#i don't like to post stuff without giving the source

[kryptonbabe]

Baby too eepy to parallax

[goozeghost]

over-detailed boots wip that's totally not an excuse to rant in the tags 😌✨🤫

[chipistrate]

did u ever find out what time hw2 is coming out❔ i wanna watch mr astralspiff stream it live but im worried i may be in school when it drops,,, sadge

Man I wish,,,

I'm assuming it comes out the same time RUIN dropped, which was midnight MST iirc, but I keep getting people telling me that it's dropping noon EST- but I literally can't find any source on that and it's getting kind of frustrating.

They say it came from an account that's now deleted, and to be fair I know the account they're talking about, but all of the stuff they used to post was stuff that was posted elsewhere first- there wasn't any insider knowledge that was directly given to them as far as I could tell, and I can't find anything about a confirmed release time anywhere else.

So until someone can give me a source, I'm just assuming it's midnight MST again until we get something official that can be properly sourced

[thethingything]

I need to get ready for bed but I remembered the dentist appointment that's coming up in less than 2 weeks and ended up dissociating for over 2 hours (I'm honestly not sure how long it's been) and I do not feel good in the slightest after that

[insertdisc5]

🎮 HEY I WANNA MAKE A GAME! 🎮

Yeah I getcha. I was once like you. Pure and naive. Great news. I AM STILL PURE AND NAIVE, GAME DEV IS FUN! But where to start?

To start, here are a couple of entry level softwares you can use! source: I just made a game called In Stars and Time and people are asking me how to start making vidy gaems. Now, without further ado:

SOFTWARES AND ENGINES FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO CODE!!!

Ren'py (and also a link to it if you click here do it): THE visual novel software. Comic artists, look no further ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It has great documentation! It has a bunch of plugins and UI stuff and assets for you to buy! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) You can also port your game to a BUNCH of consoles! ✨Cons: None really <3 Some games to look at: Doki Doki Literature Club, Bad End Theater, Butterfly Soup

Twine: Great for text-based games! GREAT FOR WRITERS WHO DONT WANNA DRAW!!!!!!!!! (but you can draw if you want) ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's versatile! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) ✨Cons: You can add pictures, but it's a pain. Some games to look at: The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo, Queers In love At The End of The World, Escape Velocity

Bitsy: Little topdown games! ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's (somewhat) intuitive! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! You can make everything in it, from text to sprites to code! Those games sure are small! ✨Cons: Those games sure are small. This is to make THE simplest game. Barely any animation for your sprites, can barely fit a line of text in there. But honestly, the restrictions are refreshing! Some games to look at: honestly I haven't played that many bitsy games because i am a fake gamer. The picture above is from Under A Star Called Sun though and that looks so pretty

RPGMaker: To make RPGs! LIKE ME!!!!! NOTE: I recommend getting the latest version if you can, but all have their pros and cons. You can get a better idea by looking at this post. ✨Pros: Literally everything you need to make an RPG. Has a tutorial inside the software itself that will teach you the basics. Pretty simple to understand, even if you have no coding experience! Also I made a post helping you out with RPGMaker right here! ✨Cons: Some stuff can be hard to figure out. Also, the latest version is expensive. Get it on sale! Some games to look at: Yume Nikki, Hylics, In Stars and Time (hehe. I made it)

engine.lol: collage worlds! it is relatively new so I don't know much about it, but it seems fascinating. picture is from Garden! NOTE: There's a bunch of smaller engines to find out there. Just yesterday I found out there's an Idle Game Maker made by the Cookie Clicker creator. Isn't life wonderful?

✨more advice under the cut. this is Long ok✨

ENGINES I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT AND THEY SEEM HARD BUT ALSO GIVE IT A TRY I GUESS!!!! :

Unity and Unreal: I don't know anything about those! That looks hard to learn! But indie devs use them! It seems expensive! Follow your dreams though! Don't ask me how!

GameMaker: Wuh I just don't know anything about it either! I just know it's now free if your game is non-commercial (aka, you're not selling it), and Undertale was made on it! It seems good! You probably need some coding experience though!!!

Godot: Man I know even less about this one. Heard good things though!

BUNCHA RANDOM ADVICE!!!!

-Make something small first! Try making simple: a character is in a room, and exits the room. The character can look around, decide to take an item with them, can leave, and maybe the door is locked and you have to find the key. Figuring out how to code something like that, whether it is as a fully text-based game or as an RPGMaker map, should be a good start to figure out how your software of choice works!

