#character from it (i don't feel like it's very original but GUYS I LOVE GAME DESIGN GAME DESIGN IS SO COOL AND INTERESTING)

[thankskenpenders]

The Knuckles show

The announcement of a live action Knuckles streaming miniseries was surprising, to say the least. I mean, what would such a show even be about in a version of the Sonic universe with no Angel Island and barely any characters from the games around? Is he gonna go treasure hunting with the gang from Montana or something? Would a streaming miniseries have the CGI budget to squeeze in any new game characters, even briefly? Rouge? Amy? At least one member of Team Chaotix? Anyone?

Now the show is finally out, and it turns out what they actually made was a comedy show about bumbling deputy sheriff Wade Whipple, the minor comic relief character played by Adam Pally who you might not even remember all that well from the first two movies, with Knuckles as his sidekick. While, yes, Knuckles does get a decent amount of screentime and opportunities to punch bad guys and do cool moves from the games, large stretches of this show focus on Wade's personal life, to the point that a couple times I almost forgot I was watching a Sonic-related show. If you're judging it purely by the metric of how well it adapts and engages with its source material, this surely must be one of the worst adaptations the Sonic franchise has ever seen.

So then, despite some huge complaints... why do I kinda like it?

(This will contain full spoilers for the Knuckles show.)

A brief summary of what the show is actually about because I know half of you aren't going to watch it

The show picks up not too long after the end of the second movie. Knuckles is now living in Montana with Sonic, Tails, and the Wachowskis out of a sense of debt to them, though he doesn't really see it as his home. He doesn't feel like he belongs on Earth, and his life currently lacks direction. After communing with the ghost of Pachacamac, though, Knuckles is instructed to keep his culture alive by teaching "the ways of the echidna warrior" to a new apprentice: deputy sheriff Wade Whipple, who's currently more concerned about winning a bowling tournament in Reno than anything else.

Things are complicated by the interference of two rogue GUN agents - Agent Willoughby, played by Ellie Taylor in a bad wig, and Agent Mason, played by Kid Cudi. (Yes, the artist behind the second movie's credits song is one of the bad guys in this.) They want to steal Knuckles' power and sell it to a former associate of Robotnik's played by Rory McCann (The Hound from Game of Thrones), who now works as a black market arms dealer. Yes, they're still doing the thing where Sonic and friends' quills radiate some kind of super-energy that the bad guys all want. No, I don't particularly love this element of the Paramount Sonic continuity. Anyway, they go after Knuckles and Wade, complicating their straightforward road trip to Reno. Antics ensue.

The Wade show

So here's the thing. While the first episode focuses largely on Knuckles, the entire rest of the show is very much the story of Wade, and by extension the other original human characters invented for this miniseries.

Episode 2 is about Wade having to rescue Knuckles from captivity after the GUN agents get him. Knuckles spends most of the episode in a cage.

Episode 3 is about introducing Wade's Jewish family, including his slightly overbearing mother and weird sister, so that Knuckles can learn about their family traditions and have Shabbat dinner with them (and then save them from bounty hunters that the GUN agents hired).

Episode 4 only features Knuckles at the very beginning and very end of the episode, probably for less than a minute total. Wade is captured by a bounty hunter he personally knows, and Knuckles decides to let that be a trial for Wade to overcome on his own.

The last two episodes feature the climactic showdowns with the GUN agents and their arms-dealing ally, who comes in with a mech for the obligatory final boss fight. You'd think this would be Knuckles' time to shine, but really, these episodes are mostly about the bowling tournament in Reno where Wade encounters his estranged father, wrapping up his own personal arc. While Knuckles does get some fights, a lot of the finale is spent on lengthy bowling scenes where Knuckles isn't in the room or even mentioned. It frequently feels more like a spiritual successor to '00s sports comedy movies like Dodgeball, Talladega Nights, or Blades of Glory than it does a part of the Sonic franchise, and the presence of ESPN 8: The Ocho commentary in the finale only drives those Dodgeball comparisons home. They get so immersed in the bowling stuff that it's genuinely hilarious when the show suddenly pivots and remembers "oh shit we still need to do the final boss fight"

Throughout all this, Wade is the protagonist. He's the character we spend more time with, he's the character who drives most of the major events, he's the character who gets more of an arc. The emotional core is Wade's journey. Knuckles is still present - sometimes, at least - but he's there as Wade's wingman, and also just as the excuse for there to be some fight scenes.

How much Sonic stuff is actually in this show?

Honestly? Not much.

Sonic and Tails are only in the first episode. Sonic gets some good scenes, but Tails gets a grand total of five lines. I counted. Unsurprisingly, Jim Carrey is absent as Robotnik, though he does get mentioned a fair bit. (For that matter, basically the entire established human cast beyond Wade is absent, even including Tom, though Maddie is there in episode one.)

GUN is involved in the story, which helps it feel slightly more connected to Sonic, but it kind of feels like it's GUN in name only. They don't use any recognizable GUN tech, and they don't call in the military. It's just two agents in suits. They might as well be the Men in Black.

The Master Emerald is mentioned as something Knuckles has to guard, but it's never seen. Angel Island is pictured as a drawing during the show's intro, appearing exactly how it does in Sonic 3, but it's never referenced at all beyond that.

I guess the climax taking place in and around a Reno casino is a reference to Sonic's many casino-themed levels. That's something. I'll give them that.

Oh, and if you're wondering if this is the point where we finally start to get actual music from the games: no, it's not. The soundtrack consists of a lot of '80s needle drops, many of which are generic Hollywood picks like "Holding Out for a Hero" for the billionth time, thought it at least has some slightly less obvious picks than the Mario movie. The theme song is '80s rock song "The Warrior" by Scandal. You'll hear it many times. You'll hear the Adventure era Knuckles raps zero times in this. You'll briefly hear classic A Tribe Called Quest song "Can I Kick It?" before Knuckles takes the question too literally and breaks the radio in Wade's car.

Beyond a handful of surface level references for nerds (one of which is admittedly wild - we'll get to that), this is probably the least an officially licensed adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog has ever tried to actually engage with its source material. I struggle to think of another Sonic adaptation that has less to do with Sonic. For as much shit as I and countless others have given Penders for seemingly ignoring the content of the games in favor of building his own convoluted mythos, his Knuckles comics honestly included way more elements from the games than this show does.

Somehow, the one new(-ish) Sonic character introduced in this is the ghost of Pachacamac of all characters. Not even Tikal! Pachacamac! A very minor character nobody has particularly strong feelings about! You can't even use the excuse that they already had the character model, because they completely redesigned him compared to his cameo in the first movie to better match his Sonic Adventure design. And he's voiced by Christopher Lloyd! Honestly, so many of his lines are strained that it sounds like he's on death's door here, but then he'll surprise you with a more casual line like "just do it, man" and it catches me so off guard that I can't help but laugh.

Pachacamac here has basically nothing to do with the game character he takes his name and appearance from. Where the game character was a cruel warlord who kicked off a 3000 year cycle of violence, Paramount Pachacamac is now just this chill old man who gives Knuckles (and later Wade) advice in two episodes of the show. Hell, he also feels completely disconnected from his established role in the movies, where he's literally the guy who shot Longclaw. The show will not grapple with this contradiction at all. He's just here to be a thing fans like me will recognize from the games. Again, if that's all they wanted, it's kind of baffling that they didn't just use Tikal.

I don't love Knuckles in this

But what about Knuckles himself? Well, he doesn't feel all that much like Knuckles to me. Ironically, he sometimes feels like one of the weaker elements in his own show.

Back when the second movie came out, I noted that Knuckles' characterization seemed to be pulling heavily from MCU Thor as a gallant warrior from an archaic alien culture who doesn't really understand modern day Earth stuff. That worked for me in that movie. It was just there for spice. Just a little extra flavor for the character in what was otherwise a very faithful adaptation of Knuckles' storyline in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Without those familiar elements grounding him and with a much higher reliance on comedy, Idris Elba's Knuckles becomes a pretty one-note character in this.

In damn near every scene with Knuckles, he's going to say something about being a proud, honorable echidna warrior, or brag about his glorious feats of strength, or be confused about some Earth thing and call it sorcery, or act like every other character is also a member of some noble warrior clan. He still has his moments for sure, but this schtick kinda gets old fast, and it just doesn't feel like Knuckles to me. His entire character feels derived from the scene in the diner where Thor smashes the cup on the ground and goes "Another!" Sure, I can picture game Knuckles smashing a radio to turn it off and being a little too gung-ho about busting holes through walls. That's Knuckles behavior. But building a barbarian combat pit in the living room so the Wachowski family dog can fight the mailman? Nope. That's some other guy now. It really does just feel like them taking a broad character archetype from something popular that kinda sorta fits Knuckles and just running with that, rather than trying to actually adapt the character.

Oh, but don't worry, he wears the OVA hat for like two minutes! AND he loves grapes! See, Sonic nerds? We read the wiki! That's his favorite food! Grapes! This is gonna come up like five times!

Knuckles kind of gets an arc here, but not as much as Wade does. I think the stuff about him starting to feel at home on Earth thanks to Wade's mom and the way he connects with their Jewish family traditions is oddly sweet. This arc is kind of let down, though, by the fact that Knuckles' heritage is treated as a complete joke. He's a cartoonish pastiche of various historical warrior cultures stuck together in a blender and used mostly for comedic effect. When Pachacamac's ghost appears, he's reading a newspaper and bemoaning the fact that the Mets lost again. This is not the place for a serious examination of Knuckles' feelings on being the last of his kind.

This is far from the only time the show undercuts itself with its jokes and attempts at self-parody. In the first episode, for instance, Knuckles clashes with GUN Agent Mason and his tech-enhanced punches, leading to an extremely on-the-nose inversion of the "Do I look like I need your power?" scene showcased in the trailer for the second movie. Except this time, Agent Willoughby butts in and points out how stupid that line is in this new context, since they're literally trying to steal Knuckles' power. The fight can't just be cool, they have to get cute with it. A lot of stuff like that happens in this show.

Given all these complaints, the first two episodes left me thinking I'd be fairly negative on this show overall. This seemed like the version of the show from the fandom's collective nightmares, one that undoes all of the progress the movie series seemed to have been making towards faithfulness to the games. Like, just look at these cast posters. Is this what you want out of Sonic? Do these excite you?

But then, something strange happened. Over time, I just kind of let the jokes and shenanigans wash over me and basked in how fucking weird this show is.

And I started to actually enjoy it.

Look. The Wade & Knuckles Show was never going to be peak Sonic. But that sure as hell doesn't mean it can't be entertaining.

This show is so fucking goofy

Here's the thing.

The show is funny.

Unlike a lot of other people, I didn't hate all the wedding stuff in Hawaii in Sonic 2, because I thought a lot of it was funny, both in its actual jokes and in the ways in which they tied everything back to Sonic. Tom looking wistfully at some bodybuilders doing Top Gun shit and spraying each other with beer and being like "I wish Sonic had that" is weirdly funny. The twist that those muscle bros are all agents of the newly formed GUN, who orchestrated the wedding as an elaborate scheme to catch Sonic, is funny. Mr. Olive Garden becoming the fucking GUN Commander is VERY funny. Are any of these elements of my dream Sonic movie? No, of course not. But my dream Sonic movie was never gonna happen in live action.

The Knuckles show follows up on the comedy of the previous films by being probably the funniest live action Sonic release yet. Did every joke land for me? God no. There are some stinkers in there that made me roll my eyes. But enough of them landed that it worked out for me overall. A big part of this is the fact that they've got a good cast of actors and/or comedians here.

Adam Pally is funny as Wade, and I found myself liking him more and more as a character as the show went on. He becomes an oddly endearing loser, with some sweet moments in his personal arc that made me feel for the guy. I like Wade more than Tom now, thanks to this show. I will now be happier to see Wade in Sonic 3 than I would have been previously.

The supporting cast is frequently great, too, many of whom are playing completely cartoonish, over-the-top characters. They took a cue from how exaggerated Carrey's performance was as Robotnik and decided to just abandon all pretense that this is the real world. Stockard Channing as Wade's mom is funny, and carries some of the more sincere parts of the show. Cary Elwes as Wade's very British dad who abandoned him as a child to run off and be the world's most egotistical professional bowler is funny. Edi Patterson as Wade's sister Wanda is... well, she's kinda trying too hard, but she has her moments. The Mighty Boosh co-creator Julian Barratt(!!) as a scenery-chewing bounty hunter, who was also somehow Wade's former best friend and bowling partner, is VERY funny. I love this guy.

(Honestly, they should let more people who were on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace be in Sonic stuff. Where's Matt Berry)

This is kind of a stacked cast for a bunch of stupid side characters in a live action Knuckles show! And honestly, that just makes it funnier to me. Even when they're not funny, the fact that this exists makes it funny. They somehow convinced Paramount to give them a bunch of money to make a spiritual successor to Dodgeball about a schlubby guy who wants to beat his dad at a bowling tournament... except also Knuckles the fucking Echidna is there as his personal life coach. My life is richer for the fact that I can say that sentence. I think about all the little kids who are probably watching this show this weekend, going in expecting a show about Knuckles the Echidna and having to sit through extensive bowling scenes and lore about Wade's family, and sorry kids, but I just have to laugh. Wade isn't even on the poster! The poster is just a picture of Knuckles!! They punked those kids!!!

In a franchise where every single aspect is so carefully micromanaged these days, it feels truly special to get an adaptation this bonkers. It frequently appeals to the same part of me that enjoys the fact that there's an officially licensed Knuckles comic in which Charmy Bee's best friend (also a bee) dies of an accidental LSD overdose from a drug-laced chili dog. Or like, everything about the original 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie. Or the fact that they made seven direct-to-DVD sequels to Alpha and Omega, one of which is half a retread of the adventure from the first movie (with more annoying supporting characters in tow this time) and half a literal clip show of the first movie. The sheer absurdity of the fact that these things exist is charming to me. Except, with the Knuckles show, it has the added benefit of frequently being funny on purpose! This is why I'm not sure I'd call it "so bad it's good." Like, it's not amazing, but there were a lot of parts that I enjoyed in the exact way I was supposed to enjoy them.

Look. Here's a list of real lines of dialogue from the Sega-approved Knuckles the Echidna streaming show that they're billing as a pillar of the Paramount+ lineup, to drive this point home. Let these marinate for a minute:

"I only eat grapes, and Cool Ranch Doritos™."

"Annihilate this little girl, Wade. Crush her spirit. Humiliate her so badly her parents won't even look at her again." "Doesn't that seem like we're going a bit far?" "Not far enough."

"So is he Jewish?" "Half, I think."

"I had a friend who when he listened to Alien Ant Farm he could lift a Toyota Corolla over his head."

"I'm in dire financial straits. Due to my lawsuit against an unnamed rainforest-themed restaurant franchise, I don't have two pennies to my name."

"We're here in sunny Reno, Nevada, which is so close to Hell you can smell the sparks."

"You can't threaten me with your Jewish karate chops because I am a federal agent."

"I will say, regardless of how you feel about child abandonment - and I'm against it! - the deals at TJ Maxx can't be beat."

This is a Sonic show in which they got Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel to appear as ESPN 8: The Ocho commentators.

This is a show where Wade's mom insists upon pronouncing "Knuckles" with the throaty Hebrew "ch" sound, and declares that Knuckles is basically Jewish. Later, they watch Pretty Woman together while enjoying a nice slice of key lime pie. Knuckles comments: "I don't understand. This young streetwalker with a heart made of gold, why do the others treat her with such disdain? Is it so wrong to walk the streets?"

This is a show where the fourth episode is directed by one of the guys from The Lonely Island and features a hallucinatory low budget rock opera stage musical put on by the ghost of Pachacamac. It recounts Knuckles' life story, with Wade playing Knuckles and the "evil" Longclaw played by the bounty hunter guy who's played by the Mighty Boosh guy.

Look at this.

And also, Knuckles' singing voice is provided by Michael Bolton, which they proudly announce in the middle of the musical.

And also...

Also...???

IBLIS IS IN IT????????????

Yes, Iblis!

From Sonic '06!!

Knuckles is said to have looked for a mythical power called the "Flames of Disaster" to avenge his clan, which ended up being the power that was within him all along that lets him do fire punches yadda yadda yadda. As part of this, he apparently fought Iblis off-screen at some point, as conveyed with the giant singing papier-mâché Iblis in the musical.

