#change is the most certain thing in life and its fucking awesome

[festynoodle]

talking into the void but this blog didn't age well at all, in the best way though. i want to give younger me a hug so badly, it got so much better. love x

[sparxemberflame]

Fuckin'... Aabria Iyengar.

I am... In awe. I am delerious. I am chomping at the bit. I just... Fuck!!

So. Past two weeks/episodes Especially. Watching/listening to Burrow's End and Worlds Beyond Number back to back is an Experience. Having 2 seperate shows that contain Brennan Lee Mulligan, Erika Ishii and Aabria, in my ears telling me different stories 2 eps at a time is an absolute blast (shoutout to Lou, Jasper, Isabella, Rashawn, Siobhan and rest of cast and crew on both shows too you're awesome! Not the focus of this little outburst.)

Anyway it's GREAT. Highly recommend both shows and there are parallels I'll get into elsewhere, elsewhen. But.

This is an Aabria Iyengar specifically fucking Stan post.

You have made me feel so many overwhelmingly cool, awesome and intimate emotions and ideas that I can hardly begin to explain them. For some reason the only fucking thing that comes close is this. Silly but sorta deep thing about my favorite snack (shout out to snack gang) a Ferrero Rocher:

Aabria,

Shall I compare thee intricate weaving of characters and narratives to a Ferrero Rocher?

I shall. For this is no poem or any such writing of iambic pentameter. It is at best a floundering simile.

You have a way of creating characters and stories which much like a certain confectionary treat when unwrapped contains such an immense blend of texture and flavor. Each instance containing a wholly unique configuration of features bound together in perfectly imperfect unity. Not wholly smooth round but spherical oozing with points of uniqueness sticking out all over.

But yet if you dig just a bit deeper. There's this. Shell. Not a Barrier as it might first seem. But an Obstacle. A Challenge of sorts. Put there not to deter you but to provoke a moment of reflection. I think of Suvi and her refusal to process or be truly vulnerable in most situations. I think of the intricate power-structures of Last Bast and the Hint of this Wall that something Richer. More interesting, more honest and lovingly crafted lies Just Beneath.

This shell. Which you'll find is litterally Wafer-Thin. Should you ask the right question. Follow the right narrative thread. Bite into it with your teeth.

That curiosity is. Always and forever rewarded. With a richness of flavour and care that feels like a hug, like understanding, like being, at last: Home.

It is easy to get lost in that and yet even in this sea of what I can only call love. You find it. The Core. The hazelnut. A moral. Or a question, or a consequence. Something to once again think about and bite into.

And you realise. Once you've finally reach it that this core. This secret. Was Always Obvious. It was Sprinkled. All atop the very first layer. Litterally poking out. Each and every goddamn feature sticking out. Every chopped up uniquely distinct feature.

Was made up of the same material. Was the Core The Whole Time. Visible to the naked eye. But now having experienced the whole show. The whole treat. It is gone.

But its nourished you. The treat nourishes my body. The way Aabria tells stories nourishes my very soul.

Thinking back on many stories told that core in plain sight is often about Family or Love and the relationships between. Far from an uncommon subject in stories. But something about it. Something about the unique way Aabria does it in not just one but seemingly every story and character she creates. Its fantastic, its familiar and it... I can't describe it any other way than that it fills me with elation, jubilation and a deep sense of belonging and the implications therein drives me absolutely insane.

It's with my hat off, eyes sparkling in adoration and my heart full that I say:

Thank you Aabria Iyengar for telling these stories, for bringing these characters to life. They have changed me and many others forever and have and continue to drive me to create my own stories and campaigns for many years to come.

[megabuild]

been thinking 💭 about their time spent as worlds most annoying students

lore dump LOOK OUT

- i will make a proper explanation for the worldbuilding i have for empires one day but basically all thats necessary is that its set in a high fantasy world separate from any other smp, i consider most smps being set on the same "planet" i guess? (special thanks to rendog for making me have to clarify that.) but at different times so empires s1 takes place fairly early, a time similar to the renaissance period for us.

- pix and fwhip knew each other before the series though because as said above They went to school together! About ten years before season 1 is set. Specifically a very prestigious academy in the city they both grew up in, it's more like a university than a school, they're both young adults when they enroll.

- fwhip is studying alchemy not just out of the love of it but also to follow in his father's footsteps (his relationship there is. not great but that's another ballpark) while pix is studying astronomy which in this world is a very important and magical study! the people of this region believe the stars and planets can help predict future events and disasters, so talented astronomers are basically like prophets. he doesn't actually have any prophetic visions or anything though.

- pix has a whole thing i'll get into some other time that basically means his ability to harness and use experience/magic is limited. most humans aren't as naturally predisposed as some other species but pix is especially Not good at this. but he's very studious and wants to learn all he can about magic even if he can't use it, so he's a model student

- fwhip on the other hand has natural disposition for magic due to having elvish genes, and is a bit of a slacker tbh, not because he doesn't care but because of bad past experience with educational environments.

- the two of them meet because they have a handful of classes that overlap. Don't really get along at first (quite badly actually though I'm considering changing that LMAO) but they end up becoming friends and eventually falling into dating yayyyy great awesome who clapped.

- fwhip has bigger dreams though. he wants to become Thee royal alchemist and it's sort of in his game plan that pix will become the royal astronomer even though pix... Isn't really that certain about astronomy as a career path at all. He has a family business that he might need to go back to but more importantly for him he just sort of wants to slow down and focus on rn!! Their relationship ends up falling apart for a lot of reasons but this is one of them.

- I say falls apart but it never actually has a defined end lol fwhip just. Leaves one day before he even graduates because he gets offered a very lucrative position that he can't really say no to. He leaves a letter but he never says bye and pix will hold a grudge to this for over a decade.💙

- their time at the academy is probably the happiest years of their relationship (unless i decide to say fuck it and give them a semi happy ending) and almost definitely the happiest years of fwhip's life. they are the most annoying bitchy gay couple u know. they pull so many pranks (pix has always been a lover of those and fwhip only enabled him in taking them to extreme levels) and generally are quite sweet at times even if its not always clear like. how committed fwhip actually is (he loves pix! he's just allergic to commitment and showing feelings without backtracking to make a joke after)

- on their designs there's not much to say, fwhip cuts his hair shorter including his little horn tufts and generally doesn't let it get long enough for the green to show cause he's trying to be more cool and professional. (Later on he actually starts dying it to make sure no green shows which is fake as hell of him but anyway) Pix bears a striking resemblance to recap!pix which doesn't really mean shit other than he is his great x10 peepaw uncle twice removed and ithought it was cute. Fwhip bought those earrings for him which I think I've posted about before somewhere. Their outfits are sort of lame cause I made them up in five seconds just so I could draw something orz I don't think the academy had any strict uniform though pix probably did wear gloves due to working with magic and fwhip definitely never wore suitable gear for working with highly dangerous chemicals

- tldr blows them up in my mind

[puphoods]

how does claire feel about the people he knows, including himself if youd like? if he had to pick someone, who does he love the most? and who does he hate the most?

also, bonus round for fun: what's his favorite color, animal, + blood type (assuming he's a blood drinking vampire, if not, maybe instead whats the favorite thing he's eaten :-O)

himself- hey is your icon a little spider i never noticed that. awesome. his sense of self is pretty... not unstable but unclear? he has always been a Thing as opposed to a person, and he doesnt really think about the things he does or thinks or feels etc. he is not good at self-reflection. its one of the things he starts to figure out as he finds a space for himself in the world

amber- his girlfranddd. they get along immediately when they meet and it doesnt take them long to start feeling out a relationship but for the both of them its a whole new experience (claire has never been in a relationship + amber has only had teenage relationships + hasnt had anything serious) and its pretty rocky, especially with both of them having so many fucking issues. he cares about her a lot and puts her on a bit of a pedestal at first- something that causes conflict for them (amongst other things). he admires and respects her a lot, and despite teh fact that its his first relationship hes certain he wants her to be a part of his life forever because she inspires him to be better and try harder- both in their relationship, his relationships with others, and as a person himself

len- len is ambers best friend and claire thinks shes the most annoying person in the world. exaggerating. they get along but she is very extroverted and loud and flashy and its a bit much for him at times haha. he thinks shes irresponsible and kind of stupid, but respects her because she is very loyal and caring, and is willing to acknowledge her failings and faults in order to do what needs to be done

honey (need to change their name)- he gets along with honey pretty well. theyre both quiet and not the type of person to start a conversation so if you put them in the same room theyll probably be pretty awkward but they have a lot in common, and he sees a lotof the struggles he has been through in them and so he has a soft spot for them

jake- i think they get along fine. as much as you can for "your girlfriends teenage brother". they dont really hang out if amber isnt there

ambers parents- claire loves. ambers parents. they dont show up too much in the story and most of him getting to know them would be post-canon but its a very close knit family and once they know him he is welcomed in to that family. they get along well

annie- umm. claire and annie were very close when they were children and then as they started to get older grew apart more and more until they hated each other. he wishes things could have been different and wants her to understand where hes coming from and listen to him so they can fix things. she doesnt. i could say a million billion things about how they feel about each other but it really boils down to the fact that theyre incredibly similar in a way that means they will never have a healthy relationship unless things were very different

magdalene- as much as he learns that she was a horrible person and hurt him in ways he will never recover from he still holds a sense of loyalty and reverence for her, even knowing he will do everything he can to never see her again

zack- similar to above... though he has an even deeper sense of guilt about killing him. but he is relieved he is gone

^these are all the important people. guy who never fleshes out his oc settings. i need a lot more characters to fill this out i just have not gotten to it...

his fav colour is red, he doesnt really have a favourite animal but i think he would like lizards especially geckos, and im not sure if i want to make blood type something thats like noticable tastewise haha, he typically isnt picky regardless.

[kindredsuffering]

callout for sucklet (@\xching1969) and cinder fall sex haver (@/moonchemistwy) for evil malicious bad person behavior

both of these individuals have been up to some nefarious deeds as of late, and it is sickening to see other people not stricking down these foul individuals despite their behavior.

i am here to bring the word of the Truth to all ye who witness, that these two beings have done suchs things as:

impersonation, blackmail, bribery, trasphobia, treason, threatening my good being, ruining the livelihood of hard working men, merging, stealing art or falsely claiming other people’s art as their own, threats, autistic, gross disregard for others hyperfixations, and not limited to these (etc)

i am certain that these two (or soon to be one) will quickly retailate against me and attempt to make it out that i am making false claims about their person(s) despite the fact that i have much evidence to prove that THEY have been doing these horrible things and thinking they are about the consequences. just because you have two minds within one body does not mean that you can’t be held accountable for your previous individual bodies’ actions.

screenshots below cut:

sucklet has been nonstop constantly trying to make me paranoid and convince me i am going to be doxxed, asking me what i would do if i found my full name and social security number in a surreptitious place

moonchemistry gaslighting the entire rwby fandom when we were simply here to attempt to have some good fun and yet this is how we are treated? like chunks?

chem is trying to use their mental illnessi (plural of mental illness) as an excuse for their behavior and to coerce me into doing what they want (in this case not making them a soup because i care about them so much and want to be kind to them despite their repeated harassment of my person)

this event occurred roughly in the middle of Sucklet’s art theft accusation arc, where it tries to claim that the horny police (alter ego The Shining Diamond) stole its art when her signature is very clearly on the art piece in question. this is an attempt to undermine the talents of other artists in order to boost its own pathetic self view

cinder fall sex haver berating me in DMs and repeatedly convincing me that they do not care about me

and these is where sucklet tried to make a lovely delightful little fun RP that they and i had been having into an NSFW rp immediately without prior discussing with me and when i tried to redirect what was happening they just kept godmodding my character into having hot gay sex (it was relaly good but thats besides the point)

discussion occurring shortly after the reveal of IBSKing!Neo and PCOS!Pregnant!Cinder 🫃

this is just one example of the first of many times they began attempting to dodge any and all consequences

sucklet out of NO WHERE fucking CAME AT ME in such a hideous manner when i was trying to sharem y super awesome gene editing program i’m partnered with

i tried to confront sucklet about its outrageous behavior and it denied that it had done any of these things in the first place, with no evidence to back up any sort of forgery or edited messages or going into discord on the website and using the inspector to change what the messages said or anything of that sort that i would never ever do in my life because i am a nice benevolent good person

moonchemistry (also known as their alter ego Cinder Fall Sex Haver, and their lesser known alter ego janiel) attemped to take my life today, when they had found out that i was drafting this callout post about them they came to me in DMs and assaulted and battered me. i was scarcely able to escape with my life, and they absconded with most of my evidence folder on them (hence most of the screenshots are about chingx1969 (also known as its alter ego sucky fucky wucky, aka king fucklet, aka sucklet))

as they are a hivemind, sucklet quickly (instantly) learned the same knowledge as chem and attempted to threaten me at the same time in a pincer attack known as the merger double wombo combo extraordinaire (ver. 2)

clearly the only thing there is to do about this dangerous individual is to put them down. they have gone too far and are beyond recovery or change. the merging process is nearly complete, and if we do not stop them now they will evolve beyond petty things like mortality.

to my 6 followers: kill

[leonemian]

Werewolf: 21st Century Edition

Okay, been working on this for a while, and I figure here's a good a place to post, and a good a time as any to start.

I love Werewolf: The Apocalypse in spite of itself.

A lot of really great writing, worldbuilding, character work, and RPG design went into the system, but while the 20th Anniversary Edition took the most steps forwards, every edition has seen at least one step backwards. Changing Breeds put the nail in the coffin for me, when it comes to official content, and I just sadly put it on my shelf as a work of art I was once entranced by.

Then my fiance says I talk about it so much, I might as well write my thoughts down. I can't be the only person who feels this way about it.

Plus I've worked out some deep-seated emotional issues through the game, and that aint nothing.

TW: violence, by the way.

Here goes nothing, I guess.

RAGE

A lot of people on this website talk about anger, and how emotions stereotyped as 'negative' are not antithetical to love. How you deal with anger, rather than just labeling it as broadly negative and shoving it down within you or 'rising above', is an important lesson to learn.

The world is filled with terrible things, terrible actions, and terrible people. Being filled with rage is a completely reasonable and understandable reaction.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse makes, as its first theme, Rage. It's right in the tagline, "When Will You Rage?", essentially the entire game is asking this question. I love that the game has a question as its tagline, which is as good a time as any to talk about Judaism.