-After that, if you have an idea, try first to make the simplest version of that idea. For my timeloop RPG, my simplest version was two rooms: first room you can walk in, second room with the King, where a cutscene automatically plays and the battle starts, you immediately die, and loop back to the first room, with the text from this point on reflecting this change. I think I also added a loop counter. This helped me figure out the most important thing: Can This Game Be Made? After that, the rest is just fun stuff. So if you want to make a dating sim, try and figure out how to add choices, and how to have affection points go up and down depending on your choices! If you want to make a platformer, figure out how to make your character move and jump and how to create a simple level! If you just want to make a kinetic visual novel with no choices, figure out how to add text, and how to add portraits! You'll be surprised at how powerful you'll feel after having figured even those simple things out.

-If you have a programming problem or just get confused, never underestimate the power of asking Google! You most likely won't be the only person asking this question, and you will learn some useful tips! If you are powerful enough, you can even… Ask people??? On forums??? Not me though.

-Yeah I know you probably want to make Your Big Idea RIGHT NOW but please. Make a smaller prototype first. You need to get that experience. Trust me.

-If you are not a womanthing of many skills like me, you might realize you need help. Maybe you need an artist, or a programmer. So! Game jams on itch.io are a great way to get to work and meet other game devs that have different strengths! Or ask around! Maybe your artist friend secretly always wanted to draw for a game. Ask! Collaborate! Have fun!!!

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

[fashion-runways]

hiii new pinned post again because the last one was outdated, there are links to the previous ones in that one as well. unfortunately there are no real updates re: my dad's wrongful imprisonment. at this point, they might be waiting until the statutes of limitations happen and it's over, i don't know. he has a therapist who's kind of expensive but we have to pay for and he has to go weekly because of all the trauma he has left from being in jail and from losing his job/not being able to find a new one because of this. his health got worse in there, too, so there are a lot of different doctors he has to go to, medications, etc. he's doing better every day, though, but that takes a lot of money of course.

i used to have a redbubble account that helped me get afloat alongside this blog, but it got suspended without notice and never got reinstated no matter how many things i've tried, so... that's another source of income that we lost. i used to make around 30/40 dollars a month there, now i make like 1/2 dollars on teepublic monthly, that's a huge difference. argentina's economy was always bad but it has been an absolute disaster since the current president got elected. prices rise literally on a weekly basis for everything from basic groceries to public transportation, power, water, phone bills, etc. my laptop's keyboard broke at some point and i almost had to buy a new one with money i literally didn't have, just going into negative numbers, but i managed to find a guy who replaced it for as cheap as he could. it was still expensive, but it was better than having to buy a new laptop entirely. would love to get a stable job, but that's always been impossible in this country, even more so lately. for updates on argentina in english, this person on twitter makes very good informative threads if you're interested.

on top of that my dog passed from cancer a few weeks ago, that was really expensive for us too, meds and appointments and special foods and everything that we could do to keep her happy until it was her time to go, and she was. i also started therapy around the time she was diagnosed (thank god) but my therapist had to rise her rates because of the economy mess i already mentioned, so... yeah. everything is exhausting and everything is expensive, and this is literally my only source of income. it's also the thing that i love doing the most and the thing that keeps me sane in all of this mess, so hey, never leaving. in fact, if anything ever happens to this website, you can always find me under fashion_runways on twitter or probably anywhere else. some of you guys mentioned not seeing my posts lately too, so if you can/want to, you can turn notifications on!

anyway yeah, all that to say i love this blog, i love fashion, and i love showing you guys new cool things and giving you guys ideas for art, or writing, or your own style, or just interesting stuff to look at. so if you can donate any money, that would help me more than you think. even a single dollar can change what i can do with my day sometimes, i swear. as usual, my kofi link: https://ko-fi.com/fashionrunways and my teepublic link: https://www.teepublic.com/user/dinah-lance. thanks for being around and sharing and reblogging my posts, thanks for asking questions about fashion, and of course thanks for helping to the ones who can, and thanks to the ones who can't too, i know how that feels like, don't worry about it. i love you 💖

[arrimorr]

Alright,

A base lore info about my setting.

Most of it was yapped away through the asks already, but I decided that it's still worth to organise this stuff in a coherent manner. This text also doesn't really touch on the character's arcs and their relationships with each other. This is more about the wider setting.

SHORT VERSION:

Tginf is a horror roadtrip game I'm planning to make. Embark on a terribly convoluted forest car ride with different local creatures hitchhiking your car.

EXTENDED VERSION:

The main character: You (are going to) play as the Nameless, a 20+ year old without a name, a concrete gender or any understanding of who to become to avoid getting crushed by a closing in adult life.

The forest:

The forest they got unlucky to travel through is a strict eco system. Everything not useful to it gets digested by it. Literally slowly disintegrated to at least feed the soil. At least this process takes some time.

The feudals:

Luckily, the forest road is ruled by three higher beings that can save unlucky travelers by giving each of them a useful (in their opinion) role to play.

The names of the feudals are:

the Oxygen, the King of the road, the Mine.