...Then Iblis sings about hitting up Facebook Marketplace

How? How does any of this exist? Why reference '06 of all games? How did Iblis get into the live action Sonic movie universe before Amy and Metal Sonic? Why are they using Iblis and the term "Flames of Disaster" in such a goofy way that completely disregards their original context?

I don't know. I don't know how any of this happened. But I love it. We got a Knuckles miniseries in which Michael Bolton sings the phrase "the Flames of Disaster." The world is a beautiful place sometimes.

Some people will tell you to skip episode four. "Knuckles is barely even in it," they say. "It's dumb and pointless," they say. "They clearly just ran out of special effects budget," they say. These are people whose opinions you should disregard. The episode with the least Knuckles in it is somehow the most entertaining episode of the show. I would, in fact, go as far as to say that if you only decide to watch one episode of the Knuckles show to see what goofy bullshit they get up to, it should be this one.

I cannot be mad at this show. It's so dumb, but it completely owns the fact that it's a dumb and unnecessary spinoff. Inferiority is baked into its very DNA. It's very self-consciously redoing the premise of the first movie, but stupider. It's about The Other Cop from the movies, instead of the competent one. Instead of being into a "cooler" sport, his life revolves around professional bowling. Instead of going to Vegas, he goes to Reno. Even his tragic backstory that shaped his entire life sucks. He was abandoned by his pro bowler dad in a TJ Maxx. Not even a nicer department store. A fucking TJ Maxx. This whole show is a Dril tweet.

They put a ton of effort into making it dumb in an occasionally spectacular way. So much effort was put into that joke rock opera that fans will just write off as stupid filler. They put their whole pussies into it. This is not a poorly made show. This has better production values than half the shit made for Disney+. This was made with love. Maybe not as much love for the Sonic the Hedgehog series of video games as we'd like, but it's love nonetheless.

Maybe this show broke me and these are the ramblings of a madwoman. Maybe I'm just really nostalgic for the '90s and '00s comedy movies all the Wade stuff is modeled after. Maybe the Alan Wake fan in me just really loves it when a story pivots to a silly rock opera for no real reason. I won't discount any of these possibilities. This isn't high art. This isn't something I would recommend to anyone with zero interest in Sonic, and it also isn't going to sway Sonic fans who hate the Paramount universe. I really can't blame them for being bewildered by this show. But for a specific type of person, this is the absurd three-star Sonic-adjacent comedy miniseries of your dreams. It's a mid masterpiece.

Again, I just have to step back, realize the fact that this shouldn't exist, and smile. Sega's too afraid to do stupid bullshit with the franchise like this these days. And I can't blame them, after years of Sonic being a treated as a laughingstock. But part of me misses some of the goofy shit. No matter how much I tore some of the Archie comics apart as I was reading them for this blog, I just look back on stuff like Cal and Al or the Many Hands issues and laugh. And that same part of me looks at this show about Knuckles being the sidekick to this fucking guy, and just goes...

"We're so back."

In conclusion, I genuinely think this was a more enjoyable TV show than Sonic Prime.

I wouldn't go back and rewatch Sonic Prime anytime soon, aside from maybe, like, a couple of the Shadow-heavy episodes. Huge stretches of that show bored me to tears. The writers squandered all of that show's potential. But I would rewatch the Knuckles show, which takes a terrible premise and has a lot of fun with it, in a heartbeat. Even the bowling parts. The bowling scenes in the Knuckles show are more engaging than 70% of the fights in Sonic Prime. I am not trolling. I mean that sincerely, with all my heart. Don't @ me.

Stray observations

There is effectively zero meaningful setup for the third movie in this, unless Wade's family or the two GUN agents come back or something. Project Shadow is not mentioned in this. There is no secret post-credits scene with Gerald

The CGI in this is pretty good. Not quite on par with the movies, but pretty good. Sonic's weird forehead wrinkles are distracting in his scenes though. Please fix that

I wouldn't say I liked this as much as the second movie, which obviously gets a ton of points for, you know. The Cool Sonic Shit. But I had more fun with it than the first movie, which I still feel is a painfully generic family movie that was only saved by Tyson's redesign

"Grapes are an interesting choice for someone who doesn't use his individual fingers."

Agent Willoughby was apparently the one at GUN who had to buy the Olive Garden gift cards and set up the fake wedding. Her origin story is that she hated doing shit like that and wanted to go fight aliens

This miniseries contains another Keanu namedrop because Wade's childhood bedroom has a Speed poster on the wall. I swear, if Sonic doesn't say Shadow sounds just like Keanu...

Knuckles is familiar with Paul Blart Mall Cop

Near the end the ESPN 8: The Ocho commentators say that the 1974 Reno bowling championship was also interrupted by an extraterrestrial, and given that was exactly 50 years ago I can't write off the possibility that that was Shadow. Please for the love of god give us a sequel series after the third movie where Wade takes Shadow the Hedgehog bowling. I need this more than I need air

[crescentfool]

going to keep this vague on purpose but playing reload has reactivated brain chemicals in me that i forgot i had.

i think i'd want to make a more thought out post later, but i think my favorite thing about reload (aside from seeing minato in full HD glory) is how much it's made me think about video games as a storytelling medium- specifically with what mechanics and game design imply for characters.

there's a lot of quality of life features added to reload that help players easily enter a flow state and get immersed in the gameplay (most notable with tartarus)! which is so dope! reload has been such a nice blend of the mechanics from both FES and portable and it feels like a love letter to persona 3 fans.

there are definitely mechanics i miss from FES (minato's ability to wield multiple weapons being one of them). i can't deny that FES has some dated mechanics that don't necessarily feel fun for the player experience... but!

i think i mostly miss things from FES because i feel like so much of minato's characterization (for me) was informed by the gameplay experience and mechanics (e.g. fatigue system). obviously there's still other ways you can put together his personality (his dialogue responses), but i think game mechanics are a bit part of it, for me.

but in spite of that, i think reload is a really nice introduction to persona 3, it's so much more accessible and has a bunch of things to help make it more fun :) so far i think i'd recommend it to people :D

[skrunksthatwunk]

i just finished saw v and i don't have high hopes for the rest of the franchise (based on what ive heard) but im in too deep to stop now

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

never have I played any nights at Freddy fazbears

pls explain the whole plot and all lore to me as if I were small and slightly stupid

oh great timing i literally JUST explained this to my asoue discord

this is a VERY simple summary, but things to keep in mind while reading:

very very VERY little of this is directly spelled out for us. the creator, scott cawthon, LOVES to confuse people on purpose and the vast majority of the lore is gleaned from hidden minigames, secret cutscenes, and easter eggs. this makes things very confusing and controversial within the fanbase, so im gonna try to explain where there are differing opinions

really, there's two main stories: the first main story was completed with FNAF6 and Ultimate Custom Night, the story going on rn is the second and it is still ongoing. as such, a lot of the lore is still a mystery to all of us.

For clarity's sake, I will divide this between: THE AFTON STORY, the one the movie's gonna tell a part of, and THE GLITCH STORY, which the games are going through

dont worry i will make it fun to go through so it doesnt feel like school

ok lets go

THE AFTON STORY

First, let's get a visual chart in here. don't worry it's just for show

These are the important families we will be talking about; the Emily family, with father Henry and daughter Charlie, and the Afton Family, with father William, two sons (Michael and a boy who is still unnamed, he might get named on friday? We call him Crying Child "CC") and a daughter, Elizabeth. Don't worry about the mothers they're not important

Okay so here's the thing: of these four children, all but Michael die VERY early on in the timeline

The problem is we do NOT know THE ORDER each of them died. There's a lot of arguments on all sides but I personally think the order is sad boi->charlie->baby so imma present it in that order. But keep in mind that we don't actually know because of the confusing way the lore is dropped.

okay so for starters.

Backstory/FNAF4

purple guy is william afton and he and this guy vcalled henry start opening a restaurant chain starring freddy fazbear

in the original location they've got two animatronic suits, fredbear and spring bonnie. the other location has freddy, bonnie, foxy, chica

the og location suits are ~special~ tho, bc henry and william are crazy inventor dudes. these suits are called "springlock suits". they function as full animatronics but you can wind all the wires and gears and endoskeleton and shit back and step into the costume yourself. only problem is the safety is jackshit and if you like. cry or sweat or breathe wrong the springlocks will fail and the metal will come crashing back and crush u to death. u should have enough time to get to the back room so u dont bleed out in front of the customers tho. springlock suits are important remember those

michael is in his early teens and has just learned how to be a shit to his siblings and is trying out this hot new bullying thing. he's picking a lot on CC because CC is terrified of the freddy animatronics. it is said that he "saw something" that scared him, it could be anything as benign as "saw someone go into the suit and got freaked out" to something as serious as "saw one of those aforementioned springlock failures and person bleeding out." could also be charlie or elizabeth's death if those happen earlier in the timeline. again we dont know bc cawthon likes to confuse us

CC is not scared of the freddy characters tho, he has all the plushies and calls them his friends. he's just scared of the animtronics. unfortunately his dad works there so he has to be there like 90% of the time so he's having a wonderful time. hence the moniker "crying child". bc he cries all the time

anyway at his birthday party, michael decides it would be really funny to shove CC up into the animatronic's mouth for kicks. this goes about as well as you'd expect cause the mouth closes and fuckin. crushes his head

kid goes into a coma for a while but eventually flatlines. while he's in the coma we hear michael tearfully apologizing, and his fredbear plush talks to him (presumed to be william) saying he will "put him back together"

anyway that was fun. so next up charlie emily gets FUCKING MURDERED

Backstory/FNAF1-2

for some reason charlie gets locked outside the pizzeria. william's driving by and decides to stab her bc why not

honestly most of us believe that this occured after CC just bc it gives william motivation to be pissy at his business partner and kill his kid abt it, but also a book that released a month ago implies that william might have been nightmare gassing his kids for shits and giggles so. who knows. dont worry about that btw its not relevant rn

anyway the thing is willie and henry had an animatronic designed to protect the children called the puppet. the puppet sees charlie outside and goes out to help her but it's raining so it fries up the puppet's circuits and it crashes on top of her dead body. cheery!

except this is where it gets wild bc charlie proceeds to like. possess the puppet

possession is really complicated in this universe but basically there's no real way to communicate openly with people and the possesser might not even be aware of who or where they are or anything really but. yeah the lil girl def possesses the puppet

its after this that william starts killing kids for funsies. a lot of us presume that he saw the puppet getting possessed and was like "holy shit a way to bring crying kid back" but again he might've just decided this was fun

anyway he lures five kids into the Secret Freddy's Backroom That Is Not On The Maps by wearing the spring bonnie costume. after killing them he shoves them into the other animatronic suits (freddy, bonnie, chica, foxy, fredbear "golden freddy") and yeah they start gettin possessed

the fifth missing kid was stuffed in fredbear and here's where it gets veeery theoretical cause we dont have straight confirmation of this but just some theories. it's VERY likely that crying child was also haunting fredbear at this point, and shoving another kid in there got two kids haunting the same bitch and it causes fredbear (golden freddy) to be really fucking weird and glitchy and eldritch or w/e. anyway you dont have to worry about that rn cause golden freddy doesnt show up much they're too busy ascending or smth

now this is where the lore gets confusing-- the first game claims that after the last two were lured, someone was caught on camera, arrested and charged. however we know for a fact willie-boi wasnt caught so either 1) this got retconned when cawthon decided to actually make lore, 2) he wasnt convicted and somehow still kept a hold on the fazbear empire during this, or 3) a lot of us theorize that henry was framed for the crimes and thats why he disappears from the timeline until the sixth game. cause yeah he disappears from the timeline until the sixth game. personally i believe the third it makes a lot of sense but yeah willie-boi stops killing at about five kids

anyway will is going full scientist with all these animatronics and he's like. ripping parts off them and putting them on other animatronics to see what happens. we THINK. again this is really vague but this is just kinda the most logical explanation here.

anyway this is what happens in fnaf2 and what it does is like. split the souls and shit. and he's like "oh this is sick" except this makes all the suits act erratic as hell and very angry towards adults (theyre cool with kids tho) and eventually one of them causes the infamous Bite of 87. we're not entirely sure what it was but one of the animatronics bit off the frontal lobe of someone in 1987. this caused this location to get shut down and willie boi just puts the pieces back on the og animatronics and is like "well shit what do we do now boys"

FNAF5: Sister Location

anyway so this is where we think elizabeth dies in the timeline. william makes these things called the "funtime animatronics"-- we know they are made after a fnaf location shuts down, though it's not specified which. these animatronics are built SPECIFICALLY to kidnap children. ballora is built as a distraction for parents, the other two are built to only move when not seen, and then Circus Baby™ has an arm that can grab kids and drag thtem into her until willie lets em out. she is programmed to only do this when a child is alone in the room so william tells elizabeth "do not go see baby when you are alone in the room"

so elizabeth is like 6 and she goes to see baby when she is alone in the room and baby grabs her but the arm is fucked up and the kid dies p badly

funtime's location is then immediately closed due to "gas leaks" and william rents out the funtimes for parties. at the same time he starts shoving some haunted parts into the funtime animatronics to see what happens. we THINK.

important location here btw is the "scooping room." it's actually very good horror but basically it's a bitch that is supposed to rip the endoskeletons out of the suit whenever theyre malfunctioning. super smart idea that will cause no nightmares going forwards.

anyway the animatronics all kinda know that william killed them so after a while (a few years??? who knows) they start trying to kill him and he's like "hmm. i cannot go into this bunker anymore. let me send michael, my last surviving kid who i hate." this is where michael, now an adult, re-enters the timeline.

mikey boy is told by his dad that he can bring his baby sis back to life if he goes down into this bunker and does some shit. michael is like "oh sweet" bc honestly he probably still feels guilty about literally killing his bro and so he goes down to the bunker.

the animatronics eventually tell him "go into the scooping room it'll be totes mcgotes" and when he gets there he finds out that the animatronics have killed all the other employees, scooped themselves, and fused their endoskeletons into one conglomerate called ennard

ennard is like "yeah we cant escape here cause they just bring us back so we're gonna use you as a skinsuit k thnx" and they scoop him and use him as a skinsuit

it's really good horror i promise

BUT this turned out to be a bad plan because Humans Decay so after like a week ennard gets puked up by the MikeSuit and escapes into the sewers.

here, meanwhile, is where mike pulls a reverse uno card and possesses his own decaying corpse

LIKE A FUCKING BADASS

he then calls up his dad and is like "hey dad :) elizabeth's fine now :) BUT :) they fucking killed me :) because they thought i was you :) you sure sent me down here to die huh :) anyway :) im gonna come find you :) you have a ten minute head start start running :)"

actor really fucking sold that monologue too ngl

so he's like. PISSSSSSED and rightfully so he is walking around in his own corpse. so he goes to find his dad

Backstory/FNAF3

this is about when peepaw willie goes back to the original fnaf location (we THINK) and is like "ok im just gonna take apart all the animatronics and do something with these"

only when he destroys the suits the missing kids' ghosts show up and spook him. so this guy who's been studying ghosts is like "oh fuckshit there's ghosts here" and tries to hide in the spring bonnie suit. only he laughs and this causes the springlocks to malfunction and FUCKING VIOLENTLY KILL HIM. get springlocked idiot

except then HE possesses the spring bonnie suit and this is springtrap. but also he's in a super secret back room while this happens so he is trapped there for a while

FNAF6

so ennard, michael and william are fuckin around for a couple years. at some point ennard decides that elizabeth is kinda a freak actually and kicks her out of the hivemind so she just rebuilds herself a circus baby suit and keeps wanderin around so now we got four bitches doing who knows what

eventually it's been 30 years since the last freddy's closed and someone opens up a haunted house parody of it. mike goes to work there as a security guard* and guess what they found springtrap and bring him to the attraction thinking he's just an animatronic. after five nights of fucking with him mike sets the place on fire to try and finally kill his dad fr. it does not work