I'm not that close with my Jewish ancestry, on account of how my entire observant family were killed during the Shoah. Even in early 20th century, the American side of my family, lead by my grandfather, were pulling away from the faith. My grandfather was a strict rationalist, a man of science for whom faith held little interest.

That said, we still celebrated the holidays and didn't exactly Christianize, so I've always felt aloof from both worlds. I distinctly remember having to ask my father about our family history with the Holocaust, and, after a quintessentially Jewish moment wherein my father repeatedly asked me if I was certain I wanted to know, I received some photocopied documents. A list of names and numbers, and my family name written down among them.

I've dealt with a lot of rage in my life, as a Jew, as a queer man, as a progressive, as a leftist, it all boils up at times. Beyond that, I also am an angry person on a fundamental level, and that anger feels complicated. I'm soft-spoken normally, but I've been told when I'm angry, I bellow with a voice that legitimately frightens people. I don't mean this as a boast, it *terrifies* me.

To get back to Werewolf, part of what resonated so strongly with me was the idea of everyone having Rage. Some have it stronger, like the Ahroun, some have it weaker, like the Ragabash, but everyone has it. When you play Werewolf, you are playing a fighter, a barbarian, a druid, a sorcerer, a rogue, and a bard all at once.

To isolate the barbarian side of things, you ever wonder what it'd be like to live with a Barbarian, like a classic D&D Barbarian? Because, sure you as a player can turn Rage on and off at-will, and the lack of spellcasting or 'concentration' is a common limiter meant to signify their lack of restraint.

But, what if it wasn't something you could fully control?

I should clarify for those who don't play Werewolf that Rage is fucking AWESOME. Spending Rage points lets you take multiple actions per round, instantly shapeshift between forms, and ignore wound penalties. It's an invaluable resource in combat that means the difference between life and death, and makes a Werewolf pack unstoppable whirlwinds of violence, capable of punching way above their metaphysical weight class in-universe.

The problem is, you don't just get to have it when you want, and ignore it when you don't.

In Werewolf, anything can provoke Rage in you. Sufficiently agitating or infuriating situations can have the Storyteller call for a Rage roll, making this precious resource debilitating at a time when you want to be calm. Roll too many successes and the game mechanics make you Frenzy, attacking anything in sight. Frenzy can be useful in combat, you instantly shift into the war-form, Crinos, and ignore wound penalties for the duration, but outside of combat? Things get *dire*.

You can spend a second in-game resource, Willpower, to resist a Frenzy, but Willpower is a resource that takes much longer to regenerate, a 'good night's rest' usually only restoring 1, for comparison.

Are you a bad person if you flip out and destroy something? I've argued with my storyteller, asking for higher difficulty to the Rage roll (higher numbers required to gain a 'success' which in this instance is NOT something you want), if my character just directed their anger at an inanimate object. It worked in-game, but it also scared my character's brother and sister, and broke the sink in their kitchen.

I have a brother who I love so deeply and dearly, but who terrorized me as a child. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. I still fear the sound of floorboards creaking outside of my room, I still shrink from people who touch me from behind, even gently, when I don't expect it. It left a sense of impotent rage at my inability to protect myself, an anger towards my family for not protecting me, and a deep-seated desire for payback at him.

Thing is, he's apologized to me so many times. He loves me, I love him, and he was a kid with severe addiction problems whose brain was on fire 24/7. My parents were making the best of a terrible situation, and simply couldn't be in two places at once.

He's talked about feeling like a monster. Feeling like he couldn't control the waves of emotions, at that and many other moments. He took responsibility, but in the decades since, I've been on that side of the fence myself a few times.

I love him. Justice is in our reconciliation, for me at least. His acknowledgement of my pain, and my sense of him as a full person rather than as a demon who hounded my childhood has given me my brother back.

I've yelled at him a bunch, I've gotten my chance to voice my pain, but I realized at a certain point that it wasn't making me feel better. The problem was, I love him, and thus, even if he was the one who hurt me, it didn't help to see him in pain, whether through my 'punishment' or his own guilt and self-torment.

That said, I did a lot of the smiling mask, burying my emotions down, for a long time, and that wasn't useful either. The rage needed to be let out, and you know what? It was well deserved.

To get back on topic, that is a complicated web of pain, but it arises really easily in Werewolf: The Apocalypse. We often think we're rational, logical beings, in full control of ourselves, but by periodically taking the choice out of our hands via the dice, Werewolf lets us deal with that complicated, painful moment where we are responsible for injury, but may not have been entirely conscious at the time.

Treating it like a disease is also bad, though, because...

The world SUCKS. Things are TERRIBLE. Violence, murder, bigotry, corruption, capitalism, ecological devastation, man's inhumanity to man just keeps rolling onwards, and it makes us ANGRY. That anger is earned, that anger is justified, and we don't always need to sublimate or deny it, because if anger is the only thing getting you up in the morning, then anger, in that instance, is a good and holy thing.

I'll end each of these sections with a bit from my personal favorite Werewolf character of mine, Maeve Ceallach, Homid Fianna Ahroun.

Oh, spoiler warning, I'm going to try and do more posts, more sections on Werewolf concepts, how the game handles them, and how I would change them. Rage was the one I started with because it's both the primary theme of Werewolf, and also the one that needs the least change in my opinion.

Maeve Ceallach

"I don't remember at what point I realized my father was missing his right arm. It must have happened when I was really young, I remember him having his arm, there's pictures of him holding me, but grade school onwards, it was just a fact of our home life. Daddy did things differently, that's just how it was.

My mother didn't speak to me about it. Well, shit, she didn't talk to me about much of anything, until my first change. Then I got a lot of attention, I was the golden child from then on. Tried to live up to her expectations, and that didn't include dredging up painful family memories, so I stayed off it.

By the time I finally got her to talk to me about it, I was in college. I had a lot of... interest, let's call it, from a lot of people. It was fun at first, then it was irritating because I had to keep up my studies and my duties to the Nation. Then it got weird, and finally, scary.

Look, I get it, redhead, big muscles, funky scars, the piercings, the tattoos, the boots, I'm aware of my presentation. Lotta people want me to step on them, and that's fun from time to time, but it gets old. Remind me to tell you the story about the ink at the base of my neck, that'll clue you in.

It's fun... until it isn't. I had this one girlfriend in Junior year, and she just kept... pushing. She wanted the 'lioness', she wanted the 'wolfmother', she wanted, you know, the beast in me. I didn't want that, I get enough of that in my job, but she just kept pushing.

It was a bad night, and I should've just walked away, taken a breath, counted to 100, all the stuff I've learned. I didn't, and she wasn't taking the hint that I needed to be alone... Honestly, maybe I should've been firmer about it? I've always had trouble with that, I like to please.

She grabs me from behind, and I just snapped. I left claw marks in the washing machine, and grabbed her. I wasn't going full Crinos, but I definitely drew blood. The look on her face... I still see it in my nightmares. Not just her, but the reflection in her eyes.

My ma came and picked me up. Guess she had to, Sept leader and all that, clean up the mess, keep everything hush-hush, but she stayed behind with me.

'Never bring the fight in here.' She said. 'We fight, we bleed, we kill, but you don't bring it in the house. You wash up at the gym, you sleep in the car or on the rocks if you've got to. You don't bring the fight in here.'

My dad pulled up, and as I watched him fiddle with his keys to get into my apartment, I asked the question I'd been waiting 24 years to ask.

'Did you ever let the fight come home?'

She looked out the window to him, and he waved at her, smiling.

'Once.' She said. 'Only once.'"

[flowergirlmiwa]

i had a poll asking if yal wanted me to post my wrestling video game reviews here so heres the first one its a review of the game WCW vs nWo World Tour for the N64. TL;DR this game especially for its time pretty much fucks i mean it's just a great game even if it doesn't have a season mode. AKI made awesome wrestling games

this was written in like 2019 as a potential youtube script so if it reads like a youtube script i was writing it to be a youtube script ok ty also i just put in some pictures so it's a little less drab ok ty again

Graphically, for 1997, World Tour looks pretty good… for the most part. The crowd is a strange flat texture that doesn’t necessarily even resemble a crowd, but it does its job, and reacts accordingly with the crowd noise. The wrestlers themselves generally look good, although body proportions can be totally off at times. Everyone appears to have the same height, meaning Rey Mysterio Jr. and The Giant stand practically shoulder-to-shoulder. It’s quite strange, but besides this, each wrestler has a decent approximation of their real-life look and attire for the era. That is, with the exception of the faces. Sometimes, the faces look good enough, and sometimes they just look totally off. For example, Rick Steiner looks okay, but Scott Hall just looks strange.

There are some strange quirks like the 'back spike' which can be seen every so often, as well as things like parts of a body disappearing from view in certain camera angles. All-in-all, the models themselves are rather detailed, and the faces kind of fall into the back of your mind while you’re playing anyway. Each wrestler in the game has four attires, clearly accounting for the possibility that 4 players would all want to play as the same character. While half of the time, this amounts to alternate colors, this feature is deeper than one may expect. For example, both Hogan and Sting feature their ‘classic’ look in alternate attires. The feature clearly wasn’t just an afterthought by the development team. (2024 edit: also the alternate colors are probably relatively accurate to real world gear they've worn for all i know)

Each wrestler has a drawn picture as their menu sprite, which sometimes looks great and sometimes just looks odd. It’s quite like the in-game faces in this way.

While the action plays out, the camera angle will often change to give a better or more exciting view of the moves being performed. At first, this may seem distracting, but as the camera angle typically reverts back to the same view by the time you’re back in control of moving your character, it just serves to make the match seem that much more dynamic.

Each wrestler has a variety of moves at their disposal, which I’ll get into later, but in general, these moves look GREAT. There is a lot of very fluid animation and the sheer variety of available moves goes to show that the developers were passionate about professional wrestling. Especially for the time, the animations in general are top notch. In addition, as wrestlers take damage, they will get visibly weaker, with arms clutching at pains in the chest and head, for example. This level of detail is above and beyond what one would expect from a product of this time. There are also a variety of fighting stances, taunts, etcetera for each wrestler, and the fictional wrestlers even get plenty of totally unique animations. Each character truly feels distinct, from their movesets down to their unique animations, even though they all control the same way.

There is one arena for each promotion in the game. These are generally unremarkable, and don’t really reflect any actual arenas, but the visual variety is nice. Each arena has differences such as turnbuckle colors and the size of the crowd. The Independent Union even has a very unique Japanese-style ring. Some may be disappointed that arenas such as the one for Monday Nitro were not included, but I’m just surprised the different promotions have this many differences in their arenas, and find them to be a worthy inclusion.

In terms of entrances, there… kind of aren’t any. I say ‘kind of’ as there are match introductions which play out as a name card and a brief taunt by your wrestler. It’s bare-bones, but it’s passable. (2024 edit: this is basically a truncated version of how Japanese wrestling promotions do wrestler introductions)

Let’s talk about sound. Like the arenas, the music in the game is pretty unremarkable. Unless you play the game a lot, a definite possibility in 1997, you probably won’t remember any of the songs after turning the console off. Most of the tracks have a rock ambiance to them, but they strike me more as Japanese video game music than, say, an edgy late 90s kind of rock you may expect based on the license. There are also no wrestler themes, or WCW-related themes included in the game. Each wrestler seems to have a single sound effect associated with them which they will use pretty much every time they do anything. Most of these are simple grunts, and they’re not, say, voiced by the original wrestler, so they’ll probably fall to the back of your mind as play continues. The aforementioned crowd noise provides a good backdrop to the action. The crowd will ‘ooh’ at moves during their setup, and cheer when the move lands. If a wrestler happens to take an attack to their dick area, the crowd will react with shock. It’s easy to overlook, but the crowd noise does a good job all the same.

Let’s talk roster. This is one MAMMOTH of a roster for the time. Forty-two total wrestlers, each with their own distinct look and move set, in 1997 no less, is nothing short of impressive. There is a caveat here, however. Many WCW fans were and will be disappointed to hear that only about half of the included characters are from WCW, and for that matter, the other half are entirely fictional. This is where the “World Tour” aspect comes into play. Ostensibly, this other half of the roster is foreign wrestlers with all sorts of strange personalities. Unfortunately, this means that for many people, there won’t be much appeal in half of the roster, as they are, for the most part, inherently uninteresting compared to the WCW wrestlers. However, there is a hidden secret behind these characters. Each one is actually a stand-in for a wrestler, mostly Japanese, which wouldn’t have made it into the game otherwise as they didn’t have the license to use those likenesses outside of Japan. So, if names like TAKA Michinoku, Genichiro Tenryu, The Great Sasuke and Abdullah the Butcher interest you, they made the game in the form of these fictional characters. The full moveset for these characters are based on these wrestlers. It’s a smart way to include these move sets, although it may still disappoint fans, as the character who receive these move sets usually bear little resemblance to the wrestler they represent. It is good to have these extra characters, though, as they make the roster fuller than it would otherwise be.

Back to the WCW guys, there’s 23 of them, and most of them are worthy inclusions. You have guys like Hogan, Hall, Nash, Syxx, Macho Man, DDP, Regal, Sting, Dean Malenko, Ric Flair… if you were a WCW fan at the time, you were pretty much guaranteed to have one of your favorites make the cut. I know most people would have preferred if the entire roster were WCW guys, but by all accounts, this is still a big, impressive roster.

In terms of general presentation, I think WCW vs. nWo World Tour does its job quite well. The biggest issue here for me is a tenuous link to the WCW license. There is, for example, no Monday Nitro arena. There aren’t any WCW belts seen in the game. There’s no commentary of any kind, there’s no music from WCW, there isn’t really anything that relates the game to the WCW license other than the included talent and the logo being seen in the WCW ring. And, of course, half the roster isn’t WCW guys. It’s not a huge deal, but it does give a bit of an air of having the WCW license put on in the final stages of development, which I’m not sure was actually the case.

