis, casual gaming, and female protagonists for years now. But they have also pushed boundaries in portrayals of queerness and trans life--and as I played through all of the Reading Room’s offerings I realized that this was what linked these very different games together like a necklace.

Though no literature or marketing for the Reading Room advertised the fact, all had “queer content,” all had gay and/or trans characters. There weren’t many multi-game booths or pavilions that could make that claim (although Ysbryd has been doing a commendable job with this lately on show floors). It was a lovely thing to see amid PAX’s maelstrom.

Most comforting of all is the thought that perhaps some souls who wandered into one of the Reading Room’s weird, adorable wonderlands might find themselves just a bit less lost.

Katherine Cross is a Ph.D student in sociology who researches anti-social behavior online, and a gaming critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications.

[symbianosgames]

It’s no secret that I love visual novels. Part of the reason has to do the vagueness of the term which, perhaps not surprisingly, works similarly to how “anime” describes a medium more than a genre. Visual novels take all kinds of forms, after all. Even if many of them share the same RenPy interface, little else links them; many have an anime aesthetic but not all; many have a relatively low difficulty level, but certainly not all (play Long Live the Queen for a taste of what I call a “bullet hell VN”). That diversity deserves a unified showcase where they can be compared side-by-side. 

Love Conquers All Games’ Christine Love agreed and spearheaded the creation of a new addition to the Indie Megabooth at PAX East this year: the Visual Novel Reading Room. It featured her own game, Ladykiller in a Bind, which was already a novel take on the medium with its approach to dialogue and sexuality, and last year’s successful We Know the Devil by Date Nighto. But while these served as familiar anchors of visual novel-dom, there were new up and coming releases available for play as well, one of which really demonstrates the flexibility of the medium.

Dev or Die’s Date or Die, Accidental Queens’ A Normal Lost Phone, and Lettuce Waltz’s Spirit Parade are a tour through the medium’s potential and how it can be so thoroughly realized through inclusive design that tells strange new stories. 

If there is a through-line that links visual novels it’s romance. Most VNs have branching paths through the game’s narrative called “routes” which are invariably named after the object of your character’s affections. Experiencing them all is how VN completionists satisfy themselves. VNs often as not succeed when they say or do something new with the idea, however.

Ladykiller, for instance, was an instant classic for its groundbreaking portrayal of BDSM as both achingly sexy and deeply human--and its take on relationships was starkly mature, delving into the nature of love, “fucked up fantasies,” and abusive dynamics. VNs endure when their romance is either unique (Ladykiller) or not what the game hinges on for its distinction (e.g. Black Closet).

A Normal Lost Phone eschews the route system entirely, however, instead providing a microscopic examination of relationships under the stress of a double life. Available for both computer and mobile platforms, the game is best enjoyed on your phone as its entire interface is that of a lost mobile phone you rifle through in an attempt to discover who it belongs to.

A Normal Lost Phone

Like so many excellent mobile games, Lost Phone works optimally when the device you play it on feels like an artifact of the game world itself. It presents you with a standard stylized smart phone interface with different applications you have to access in order to uncover the truth about Sam, the enigmatic owner of the phone. Sam has gone missing, apparently, and his phone holds clues as to why. Unlocking new apps requires one to solve puzzles, such as assembling different clues to get a wifi password that’ll allow you to log on to Sam’s dating profile.

There’s much that could be said about privacy and personal space here, but for now it’s enough to say that like so many games that diegetically simulate this kind of keyhole-peeping, it’s very engrossing. Our appetite for the inner lives of others is something Lost Phone unapologetically plays with, making of Sam’s phone a digital Greenbriar house that demands exploring. For the moment, who you are, and what the ethics are of you invading Sam’s life like this are for you the player to decide on.

Speaking of ethics, or a woeful lack thereof, Date or Die sees you take on the role of a nameless character dragooned into an evil reality TV show. You are “matched” with one of six other contestants by a beguiling villain who calls himself The Host. The last two people left alive after a series of challenges will--the Host promises--live happily ever after. After all, he wants to prove that some people are truly devoted to finding their one true love: devoted enough to kill. It’s delightfully twisted and seems set to be a delectable bit of horror. I could only access the intro, but Arden Ripley’s dark creativity still entices.