*note that this isnt confirmed to be michael but we kinda. all know it's probably him. it really seems to be him

anyway then michael finds out that an actual fazbear's is opening and needs an owner so he goes and becomes owner of the restaraunt. while some guy on a cassette tape is giving him tutorial instructions he sets up the place and also collects several animatronics. these are:

scraptrap (peepaw post-fire and really pissed)

scrapbaby (elizabeth now thinking that maybe if she kills things her dad will pay attention to her)

molten freddy (remains of ennard still not entirely sure what's going on)

lefty (a bear solely built to capture the puppet, who was still fuckin around the fnaf2 location i guess. anyway now the puppet is here thats important)

so after our five nights scrapbaby comes on the speaker system and is like "omg dad if we kill people will you love me. we're gonna kill soooo many people it's my passion actually" and that's when the cassette tutorial guy interrupts her

and he just goes "yeah. you're not doing that"

anyway he's like "hi guys. you remember me??? henry??? from 30 years ago?? i owned half this business? you killed my daughter and stuffed her soul in a puppet? lmao yeah i literally lured you all here and you came like the fucking idiots you are. im setting the place on fire, we're all gonna die and go to heaven. except for YOU, WILL. you are not going there. lmao bye" and he sets the place on fire and they all burn. it's more epic when he says it tbh

now henry mentions that he had an escape route ready for the building owner but he figured out the owner was michael and was like "i feel like you wanna stay and burn with us" and michael's like "fuck yeah"

you might think that wraps up the story nicely but OH NO THERE'S MORE

Ultimate Custom Night

see, the next game is ultimate custom night where you can choose which animatronics hunt you and their level of difficulty. it is through hidden messages and shit that we find out that ucn is, canonically, william being tortured in hell. which is sick af

anyway the tormentor is a spirit labelled "the vengeful spirit" in the files, and "the one you should not have killed" by the animatronics. we sometimes hear either a light voice behind the other animatronic lines (could be either a woman with a light voice, a little girl, or a little boy), and the pic that sometimes shows up as a hallucination is a distorted photo of scott cawthon's son. we know for a FACT this spirit is someone from the fnaf6 fire cause they reference the fire more than once while poking willie with a stick. it's probably not elizabeth cause she was just tryin to get her dad's attention. it's not charlie/puppet bc one of her lines is like "ffs just stay out of my way for ONCE." we also know for a fact it's not henry cause they were like "henry sure tried to release us huh. not happening im not letting you go that easily bitch haha" so that narrows it down to michael and the missing kids

now here's the thing.

the vaaaaast majority of the fandom is convinced that the vengeful spirit is cassidy, the missing child that was stuffed inside golden freddy with cc. this is because golden freddy is in a looot of ultimate custom night and if you beat the hardest mode you just get a quick cutscene of him glitching and then everything fades to black

however. i have seen legiterally no convincing evidence that this is the case. all we know about cassidy is she is the golden freddy missing kid and was talking to cc through the logbook. and we BARELY know this. in the alternate universe book she first showed up in (the silver eyes) she wasn't even the golden freddy kid. people point out a similar situation to her and cc in fazbear frights where one of the kids was tormenting william (stitchwraith) but that's literally a whole separate universe and completely separate characters with separate backstories and personalities

there's a sprite in security breach who fights glitchtrap (explained below) who was named in the files as "cassidy" so ppl point to that but 1) they changed that name after people made a deal out of it, 2) that could mean literally anything, 3) the protag of the next game was named "cassie" and her story kinda paralleled the sprite's first game so uuhhhh anyway

honestly i think it's WAY more likely the vengeful spirit is mr michael "i'm going to come find you and set you on fire twice" afton, using his childhood likeness to fuck with his dad. this is strengthened by one of the easter egg cutscenes in ucn, where the vengeful spirit talks to a benevolent spirit who tells them to "leave the demon to his demons. there is nothing for you here." the audio in the background is someone distortedly screaming "HENRY" and "MICHAEL"

one of the animatronic lines also says "is this a prison for you or for me? perhaps both" implying that the vengeful spirit feels like they belong in hell, which would fit with mike's "i killed my brother" self-loathing. the golden freddy glitch could very easily be his mental anguish as well as william's, with the optional cutscene telling us that while michael is self-harming by torturing his dad in hell, he has the ability to move on and find peace if he can forgive himself. honestly i really like that open ending there

another point towards "vengeful mike" theory is that we play as him for most of the games (definitely 5 and 6, most likely 1 and 3, some theorize 4) and so him being the vengeful spirit is way more emotionally impactful than "random kid #5"

however every time i bring this up to the fnaf fandom they get really really pissy at me because y'all love ur angry lil girl cassidy headcanons and honestly that is completely fair i also love angry lil girls. im just saying this bc we're going over whats canon rn and i firmly believe in vengeful mike (thank @birdsareblooming for that) but yknow. cassidy is also fun as hell

i wrote a whole essay on this btw these are just the cliffnotes. do you guys wanna see the essay

anyway that's where the afton story ends but OHHH NO MR CAWTHON CANNOT STOP

if you just want a quick catchup before the movie you can stop here but anyway. let's talk mimicry

THE GLITCH STORY

the games coming out recently are kinda a sequel-story and bc theyre still coming out we are still very confused about what the fuck is canon and what is not so this one will be a lot more guessing. i digress let's talk about

Help Wanted

so back on earth, it's the 2020s-2030s. turns out the fazbear company is still functional and they're like "well shit guys what the FUCK do we do about all of That"

so they decide they need a brand cleansing and what they do is they secretly hire an "indie game developer" to make the fnaf games in-universe, to make light of the tragedies and make people take them less seriously. they pretend to have beef with this indie dev but eventually put all of his games into a VR game as a show of "good faith." somehow this actually does work in revitalizing the brand image

also sidenote but the books imply that the indie dev was kidnapped and gaslit into making the games but thats not important

now see there's a glitch in the game and the beta-tester jeremy mentions it and then gets increasingly withdrawn and obsessive. because it turns out there is a Bitch in here

now. the identity of the Bitch is uh. controversial in the fandom rn. i will say for clarity that i am in Party Two and will probably be biased towards that but here's the thing. the Bitch is either:

a digital upload of william afton's soul (somehow escaping hell)

THE MIMIC

Help Wanted Interlude: The Mimic

see, the other books (silver eyes, fazbear frights) are set in a parallel universe-ish to the books, similar rules and worldbuilding but cawthon can fuck around all he wants with no consequences. there were charliebots and springtrap mpreg at one point it was nuts. but the thing is right now they're kinda trying to tell us that the current series, tales from the pizzaplex, is game-canon. god only knows if they'll stick to that so some people think the books are in the game's universe, others think they're parallels to the games and not 1-1 exact much like the others

but anyway they give us crucial lore on The Mimic so here we go

some guy named edwin (some think he's a parallel to henry or william, but rn we're just gonna assume he's canon) is a single dad to a toddler. however he's working for fazbear making all these animatronics and he's sooo busy and needs something to distract the toddler so he creates a fucked up nightmare animatronic called The Mimic, whose programming is extremely basic: "copy whatever you see being done"

the toddler actually loves the fucked up nightmare animatronic and teaches him to play patty-cake and carry around stuffed animals or w/e. anyway then the toddler runs out into the street and gets hit by a car

edwin is still grieving and the mimic comes up carrying the toddler's stuffed animal and still copying him and when the mimic that edwin programmed to copy things is still copying things edwin snaps and just beats the fuck out of it bc he needs a grief outlet. he then abandons the thing but however the mimic has just learned Violence

some employees come by to see where edwin's animatronics are and the mimic just starts killing all of them bc. well. it's supposed to copy things. it will copy things

there's a BIG GAP here in what happens to it next but it disappears for the next 30 years. however it is heavily, HEAVILY implied that it witnessed at least one of the missing children incidents

fazbear actually has a Lot of mimic endoskeletons but bc they start copying violent shit they shut them all down. however they all run on the same program, "mimic1" and fazbear keeps that tech around cause you know it could be helpful

Back to Help Wanted

now here is where the "we only THINK this is canon we dont knkow yet" comes in

back to the vr game, they are just shoving random old pieces of code in there to speefd up the process of making the game cause capitalism doesnt like long development times. this puts the mimic1 program into the program and it immediately sees All Of Afton's Crimes In 4K. it decides "oh yeah i can mimic this but i should probably get a physical body in order to do that"

so beta tester jeremy sees the mimic program, which takes the form of Spring Bonnie Suit. this is Glitchtrap

now keep in mind that some people do still believe that all this aint happenin and the spring bonnie glitch is just william. again i personally believe the mimic cause it makes more sense than "william escaped hell somehow" but w/e

anyway, glitchtrap is fuckin around. it tries to possess beta tester jeremy and in order to stop it, jeremy does the sensible thing and cuts his own face off

so glitchtrap is like "hmm. that didn't work out" and decides to go for the more subtle approach. the next beta tester, currently unnamed, starts recording tapes inside the game to send to the next beta tester so they dont fuck with glitchtrap. glitchtrap however seals itself inside the tapes so that when the beta testers try to delete it, it'll instead be inside the tapes and cant be removed lmao. it then "mimics" tape girl's voice and adds a last tape saying "let him possess you its ok i promise"

it also mimics her intro of "hello can you hear me" in the one time it speaks so. mimic

anyway the next beta tester is this gal named vanessa and she gets possessed like suuuper quickly and glitchtrap is like "oh fucking FINALLY"

Security Breach Therapy Tapes

vanessa's acting weird at work so company requires her to go to therapy, however she has the same therapist as Another Patient. this patient will be named later however right now we're calling them Patient 46. they do not talk but have the same therapist as Vanessa and is creepy about it. anyway whenever a therapist prods too much into either Vanessa or P46's life, or discovers them fucking with fazbear tech, the therapist mysteriously goes missing and shows up later dead and mangled by machinery

they go through like five of these bitches at least, but it's clear P46 is another bitch possessed by glitchtrap but they're like more possessed than vanessa is so glitchtrap likes them better

BUT THAT'S ALL BORING, WE'VE GOT A PIZZAPLEX NOW!!!

Security Breach

fazbear opens a giant 80s-style mall with a ton of attractions like disneyland or w/e and call it the Mega Pizzaplex. There's state-of-the-art animatronics in here that are basically sentient ai. they might be possessed but we're not actually sure rn they might just be advanced robots

they start with "glamrock" freddy, bonnie and chica, along with roxy wolf instead of foxy. we're not sure why rn. anyway at some point something suspicious happens and bonnie is found mangled and he's replaced with montgomery gator, a c-list animatronic they had to run the golf course. he doesnt seem to take the spotlight well and has started breaking things but its probably fine

anyway they eventually realize they can automate the staff and stop paying human beings and they jump on that cause they love cutting costs. they've got staffbots everywhere except for ONE person- vanessa, who is hired as the security guard. we find a note saying that her interviewer found her too inexperienced for the position, but someone "very" high up in the company pushed her into the role. this is implied to be glitchtrap taking over the systems

so vanessa and P46 are shoving glitchtrap into the systems because, well, guess what? the pizzaplex is built on top of the fnaf6 location. the one where henry set them all on fire, and they're trying to do some sort of shit with the burnt remains of springtrap. if you believe in william!glitchtrap he's trying to get his body back; if you believe in mimic!glitchtrap he's trying to fuse himself to afton's corpse in order to gain a corporeal form. it also helps that there is The OG Mimic Endoskeleton in this area (its explained in the books im not going into it) but it's pretty fuckin damaged so they gotta spend some time fixing it before fusing it with peepaw's corpse

but the night they're supposed to do that, something goes wrong: a child is loose in the pizzaplex

glamrock freddy had a malfunction onstage, and when he wakes up in his room, there is a child hiding in his stomach compartment (used for oversized piñatas and cakes). this child is named gregory and he looks suspiciously like the crying child and we dont have an explanation for that but no, matpat, he's not a robot, it's probably just symbolism

anyway gregory actually has like very little memory of what's going on and barely remembers his own name but he says that vanessa the security guard is trying to fuckin kill him so he needs to get tf out of the pizzaplex. freddy's like "well you're shit out of luck cause the doors close and seal until 6am but that's fine we can make it til then" and gregory's like "fucking JOY"

long story short gregory has to run around the pizzaplex while every animatronic but freddy is trying to kill him. freddy is not trying to kill him bc his malfunction caused him to enter Safe Mode and it turns out that Safe Mode is safe from the glitchtrap virus. everyone else, however, gets glitchtrapped and is trying to kill this kid

you dont find out why until like laaaate in the game and even THEN you're confused until one of the goosebumps-knockoff short stories confirms a thing, and that thing is:

gregory is patient 46

oh shit

turns out gregory was possessed by glitchtrap for FUCK knows how long and was used as its body for like the entire time. and when he eventually wakes up un-possessed (no idea how that happened) he has no memory of whats going on at ALL and is understandably fucking terrified. doesnt remember being possessed or killing ppl or anything he just wakes up and runs. glam freddy likely malfunctioned cause glitchtrap was like "oh my god go GET that stupid kid" and glam freddy was like "but???? protecc????" and entered safe mode

so gregory eventually fuckin DEMOLISHES all the other animatronics and uses their parts to upgrade freddy. freddy is like "hey where'd you get these parts" and gregory's like "uhhhhhhhhh dont worry about it" "hey where are my friends" "DONT WORRY ABOUT IT"

while this is happening, a possessed vanessa is in a bunny suit calling herself vanny and also trying to kill him. this is just as confusing to us as it is to you

anyway there are six endings to security breach. according to the most recent game, there is a chance that two of them are canon. WE DO NOT KNOW which of the two is canon. these are the endings:

Princess Quest Ending: greg and freddy try to confront vanny and she gets freddy ripped apart by staffbots. gregory then finds an arcade game in her room and plays and beats it which sets her soul free (presumably he knew how to do this cause he's remembering bits and pieces of being possessed??? idk). anyway once the game is beat she is unpossessed and takes gregory and freddy's decapitated head out of the pizzaplex

Burntrap Ending: gregory and freddy avoid vanny and go to the fnaf6 basement where freddy starts acting all fucked up and then thtey find the Springtrap corpse, now Burntrap (fused with the mimic? glitchtrap? yknow). it tries to kill them so you have to Boss Fight everything and then set him on fire again. THEN a tangled mess of animatronic wires with a funtime freddy head (remains of ennard???) shows up and drags him off. again, just as confusing for us as it is for you. freddy and gregory escape. no idea where vanessa is

ONE of these is canon. we do not know which. this is making the fanbase super chill and normal /lying

Evidence for Princess Quest: in ruin, we see a headless glamrock freddy in the exact same area he is in pq. we also have no sign of vanny trying to help glitchtrap. you can collect gregory's fanart of his own game and pq is the only one he didn't draw. princess quest arcade game has sword sticking out of it

Evidence against Princess Quest: aforementioned headless freddy is labelled a prototype on his foot and we know for a fact that our freddy does not have that stamp. he also has a gift inside his stomach when freddy gave his stomach gift to gregory already (and it was a diff color). the pq arcade game has sword sticking out of it BUT that could symbolize the princess being skewered, and surrounding the game is art of the escaped glitchbunny

Evidence for Burntrap: labelled as "true ending" in the files, only ending to be FULLY animated instead of switching to comic form and also only one with boss fight, the tangled animatronic mess is definitely canon (we see it, gregory draws it so he saw it too which means he went in the basement where it was), while vanny isn't seen her grafitti is everywhere and appears to be recent

Evidence against Burntrap: the "true ending" label, like cassidy, could mean literally fucking anything. also if vanessa is still under his control why the fuck doesnt she help him where is she

so yeah we're having fun figuring THAT out

Ruin (the end so far thank god)

the most recent game we got, then, was the dlc for the above game, this dlc is called ruin. a few months after this, a lil girl named cassie wanders into the ruins of the pizzaplex cause her best friend gregory told her to meet him there. when she gets there she finds a walkie-talkie and he's like "girl im trapped under the pizzaplex you need to shut down the security and come get me" and she's like "sounds great"

she finds vanny's mask and puts it on and enters an AR world where a glitched bunny is trying to kill her (this one isnt glitchtrap actually) and a friendly little AR bear is telling her to keep going she's doing a great job (this one IS glitchtrap probably)

anyway it turns out her backstory is her dad worked for the pizzaplex and she had a birthday party there with her Favorite Character Roxy and literally none of her friends showed up. she was sad about it until gregory showed up and became her friend. then gregory went missing and she was sad

anyway the last security node is favorite character Roxy and roxy recognizes her and is nice to her and its very sad

cassie eventually goes down to the fnaf6 basement and is like "ok gregory i opened the door are you okay" and PSYCH, IT'S NOT GREGORY

IT'S

THE

MIMIC

the mimic immediately tries to kill her bc it likes violence but roxy shows up to save her. the real gregory calls her on the walkie-talkie and is like "bITCH GET OUT OF THERE" and she's like "IM TRYING" and gregory's "friend" (whose pronouns are very specifically blurred out, so it could be either freddy or vanessa) uses the building maps to help her to an elevator. however when she gets in the elevator gregory's like "yeahhhhh sorry we cant let you be followed :(" and drops the elevator, trapping her there

it's like a 99% chance this last bit was not gregory but it was the mimic, seeing as gregory is not even in the pizzaplex and the mimic lost cassie right next to the elevator fuse box that it could easily rip out. so you know

anyway we end with either roxy finding cassie or the mimic using roxy's voice finding her so this kid's fucked lmao

also other questions about if mimic is burntrap is that we see the mimic p naked in this game and not in a fun corpse skinsuit so where did bunny go??? however i will also mention that there is a secret ending that shows us that the FUCKING SCOOPER is here so. personally i think that answers that question. get scooped idiot

oh also if you noticed "hey 'cassie' sounds a lot like 'cassidy,' the golden freddy kid who was sharing a body with the crying child, who has a similar design to gregory," congrats! we've noticed that too! we have no fucking idea what it means! :D

and thaaaaat's five nights at freddy's

that didnt take too long did it

[sundrop-writes]

My Bleeding Heart

Draco Malfoy x Fem!Reader

Summary:

When Draco finds out that you are pregnant, he can't bring himself to be happy about the news because he doesn't want to bring a child into this wartorn world just to be another pawn in the Dark Lord's games. So, then and there, he makes a very important decision to risk everything in order to protect you and his future child.

Draco Malfoy x Fem!Reader. Arranged Marriage. Angst (with a Fluffy Ending). Set during Deathly Hallows.

Word Count: 3,400

Harry Potter Masterlist | AO3 Link

Full list of warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: the reader is pregnant in this fic; this is set during Deathly Hallows and there are a lot of themes from that era - death, blood purity ideals, general violence, murder, mentions of Draco being tasked with killing Dumbledore; Draco and the reader live in an environment where they fear for their lives because they don't believe in Death Eater values completely and fear being killed for it; Draco and the reader are in an arranged marriage meant to carry on blood purity - but they have fallen in love in the marriage; the reader is a pureblood, but I have not mentioned her being related to any canon characters, so her appearance/race is not defined; general emotional angst - Draco fears for his own life, your life, and the fate of your unborn child if they are born into pureblood society; in the first half, there is some arguing/tension between Draco and the reader (but it's mostly due to the emotional tension of their situation); mentions of Dumbledore's death; non detailed mentions of sex (that's how we got the baby, duh) (sadly no smut); passing mention of abortion/pregnancy termination (they both want the child but fear for the child's safety in this environment); semi-graphic mentions of consensually inflicted injuries - Draco gets the reader to cut off the skin with his Dark Mark on it so that he can't be tracked or summoned with it; these warnings make it seem like a really dark fic but the ending is really fluffy I promise; toward the end, the reader and Draco have a toddler who refers to them as 'Mummy' and 'Daddy', and I think that is about it.

Author's Notes: The prompt of 'character finds out you are pregnant' was originally from the fluff prompts list, but because this is Draco, I couldn't help but to throw some angst in here. Because I imagine that if Draco was still living with his parents and surrounded by Death Eaters and the blood purity ideals, he would be very hesitant to want a child of his own because he wouldn't want a child to be tainted by all of it the way that he had been. Because at a certain point, the pride he felt turned sour. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy because this does get fluffy toward the end.

...

Terror. 

That was the very first thing Draco could tangibly say that he was feeling. 

The last two years of his life had been a sickening rollercoaster of utter chaos, and quite frankly, he had become numb to it all. He had to force himself to be numb, otherwise he wouldn’t have survived. And currently, survival was his only feasible goal. But this - this news touching his ears was one thing that woke up his senses from that numbness and sent him rocketing into the harshness of reality. This made him feel again, in the worst ways. Suddenly he was nauseous, shaking, blood rocketing against his ear drums, creating a harsh thumping in seconds. 

He wished that he had heard you wrong. 

“Are - are you sure?” He stuttered out, feeling his hands becoming exceptionally clammy as he clutched them around nothing, his feet unsteady on the ground. 

You saw him becoming remarkably pale for someone who was already so papery toned on a normal day, and you worried that he was going to faint. You worried that his harsh reaction meant that he hated the idea of you being pregnant - that he was angry with you. Of course, you realised that the fault wasn’t all on you, that was just nature. But part of you thought that he put the onus on you to take care of birth control, using potions or spells, because he had been worried about so many other things since the start of your relationship. 

Up until now, you weren’t sure if you wanted what they wanted. You weren’t naive enough to look beyond the reason you had married Draco in the first place. You were there to produce the next pureblood heir with him. Originally, you had thought it was romantic, in a sense. But when you had met Draco’s family, the people he was surrounded with, the people who called themselves Death Eaters - you realised that it most certainly wasn’t an ideal environment to bring a child into. 

Killing at the drop of a hat, torturing, murdering the innocent - those weren’t ideals that you wanted your child to be brought up on. 

“Draco, sit down, please,” You put a hand on his shoulder, trying to usher him toward one of the expensive chairs sitting in the corner of his room. 

You had stolen him away for a rare moment of privacy between meetings and Death Eaters traipsing around the house. These days, his parents always demanded that the two of you make good on appearances because you were supposed to be the sweet young couple, the future of the pureblood line. 

“Are you sure?” He whispered the question much more harshly, the words hissed through his lips like pure venom as he desperately waited for you to confirm it. 

He let himself be guided by you and collapsed down into the chair, sitting with his head in his hands, ruffling up his usually neat, slicked-back hair with rough, stressful fingers through it. 

Your stomach twisted with your own unique stress as you watched him. You hadn’t seen him so distraught since his first failed attempt on the mission he had been given last year. 

“I’m sure.” You said. “I went to the apothecary and got one of the test potions-” 

“A store bought test potion?” Draco hissed. 

He gave you the harshest glare that you had ever seen from him, which was saying something considering the looks of pure disdain he had given you upon first meeting. His jaw was set so tightly that it looked as though his molars were going to crush in on themselves at any moment. 

Your posture shrunk back, desperately trying to hide from his invasive stare. You wished that you could have burrowed under the floorboards at that point. 

You knew that it was fear and panic about the situation at large, all the death you had been surrounded with compounding onto him. But you hated that he was inadvertently taking it out on you. 

After a moment of you not speaking, Draco continued. 

“I should have made it myself, if you had just told me-” 

“Yes, and nobody would have become suspicious if you were mulling around, gathering the ingredients for a pregnancy test potion.” You snapped back. 

Draco’s face grew even more sickly at this, and you knew that you were both silently on the same page - nobody else in the house could know that you were pregnant. If they even suspected it, then it was over. 

He heaved a sigh, gathering all of his thoughts before he chose one to bring to open air. 

“Were you seen?” He asked, still tearing into you indignantly, talking to you as though you were stupid. 

“No.” You told him, entirely certain. “I wore a large cloak with a hood, it was dark. Nobody recognized me.” 

He gave you a distinct frown that said he was unsure of the truth in your words, and you rushed to trample over his potential sarcastic remark with your own. 

“I suppose they don’t recognize me when I’m not on your arm, anyway.” 

You scoffed out the last part, talking about this fact with distaste even though in actuality it was something you loved. You felt safe when you were with Draco. You couldn’t imagine facing the scowling faces without his arm around you. 

But you knew that’s all you were in this society - Draco’s wife. That’s all you had been labelled as since you had been shipped over from America by your godmother. 

You were the last of your noble pureblood family’s line. Your parents had been killed by Aurors in the name of Voldemort’s cause during the first war. After their deaths, you had been sent to live with your godmother in America, never truly understanding how your parents were killed or why.

The whole reason you had met Draco in the first place - an arranged marriage. Something that would have honoured your parents, apparently. 

The Malfoys had been looking for a pureblood match around Draco’s age, and they had once known your parents, and thought of you as a good prestigious pureblood girl to marry their son. It didn’t take them long to find you, even though you didn’t mingle in pureblood society like they did. (Something they found to be a big shame and a horror upon your parents’ memory.) 

Your godmother sold you out for a ‘dowry’ of two thousand Galleons, and from there, your life became a living hell. 

Strangely enough, Draco had been the one anchor keeping you alive in it. 

Most would say that it was because he was kind by comparison, but truly - he was easy to fall in love with when he was compassionate, sweet, loving in the smallest ways that made you feel safe during some of the most hectic times of your life. 

Draco had never intended to get attached to you. 

But like anything in his life - pining for the crumbs of his father’s approval, digging under all the proprietary for a single genuine gesture of affection from his mother - Draco’s heart kept beating as much as he tried to turn it off. He convinced himself that he was solid stone, but apparently, you were the pickaxe that made him crumble to pieces. After meeting him, you burrowed through the layers of snide coldness and dark humour that he used in an effort to put you off and you found that still beating heart. That soft thing that he hated so much about himself. 

You dug that heart out of his chest, and - despite his best efforts to fight you off, you nursed that heart back to health. And you gave him the closest thing he had experienced to ‘love’ in years. 

On the day the two of you got married, when Dumbledore’s dead body was barely cold, Draco said his vows to you with nothing but honesty in his heart. And that night, he made love to you with intense passion, held you in his arms as though you might slip away if he didn’t grip onto you tight enough. And only after you had fallen asleep in his arms, was when he allowed himself to cry. Because he knew that they now had one more way to make him hurt if they wanted to. They could kill him, they could stop the breath in his lungs, but he would die a million deaths through you being hurt in the smallest of ways before that happened. 

And now - with this utterly horrifying revelation, they had new ways to hurt him. He should have died a lone man. He should have let them kill him instead of agreeing to any of this in the first place. He shouldn’t have learned to love - he shouldn’t have grown these new limbs that they could cut off savagely and tear apart in front of him. 

“I got another one.” You announced when the room had grown too quiet, silent tears streaming down Draco’s face as he sat in intense contemplation. “Another test potion. An extra. I figured you’d want to see it with your own eyes.” 

Even though the two of you had only met two short years ago - you knew him too well. You knew that he would want visual confirmation before his own eyes. 

“Get it. Please.” He said, trying his best not to let his throat drown in these tears. He wouldn’t be reduced to sobbing. 

You went to your cloak, which was hung on a hook in an opposite corner of the room, and grabbed the potion vial out of your pocket. Your shoes clacking against the floor made a terribly hollow soundtrack to the whole thing as you ripped off the small tag that was tied to the neck of the potion bottle and handed it to Draco. He read the instructions on it while you uncorked the potion. 

It was simple: you put some sample of your DNA in the bottle - a hair, a small bit of blood, something like that. And then if the potion changed colours to glow white, it meant that you were pregnant. If it made no change from its original, soupy grey colour - then you weren’t pregnant. 

He watched, holding his breath as you plucked a single hair from your head and then dropped it into the now open top of the bottle. When the hair made contact with the liquid, it bubbled slightly as it dissolved. Then - after only a moment, the bottle began to shake roughly in your hand as it changed colour, and surely enough - it glowed brightly white. 

You were definitely pregnant. 

Draco’s nausea increased. And then - in a moment, he felt a fierce sense of protectiveness wash over him. It was as though he had been slapped sharply across the face, woken up from the blind numbness he had been feeling. He knew at that moment that he needed to take action. He couldn’t simply stand by and let things happen around him anymore. He could simply sit around hoping for safety, hoping for some miracle to save the two of you. 

“Happy?” You scoffed. 

You took Draco’s lack of words as a negative - a sign that he was certainly unhappy with the news. 

Not that you were entirely thrilled under the present circumstances - you were scared, stressed, and hating it because you had always wanted children, but not like this. 

You placed the potion down on the nearest table and stormed off to the bathroom attached to Draco’s bedroom. He chased you, catching the door before you could slam it closed and lock it. 

You conceded to his movements quickly and simply turned to face the sink, unable to look at him right now. You turned it on, splashing cold water on your face, trying your best not to freak out because clearly he was already playing that role. He walked up behind you, gently pressing his body into yours. Even under these circumstances, you found his presence so comforting. You found his body behind you to be nothing but a wall of safety, and you couldn’t help but to lean back into him, your eyes still tightly closed. 

Draco reached around you and gently pressed his hand into your stomach - you held back tears of your own now. Clearly, you were both thinking the same thing. Thinking of the unborn child that you both needed to protect. You placed your hand over his, seeking comfort in his touch as he flattened a palm across your stomach. 

It was a world shattering revelation to know that his child was resting under his hand. 

“No one can find out about this.” He muttered quietly into your neck. 

It was something Draco dreaded - them finding out about your pregnancy. 

This is what they had been waiting for. This was the reason for the marriage in the first place. This was the pureblood heir - this was their chess piece. 

Draco wouldn’t let his child become another pawn in their games. 

“It’s still early.” You choked out quietly. “There are other potions. We could-” You choked on your own words, unable to even speak it aloud. 

Draco dug his fingers into the fabric of your shirt protectively, quite insulted at the insinuation. 

“No.” He replied, his voice rough with anger. “Unless the idea of being pregnant with my child is so utterly horrible to you-” 

“It’s not that!” 

You screeched, forcefully turning in his arms, wanting to face him. He kept one hand on your hip, and moved the other up to gently grasp your cheek, thumbing away your tears as they gathered. It was that gentleness that always got you. His natural instinct to comfort you.You leaned into his touches as you continued. 

“I want this baby more than anything. I - I’m just terrified they’ll see that as a weakness.” 

You knew it was the truth. Especially when Draco’s sullen face confirmed it. In this circle, loving anything or anyone was a weakness that could be exploited. 

Draco leaned in and kissed your forehead. You closed your eyes, letting the single, solitary moment of peace wash over you. 

“I’ll protect you.” He declared, his voice whisper-quiet, but nearly broken with the intensity of his words. “Both of you.” He added this on as he brushed his palm over your stomach once again. 

Again, you laid your hand over his, uttering quiet assurances of love toward your unborn child. 

“Draco, how-?” 

He didn’t let you finish the question. 

“We’ll leave. We’re leaving. Tonight.” He declared firmly. 

It was something you had suggested before - to protests from Draco, many scathing comments poking holes in your plans. His parents would be killed if he left. At this point, he had to surrender to the idea that they could take care of themselves - that they had made their bed and they had to lie in it. But now that he had the Dark Mark, they would be able to find him, wherever he went. But he would find some harsh way around that. 

Now that he had so much more at stake, he couldn’t care if his parents died because of his actions. He had so much more that he had to protect. 

“I’ll cut off my bloody arm if I have to.” Draco mumbled quietly, and then turned sharply from the bathroom, leaving to pack. 

… 

“Daddy, Mummy’s not being fair! She won’t let me play with the jellyfish!” 

“Draco, can you please explain to your daughter that jellyfish are dangerous and she can’t play with them?” You replied, trying your best to haul your toddler away from the rough rocks at the water’s edge where the creature had washed up. 

“Love, why don’t you come and play with your toys over here?” Draco posed, trying to draw her attention toward something else. She was much like himself as a child - determined, stubborn, and wouldn’t do anything unless she believed it was her own idea first. “Come and show Daddy how to build a sand castle, hmm?” 

She seemed to perk up at this. She was clever, and over-eager to show off her skills. More than eager to show her father how to do something properly if she felt that he wasn’t doing it right. This happened with everything from the way he spread marmalade on his toast to the way he tied his shoes - something she had just learned how to do that she was eager to show off her expertise in.

As she tore out of your arms and trudged across the beach to scoop some sand into her bucket, Draco had to be thankful as he watched you follow slowly behind. Purely thankful of the fact that the biggest danger your daughter had to worry about was something like a stray jellyfish washed up on shore. 

Three years after escaping a life of servitude toward the Dark Lord in England, you and Draco enjoyed a quiet life with your daughter Aster in France. 

You sat down beside Draco with a huff, picking up the book you had previously been reading. You flashed him a grateful smile as he listened to Aster’s detailed instructions about how they should build their castle. He gave you a wide grin in return, and you felt your insides tingle. His smile used to be something as rare as a Basilisk, but now he wore it proudly and more often - he wore his happiness without restraint. 

With the short-sleeved, light linen shirt that he had on for the beach, the scar on his forearm was fully visible. It reminded you of the brave choices he had made on that night three years ago. 

You had convinced Draco not to cut off his arm completely, but the two of you knew that the Dark Mark needed to go. Otherwise, the two of you could never run far enough, you would have nowhere to hide. So now he sported a large scar where you had held him down and cut the skin off with a sharp knife. That night, his parents had found his room empty, save for the flap cut-off skin in the middle of his bloody bedroom floor. Luckily, you had a talent for healing spells and Draco had been able to knick a few good potions from his family’s cupboards before the two of you left. 

On the outside, it was jagged and ugly. But when he looked at it, it reminded him of nothing but freedom - of the love you had committed to him that day, to your unborn daughter. 

With a couple thousand Galleons in gold taken from his parents’ stash, the two of you started a new life. You were untraceable and happy. And though there was intense relief when you read in the papers that Potter had succeeded in defeating the Dark Lord and that meant the war was over - the two of you didn’t have any plans to go back to England anytime soon. 

Not when your new life was this good. 

“-and see, you need to dig down until you find the sand that’s wet, that makes a good castle-” Aster drawled on, piercing her toy shovel into the ground frantically as she spoke. 

Draco nodded, giving her a smile as he followed her instructions. “Yes, yes. I see. Very smart girl.” 

He had gotten the two of you away from that life, and not for a moment had your daughter ever known the kind of pain or fear that you had. 

“Daddy’s learning a lot today, isn’t he?” You remarked, giving Draco a sly grin. 

“Good thing I’ve got this smart girl here to teach me,” He said, leaning over and giving Aster a kiss on the forehead. 

That was another thing that made you fall even deeper in love with him - the droves of affection he gave to his daughter. Now that he wasn’t being watched so closely, now that he wasn’t expected to be the picture perfect son, he could love her exactly how he wanted to. He didn’t have to worry about propriety or appearing weak. 

Aster giggled at this, and Draco blew raspberries on her cheek before kissing her again. She then rallied Draco up to go to the shoreline for a bucket of water. As you watched them walk hand in hand, you felt your heart ache from how overwhelmingly full of love you were. 

Somehow, you found yourself endlessly thankful for the rocky road of fate that had brought you here.

[maopll]

🫧 — NOT SO SECRET CONFESSION :

# genshin impact !

⌗ a/n : I changed it a little. the original request wasn't like the one I'm writing but definitely a lot same. I hope this is also to your liking :D

⌗ warning : slight angst(zhongli), your best friend being so real.

⌗ characters : kaeya , diluc, zhongli, kaveh & gn!reader

「 summary 」 : your crush was just passing by the little cafe downtown for some errands. while you were talking about your ideal type, it was clear it could only be one person and even you said it was him. however, you were unaware of the same man eavesdropping on your conversation with a very obvious blush on his face. so could this be the start to a budding love?...

‣ 𝐊𝐀𝐄𝐘𝐀

Klee wanted to get a few pastries from the bakery in mondstadt, so he was put to the job. While he was returning, he heard the voice of a very familiar person. 'Oh? it seems like knight y/n is slacking off,' he thought to himself. He wanted to ask why you were here, but he stopped as soon as he understood the topic of your conversation with a colleague.

"Honestly, any man who is tall, dark-skinned, and has long hair is a solid 10/10 for me. They would be eye candy for sure." Your friend agreed with you saying,"Very real of you y/n, but why does that sound like someone WE know...". "We know someone who looks like this?" Kaeya is no fool. The description you provided does trace back to the only prominent figure in mondstadt that has the same features. He was breathing heavily, and his heart was thumping in his chest. "Wait... yeah, it does sound like someone we know..." "It's the cavalry captain kaeya, isn't it ?" There it is, there was his name. His eyes widened partly from shock and partly from relief, knowing that his secret crush also crushes on him. He peaked at you from the corner of his eye, and you were just as flushed as him. "Well he does look very...handsome. Do you think I should uhhh try telling him how I feel or should I wait some more?" you asked your friend.

He departed from the cafe where you were since he had to return. He hopes that you will come to tell him your feelings at the earliest. He's not that patient when it comes to his love life. It's better if you confess to him. Otherwise, he might have to step up his game...

‣ 𝐃𝐈𝐋𝐔𝐂

It's the work hours, and he needs to get the tavern job done and bring the ice cubes since they have run out of it. Handing over the work temporarily to Charles, he dashed his way towards the designated shop when he heard a very familiar voice. Who was this again ? Oh, it was the regular customer of Diluc every night at exactly 10 p.m. He favoured you quite a lot. Free drinks, empty reserved seats in a quiet corner, and so and so. It was quite clear to people close to Diluc that he was your secret admire, though they never admitted it. So imagine his feelings when he overheard your conversation that also shows your true feelings towards him...

He's a gentleman, and he doesn't like eavesdropping, but the conversation that he happened to chance upon piqued his interest. "Tall, mysterious, rich, handsome, long hair, will cry for me and in front of their mother. This sounds like a dream guy for the girlies!" Your friend looked at you with a cheeky grin and said "oh I know the one who you're talking about!" You squealed,"Don't say so loudly! shhh...what I'd they hear it, " you said in an embarrassed tone. Diluc was expecting to hear his name the most but felt as if it might not be him. 'what if its not me?' he thought. But his worries would melt away with the name. "it's master diluc! I knew it he WAS the best man for you y/n".

Diluc heaved a sigh of relief. Getting his feelings reciprocated was one of the best things that ever happened to him. Not only was he a man of few words, but he also rarely showed his emotions. The prospect of being with you in the future, smiling with you, spending most of his time with you. You could be the very light that would shine upon him in his dark night.

‣ 𝐙𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐈

He was stoic and often came as impertinent to many women and his colleagues. You were, however, different from the ones he has come across. You patiently listened to him and even made remarks if necessary. Later, he felt these feelings rising up in his chest. His heart would thump heavily in his chest whenever he would meet you, he would often get flustered whenever you would be around. But...he was good at hiding these feelings ! so you couldn't even know if he felt the same as you ! but he soon found his answers upon...eavesdropping...

He was passing by Yuehai Pavilion after getting Director Hu's job done. But he heard your voice, and although it was quite rude, he couldn't help but hear what the topic of the conversation was that got you so hyped up. "Gentlemen with a favourable gait, tall and long hair is what I seeketh," you friend snickered, "drop the accent, but where will you find such a man? It's basically impossible to find someone who fits your standards lower your expectations y/n. " You frowned, "But I know this man! he fits, no...breaks the bars I tell you!". Zhongli wasn't feeling jealous at all. No, no. But he thought, 'There can't be a man who resembles your taste except me. I am what people say god-carved'

Lo and behold, there was his name being mentioned. "It's Mister Zhongli, isn't it? Good luck having your shot at him. He looks rather stone cold to be able to reciprocate how you feel y/n." Zhongli wouldn't deny that. That's just how he's been described all his life by people. But he felt sad because what if you pushed him away because of his personality?. He sighed and walked away since he couldn't leave work for so long with a heavy heart.

"I love him for who he is. He is a great guy his personality is nothing like how they make it up. He is rather sweet and gentle. How about I ask him out after his work has ended?". And thus marked the end of your conversation with your friend.

‣ 𝐊𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐇

He's always had a puppy crush on you since the time you two were students at the akademiya. It's just that he never mustered up the courage to go up and ask you out. Although he would sneakily drop hints that he does like you in conversations and touches that would last longer, you never picked those up. He was quite disappointed but adjusted himself day by day. But it all shatters into pieces during that one faithful day, and he again finds himself returning to how he was back when you two were young.

He sat down by a fountain observing the scenery before him. He carefully sketched it into his canvas. He had total concentration until that one familiar voice and that one familiar way of saying his name that he heard. 'Oh, it's my past crush... Will they remember me?'

He didn't mean to eavesdrop, but your talk seemed a little...attractive since you wouldn't really get THIS worked up over someone or something. "and this is precisely why I find myself liking blondes! tall, lean figure, and artistic face and blonde, blonde, blonde!" Your friend scoffed and said "yes yes fine! I get it that you like blondes. But is there even anyone that matches your description of an almost dream-like significant other?". You pondered on that topic for a while, and on the other hand, Kaveh was also thinking, no, distressing if there truly was anyone who had the face that caught your gaze. He frowned. Until he heard you say his name. his name.

"Kaveh fits the standard for me! he looks just like a dream! how can you not like his personality, charisma, and his face." Your friend smiled and said, "Looks like you found who you like. Have a go at him. I'm sure he will show the same feelings as well." That had to be the best day of his life. Although you were unaware of his presence, he hoped that you would keep him in your mind until you confessed.

[crossdressingdeath]

I'm thinking about Karlach and in particular her relationship with Gortash, and the more I think about it the more I really wish that she'd known he was a Banite from the start, or at least for a good chunk of her time working for him. I mean, the canon story of "I didn't know what he was, he lied to me and I didn't realize the truth until he stabbed me in the back" doesn't not work? It just feels like a very... safe option. Now, I love Karlach, I really do, she's a joy to be around. But I don't know, the whole "I didn't know what they were doing" method of letting a wonderful person work for the bad guys has been done. It's been done a lot. And it also makes Karlach feel less morally complex than the other origin companions to me! I mean, it's entirely possible she didn't even know Gortash was a criminal; his public persona would require bodyguards too. So if we assume that she didn't even know he was a criminal then her moral complexity is limited to having some friends who are devils and wanting Gortash dead, which... even just by general fantasy standards and especially when compared to characters like Astarion, Shadowheart and Lae'zel (as the most obvious examples, but personally I also find Wyll's pact with Mizora and Gale getting the orb at least as complex if not more and they didn't work for the villain, so that feels like a bit of a problem) is very straightforward. She's good. Maybe she used to be a bit naive and then learned not to be so blindly trusting through betrayal. Sure. Fine. Personally I do not find that particularly compelling, if I just saw her backstory written out without the super hard work of her writer and VA in the rest of the game my reaction to her would basically just be "Eh". And if we assume she did know he was a criminal then it feels kind of weak that the only time that even vaguely comes up is Gortash potentially making one comment about how Karlach knew what he was and shouldn't really have been surprised.

Also, an additional point, the fact that supposedly Gortash was putting enough work into keeping her ignorant that there was a noticeable drop in his ethics after he sold her is... kind of weird, because the only reason we're given for it is "He liked her"? To be clear the fact that he liked her isn't the problem, we know Gortash is perfectly capable of liking people. But... he went out of his way to deceive this one employee? To the point that people noticed a change when he was gone? Or alternately selling her specifically actively made him significantly worse, which... would also be kind of weird. There isn't even any particular reason for him to see himself in her, other than the Lower City upbringing they had very little in common before Gortash sold her (unless baby Enver was way better of a person than his current self would suggest). I feel like if Larian was going to justify Karlach apparently not realizing she was working for an arms dealer and slave trader as his personal bodyguard (so someone who'd logically be around for a lot of shady shit or frankly what is the point of her being on the payroll) with "he lied to her" more needed to be done with it.

But if she knew he was a Banite and knew what he was doing for a good chunk of the time she spent working with him that adds a tasty "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face!" energy to the whole situation! I love the idea of Karlach liking and trusting Gortash despite knowing what he was because he treated her with respect and that was all that mattered! Obviously this is subjective, I will freely admit I like my characters with a bit more moral greyness than Karlach shows, but to me at least her reassessing and improving her morals from a standpoint of "Him liking me and respecting me wasn't enough to save me because other people's lives do not matter to him" would be much more interesting than her being a perfectly lovely person from the start and not knowing what her boss was doing and getting betrayed and then continuing to be a perfectly lovely person. (I'm not going to claim that a person's morals improving when the thing they did to others is done to them is particularly ground-breaking, but I would argue it's no less ground-breaking than "they didn't know and were good all along and their boss was lying to them" and to me at least it's significantly more engaging.) And it would also neatly remove the question of why Gortash cared enough to lie about what he was doing to this one specific employee from day one (so before he could bond with her at all), which. y'know, would be nice.

[itsclydebitches]

Though I adore the dynamic myself, it struck me as odd a few months back that fans were taking a "Monster loved for the first time" approach to Astarion. Part of the allure of a vampire (for me anyway) is the act of transformation; the horror and tragedy of having lost who you were before—including all those everyday, human experiences. There were debates about precisely how old Astarion was when he died and at the same time fans were screaming over him having his first hug, his first real romance, this is the first time someone has helped him without ulterior motives, etc. and I'm going, "How is that possible?" This is an elf who lived a life before being turned, even if it was short compared to what his race would normally experience. Astarion had a family. He had a job! Yet the fandom (and to an extent the game as well) treats Astarion as more of a Phantom-esque character: deemed monstrous from birth and blindsided by the simplest acts of love because he was denied them from the get-go.

Of course, it's easy enough to read everything through the lens of slavery and torture. Sure, Astarion had all this at one point but it's been so long and his life as a vampire has been so unimaginably torturous that it's eclipsed those earlier experiences. I get that... but time as the answer still didn't fully convince me.

Not until I started romancing him and hit this line:

"I... I don't know. I can't remember."

This is in response to asking Astarion what color his eyes were before they turned red. Can we just sit with that for a moment? He doesn't remember the color of his eyes. This line was a game changer for me because I can't even CONCEPTUALIZE that. Mirrors appear to be pretty common in Faerûn—it's not like this is a setting devoid of all modern inventions and Astarion, as a member of the upper class, absolutely would have had access to various ornate mirrors like the one he starts this scene with—so what does it take to make you completely forget such an ingrained bit of knowledge about yourself? 200 years as a dehumanized slave, obviously. Still, my mind continues to trip over the idea. I have blue eyes. That's a fact I've known since I had any real sense of self. If my eyes were to suddenly change tomorrow I can't imagine forgetting that they were originally blue. Even if I'd put it from my mind for an extended period of time I'd expect the very pointed question, "What color were they before?" would fire some old synapses and drag the information back. Obviously none of us have any idea what 200 years would do to a human brain (or, you know, an elf's) but it still feels firmly in the real of impossibility that I could ever completely forget something like that.

Yet Astarion has and this line more than anything else has sold me on his Baby Monster Loved For The First Time characterization, both in-game and in the fandom. He acts like he's never been hugged before? Of course he does! The guy can't remember his eye color and you think he's going to recall any probably-treated-as-casual-and-thus-didn't-solidify-as-significant-memories hugs while alive? When was the last time you were hugged? I'm not sure. I know I HAVE hugged recently but was the last one with family over Thanksgiving? Did I give my friend a brief side-hug before we parted? I'm lucky in that hugs are such a normalized part of my life that I don't give them much thought... which means that if you were to suddenly enslave me and keep me isolated for 200 years, yeah, I'd probably forget what they feel like too. Or that I ever had any at all.

(Self-hatred is going to play hell with memory too. Once you feel like you don't deserve something and it's continually denied to you it's easier to convince yourself you never had it to begin with.)

So yeah, Astarion acts like someone who was always the monster because he has, on a literal canonical level, forgotten what it was like to be anything else. Which just sets his relationship with Tav into such angsty, terrifying focus. Here's someone who has lost his previous identity. He (rightfully) despises the identity Cazador forced on him. Even if he didn't, Astarion is now miles away, the tattered remains of his self threatened by ceremorphosis. He stares into a mirror knowing he'll never see anything, but doing it anyway because he needs to figure out who he is—and that's precisely where most of us would start. What do I look like? What do others see when they see me? Is that the person I want to be?

Then Tav offers to be his mirror, just like they offered to sketch out the poem on his back. How exquisitely horrible for Astarion. He's being given precisely what he wants but he's in NO position to take it. All his sense of self placed in the hands of another? Asking, "Who am I?" and hearing, "I'll tell you. I'll be the keeper of that knowledge"? That's a far more intimate, potentially destructive power than anything else Astarion is looking to get his hands on AND he's trying to manipulate YOU at this point in the story! It just makes me crazy because Astarion is desperate to figure out who he is, but circumstances have ensured that, at this point in time, he needs to put his trust in someone else to begin answering that question... and the one thing he does know about himself is that he's a manipulative, mistrustful rogue who's only out to keep himself safe. Allowing someone else to take the reins with his identity (again) is probably the least safe thing he could possibly think of.

It's this messy tragic loop that yes, Astarion is working to break by the end of the game (depending on your choices) but in Act 1? Goddamn. No wonder he's trying desperately to maintain control of this relationship. No wonder—despite his best efforts—he's still undone by the simplest acts of kindness.

[seikoru]

!Nerd Armin h'cs

Since I found out that the dudes here love !Nerd Armin, I felt it was my duty to share my head-canons on him. I have no idea how to use tumblr at all but here it is. All of this is a pieces of my au for a huge storyline armin fanfic with original female character, so…. just enjoy

You met completely by accident. You only went to Wall High School this year when you moved. And you didn't really like the local way of doing things. The whole caste thing, the whole cool dudes/loser thing. it was weird.

You wanted to hang out with everyone, no matter how different they were. Even though you were considered a cool and pretty girl by their metrics.

You first asked Armin for help after another biology class with a hell of a teacher, and he gladly agreed to help.

Armin was immediately very sweet to you. The way he would sometimes adjust his glasses or tuck a strand of hair behind his ear while he was explaining a topic to you…

To be honest, he was a bit frustrated by your lack of results after his help. You were barely getting better grades. He just didn't notice that half the time you weren't looking at the textbook, but at him.

But the more you became friends, the better his character revealed to you. He was known around school as the creepy anime otaku. Was that true? Absolutely. When you first went to his place, you were literally in a pink kingdom where all the walls were covered with anime girls.

Yeah, Armin had never felt the touch of a woman before. He'd had friends like Mikasa, but you… you were something else.

You'd been friends for almost six months until the winter ball was announced. And you literally didn't know who to go with. There were tons of guys chasing you, but they were all like Rainer: idiotic jocks.

The prom was coming up, and you still hadn't found a date. Armin rejected the prom: he didn't like the idea of jostling with sweaty, drunken teenagers to idiotic music in a stuffy room when he could be at home playing video games.

You managed to talk him into going out with you as a friend.

Did you kiss him ballroom night? Yes, you did.

When you, already drunk, said "I want to kiss you", Armin was quite taken aback. At first he just pulled you away and said something like "You need to sober up," but his heart was jumping out of his chest.

When you started convincing him of your sincere affection for him, he became hesitant. Quietly he muttered "I don't want you playing with my feelings".

You asked "Feelings?". He realized he had said something unnecessary, but there was no turning back. So you moved closer, took his glasses off his nose and gently touched his lips with yours.

In a relationship, Armin is the ultimate golden retriever. He smiles widely when he accidentally meets you in the school hallway at recess and is adorably embarrassed when you fleetingly touch him in public.

You're not allowed to spend much time together, lest you bring a wave of bullying on Armin. You had to keep yourselves within the school castes. But you guys didn't like the PDA anyway, so it wasn't a big problem.

Armin is proud of his collection of anime girls on his wall, but he's even more proud of his girlfriend. He always thought you were out of his league, and he couldn't hope for anything more than friendship.

But how happy he was when you would come to his house and sit on his lap while he was on Discord with his friends playing some games.

Armin often caught hyperfixated on his studies and wouldn't get out from under mountains of textbooks. It's not like you like studying much. But Armin is fine with it: he's willing to do ABSOLUTELY ALL of your homework for you.

Socially, he doesn't show how soft he is on the inside. While you were friends, you were sure he only knew how to be sassy. But hell, it turns out he's also good at kneeling in front of you, slowly kissing your ankles, calves and knees, working his way up to your thighs-

And you loved owning that side of him. Supple, belonging only to you. When he stared at you with admiring eyes, and you gently brushed away the strands of hair that fell across his face. He could have fucked anyone else without a second thought, but not you.

[sennamaticart]

Every New Years, I like to show off some of the art that never got posted during the year! I think its important to know not everything makes it through to the final stage, but its always good to keep track of your work!

Explanations under the read more!

One of the many unicorn drawings I made this year, I was SUPER dedicated to making something that echoes the design of a halberd. When I was making it, it ended up feeling like I was going through the motions and I lost sight of the original idea. It ended up being finished, but I never posted it because it felt like it wasn't good enough to stand alongside my other works in the series!

A little doodle of Uncle Stinky and I from early January! I really DO like this one, and would have posted it if it were more substantial. I'm hoping to maybe repurpose it into a bigger collection of my diary comics instead of letting it rot on my hard drive for no reason!

Another Uncle Stinky drawing. I actually think I might've posted this one somewhere on twitter or Instagram, but it didn't seem to make it to tumblr for the same reason as the previous drawing. But fun fact! This was one of the first drawings I made with the Kolormarc brushes that ended up shaping my unicorn art during the year!

Another unfinished Unicorn drawing. This one went through a ton of differently thumbnails over quite a few weeks. I got all the way to the lineart before I burned out on it. I just couldn't decide how I wanted to color it and other work ended up piling up. I would really like to see it through to the finish line in the future.

A collection of photobashed weapons from a DnD campaign. This was the campaign my friend DMed and the same campaign that created Romeo. I made this drawing for a zine we've been working on for a few months. If it ever makes it to finish, I'd love the share the zine with you guys! The weapons are (in order from left to right) a lethal squirt gun, owned by Romeo, a glittery mace owned by Hugh Mongus, a temperature-controlled hook for Captain Hook, and a feather-light sword for Hickory.

The very first thing i made in the Womp 3D software! I don't have much experience with 3D modeling, but it was pretty easy to latch onto the mechanics of this! It was just a simple beast, I still kind of like it!

Another DnD drawing for the same zine as #5. This is a little drawing of an NPC named Rumple, who's some fancy fashion designer who's crossed paths with Romeo in the past. Rumple was really fun to interact with, and the snazziest dresser in the campaign!

A itty bitty Uncle Stinky I made for a super bare-bones pet game i found somewhere? It was so barebones that it's pretty much useless. But hey! If you wanna try it out, I'm hosting it on my (practically unused) neocities page

Some drawings of my friend @finnimate 's DnD character from the same campaign as Zoltan! His name is Angel, and he's a big sturdy triceratops. I love a good dinosaur, but Triceratops are notoriously awkward to draw. I threw this page together just to try it out and see if I could help them settle on a design. I don't think I succeeded, but I like getting to draw Angel anyways :D

[tkwrites]

Shoot the Moon - Quinn Hughes x ofc

Photo from instagram

Title: Shoot the Moon

Author: Tory / @tkwrites 

Relationship: Pre-established: Quinn Hughes x Original female character 

Warnings: comfort, fluffy beginnings, smut (18+ only), oral m & f receiving 

Summary: Quinn comes home exhausted from a rough road trip. After a good night's sleep, he decides to try out some new things with Sarah. 

Word count: 5,500

Comments: this is my first fanfiction ever posted, though I've been writing them for a long, long time. I hope you enjoy! 

Shoot the Moon

A Quinn & Sarah Snapshot

 I made tacos at your place, so don’t pick anything up on the way home.

This simple text sent gratitude rocketing through Quinn. He just needed to get home. They were on the bus to the arena, then he would drive the 20 minutes to his apartment, and to Sarah who was waiting for him with his favorite meal. The bus seat was digging into the bruise on his right hip from where he’d hit hard two days ago. It felt better when he was moving, but sitting still was torture. It had been on the plane and it was here again. 

He was so glad to be home. It was near the end of the season, and he was tired, his body,  time and emotions drawn out well beyond their limits. He couldn’t wait to get a good night's sleep next to Sarah. He had never missed someone like this. He'd never noticed the absence of her weight in the bed next to him, or missed the smell of her perfume in such a tangible way. He was beginning to feel like he couldn't and didn't want to live without her. 

The next road trip they went on, he needed to bring something with her perfume. Maybe that would help him sleep better. 

When he finally opened the door to his apartment, Sarah walked around the couch to greet him. His bags hit the floor and he collapsed against her, nuzzling his nose into her collar bone and taking a deep breath. 

“God, I missed you so much,” he said, pulling her flush to him. She was in an oversized t-shirt and a pair of leggings. It was the very thing he’d been hoping she would be wearing.

Her hand went to the back of his head to stroke her fingers through the dark waves there. “I missed you too.” 

They stayed that way for a while, just holding each other. Quinn felt like he might cry, being back with her. Man, love had turned him into a sap. 

He understood why the older guys were always so anxious to get home to their wives. 

He moved just enough so he could catch her lips with his. A different kind of sigh moved through his body when she returned the kiss. 

After a few minutes of gentle, loving kisses, a loud gurgling came from his stomach, and Sarah laughed as she pulled away. “Let’s get some food into you,” she said, taking his hand and leading him into the kitchen. 

“You sit,” she said, gesturing to the table, “I’ll bring you a plate.” 

After setting a full plate in front of him, she went back to make herself one. He was certain she’d eaten earlier, but didn’t want him to feel alone. It was eight already. All he wanted was to eat and fall into bed with her, letting her hold him. His eyelids seemed to get heavier at the thought. 

“Don’t tell me my food is that boring,” she teased sitting next to him. 

Shaking his head, Quinn tried to blink away the tears welling up in his vision.

Sarah set down her taco and put her hand on his forearm, “what’s wrong?” 

He sniffled. He felt like a kid, coming home from a bad game and crying to his mom. Except this time, the disappointment of loss was soothed by a swell of gratitude like he’d never felt before. 

His voice was thick and a little higher than usual as he said, "I don't know, just coming home to you, and to this,” he gestured at his plate, “I just feel so lucky.”

She smiled, and leaned over a corner of the table to kiss him, “I love you too. Now eat before you get too tired and wake up hungry in the middle of the night.”

He laughed, remembering the first time he’d done that very thing when she started sleeping over. She'd come out with his shirt on, voice and eyes bleary with sleep as she asked what was going on. Her eyes went wide when she flipped on the light and found him with a sandwich in his mouth. 

If he ate too early in the evening, hunger pains would wake him in the middle of the night. Nothing was going to wake him tonight if he had anything to say about it. 

His tears subsided, soothed by her knowledge of him, her scent and the food filling his stomach. 

He put the plates in the dishwasher, as she went about putting away all the ingredients. There were a lot of moving parts to this meal. He didn't even know he had that many food containers in his house. Maybe she had brought them from hers. 

“You can go lay down while I finish this,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. 

Quinn shook his head. He’d been too long without her. He wasn’t about to willingly walk away now. 

When they finally made it into the bedroom, he stripped down to his boxers, and washed his face in the basin beside hers. She removed her leggings, and threw some of the pillows onto the floor. Usually, she would stack them in a chair, but apparently, she was as anxious to get into bed as he was. 

They lay on their usual sides. She’d already seen him cry that day, so he didn’t feel as hesitant to ask for what he wanted. 

“Can you hold me?” he asked. It came out quieter than he thought it would. 

Sarah smiled, and scooted closer to him so their noses nearly touched, and she could bring her arms around him. 

“No like,” he felt his cheeks get hot, “can I be the little spoon?” 

“Sure, roll over.” 

“I can’t. My hip.” 

“What’s wrong with your hip?” she asked. “You told me you were fine." 

He winced, a flash of guilt in his face, "I don't have any major injuries." 

"But you have minor ones?" She pulled back the blanket to get a better look at him. 

“I took that hit and landed right on it in Ottawa, and it’s bruised to high heaven,” he said. “It's not really hurt, but it's tender.”

Her fingers brushed down his side, and despite his exhaustion, his skin still reacted - shivering onto high alert.  She pulled back the band of his boxers to reveal a dark purple bruise that had gotten bigger since the last time he’d looked at it. Apparently sitting on the plane hadn’t helped him at all. 

“Oh, Q,” she said, voice turned nurturing instead of the coddling or "buck up!" he got sometimes from the trainers or his teammates. 

“Here,” she said, rolling on top of him.

If this was any other night, this would play out much differently. He kissed her still, because he’d been thinking about it for too long, and she was here. She was here. He was home, and she was here with her perfect mouth, and her cute, crinkly smile. He couldn't resist her. 

She deepened the kiss, devouring him like she just couldn’t wait any longer. She'd missed him so much. She knew he was tired. He'd been tired all week, but she finally had him back in the city - back in their bed - and she couldn't not. 

Quinn felt himself groan. His hands reacted instinctively, rucking her shirt up, anxious to feel more of her skin. 

Breaking away, she moved her mouth to the spot under his jaw that she knew made him weak. 

“Sarah,” he breathed.

She responded with a slow glide of her tongue. 

“I want you so bad,” he whimpered, “but…” 

She pulled away from his neck to look down at him. "But?” she repeated. 

“I’m so tired, I don't think I can keep it up.” A hot flush spread down his neck and onto his chest, “I’m sorry,” he babbled, “I really, really want to, but can we wait until morning?”

She bit her lip and nodded, swallowing down the hot desire she felt. 

"I'll make it up to you, I swear," he promised. 

Her mouth melted into a smile. "I know you will," she said before pecking him on the lips. 

Sarah rolled off of him, onto the other side of the bed. “Scootch over,” she said. 

He did and she settled, tucking her body against his. 

“Wait, I need my pillow.”

They did an awkward shuffling dance to switch pillows without sitting up. 

Once settled again, she sighed into him. Every part of her was touching him, and he would have given her anything at that moment. He could even feel her nose against the back of his skull. 

He felt supported and loved, and home. Finally home. 

She draped her arm around his chest and he found her fingers with his own, lacing them together. 

“I love you, Sarah,” he whispered. “Thank you.” 

“I love you too Quinn.” Her breath tousled the short hairs on the back of his neck, “I’m so glad you’re back. I missed you.” 

“I missed you so much,” he said, finding a way to somehow pull her closer.

As sleep overtook him, he found himself thinking for the first time in a relationship how much he wanted to be with her forever. How much he wanted to make a real commitment to her. He’d never felt that way before. He should call his dad to see if he could use his grandma’s ring. The thought was startling, and he realized he was getting ahead of himself. First, she needed to move in. He wanted her here. Everything was so natural with her. Finally, he really was home. 

Quinn couldn’t remember ever sleeping so well. He’d slept fitfully on the road trip, despite his exhaustion and usual ability to sleep anywhere. His brothers had been quick to send him funny memes about him looking like a zombie. He came home feeling like a zombie. 

Waking up now, things felt right. He wasn’t sure he could say it in any other way. It all just felt better and brighter. He felt rested, and invigorated for the first time in seven days. He was on his back, and Sarah was tucked against him, on her side. He finally had a day to himself, and he was going to spend every second of it with her. 

Her t-shirt had ridden up through the night, and her bare thigh was pressed against his. 

Spending some time memorizing that feeling, he waited for her to wake up. 

“Hey,” he said quietly after ten minutes when she showed no signs of stirring.

Her eyelashes fluttered, and she tucked her face into her pillow, mumbling something he couldn’t understand. 

He laughed a little, and tried again, this time squeezing the arm around her. 

“What time is it?” she asked, her morning voice hoarse and a bit deeper than usual. 

That voice stirred something in him. It always had. It took him back to the first time she’d slept at his apartment. Waking up next to her was something he could never forget. The way she’d wrasped, “good morning,” before kissing him softly. It was one of his favorite memories. 

He glanced at his watch, “a little after seven.” 

She groaned and tucked her face behind his shoulder, “it’s too early to be up.” 

Laughter bubbled up his throat. “We went to bed at 9. That’s almost 10 hours.” 

Looping her arm over his chest, she somehow managed to pull herself closer to him as her leg covered him, her knee to his opposite hip. “Still too damn early,” she said, settling her head on his chest. 

“If you want me to go back to sleep, straddling my thigh isn’t the way to do it,” he teased. 

“I’m not straddling your thigh,” she protested, “I’m cuddling.” 

“I can still feel all of your skin.” 

She rolled her eyes, “if you want me to be up at seven, you better have a damn good reason, Quinn.” 

Rolling onto his side, Quinn cupped her cheek in his hand. He kissed her gently before rolling on top of her. “Is this a good enough reason?” he asked, working his leg between hers before licking farther into her mouth. 

“Mmmm… I don’t know,” she said, making a big show of shrugging her shoulders, even as her fingers were winding into his hair. 

He pulled back, “you want me to stop?” 

Her big blue eyes looked up at him, looked right through him, and it sent a shockwave through his whole body. God, how had he ever managed without her? 

“No,” she said, voice quiet, the morning hoarseness starting to wear off, “I’m up now.” 

“Good,” he said, “because I am too.” Leaning down to capture her mouth again, his hands pushed her shirt up. 

She pulled back with a groan, “did you just make a dad joke during foreplay?” 

His smile was impish, “maybe. Did you like it?” 

She rolled her eyes even as she was pulling him back down into the kiss, “It’s a good thing I love you, Huggy.”

He groaned at the use of the nickname. “Please don’t call me that in bed,” he begged, moving his mouth to her neck. 

She giggled a little before it bled into a moan. The sound shot straight to his groin. 

He had some theories he wanted to try out. 

Half way through the roadie, he had shared a room with Elias. 

The only explanation for the conversation that followed that night was Quinn's exhaustion. If he were normally rested, he likely wouldn't have brought it up at all. But sitting there mindlessly watching Sports Center, listening to Petey talk to his girlfriend in Swedish, he wondered if he was doing things wrong with Sarah. 

It's not that he felt Sarah was unsatisfied. She didn't seem to fake it, and their connection was only made stronger when they slept together. Even on nights when sex was off the table, but she still stayed over, sleeping in the same bed seemed to solidify their relationship more. 

Still, he worried. He wanted to be good for her, to be the best for her. And maybe their sex life was normal, but it didn’t seem like anything from the romcoms he’d seen, and he wondered if they were missing something. Maybe he wasn’t giving her something she needed.  

Anxiety always came easier when he was tired. That was the only reason he asked Petey what he thought being a good lover meant when he got off the phone.

“Does Emma like everything you do?”

“Everything?” Elias repeated, laughing, “no.” 

“No, like in bed?” Quinn felt his skin get hot. This was not the kind of conversation they usually had. 

Petey's pale skin flushed red. “Are you asking me how my girlfriend likes to have sex?”

“No. I mean maybe? I just mean, I want to make sure Sarah's satisfied, but I'm not sure how to do that.”

“Have you talked to her about it?”

“Not really.”

“I think that's probably your best bet.”

“Yeah. I just feel like there are things I should know.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Like, foreplay stuff.”

“Do you not usually do that?”

“No.” He thought, then amended, “I mean we make out a lot. And she likes when I kiss her neck, so I do that. I get her off with my hands sometimes." 

“Does she seem like she wants more?”

“I don't know.”

They ended up having an extensive conversation in which Petey talked about how Emma liked it. How on nights when they had the time he would give her two or three orgasms with his hands and his mouth before they had sex. 

“She really likes when I suck on her breasts,” he said. “Actually every woman I've been with has liked that. I think Gretta told me that. She was my first girlfriend.”

Quinn had been mentally taking notes the whole time. 

“Honestly,” Elias said, “it's best when I ask her how she wants to be touched and she tells me. That varies from day to day. Sometimes she doesn't even want foreplay.”

So now, Quinn mouthed his way up to her ear, and whispered, “how do you want me to touch you?” His voice was husky and deeper than normal. He’d never sounded like that before, but he'd never wanted to be good for any other woman like this before. 

Her little gasp was followed by her hips tilting into his. Maybe Petey was on to something here. 

“Show me how you want me to touch you,” he said, moving his mouth down to the soft spot under her jaw he knew she liked.

He nibbled it with his lips as their hips surged together. 

Her hands were in his hair. And her fingers tightened as another soft moan escaped her mouth. The next thing he knew, she was sitting up, forcing him back onto his knees. She ripped her shirt off, tossing it somewhere in the room. She was left in a pair of cotton underwear styled to look like men's briefs. They had tiny green flowers all over them and green trim. 

“These are cute,” he said, running a finger along the waistband. 

Her skin quivered under his touch. 

She pulled his mouth to hers before placing his hands on her breasts. “Here,” she breathed against his lips, “touch me here.”

God, if this wasn't the hottest fucking thing he'd ever experienced. Why hadn't he ever thought to ask her what she wanted before? He didn’t have to guess, he just followed instructions. 

Her hands covered his, and she led his fingers to roll her nipples. She arched into his touch and a whine escaped her throat. Her hands slid up to cling to his shoulders. 

Moving his mouth back to the soft spot under her jaw, he listened to her panting breaths for a while. He wasn’t going to last long if she kept that up. 

Time to put another theory to the test. He mouthed down her chest before wrapping his lips around her nipple and sucking. Answers came immediately. 

“Quinn,” she moaned. Her hand cupped his head, encouraging him to stay there. Her hips ground against his own. He couldn’t hold back a moan. 

“Fuck,” she whispered, heat pooling between her legs, “that feels so good.” 

He’d never made her swear in bed like that. A ridiculous amount of pride swam through him.

He moved to the other breast and reveled in the groan that fell from her lips, a little louder this time. 

"I want your mouth all over me," she heard herself say. 

When they first got together, Quinn had been fairly inexperienced. Some due to them learning what the other person needed, and some, she figured, because he was used to quick hookups and had never really been in the kind of relationship where a woman could teach him what she liked. 

He got more bold as they got more comfortable, and she told him what she liked. Still, there were certain things she'd been dreaming about since they met that he seemed too nervous to try. He seemed willing now and she was teetering on the edge.

She whined when he lifted his mouth from her. He gave the puckered nub a kitten lick when she tried to pull him back down. 

“Where else do you want my mouth?” it felt a little dirty to say out loud, but her response had him wishing he’d asked before. 

Her head plopped back on the pillows behind her, and she groaned, louder still. He wondered if he might be able to get her to yell his name. The thought of it made him ache. 

“I,” she panted, “eat me out, please.” Sarah was so turned on at the thought of him finally going down on her that her flirty filter was gone. 

“You want it here?”  he asked, sliding his hand down to cup her, still covered in the cotton briefs. 

“Yes,” she moaned, “God yes. Please, Quinn.”

Quinn had only given oral sex once before. It was with a girl he dated in high school, and she all but forced him between her legs the first time they went further than making out. 

When he had started, not really sure what to do, hoping for a little instruction, she shrieked about him being a selfish lover and stormed out. He hadn't even needed to jack off. The experience was so deflating he hadn't ever tried it again. 

“How do you like it?” He asked now as he peeled the briefs down her thighs. 

He knew what Sarah liked, but the thought of failing her made his heart heavy and his ego ache. He wanted to be good for her. 

He had some idea from watching porn, but he knew by now that was an unreliable source. 

She kicked her underwear off the bed, and she was bare before him. An ache opened up in his chest. How was it possible to love someone so much? It wasn't just lust, even though he felt that too. It was vulnerability and trust made into action. 

“Like you do with your hands,” she said, "except with your tongue. I'll tell you if I need something more. I trust you.”

The anxiety fluttering in his chest calmed a little at her words. He decided it was better to just start. The baseline knowledge he had of her body told him things like the pressure she liked, and where she liked to be touched. 

He stroked his hands over her hips, and settled between her legs. 

“Tell me if you don't like something?”

She nodded, heart hammering with anticipation. 

He leaned in and parted her with his tongue. The sensation was unlike anything he'd ever felt before. Soft and warm and delicate. Also delicious. Sweet, tangy and completely different from anything he'd tasted before. He loved the smell of her when they made love, and this was the same amplified ten fold. God, why had he waited so long?

She gasped and moaned, hips arching up to meet his mouth. Finally feeling his tongue on her was better than any of her fantasies. 

"You taste so good," he groaned.

“Really?” she thought people only said that in books. Men written by women.

Now that he was here, a carnal, competitive need took over. He needed to get her off. It was more than a matter of pride. Now, it was something he couldn't live without.

“So fucking good,” he moaned against her as he licked and kissed trying different motions to see what she liked.

“There, there,” she said, body arching, hands fisting the sheets. “Right there. Don't stop.”

This was the most amazing thing he'd ever done. Part of him wondered why he'd waited so long. Most of him was thankful he'd waited to do it with someone he loved and trusted and who loved and trusted him enough to tell him what she needed. It was his favorite thing about Sarah. 

"Quinn," she moaned, "suck please." 

Sealing his lips to her, he pulled with his mouth. 

Pleasure exploded through her veins. 

The noises - the moans and mewls, the little grunts and gasps she responded with drove him on and nearly drove him out of his mind. 

All of him was more turned on than he ever thought was possible just from giving her pleasure.

Fuck, why had he been scared of this? 

Her fingers suddenly dove into his hair and tugged. He nearly exploded right then. Pulling back slightly, he breathed deeply through his nose to calm down. 

“Quinn,” she whimpered, “I want your fingers.”

He was dreaming. He had to be. Lifting his head, he asked, “what?” 

She whimpered at the sight of his face: chin wet, brown eyes soft with love, pupils blown wide with lust. “Your fingers,” she gasped, “I want your fingers inside me while you do this.”

He groaned. Where had this demanding, dirty talking girlfriend come from? Petey was a genius. 

He went back to work, taking time to kiss and nip her inner thigh before licking her up and down. 

“Keep your tongue there,” she begged. “Yeah, yeah, just like that.” Her hand slid to the back of his head, keeping him where she wanted him. 

He eased a finger into her. Her hips bucked. “Quinn,” she moaned and it was louder than ever. “More.” 

He slid in another, and she rocked with him. 

“I… I…”

He lifted his head a little to look at her. She was practically writhing on the bed. “You look so beautiful right now.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, pushing his head down again. “Put that pretty mouth back to work.”

He laughed and lowered down. He found her pulsing nub, and licked it into his mouth, suction gentle but decisive. 

There were a few more desperate moments of Quinn trying his best to please her and to not shoot off too early. It was like walking on the edge of a knife. Hopefully just because it was the first time. 

“Oh, oh Quinn, I - I’m gonna…” she said before his name was wrenched out of her mouth in a strangled cry. 

Her body pulled taught, legs flexing under his hand, as she clenched around his fingers before the tension snapped and she collapsed, limbs limp. 

“Holy shit,” she said quietly as she came back to herself, gently pushing him away from her core. 

Quinn rose onto his knees and wiped his mouth on his arm. “I know,” He said, flopping down next to her. “I had no idea you had that in you.” He felt euphoric, and he hadn't even gotten off. Hearing his name drip from her mouth like that gave him a sense of pleasure and intense satisfaction he hadn't felt before. 

She giggled, riding a high she hadn't felt in a long time. “I knew once you got up the confidence to give me oral, you'd send me to the moon, but goddamn." 

“You…” his brain was swimming, “how did you know it would be good? I've never done it before.”

“Really?” she asked, genuine surprise in her features.

“My first time kind of blew up before she could tell me what to do. I was only sixteen. How did you know?” He asked again.

“We kiss all the time, Quinn. I know the magic you can work with your mouth. I've been fantasizing about it pretty much since we first kissed."

“Holy fuck,” Quinn said quietly as her words sunk in. Four months. He’d been denying her of that for four whole months. “I'm sorry I didn't try sooner.”

She rolled on her side to face him. “I'm glad you tried it now.”

Leaning in, she captured his mouth, slanting into him and rolling them so she was on top. 

Her mouth wound its way down his jaw, over his chest and down his stomach as she moved to kneel between his legs.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his chest rising and falling quickly. 

She glanced up at him, and there was a spark of teasing desire in her eyes he wasn't sure he'd seen before. “Returning the favor.” 

All the air left his lungs in one big whoosh. His thoughts spun. 

“I… you don't have to –” but her mouth was on him again, and he lost the words. 

She didn't love giving blow jobs. She'd done it twice before. Once when they clinched the playoffs, and once when he begged for it explicitly. He knew it was something she endured rather than enjoyed. 

The thought of her mouth on him right now, though, sent his arousal into overdrive.

“I want to,” she said. “You did it for me. I do it for you.”

Yet another reason giving her oral was turning out to be one of the best decisions he'd ever made. Not only had it gotten her off and turned him on more than he thought possible, it made her want to get him off with her mouth. He was definitely buying Petey dinner the next time they were out. 

She slid his boxers off, careful of the bruise, and continued her teasing, mouth tracing over the v line of his right hip. 

“Sarah, please." He was so riled up, he didn't think he could take any of her teasing. 

He felt her lips curl into a smile against his skin. 

His begging had the opposite effect he was hoping for. Instead of sinking a little lower, her mouth started moving back up to his. 

A desperate sounding whine escaped him. 

“Does this work for you too?” She asked before putting her mouth over his nipple. 

Three seconds before that, he would have said no, but her hot soft mouth on him shot a surge of pleasure straight down his spine. A deep growl ripped from his chest and his hips surged up, desperate for any kind of friction. He swore. 

She moved to his other pec and he felt like he might just combust. 

“Sarah, baby, please.” He begged, “please.” 

Her mouth lifted from his chest and he tried to gain control of his breathing. 

“I think that's a yes,” she said, a bit of laughter in her tone. 

Shifting down, she let her lips trail over his stomach again. 

When she finally took him between her lips, the shouted sound he let out was barely human. 

His muscles corded tight, desperately holding himself back from thrusting into her mouth. He was panting praises at her. 

She lifted her head and he whimpered. Had he ever done that before? 

“How do you want it?” She asked before wrapping her lips around the tip of him. 

"I-" He tried, but his thoughts kept getting jumbled. "Like that," he groaned when she ran her tongue under the head. "Can you - can you use your hand?" 

Her fingers wrapped around him, and he mumbled something incoherent even to his ears. 

“Hmm?” She asked not lifting her mouth. 

He couldn't hold back from bucking up at the vibration.

When he settled, she added her hand into the mix, gently twisting with her fingers. Hot, heavy pleasure flooded his limbs, turning them to jello. Oh god, he was in heaven. Her name came out of his mouth, moaned like a prayer. He wanted to worship her for the rest of his life. 

He was so strung out that he couldn't vet any of his thoughts. “I want to come in your mouth so bad.”

She looked up and their eyes locked. This image was going to be branded in his mind forever. He knew it would be a memory he called up on the road when he was missing her. 

She nodded, just slightly and sucked a little harder. 

“Fuck,” he said reverently. She’d never let him come in her mouth before. The thought alone had him tensing up right there. 

He tried to hold back. But feeling her come apart on his tongue had brought him so close to the edge already. Now, she had her mouth and fingers wrapped around him giving him the most amazing head he'd ever received, telling him he could let go in her mouth. All after 10 days without her. It was a losing battle

“I -” he tried to warn her, but his body was its own master, demanding release. He came in a sudden flood of intense light and pleasure that pulsed out to his fingers and toes. 

She made a small noise of surprise, but true to her word didn't pull away until he was spent. Everything in his body went slack except his heart that pounded in his heaving chest. 

Vaguely, he felt her get off the bed and listened to her walk into the bathroom. 

When she came back, laying next to him with her head on his shoulder, she smelled fresh and Minty.

“Did you brush your teeth?” He asked, an edge of a laugh in his voice. 

She winced, “I know I'm supposed to be all sexy and swallow, but I just can't stand the taste of it.”

Laughter bubbled out of his chest. “I don't care if you swallow. I don't really even mind not coming in your mouth, that was just a heat of the moment thing. Thanks for letting me anyway,” he said, pressing a tender kiss to her forehead.

She adjusted so she could kiss his lips. “I'm glad you asked for what you wanted. Thank you for sending me to the moon.”

He pulled her on top of him and kissed her. It was slow and intimate. The kind of kissing no one told him was more intoxicating than all the quick makeout sessions he had when he was younger. 

“Do you think I can get you past it?” He asked. 

“Past what?”

“Past the moon,” he said.  

She laughed. “I mean, I guess anything's possible, but I'm not sure how you're going to top what you just did.”

“Well, I've got all day, and my only plans involve me showing you how much I missed you. So, tell me what to do and I'll take you wherever you want to go.”

Want more Quinn & Sarah? Check out the Snapshots Masterlist

To read all my fics, check out the Fanfiction Masterlist

[mizu-nights]

HIIII

Your finally open again 🫶🫶🫶

Can i request a tsukasa, rui and nene x reader (separate) and the plot is something like the song “something stupid” more specifically the verse “ the time is right your perfume fills my head the stars are read and oh the nights so blue, and then i go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like i love you “

Thank you xxxx I’ve missed youuu

♬ now playing: "i love you..."

-> saying you love them so suddenly, so unexpectedly... are you trying to give them a heart attack?

★ — chars ; tsukasa , rui , nene

★ — notes ; HELLO H :333 finally writing this. VERY SORRY FOR THE WAIT!!!! lowkey got rlly excited to write this then BAAM. SCHOOL WORK EVERYWHERE.!!!! also listen to the song on loop as i was writing (michael buble's cover ft reese witherspoon bc i LOVE michael buble's voice) and it got me in the mood!!! I HOPE U LIKE READING THIS AS MUCH AS I LOVED WRITING IT!!!

★ — warnings ; open endings for all of them (nothing rlly insane lol) , otherwise none!

★ — taglist ; @asherenjoysart , @nogenderbee , @akitosheart , @nenes-numberonefan , @mintchocaur

affiliated with @virtualbookstore ★

★ track one: tenma tsukasa

the day before, tsukasa had invited you to go with this festival with him. there'd be lights, games, prizes... just about any other regular festival.

and yet, here you are with him. people around you are chattering, 'you won!' sound effects can be heard blaring around the entire area.

... surely, if you dropped the 'L' word, he wouldn't hear it.

"...i love you, tsukasa."

a soft yet sad smile can be seen on your expression. you really just said that for no reason, didn't you? how silly.

well, that was what you thought until tsukasa turned back at you, with this bright red blush on his face. yep, definitely heard you.

"...you do?"

this might be the most quiet you've heard from the boy. you were surprised he could even say something like that in such a meek voice.

it's all up to you now. do you want to admit it, change your friendship with him, or would you rather deny it and go back to square one?

★ track two: kamishiro rui

like every other day, you go hang out with rui as he's working on robots for a future show. as always, he appreciates your company. you're a good friend to him, and you also don't touch his works in progress without letting him know.

... also, you tend to ask him questions as he works. not too many to distract him, of course. he finds that rather cute, whether you believe it or not.

he also finds you keeping him company endearing, making sure he doesn't feel lonely... and it seems like you have similar feelings.

"i love you."

is what you thought you thought to yourself, but when rui looked back at you with a startled look on your face, you suddenly realize that you, in fact, said it out loud.

"i meant- i meant your inventions! your work... it's really impressive, rui."

great save there. he totally believed that. especially with how much you stammered.

"oh, that's disappointing. i was about to say the same back to you."

rui had that signature smirk of his, though this one... you could easily tell he lacks the regular cool, level-headedness it usually has.

whatever his intention was, it ended up making you blush in the process. this guy is really going to be the death of you, isn't he?

★ track three: kusanagi nene

you really can't shut your mouth, can you? the original plan was to simply help nene memorize her lines, making sure everything sounded smooth.

yet now you found yourself gazing at her adoringly. one thing led to another, and you just had to tell her that-

"i love you."

it was as if time stopped. you cover your mouth with your hand, gasping with surprise. nene wasn't any different—she was in total disbelief. and if that wide-eyed look on her face told you anything...

"...it's the next character's lines. i'm just... trying to help, yeah?"

the awkward smile on your face didn't make your words any more believable. not to mention, nene has already scanned over the script, she already knows what the actual line is!

"...i love you too."

... that wasn't nene's line. mostly because that wasn't even the other line to begin with, but when nene said that...? oddly suspicious, in the best way possible.

when you finally have the courage to gaze at her once more, you can even catch a glimpse of her subtle yet gentle smile.

"that's my line, after yours."

in a way, she wasn't wrong.

[amorganva]

Just a bunch of random interesting Lies of P stuff I've seen so far because I still love this game:

So the workshop was established 1868....which means that we're in the year 1889 or around that timeframe based on the grand exhibition signs.

Apparently Sophia has a diary? and this is the only page: Master Cherry gives the Piece of wood to his friend Geppetto At that very moment a loud knock sounded on the door It was Geppetto, an old friend of Master Cherry. The boys of the neighborhood called him Polendina because of the wig he always wore, which was just the color of yellow corn. He was known to dislike children, and even more so when they called him Polendina.

on some of the plaques at the grand exhibition

The Krat k for reference and the devs having fun sneaking pics onto bottles lol

The music sheet on the piano is the sheet music for the Oblivion soundtrack of the game. I also wonder why P chooses to play that particular piece that he plays as his humanity increases, why is it stuck in your head P?....on to another Carmeo doodle! I mean seriously the first few notes of the Estella Opera theme sound like humanity level 1 P trying the piano....like there's this specific tune in his mind. Like the two used to play together or Carlo the bougie being good at playing would teach Romeo, the kid from the streets. And the whole level P would hear that tune ....operafied and extra because it's Romeo, cmon, but also as a reminder like -Hey...remember, buddy?

Just for reference purposes, when exported directly, Romeo is a giant at almost 9 ft - while P is about 6'4" when not constantly in battle stance. But Sophia and every other NPC in Krat is also about 6 feet when directly exported so the characters aren't made to scale - youngest of the BRBH is as tall as Sophia without ears. I read somewhere that Carlo is supposed to be around 5'3" on average and 5'6" at the tallest (people being shorter back then etc....our short king) so in my headcanon for my doodles reference I scaled Romeo to be about 5'10", just a bit taller than Carlo. Idk why I make him taller but there's something about his nickname Lampwick which just meant that he's skinny and polished looking in the original context but it got in my head that he's just tall and skinny and I'm rolling with it. Funny that his puppet form is so rusted and kinda clunky and raggedy looking for someone so well put together presumably before he died. The most unruly of Pinocchio's friends but also the nicest guy in this universe--- don't get me started on Romeo again gigachad of a friend///

Also something you can't really see ingame cuz resolution but irl all records are by Trilogy Records and Feel in particular is "Song of Vamp, Rosa Milan" ....no clue what it means.

the placeholder used for Romeo's play in the trailers....but also Hotel Krat before it became a Hotel in a bustling city?

Question: Blue hair Sophia or Brown hair? Short hair P or long hair P? (I like short hair because it's an iconic look and the devs clearly spent a lot of time fine tuning it when you look at the trailers lol, long hair to me just feels so....basic) Also P's hair is aktschually brown.....it just looks really dark ingame and in all the artwork they just chose to make it black-looking. So Carlo and P technically have the same hair, he just doesn't have P's freckles which....a choice was made by Geppetto and I respect it.

You can read this oddly specific daffodil newspaper texture and this letter.....like why is this so high res??

It's a shame you can't see some of this stuff unless you actually take a close look at the game files but I like to snoop. I just wanna see more of Krat...like a tour video or something or a book before it all kinda went to hell. Thanks Geppetto ....and/or Simon.

[anarglitch]

Scott pilgrim takes off inhabits the same artistic space as the matrix 4, or even the final fantasy 7 remake. I mean this as a good thing. It has the distinct touch of an artist that made something that defined a generation revisiting the art that outgrew them a thousandfold with more maturity and different interests.

These interests usually skew meta, they're about what drives someone to revisit something made by a past version of oneself, about the experience of suddenly gaining more influence than anyone could reconcile, where criticisms of your work (which you also, no doubt, have many) become synonymous with criticisms of your culture. If you've been here a while, you probably know (and are tired of) what I'm talking about, manic pixie dream girls and aloof average male protagonists, toxic nostalgia, pick your theme and it's a video essay title.

Imagine having every read of your 2004 funny video game-coded coming of age comic reverberate infinitely toward every direction, people saying your main character taught a whole generation of men to be self-absorbed while the exact opposite type of people rant about how your secondary lead "ruined a whole generation of women" because of hair-dye or whatever. Imagine Edgar Wright makes a movie adaptation of your cute little comic that somehow launches the careers of half of the current celebrity pantheon simultaneously. How would that change you?

Well, for one, it makes you less relatable. The truth of an aloof nerdy guy dating in his early 20s is a lot more universal than the truth of an artist in his 40s forever defined by the event horizon of a thing he wrote half his life ago. The matrix 4 couldn't stop talking about how it feels to have created the matrix. The final fantasy 7 remake can't help but to constantly examine what it means to remake final fantasy 7. It's easy to see why someone would hate that indulgent meta trend, I'll probably never write a generation-defining story, why would I care about the first world problems of someone who did? It can feel distant, and at its worst it can feel insulting. Like it's pointing the finger at the fans, whispering 'you did this to me'. I get that.

I get that, but I love it.

It's the fundamental difference between wanting something that is like something you liked, and wanting someone that is from the same creator of something you liked. The difference between feeding the mona lisa into an AI and finding a new authentic da Vinci. You can't make something entirely new if you religiously stick to using the parts of something that's already there. The human behind the work will always have influences you didn't realize, thought patterns and aesthetic preferences that weren't entirely clear in their previous work, no matter how much you deconstruct it. More importantly, the human will also change, and this organic self-continuity will reflect on the art. I don't want the creator of something to hold their own creation with the same zeal as its fans, because someone who did that simply wouldn't have been capable of creating the original piece in the first place.

I don't want a product, I want art.

Scott pilgrim, the original, indulges the most earnest impulse we have-- that of self-mythologizing, of creating a narrative off of our own lives. To depict the mundane as fantastic, interpersonal relationships as adventures. It resonated with so many people because it was earnest, and it was also picked apart to hell and back because it was earnest. Its flaws were on display, and not just the ones it intended to show. But in my opinion, the opposite impulse, that of washing off everything that could be criticized and presenting the cleanest possible image of yourself through your art, is just... bad. it makes for bad art, or it just freezes you. The very first hurdle of creating anything is getting over that, then maybe the spotlight will fall on you. If it does, you'll get everything you ever wanted, but everyone gets to see through you.

So, how do you revisit something like that? You have two options. Either you take all the pieces and try to reassemble them exactly how everyone remembers it, signing your name as a formality, looking at a mirror in which you no longer see yourself, or you talk to it. You dialogue with your own work, with who you used to be. You travel in time and talk to yourself. You question them, acknowledge them but also teach them a thing or two. You don't respect the product, you respect the feeling. You find the same earnestness that made you put pen to paper for the first time, and you point it towards your new loves and fears. Maybe you make it less about the main guy, take the chance to develop your secondary characters, maybe you give the girl more agency. Maybe you summon the future and refuse its answers. Maybe you fight yourself.

That's the harder choice. It submits your new self to the scrutinizing eyes of a whole new generation, it risks alienating the people who identified with your previous piece. It's riskier, probably less profitable, and by any pragmatic lens probably a bad idea. But it's the only way you can make art. It's truth, the truth that got you there in the first place.

It's how you get it together.

[emj4yart]

Calling all Oncelings! I need your help!

Greetings, Onceler fandom! Tis I, MJ, just a little guy who wants your help on a big project I'm planning!

Here's the rundown: I want to do a deep-dive video on the Lorax, from its origins to its adaptations, to the cultural phenomenon that it has become, including a HUGE dedicated section to the fandom and its history! And I need your help with it! Keep reading if this interests you :D Rough outline of topics that I'm plannning on addressing:

THE CONTENT:

The Original 1971 Book

The 1972 Short

The 2012 Illumination Movie (And what went WRONG, the cut content, analysis)

The 2015 Musical

THE IMPACT:

The Onceler Fandom's Beginnings and Early Years (2012)

Shipping (Oncest, Normaler, the like)

Onceler OCs and aus! (Possibly an OC feature from those in the fandom!)

The Lorax in Meme Culture

The Resurgances of the Fandom (2015, 2021, 2023 Tiktok Boom)

Where's the fandom at now?

It's a huge project and that's why I want you all to help me with it! What do I want your help with? At the moment this is my list!

Research and Fact Checking on the "Content" Section, especially on lesser known topics like the musical or the cut content! (Pspspsps calling the five of you who actually know what the musical is)

RESEARCH AND FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCES OF THE ONCELER FANDOM'S EARLY DAYS!! I joined this place in 2023 so I don't know much about the early days of the fandom, and I want to know SO much more than I do! I want to know the scope, everything from the in-jokes to the aus to the deoncelerization. If you've been in this fandom since 2012 I would LOVE to hear from you!

Last but not least, I want the end of this video to be a love letter to this community, sharing firsthand experiences of what the Onceler as a character and the fandom means to you! I want to conduct interviews with people over discord (which is going to be a lot less fancy than it sounds so dw, it's not going to be an interrogation LMAO)

Specifics are subject to change but one thing will stay, I want to end the video to be made out of raw Love and Appreciation for this fandom, showcasing the side of this little corner of the internet that people who brush it off as mindless cringe don't see. All I've seen from this community is love and support and I want to be the video essayist who shows it for what it is!

At the moment I don't really have much of a plan (I'm not a very good planner lol), but if enough interets garners I know it'll help me streamline my motivation and come up with a game plan!

Feel free to leave me suggestions for where to go from here, maybe give out my discord? Make a Discord Server? Maybe there's something I can do solely on tumblr? I don't know! I don't know at all how Tumblr works! Help Me! Am just a little guy!

Alright that's all from me for now gamers, if this project interests you all in any capacity or you want to help out, please reblog/reply/message/ask/howeveranythingworksonthissite to let me know! Feel free to ask me questions or whatever as well! Peace out for now ✌️

[sea-owl]

You know, I think there's some conversations to be had with Ogerpon's decision to go with the main character and the reactions to it.

Looking at the backstory for Ogerpon, she has been living very isolated on Kitikami ever since her original trainer died and the battle with loyal/mischevious three. Her story has been mistold to where she's the villain and the people born to Kitikami dislike her basically on principle. She hasn't felt safe to reveal herself to others outside of the masks festival where everyone is wearing a mask. Though based on some of the dialogue, it makes me think this is a one-off thing, and I think she finally felt brave enough because she saw the MC beforehand.

Ogerpon is shown to be very intelligent pokemon, she knows who is from the village and who isn't. She's also a curious pokemon because instead of fleeing when she sees MC and Kieran battling in front of her cave, she stays and watches. MC is probably the first outsider, like herself, that Ogerpon has come across. Kitikami kinda gives off the vibe that while they are currently trying to become more open to outsiders its a work in progress. But seeing someone different may have made Ogerpon curious enough or brave enough to go to the festival. At the festival she has a positive experience with the MC, the first positive experience she's had with a human since her original trainer. Now her past experience did make her nervous enough to flee when Carmine, one of the villagers, showed up, but I don't hold that against her.

After that, Ogerpon has positive after positive experience with the MC. They bond, MC shows a gentleness and care that Ogerpon hasn't received from humans in generations. The MC runs around Kitikami looking to take back the masks Ogerpon cherishes with Ogerpon. Looking into all of that I'm not surprised by Ogerpon's choice of traveling with the MC to put her hurt behind and make new memories.

Now, looking into Kieran. Before I go further, let me say I love Kieran. I love the arc his character goes through, but he kinda gives off nice guy energy who got rejected by his crush when it comes to Ogerpon. We learn early on that Kieran idolized Ogerpon's or the Oger's, strength. While talking with Carmine at the festival after seeing Ogerpon, she hints at, as much as can be hinted for a kids game, that his idolization may be a bit more of an obsession. Which, I am inclined to believe because we actively see him doing the same thing to MC and their strength.

Off the bat, Ogerpon isn't going to trust Kieran because he's from Kitikami. That isn't against him. That more just has to do with Ogerpon's experiences. Kieran also actively goes into Ogerpon's territory, sometimes at night, we're told, which is dangerous. That can't be a good feeling of someone rocking up to your home in the night, possibly waking you up. Especially when you don't trust the villagers as is and try to avoid them. Now we don't know if Kieran ever said anything while at Ogerpon's den, hoping she would hear or what he does when he gets to the den. But we do know she never felt safe or comfortable enough to reveal herself. Kieran mentioned to the MC that he would have Ogerpon live in his house in the village, a place Ogerpon actively avoids. So I wonder if he made that offer to her too by speaking it aloud or she overheard that at an earlier point, and it came off as a threat to her.

Back into the story Ogerpon doesn't bond with Kieran at all. He has the chance to, MC and Carmine both actively say hey let's go help Ogerpon get the masks back but he declines. Now he does go and spread the true story of Ogerpon to the other villagers but Ogerpon never asked for that, she didn't even want to step foot into that village. What she wanted was her masks back. That honestly should have been our first hint that Kieran didn't respect Ogerpon's choice.

Then came the battle for Ogerpon. At this point Ogerpon has actively chosen MC to be her new trainer and we see the negative affects of Kieran's obsession. He claims we "stole the Oger" from him, who he liked first. Carmine even jumps into this argument, saying that hey Ogerpon made her decision and they should respect that, but Kieran still wants to battle MC for her. He runs off after MC catches Ogerpon and the end scene to the Teal Mask DLC we see his obsession full on switch from Ogerpon to MC.

Indigo Disk also brings up some intresting things as well when it comes to Kieran's unhealthy obsession to Ogerpon. During your battle, he still calls her the Oger instead of her actual name, and if you bring her into battle, all his attacks focus on her. He's not over her rejection.

I also think there might be a conversation to be had about real world commentary on women's choices via Ogerpon as well. Whether the Pokemon company meant to do it or not they set it out there when they decided to make Ogerpon a girl. They reinforced it too by making players respect her decision and making her untradeable when Kieran trades with you after Indigo Disk.