A big roster doesn’t mean much if the gameplay doesn’t hold up, and fortunately, World Tour delivers. It has a gameplay system I’d describe as easy to pick up but complex to master. The A button provides access to grapples, and the B button handles strikes. The C buttons handle things like running, pinning and exiting the ring, while R and L provide ways to evade or block attacks. Unusually for a Nintendo 64 game, movement is controlled by the D-pad, with taunts and special attacks mapped to the analog stick. You can do a strong version of a strike or grapple by holding down the respective button. For grapples, there are 12 total moves that can be done from a front standing position alone, by using any combination of A or B, up and down, after getting your opponent into a hold with the A button. Moves are context sensitive, you can grapple your opponent at a turnbuckle, from behind, and there’s even different moves on a grounded opponent depending on what side they’re laying on and whether you go for the head or the legs. The opponent can also be irish whipped and attacked while you’re running. There’s a lot of different ways to deal damage to your opponent, and most importantly, all of this has a great flow to it. Reversals can be done by tapping R at the right time, there’s backing away to evade grapples with L, you can use a strike to interrupt the opponent or go for a surprise strong grapple when you catch them guarding too much. In addition, when both you and your opponent go for a grapple at the same time, a test of strength occurs. I’m not sure how this feature works, but it may just be that the winner is whoever can button mash the fastest. Speaking of button mashing, both pin falls and submissions work this way as well. Submissions will occur whenever a wrestler happens to have a submission move in their moveset, so it pays to explore each wrestler’s moveset thoroughly to find out where his best submissions are. The gameplay is a bit slow paced, but it does a fantastic job of emulating an actual wrestling match. As I’ve intimated, the game features simple controls with a lot of depth built in, for those who are interested in getting skilled at the game. There’s even unique maneuvers and moves that I haven’t mentioned, as there are just so many of them for seemingly every situation. Overall, I have no hesitations in saying that based on what I’ve covered already, WCW vs. nWo World Tour was the greatest wrestling game that had been released to America at the time of its release.

We can’t talk about gameplay without bringing up the Spirit meter. This shows how well your wrestler is doing, and is another way that the game emulates wrestling fantastically. When your wrestler is doing well, his Spirit meter will rise, and when it reaches its peak, you are allowed to do special moves. There are two ways to do special moves in this game, done by strong grappling an opponent from the front or back and using the analog stick. If your wrestler is getting beat down, his spirit meter will become smaller. However, much like a real wrestling match, a comeback can be initiated by turning the tide of the match into your favor, and this will inspire the Spirit meter to rise rapidly. The Spirit meter has a surprising amount of depth to it, much like the rest of the gameplay, it isn’t a simple bar you fill up to gain super attacks. Keeping a close eye on your Spirit meter is key to success.

You can go outside the ring and attempt to find weapons given to you by the crowd, but I haven’t found a way to bring these weapons into the ring. Unlike most aspects to the game, the weapons seem to be a bit of an afterthought. You can’t get disqualified, and I haven’t observed weapon attacks to do that much more damage than, say, a regular heavy strike. Additionally, you can cause your opponent to bleed if you have ‘realism’ set to ON. How this passed on a rated K to A game is beyond me, but it’s fun to see happen. As for how this happens, I’m not quite sure. It seems to just happen at random in my experience.

Believe me when I say this, this is a finely crafted game from a gameplay perspective, and it’s still quite fun to play to this day. That especially goes for multiplayer, which was a particular highlight for many people at the time. The Nintendo 64 was equipped with 4 controller ports out of the box, and as such, four players can battle in an all-out war in the battle royal mode. This works in an elimination style, although eliminated wrestlers still stick around and can mess with other players by grappling their feet.

In terms of match types, it’s pretty basic. There’s the standard one on one, tag team matches, a two on one handicap match, and the aforementioned battle royal. That’s all there is in terms of exhibition, but even having a battle royal match in the game made for a great plus to the total package in a time when players probably weren’t expecting things like cage and table matches. Speaking on the tag team matches, they are actually quite fun in this due to your partner’s ability to interrupt the action and help out, whether it be hitting or grabbing an opponent from the ropes, opening an opportunity for their partner to make an attack, breaking up pin attempts, or just jumping into the ring to kick ass. With two players against computers, this can be quite engaging, and I’d imagine it would be even more fun against a second team of players.

There are three other exhibition modes seen on the main menu, these being the eponymous WCW vs. nWo, League, and Tournament. The tournament mode is pretty self explanatory, although there is support for a tag team tournament as well. The league plays out a Round Robin style tournament, commonly seen in Japan. I’d imagine this would take quite some time to complete if you go with the maximum of eight wrestlers and have them all controlled by people. I wonder what was the last time someone actually did that. Hmm. In these modes, matches that include only computer players can be skipped and simulated. WCW vs. nWo mode pits teams of up to 5 against one another in a gauntlet format. One wrestler stays in until they are defeated. It goes on like this until one side has won. Your reward for all of these three modes is the same basic congratulations screen. These modes don’t add a lot to the game, but they certainly don’t take away anything either.

The main single player mode and your path to unlocking this game’s 6 hidden characters is League Challenge. Each promotion in the game has a series of battles to face en route to a championship opportunity. In each promotion, finishing the Heavyweight title run will reward you with a WCW character, most notably DDP and Randy Savage. There are also Tag Team and cruiserwight paths to try out. Upon completing all of the other challenges of a type, a new challenge in a new promotion will open up, allowing you to unlock the strangest characters in the game, Joe Bruiser and BlackWidow. BlackWidow is the only female character, but she works exactly like everyone else and there aren’t any kind of restrictions against fighting or even bloodying her. She does look a bit odd, though. Joe Bruiser, on the other hand, is a boxer who has no grapples to speak of, just a lot of different punches. It’s worth unlocking Bruiser just for how unique and strange he is as an inclusion. Sadly, the hidden promotion doesn’t also unlock a new hidden arena, as the promotion just uses the WCW arena. Once you have these two, you can consider this game finished.

League Challenge is a pretty straightforward series of matches with no flavor or cutscenes. In the end, you are rewarded with a simple trophy screen and another check mark on the list. Besides the unlockable wrestlers, there isn’t much if any reward, so the tag title paths are essentially pointless. It shouldn’t take very long for most players to unlock all of the hidden characters. The game allows you to pick the difficulty of your computer controlled opponents, from Easy to Medium to Hard, which may add a little spice to this. My biggest issue with this mode is how damn long some of them can take. Some of these championships will require what feels like an endless amount of battles to win, especially the WWW challenges. It gets a bit stale simply doing matches one after the other, so it may be better to chip away at these over time rather than try to get them all done as soon as possible. And as a small note, as Wrath and Glacier are unlocked by doing the fictional promotion Heavyweight paths, they are put onto the selection screen in those promotions. I would have expected them to be put with the WCW characters, but instead they stick out put next to all these fictional wrestlers. Just a bit odd.

Although I have been pretty positive with World Tour so far, there’s a couple of gripes I have with it. For one thing, having only front and back specials means some wrestlers like Hollywood Hogan are out in the cold. His leg drop is just a regular move which requires no preamble and doesn’t do much damage. You can still finish a match by using it, but as it’s not contextualized as a special, it feels a bit odd. As well, Hogan’s actual front special is… a chokehold? Some wrestlers don’t have entirely accurate specials, either, with Nash famously doing a not-Outsider’s Edge, for example. As the moves are generally on point, seeing some guys lacking in terms of accurate specials is a bit disappointing. This also contributes to the ‘not-quite-WCW-enough’ feel that the game has. Another thing that may be an issue to some is that it is impossible to save your progress without a Memory Pak. All it does is save your settings and the League Challenges you’ve defeated, but this means if you don’t own a Memory Pak, you will have to unlock all the characters you want to use every time you turn on the game. Saving via the Memory Pak wasn’t a totally uncommon thing back in 1997, and most N64 fans will most likely have one or two laying around, but it’s worth noting nonetheless.

WCW vs. nWo World Tour is a very solid game. While it may feel rather bare bones by today’s standards, it was revolutionary for the time and basically wrote the book on how 3D wrestling games should work in the future. It’s a hell of a lot better than contemporary games such as WWF War Zone, and is still a fun time today. With no creation aspects and a simple arcade mode for single player content, wrestling fans may find themselves uninterested after a while. The gameplay is the main star here, however, and with a big roster, good graphics for the time, a selection of unique arenas and the famous battle royal mode, World Tour stands up to this day as a good wrestling game, and a great starting point for the AKI/THQ wrestling game series.

+Revolutionary, skill-oriented gameplay +Large roster including not just WCW but foreign wrestlers as well under aliases, each with their own unique moveset +Stellar animation work along with solid graphics for its time +4-player Battle Royal and a variety of side modes such as tournaments give the game multiplayer replay value -Single-player League Challenge mode is no-frills arcade style, with little in the way of personality, which gets repetitive -More WCW names could have been included -Saves need to be done with a Memory Pak -Not a lot of content outside of the standard Exhibition matches -Some wrestlers don’t have their accurate finishing moves, either because of a wrong move choice, or because their finishing move doesn’t fit one of the 2 Special move types included

Fake Sting here is playing the Japanese equivalent to this game, Virtual Pro Wrestling 64

[teabookgremlin]

7 (obviously), 19, 38, 50, 61, 78, 83 🧡

7. Would you cannibalise a dead body in a life-or-death scenario? Does your answer change depending on whether they're a loved one or not?

i think that if i was desperate enough i could but like i think i’d have a hard time even eating animal meat in a life or death scenario if it came down to it. so like maybe i could but i would permanently fuck me up to the point i would rather just offer myself up as food. also my survival plan in most apocalyptic or otherwise extremely dire situations is to just die lmao

19. In general, is there any historical event you desperately want to witness?

i’d love to have been able to experience defining moments within queer history, i don’t care which one’s just any would be awesome and i suppose i likely could experience some in the future so yeah

38. Who do you miss, if anyone?

most of the ones i miss the most are just animals that were in my life but now aren’t. i’ve been really missing my cat felix recently and also having a new puppy around, especially a black lab, is making me miss working with justice

50. What qualities do you find charming?

passion is a big one, like if i can tell how passionate someone is about something its just so appealing. also care for animals, if i’m like already interested in someone than watching them interact with animals in a loving way will be so incredibly charming to me bc like animals are such a big part of my life so i want people who also love them around me

61. Are you a romantic person? Why?

i would describe myself as a hopeless romantic FOR SURE like i just want someone who i can do all sorts of cheesy romantic things for and i’m always imagining like dream dates or just general things to do with a future partner, even like little everyday things. finding a good life partner is just super important to me and is one of my big goals and that just bleeds into being/wanting to be romantic for me

78. Have you ever written a poem or song about someone? Or had someone write one about you? Do you hope to have either of those experiences in the future?

i have not nor has anyone done that for me. i think in the right context it could be super sweet and lovely, definitely as a more private thing but as i said i am a hopeless romantic and am a huge sucker for this sorta thing

83. What's your type? Otherwise, do you think you attract a certain a sort of person?

my type is van lmao but i also am not super picky like there are definitely some trends among who i find attractive but i’ve been into a lot of different types of women/non-binary people so like i have my ideal dream girl type but also am very open to a lot of different types. i don’t think that i attract a certain sort of person but idk i’m not very aware of people’s attraction to me unless they say it outright which has not happened much. in a more friendship kinda sense i definitely attract water and earth signs a lot, my closest friends throughout my life have usually had a water or earth sun sign.

100 questions

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

Even if the curse can be seen as an allegory for chronic illness, it's still its own thing in canon. Those two things can co-exist. People are getting so attached to the messaging that they are forgetting that 1) the curse is its own thing and 2) neither Eda nor the Owl beast wants it. Also it's a bit weird of people to go "I want Eda to continue to suffer with this because I like the message"

Anon, you cannot separate those two, even if they are technically “different things”. It doesn’t matter that it’s “just” an allegory. The parallels are as blatantly obvious as they are intentional, and they are sending a message about chronic illness with how they handle the curse because the curse is essentially portrayed as a chronic illness. Of course Eda doesn’t like having the curse. And you’re right, the owl beast doesn’t want it either! But they’re learning to live with each other, and sometimes that’s just how it is. Let me let you in on a little secret: people with chronic illnesses don’t like having those either. But they’re still something people have to live with, because a lot of chronic illnesses are incurable.

This isn’t about how “I want Eda to continue suffering”. But since the crew chose to portray the curse as a chronic illness, with ongoing treatment, with Gwen continuing to push Eda towards a new cure every year against her will and none of them working, etc., how they end up handling it in the show sends a message when it comes to actual chronic illnesses. Having an episode on how it’s bad to continue pushing for a cure when there isn’t one, over trusting the ill person to know which treatments work, sends a message. And if they end up curing it after that, this message changes to “Actually never mind what we said earlier. It’s actually fine to keep looking for cures in the most absurd of places, even if it’s against the ill person’s wishes and wears them out and gets their hopes up over and over again just to crush them, because if you just have enough patience, you will find a cure, after all! Just don’t give up hope!” And that sucks. That message fucking sucks! And it harms real people with incurable chronic illnesses. Because in a lot of cases, “if you just keep searching for a cure you will find it” is utter bullshit!

I have asthma. I also have scoliosis. Both are incurable chronic diseases that I’m gonna have to live with for the rest of my life. Is having them fucking awful? Yes, it is. Do they influence my life in a negative way, despite not being as bad as they could be, and far from as bad as some of the other chronic illnesses out there? Also yes. Would I prefer to not have them? Obviously! But there is no cure for either, and so I live with them. I don’t have any other choice.

We don’t want Eda to continue suffering because we like to see her suffer, anon. It’s about the reality of a lot of people that her story reflects. People that got their hopes up over and over and over again just to have them crushed each time. People who’ve been driven into depression because the focus was always on the illness over them as a person. That were taught to despise their illness and all of themself because they were made to believe being sick makes them broken. Telling those people “if you just hold on longer surely one of those absurd appointments will go somewhere” fucking sucks as a message. Some chronic illnesses can be cured. Some just can’t. That’s reality.

I don’t want anyone with a chronic illness to suffer. If Eda was a real person, sure, it would be awesome if one day a cure for her chronic illness was found, despite it currently being seen as incurable—even if I still wouldn’t want her to get her hopes up before that, because chances are it won’t be. But Eda isn’t a real person. Eda is a made-up character that the creators chose to write a certain way. And as such, the message her story sends, no matter how it ends, is one the creators chose to send. I don’t want Eda to be cured because not being cured is a reality for people with certain illnesses, and continuously being told to “just hold out hope for a cure because one will be found eventually” is unhelpful and tiring and just plain untrue. A huge part of Eda’s story portrays the issues of real people, the suffering they go through not just because of their permanent chronic illness but because of the way other people treat their illness. Because of the way others make them see their illness and themselves.

Gwendolyn goes from “cut this thing out if you have to” when Eda is a child to “I made you think your curse was something to be ashamed of. Whether we want it or not, it’s a part of you. And I love every part of you.”

And that’s powerful. Chronic illnesses fucking suck. I assure you, absolutely nobody likes to have them. But they are a part of some people, and not a part we should make anyone feel ashamed of. There’s so much stigma against people with incurable chronic illnesses, making it all about finding cures at all costs, no matter how it affects the ill person. No matter how draining it is for them to keep getting their hopes up in vain, or how ashamed it makes them of that specific part of themself, and themself as a whole.

And, to quote Eda from episode 8: “Neither of us wanna be here, but we are, and there’s no changing that. If we can’t accept each other, this fight here will never end.”

When you have a chronic illness, it can feel like your own body is the enemy. But that’s not a fight that can ever be won. What Eda gained from accepting the curse as a part of her is obviously an exaggeration—but coming to terms with your incurable illnesses does make life a little easier, and saves you constant disappointment.

Also, please keep in mind that The Owl House is a kids show. I know a lot of people think that we should shelter kids from certain realities, but the thing is, a lot of things in life don’t have happy endings. Some chronic illnesses that don’t have a cure are being researched and looked into by a ton of scientists all over the world—have been for years—and it’s still unlikely that a cure is gonna pop up anytime soon. These things don’t end in rainbows and sparkles. That’s just not how it works, and I think sheltering sick kids from that reality does more harm than good in the long run.

Anon, what do you think the better message is to send to a child that has an incurable chronic illness? “Keep holding out hope, even if it’s gonna be crushed over and over and over again, because there’s a slim chance that one day a cure will be found”? Or “nobody likes having a chronic illness, but even if it doesn’t go away, taking your meds can make it more manageable, and the people that matter love you just the same. This is just another part of you, and you don’t have to be ashamed of it.”?

Of course Eda and the owl beast don’t want to be there. And of course the situation sucks. None of the people with chronic illnesses want to have those. But if you’re stuck with a chronic illness for life, the only way you can go about it is acceptance. I know that’s not a pretty reality—but it’s a reality nonetheless.

[kitsu-katsu]

About revived (by Derivakat)

(Disclaimer: Nothing against Derivakat, I think her songs are amazing in general and she's very talented, I simply have a bone to pick with these lyrics and characterization)

So um, here's my counter to some of the lyrics because fuck it, I'm tired and fueled by spite, let's go:

Let's start with the chorus:

"White streak in my hair but no stress now" - Funnily incorrect, cc!Wilbur confirmed that the white hair is from stress itself, it's not about the revival process alone. Also just by reasoning, I cannot imagine what might have been stressful about spiralling and believing that the world is out to crush you, believing that you're the scum of the Earth as well, only to die, spend 13 and half years in dark isolation and then being jolted back up to life missing huge chunks of information, really cannot fathom how that might be stressful /s

"I've seen hell, but this is a bit more my style" - True you know? It's awesome that he's said that he's over the moon about being alive again after spending 13 and a half years of pure isolation in the dark, screming until his throat was hoarse. But coming from the tone of it, I'd like to point out that Wilbur's also still passively suicidal and self harms (check out the part under "He doesn't love TNT, he self-harms with it" in this post)

"A decade of time to make everything mine" (also counts for "This is my sunrise, this is my dawn, this is what I've waited for all along. All of this time, all this is mine. MINE. MINE. MINE!")- Honestly, based on what he's been doing, no prejudices, forget everything fandom's said: he doesn't really seem to want to "make everything his", does he? This perception mostly comes from him saying "This is my sunrise, this is mine!" in the original revival stream, however, if you forget about common fandom perception, what's so evilly framed about a guy who spent 13 and a half years of isolation in the dark saying "this is my sunrise!" after watching the sun coming up again for the first time since his death, in which he was extremely emotionally unstable? Like for real?

Now onto the verses:

"Am I the bad guy? I'll be the bad guy again" and "I've come back hell-bent" - Now, he has said that: “Here’s the thing, Tommy. I, I, I, I know I was bad, and I know I can redeem myself, but like, you know, there’s a little bit of fun in being bad, you know, we’ve spoken about this.” - (Wilbur’s resurrected gentleman of L'manburg: 11:31, 5th May), BUT, since then he's also expressed genuine remorse for his worse actions during Pogtopia (check out the parts under "He really regrets what happened in Pogtopia" and "Wilbur cares. A LOT" in this post), a wanting to redeem himself and truly become better and... uh... OH! He's also admitted that he's afraid he scares people and cried when Ranboo said that he was "an alright person". For real, just watch the Healthy Competition stream and read this reddit post by cc!Wilbur

The reddit post in question, just in case:

"You think I cared? It was always a means to an end" - So false. Just... so false. Ok, so quick one, let's review the actual lines said originally about him "not caring for L'manburg" in full:

“Uh, one thing, I didn’t actually really care about L'Manberg, I just cared about, you know, sticking it to the man. Actually, I cared about L'Manberg for the sole reason that I could use it to stick it to the man.” - (Wilbur’s resurrected gentleman of L'manburg: 24:18, 5th May)

“Look, I- Okay, I said it wrong. Look, I did care about- I did care about L'Manberg, but I cared about it for- You would call it the wrong reasons, but I, I- Just don’t think about it, don’t think about it too hard. Look, L'Manberg’s gone now, we’ve got that, you know- That, that wart on my side is gone, you know. I salute it, I salute it, you know, it was a great- It was a great place.” - (Wilbur’s resurrected gentleman of L'manburg: 25:18, 5th May)

“Look, Tommy, I’m gonna reiterate for you once more because I don’t think you quite understood, and that’s okay, you know, you don’t need to understand everything. I did care about L'Manberg. I did, I did. A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet, Tommy. L'Manberg would have been as loved by me had it been called Bimbum and was built in the middle of the desert.” - (Wilbur’s resurrected gentleman of L'manburg: 26:05, 5th May)

“The actual location, and the actual things it was, it were, were not important to me. It’s the thing it stood for. Which was freedom, liberty, and sticking it to the man, Tommy!” - (Wilbur’s resurrected gentleman of L'manburg: 26:26, 5th May)

“We were a family, Tommy. We were…” - (Wilbur’s resurrected gentleman of L'manburg: 27:26, 5th May)

So as you may see, he retracts himself immediately and explains his feelings with more nuance

Then, let's look at the more recent confession to Ranboo:

“I told Tommy that I didn’t actually care about L'Manberg, and that it was just like a tool for me to use to gain like, you know, power and stuff. But it’s not, it’s not true.” - (Wilbur’s A Year Later: 26:36, 3rd Aug)

“L'Manberg is- was really important to me. And it is still to this day.” - (Wilbur’s A Year Later: 26:47, 3rd Aug)

“I want it to, em, I want its history to live on not as a stain caused by me, you know. I basically just took a big shit on the history books, it feels like. I wanna, I wanna make it, I wanna make it feel like it was, you know, it was something that happened. You know, it was a great thing, you know, think of the good times. The- The years of safety. Well, not years, but you know.” - (Wilbur’s A Year Later: 26:47, 3rd Aug)

If this got more explicit I'd be literally hitting you over the head with it. Anyway, check out the parts under "Wilbur cared. A LOT" and "He really cared and cares about L'Manburg, and didn't want its ideals twisted to hur others with" in this post

"So who cares? So what? I'm not calming down" and "Shut up! And listen" - “Tommy, shut up! I mean, Tommy, come over here. Tommy, come over here, come over here, man. It’s cool, it’s cool, it’s cool. Sorry, I, I-” (Alivebur)

– (Wilbur’s A Deck of Cards with a Green Smile on them: 26:08, 31st May)

That line's totality gets often cut down, erasing the immediate apology after the loss of cool. Furthermore, I'd argue that him "not calming down" in general is mainly due to his euphoria and overexcitement during certain scenes where it makes complete sense for him to be feeling like that, and in a broader sense, he has a tendency to say things in the heat of the moment and out of impulsivity that he turns to later regret from all the way back at Pogtopia. Him not calming down now is either out of impulsivity or outright euphoria to be out of limbo, not necessarily an evil thing. And when he percieves he should calm down, he tries his best to do it, or apologizes for snapping

“I’m sorry I wasn’t, you know, entirely on the same page. But, man, I promise you, I’ve calmed down, you know, I’m all, I’m all settled in. I understand, you know, what’s changed, what hasn’t, who’s new, who’s old, you know, who’s still about, you know, who… Who, uh… uh… Who trusts me and stuff.” - (Wilbur’s A Year Later: 15:04, 3rd Aug)

“I relived that explosion in my head so many times man. And, and, and I- I get that you don’t, you don’t trust me, I do, but like, man, look at me, bro, I’m not gonna do it again. I’m not gonna- I’m not gonna hurt you again.” - (Wilbur’s A Year Later: 21:21, 3rd Aug)

(Check out the parts under "Wilbur cares. A LOT", "Paranoia and distrustfulness are integral parts of his character", "Self-loathing and self-sabotage are also integral parts of his character", "He hesitated regarding the button tons of times" and "He feels inhuman. He knows that people see him as a freak, evil or crazy and that makes him feel dehumanized" in this post)

"There's nothing wrong with me" - BUDDY. Wilbur drowns in self-hatred, what are you talking about? The man got caught off guard and cried when someone said "you're an alright person"... He's worried that he scares people, he knows how others see him on top of his own self-hatred

“TommyInnit, as you know, is just, he thinks I’m insane. I’m not insane, chat, I’m not insane.” - (Wilbur’s The Festival: 4:30, 16th Oct)

“See, I’m not so crazy, Tommy. I know what I’m doing.” - (Wilbur’s The Festival: 16:40, 16th Oct)

“I’ve told you, I’m not crazy, Tommy. I know what I’m doing, and this is genuinely the best thing we could do right now.” - (Wilbur’s The Festival: 17:18, 16th Oct)

“I’m not crazy! How am I crazy?!” - (Wilbur’s Speedy Stream Festival What festival: 43:18, 17th Oct)

“Everyone I seem to meet has this deep intrisnic feeling of disgust towards me. Jack Manifold seemed to be quite nice to me, but I reckon he, I could feel it, you know, in his stare. But like, you don’t have that. I can tell you’re a good guy.” - (Wilbur’s resurrected gentleman of L'manburg: 30:24, 5th May)

“Quackity, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I’ll be honest you with you, I’ve lost everything, man. I, um. I’ve lost decades of my life. I’ve lost my- most of the people who cared about me. Some people don’t even know I’m back yet, and I, and I think that’s probably for the best. So I feel like that does humble a man. That really humbles a man, you know?” – (Wilbur’s A Deck of Cards with a Green Smile on them: 1:00:52, 31st May)

“Listen, Phil, I met, I met Quackity. After you very kindly lent me your house. I went and met him. Yeah! I met up with him, and I hadn’t seen him in ages. It was, I’m gonna say it, it was nice. It was a nice time. I- I- It felt good, it felt, uh, you know, he didn’t, he didn’t seem afraid of me, which is cool.” - (Wilbur’s Healthy Competition: 7:38, 25th July)

“Not many people do. I mean, Phil, you don’t seem afraid of me, you’re not afraid of me, are you, Phil?” - (Wilbur’s Healthy Competition: 8:03, 25th July)

“Good, good. 'Cause I’m not afraid of you.” - (Wilbur’s Healthy Competition: 8:10, 25th July)

“Why? Why? … No, no, no, no, no, not the, not the bit about the, not the bit about the right foot, the why don’t you think I’m a bad person?” - (Wilbur’s Healthy Competition: 35:13, 25th July)

“Can I be real with you, man? I think I scare people.” - (Wilbur’s Healthy Competition: 36:30, 25th July)

“I mean, like I, I, I, I don’t think I, I- I think a lot of people share your idea, but they share your idea in trying to- trying to keep me from hurting them, you know? Like they’ve seen what I can do, and they don’t want me to do it again, so they adopt your emotion in order to do it.” - (Wilbur’s Healthy Competition: 36:46, 25th July)

“Dream is- He’s had his comeuppance, and I have not! My comeuppance was apparently not good enough for this people. They’re just waiting, they’re waiting for the next thing for me to slip up on, and, Ranboo, I’m not gonna fucking slip up, Ranboo. I’m different.” - (Wilbur’s Healthy Competition: 38:07, 25th July)

“I’m living in eternal limbo, again. I’ve been through limbo, I’m out of limbo, and socially, I’m still in this limbo.” - (Wilbur’s Healthy Competition: 38:36, 25th July)

(Check out the parts under "He feels inhuman. He knows that people see him as a freak, evil or crazy and that makes him feel dehumanized", "Paranoia and distrustfulness are integral parts of his character" and "Self-loathing and self-sabotage are also integral parts of his character" in this post)

"Oh yes, I blew up the nation!" (said with glee) - I make a point of the tone in this specific line, because I could make a point of the tone in the whole song, but this line is a good example. He didn't blow up L'manburg just with glee like "hell yeah! I did it!". Of course he talks about it with pride sometimes, but it's usually either said in the middle of the same impulsive moments in which he'd claim he doesn't care, said with relief of him having control over at least that situation (like him sighing right after doing it just to ask Phil to finish it off by killing him), or said with the same deflection with which he'd claim that not having a grave didn't affect him and was badass actually since he only wanted it for the hateful obituaries anyway (which was a lie, and he admitted it on the third of august stream when saying "I was so pressed about not having a grave" in case you had doubts)

Finally, I want to make emphasis on the fact that: The explosion on the 16th had two main drives behind it and they often get glossed over. The first objectivee was blowing it up and causing just enough destruction to get L'manburg back (You know, when Wilbur still had some kind of hope). After his spiral went further and his paranoia and self-loathing worsened, his two drives become apparent: First was blowing it up to rid the world of the twisted thing L'manburg became, ridding the world of what the twisted version of his ideals became with Schlatt in control of them. Secondly, he wanted to end L'manburg as a part of himself and rid the world of himself completely (by this I'm referencing his suicide), he decided he wanted to die and expected that as a result since a lot of time before the 16th. The explosion was effectively a bigger projection of his suicide, rid the world of both himself and his creation, mixed with his constant desire to protect, it also becomes "rid the world of the corrupted version of L'manburg that became Manburg", because for all intents and purposes, since the important thing about L'manburg was its founding ideals, L'manburg had been dead for a long time at that point.

“Yesterday I had the perfect opportunity to blow everything up and finally end it, you know. I had the perfect opportunity to finally blow up everything and end it and just completely save everyone, right, from the tyranny of Schlatt and the tyranny of the existence of Manberg and L’Manberg, right.” - (Wilbur’s Speedy Stream Festival What festival: 25:17, 17th Oct)

“Explain it to me! Give me a reason! Give me a reason!” - (Wilbur’s Speedy Stream Festival What festival: 26:50, 17th Oct)

“Who else is it gonna hurt?! It’s gonna hurt Schlatt, Manberg, and-” - (Wilbur’s Speedy Stream Festival What festival: 26:55, 17th Oct)

“Why did I bring- I should have just done it. I’m such a fucking showman. I should have just done it.” - (Wilbur’s Speedy Stream Festival What festival: 27:18, 17th Oct)

“No you two can escape, I’ll be the… I’ll- I’ll- I’ll be… I’ll be trapped in here…” - (Wilbur’s Speedy Stream Festival What festival: 27:27, 17th Oct)

“I just- I just want to f… I just wanna end it, I wanna end it. I wanna press that button, man.” - (Wilbur’s Speedy Stream Festival What festival: 28:08, 17th Oct)

(Check out the parts under "Wilbur cares. A LOT", "Paranoia and distrustfulness are integral parts of his character", "Self-loathing and self-sabotage are also integral parts of his character", "He hesitated regarding the button tons of times", "He really cared and cares about L'Manburg, and didn't want its ideals twisted to hur others with", and "He really regrets what happened in Pogtopia" in this post)

[tomatograter]

hey dirkjake guy , what makes you so interested in dirkjake so much ?

if I were to answer this with total accuracy we would be here all day and i’d have to hand you a 60 page peer reviewed thesis but since I don't have that time and i’m assuming you also don’t; There’s a LOT of things to work with if you read dirkjake as more than just… a vehicle for dirkcentric character angst. And they’re pieces actively embedded in the story! That matter! I like building fanwork around a textual basis and these two quite literally go as far back as being part of the guardians setting up SBURB beta in Act fucking 2. You can mine motifs until you’re dead. Here’s a contained, though by no means complete, list of things I particularly like about them:

1) Dirk and Jake both have highly imperfect experiences with their own gender/sexuality, partly out of societal pressure and partly because the story has decided what they ought to be. You've got two gay characters who are both a man in the WRONG way; Dirk overcompensates masculinity so hard he thinks of himself as too brash, imposing, damaging, nearly sizzling arsenic. Jake is expected to be the most perfect dude that has ever Het'd and fails in every feasible way because its not who he's comfortable being. He's not a wife-hunting casanova, He's just kind of a blatant useless fruit. Each of them thinks the other has it together and is doing sooooooooo much better than themselves, though.

I like that even though the adoration is mutual, the relationship is not smoothed out. It's not perfect from the get-go, and it's easier to make it awkward before making it good. We see them at their most immature, they have plenty of flaws, and they're extremely self-sabotaging in the way that isn't "cute" (or romantically convenient) but rather realistically concerning. I like seeing them working through it & maybe relapsing & putting in the effort to be better. They mean a lot to each other but have no idea how to go about it without putting on a show, it's comical to the point of being endearing. 

...And they're still the one person that makes the other feel like more than just a sum of poorly stitched frankenstein parts. 

2) Moving onto The Cringe Axis Of Relevance: Dirk and Jake are inextricable from the overarching plot and cyclical nature of Homestuck itself, Dirk as a motivator and Jake as a escapegoat. You could technically “pin” the “blame” of more than a dozen game changing plot events on them, and sometimes they’re not even aware of it. Beta Jake is HIC’s bastard child, a Dirk splinter is a core component of LE, Jake Harley translates the ancient runes in the frog temple containing the game code & is the one to release SBURB worldwide, eventually going on a time-displaced quest to get the game in motion; Ultimate dirk, funnily enough, is trying to do the exact same thing but much more shittily after borrowing one of Jake’s company ships and copying jadebot’s schematics for the purpose of making a robot daughter to forcefully restart Homestuck, The Webbed Comique, after its over. (Mom lalonde was Grandpa’s assistant & vaguely familial protégé, if you remember. Funny how that works!) And this is just like, in the text. Rose in the candy postscript directly drops it: 

I guess plagiarism is a backwards form of flattery :/

Alpha Jake in turn ends up flooded with promises of giving LE’s his first defeat, kickstarts a thousand little conflicts throughout act 6, brings dirk back to life with a kiss, sends the bunny back in time in the box (he was jade’s secret penpal that far back!), eventually only knocks caliborn on his ass because *Dirk* gets hurt in a fight, then it turns out davepeta is his sprite and actually the one fated to defeat the final boss, and that’s just the major stuff. Alpha Dirk & his dastardly AI-self messily usher the alphas into a new session, we only discover what the hell is up with alpha earth through dirk’s 20 page pesterlog gifted on jake’s birthday, Hal’s existence partly relies on Jake’s unending support- and so does Brain ghost dirk’s existence, for that matter. In big-scale and small-scale stuff alike, they’re tied up.

3) Overabundance of referential motifs: Homestuck is practically a big collage of character-relevant media. You can talk about things like some of jake’s favorite superheroes being similar to dirk, or how dirk and jake’s romance is jokingly compared to the Princess Bride via their planets/personalities/BGD literally quoting the movie and acting out the same sword movements, or how they both have a thing for artisanal puppetry, or how dirk is a history buff while jake is a time-displaced verbal oddity, or how Dirk's concerns with narrative philosophy and clean logic make him squarely Apollonian in certain lit terms & that is perfectly opposed by Jake's haphazard Dionysian approach! Or how Grandpa has an orange-lit room of knights and a replica of Iron Man’s armor (widely known for his fragile heart) to stand in for Dirk while Jake has his knight genre movie posters and dreams up dirk to serve the same role, or how the brobot, built with jake’s help, eventually has a nervous conniption and rips his heart out so it can be used as a battery - and while the moment is reminiscent of aradiabot's blue blood breakdown, the heart is actually the same kind grandpa had installed into jadebot; as both were created to protect someone dearly beloved.

Funny how that works x4

Or just how like, Jake fantasizes about Avatar while kissing a poster but mentally he's having an elaborate dream of putting Dirk in the role of the movie's lead to prove how Awesome And Perfect life can be. Or how brain ghost dirk tells jake he looks good when he's feeling like shit and jake, in turn, says his gay little prince outfit looks pretty sweet and not dumb at all, in a sort of covert pep-talk system covering for both of their masculinity hang-ups. That works too.

4) They're the only ship I can confidently compare to Shrek, the Movie, and make that into insightful commentary.

And lastly:

[crashdevlin]

Opposites Don’t Attract (A Witcher Fic)

Author’s Note: This was written while I was fighting Covid19...so I’m pretty proud of that. I'm aware that not everyone likes the Witcher but this was the only thing that would could out of my head that week so...

I took bits of lore from the show, the books, and the games and mixed them all up into a cohesive awesomeness...also, the smut is pretty good, but the banter is where it's at with this one. If you guys like this, I might make it a series...so, let me know how you're feeling on it.

Summary:  Y/n is a witcher from the Cat School (a nomadic school that is one of the few that actually makes female witchers) who keeps running into Geralt of Rivia...to her great pleasure.

Pairing: Geralt x Female Witcher!Reader, mentions of Geralt x Yennefer and Geralt x Triss Merigold

Word count: 3869

Story Warnings: 18+! HERE BE SEX!! DON’T READ IF YOU’RE A YOUNG’UN!!!, unprotected sex, creampie, mentions of infertility, little bit of angst (it's a Cassie story...what do you expect?)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It wasn’t often you crossed paths with the White Wolf. The Continent was vast and you both had work to do. But it was always a treat when you walked into a tavern and smelled the man.

"Geralt. What brings you to Kagen?" you asked, taking the stool next to him at the bar.

"A contract."

"Always so succinct, Wolf...and just a bit disrespectful. Isn't my school the one that's supposed to birth disreputable thugs?"

Amber eyes turned on you as you fiddled with your medallion, a silver coin with a cat's head on a silver chain. It hung right between your breasts and never came off.

"Here to kill a monster...or be a monster?" he asked, his voice a deep rumble.

A zing of indignant fury went through you but you stifled it instinctively. "I haven't taken a contract against a human in nearly twenty years. I've learned the error of my ways. I told you as such when we met last. Remember? The bard's impromptu celebration in Lyria." He grunted softly at you and looked away. "You do remember, don't you, Geralt?"

"My memory is fine, Feline."

"Then you remember folding me in on myself and making my body quake?" You set your hand on his thigh and watched his face for a reaction.

He gave no indication he even noticed your fingers over the conditioned leather. "Since when do you call them 'humans'? When last we met, you were still calling them by the slur."

You rolled your eyes. "That was a single slip. Another thing I've seen the error on. I've developed, I've grown. You have to admit that some things are hard to shake, like a word you shouldn't say or a prejudice you were taught as a small child. I wasn't really given a choice on who to sympathize with in the conflict. Cats and Elves, we go together. Call it a commiseration of outcasts."

He let out a long sigh before dropping his hand to yours. "You talk too much, Cat."

"Well, someone has to fill the silence around you. Jaskier doesn't seem to be around right now, so I'll take that mantle." You licked your lips and hummed as his fingertips slowly caressed the back of your hand. "I could help you fulfill your contract. Two witchers are better than one. What are you after?"

He turned his head just enough to catch your eyes. "You want to help me?"

"I want to fuck you, but I feel you're going to be distracted until you've got your coin so I might as well hasten that instance."

"Can I trust you to have my back in battle?"

You pulled your hand away and shook your head. "If I can alter my preconceived notions of humans, you can alter your notions of Felines. Or, in the very least, of me." You caught his eyes and held them without blinking. "I have known you for decades, Geralt. Can you trust me to have your back?"

He held your eyes for a few moments before he picked up his ale. "It's a graveir. Strength is more important than speed."

"Well, then I'll just have to pull its attention and hope it is hungry for witcher." You smiled. "And you can kill it before it eats me."

He smiled just a bit as he set his mug down. "Perhaps I'll let it eat you, kill it while it is sated and happy."

"Aww, but then the great White Wolf would never get to eat his fill of this Feline ever again."

He smirked as you set a coin on the bar and requested an ale of your own. "And what brought you to Kagen, Y/n?"

You smiled at the use of your name. "Tracking a man." His eyebrow went up so you clarified. "Just tracking. He's a historian. There's some question of the authenticity of some of the Aen Seidhe artifacts he's 'found'. He's at the whore house two down so I thought I'd have a drink while he was busy. A lucky stroke to find you."

"If you help me with the graveir, you might lose him."

You took a drink of your ale and turned on the stool. "You think we can't take down a graveir and have a fun night before a middle-aged human historian wakes from his well-deserved nap after a night of lust away from his wife?" You leaned next to his ear and whispered, "Are you underestimating me or yourself?"

"I could never underestimate you." He tipped his head back and finished off his ale and you chugged down your own. It was time to work.

As you moved to follow Geralt out of the tavern, a tall man with a sunburned face stepped in front of you.

"I didn't know they made witchers with tits," the foul-smelling farmer said with a guffaw at the end for good measure.

"Well, you've never seen the Butcher of Blaviken with his shirt off, have you?" you snapped, stepping away from him.

"You're a real one, then? You got the eyes, I see. They do all those mutations on you? Hear witchers are like a bitch in heat but cain't procreate. Now there's a perfect woman, right? Always ready to be filled, but never able to give me any more little brats."

Geralt sneered at the man's words but you just shook your head. "I guarantee no woman wants to be filled by you or your brats. Especially not this woman."

The drunk looked offended for a moment before he scoffed. "You're not a woman. You're a fuckin' mutant. Wouldn't want your-"

A blade was in your hand and held against his throat in a flash. "I'm a fucking mutant and a fucking woman and I want nothing to do with you."

"Apologize," Geralt demanded, quiet and intent.

The drunk looked down at the knife and blinked a few times, then nodded. "Sorry."

Your blade was back in its sheath on your hip before he could take another breath. "Let's go, Geralt."

"Hmm." He pulled open the large wooden door and walked out, you followed.

~~~~~~~~~~~

"When's the last time you saw the Caravan?" Geralt asked as you headed for the woods.

"You really don't think I've changed, do you?" He gave a noncommittal grunt so you rolled your eyes. "Even after that slime back at the tavern? I didn’t kill him. I didn't even hurt him. I didn't even spout off and call him a...well, if anyone deserves to be slurred, it's a man like that and I held my tongue." You reached out and slapped your hand across his chain mail. "Haven’t seen hide nor hair of Dyn Marv in…"

You rubbed your fingers across your eyes and shook your head. "I abandoned the Caravan the day I met you. The ideals were harder to shirk but I left my school the moment I realized that Gezras wasn't quite the savior they claimed. You had it right. You and the others up at Kaer Morhen, you know how...how a witcher's supposed to act. You were trained in the codes and morals, I wasn't."

"No, you were trained blindfolded on a tightrope across the rooftops of Oxenfurt."

"Let it never be said that Cat School is without our flair." You smiled over at him. "And it was Oxenfurt, the Cintran Capital, and Vengerberg. Nomads and all that."

Geralt looked over at you and smiled. "I can imagine the Cintran guard were very happy to have a bunch of witchers crawling across their roofline."

"Oh none of them ever cared for having a bunch of witchers in their city let alone running training exercises across their roofs. But not a one tried to stop us. You'll recall, there was a time when most feared and respected us more than they hated us."

"I don't recall people ever fearing Cat School," he teased.

"Ah-ha, you're so hilarious, Geralt. My sides are in stitches from all this laughter," you responded dryly.

You walked in relative silence for a few moments, your boots making no sound on the tall grass. "I didn't know meeting Vesemir affected you so much," he said eventually.

"Oh, yes. It was wise old Vesemir that showed me the error of my ways, not the dashing white-haired man who rode into Novigrad after him."

"Dashing. That's a new one."

"I'm absolutely certain it is not a new one, Geralt. Not for any woman who's had the pleasure to make your acquaintance." Your cheeks heated up in a way you imagined his never did. Wolves dulled emotion. So did Bears, and Vipers, and most schools. Most pushed down emotions to make a witcher less susceptible to fear and anger and sadness. Cat School was different. You were reminded of that every time you were around Geralt. "I bet 'dashing' would be one of the first words they'd use to describe you: the Triss Merigolds and Yennefer of Vengerbergs of the world."

He looked over at you as you approached a cemetery filled with recent dead from a bandit attack on the outskirts of Kagen. "Hmm. Is that jealousy I hear?"

"No!" you responded just a little too loud. "What do I have to be jealous of? They're two supernaturally beautiful sorceresses who've been part of your life much longer than I have. Besides, none of us really gets you for more than a night or two, right?"

He grunted softly in agreement, then offered a potion from his belt. You took it and swallowed it down, feeling your already-fast reflexes get a boost. "You're supernaturally beautiful too. It will make you better graveir bait."

You couldn’t focus on the compliment he'd given you as he pointed to a bloated ghoul digging into a fresh grave with short, strong claws. He was gone by the time you looked back but you could sense him moving around the outside of the cemetery.

Normally, this was the point when you'd draw your silver; approaching a ghoul as it ripped a limb from a corpse to make its meal for the night. The sword stayed on your back with your steel, however. You were to take its attention so Geralt could kill it from behind.

It was fairly easy, actually. You and Geralt, working in tandem, had the graveir as dead as his dinner before there was a chance for real trouble. It noticed you, it rushed you, you dodged and dodged and threw a punch or three to its ugly face and then Geralt appeared in your vision and the graveir met the sharp blade of a witcher's silver sword. No muss, very little fuss, and very little blood.

"You did good as bait," Geralt commented as you walked back toward the city. "Maybe I should have you play the snack on hunts more often."

"Oh? A snack for the monsters or a snack for yourself?"

"I'm serious. We work well together."

"It's not the first time we've worked together."

There had been, in fact, two other monsters that you helped Geralt with. A wraith terrorizing a man in Novigrad that you helped him with when you first met each other and a wyvern you encountered on the road. Geralt happened to have the contract on the wyvern and showed up to take it down as you were in the midst of killing it.

He graciously shared a portion of the coin garnered from his contract.

He hummed in acknowledgement. “You should come with me.”

You stopped and turned to look at him. “What?”

“Once you’ve fulfilled your contract on the historian, you should saddle up and travel with me. You said it yourself, ‘two witchers are better than one’.”

You looked up into his eyes and blinked a few times. “You miss Vesemir so much that you would travel with me just to have another witcher at your side?”

“Why don’t we leave it at ‘I enjoy your company’?” he suggested.

You started walking again, heading toward your mare, a Konik named Daisy, and Geralt’s mare, Roach. “Will you be staying in Kagen for a while?”

“I have a room at the inn. I can stay in Kagen until you return.”

“You’re serious about me coming with you? I thought sweet nothings were whispered in the throes of passion, not in the aftermath of battle.”

“You don’t have to come with me, Y/n.”

You shook your head. “I’ll have to think about it, Geralt.” You didn’t want to anger any sorceresses. You climbed up into Daisy’s saddle and grabbed her reins. “For now, let’s go to the inn. A bath and a bed sound amazing,” you said, before riding toward the city.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The tub was small but you weren’t large. “How do you fit in this thing?” you asked, dunking yourself under the warm water.

“I’m very good at fitting into tight spaces.” Geralt stepped up behind you and kneeled down, setting his chin on your bare shoulder. “Do you need help getting clean?”

“No. But I’d love a bit of help getting dirty again after I’m done.” He hummed and nodded, turning his head to press his lips to your neck. You hummed happily and turned your head to give a bit more access and he took the invitation, running his hand down your body and under the water. You gasped as his fingers brushed your curls. “I’m not clean yet, Geralt.”

“Clean enough.”

You pressed closer to him, arching your hips and reaching back to grab the back of his head, pulling him further down. “More,” you whispered. He chuckled, slipping a finger down to tease your entrance. “Fuck, don’t tease.”

“Why not?” He nipped at your jawline and gave a low hum. “You know...the first time I heard your voice, I knew I’d have to hear you moan.” You gasped as his finger slipped into you down to the knuckle, your fingers digging into his scalp as the heel of his palm pressed into your clit. “I knew I’d have to feel you cum on my cock when I smelled you in the heat of battle.”

You moaned at the thought of Geralt, barely knowing your name, deciding that he’d have to have you just based on scent. It was something so animalistic, so inhuman...so uniquely witcher.

You twisted in the water and wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him in for a fierce kiss. You didn’t wait for an invitation into the cavern of his mouth, tugging on his bottom lip with your teeth as he gathered your body in his arms and carried you to the lumpy bed across the room. You pushed at his clothes without breaking the kiss, desperate to taste and feel him. Your fingers skimmed across the lines of his back muscles as you pulled his shirt off. His fingertips dug into your hips and moved to put bruising pressure on your ass as you started untying his trousers.

The man was a specimen. The mages at Kaer Morhen made the best of him. You didn’t have time to examine the body and the cock that were so prominent in your wettest dreams because he was obviously just as desperate for you. He got his trousers down and reached between your bodies, taking his length in hand and smearing the head of it in the wetness seeping out of you. You were just about to start begging when he slipped his cock into your cunt.

You lifted your hips to get more of him inside of you. You needed him stretching you and stuffing you. You needed him pushing you to the absolute limits. He fit you better than any ever had.

He rocked his hips against yours, his pelvis putting pressure against your clit as his cock barely moved against your walls. You wrapped your legs around him, ankles crossed at the small of his back, urging him deeper. He growled and grabbed your wrists, pulling your hands from his shoulders to pin them to the bed above your head.

No other man could put you in such a position. No other man controlled you like Geralt. You would never think to let it happen. No man, not even another witcher, could play you like such a fine instrument. A beautiful lute.

Part of you wished you didn't heal so efficiently, so quickly. Part of you wanted to wear his marks upon you for days, but his marks, just like the scent of your coupling, faded far too quickly for your liking. It left you with nothing but the memory and that just wasn't enough. Not when the man you were remembering was so...amazing.

You whimpered out a faint request and he heeded it, slamming his hips into yours harder. You struggled against his grip, desperate to get your hands in his hair, wanting to tug on the white locks, but he refused to relinquish control of your wrists. He gave you everything you needed, but not necessarily what you wanted.

Like you wanted to hear his voice, but the only time you really needed to hear it was when he leaned down next to your ear and demanded, “Cum, Cat.” Your toes curled and your head pressed back into the pillow, your hips arching closer to his as that finally cracking pleasure fell over you. Geralt lasted a while longer before he filled you, his cock pulsing against your walls as his breath caught in his chest, fingers tightening around your wrists as he came.

He pressed sweet kisses along your jawline as he pulled his half-hard member from your dripping pussy and his hands released your wrists to slide his fingers up to entwine with yours. You ended up with your legs tangled with his, neither of you seeming to care about the wetness of sweat and cum sticky between both of your thighs. You kept one of your hands clutched in his, but pulled the other away so that you could run your fingers through his hair as you stared at the ceiling.

“Do you give it much thought?” you asked, quietly. He made a questioning noise and popped open one eyelid to look up at you from where his head was on your breast. Your cheeks heated up and you licked your lips. “What they did to us. What the mages made of us. What they took from us.”

“Took?”

“Options. The options they took from us. We were children, Geralt. We were babies. They stole…” You cut your words off with a shake of your head. “I guess I’m the only one who thinks about it...and I can’t really imagine being some normal peasant wife with a litter of children and a world of misery, but I...I guess there’s some sweetness in the simplicity of their lives, you know? And I hate that I was never given that option. I was deprived of simplicity before I was even aware there was a difference between the folk in the Caravan and the rest of the world.”

Geralt was silent, but the way his fingers tightened their grip upon your hand filled you with a sense of calm. “People hate us, Geralt. They think us heartless, emotionless, cold. I learned to fake it, because that’s what people expect from someone with two blades on their back and these lovely eyes, but-”

“Cat School doesn’t dull emotions.”

“No. Not even with training. That’s a learned reaction to the outside world. I miss Dyn Marv fiercely sometimes because it’s...lonely away from people who understand. It’s hard to walk the Continent alone.”

He closed his eye and shifted a bit against you. “Why aren’t you with them, then?”

“Differences of morality.”

He was silent for a few minutes, just the sound of your breathing filling the room. “Opposites attract.”

“What?”

“It’s something the bard says. The idiot heard it from an alchemist once and he likes to believe it applies to relationships too. It’s why he goes after beautiful, cultured, married women. ‘Opposites attract’.” He sat up and looked down into your eyes. “But it’s horseshit. We look for companions that remind us of us. It’s why all of his women are as enamored with him as he is. Opposites don’t attract, Y/n...and that’s why you are someone I can’t say ‘no’ to.”

“Because we’re so alike?” you guessed.

“Yes.”

“Just because I’ve changed though, right?”

“No. You changed because you weren’t truly that woman. You were what the mages made you. What your teachers made you. You changed when you decided to.”

You licked your lips again and sat up a bit on your elbows. “What about your sorceresses?”

He smirked a little. “I don’t have sorceresses, Y/n.”

“Lovers. Ex or current?” you simplified the question.

“Current. Obviously,” he said, sarcastic humor in his voice as he ran his hand down your body.

You rolled your eyes and tried to ignore the way his touch lit your skin aflame with sparks of desire. “Geralt, I’m serious. If Yennefer were to ride into Kagen right now...if she knocked on that door…”

“Yen would just walk in. She’s never been one for other peoples’ privacy.” He leaned his head down when you didn’t express amusement at his jest, pressing his forehead to yours. “I could lie.”

“Not really. You’ve not proven yourself a good liar, Wolf.”

“True. I prefer honesty.” He sighed and looked away, sitting up to lean his back against the wall.

“Would you turn her away? Would you turn away Triss?” You sighed heavily. “I’m not trying to sound...like such a sodding woman, but...Geralt, you asked me to come with you. That seems like-” His pensive face made you question what you were even trying to get at. “You know what? I think it’d be better if I just head back to my job following Professor Lery and-”

“Don’t.” He grabbed your arm as you moved to get off the bed. “I care for Triss and I think I...loved Yennefer. But I...don’t think we’ll be an option again. She’s been upset at me since Triss.”

“Won’t this-”

“Stop questioning everything.” You closed your eyes as he leaned over and kissed you again. “Stay.”

“I have to finish the contract, Geralt. I’ve already been paid a hundred-fifty gold for it.”

“Then come back,” he demanded softly.

You smiled at him and nodded, but your heart was far less resolute than you were pretending. “Of course. Don’t go anywhere.” You rolled off the bed and grabbed your trousers and shirt, dressing hastily before grabbing your swords and potion belt. You kissed him one more time before leaving the room, swiping a loaf of bread off of a table in the tavern on your way out.

You weren’t sure if you were coming back to him. You wanted nothing more, but you weren’t looking forward to the moment one of his sorceresses came to call. “I’ll decide while I finish this job,” you told your horse, patting her lovingly. “Maybe it should just stay you and me, huh, Daisy. Maybe two witchers aren’t better than one.”

[amymel86]

Hello! Do you have any bits of your awesome writing to share for WIP wednesday?😍

I just saw this anon!

And thank you for asking <3

This is a bit more of this as yet untitled 'post-apocalyptic/fertility/modern arranged relationship???' fic. The first bit I posted on tumblr is here and as before, some things are not yet decided (like town names) and things may change...

“Are you sure this is what you want to do, darling?” Her mother’s voice on the telephone was a balm to her soul.

Sansa’s finger brushed the soft vivid petals of the small potted iris she’d bought at the store today. The iris symbolises hope, wisdom and courage among other things and she prays that the pretty purple and yellow bloom will lend her some of those. “I’ve got to try something, Mum,” she says, turning her attention to the two separate bundles of paper in front of her. Two men, two candidates, two different futures. Sansa had filled out all the matching service’s extensive questionnaires and scrutinised all the information she could find on the program. It seemed simple enough – you’re rewarded for helping to repopulate. In turn, the authorities help to pair you with someone who should be a good match dependant on all the information they have about you. The aim is that this new generation of children are raised in the traditional family unit. That had appealed to Sansa. “I can’t seem to find the right guy all on my own anyway,” she said into her phone.

“How do you know it will be safe, though?”

“It says here that my situation will be monitored by my own caseworker. I can call them any time I want. They’re not just going to drop me at the guy’s house and just leave us get on with it.”

“Hmmm... tell me about them? These men that they’ve narrowed down for you.”

“One’s called Waymar, he’s a financial advisor here in the Vale,” Sasna pauses, looking at the man’s photograph on his paperwork before fishing out the other. “And the other is called Jon, he owns a farm in the Reach.”

“None in the north then?” Her mother has been itching to get her back home. “I just wish there was a way to know that either of them were good men, Sansa. That’s all I want for you.”

Sansa put the two photos together. Two possible fathers for her child.

“That’s what I want too.”

***

“Shit! Holy fucking shit!” Jon says to himself, hanging up from his phone-call. “Mance!” he yells, bursting out of his trailer to find the old man. “Mance! It worked! It fucking worked!”

He’d relented. When Mance first put it to him that he should sign up for that weird government breeding program or whatever the fuck it was, he thought the old man’s last brain-cell must’ve fried up in the sun. But if they were going to make it easier for them and it meant Mance could keep the farm (and Jon could carry on living there rent free), then it was worth a shot. So he had relented. He’d filled out what seemed to be a gazillion and one questions about himself, his politics, his views on family and finances and education and fucking... art and shit. These damned government people wanted to know everything about him down to whether he scrunched or folded his toilet paper it seemed. He’d even had to lie. He didn’t like doing it, but there was no way that a fertile was going to pick him if he didn’t. So, he fished out an old photograph – one taken before the bar brawl that lost him his sight in one eye, and he’d also lied his asscheeks off by claiming he had ownership of the farm. He knew – he knew – that these lies are just more things that were going to trip him up one of these days but with Mance urging him on, he’d signed that damn form and offered himself up for the program.

And now a fertile had chosen him.

Him.

Fuck, he might throw up.

This can go one of two ways. Either completely up Shit Creek without a paddle – with his lies and reality crashing down on top of one another, leaving them exposed... or, his fertile somehow looks past his deceits and sticks with him and they-... well, shit, he could actually become a father. No-one becomes parents these days, especially not ‘round here. Fertiles flock to the big cities, to men with bigger pockets, or they work for couples who can afford to pay them off in exchange for a kid or two.

“It worked?” Mance asks, rolling out from under an old Ford pickup that needed a new exhaust. “They sendin’ us a peach?”

Jon shook his head. “They’re not sendin’ you anyone, old man. An’ don’t call her that – they’re-“ Fuck, what did the council call them on all that paperwork? “Reproductively abled.” He’ll have to remember that if he doesn’t want to offend her.

“Well, shit,” Mance grins. “What did I tell ya? Knew your pretty face was good for somethin’!”

Jon frowns. “Ain’t so pretty no more though.” He might have to go get himself a patch to cover his milky, sightless eye. It’s fine most of the time since Mance is the only one he sees unless he’s going to drink at Hobb’s, but he certainly doesn’t want to put off his ferti- reproductively abled friend who’ll be arriving in three weeks.

“She got a name? Your new peach?” Mance asked, earning him a glare.

“Sansa. Sansa Stark.”

Mance grunts and nods. “Sounds fancy.”

Yeah... It did sound kinda fancy he supposes. Jon’s first reaction had been that it was a mighty beautiful name, but now he thinks of it...

“Shame we can’t look her up – see if she’s a beauty or not.”

Jon can’t remember a time when that was an option. He was barely 11 at the highest point of the virus’s hold. Government officials had deemed certain channels on the internet were causing more harm than good by spreading false rumours, incorrect statistics and completely counterintuitive medical advice. The whole thing was shut down, now deemed illegal, only to be reconnected again three years later apparently looking like a foreign landscape from the one before. The internet was no longer a platform to socialise, only government approved informative sites remained. Mance says it’s better this way – that all people used to do was post vain images of themselves for attention anyway.

Jon wouldn’t mind seeing a vain image of Sansa Stark right about now though.

Not that it mattered terribly. As long as they get along and she decides to stick around she could be as ugly as sin. In fact, she probably will be, won’t she? Most pretty ferti- reproductively abled women stick to the cities and its high-fliers.

It doesn’t matter, he told himself. You just gotta keep her happy here and-

“Mance?” he asks, an issue coming to mind. The man grunts in acknowledgement. “Where the fuck is she gonna sleep? She’s not gonna want to stay in my trailer.”

The man grins in response. “I’m glad you asked, boy. I’m glad you asked.”

***

Her caseworker was meant to meet her at the train station. It was quite a drive to the farm and he was meant to pick her up, make sure she’s safe and happy and introduce her to Jon.

That hasn’t happened.

“Please accept my apologies, my dear,” Mr Baelish said down the other end of the phone. “There’s been a mix up with my schedule. We can set you up for the night at a local motel or ask your match to come and get you. Which would you prefer?”

Sansa eyes the dirty looking motel across the street from the train station. Everything here at [[INSERT TOWN NAME]] seems a little on the... rundown side. Maybe the sooner she gets to the farm, the better. Plus, her tummy is all a flutter with anticipation to actually meet Jon. She’d wound up swaying towards Jon as a match due to a few reasons; 1 – he does not live in, around, or anywhere near Harry or his crazy mother. 2 – he owns a farm, and that had conjured up hazy daydreams of idyllic country life. Sansa may enjoy big nights out in the city, drinking her dirty margaritas and feeling her bones vibrate against the base beat in a nightclub, but she knows that’s not what she wants to raise a child around. A child will want to run barefoot through wheat fields and chase chickens and milk cows and –

Let’s just say Sansa has a few ideas and that they all helped to sway her away from city pleasures and towards farmhouse life. And Jon

And last, but not least, reason number 3 – Jon himself. Put side-by-side, his and Waymar’s photographs looked rather similar if truth be told, but Jon won out on something that Sansa just couldn’t describe. Looking at his photograph gave her goosepimples along her forearms because it was like he was looking right back at her. There was something in the depths of his eyes – a kindness? A wit? A strength? She’s not sure, but she couldn’t find the same qualities when she stared at Waymar’s likeness. And his answers too. His questionnaire was full of how he’d like to teach a kid how to walk and ride a bike and fix a... a tractor for heaven’s sake! And so her head was flooded once more of this idyllic life where they got up to watch the dawn stretch over the farmland and they’d grow their own vegetables and she’d bake a pie every day and it would just be perfect.

Perfect, perfect, perfect.

Sansa glances around the near abandoned train station.

This doesn’t look so perfect right now.

“Could you please arrange for Jon to come and get me, Mr Baelish?”

***

It’s been an hour and fifty-six minutes precisely since Sansa last spoke to Mr Baelish to arrange her match coming to get her. An hour and fifty-six minutes of sitting on the curb, waiting, surrounded by her three suitcases. She’d started off by sitting at the nearby bus stop, purely because it was somewhere to sit and she had a clear view of the road, but after the rude bus driver insisted that if she’s sat there, she must be wanting to hop on his bus, Sansa decided to park her butt on the dusty, sun-baked curb instead. Her legs were beginning to numb and she was starting to get a headache from the sun beaming down on her head. The curls she’d styled into her copper locks have likely lost their hold by now. What a waste. Opposite, on the other side of the street, beside the dirty little motel, there was a tiny bar that advertised the fact that it hosted exotic dancers at the weekends with a blinking neon sign. Next to it was a hunting and fishing ‘emporium’ and beside that was a vacant store with an old dirty sign that read ‘Blouses & More!’. Presumably, the ‘& more’ still wasn’t enough to keep that fine establishment in business in this funny little town. At the end of the block was ‘Tarly’s Drugstore’ and Sansa had been debating with herself whether or not she should haul her suitcases over to go buy a drink and a magazine for about the last hour and fifty-five minutes.

But she hadn’t wanted to miss Jon Snow’s arrival.

Jon Snow, who seemed to be pulling up outside Tarly’s Drugstore in a dusty Ford pickup truck right about now. Sansa stood, expecting him to come right on over considering how long she’d been waiting for him, but she found herself wondering if she’d got it all wrong when she hadn’t caught a good enough look at him before he darted straight into the store.

Sansa is done with waiting. She grabs her smallest case and places it on top of her larger one, trying her darnedest to roll all her luggage across the road in a lady-like fashion. She could feel the eyes of several passers-by on her while her stiletto heels clip across the street. In turn, her own gaze fell to Jon’s cream-coloured truck. Its front bumper looked a little rusty and wonky too. There was a big gash in the leather of the bench seating on the passenger side. On the truck bed, there were a number of items, including a rocking chair that seems to have a couple of spindles on the chair-back missing, and a new double bed mattress wrapped in clear plastic. Sansa was almost done frowning at the state of the vehicle when the over-door bell of the drugstore tinkles.

“Holy shit,” he curses. And yes, it definitely was Jon standing right in front of her. Only... well... his hair was tied into a knot at the back of his head and.... and... he was wearing a black eye patch? “Uh,” he stood there, arms laden with bottles from the store as the gaze from his one good eye quickly darted down her frame and back up again. “You’re her, right? You’re Sansa Stark?”

Sansa found she could only nod, looking him up and down, like he was with her. He was in jeans with oil smears, some tough, heavy looking boots, a somehow pristine white vest and flannel shirt with the arms ripped off.

Speaking of arms...

Gods-damn! Sansa’s focus was momentarily derailed...

“Sorry, I-“ Jon starts before his grey eye drops to the floor and then returns to her, looking a little bashful. “I didn’t expect you to be so pretty.”

Oh boy. He may be wearing an eye patch right now but this man could win over a thousand girls with that smile, Sansa’s sure of it. She resists the urge to giggle like a schoolgirl. She’s here to find out if they’re well suited enough to start a family together – she needs to keep her head and think rationally, not allow herself to be swayed by his rugged country boy charm. It was Harry’s looks that enticed her in the first place – and look how well that turned out for her?

“Thank you,” Sansa says, blinking back at him before his words truly hit home. “Didn’t they give you my photograph?”

Jon shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

Huh.

“Did they show you mine?”

Sansa bites her lip and gives a nod.

Jon grimaces. “So I guess you weren’t expecting this?” He points to his patch.

Sansa shakes her head. “No... did you... did you do something to injure it?”

Jerking his head, Jon begins rubbing at the back of his neck with his free hand. “It’s a long story... but... it ain’t gonna get any better, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

“Oh.”

They stood, staring at one another for a heartbeat or five before Jon sucks in a breath over his teeth and glances down to the bottles he clutched to his chest with one arm. “I tried to get you some things to help you feel at home,” he says, “these are the nicest smellin’ soaps ‘n’ stuff from Tarly’s.”

“Thank you,” Sansa replies, knowing full well that she brought her Highgarden Floral Scents bathroom range with her.

Jon chews on his lip as he eyes her suitcases. “Lemme get those for you,” he offers before dumping the bottles in his arms into the truck bed and reaching for her luggage. Sansa’s heeled shoes seem welded to the spot. Jon notices. Scrubbing both hands down his face in resignation, he takes a step closer to her and Sansa realises for the first time, that he had dirt beneath his fingernails. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “It was a shitty thing for me to do,” he offers, his words low and husky. Sansa feels the timbre of his voice set off a trickle of gooseflesh down her spine. “I’m sorry.”

She blinks at him, momentarily confused.

“About this,” he explains, brows high on his head as he points to his patch. “I shouldn’t have sent that old photo of before this happened, but – fuck – even my ex-girl won’t acknowledge I exist anymore with this and I knew I shoulda been honest about it but-“

“This ex-girl...” Sansa suddenly found herself left with a sour taste in her mouth. “... does she still mean something to you?”

Jon licks at his lips, his eye falling briefly to her own. “No, ma’am,” he shakes his head.

[iamnotawomanimagod]

If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power - A Reluctant Ranking of Every Track

Disclaimer: This entire album is incredible, truly no skips, and I also think it’s an album that is hard to separate into individual tracks, because it all goes so well together. But I still wanted to try! This is just my personal opinion, and it’s subject to change. (Also I surprised myself. And I bet I’ll change my mind by tonight.)

Please feel free to do your own and tag me in it!! I wanna see!!

13. Girl is a Gun

It’s not that I dislike this song, it’s just a sound that I didn’t expect on this album. I think it would’ve fit in better on Manic. I don’t love how it kind of just repeats over and over again, especially on an album so full of complex, intricate lyrics. But it’s a really upbeat, sexy song and I bet it’s going to be so fun live.

Favorite lyric: 

Time is a blessin', to me, it's a lesson And I can't be stressin' to give you attention 'Cause, oh, it's never enough, so I'm givin' you up And you'll be better with a nice girl, darlin'

12. Lilith

Similar to “Girl is a Gun,” I simply wasn’t expecting this kind of sound on this album - could’ve seen it on Hopeless Fountain Kingdom though! The bass is amazing and I love the rhythm.

Favorite lyric:

You know I get too caught up in a moment I can't call it love if I show it I just fuck things up, if you noticed Have you noticed? Tell me have you noticed?

11. Darling

This song is so sweet and charming, especially if you compare it to “More,” which I think it acts as a sort of sequel to. Something about the melody hits me just a little wrong. When they start singing, I can’t help but hear the verses of “Hopeless.” That might’ve been intentional, but I can’t get past it to hear this song as its own thing.

Favorite lyric:

Never knew the feeling of a stable home Been a couple years of living on the road Couldn't really tell you where they'd leave a stone To visit me when I am dead and gone

10. The Tradition

I love the haunting piano and vocals. It feels like a song that was written for the film specifically. (Was it even in the film, lol?) I really love the sound of it, but the lyrics don’t do very much for me.

Favorite lyric:

And I hope what's left will last all summer long And they said that, "Boys were boys", but they were wrong

9. The Lighthouse

This song reminds me the most of a Nine Inch Nails song - fitting that Trent Reznor provides backing vocals on the final verse. I love the grimy guitars, and and discordant beat, and the way it builds up. The melody is cool and liquid. The final verse really feels like waves crashing. It’s a well-written song that really shows off Halsey’s alternative side.

Favorite lyric:

Well, that should teach a man to mess with me He was never seen again And I'm still wandering the beach And I'm glad I met the devil 'Cause he showed me I was weak And a little piece of him is in a little piece of me

8.  Ya’aburnee

This song makes me really emotional. It makes me think of all the people I love the most and it makes me want to cherish my time with them even more. That’s an incredible feeling for an artist to create. It’s such a bittersweet song. I wanna cry but it also makes me smile.

Favorite lyric:

But what's worse? Telling you my feelings or to die without revealing That you crawled inside my head and set a fire there, instead Letting all my insecurity Devour me with certainty

7. honey

If you’ve ever felt this way for someone, this song stings in the best way possible. I love the rhythm and the drums and the guitars - this is peak pop punk and Halsey fits right in. I love the honey imagery, especially that she included some imagery about bees and the way honey clings.

Favorite lyric:

And now she's impatient and I'm complacent With just a little taste of wasting time Looking for honey But she stings like she means it She's mean and she's mine

6. 1121

Now this is the sound I expected from this album. Cinematic, dark, dramatic. The piano is so haunting and so beautiful. It evokes so much imagery through sound alone, even with the lyrics being relatively simple. And their voice is so incredible. The song overall reminds me a lot of Evanescence, which is high praise. And I really appreciate the “self-loathing in love” theme, I can relate to it a lot. I’ve already been singing the chorus at the top of my lungs whenever I play this song.

Favorite lyric:

Take one in the temple My tongue is a vessel I try to be careful with The thing inside my chest You shoot for the memory So you can forget me I'd leave if you let me, oh

5. Bells in Santa Fe

Ever since we heard a snippet of this song in the first film trailer, I’ve been desperate to hear the rest of it. It didn’t disappoint. I love her lower register vocals, the tinkling piano and the frantic rhythm. And I relate too much to the message of the song - loving someone so much but refusing to accept that they want forever with you, insisting that they’re better off without you, warning them that you could slip away at any moment. It hits me where I live.

Favorite lyric:

Jesus needed a three day weekend To sort out all his bullshit, figure out the treason I've been searching for a fortified defense Four to five reasons But, Jesus, you've got better lips than Judas I could keep your bed warm, otherwise I'm useless I don't really mean it, 'cause who the fuck would choose this?

4. I am not a woman, I’m a god

This song fucks. Claiming their power to create life - recognizing that as godly and divine, while also insisting this is not a power that makes them a woman. I can’t wait for it to become a smash hit and for people to be singing about a nonbinary/trans experience without even knowing it. I honestly have trouble even articulating why this song is so awesome, it just is. I’m pumped every time I hear it.

Favorite lyric:

Oh, I just wanna feel something, tell me where to go 'Cause everybody knows something I don't wanna know So I'll stay right here cause I'm better all alone Yeah, I'm better all alone

3. You asked for this

I really like the 90s alternative sound of this one, it reminds me of Alanis Morrissette and certain No Doubt songs. I think it’s a very realistic depiction of how settling down in life can be very bittersweet, and the things that we ask for are sometimes not what they seem to be. But we also come to realize that settling is a part of growing up. Still, Halsey sings about wanting everything, knowing there are contradictions in that. The chorus is fun and easy to sing to, and the final verse is so amazing.

Favorite lyric:

I want a beautiful boy's despondent laughter I want to ruin all my plans I want a fist around my throat I want to cry so hard I choke I want everything I asked for

2. Whispers

This one hits hard, but god, it’s so good. The way they whisper certain phrases. The simple piano under the first verse, the way it becomes more complex, the way the beat comes in. You want to dance and cry at the same time. The lyrics - I know so many of us can relate to them. The themes of self-sabotage and self-loathing are so strong in this album, which definitely hits me right in the chest.

Favorite lyric:

I've got a monster inside me That eats personality types She is constantly changing her mind on the daily Think that she hates me I'm feeling it lately Might have to trick her and treat her To 70 capsules or fly to a castle So at least we could say that we died being traveled

1. Easier than Lying

I’ve had this one on repeat since the album came out, and that surprised me at first, but god, this song is addictive. The crunchy guitar at the beginning, the driving rhythm, the way her voice contrasts with that. The scream-singing on the chorus. It’s the kind of song you want to drive way too fast to. The bridge!! Aaah! It’s just so badass and listening to it now gets me too hyped!! Also the way it can kind of be seen as a sequel to “Lie,” - the growth of going “if you don’t love me no more, then lie” to “losing you is easier than lying to myself” is so meaningful and so empowering.

My heart is massive but it's empty A permanent part of me, that innocent artery Is gasping for some real attention Some undivided hypertension I tell it "quiet down, you're being loud" But it beats harder every time you come around But do you love the sound?

I’m gonna tag some mutuals, just to share, and also to see if anyone else wants to do this! Also you don’t need to go as in-depth as I did if that’s intimidating or too much, I’m just wordy.

@demonzplay @easiersthanlying @ttpane @yoursalwaysleo @anarkyandmadness @feelingsiwontforget @tolerateit @tommyhardyx @elysiems @imacreepygirl @finallybeautifulstranger @inthenameofloveforthesakeofpower and I know I’m forgetting some folks, I’m sorry! Please feel free to steal this and also tag me in yours!

[atruththatyoudeny]

Happy 28th! I’ve read so many awesome fics this month! Make sure to check them all out. As always, all my love to all the authors in this fandom ♥

➻ don't want to fight you | starryharry | enemies to lovers - enemies to friends to lovers - pining - mutual pining - angst - fluff slow burn - no smut - 124k Louis hates that it’s familiar. He hates that sparring Harry is familiar because they train together. He hates that he even has to spar Harry at all, because Harry is good. Louis wonders what his life would be like if him and Harry didn’t hate each other. He can’t picture it, really. The incessant bickering that often turns into real arguing, the nasty looks, the eye rolls, the middle fingers. It all feels very necessary at this point. Or, the one where two fighters can also be lovers because routines are never permanent.

➻ we are ghosts amongst these hills | louisgaynkles | Soulmates - reincarnation - historical - slow burn - angst - fluff - 84k Harry spontaneously buys a house in Yorkshire because the universe, or fate, keeps leading him to it. What he didn’t know, is that his new house comes with a past that seems to be mysteriously tied to his own life. Before he knows it he finds himself travelling back in time, stuck in the middle of a century old love story. Featuring Louis as a farmer with a passion for gardening, Zayn as the heir to the local manor, Niall as a pub owner with a secret, and a truly underappreciated Liam. Based on Mariana by Susanna Kearsley

➻ through the wheatfields and the coastlines | thepolourryexpress | farms - cowboys - angst - implied/referenced homophobia - implied/referenced gun use - humor - smut - 53k “You’re not from around here, are ya?” Hot Cowboy asks, tracking his little lamb with his eyes. Louis frowns slightly, having thought he was doing pretty well at not sticking out like a sore thumb. It’s not like he’s not from around here — it’s not his first summer he’s spent at his grandparents'. But he supposes that the Manhattan city lifestyle that he’s used to is always going to shine through. “I’m visiting family for the summer,” Louis explains, cheeks a little pink. “Trying to get some work done without distractions.” Or, alternatively, the one where Louis needs inspiration, and a certain cowboy and his lamb are the perfect distraction.

➻ An Irrationally Strong Bond Between Two People | jishler | dystopia - friends to lovers - angst - first time - 18k Before The Advancement, most human lives and careers were plagued by irrationality and a lack of productivity. This was largely the symptom of what scientists refer to as “interpersonal passion,” which included two separate (though often conjointly occurring) phenomena: “love,” and “sex.” “Love” was a pre-Advancement word which referred to an irrationally strong bond between two people, which caused its sufferers to prioritise their fellow “lover,” as well as the integrity of the malignant bond itself, over vital things such as workplace productivity. Taken every two weeks in pill form, The Drug immediately removes interpersonal passion from the human psyche. Children’s friendships do not have the capacity to develop into full-fledged “love” since they are not yet adults. Every person over eighteen takes The Drug gladly, grateful that it allows them to be productive, clear-headed, and rational members of society. A few weeks before Louis’ eighteenth birthday, Harry and Louis fall in love. (Based on the book Louis writes in indiaalphawhiskey's Our Lives, Non-Fiction.)

➻ And When It's Time | larryftnoctrl | Soulmates - soulmate-identifying timers - 6k Louis wants a soulmate, Harry loves his free will. They don't exactly go hand in hand. Prompt: AU where you have a countdown on your wrist for when you're going to meet your soulmate and if you miss it the time will reset. Louis/Harry keep having awful luck and always are missing their time until one day they don't. Maybe the other one is scared/has anxiety about meeting their soulmate? Maybe one time they're in a relationship so they intentionally miss their time? Who knows! But they finally meet :D

➻ made for lovin' you | cuddlerlouis | a/b/o - enemies to lovers - hate to love - soulmates - hurt/comfort - angst - fluff smut - 53k “I’m in,” is all Louis receives. He blinks a few times, making sure he’s reading this right. “For real?” he asks, just to be a hundred percent sure. “Yes,” pops up. “How do you wanna pursue?” The alpha adds, like he’s on a special mission or something. “I’m gonna call us a cab to go to mine. Once I know it’s here, I’ll leave and join you there,” Louis explains. “I’ll text you to go around five minutes before it arrives, so it doesn’t look suspicious, and our friends don’t notice us leaving together.” “Noted.” So Louis does, and ten minutes later, he’s sat in the backseat of a cab, next to Harry Styles, the person he hates the most but unfortunately still finds attractive. They’re on their way to fuck in Louis’ flat. Splendid. - Or the one where a quick, horny decision ruins Louis’ summer plans, but may also lead to unexpected discoveries. Featuring the road trip of dreams, misunderstandings, and a bit of fate.

➻ deFENCEless | solvetheminourdreams | neighbors - enemies to lovers enemies to friends to lovers - gardening - fluff - humor - banter - no smut - 27k "I moved here first," Louis says with finality, crossing his arms over his chest. Harry shoots him an unimpressed look before leaning forward, leaving only a tiny gap between them. "Then get the fence first," he whispers, lips a mere inch or two away from Louis'. When Louis butts heads with his new neighbor who loves to garden a little too much, all he can do to protect his yard (and heart), is keep on building up his fence(s).

➻ Canyon Moon | delsicle | a/b/o - werewolf - soulmates - childhood friends - friends to lovers - arranged marriage - mutual pining - hurt/comfort - angst - 41k For as long as Louis has remembered, he has been promised to be mated to Harry, his best friend and the future pack alpha. But Louis’s heart belonged to the forest and to the hunt more than he could ever imagine it belonging to Harry. Then Harry’s father dies in a violent accident, and Louis’s future alpha disappears on the wind. An A/B/O Lion King AU

➻ only guilty of loving you | sweetrevenge | a/b/o - strangers to lovers - blind date - soulmates - fluff - angst - mutual pining - smut - 22k After Harry gets set up with his co-worker's alpha friend Louis, he's expecting some pleasant conversation, free dinner, and maybe a new friend. What he doesn't expect, however, is that Louis' arrival in his life begins a life of crime Harry never knew he had in him. A You've Got Mail!AU with a twist.

➻ 'Til Everything Changes | lovelarry10 | a/b/o - older characters - brokend bond - loss - falling in love - fluff - implied mpreg - smut - 57k Harry’s nose twitched as he caught a scent on the breeze, one that sent a shudder through his whole body. His eyes closed subconsciously, and he lost himself in the heady scent, the vanilla top notes, and the more woody undertones, making every hair on Harry’s body stand on end. That was how Harry discovered this man was an Alpha. “Jaz, Harry, this is my Uncle Louis. Lou, this is my girlfriend Jasmine, and her dad Harry.” "Lovely to meet you,” Louis grinned, leaning in and kissing Jasmine’s cheek quickly, a respectful Alpha gesture. Harry held his breath as Louis stuck out a hand, taking it almost reluctantly, certain the Alpha would pick up on his own scent and the nerves flowing through it. “Hi, Harry.” “Hi,” Harry said, his voice low and raspy, still affected by Louis’ scent. “Nice to meet you.” ~~~~ Harry’s an Omega who has been alone for too long. Louis’ an Alpha who is scared to find love again. Thanks to the meddling of Harry’s teenage daughter and her boyfriend, the two seem destined to meet, and it might just change everything they thought they knew about their lives. Will they find what they didn’t realise they’ve always wanted in each other?

➻ Mind Over Matter (You Under Me) | youreyesonlarry | ice hockey - hurt/comfort - angst - fluff - major character injury - pining - unrequited love hospitalization - smut - 74k It’s dark outside when Harry finishes practice for the day. -------- Prompt 21: Harry stopped playing hockey (after 10 years of a professional career) because of a severe injury. The dream he worked so hard for vanished in the blink of an eye. His family insisted that he had to go to physical therapy, even if it only helped his health. Cue to personal assistant Louis, the most efficient and kind PA one could hire

➻ Rooms on Fire | softfonds | a/b/o - actors - famous/famous - friends with benefits - secret relationship - 34k Ten years ago, Louis helping Harry through a heat was the start of a romance that ended in heartbreak. Now, Harry's marriage is over thanks to his husband's very public infidelity, and Louis is fresh off a Golden Globe win. The last thing they both expect is to be cast in the same movie.

➻ Stumbling Into Your Arms | sunshineandthemoonlight | a/b/o - strangers to lovers - college/university - fluff - 7k Suddenly, Harry’s nose was brushing against Louis' neck, where his scent was overwhelming. Harry jerked his head to the side and took a deep breath of air, trying to clear his nose of Louis’ scent. ‘Don’t get slick, don’t get hard, don’t get slick’, he repeated to himself in his head, like a mantra. Louis and Harry are university students heading home for the holidays. Harry quickly becomes enraptured by the attractive alpha standing across from him in the train carriage, who has a heavenly scent and a gentle smile.

➻ Little by Little | nonsensedarling | mpreg - non traditional a/b/o - exploring sexuality - exploring secondary gender norms - gender identity strangers to friends to lovers - mutual pining - fluff - slow burn - 65k Harry Styles is an omega who works at the London Planetarium, has lived in the same flat for ages, and is happy enough on his own. When he gets home from his first (horrible) attempt at dating in years, a new pregnant neighbor knocks on his door after smelling his cooking. He and Louis quickly become close, but their friendship gets complicated when Harry begins questioning who he is and what he likes. Or Harry discovers figuring out who you are is more complicated than a potato metaphor.

[jrwiyuri]

THAT SOUNDS SO COOL OMG

I mean everything you may wanna tell someone I'm interested in listening, the concept is amazing and seeing characters interact with the universe here sounds even more awesome

cool way of connecting different stories and characters :]

Ahhh thank you!!! I plan to properly create a list of different mini adventures they do, each one getting progressively less “haha fun wacky adventuring!” and more “we’ve gotten into something much bigger than we can handle” type shit. I don’t have eveyrthing fully fleshed out but I am very happy with it so far.

To continue talking about actual lore and not just gushing here is what’s going on with the government cause oh boy are they extremely morally gray people!

First of all, individual countries and governments are now controlled by a larger, universal government. They ensure that all countries follow basic human right laws. They literally couldn’t care less about certain individual rights of people being taken away tho. Individual governments can deal with all of the specifics of inequality and shit, they just need to make sure they aren’t like.. torturing people for fun or trying to remove water as a basic human right…

The universal government has given out specific things to make life more controlled through all of these astral planes. Some of these rules are:

Government mandated dolls. Dolls are to be an exact replica of you. Microchips that source its basic location must be placed inside the persons living arrangements and contain traces of the persons dna. These dolls are to properly track individuals easier and make it natural for people to be tracked and surveyed. Dolls made for children are free, and dolls made later in life are often cheap and can even be covered by different things (ex: health plans if you undergo some surgery that changes ur body drastically & have signed up for that kind of insurance)

Irregular government checkups! You don’t know when they start, you don’t ever know exactly when they end. Just look less suspicious! I mean, it’s not like people are doing anything illegal or happen to not be from the plane right? Yeah, thought so! (Checkups happen more often in places where astral planes are bigger or where a particularly disastrous incident has happened) ^_^

Bouncing off of the irregular government checkups, the Universal Government has its own police force! Although it’s mostly for dealing with the weird shit that comes out of those astral portals, it can also deal with any normal crimes they see and report it to said countries police force. Not usually it’s job though and honestly it will let most crimes go even if they see you doing it! Not their job after all. Some petty theft or even mass murder doesn’t compare to what some of these people have probably seen. this isn’t a fun job…

Worldwide emergency announcement broadcasting! They can be tuned into specific areas or used for well, the whole world. Luckily that has never needed to happen, and hopefully never fucking will. Even imagining why they could possibly need to convey a message to the entire world is a terrifying thought to most, and so they try hard to avoid it. Being a government worker is not good on ur health 👍

Oh also the government is run by the actual god of the world who runs the entire world government. Failure to comply with its want WILL cause it to erase human kind for the sake of the overall world. So yknow.. normal government president stuff..

Most government workers do not know the true scope of the organization, and almost none know about the true identities of the president. Except that they are seemingly immortal, or is replaced by an identification.. but honestly that’s not even that weird compared to other shit they’ve had to deal with.