  Once again, the game offers a sideways take on relationships, using the insight of the medium to tell a new story that goes beyond a simple anime fantasy while still hitting those buttons. As is often the case with early previews like this, much remains to be seen. But the prologue available at PAX East gave a good enough sense of the characters that I feel a cautious optimism about what’s to come later in the year when Date or Die releases. They all feel distinctive, like each could make a uniquely intoxicating brew when mixed with your character. Evidently, even the Host is romanceable, though this is explicitly written as an unhealthy relationship where ugly dynamics are fully explored.

After all, Ripley promises us a game about “the horrors of love.”

It takes me back to Hanako Games’ Magical Diary, the inaptly named tale of a young woman at a Hogwarts-style magic school, learning spells and drowning in teen drama. The story has routes that involve romancing a teacher or romancing a murderously abusive young man; neither is played up as a straight morality tale but each explores the unsettlingly ugly nature of each relationship without glamorizing or ironing over everything wrong with each situation.

This is all to the good, so far as I’m concerned; we need to be able to indulge in forbidden stories. Christine Love did this well in Ladykiller as well; not every expression of romance is safe or “unproblematic,” but then neither is love and sex in the real world. The best visual novels explore that territory without apology, instead of regurgitating the same masturbatory fantasies. The latter can be fun in their own right, but they do nothing to advance the medium.

***

The display at PAX East was charming, taking up only two booths worth of space, with economically arranged tables and screens to display every title (Lost Phone’s mobile capability was a huge boon here), while Ladykiller was discreetly tucked behind its usual elegant screen to protect the modesty of PAXgoers. 

Nearer to the crowd was the large TV displaying Spirit Parade, which was perhaps the most traditional visual novel on offer in the Reading Room. I didn’t get anywhere near as much time with this one as I wanted, but it still catches one’s attention with its premise. A polio-stricken 17 year old girl is suddenly transported to a spirit world populated by demons celebrating a weeks-long festival. You have to help her find her way home. 

Spirit Parade

The protagonist, Nara, is described as “cynical” and deeply suspicious of the intentions of others after years of being patronized and pitied for her disability. Her time in the Spirit World is meant to be a reckoning on how she approaches life: “Will [Nara] be able to get over her bitterness borne from the past, or will she be engulfed in hatred and lose sight of what's truly important?” asks the game’s ad copy. It’s an interesting hook, but I could see this going badly very quickly given longstanding stereotypes of people with disabilities as embittered complainers who are in dire need of inspiration. 

There is certainly a lot of merit to the reasons for Nara’s bitterness and mistrust, however. The empathy required to write that in a way that centers her rather than the able bodied people in her life leaves me cautiously optimistic. A lot depends on how the narrative shakes out, and how the promised “good” and “bad” endings are framed.

Spirit Parade also grabs your attention with its striking artwork, and there’s the novelty of voice acting to boot. Whatever else it may be, it is a beautiful VN whose presentation, like a traditionally staged opera, cleaves proudly to the fundaments of its medium. It may be the least avant-garde or daring of all the Reading Room offerings but it seems to do what it does quite well and has a lot to offer anyone who enjoys VNs.

***

“Spirit parade” is a pretty apt way of describing the PAX show floor, with an endless river of colorful costumes, personalities, and lost souls alike flowing past the wild, almost magical booths. To say there’s always something to catch your eye is an understatement. But every time someone asked me that standard icebreaker question at the convention, “what stood out to you the most on the show floor?” I found myself always mentioning the VR Reading Room.

It’s quite possible that I might not have noticed it so quickly if Christine Love, whose work I’ve long been well disposed to, hadn’t put her name behind it and taken the initiative to create it. But I’ve always loved visual novels, which gleefully traipse into territory most other videogames are quite shy about. They’ve been vehicles for porn, romance, narrative-emphasis, casual gaming, and female protagonists for years now. But they have also pushed boundaries in portrayals of queerness and trans life--and as I played through all of the Reading Room’s offerings I realized that this was what linked these very different games together like a necklace.

Though no literature or marketing for the Reading Room advertised the fact, all had “queer content,” all had gay and/or trans characters. There weren’t many multi-game booths or pavilions that could make that claim (although Ysbryd has been doing a commendable job with this lately on show floors). It was a lovely thing to see amid PAX’s maelstrom.

Most comforting of all is the thought that perhaps some souls who wandered into one of the Reading Room’s weird, adorable wonderlands might find themselves just a bit less lost.

Katherine Cross is a Ph.D student in sociology who researches anti-social behavior online, and a gaming critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications.