#but there's theoretically way less text

[drawing-way-outside-the-lines]

➖ Mature content, 18+ ➖ check the trigger tags each time ➖      

Chapter 26 - Old Messages, pt. 2.

--------------Congo's point of view--------------------

I had promised myself there would be no more between me and Andy, but already the next day, I knew it was impossible to keep. I wanted him more than ever, and breakfast was almost impossible to get through. Marius was sweet, lovingly sitting on my lap, trying to feed me breakfast pancakes, while I was trying to pretend to read the morning news paper. I was mainly trying to avoid eye contact with him. I had never cheated on a partner before. And the burning feeling in My stomach was awful to bare. I had tried reading a few lines of the paper, but I kept getting interrupted by visions of Andy and I kissing in the forest last night. It was impossible to concentrate in anything. It was impossible denying I wanted more. The whole day I was wandering around aimlessly, I couldn't get Andy out of my head, and being with Marius made my guilt grow every minute. So late afternoon I decided to drive 2 km to a small mountain town, located behind my dads house. Not even the fresh air could clear my head, even though I tried my best. The evening seemed to run at snail speed, so I decided to call it a night already around 9. It was early for me, and Marius did question it a bit. I couldn't sleep however, thoughts of Andy and how this situation could possibly turn in my favor, were racing my mind. I had loved him 10 years. 10 whole years. Since the very first night I met him. And now he had finally fallen for me. But being engaged to a vampire, was a deadly cocktail, at least for the one standing in the way. I knew I needed to get as far away as possible, but he was my Andy. It's safe to say I hoped and begged it was him on the line, when suddenly my phone lit up in the dark bedroom later that night.

Andy: I miss you. A lot. I wish I could wrap your arms around me, and fall asleep like that. Safe. I sit here looking at the pics of you and Marius… all I can focus on is you… Your lips Your beard How I wanna run my fingers through your hair Your chest Your upper arms I love you I just wanna see you again. I know I need to shut up and move on. I don't wanna hurt you. I know I said everything yesterday… but I just keep running it on repeat. I just wish there were some way we could be together… and no one getting hurt. I just really need you! Close. Always. You keep me calm. You always made me feel safe. You were always so nice to me…. took so good care of me. I miss you so fucking much!! Miss your smell…. I love you.

Congo: I love you too.

Andy: You have no idea what those words mean to me.

Congo: I know what it means to hear them from you.

Andy: <3 I'm so in love with you!

Congo: I'm so in love with you too.

Andy: What are you doing now?

Congo: In bed.

Andy: Were you sleeping? Did I wake you up?

Congo: No, I couldn't sleep.

Andy: Oh… why not?

Congo: Thinking of you.

Andy: Good or bad?

Congo: Both, I guess.

Andy: What was the good?

Congo: YOU.

Andy: (He sent a smiley with stars in it's eyes) And then what's the bad?

Congo: That I can't have you.

Andy: I know! (Smiley crying on the floor)

Congo: What are you doing? Just sitting around in your room?

Andy: Yeah… can't sleep. I'm too restless… horny… confused…

Congo: I guess I feel sort of the same. Plus, it's too hot to sleep.

Andy: Take some clothes off.

Congo: I'm already naked.

Andy: :3 DAMN (followed by a row of blushy and pervy smileys)

Congo: You are crazy.

Andy: You love that about me.

Congo: Yes.

Andy: You make me hard!

Congo: By telling you I'm naked?

Andy: Yes!!! Of course!! You are fucking hot!!! GOD! That bulgy chest of yours!!!!!!!

Congo: What more?

Andy: Your big warm arms.

Congo: Anything else?

Andy: Your kind eyes… Your sexy beard Your strong upper arms Your v of muscles above your jeans line! Your firm ass Your muscly thighs GOD! I fucking want you so much!!!!

Congo: I want you too.

Andy: How much?

Congo: So much that I'm touching myself.

Andy: (Crying smiley, followed by a smiley leaning against a wall) First one was a finger spass… sorry…

Congo: What does the second one mean?

Andy: I wish I was outside your bedroom door!

Congo: Me too!

Andy: I want to feel your naked body against mine… making love to you all night and morning.

Congo: Mmm yeah… I would love that. Feeling my hands all over your perfect body. Tasting your skin. Feeling myself grow inside you.

Andy: Fuck!!! I wanna taste you too… and feel you so badly!!!!! You're so strong and warm. I can't get enough of your warmth! I wish I could push myself inside you, and just live in there…just merge with you… Are you still touching yourself?

Congo: Yes.

Andy: DAMN! I wish I could crawl under your blanker and give you a blowjob. I really wanna swallow you, taste your cum again. Mmmmmm! Tell me how you touch yourself…

Congo: I am slowly stroking my dick, and pulling lightly in my balls. Thinking of you. Wanting your hands and mouth on me.

Andy: Fuck yeah!!!!!!!!!! Wait… what are we doing? I;m so hot now I'm almost burning up!! And I'm touching myself I'm so hard it almost hurts!

Congo: The sweat is running off me. I want you so bad I think I'm gonna scream out your name soon!

Andy: FUCK!!! We need to cool down!

Congo: I know. How about we take a shower? Together. I mean, as together we can. I'll go jump in my shower, you go jump in yours… We jerk off with the thoughts of each other, and when we are done, we meet up here again? You can go to your bed as well, and we can keep talking till we get tired enough to sleep, or simply keep going till we fall asleep?

Andy: Yes! I'm in! I really need to cum! But as I'm quite challanged on that some days, I really need help… this might do :3 just the thought of you makes my insides buzz and my heart pound!

Congo: I know! I feel the same way about you. I'll meet you here in 10-15 minutes. I love you.

Andy: I love you too. (20 minutes later) I'm back!

Congo: Me too.

Andy: :) you make me smile and get butterflies in my stomach.

Congo: :) you too.

Andy: Really??? :D

Congo: Yes.

Andy: I'm melting!

Congo: :)

Andy: Did you cum?

Congo: Yes :) you?

Andy: Yes! Could almost not stand on my legs, that's how good it was!

Congo: Perfect!

Andy: Yes! :3 I kept thinking of your face :3

Congo: Only my face?

Andy: More or less. Only one time I thought of you sucking me. The rest of the time, I just pictured your smile… well, your profile pic here mostly…

Congo: You make me so happy.

Andy: Why? :)

Congo: Because now there's no longer a single shred of doubt in me. I know you are in fact in love with me too. That it's not just lust and a crush. I mean. You didn't just focus one me naked or fucking you. It was my face. Me as a person.

Andy: I told you! :)

Congo: I know, but it sounds too good to be true. Well, it is, since we can't be together. It stings in my heart every time I think of it.

Andy: :/ I don't want you to get hurt, or get bad health because of this. If its easier I'll stop writing these things to you, and we will somehow rewind time till before I told you… at least imagine that part…

Congo: No. Please. Even if it makes things a million times harder, I need to know you love me too. You did the right thing. We will find a way to control this, cause we have to. But for the rest of this night, let us just go to bed, and pretend to cuddle, how does that sound? No bad vibes before sleeping :) Let's keep it light.

Andy: Sounds nice. I would say perfect, but perfect would be you laying next to me, in reality…

Congo: I know sweety. Let's crawl to bed at least this way.

Andy: Alright, I just need to finish eating my bread…

Congo: You're eating? (Back then Andy had a lot of trouble eating. He had gotten of alcohol after around 10 years as an alcoholic, and his stomach wasn't used to solid food. On top of that he had a lot of anxiety around food, so it was a rare thing to see him eat more than a bit of fruit salad or a small bowl of cereal with milk or yoghurt)

Andy: Yes, a big piece of bread with butter and raisins :)

Congo: That makes me happy <3 thank you.

Andy: You don't have to thank me :) I don't wanna die any longer, remember? (he also used to be very suicidal)

Congo: Yes :) but that's also almost too good to believe.

Andy: :) just give me 2 minutes to get done…

Congo: Sure take your time.

Andy: (A few minutes later) I'm done, but I have raisins all over my mouth, I'm gonna go brush my teeth… Congo…how heavy does Marius sleep?

Congo: Pretty heavy, why?

Andy: Uhm, I'm in my own bedroom, so A surely wont hear me. Maybe if you think it wont wake up Marius, I could call you, and we could whisper a bit to each other? Or just be on the line, so we can just feel each other near? Or is that stupid?

Congo: No, it's not stupid. I would very much like that :)

Andy: :D I'll be right back!

Congo: Yes.

Andy: (Another few minutes later) Can I call now?

Congo: Yes :)

Andy: :D

We talked for about 45 minutes that night, till I no longer got an answer. I could hear him breathe deeply, and it was comforting knowing he was safe asleep. I kept pressing my phone againts my ear, as if I was trying to get him closer to me. I fell asleep much later with a smile on my lips, but a heavy heart knowing it was all wrong, and we had to stop.

[thatoneluckybee]

I went to English class after answering asks about MPREG all morning and then accidentally started my argumentative essay for a major grade about mpreg and why I shouldn’t write it.

Luckily I caught the slip-up but I still feel like it’s very important that at least you know this. (And then by process of spreading hopefully Kiri and Chaos and Static will and NONE OF the NORMAL PEOPLE finding my blog from MPREG)

......That. Sure is a mistake to make. Wow. Thank you for saving your teacher's sanity

[loversmantra]

FREE FALLIN' LOVE ADDICT!

synopsis. satoru's fingers look their best soaking wet.

content. gojo satoru x cisfem!reader. smut. minors do not interact. lowkey... househusband satoru and his working wife. making out. fingering. cum eating. drooling. size difference. not explicitly stated but this definitely reads as sub!satoru. foul language. "gojo satoru has the biggest praise kink in existence," i say from the top of my hill. he's kinda pathetic in this tbh but so am i so it's fine.

title from poplar st by glass animals

wc. 2.3k

message from noe. this started as something very different, very wholesome... then it became this. i was fighting demons. sorry. also this is lowkey my first time doing smut be nice to me pls. anyways @neptuneblue dis one is for you twiiin

satoru’s hands are much bigger than yours.

you’ve known this for a long time, of course. as a teen, he never missed an opportunity to remind you you were smaller than him: whether that be by holding something out of your reach or using that creature of an appendage to cover your entire face and muffle your complaints.

he didn’t outgrow his antics. his hands did, however, get even bigger.

but it’s one thing to know, to have the theoretic knowledge of it in the back of your mind. it’s another to have indisputable proof of it: his huge hand wrapped around your own, both warming it and dwarfing it.

satoru’s had his hands on you since the day you first met. rough, teasing — and later loving. soft. and you’re thinking about them a lot these days. you’re thinking of his hands everywhere.

his longs fingers wrapped around your throat. snug around your waist, tight on your hips. deep inside you. you’re thinking about it, a lot.

the wonderful contrast of cherry red flush on his cheeks, down his neck, down his heaving chest. the heat of his breath on your lips, crazed, feverish, delirious. wide smile, all teeth, as he puts his fingers on his tongue and sucks. baby blues rolling back, away from the conscious world and into something he keeps on a tight, tight leash. he’s so beautiful when he gets like this. you want him.

you’re thinking about it so much, these days. you’re thinking about him.

you’re thinking today might be the boiling point.

you’re thinking satoru looks way too good in this outfit… and his hand is just so much bigger than yours.

your workday ended with a text from your beloved, urging you to hurry home, because he had a lil’ surprise for you. knowing satoru, you were fully expecting to find him laying on the bed naked and oiled up, but the sight you were greeted with when you arrived home was very different — though no less delectable.

the "surprise" itself: satoru in the kitchen, preparing dinner for you. he turned to face you when the door closed softly.

and while this might seem strange to anyone — anyone except you — when paired with his text telling you to hurry, you knew exactly where his intentions lied. you’ve been experiencing him long enough.

he wanted to seduce you. and fuck him, it worked.

not like you needed much help there: you’ve been thinking about jumping his bones, among other things, twenty-four seven, for days. you’re wrapped around his finger. head over heels. thoroughly whipped.

but to be fair, who could blame you?

briefly, you pondered. how wonderful it is, you thought, to have this man taking care you after a long day. how wonderful it is, to be loved by such a cosmic being. to come home and find the house clean. to come home and smell dinner cooking.

you pondered — but not for long. something else drew your attention away from his loving acts of service.

black slacks stretched around his toned legs, glorious ass on full display — you could have bitten him right there. his pristine white shirt was tight on his torso, showing off his rippling muscles as he expertly chopped vegetables. his sleeves — struggling to keep his biceps in check, it almost seemed — were rolled up to his elbows. displaying his hands and forearms perfectly. damn him.

to top it all off: an apron tight around his slim waist. picture perfect househusband.

he looked good. good enough to eat.

and you could tell he thought the same of you in your tailored suit. you saw his eyes darken from all the way across the room.

this was all part of his plan, of course.

he smiled. washed his hands, didn’t wipe away the droplets. he raked his eyes all over you, dark, wanting.

“hi, baby,” he purred.

you took off your shoes hastily, hurried to his side, pushed him against the counter and pushed your lips against his…

…to end up here, dress shirt wide open, tongue down his throat, arms pinned to the kitchen island by his large, large hands. his poor apron forgotten across the room.

there isn’t an inch of free space between the two of you — satoru simply refuses to let you drift away. you can feel his impatience all over him, little whines escaping his lips that you drink eagerly, narrow hips pressed to the furniture as if to give himself relief. you won’t have it, you refuse. his relief will be you or nothing.

“how was your day, satoru?” you smile against him.

he returns it, body shivering at his name falling from your lips. his hot mouth trails down to your shoulder, to leave no part of you untouched, untasted. “missed you,” he whispers with a push of his hips against you.

“hm, is that it?”

a hand leaves yours to flatten on your belly — he pushes you down easily and takes his rightful place, right on top of you. white hair tickles your skin as he makes his way back up until… “yeah,” he grins, eyes so dark you can barely breathe. his smile is all teeth. “that’s it.”

without your permission your thighs move to rub against one another. it doesn’t escape him. you try to turn your head away, to flee from his teasing. he follows. he always does.

“look at me, pretty,” he bites into your neck. “you want something from me?”

you do — you want his fingers knuckles deep inside you. and the absolute best part is, you know how bad he wants it, too, to see you come undone with his touch. you see it, you feel it in his every move. the need.

you feel it in the tight grip his hand has on your own, on your waist to keep you pressed against the marble. in the very, very slight tremor of his thighs close to yours, kept tightly under his control. in the tensing, untensing of his every muscle — restraint he’s giving his all to maintain. in the glorious pink of his cheeks, the sweat already accumulating on his flawless skin. he wants it. he wants you to ask for it.

but your satoru’s been quite spoiled lately. he’s gotten used to getting his way every time, little prince. it wouldn’t hurt him to work for it. you want to make him work for it.

you don’t answer him. instead, you keep him busy with your tongue tracing his lips, one hand trailing your nails down the soft hair of his undercut — earning you another full body shiver — while with the other you unbuckle your belt on your own.

it’s easy, after that, to shove your hand under your panties. satoru pushes himself off you, to better watch.

you make a show of it, just for him. making sure to really coat your fingers with your slick. two tight circles on your clit aren’t enough to relieve the pressure, but you trust him to come around and take care of it — he’s so good at taking care of you. you throw your head back with a soft whine, arch yourself into him, and in the hot air you share with him your hand comes back up, fingers glistening.

he looks jealous. already, he’s moving — moving to take your hand in his and taste — but you won’t have it. before he can do anything about it, you pop your fingers into your mouth, sucking yourself off them.

satoru’s eyebrows knit briefly, but his smile widens. his breaths are reduced to pathetic, shallow pants. if you push him a little more, will you get him drooling, tongue hanging out like a puppy? you bet you could. but today isn’t the day to find out. you want his fucking fingers.

he doesn’t let you think about it any longer. “can i?” he rasps, leaning down. his tongue runs over his teeth.

you don’t think about it. you nod your head, and he dives.

licking into your mouth desperately, moaning like he's having the time of his life. it’s so easy to meet him halfway, to suck his tongue in your mouth, to swallow all his little whimpers — so good, baby, fuck — you want it all, so you take it all.

he only stops to rest against your mouth and whine, “you taste so good, i wish you could eat yourself out.”

he catches you completely off guard. you have no answer to that, so brilliantly, you say, “huh?”

he noses at your cheek and explains, “i want to eat your cum straight from your mouth.”

and that’s enough of that — you’ve run out of patience. you think you’ve wrecked him enough, in any case, to hear such things spewing out of his mouth. you feel him throbbing. you are, too.

“can’t have that, angel,” you pant against him. “but you can make me cum.”

you can feel his smile. “i thought you’d never ask.”

his fingers slide down your body, under your pants, taking the same route yours did. only it’s much harder for him — they’re much bigger.

satoru wastes no time. the stretch is immediate, big finger pushing into you slowly. your hand knitted in his hair tugs him down to you. his moan is even louder than yours.

he stays there for a moment, savoring it, licking at your lips, your neck, the underside of your jaw — moaning like an animal in heat, like he could cry from the relief your hot walls hugging his fingers bring.

cherry red on his cheeks, down his neck and the glimpse of his heaving chest his shirt gives you. hot pants fanning your lips. crazed. feverish. delirious. wide smile, canines glimmering in the light. oh, you’ve been waiting for this. you want more of him, you need more of him. your hands move against your will, almost tearing open his clothing. a huff of laughter warms your cheek.

but your love is as impatient as you.

a second finger pumps into you, slow and steady. you mewl, and with your encouragement satoru rises on his elbow to increase the pace.

“feel good, sweetheart?” he pants.

you couldn’t keep quiet if you tried.

“yeah,” you smile. “i feel fucking good.”

then you sink your teeth straight into his neck and delight at the wild buck of his hips, the sinful cry he gifts you.

his entire body moves with him. his hips grind into you, shameless, desperate, following his hand’s movement — and so does his tongue, fucking into your mouth like he wants you everywhere, wants to be inside you everywhere, wants to bury himself into you. drool drops down his chin. you drink it.

every beautiful sound that comes from him, every whimper, every harsh breath, every high-pitched moan is rewarded with a soft murmur of yours — so good, angel, so good for me, so good! his pace increases, his bicep is bulging, his back tenses, his eyes cross, he’s so close, you’ve got him right where you want him.

the pressure in your lower belly grows stronger with every expert stroke. he touches everywhere, a tender caress pumped into you by the strengths of his arm and pelvis together. mimicked perfectly by his tongue tugging at your lips, stroking your own, invading your mouth. you feel it grow, grow, until—

you come undone right there on his hand, in your pants, with a loud cry of his name, digging his nails into his shoulders — in retaliation, and partly to stave of his own orgasm, you’re sure of it, his bites the soft flesh of your neck, a wail dying in the back of his throat.

you come down together, chests rising and falling against one another, hot breaths warming the air around you. he’s still throbbing against your thighs, fingers slowed to shallow thrusting, as if he couldn’t bear to let the moment end just yet. you force him to still by smothering his hand with your thighs.

satoru makes his way back to your lips, leaving behind a trail of wet kisses and a singular bite on your cheek, one you answer with a giggle.

“that was a good one, baby,” he says against your mouth. “how many more can i give you?”

“depends. how many more can you take?”

he doesn’t answer. instead, he smiles. his hand resurfaces from your underwear, soaked, glistening. he takes a moment to rub his fingers together, admire the slick, the feel of it all over his skin. you take the time he gives you to admire him.

he’s so beautiful, when he gets like this.

his hand rises, heading for his face. your gut clenches, thighs rubbing together in anticipation, a deep breath filling your lungs—

his tongue lolls out and his soaked fingers come to take their rightful place right onto it. his lips close around his hand. his cheeks hollow as he sucks.

baby blues rolling to the back of his head, satoru trembles, wracked with a full body shudder and a moan so sinfully loud you swear it echoes against the walls. his throbbing cock rubs on your thigh.

he allows himself one, two, three finger-deep thrusts into his mouth, practically fucking himself, gagging on his own hand, putting on the most wonderful show for you. just to make sure there’s not a droplet left.

then his fingers leave his mouth with a loud pop! and he looks back down at you. crazed. feverish. delirious. eyes so dark you can barely breathe.

looking good enough to eat.

later on, after a lot more cum from both parties and a well-deserved bath, you rush into the kitchen, praying your apartment isn’t about to burn down. satoru was, after all, supposed to be making you dinner.

when you lean over the countertops, you find that the stove was never on.

LOVERSMANTRA © 2024, all rights reserved. do not translate, crosspost, or copy. steal my work and i'll steal your kneecaps. bitch.

[imagine-shenanigans]

sighs dramatically.

Okay but the ghost distribution system as we call it is hysterical but can we tlak about how None Of The 141 are built to date.

Like, sure, Gaz is great at flirting, and he's charming, but DATES? He's the type who asks you on a date because he thinks youre pretty/handsome/adorable/etc but by the time the two of you actually go on a date he's ready figured out like. the whole rest of your lives together. He's already imagined up 20 different scenarios of different dates, stalked your front-facing social media and found your secret or hidden accounts that theoretically don't link back to you. Sure, he's scrounged through your discord servers and your private messages and texts and a thousand other things while he was bored on leave. He knows enough to know that he's happy with what comes next. All dates are simply... ritual at this point? Something obligational, other than the fact he gets to spend time with you.

You're not going anywhere, he's just the least heavy handed of them, the one who'll let you think its your choice to keep him around until he's got his ring officially on your finger. Life won't go according to plan but he's prepared for that too. In his head, you're already married anyway, he's just working his way up to that part. He'll manufacture any scenario to keep you with him, because he wants you to be. And he'll make sure you want to be too.

Soap on the other hand is WAY less tactful about it. He's charming, and he'll take you on dates, sure, but the moment he spots you it's incredibly easy to get obsessed. He immediately drops an arm around you, purring in your ear and talking to you. Doesn't ask you on a date so much as demands it, puts his number in your phone and presses a kiss to your temple, his fingertips squeezing your chin before you leave. God forbid you let him into your home - he'll never leave if you do. Johnny's SUCH a physical guy that while, yes, personality matters, it seals the deal for him the moment he's got his tongue down your throat and his fingers in your pants. Something about the way you settle in against him makes him feel like he's home, and you will never get rid of him.

He's willing to take you on dates if you need more proof, but he won't even pretend like he doesnt already have a copy of your key. Like he's not telling the guys about the bonnie little thing he's going home to - he slips into your apartment/house/etc and into your bed without changing, barely finding time to slip his boots off. Presses one hand to your mouth and just... holds you. He'll fuck you within an inch of your life later when you're less panicked, sure, but he just wants to press his nose to your neck and breathe you in. If his hips rut against your ass, ignore it for now. (Haha... unless? No? okay in a minute then)

Price is just as manipulative as Gaz can be, just as charming as Soap and Gaz too. But he just... doesn't care, just like Simon. There's a reason so many people have Price with like... mail order bride or a "one day you look up and hes your husband" scenario and thats because he's good at what he does. And by that I mean being a husband and pumping you full of kids whether or not its physically possible. (Btw check out Ceil's mail order bride western au its good shit, or Bo's Kingpin Price drabbles, makes me lose it every time.)

He sees you walking about and the MOMENT you do anything remotely domestic - pick up a neice/nephew/babysitting kid/etc and put em on your hip? Rock hard. play peekaboo with a baby across from you at a cafe? pick up after yourself just to be polite to the waitress? he's already stalking you on multiple platforms theres no goddamn way youre getting away from him. He'll figure out where you go in your free time and insert himself there as naturally as possible. He's not particularly hiding what he's doing either - he likes to test you, to see if you notice things missing or moved. If you do, he'll be a little more cautious, use it as reason to drive you into hsi arms. If you don't he jsut views it as all the more reason to take you away - poor thing, you just can't help yourself can you? You're lucky nobody else has got their claws around you, hm?

[tobi-smp]

you know, with hindsight now what it is I really do think a more literal reading of c!techno's chat would have helped his characterization a Lot

and mind you, this was originally intended to be the case, and very well may have been intended all along even if it wasn't usually emphasized within the lore

and don't get me wrong, I Get why it fell out of favor within the fandom. it coincides with a Very storied ableist trope that demonizes DID and disorders adjacent to it, and Can be spoken about in a way that is essentially indistinguishable from it depending on the word choice.

but the thing is ! not only does it not Have to be an allegory for DID, I straight up don't think it is At All.

because we Know what it's an allegory for. It's His Chat. there's technoblade playing the game, and there's the thousands of people watching with expectations and wants that he's compelled to meet (or, at the very least, pacify through Entertainment).

and this makes much Much more sense when conceived of as Supernatural. be that spirits, gods, demons, or anything that could fill that role. separate entities that, for whatever reason, only techno can sense the presence of and be affected by.

and of course, to an extent this is true for all creators. everyone had an audience that they were meant to entertain and the choices they made were influenced by that fact.

but technoblade came in with a Very distinct set of expectations that heavily impacted the choices he was Expected to make and the kinds of stories that he could tell. he was more or less a living legend in real life just as much as he was in roleplay, and these things were inherently connected.

and it's like !

when c!technoblade says he was peer pressured into killing tubbo at the red festival he Is technically talking about what happened within the roleplay. schlatt was demanding it from him, there's a sort of pressure there. but schlatt was also the dictator they were set to kill, and techno has never had any trouble fighting people he considered a dictator before, and certainly not Schlatt of all people.

but he WAS being peer pressured By His Audience. by thousands of people, most of which were demanding blood Because It Was The Expectation, because it'd be Fun.

out of universe technoblade made the decision he thought would be the most Entertaining, and he was right! consistently he made choices that would let him do the most bombastic Spectacles possible. And It's Great. he's Excellent at pulling dramatics and making a compelling scene that give other people room to work off of. in that sense I'd consider techno an Excellent actor, and I have to imagine that he was fun to work with.

the problem is when you then have to justify it from an in character perspective, grounded in those mushy things like Feelings with characters that can be traumatized and sustain lasting damage, Especially Without acknowledging the out of character incentive.

mind you, it's not Impossible to Create a backstory that could justify it. why a character as consistently powerful and feared as technoblade would feel pressured to kill an ally by someone he not only Can kill but Wanted To Kill. why a character as seemingly secure and in control as technoblade would lash out the way that he does to perceived betrayal, and yet consistently puts no weight onto having killed and permanently scarred an ally that trusted him.

what that'd need is tragedy. a storied history of being hurt and having to survive. building up To an untouchable god from a much much more vulnerable position. Long Lasting trauma that's lead to this deep insecurity and paranoia. and that's Possible and that's Compelling.

but it's just not in the text.

not only did we never learn basically Anything that c!technoblade was up to pre-series, we actually know Less by the end than when we started because of the sbi retconning.

it's a Theoretically Possible interpretation that's technically never Contradicted by canon, but would have to be created by scratch. it's a compelling idea for a fan fic (and one I'd like to read) and it's compelling for a theoretical recontextualization of the character, but it's just not In The Text.

meanwhile, we have the video above.

we have the Objective Fact that technoblade's decision making was often subject to the rule of cool (very Very effectively) to entertain his audience.

and most compellingly, these concepts Don't Need To Be Separate. in fact, in my opinion they're Stronger when you put them together.

because the thing is. it's Difficult to imagine techno as ever being in a vulnerable position. he is just Objectively more powerful than everyone else on the server, both in real life And within the lore. How could he have ever been afraid when he was stronger than anyone and everyone combined? when we saw with our own eyes that techno could face nearly the whole server at once and win.

but he Is a tragic character, at least he's meant to be. and that tragedy makes much Much more sense as something Inward.

technoblade as a character who Needs connection, who Needs stability, who Needs security, who Needs friendship and community and Love. but Lashes Out, Obliterates to the core of the earth, because of something that's not only out of his control but that other people Cannot Understand.

how do you explain to a child that you killed their best friend because a chorus of the undead called for his blood and you (in all the glory that he'd idolized) were unable to do anything but comply? how do you explain to that child that you beat him senseless in a pit as the restless dead jeered and laughed?

That's interesting. That's Compelling.

technoblade is idolized like a god, feared like a force of nature, and in an instant cut himself off from nearly everyone who'd considered him an ally. and that seems to be a pattern, over and over and over again. he's left isolated, and in return he faces retaliation, and in return he's always Waiting for retaliation.

and what do you say to someone who wants to kill you for being a monster? that it's Fine Actually because you only did what you did because you have a curse that compels you to? that the supernatural guided you to destroy their homes and kill their people? (rip jack manifold you will be missed)?

That Doesn't Quite Help Your Case.

technoblade as someone who is beholden to this literal cycle of violence and Loses those things that could ground him, community, stability, People, as a result. who Tries to overcome this very fact (to become a better person, in his own words as per the clip above), but is pulled back into it as a consequence of his own actions.

that's a tragedy !! that Makes Sense. that allows him to be Both this force of nature that other characters have to survive And A Person Who Is Hurt By The Same Conflict.

"I'm a person!" that fear of dehumanization makes So So Much More Sense when you see technoblade as someone who Already fears himself. who fears being a monster, who fears losing control, who has faced isolation again and again and again.

and, importantly, it doesn't have to be anyone else's Fault.

by making the source both Internal and Completely External (something that none of the other characters have any awareness or control over), you can Have techno as a tragic character without demonizing anyone else Or erasing the impact that c!techno had on them.

and in that sense, it Can be an allegory for mental illness, but not in that direct "oooooh how scary he hears voices" kind of way that people fear it looks. but in that sometimes people Will do things that can hurt others while not feeling in control. anger and mania and paranoia, things that you can't always Control and yet that impact that you have on other people still Matters.

and the answer to that is, often, vulnerability and accountability.

I think a lot about technoblade isolating himself so near entirely from the rest of the server, and slowly gathering a support system Back by the end. and I Really Do think that framing of it through this lens is a Very impactful way of breaking it down.

tubbo, tommy, wilbur, ranboo, niki, I think they'd All understand not feeling in control. lashing out, maybe even feeling justified in the moment, but hurting people they care about and furthering their own isolation.

There's Something There, and it's already In The Text. it just needs to be expanded on.

and why not do that ourselves now?

[sexhaver]

What makes Jeweled Bird so bad?

first, some context: wayyyyy back in the stone ages when dinosaurs walked the earth and MTG first released, it was envisioned as less of a serious competitive card game people would explicitly try to minmax and more of a fun little diversion for your D&D group to play while you wait for Jared to get off his shift so you can actually start your campaign. this explains a lot of design choices that seem backasswards 30 years later. for instance, yes, Richard Garfield knew Black Lotus was unbelievably busted, but figured it was fine to print since it's not like people would do anything crazy like buy up hundreds of packs/hunt down singles on a secondary marketplace and play the game competitively for cash prizes.

one of the wackiest outcomes of this design philosophy was the concept of "playing for ante", an optional game mode/modifier where each player would begin the game by putting the top card of their library directly into "the ante", a pile of cards off to the side. whoever won the game won permanent, real-life ownership of all cards in the ante. basically "playing for keeps" but in a TCG instead of with Pogs or those weird tiny cardboard Beyblade tops that came in chip bags.

as you might guess from just reading that description, it was pretty wildly unpopular with most of the playerbase at the time and only got less popular as time went on. people didn't want to risk losing their cards, especially once the game became established and some of those cards were worth, like, actual amounts of money. and then there was the variance - it was entirely possible for you to ante up your only copy of an expensive card (meaning you were even less likely to win because now you can't draw it) while your opponent anted a basic land.

partially due to this, but mostly due to WOTC lawyers learning about the concept of "gambling laws" and WOTC PR learning about the optics of getting children into gambling, ante was officially removed from all sanctioned MTG tournaments very early into the game's lifespan (in fact i think this might have been enshrined into law before the actual first official tournament) and mostly memoryholed from the comprehensive rules, outside of section 407, which leads with this literal legal disclaimer:

there were 9 cards printed before this that explicitly reference "the ante" and do something unique to the cards in it. all of these cards have been errata'd to include the rules text "remove this card from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante" and banned from LITERALLY ALL SANCTIONED FORMATS, including Vintage, the format whose entire appeal is "we never ban anything" (laughs in Lurrus).

okay so with the context out of the way we can start getting into why Jeweled Bird specifically is A Bad Card

first, the obvious: it's an ante card, which means you can't play it unless you're playing for ante, and if you ask anyone at your LGS to play for ante they will try to surreptitiously call the nearest retirement home to report an escapee from their memory care unit. so right off the bat it's quite literally unplayable as an MTG card (ante doesn't even work right in cube drafts, usually the last solace of jank-ass mechanics), which is not a great start.

now that we've established that ante cards are bad because they're effectively banned everywhere, let's assume we're living in some bizarro land where you've managed to convince a handful of friends to play in your personal MTG tournament bracket that allows ante. even then, all but one (don't worry we'll get to that one in a second) of the banned "ante cards" are just. unplayably bad. like absolute dogshit.

ok actually you know what i hadn't looked over all the ante cards in a while before typing up this post and now that i have i think Jeweled Bird is arguably the third or fourth best one out of the lot, and it's STILL unplayably bad in a modern context. it's effectively 1 colorless mana to draw a card, which is theoretically decent in some colors nowadays if you squint but would have actually been notably good back in its heyday. it actually gets pretty close to what WOTC was trying to go for with most of these ante card designs: you get a powerful effect (card draw for 1 colorless mana in an era when even blue had to jump through hoops for a rate that good outside of Ancestral Recall), but at the cost of adding something to the ante, but since the effect is so powerful, you should ideally be able to win the game off of it and completely negate the downside of adding your stuff to the ante.

you know what, fuck it, let's just go through the other ante cards from worst to best:

this card looks absolutely batshit until you get to the last sentence and realize it's effectively 6 mana to force your opponent to ante a card. if you spend 6 mana doing effectively nothing, you are not winning the game or that ante

this one is this low because in 99% of circumstances it's 10 mana over two turns to burn your opponent for 10. however, it takes the edge over Amulet of Quoz because 1. it just bypasses the ante zone entirely to literally steal the card directly, outcome of the game be damned 2. if your opponent has 9 or less life, they have to either let you steal their card or concede on the spot (which means they lose their ante) and 3. if i'm reading this ruling correctly you can set up the 9-or-less-life scenario with a TOKEN COPY of Bronze Tablet and give them a literal bar napkin with a doodle on it in exchange for their judge promo foil Elesh Norn:

so for 6 mana, you can heal yourself back to full at the cost of anteing an additional card. if that was all this card did, it would still be pretty bad, but the icing on this shitcake is that your opponent can just. also do that. but without spending their entire turn to cast a 6 mana spell. so now you're both on equal footing lifewise, but they have their entire turn to gain tempo advantage after you spent your turn healing them. and you gave them another one of your cards once you inevitably lose because of this. i guess theoretically you could run it in a super heavy control deck that aims to win via mill as a safety valve against aggro? idk man

this card effectively does nothing, but doing nothing for 3 mana is still an improvement over "doing nothing for 6 mana", "doing 10 damage for 10 mana over two turns", and "helping your opponent for 6 mana". i guess if you're really confident that your deck can win anyways (perhaps because of another card on this list) you could use this to force your opponent to ante another card for you to win? mostly this one is this high up here because "if the opponent doesn't concede the game immediately" is the funniest possible opening to a MTG card's rules text. like that's always true. you could add that to quite literally every card ever printed and it would change nothing other than making the game way funnier

okay so this is a three mana 1/1 with an ability that costs three MORE mana to activate that effectively just makes your opponent ante a card. i know it looks like it destroys and then literally steals an artifact, which would actually be a pretty good effect since it impacts the board (something none, but the entire thing is countered by anteing a card so that's what's gonna happen every time. at least this one can chump block

okay now we're starting to get into cards that at least make you think a little bit before deciding they suck (Jeweled Bird would go around here)

this scores higher than Timmerian Fiends for several reasons. obviously, a 4 mana 3/3 is a much better rate than a 3 mana 1/1, and the sac ability being free (other than a tap) makes it a lot more usable. the effect is even debateably good in red specifically: either it "draws" (literally legally steals irl) you a card, or it does 10 burn to the opponent's face. however, it does lose points due to the part where you, uh, have to give it away after using it once, win or lose. basically this is like Bronze Tablet but 6 mana cheaper and on a body that can actually theoretically do something. also lol at the "or conceding game" clause like Demonic Attorney, i really want to start seeing that wording on every card ever printed

now this might seem similar to Demonic Attorney at first glance, but the Oracle text makes it make more sense: "You own target card in the ante. Exchange that card with the top card of your library." notably, like Efreet and Tablet, this swap in ownership happens regardless of the outcome of the game, and unlike those two cards, you don't have to trade Darkpact itself for the card you're stealing. stealing your opponent's card out of the ante does mean that now both of the cards in there belong to you, meaning you have twice as much to lose, but hey, you just stole (and got to draw and cast, lol) your opponent's shit. "do what you must, i have already won" type beat

as powerful as Darkpact is, it's still only the second best ante card, and it is not even in the same zip code as the first best. ever heard of a little card named Ancestral Recall? draws 3 cards for one mana? and that's such a busted effect you're only allowed to legally run one copy in the one format it isn't explicitly banned in?

hahahahahahahahahaha holy shit sorry every time i remember this card i cackle at it a bit. what do you MEAN "discard your hand and draw 7 for 1 mana"?? discarding is an UPSIDE these days! people have unironically run One With Nothing, which is this card except for all the words after "discard your current hand". that "add the first drawn to the ante" bit might as well be flavor text because if you manage to lose after casting this then your deck was never even theoretically capable of winning in the first place. jesus christ.

[physalian]

Fanfiction is valid form of literature and deserves respect because:

Corporate meddling often takes long-running series and runs them into the ground to squeegee out as much money as possible, ruining characters, relationships, lore, and magic systems that fix-it fics repair

Just because it is provided for free and by unpaid writers who slave away tens of hours of their lives trying to entertain people, doesn’t make the content that can come from it any less powerful

Fanfic is the place to go for under-represented themes, tropes, and characters in the outdated or unwilling canon

Fanfic is the place to go for fixing problematic plot decisions and characterizations that did not age well

Fanfic is the place to go when the real author becomes a TERF feminazi and the poster child of “death of the author”

Many fics are longer than published works and can do that because they’re entirely digital, bound to no printing limitations, and update per-chapter, as opposed to per-novel, often written without and endpoint in mind

Fanfic is a safe space to explore identities that the canon pretends doesn’t exist, like queer characters and non-monogamous relationships, as well as (theoretically) a safe space to share and explore kinks and have your very own Gay Awakening

Fanfic is bound to no rules of the publishing industry and explores new ways of written works like chat/text fics and drabbles and unconventional forms of narrative layout

Fanfic is also not written by committe or dictated by editors and publishing houses telling you what you can and can't include in your story

Fanfic is a springboard for many original authors

It’s a celebration of canonical works and should be welcomed by all creators of those works, not panned and litigated against when, again, it’s free and earns its writers no money

Fanfic, by its repetitive and familiar nature of throwing known characters and elements into a new situation is less intimidating than an entire bookstore of uncertainty, and still encourages people to read when they otherwise might not

Fanfic’s approachability is helpful to people with neurodivergence, as comforting to fic readers as bargain bin bad movies are to everyone else, or watching reruns of the same 90s sitcom that might not be any better written

Fanfic fosters a community of like-minded people that you might not otherwise find due to geographical location, social status, economic status, or for people who are unable to enter physical public spaces due to disability or anxieties

Big books are expensive and heavy and demand investment when a bad or boring fic does not, and there’s plenty else to fill the fanfic void where a bad book just makes you feel duped for buying it

It’s no more toxic a community than any other hyper-insulated realm of fandom like professional sports, toy/comic book/action figure collecting, LARPing/D&D, or videogaming, and has this reputation because it’s predominantly enjoyed by women and young girls (the terrible scourge that we are)

[buckets-of-dirt]

(ID: A screenshot of tags that read "#Prev what are some alternatives to the word primitive that are less derogatory" /end ID.)

@panicdeleter I'm responding to your question on a new post so that the op of the original doesn't get this in their notes because answering in good faith is going to take a lot of explanation.

Short answer: there isn't one.

Long answer: as you say in your tags, "primitive" is a derogatory term with a very loaded meaning. Removing it from your vocabulary is less a matter of finding a more PC alternative, and more a matter of understanding why it's derogatory and changing your perception of what's being discussed. To do that, we're going to have to look at archaeological theory for a minute. Stick with me, I do have suggestions at the end.

Archaeological theory is a complicated subject and there's no way I'm going to try to summarize all of it in a Tumblr post since it's a topic arch programs devote at least a semester (if not longer) to. So we'll focus on the relevant bits.

Essentially, in the bad old days when archaeology was starting to become a discipline instead of a thing rich dudes did on the weekends, there was this idea that certain European societies were the peak of civilization and everywhere else was less evolved and therefore primitive. It was based on the misunderstanding of the theory of evolution that was common at the time. Like so:

(ID: a diagram drawn in pen. It's titled "Ye Olde Arch/Anth Theory TM". The next line says "Primitive = simple, less evolved, bad". Below it there is a vertical arrow pointing down, with the words "one way line" next to it. Under the arrow there is a line of text reading "Advanced = complex, most evolved, good". /end ID.)

These early archaeologists believed that all of humanity lived on a hierarchy with the "advanced" societies they lived in (and their ancestors like Ancient Greece) at the top and all the "primitive" past and current societies (destined to either become like them or die out eventually) at the bottom.

It's been a long road for archaeological theory. The 20th century was fraught with theoretical movements and debates that sometimes literally devolved into fistfights. But eventually we all ended up more or less here:

(ID: A hand drawn diagram in a similar format to the one above. It's titled "Arch Theory Today (Short Version). Below the title there is a single line of text centred around a horizontal line with arrows at both ends. The left side of the arrow reads "simple" while the right side reads "complex". The line itself is labeled "continuum or spectrum". /end ID.)

While you'll still find some archaeologists who disagree, the main consensus appears to at least be on the same page that instead of the old primitive vs advanced hierarchy, societies exist on a spectrum that ranges in complexity. In the most basic terms, because I'm glossing over A LOT of nuance here, hunter gatherer societies tend towards the simple end of the spectrum while big state societies are on the more complex end. This is not meant as a value judgement of these societies, but merely an attempt to classify them so other people have a frame of reference for what you're talking about. Even so, there's considerable debate about the language used for certain terms and societies, and I am not necessarily qualified to go into that in this post.

I say all that to help you understand why I can't give you a catch-all term to replace "primitive", because if one did exist it would be just as derogatory. In certain contexts there may be more appropriate words that you can use, such as simple (as in the case of the meme that inspired this post) or old. But a lot of the time an alternative just doesn't exist because we are not better or 'more evolved' than our ancestors any more than people living in big state societies are any better than people still living as hunter gatherers.

I know this has been a very long post, but I really am just scratching the surface here. For more information I suggest looking at podcasts like The Dirt or A Life In Ruins, youtube channels like The Welsh Viking or Archaeology Tube, or the blogs of any of my fellow dirt lovers here on Tumblr like @chaotic-archaeologist, @micewithknives, @art-thropologist, @archaeologistproblems, and @rhysintherain to name just a few. Archaeologists are generally a bunch of nerds who will take any opportunity they can to talk about the human past, and we rarely bite.

[kyomint]

Theory: Stolas' trial

I'm going to put my theories about what will happen in Mastermind/Sinsmas in order.

At the beginning of each episode, we have a content warning. In it, we can hear a "ticking", very similar to the noise of the hands of a clock. This ticking starts in the episode "Truth Seekers" and recently some people have pointed out how the sound has decreased over the episodes. In the beginning it played during the entire warning, in "The Full Moon", it stops halfway through the warning.

Another interesting detail that we can notice in the warning is the symbol that appears in the background. This symbol is known as "Devil's Trap" and originally appears in "Solomon's Clavicle" (no, it's not from Supernatural), a grimoire with a vast collection of ancient spells, with the Devil's Trap being a spell used to immobilize and control demons.

In the LVL UP trailer, we see scenes of what appears to be a meeting between the 7 Deadly Sins and the Ars Goetia. We can assume from Vassago's lines, "Where is Stolas, anyway? We have to summon him at once" that the meeting's agenda is something that Stolas is responsible for and given Vassago's stress and Andrealphus' interference, things are ugly for him.

From the trailer it is also possible to deduce that Stolas will lose his powers at some point since in the scenes below, we see that he is completely defenseless against Andrealphus, who theoretically should be less powerful, since in the hierarchy of Ars Goetia Stolas occupies position 36, while Andrealphus occupies position 65.

Okay, but what does the ticking have to do with the meeting and Stolas' powers? Simple, the ticking of the clock is marking the time until the trial of Stolas and the I.M.P.

I believe the meeting will aim to discuss Stolas' actions and whether or not he should be tried for allowing I.M.P. to use his grimoire to gain illegal access to the human world.

Thanks to the group's carelessness in episode 6, the D.H.O.R.K.S. were able to obtain irrefutable proof of the existence of demons, which led the human government to finance the activities of the organization, which in a short time was able to discover a way to access hell.

Even if the D.H.O.R.K.S. aren't a threat at the moment, it's only a matter of time before they figure out a way to actually open a portal and then, yes, hell will have something to worry about.

Andrealphus and Stella, knowing about the affair between Stolas and Blitz, will take advantage of the situation to formally accuse him, convincing the Ars Goetia that he and I.M.P. must be judged and held accountable for their actions.

As punishment for breaking the laws of Hell, Stolas loses his titles and has his powers temporarily sealed by the Devil's Trap while he awaits official trial. Meanwhile, Stella and Andrealphus take possession of Stolas' possessions, which now rightfully belong to Stella, as the divorce has not yet been made official.

In the midst of all this, Octavia's custody will also be officially passed on to Stella, who, knowing how much Stolas cares for his daughter, will prevent them from meeting, further damaging their relationship, as we see in the speech "You don't love your mother, and you don't love me, you love HIM".

Anyway, this is what I think will happen in the next episodes, I hope the text wasn't confusing, as English is not my first language. I'm looking forward to seeing how this plot unfolds, and whether or not I got anything right!

[transmutationisms]

i know this is like baby communist stuff but do you have any recommendations on how to approach theory? aside from like marxists dot org

sorry forgot this ask was here. i'm not sure if you mean getting into marxist theory specifically or just, how to approach dense theoretical texts that are often unwelcoming to new readers.

regarding marxism, i personally get a lot out of michael heinrich's how to read capital every time i revisit it, and his introduction to capital. david harvey also has some useful work, including a companion to marx's capital. harvey also has a lot of problems (see here to start) and tbc i'm not suggesting him or heinrich because i think you should treat them as unassailable authorities. but i find that both of them are useful for glossing and presenting many of marx's ideas in a way that makes it clearer to lay readers how they're formulated and what's at stake. if you've ever opened capital and just been like "these corn laws must be important but i'm not sure i understand why", i think companion guides like heinrich's especially can be really helpful for giving you a foothold and an idea of what to look for, how to evaluate the utility and applicability of the concepts, &c.

in general, getting into theory can definitely be intimidating but i also think it's less scary than people make it look at first. what concepts or problems or people are interesting to you? that's where you should start; you might find that you end up wanting to read the people they were responding to as well, but i think it's a common mistake to psych yourself out by trying to trace every theoretical concept back to its ultimate source (the old "reading plato so i can read kant so i can read hegel so i can read marx so i can..."). if you're baffled by a text, online is your friend; i really recommend the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, and you can poke around their articles' bibliographies. also, if you're reading something and it sucks, hit the bricks. life is short. lastly i think discussing theory is not just fun but also useful, for pushing your own understanding and gaining someone else's insights. so, if you have friends who are into this stuff or access to a reading group or something, i'd take advantage. there are definitely ways to do this online as well, although there is something to be said for buying someone a pint and a pack and having a good argument :-)

[blommp717]

I try to follow what you are saying, but I find your content confusing, and based on some of your repeat asks, I’m not the only one. The way you explain ND could use improvement, in my opinion. Maybe it’s because English isn’t your first language or because your understanding of ND is more theoretical than experiential—it seems like both. This is fine, but have you considered improving your English (or teaching in your mother tongue and paying a professional translation service?) and actually living in the ND state of being (not just reading or watching videos about it) before attempting to teach in a language you seem to struggle with? You could be more successful and less misleading.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding and inaccuracies in your writings, and your pinned post gives the impression that you aren’t the type of person to humbly take advice and cultivate self-awareness. Which in and of itself doesn't really reflect what one would expect from a guru or someone who has reached a profoundly deep nondualistic understanding and wishes to guide others. You seem bothered by critique or questions that you haven't already read the answer to. Maybe you could sincerely cultivate Self-awareness of how you are appearing to people who have genuinely experienced the ND state of being, not just an intellectual understanding, and those who have not. Maybe I’m wrong (I very well could be), but it seems like you read about it but haven’t actually had experiences beyond reading and thinking about it. It feels shallow and without real rooting in experience, not just theoretical knowledge. This is just a humble observation from another seeker on the path, so take it with many grains of salt. May you find equanimity and authentic awakening and be of genuine assistance to others. Peace.

I most definitely think you’re coming from a space of aggression instead of actually trying to inquire firstly, moving forward. I don’t really get how people asking questions is an indicator of me not knowing what I’m really talking about as opposed to people learning to accept how easy it is. Allot of these people come from LOA so they think there’s a process, they think there’s work to do, so having such a drastic shift will obviously not feel easy at first 🤭and secondly I’m baffled about the language comment, I have zero clue what makes you think that kind of stuff is okay to say to anyone, regardless of if it’s true or not, please seek some humanity and get it together. You don’t want to be saying all of that b.s to the wrong person. I reallllyy hope you don’t act like this in person with anyone.

Alright so, to what the actual focus of your text should have been.

If you notice, my pinned post was allot more recent than when I started posting, it was more of a response to someone claiming I’m giving false hope and that explaining the idea of “manifestation” alongside non-duality is wrong. Which I’m literally not, im not sure if your truly following up on what I’ve posted because I make it very very clear since the beginning and almost in every post with a long ask that I. Am. Not. Teaching. You. How. To. Manifest. There’s absolutely no such thing, it might look like it and feel like it but it’s not. I even have a post where the entire thing is me talking about why there’s no such thing as manifestation. And I have zero clue where you got any of that information about who I am as a person from that post alone when all I’m stating is how I’m not going to stop helping people? 😭😭

I think another confusion people who “enter” NonDualism have is they think awakening is real. You told me to reach a state of ND being or the State of ND which I’m not really sure what you mean by that because it doesn’t exist. It’s sadly time to burst the bubble. There is no awakening, if you truly understand nonduality, there is no journey, there’s no goal, there nothing that you can do to achieve enlightenment because it doesn’t exist, these are concepts and ideas self realized to give the “self” and “I” a reason to exist. I perfectly well understand what nonduality at its core is and have hundreds of what I’m sure people would call “succes stories” with it. My old posts have plenty of explaining as to what, just, no duality states regardless of getting what you want. How can there be a journey? There is no self thst has a journey, just ideas and thoughts spinning together in a flurry and naming it “self”. You don’t exist.

And for you, you want to understand no duality? I’m going to try not to be cryptic but here we go. You can’t and neither can I , no one can understand and seek, you’re not a seeker and there is no path, this is the truth. And no one can have a journey because there is no identity in any of this, there is no self as a person, there is no “me” on a “path”, there is no “one” here who understands anything. It’s all self actualizing thoughts making it seem like there is a journey, the “I” or what people call ego, needs purpose to exist. It feels like a threat when everything is dissolved. The idea that there is more to do, will be true for as long as you pretend it is. And without the false idea of a journey this “self”or “me” loses its purpose. It can be “hard” to accept but truly it doesn’t matter because the nature of existence will not change. Think about it why does the idea of something higher, a bigger step, some grand moment seem so enticing? And for who does it seem so enticing for? The false identity, the “me” the “self”. It’s just another story. You might sit and be, it may lead you deeper into sensations in the body and most likely a “profound” sense of understanding, but quite honestly if your looking for a tiny spark of magic to keep you going on and thinking there’s even more and even more to experience, it would be absolutely useless.

You are already all, whats there to find

Understanding nonduslity is realizing, how can any of this be more grand if there is only one, how can more be achieve if there is a constant state of nonduality? How can the illusion reach a higher state… the higher state is also just illusory, the self, body and world is just illusory. You as everything are pretending to be a person pretending a self and pretending that this person is also self and needs to understand and reach more profound states of being.

This is how “manifestation” is possible. There is no one and nothing “happening” all there appears to be is what you appear as, it’s hollow, almost like a projection. This can’t be turned off, you appear as all there is and as long as the body is here thoughts will appear, ideas will appear, visualizations will appear, you take it as just thinking or talking to yourself or daydreaming or predicting what might happen next, but that’s all what “manifesting” is. In every timeless moment (instant is not fast enough so I say timeless) stories are realized, you take it effortlessly as how your life is. Simple things like how you expect your parents to respond to you not picking up their phone, or what kind of day at your gonna have at school to literally everything, it’s constant, it’s everything, it’s always “on”. Your luck, the compliments you receive, how things work or don’t work out for you, all of it. This is not just life as it is but the entire “manifestation” it’s an experience of what “it” (you) appears as. And if all is what you are and the appearance relies on the perception of the appearance, then perceiving any type of story like, having brown eyes but you want blue. Okay, “I have blue eyes” this is not an affirmation, this is a truth, this is what “ “ (you) now appear as, timelessly, and needing proof or evidence is useless as it puts the attention back at “has it changed it”. If you understand its all you, you also know needing evidence or proof is truly completely useless. “But I checked the mirror and my eyes are still brown” with what understanding did you move to the mirror with. An expectancy of brown eyes? Hmm.

Well I think this is getting long winded, I’m not gonna make this even longer than it is, hopefully you find some clarity in this and I strongly urge you, before making random comments or being just rude, ask yourself with what state of mind am I moving forward. Do I really need to say it this way? Because truly, I’ll remain here doing what I do, I’m incredibly grateful that I can be able to help so many people so it brings me a sense of joy (though unreal 🤭). But I hope you understand there is a proper way to question and criticize, and well, your claims feel like they were based off reading 2 posts and calling it a day 😭😭. Anyways I actually will thank you regardless, I’m sure many people can learn from what you’ve initiated me to explain, have a great life, I hope to see you come again in future posts 🫶🫀🪷🪷☀️

[izzyspussy]

anyway. from my experience with people grudgingly, hopelessly meeting the expectations put on them regardless of if those expectations were 'low' or 'high' or how much of a burden and/or painful confinement filling that role was for them - and in fact my experience with BEING one of those people (in both directions), and with plentiful support from the text before it became wall spaghetti...

i think mickey would get a lot of fulfillment from being expected to take care of someone, be a primary member of someone's support system, to know and understand and anticipate (within reason) someone else's needs, to be relied on and trusted.

his life from birth has come with the certainty from others - parents, teachers, peers, law enforcement, social workers, neighbors, distant bystanders to whom he's a theoretical or a statistic - that he will be a selfish, deadbeat, low-life criminal dirtbag. he'll be a shitty kid, a shitty student, a dropout, a criminal. he'll make a shitty fucking lover and a shitty fucking boyfriend and someday a shitty fucking husband and/or shitty father, if he manages to even make it that far. he'll be his own shitty, selfish, deadbeat, low-life criminal dirtbag father's willing lackey for life. he surely can't be that smart, he's naturally violent, and if he wasn't born pre-equipped with his family's signature absence of morals he's guaranteed to absorb it by puberty. expecting any better of him is just a waste of resources.

but then look at his actual character. iirc his literal character introduction is him protecting mandy. that he enacts his care via violence does not change that he is in fact acting with care (and i would argue that if ian actually had done what it's implied mandy accused him of, mickey's reaction would be pretty close to proportional lol).

the very first time his relationship with ian progresses, it's because ian tells mickey he needs him - paired with the fact that mickey refuses when ian just asks to see him, and has textually shown immediate risk to not doing so, but can't resist need. he seems not just jealous about ian's older lovers, but also to feel some type of way about their ages specifically - and eventually vengefully extorts them for it.

he starts beef with sasha when he realizes she's paying svetlana unfairly, and while it can be argued - and is completely understandable - that mickey doesn't give a shit about svetlana personally at this point, this is still a protective/providing act; if svetlana doesn't make enough money, the whole household suffers. personally, i would also argue that this plotline, though it goes very badly and mickey ends up doing worse - in some ways - by those women than sasha, is actually a moment of character development for mickey independent of his relationship to ian; he is attempting, on his own, to form and act upon an internal sense of right and wrong; in my opinion this could have been built on even though this specific instance was not successful. and it's not even in all ways that he's worse than sasha. he has no real obligation to find a solution to the situation he caused, even less so for the women other than his wife, but he does (even though it's a downgrade). and once he's taken that responsibility, he does extend his protective violence to "[his] girls". when somebody hits one of them, he makes a house call to that guy's place and not only kicks the shit out of him, but also tells on him to his wife to a) humiliate him in addition to beating him and b) ensure that he'll have longer lasting consequences than mickey can inflict. but of course all of this was narratively forgotten as soon as it wasn't convenient lol.

(he also looooves to make people dig their holes deeper with him. but that's not strictly on topic, just something that makes me giggle and kick my feet and draw little hearts around his name in my notebook. on the other hand, maybe i'll talk about his performative anger - telegraphed, loud - versus his genuine anger - quiet, calculated, with confidence in his ability to back it up that often makes it look like amusement. some other post.)

he also makes an earnest offer to assist with domestic labor while staying with the gallaghers - and is immediately judged for and dismissed as insincere for not knowing how.

so. while of course there would be the initial panic and defensiveness at the sudden shift, the certainty that he really can't be like that and asking him to is unfair, i think with just a little bit of understanding and encouragement, mickey would actually be not just willing to take on a caretaker type of role but happy to. lowkey flattered to have even been considered a legitimate option, validated by having the related expectations placed on him when he accepts, and fulfilled and rewarded by then actually performing the role. i think it would be hurtful and deeply insulting to him to be 'relieved' of the part on the basis of the belief that he couldn't or wouldn't want to do it. devastating, in fact.

AND! he would be pretty damn good at it, after an adjustment period. even with only low expectations to live down to and/or the only high expectations for him being of the non-caring variety, mickey still found ways to be protective, caring, and a provider that were doable within the context of his environment - whenever he doesn't think it's impossible to succeed.

(and say the shift wasn't really that sudden. say he had someone very important to him gradually increasing their expectations of him over a period of three or four years, someone he was close to who knew him very well, maybe even better than anyone else ever has, telling him every now and then "i know you can do better. i want better from you." just say, for example. like. hypothetically.)

contrast to ian, who has instead been living up to unasked for expectations his whole life. he's expected to help with his younger siblings, to contribute domestically and financially to his household, to hold down a steady job that his family relies on for basic needs as a young teenager. he's so smart, he's so charming, he's so sweet-looking; he's expected to excel academically, to have well-defined and locked-in ambitions for his far future Right Now, to be polite and level-headed and respectable at all times. he's 'so mature for his age' and 'resilient' - i.e. adults rely on him to fulfill their needs, and to not need anything from them in return. frank expects him to be able to take a few hits without being affected; monica expects him to be her best friend without needing her to be his mom; fiona expects him to need less of her attention than debbie, carl, or liam, and sometimes even than lip; kash not only has sex with him, but also expects him to meet kash's adult emotional needs, and gets violent and mean when ian doesn't do so. he's expected to come to mandy's rescue, and to patiently hold mickey's hand through his personal growth.

and most importantly, ian is expected to never, ever, ever do or say or think or feel anything that frank or monica would. or even to understand it. and when he has no choice but to have something fundamental in common with monica, he is immediately expected to behave exactly like her in every way, regardless of any other aspect of his own individual personality - which is the opposite of the first set of expectations in the worst possible way.

so again. while ian would be initially defensive and resistant to it out of conditioned pride for Not Needing, it would be an overall positive and healing experience for him to be taken care of (also again, within reason). to be doted on. to be the center of someone's attention without the expectation to cater to them because of it. to be able to feel his feelings and express them and not make sense and have it all be accepted even if it's not understood. to be able to fail and it not be the end of the fucking world, or a sign of the inevitable worse to come. to have the space and support to try a bunch of shit and fail at some of it and give some of it up and succeed but still move on to something else. to have someone who wants to know every little thing about him, all the good stuff and bad stuff and neutral boring stuff, who is glad to know every new thing they find out even if it's not what they were expecting or what they wanted to hear. someone who understands and is okay with it if he doesn't know some of that stuff either.

and. btw. all this is perfectly compatible as-is with their established/extrapolate-able sexual dynamic of mickey as the impatient masochistic bottom brat size queen who wants - or sometimes needs - to be 'convinced', and ian as the demanding selfish hard-to-impress hypersexual sadist top who wants his ego serviced as much as his body, both of them rough and tumble tough guys. BTW. By The Fucking Way. and fyi.

[ponett]

with the fallout of bandai namco's idiotic "it's up to interpretation" bs, do you think that it's possible to enjoy queer media made in a corporate environment in addition to independent works? is it even worthwhile to attempt making queer media in a corporate environment? i find it special how well the g-witch production team managed to tell the story they wanted even with the challenges and pressures they faced, but i have to admit that independent works like slarpg are always going to more completely tell queer stories. as someone who has resonated with both slarpg and g-witch, i was curious to know your perspective.

i'm probably less cynical about this than a lot of my peers are - not that i can blame anyone for feeling cynical about queer rep from corporate-owned media. (we've been through so many First Ever Gay Disney Characters at this point, and lord knows blizzard loves to tease that another overwatch character might be gay every year or so as a PR move.) unfortunately it's just extremely hard to get something like a full season of an animated series funded and produced independently, so the artists looking to enter these fields and pour their hearts and souls into meaningful queer stories as a full-time job don't have many options

going indie gives you theoretically endless creative freedom to tell your stories without corporate censorship, but it's also a massive gamble. only an extreme minority of indie creatives in any medium are actually able to make a living. the fact that i came out the other side of slarpg's development with enough money that i can keep being a full-time indie instead of being in massive debt makes me one of the lucky ones. and even with my modest success, i sure as hell don't have the money to hire a whole team, which limits the scope of what i can make. so i can't turn my nose up at the queer people writing disney channel cartoons where they can't say the word "gay" out loud. they have health insurance, i don't. for most people, what i do is simply not an option

with the corporate-produced Queer Stories i enjoy, i'm often able to squint and see what the creatives were trying to do, wishing that they could have done more while understanding that they probably had to fight tooth and nail for what's there

in the realm of children's animation in particular, i'm thankful that the people working at these studios ARE fighting for more, because it means that kids today have so many more positive queer stories to relate with. i didn't have a single gay character i felt i could relate to until i read scott pilgrim at age 16 and saw wallace wells. before that, i felt so alone in the world. i denied who i was for years because it felt like there would be no place for me. i didn't know anyone openly gay in real life, growing up in the south, and in fiction gay people either existed as the butt of a joke or not at all. the fact that queer kids are now able to see people like themselves in so many shows means something, even if we still have a long way to go and the big studios continue to be a major obstacle

on the subject of g-witch, i'm honestly unfazed by the statement from bandai-namco. i guess i wish they could've let suletta and miorine kiss, but like... the text of the show is extremely blunt about them being a couple by the end. it's not up for debate. and it's not like a gundam series having a meaningful story in spite of the wishes of the toy-producing overlords is anything new, this is just our latest example

all that being said, i do think people should branch out more and explore more weird indie shit if they want more wholeheartedly, openly queer stories. people gotta suck it up and embrace more outsider art instead of only valuing things with studio-level production values. start looking at ren'py visual novels, rpg maker games, obscure webcomics, zines drawn in sharpie, artists on bandcamp who aren't signed to a label, all that jazz. maybe part of the reason why i'm not more fazed by the state of affairs with corporate-funded fiction is that i'm constantly surrounded by furry artists who are telling their own little gay stories

[ewingstan]

Hm, I think I mostly enjoyed Breakthrough's debate with Gary. As a look at the the different perspectives one could hold on power and capedom, it doesn't work at all; the reader isn't gonna seriously consider Gary's argument's when he's been positioned as a Teacher shill who'll go after a nine-year-old. But then, its not really being framed as an actual clash of ideas so much as a battle for narrative control.

And that's something I enjoy reading more than Ward's physical battles. The attempts at crowdwork, the politics and pageantry of capedom, is something I kind of wish had been a larger focus rather than the extended battle scenes. There's a lot of questions (what attempts at new modes of organization and protection have people advocated for in the wake of gold morning? how has the proliferation of groups that get hired out to "heroes" and "villains" alike affected perception of those categories?) that I wish got explored by the text more. I do wish they got explored in ways outside of an anti-parahuman movement created by a shadowy conspiracy, but hey, better than nothing.

Usually, at least. Exploring those questions gets worse when the character's attempts at narrative control intersect with wildbow trying to advocate for his own murky ideas of justice. Hence why I'm theoretically interested in how Breakthrough sells the public on Rain getting to be considered a hero, but am offput when the answer is "one girl at his trial recognizes that he's repentant and bravely forgives him, to the jeers of a crowd, because the reader is supposed to agree that Rain's willingness to be punished is both laudable and necessary." This section has enough of Victoria going "okay we gotta sell this specific point even if I don't believe it" that I don't really have the same sense that wildbow is actually making any prescriptive claims.

That falters a bit when Ashley disconnects her arms and Gary immediately loses rhetorical footing.

Ashley didn't really respond in a way that I see Gary's audience being swayed by. It challenges the "I'm specifically a monster" point but not his actual "we need to do something about Parahumans being in charge" point. He could and should be switching tacts to talking about Rune being with the heroes, or asking why they sought her as a candidate in the first place, or asking what it means that parahumans can so easily be made into a weapon even against their will. Breakthrough's argument is maybe effective in terms of having the reader reject Gary's claim, but that's because the reader has been following Ashley and knows how significant it is that she's rejecting having been a real member of the nine. As dramatic as the moment is, it doesn't really make sense for Gary to lose his momentum, and it feels like he only does to sell how powerful and important a moment it was for Ashley. Maybe its for the best, he's gotta falter somewhere for the argument to stop circling the drain, but I feel like I would've been more onboard if Breakthrough got the win through something more directly related to the narrative they're spinning.

Still, there were a number of good character beats. Ashley being faced with an accusation that she was getting preferential treatment through housing, and responding to it largely as an accusation that she was being kept as an object by the government, was a pretty great way to get across where Ashley's at. And Rain being the one to jump to "its all of us vs the villains," while Victoria privately disagreed and wanted to focus on "its the heroes vs the villains," did a good job of demonstrated Vicky's casual dismissal of non-parahumans. It was much less jarring way of communicating that to the reader than her earlier "we might have to tell them that we don't care about their concerns" comment to Vista, which felt too self-consciously villainous. Her needing to be pushed into treating non-parahumans as part of the in-group was a much more believable way of communicating the same thing to the reader.

[blueskrugs]

Kiss Him Goodbye at the Door | Nick Blankenburg

this fic is for me and demi @wyattjohnston​ specifically but y’all can read it, too

I’m obsessed with blanks these days, and I’m not mad about it. have fun. 

length: 4.2k words

It starts like this:

It’s posted everywhere: Twitter, Instagram, on the doors of Yost. A few fliers even appear on the bulletin boards in the dorms. Your roommate tears one down and leaves it on your pillow, because screenshotting the Instagram story and texting it to you wasn’t enough to tease you about your little crush on the new captain. 

It’s a raffle of some kind, you’re pretty sure. You crumpled up the flier left on your bed without really looking at it, and you’d texted Samantha back the middle finger emoji instead of reading the screenshot. Something, something, self-preservation. 

You know the hockey players tangentially, in the way that they all move in packs of backwards snapbacks and seem to make hockey their entire personality. You see them around campus, you see them on TikTok, and you go to games when you can. You try to avoid them as much as you can for your own sanity, honestly.

It’s getting harder to avoid them when Blankenburg’s smiling face seems to be following you around campus.

You hear Jacob Truscott talking about the date raffle in one of your classes a week or two after it’s announced, early in the fall semester. You’re the same major as Jacob, and you seem to share at least one class a semester with him. You’re pretty sure he doesn’t know you exist.

“Blanks is so mad about it,” he’s saying to whoever is nearby and will listen. “Apparently no one asked him about it beforehand, but he can’t back out now.”

You know Blanks even less than you know Truscott, which is to say not at all. You don’t turn around to ask Truscott any questions about it. 

You come home from classes that afternoon to a stack of raffle tickets on your desk. 

“Sam, I’m going to kill you,” you yell, even though your roommate is sitting at her own desk five feet away from you. You leaf through the little pieces of paper; there’s six of them, which had to have cost like $30. You’re not paying Samantha back if she asks. 

“They’re all in your name,” she says, not looking up from her notes. You throw a pen at her head. 

You never should have told her you thought Blankenburg was cute.

Three days later, the team Instagram posts the winner of the raffle. You tell yourself you’re not going to check. You last less than an hour before you open up the app to check. There, in big letters on a cute graphic is your name, followed by the winning raffle number that is apparently on one of your tickets. You carefully sift through them to find the right one and take a picture of it to send back as confirmation.

You get a “Congrats!” DM back minutes later. There’s a follow-up message about how someone will reach out to you in a few days with more information. You double tap the message and toss your phone to the foot of the bed, suddenly uncomfortable with the whole thing.

It had been kind of funny while it was all theoretical, but now it’s startlingly real. All you can think about is Truscott laughing while he talks about how much Blankenburg didn’t even want to give away the stupid date. You wonder if it’s too late for you to back out, ask them to draw someone else’s raffle ticket. Make it all someone else’s problem.

When you dig your phone out of your blankets later, you have another notification from Instagram: nblanks98 has requested to follow you. 

You don’t even follow Nick yourself. You accept the follow request and quickly hit the follow back button, too. You put your phone back down before you start waiting for a DM that will probably never come.

You’re in class the next Monday when someone taps on your chair from behind you.

“Hey,” a voice says, tapping on your chair again with a pen. Truscott. You turn around and raise an eyebrow at him. “You’re the girl who won the date with Blanks, aren’t you?”

Truscott isn’t quiet, and you know there’s a few other people around you listening in. You can feel yourself blushing. 

“Yeah, I guess,” you say.

Truscott grins at you. It doesn’t feel very kind. “I knew I recognized you! Blanks is pretty excited about it, he was showing everyone your Instagram.”

You remember again what Truscott said about Blankenburg and the raffle. The team had played at Yost over the weekend, but you’d avoided the games. You imagine Nick showing everyone your Instagram afterwards, the things they might have said about you. You blush harder. 

Truscott barrels on, seemingly not noticing. “I’m Jacob, by the way.” 

You don’t bother introducing yourself, since apparently Jacob knows exactly who you are already. “My roommate bought me the ticket,” you blurt. “She thought it would be funny.”

To his credit, Jacob’s grin doesn’t falter. “Well, I’m sure you’ll have a great time. Nick’s a really good guy.”

You’re saved from having to say anything else by your professor starting class. You turn back around. 

You escape the room as quickly as you can when class ends, desperate to not be cornered by Jacob again. You know he’s going to tell Nick what you said. Maybe he’ll end up canceling on you, after all, save you both the embarrassment. 

You don’t get quite so lucky. You get another DM later that afternoon from the team account, asking if you’re free that Thursday evening. You can’t come up with a good excuse, which is how you end up agreeing to a date at 6:30 in three days. Fuck, you don’t even know what you’re supposed to wear. 

Thursday comes too quickly. Your plans with Nick are casual, and you’re nervously standing outside of Cottage Inn in jeans and a sweater when Nick appears, looking just as nervous as you. He looks as if he’s not sure if he should shake your hand or hug you; he settles for pulling the door open and gesturing for you to go first. 

It’s not until you’re seated across from him that you realize that neither of you have actually spoken. 

“Hi,” you say, “by the way.” Your laugh sounds awkward to your own ears, and you cringe at yourself. 

On the other side of the table, Nick’s shoulders are stiff, even if he forces a smile in your direction. You can’t help but notice how cute he is still, even though you wish you couldn’t. You’ve both ordered sodas, but you’re aware of the fact that Nick’s a couple of years older than you. You feel young, small. You pull the sleeves of your sweater over your hands. 

Nick peers at the menu in front of him. “You do like pizza, right?” he asks, suddenly worried. 

You laugh again, and it sounds more natural this time. Nick’s shoulders relax the tiniest bit. “Yes, I like pizza,” you say, “I wouldn’t have agreed to come here if I didn’t.”

Somehow, the words are a mistake. Nick’s glances up at you, tense again. 

“Wouldn’t want you agreeing to anything you don’t want to do.”

“Is this about what I said to Truscott?” you ask. You should never have said that. Nick hesitates, then nods. “After I heard him saying that you never wanted to go on this stupid date in the first place?” It’s not an exact quote, but it’s close enough.

Nick’s eyebrows furrow. “Did he say that?” It’s your turn to nod. “He shouldn’t have said that.”

“Was it a lie, though?” you challenge.

Nick looks sheepish. He scrubs a hand over his eyes. “Maybe, no, I don’t know.”

“My friend only bought me so many raffle tickets because she knew I had a crush on you,” you admit. “And then Jacob said you’d been passing around my Instagram, and I was just worried about what you’d been saying about me.” 

“Oh,” Nick says. “Wait, you have a crush on me?”

You take a drink of your soda to avoid answering. Nick is looking expectantly at you when you set your cup back down. There’s a small smile on his face, the first real one you’ve seen out of him. “Forget I said that.”

Your waitress suddenly reappears, asking if you’re ready to order. Why couldn’t she have come back five minutes ago to save you from embarrassing yourself?

“Oh, uh—“ Nick looks up at you, then down at his menu, then back at you. “Can we have some more time?” he directs at the waitress. He beams at her as she walks away, then turns that smile on you. To you, he says, “Can you pretend you like me long enough to eat?” He nudges his foot against yours underneath the table, leaves his ankle pressed against your own. It’s a joke, and it eases some of your nerves.

You stick your tongue out at him. It takes longer than it should to agree on a pizza—“No mushrooms, God”— but you end up ordering a pizza and cheese bread. Conversation is easier after the menus are cleared away, and you can stop bickering. 

Nick seems disarmed, and he asks questions about your classes, seems genuinely interested in the answers. It’s easy for you to talk about the things you’re studying, and you almost forget the awkward start to the evening. Almost. Nick never gave you a real answer when you asked if he’d been lying when he’d been complaining to his teammates about this date.

You let it slide—for now. You’re desperate for this date to be at least mostly-bearable, and you don’t think you could stand going back to the uncomfortable tension from before. You ask Nick about his classes—International Studies sounds terribly boring to you, personally—and the hockey team this year, and you watch as Nick absolutely lights up as he talks about them. You’re not sure how anyone could enjoy language classes as much as Nick seemed to have enjoyed taking Swahili, but there’s also a reason why you’re in the School of Kinesiology. 

The pizza is eaten before you know it, and you’re busy laughing at a story Nick’s telling about some of the freshmen at practice from the week before. The restaurant has cleared out and filled up again around you, the early crowd you’d arrived with come and gone. You feel a little weird letting Nick pay the bill, but he doesn’t give you a chance to argue.

Nick checks the time on his phone. It’s not too late, still; you’d made tentative plans to do something else after dinner, but never got much further than that. You’re still not sure how much time Nick actually wants to spend with you. 

“So,” he starts. Here it comes. “How do you feel about bowling?” 

“Huh?” you blurt. You finally process what Nick said. “Oh, God, no. I’m terrible at bowling.” You dropped a bowling ball on your foot at your cousin’s birthday party once when you were, like, five, and you’ve been anti-bowling ever since. 

Nick’s laughing at you across the table. You kick him, and he just laughs harder. “Okay, no to bowling.” Nick slides out of his side of the booth and holds a hand out for you. 

You stare at it for a second before carefully placing your hand in his and letting him pull you to your feet. Nick drops your hand as soon as you’re standing next to him. You try not to miss it. 

“Okay, how do you feel about arcades?”  Nick asks next, leading you out of the restaurant. 

“There’s an arcade in Ann Arbor?” you ask. Nick shoots you an amused look over his shoulder. “I mean, sure.”

After another brief argument over the best way to get to your next destination, you and Nick end up cutting across campus to get to the arcade. Pinball Pete’s, Nick had called it. Nick walks close enough to you that he bumps into you sometimes. You bump him back.

It’s chilly now that the sun has gone down, the beginnings of fall in the air. You shiver in spite of yourself. You feel Nick looking sidelong at you for a moment, before he’s hooking his arm through your crossed arms and reeling you in close. You shiver again, but you’re not sure it’s because you’re cold, anymore. Nick’s warm pressed along your side, and the rest of the walk to the arcade passes in a blur. 

Nick leads you inside Pinball Pete’s with ease. It’s dim inside, lit with lots of neon and dad rock playing faintly overhead. Nick bobs his head to the music as he walks in front of you. It’s not very crowded—it is a random Thursday night, after all—but you and Nick are far from the only ones inside. Nick stops abruptly, and you, distracted by watching people flit between games around you, nearly walk into his back. 

Nick turns, startles a little at seeing you standing so close. He blinks, but barrels on.

“Where do you wanna start?” he asks. 

You’re a little overwhelmed, actually. You eye the air hockey tables behind Nick. “How good are you at air hockey?” you ask.

Nick grins at you. “Only one way to find out, eh?” he asks. 

You both step over to a free table. You watch as Nick fiddles with the buttons, trying to figure out how to turn it on. The serious look on his face is kind of funny, brows furrowed and lit up with green and pink neon. The table whirs to life, and Nick looks up at you, catches you staring. 

“What?” he asks. 

You shake yourself. “Nothing.” Nick flips the plastic puck onto the table. “You’ve been here a lot?” you ask. You whack the puck back towards Nick.

Nick doesn’t answer at first, concentrating on rallying, but he shrugs. “I come here with the guys sometimes instead of studying.” You score, and Nick gives you a dirty look. He points his mallet at you accusingly. “Quit trying to distract me.”

“I wasn’t!” you protest, but Nick’s throwing the puck back onto the table and you have to focus again. 

You both lapse into a comfortable quiet, only broken up by chirps, after that, focused on the game as the goals stack up. You end up beating Nick—three times. He beats you at skeeball twice, though, so it kind of balances out. Not enough to keep you from teasing, “Aren’t you supposed to be good at hockey?” You have to dodge Nick trying to put you in a headlock for that one, both of you cracking up.

When Nick finally feels vindicated enough by his skeeball wins, you bounce around the retro games lined up along the walls. Most of them are single-player, and you and Nick take turns watching each other play. 

Nick’s cute when he’s focused. He catches you staring more than once; he might be blushing in the dim light. But you catch him staring just the same in between your attempts at Pac-Man, so you’re even again. You’ve all but forgotten the stiffness in Nick’s shoulders at the start of the date. You even forget the reason why you’re on the date in the first place, until Nick opens his mouth.

“Hey,” he says, as you step away from a pinball machine. “I kinda promised the social team I’d get a picture of us tonight. Proof we both followed through, you know?”

There it is. The reminder that you both thought the other didn’t want to be on this date in the first place. 

“Yeah, of course,” you say. 

You help Nick set up his phone timer up in a spot with decent lighting. You stand close, carefully leaving a few inches between yourself and Nick. Nick puts his arm around you, his hand hovering above the small of your back. You smile as the flash goes off. You’re not sure if it looks as fake as it suddenly feels. 

You wander a few steps away as Nick swipes through his phone, presumably sending the photo off to be posted on the team Instagram. The awkwardness is back, palpable in the few feet of space between you. You don’t want the date to end, no longer interested in getting in and out as quickly as possible, but you’re not sure you can take much more of this fakeness.

Nick steps behind you again. His chin is close to your shoulder, and you do your best not to flinch.

“So, what’s next?”

You could ask Nick to take you back to your dorm. You’ve both played your parts for the night. “Have you ever played pool?” you ask instead. 

It turns out that you’re both pretty shitty at pool. It’s enough to ease the tension between you again, laughing at each other’s mistakes and playfully nudging each other out of the way with your bodies and your pool cues. 

When Nick finally walks you back to your dorm, he drapes an arm over your shoulders, and you let him. It’s getting late. You attempt to hide a yawn against Nick’s shoulder as you walk. Your attempt is unsuccessful, judging by Nick’s quiet huff of laughter above you. 

Nick walks you all the way to you door. He grabs you gently by the elbow before you can unlock your door. You twist in his grip to look at him. He’s standing close, his easy-going smile gone. 

It’s late enough your hallway is deserted, but anyone could walk past. See you standing too close to the captain of the hockey team. You don’t step back, don’t wrench your arm free. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Nick asks softly. 

“Only if I can ask you one first,” you counter. Your roommate Sam is no doubt eavesdropping on the other side of the door. She’s probably been obsessively tracking your location all night. It doesn’t matter. You need an answer from Nick on this.

Nick hesitates, but he says, “Sure.” His grip on your arm tightens. 

“Did you mean it? When you told your teammates that you didn’t want to go on a date with me?”

Nick winces. “I only said that before I knew it was you,” he protests. 

“That doesn’t make it better,” you argue.

“I was just worried that it would be awkward and weird.” You can tell Nick’s trying very hard not to roll his eyes at you.

“It was awkward and weird,” you point out. Nick winces again. You try to cross your arms, but Nick refuses to let go of your arm. “I spent most of the night worrying that you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

Nick opens his mouth, then shuts it again. He’s quiet for a long moment. “I worried the whole night about you not liking me,” he admits.

You heave a sigh, tilting your head to the ceiling and letting it thump against your door. You squeeze your eyes shut so you don’t have to look at Nick’s face when you say your next words. “I literally told you I have a crush on you, dude.”

You feel a hand on your face, Nick’s thumb gently tilting your chin back down to look at him. “But you told Truss—“ 

You sigh again. “He’d just told me you’d passed around my Instagram to the team, I was thinking about all the ways you all could be calling me ugly.”

Nick’s gaze softens. “I would never let that happen,” he tells you seriously. After spending the evening with him, you think you believe him. “For what it’s worth, I thought you were pretty cute, too.” You stare at Nick in disbelief. “Can I ask my question now?”

“I think you just did,” you tease.

Nick does roll his eyes at you this time. He presses closer, boxing you in against your door. “I have another question then.” You open your mouth, probably to make another smartass comment, but Nick talks over you. “Can I kiss you?”

You shut your mouth again, taken aback. You hadn’t been expecting that. “Oh, uh—“ Nick let go of your elbow at some point. You’re still standing in the middle of your hallway. You wind your arms around Nick’s neck and say, “Go for it.”

Nick grins and leans in. You’re just starting to settle into the kiss, the feeling of Nick’s lips moving against yours, your fingers playing with the curls brushing the nape of his neck, when your roommate jerks the door open. You’re only saved by falling by Nick’s fast reflexes, his arms tight around your waist. 

You turn to glare at Sam. She grins innocently at you.

“Quit making out in the hallway,” she says. “Have some dignity.”

As if you didn’t see her making out with some guy she didn’t know in the middle of a party the first week of classes.

Nick tugs you upright before letting go and stepping a respectable distance away. You huff and take his hand. He’s blushing hard, visible even in the washed-out glow of fluorescent lighting.

“Nick, this is the bitch who bought all my raffle tickets, my roommate Sam,” you tell him. “Sam, you obviously already know who Nick is.”  Sam’s grin sharpens. “Don’t,” you warn, but you are ignored.

“Oh, I know who Nick is alright, you’ve only talked about how cute he is for the last two years we’ve lived together.”

Next to you, Nick lets out a startled laugh. “Good night, Samantha,” you say pointedly. Sam winks at you and disappears further into your suite. You pull the door shut again for good measure.

“Can I see you again?” Nick asks. He pulls you in again, kissing you quickly one more time. 

You pretend to think about it. “You sure are asking a lot of questions tonight, Blanks,” you tease. Nick pinches you on your side, where your sweater has ridden up underneath his hands. “I guess we can make something work,” you say. Nick tries to pinch you again, but you squirm away, giggling. You pull your phone out and pass it to Nick. “You’re going to have to text me, though, no more lurking on my Instagram.”

Nick laughs, but does as he’s told. He kisses you against the door one last time before he leaves for good measure.

You’re waiting for class to start the next morning when your phone lights up with a bunch of notifications: umichhockey has tagged you in a post, nblanks98 mentioned you on their story, and a text from Sam with a picture—judging by the image preview, you’re pretty sure you know what it is.

You click on the notification for Nick’s story. He’s reposted the hockey team’s post, the photo you took at the arcade the night before. He’s added his own caption—same time next week??—followed by a string of emojis that probably only makes sense to Nick. 

You click through to the post so you can like it, then swipe backwards, back to Nick’s story. You click the little heart to like it, too, before swiping up to reply to it. I think I told you no more Instagram lurking. Nick’s already texted you a bunch of times—you’d managed to stay up too late talking to him, tucked underneath your blankets—but it’s nice to be able to tease him. Nick’s still active, and you watch the three dots appear and disappear for a second before you get another emoji, this time the one winking and sticking its tongue out.

Sam’s sent you a screenshot of the Instagram post, followed by a string of smirking emojis. You ignore her, but peer closer at the photo for the first time. It turned out pretty good, actually. Your smile doesn’t even look fake.

Someone pokes you in the back. You know without turning around that it’s Truscott. You turn around anyway. Jacob had grinned at you when you walked into the classroom, and he’s grinning at you now. His phone is tilted away from you, but you’re pretty sure he has the team Instagram post open. 

“Date went well, huh?” he teases. 

You stick your tongue out at him. “No thanks to you and your big mouth.”

Jacob looks like he’s about to argue, then reconsiders. “Well, it worked out, didn’t it?” In the front of the room, your professor is getting ready to start class. “I’ll see you around, yeah?” Jacob asks. 

You sit in front of Jacob in this class three times a week, and you’re pretty sure you share at least one other class this semester. “Yeah,” you say anyway. You know what he means.

You’ll be seeing Nick again, for sure, and you have a feeling that means you’ll be seeing the rest of the hockey team a lot, too. Your phone vibrates with a new text from Nick. You grin and tuck your phone away, finally turning around and focusing on class. You guess it did work all work out after all.

[oskidontle]

A COLLECTION OF OVERLY DETAILED HEADCANONS ABOUT CRITTERS AS A SPECIES!

(Ahead is a wall of text! If you're prepared to read a bunch of non canon bullshit I made up to explain things that don't need explained you may proceed. If not, I would avoid clicking keep reading. Because I perhaps went a little overboard.)

General Lore:

Critters are a species of human originally created from U.S government funded human experimentation during WWII. Inspired by the extremes of the animal kingdom, the government hoped to make hyperdurable supersoldiers. Mostly unsuccessful, the main thing that sets critters apart from humans is appearance and wildly unstable genetics.

After years some of the subjects escaped and thanks to their various unusual methods of reproduction their population boomed fast enough that the world could hardly keep up. Generations later and critters are a widely abundant globally. Such abundance has allowed for them to integrate into society. However, not without difficulty. Food shortages in lower income states and social pushback has led many into bad living situations.

Physiology:

High genetic variation leads to a wide variety of critters, each with advantages and, more commonly, disadvantages.

For example; critters with proportionally larger eyes theoretically would have better eyesight. However, problems with eye dilation and distortion of eye shape leads them to more commonly have bad eyesight, or eyesight which easily wanes with age and sun damage. This is compounded with their general vulnerability to injury as they protrude due to their skulls barely keeping up.

Critters are prone to gene mutation. Two critter parents are likely to pass on faulty genes as the genetic makeup of reproductive cells often gets messed up. Upon inception these genes will mutate due to their faulty genetic code, sometimes leading to kids who looks drastically different than either parent. Even if this is not the case the faulty genes still create problems for the reproductive cells of the child as they grow, continuing to be changed and passed on.

Physical:

These mutations also lead to structural deformities. Strange growths and bone shapes aren't uncommon most commonly occurring on the skull, but can manifest as extra/less limbs unusual heights, strange spine deformations, fused/hyperflexible joints and bones presenting as cartilaginous or membranous.

Mutation of innards isn't all too uncommon either; ranging from lifelong organ issues, to benign growths of veins and nerves, to a unhealthy buildup/atrophy of fat and muscle.

Unfortunately all this genetic instability can lead to high rates of cancer, infertility, dementia, and mortality rates in infants

A few mutations are universal to most critters, most common is lack of visible nostrils and ears. Don't let appearances fool you however, they do still have functional noses and ears. Nostrils by default being closed shut by default can be opened and closed with adequate muscle control or significant air pressures. Ears meanwhile covered in a thin sensitive layer of skin allowing them to hear just as well, but with less directionality and mild trouble with environmental and internal pressure changes.

A critters epidermis has a wide variety of textures, colors, and hair lengths. Some of the texture of normal skin, some are velvety, some are fuzzy, some are scaly, some are smooth, some have hardened keratinous patches, and when exposed to cold enough climates for long periods of time, some can even develop a whole body coat of fur.

Phycological:

The high genetic variation also effects the brains of individuals. Critters are more likely to be diagnosed with mental disorders and learning disabilities of all sorts. They also tend to be highly emotional.

Interestingly as they develop their brains tend to latch on to specific emotions making them more likely to perform certain behaviors or feel a specific way. Individuals who ended up latching on to particularly negative emotions can lead rough lives as they find it difficult to feel any other way without active effort.

Despite this they aren't unable to feel other emotions if something to trigger another emotion occurs. In a sense the emotion they latch onto is more like a default then a solid state of mind.

Reproduction and development:

Critters can be seen with no reproductive organs, no visible reproductive organs, normal humanoid reproductive organs, both sexes of reproductive organs or reproductive organs not commonly found in mammals

Along with normal reproduction critters can reproduce with other means depending on the individual. This includes, but is not limited to: Parthenogenesis, external fertilization, vegetative propagation, budding and fragmentation. They can also have multiple ways to conceave and incubate the offspring. Live offspring, eggs and external fetuses, as seen in fragmentation and vegetative propagation are just some of the more common methods.

Development in critters is also highly varied depending on conception. While some are born through live birth. Some go through larval stages of sorts as they develop, some molt and spin cacoons as caterpillars would, some are closer to amphibians in that they smoothly develop as they grow, and some are raised in an almost plant-like fashion in which the fetus is placed in a sealed environment and fed nutritiants from external sources until they are developed enough to support themselves. On the whole a critter usually fully finishes their development by their early 20s

Many critters can reproduce multiple ways at the same time, leading to extremely high birthrates particularly with individuals who spawn externally. Despite high mortality rates the access to modern medical practices/technologies leads to higher survival rates than normal, offsetting the losses enough to where critters are still in the process of exponentially exploding in population.

SOCIOLOGY:

Critter populations are most dense on the North American continent where in the largest cities they can match human populations 1:1. Outside of North America, critters can also be found in relative abundance in other countries where they are better tolerated.

Due to a large chunk of their population having a rapid reproductive rate, It's speculated they will continue exponentially increasing their population until they will overtake human populations worldwide within a couple of centuries. That is assuming social pushback, laws, or lack of resources won't get involved.

Their sudden boom in population on a societal scale while surprisingly well accepted in their country of origin, worldwide they are less integrated into society and less accepted.

Those on the North American continent, particularly the U.S, are treated as any other person particularly by those in higher density areas who have lived with them longer. Classified as legal citizens they are entitled to the given benefits and privileges this brings. This is not without flaw however. Prejudice still exists, biases and income inequality are sadly common.

Interestingly due to a lack of visible sexual organs on some, it has become socially acceptable for said critters to wear minimal clothes. It is still preferable to wear at least some article of clothing, so most of the time you will see these individuals wearing an accessory or just a shirt/pants