You can easily envision their domains if you split the forest space in three layers. Everything above it, everything that is on the ground, and everything below it. Every forest entity that the Nameless encounter serves one of them.

Because their territories are literally stacked on top of each other, the three don't get along particularly well and have been in a territorial conflict for centuries. For feudals, acquiring new followers through picking up the lost and stranded is another way of getting new resources in it.

The specifics of each feudal and their individual followers:

The Oxygen:

The Oxygen is physically invincible and, because of that, she never had to rely on anyone in her existence. This had a big effect on her personality. Unlike the King of the Road and the Mine, she doesn't really NEED to pick up lost and stranded to make new followers. She can create servants out of thin air, like she did with the Dummy*. She picks up travelers for her own amusement, since entertainment plays a big factor in a lot of her actions, and because the King and the Mine are invested in collecting them.

Her followers are:

The Dummy,

the Diver,

the Time Seller.

* The Dummy was created as a jab at the King of the Road's second hand - the Knight.

* The Diver is there as a statement of ineffectiveness on the King's ruling manner. He does the same type of job his followers do, but unlike them, his mind was in no way altered or modified*

* The Time seller, despite previously being human, was made into a tiger, because the Oxygen wanted to see what would happen if she fully dehumanises somebody. She likes experimenting like that.

The King of the Road:

The King of the road is very physically fragile. He needs protection, and, despite his rather gentle demeanor, time made him paranoid and fixated on the idea of control. He collects the followers to avoid any new and unpredictable variables appearing in the forest.

Through trial and error, he came to a conclusion that love is the greatest source of loyalty and motivation, so he tampers with his followers' brains to make sure they love both him and the work he gives them.

His followers are :

the Tenant,

the Radio host,

(Sorry, don't have a proper picture of her yet, since her main way of communication is...well...radio, and because I ran into Tumblr's picture per post limit, I decided to cut what I had of her imagery away)

the Knight.

*The Forest is full of eldritch, sentient and, most importantly, hungry places, such as the House, the Radio Tower and the Grand Lake. The King aims to station his followers in them, so they also stay in his area of control. The Tenant and the Radio host view their designated places as if they are their marriage partners. They love them, they provide for them.

*The King also prefers to take his time before taking a new follower in. After all, the more he waits, the more the traveler gets digested by the forest, allowing the King to rebuild his new follower to his liking. Sadly, the opportunity to wait long enough rarely presents itself because of the Oxygen and the Mine interfering all the time, thus, the only follower he got to fully reconstruct from the state of blank meat was the Knight. This made him the most predictable and by extension the most trustworthy being in the forest to him.

The Mine:

About a year ago I watched a documentary about mine workers. A part of it was dedicated to the fact, that, in case of that particular mine, people should have been working inside of it 24/7, otherwise the tunnels were guaranteed to slowly become toxic. What caught my attention was the way they spoke about it. They said something along the lines of "otherwise she would start to suffocate". And that unexpected personification never left my mind ever since.

SO, the Mine in tginf sufferers from a constant lack of oxygen, and starts to gradually suffocate if there's is no one performing the maintenance work inside of her. The problem is - she is toxic, thus none of her followers live particularly long inside of her. Which places her in a constant struggle to get herself the new ones. She lets some of her followers out on the road only for one purpose - to promote the service to her to the new travelers. Followers like that are all called Pr agents. Out of the three feudals, the Mine is the most reliant on others to survive.

Her followers are, you won't believe it:

Pr Agent 117

Pr agent 121,

Pr agent 124/178 (the number changes depending on the story route)

*None of them lived long enough to meet the other.

I also made a voice claim post some time ago, you can check it out to feel the characters too

[ekingston]

Hi; I don't know if you're still following the word-stream stuff, but the app is back online on the app store as "booktok - books and podcasts". The reviews marking it as having AI scraped data are still on the page itself, even though the name has changed, and duckduckgo still directs to their page if you look up "word-stream audiobooks"-- although if I don't know how long that will last. The website is seemingly gone, but the app still presumably has access to all the stolen works in the database.

Best regards, -someone else whose fics were stolen

yup

word-stream is back

it just calls itself—in an obvious attempt to profit from the TikTok upheaval—BookTok, now. and it’s not just the app, either: the whole website is back online, same as it was just before Cliff Weitzman took it down.

(in case you missed it, here are the original story & the update.)

fortunately (so far) the fanfiction category hasn't been re-added, but if you go to the store page for the app you can see that it’s still using 'fan-created universes' as advertising.

Weitzman didn't register the app under his own name this time, but through something called 'Oak Prime Inc'. hilariously, however, the email address listed in BookTok's privacy policy still refers to word-stream.com, so if Cliff was trying to scrub the connection between Speechify and his BookTok app, he didn't do a very thorough job.

here's the thing (and i'm about to put this up in a separate, more easily digestible post): if you take a look at the terms & conditions of Cliff's other platform, Speechify, it claims a truly comprehensive license to use the works uploaded to that platform in any way Cliff sees fit, including publishing and monetizing it elsewhere. and i keep seeing posts on Reddit and Bluesky from both readers and writers, happily using the Speechify app to read fanfic, advanced reader copies and their own yet-to-be-published work to them.

this is a BAD IDEA. Cliff has already proven that he will take work authored by others without their permission and redistribute it wholesale if he thinks it might make him money.

Cliff is the financial beneficiary of both Speechify and word-stream/booktokapp. it seems pretty obvious to me that he's trying to claim, via Speechify's terms & conditions, that every work uploaded to Speechify is his to do with whatever he pleases, which naturally includes moving them to this other platform so he can charge people for two subscriptions instead of just the one.

thank you so much for keeping an eye on this, anon, and for reaching out!! like i said, another post will go up today about the above, but i'm going to ask you all to help ensure that my posts & my name aren't the only ones giving voice to this message. when i tried to approach people about this issue on social media, often the—completely justified!—response was 'why should I take your word for it?' and Wikipedia only allowed the mention of Weitzman's copyright infringement to remain on his page when 'The Endless Appetite for Fanfiction' was listed as a source.

it can't just be me. DON’T take my word for it. do your own research (i would love to be proven wrong about this!), talk to your friends, engage with posts on social media similar to the ones i mentioned above (those are just some examples, don’t pile on to the OPs!) and make sure people know what they're jeopardizing. help me protect authors from money-grubbing shitheads like this one.

[corpsekiller]

i saw your halloween headcanon post from earlier and i just had to to drop this here — bakugou dressed up as ghostface from scream. that's it, this is the only thing going through my head😩

girl, you're so real for this. i've already read so many fics with this trope, but katsuki would definitely also dress up as ghostface on halloween. thank you so much for sending this ask, my love <3 i loved writing this dkksjsksla

PAIRING. ghostface!katsuki bakugou x genderneutral!reader

WARNINGS. a lot sexual tension, that's it

MASTERLIST

It's strangely quiet.

Your kitchen is dimly lit, the only source of light are the candles flickering auspiciously on your bedside table and the occasional colorful strobe of your decorations you've placed on your windowsill next to a carved pumpkin and some skeleton figurines you've found in a neat little store a while ago.

You're not sure where Katsuki is — he was supposed to pick you up for the party Mina is throwing at her place, but one glance at the clock steadily ticking on the wall above your bed tells you that he's already fifteen minutes late. It's odd, really, because he's always on time, considers punctuality almost as important as strength and victory during battle and yet, here you are, waiting for him as you stuff candy into your bag in preparation for this evening.

There's a faint memory of him mentioning that he wouldn't dress up, ignoring your pleads to wear matching costumes with a dismissive wave of his hand and a typical frown, muttering something about over my dead body and dressing up is only for kids, dumbass, so it doesn't make much sense to justify his unlike tardiness with the lame excuse of him just struggling with his costume.

"Where's that idiot?" You mutter with an exasperated sigh, gently tugging on the hem of your flimsy costume to readjust the fabric before reaching for your phone to text your boyfriend. Just as you're about to open your chats and type your message, a gloved hand snakes around your waist and pulls you back against someone standing behind you.

For a fleeting moment, your heart skips a beat. Then it begins to pound against your ribs — hectical and painful like a small frightened animal caught in the sharp canines of a predator — and your mouth falls open to cry out for help, but no sound dares to leave your trembling lips.

"Did I scare you?" His voice is low, a rough whisper that reverberates in his chest as he pulls you flush against his body, slowly leaning down until the smooth surface of his mask is pressed against your heated cheeks before he continues to speak. "Thought you'd just get away without giving me something sweet and call it a night, huh?"

Carefully, you turn your head and look up at him — hollow eyes and a distorted mouth locked in a permanent scream glare back at you, though the tension finally leaves your limbs and you sigh in relief, almost burst into laughter at your stupidly terrified reaction to his costume. You really must've watched too many horror movies over the span of the last few weeks if you're unable to recognize your own boyfriend.

Because now that you pay attention to the way he grabs your waist, almost possessive in a certain way, you just know his touch — strong, confident, so unmistakably Katsuki.

You squirm in his grip, meekly attempting to fully turn around to face him, but his grasp on your waist only tightens. A whimper leaves your lips, a quiet sound that causes him to chuckle as his hand trails up to tilt your chin, turning your head so you can look at him again.

"No, I don't think so. You're stayin' right here, got it?" His thumb brushes along your jaw, slow and almost tender. Even with the mask on, you can feel his smirk, can imagine the devilish grin that pulls on the corners of his mouth as he keeps you trapped between the kitchen counter and his body without a chance to escape

Though you're not sure you really want to.

"You like it, don't you?" He drawls, tilting his head to get a better look at you — although you can't see his eyes, his gaze seems to burn on your skin and you can't help the violent blush that tints your cheek in a shade of pink. There's a certain edge to his voice too, taunting and dangerous, almost sadistic if you listen close enough, as if he's enjoying the anticipation etched into the soft furrow of your brows, the sheer power he has over you and your body. "You like that I've got you cornered... nowhere to run?"

Oh, this is just a game for him and you've fallen right into his trap.

"Maybe," you reply, barely above a whisper, though you can't help but smile just a little.

"Maybe, huh?" He murmurs, a soft laugh escaping him as he lets his gloved hand wander from your cheek to your neck, lingering there for just a moment before his fingers slowly close around your throat. He doesn't squeeze, not yet, only lets you feel the weight of his hand, but it's enough to send a shiver down your spine. “Better be sure about it. Because now that I've got my hands on you, I won’t let you go.”

With one smooth motion, he pulls the mask up just enough to reveal his face—- the crimson of his eyes has darkened, pupils blown with something you can only describe as hunger and his lips are pulled into a sinister smile that bares all his teeth. There's a moment of silence, then he pulls you into a bruising kiss that punches the air out of your lungs and causes your knees to buckle under the weight of your body until the only thing that is holding you on your own two feet is none other than your boyfriend.

After what feels like half an eternity, Katsuki pulls away. Your head spins with the lack of oxygen, your legs are shaking and yet you can't help but reach out to dig your fingers into the fabric of his costume, roughly yanking him back for another kiss that leaves you just as breathless as the first one.

“Do you really think I'm done with you yet?" He whispers, voice a low rumble, before slipping the mask back down. "You have no idea what I've planned for you...Happy Halloween, babe."

[boopiemadz]

HIII saw your post abt travis x reader so PLSSSSS literally anything w him, maybe s2 timeline when Javi is missing like sitting by the fire with him in the middle of the night, or being like the only one he opens up to???? I just want to give him a hug oml 🙏

OML yes! This came out more angsty then I intended but thats okay, still has a happy ending for reader and travis dont worry. Also I wrote this as a !Fem reader btw.

If youd like I love when ppl leave comments on my stuff, it js makes me feel happy so feel free! But yeah heres the little oneshot I wrote based on this prompt.

WARNINGS!

Suicide, Death, Cannibalism (this is yellowjackets...), Loss, Grief, Kissing 🤭, and basic yellowjackets topics.

[Guilt ridden scars]

---

Time is a weird construct. Especially when stranded in the Canadian wilderness for an unknown amount of time. Ever since the crash you had kept tally marks in your journal, unfortunately you lost your notebook somewhere between the 21st and 26th day. So you had to restart. This time you kept time on the wall of the cabin, in the small corner you slept in next to coach Ben's room. You started this tally the day Javi went missing, the day of doomcoming. 

Doomcoming was a mess. 

Nothing about that night should've happened, it was the catalyst for everything. Though you never participated in the hallucinogenic chase that went down, there was still a deep pang of guilt that you didn't get to him sooner. You had been wandering around high on mushrooms far away from the group, but when you returned, the sight of Travis pinned against that tree, knife to his throat put a knot in your stomach.

It wasn't your fault.

What happened to Javi was not your fault.

What happened to Travis was not your fault.

What happened to Jackie was not your fault.

Yet it still felt like your fault.

---

It had been around 59 days since Javis disappearance, according to the tally marks. 59 days spent everyone out, 59 days since you felt anything at all. 

You'd spent the first few months staying close to the friends you were close to on the team, you loved the yellowjackets, those girls were a lifeline, a source of belonging. But something shifted somewhere between finding the cabin and doomcoming, the cabin was hot, and cramped, to be honest it made you infuriated. So to combat the overwhelming crowd you started to occasionally take a walk down to the lake to sit and think. This became a regular thing for you. Eventually someone found your spot.

“So this is where you go when you disappear”

Says Travis slowly approaching you. “Please don't be a dick and tell everyone” It's not that you didn't like Travis, he was just, abrasive. His demeanor was cold and snappy, but you couldn't blame him, he had lost his dad and wasn't exactly in the right state of mind. But you never really paid much attention to him either. 

“Nah” He says kicking the pebbles lining the shore. “I get it” He sits down next to you giving some room for space as you continue dipping your feet in the cold water. “Aren't you supposed to be out hunting with Nat?” You question “Not today, she went alone. I decided to come here instead of slowly dying of heat stroke in the cabin” You let out a giggle. 

That day marked the start of your friendship with Travis, he went from a rude and annoying boy to a close friend you'd sit with at the lake to escape from the fact that your friends are changing and everything that came with being stuck in such a place. 

---

When doomcoming happened it's like everything was flipped upside down. Talking to him felt too much, your routine lake chats stopped, eventually he went back to being the boy you'd never pay attention to, the boy who sat quietly by himself, except this time he didn't have his brother, he didn't have you.

---

The sun was setting over the snowy landscape of the forest. You'd sat yourself in front of the attic window watching it go down, yet another day without game, without peace, without javi. Ever since winter hit it's been maggots, leather belt soup and rationed meat. To say you were hungry was an understatement. Hell, a few weeks later you and the team would partake in cannibalizing your teammate Jackie (oop). 

Going back downstairs after sulking in the attic you got changed and started to settle down on your spot on the floor. Laying on your side looking at those tally marks that showed how long it had been since Javi disappeared, 59 days.

Just before you were about to close your eyes a figure walked through the dark and stopped at the door to open it and sneak outside. Everyone had already been asleep when you were up in the attic watching the sun get lower as due to the lack of food everyone had become increasingly low energy. 

You get up slowly so as to not disturb Akilah who was asleep peacefully beside you. As you crept up to the door and opened it, wrapped in your blanket, you squinted in the dark to see the person who’d left the cabin chopping wood. 

“Hey” You whispered, walking closer to the figure. “Why are you out here?” You questioned

As soon as the person turned around to face you, you finally recognized who it was, Travis. 

“I could ask you the same thing” He says, continuing to swing the axe breaking wood into smaller pieces.

“I came out here because I saw someone sneak out of the cabin, not because I wanted to stand in the cold” You retorted, giving him a sarcastic tone. He scoffs and throws some wood down on the fire pit leaning down to light the pile then sitting down in front of it hands out. In that moment, in the firelight you see it, a tear drifting down his cheek, eyes red and nose running. He'd been crying. 

In that moment you sit down next to him in silence, you hadn't had a real conversation for a long time, but something in you told you he shouldn't be alone right now.

---

After a minute of awkward silence a shift in the air starts to happen. You don't know why but for some reason the silence shifts from awkward and uncomfortable to a warm knowing embrace. It takes another second before he speaks up. 

“I- Im scared”

He says eyes are still focused on the fire in front of him. “Im so fucking scared Y/N” 

A tear falls down his cheek as he speaks, the heaviness of his statement hanging in the air. “I know” You say sliding your hand over his, something in you sparks when you finally touch. Then he turns to you, tears in his eyes, cheeks red and chin quivering. 

“I need you.”

And with that he lets out a sob, not just a tear or a cry but a gutoral sob laced with vulnerability and emotion. He buries himself in your shoulder quaking while you hold him. Holding him. 

“I'm here… Im here Travis” You mutter stroking his hair as a tear simultaneously escapes your eye. 

“I don't know what to do” He says, releasing from the embrace and wiping off his nose with the back of his sleeve. “I have no one left, what if Javi is…” You stop him “You have me” His attention softens as he shakes his head.

“Shit this is embarrassing” He chuckles softly trying to avoid eye contact. “I've never cried in front of anyone before” You speak up “It's about time you let it all go” 

“What do you mean?”

“You've been holding back this… grief, for javi. Sure we had talks at the lake but… ever since, its just been this quiet resentment. This needed to happen.”

He looks at you for a second before looking down to speak. “You know why I came out here?” 

“No”

“I've been coming out here every night. To leave food out for Javi. I knew you guys would yell at me if you knew… cuz of animals or something. But if there's a chance he's still alive, I need him to be.”

“Travis..” He cuts you off.

“But this night was different.” He takes a deep breath

“If hadn't… if we…”

You see the struggle in his eyes, the words he's saying he can't form.

“I was planning on killing myself” 

He finally spits out.

---

“Travis” Is all you manage to say as your throat dries up and your eyes water once more. You gently put your hand on his shoulder before you say another word. “Stay with me” He tilts his head to look at you, with an almost confused look “What do you mean by that. Why shouldn't I just try again tomorrow night.” 

“Because I need you” All you can hear is the wind, and your own racing thoughts. Your heart bounds across your chest as you think about him, about life and about this situation.

“I will come out here every night. I will stay by your side to make sure you stay alive.” You're not finished yet “Because I need you. I can't survive without you.” You take a breath “Everything in me says give up. Every bone in my body wants to jump off a cliff and just die. But when I look at you… When we would spend our evenings together by the lake. A tiny voice in me wants to live just one more day. With you.” 

You blurt this out without thinking, just a mash of thoughts and feelings you'd buried somewhere deep down. After another pause he doesn't speak, instead he cups your face with his hand, searching your face with his deep brown eyes until the land on your lips and he asks;

“Can I kiss you?”

And all you can do is nod before he comes closer and presses his lips on yours. They aren't tough, not like you'd expect but soft and gentle and patient. Peace fills your head and passion floods your mind as you kiss him softly but with a desire thats been brewing for a long time. After you both pull away a small smile forms on his face. 

“I guess I'm staying around.”

[dootznbootz]

Hello, I want to ask this question but I don't want it to sound disrespectful, I really want to know and I'm not trying to be rude.

Why are Helen and Menelaus one of your OTPs? I mean, at least the versions I know Helen falls in love with Paris and willingly goes to Troy with him (but I have to say that this was told to me, I didn't read it from any legitimate source, so I could be wrong) so I'd like to know what makes you love them! And that's all, I hope you have a nice day:3

YIPPEE! :D First of all, I wanna say thank you for being polite and genuine with your ask :3 I really appreciate that you seem to be coming from a genuinely curious perspective and want to know why! I hope you have a lovely day too <3

And then~ Ima put some links to other posts of mine (AND some other lovely folks) that discuss Helen and Menelaus and the whole thing with Paris. Most have text evidence :3

I have made the ones that I think are most important to read in bold

Menelaus in the Iliad talking about how Paris stole Helen

A fantastic essay written by another Tumblr user (deactivated now. you will be missed!) that delves into the reality of Paris and Helen's relationship alongside Paris as a person

My own essay about how Odysseus and Helen play "similar roles" in their stories. I'm assuming you've found me through my Odyssey and Water Wife stuff, so you're probably an Odysseus fan so this kind of delves into how I, personally, believe that Odysseus and Helen mirror each other in many ways plot wise. So if you are also in agreement that Odysseus couldn't have cheated because cheating requires consent, Helen is basically in the same situation. Paris is just basically having Aphrodite strongarm Helen for him.

My Own personal feelings on Paris

A neat essay on how, narratively, the story fits into the themes of the whole Epic Cycle and the Iliad if Helen was actually kidnapped

Some stuff on Menelaus being a soft man in canon :3

My Own post delving somewhat into Helen's unwillingness with some text evidence

I recommend reading most of these (or at least the ones that intrigue you) and then I can chatter about these sillies below 🥹

So in canon, just for the Iliad and the Odyssey, Menelaus is often portrayed as a quiet, shy even, and I would even go so far as to call him gentle, man. (It's kind of a collective fanon headcanon that Menelaus is austistic coded based on his behavior in the texts) It's something really interesting that one of his epithet's is "War Loving" and yet, he's one of the more "peaceful" kings there.

Adrestus rolled out of the chariot beside the wheel, face down in the dirt. Menelaus, son of Atreus,                        stood there over him, holding his long-shadowed spear. Adrestus clutched Menelaus by the knees and begged: “Take me alive, son of Atreus—you’ll get good ransom. My father is a wealthy man, owns lots of things—bronze, silver, well-worked iron. So he’ll give you a splendid ransom, if he learns I’m by Achaean ships, alive.”                             Adrestus pleaded. Menelaus’s heart in his chest was moved. He was about to hand Adrestus to his attendant, to take back captive to the fast Achaean ships.           But then Agamemnon came running up to him, sharply criticizing Menelaus:  “Menelaus, you soft-hearted man, why are you sparing men’s lives like this? In your own home, Trojans treated you exceptionally well, did they not? So don’t let any one of them evade a terrible destruction at our hands— not even the young child still carried in his mother’s belly. Let no one escape.                         Let everyone in Troy be slaughtered, without pity, without leaving any trace.”    

(Book 6, Johnston)

Like the main reason WHY Menelaus is fighting this war in the first place and fighting so hard, is because he just wants Helen back. Literally the most "violent" we've seen Menelaus is, imo, during his fight with Paris, the man who kidnapped Helen and is forcing himself upon her. As he literally starts DRAGGING Paris by his helmet on the ground. And when Paris offers Treasure in place of Helen, Diomedes' declines on his (and technically all the other Achaeans') behalf as Menelaus was injured.

And if you've looked at the bolded links I put above, you'll see how Helen also desperately does not want to be there and just wants to go back home, missing Menelaus and their daughter, Hermione.

And with Helen, she literally basically tells Paris that since he would've lost the fight with Menelaus, therefore would've been killed, if not for Aphrodite, that he should kill himself because that's what's honorable.

“You’ve come back from the fight. How I wish   you’d died there, killed by that strong warrior who was my husband once. You used to boast you were stronger than warlike Menelaus,  more strength in your hands, more power in your spear. So go now, challenge war-loving Menelaus to fight again in single combat. I’d suggest you stay away. Don’t fight it out man to man with fair-haired Menelaus, without further thought. You might well die, come to a quick end on his spear.”  

(Book 3, Johnston)

I honestly fucking love how Helen straight up says to Paris' face that she wished Menelaus killed him. Deserved.

In some ways, I think Paris is a very neat contrast to Menelaus in how Paris left his wife and child behind to start a life with a new "better" wife, while Menelaus is willing to go to war to bring the wife he loves so much back home, safe and happy, with him. Menelaus can't even think of the idea of just "starting anew".

And in the Odyssey, it's just... It's just so sweet seeing how these two interact when Telemachus goes to Sparta to talk to them. Helen is no longer in tears, and while she's still dealing with her self-loathing and guilt, so does Menelaus. They share this burden together and are very gentle with each other. The way she's back to being so happy and hosting as a happy Queen and wife should, is so SO different from how we see Helen in the Iliad, as she's finally happy, safe, and at home. 😭

Like, please look at how silly these two are when they see Telemachus:

Right away she started speaking to her husband, asking him some detailed questions:                                   “Do we know, my divinely cherished Menelaus, who these two men who’ve come into our home claim to be? Shall I speak up and pretend, or shall I tell the truth? My heart tells me                            I must be frank. I can’t say I’ve ever seen                            someone who looks so much like someone else, whether man or woman. When I see it, I’m amazed—this man looks just like the son of brave Odysseus—I mean Telemachus, who, when he left home, was a new-born child, when, because I’d acted so disgracefully, you Achaeans all sailed away to Troy, your hearts intent on brutal warfare.” Fair-haired Menelaus then answered her and said: “This likeness you’ve just noticed, my dear wife,               I’ve seen, as well. His feet are similar, as are his hands, the glances from his eyes,                                              his head, and his hair on top. And just now, as I was remembering Odysseus, discussing all the troubles he’d endured because of me, he let a bitter tear fall from his eyes and raised the purple cloak across his face.”

(Book 4, Johnston)

Like??? She feels free to speak and state her mind because she IS free with Menelaus. She feels respected and loved in her own house and is the queen to his king and slkdjf kljdsfalj THEY'RE HAPPYYYYYY

In the Odyssey also, it was she who interpreted the omen that Telemachus and Pesistratus even though Menelaus was asked to interpret it! ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF HER HAPPILY BEING A QUEEN AND HER AND HER WORDS BEING RESPECTED.

Menelaus, for all his warlike qualities, was at a loss to give him the correct interpretation, and his beautiful wife forestalled him. 'Listen,' she said, 'while with such inspiration as I have I explain this omen and what I feel sure that it portends. [...]

(Book 15, E.V. Rieu)

LOOK AT EURIPIDES' HELEN

Like to me, these two in canon are kind of "opposites attract" while OdyPen are "Likeminded". As Helen is definitely one to chatter more and Menelaus is perfectly fine letting Helen talk for him.

And while young, Menelaus and Agamemnon after their father, Atreus, was killed by their uncle, they had to flee Mycenae to stay safe and were exiled. And where did they stay during this time?

In Sparta, WITH TYNDAREUS AND LEDA, HELEN'S PARENTS >:3

And with most depictions of Menelaus and Odysseus when getting married to Helen and Penelope, both are usually beardless, implying youth/same age. So I love the idea of them being childhood friends to lovers. (that's just MY interpretation though) It's part of the reason why Helen picked him out of all the suitors (though yeah, another interpretation)

AND look at this depiction of them reunitiing!!!

So for the context for this specific version/interpretation of them reuniting, he has just killed Deiphobus, Paris' brother that Helen went to after Paris died, (Troy was fated to fall, if Helen was returned, Menelaus and the other Achaeans would go home and Troy would be left alone, so... Fate interfered with Helen even possibly going home) and she was in the room when it happened. Helen, being somewhat scared that Menelaus would try to kill her, started to run. (That's Helen on the Right, the left is supposed to be Aphrodite, who, while she did keep Helen in Troy for Paris, is still the goddess of love. So that's why she's there.)

BUT LOOK HOW HE TOSSED HIS SWORD TO THE SIDE TO RUN TO HER?! 😭

In general, I love the dynamics that play into their relationship AND how their relationship even plays with other characters like OdyPen. I'm not as detailed with their lives as I am with my OdyPen, they're still heavily involved in my ideas and they're all very close. They go on double dates!

Heck, since I have the whole "childhood friends" stuff in my stuff, Helen, Menelaus, Penelope, Castor, and Pollux all grew up together and were kind of a goofy lil crew :3 (I have aged up Clytemnestra to work with my Agamemnon more with how I have my timeline work out :') The timeline is a mess and this is how I'm making it work)

Like, My OdyPen are my "Freak4Freak, Likeminded, ADHD, squirming, wriggling, giggling, nuzzling noses and constantly moving and chattering" couple while my MenHelen are my "Slow and relaxed, long kisses, Helen chatters while Menelaus listens, Menelaus is Helen's weighted blanket person who eases her anxiousness with his quiet demeanor, staring at each other with big eyes." couple 🥹

Snippets of my goobers being affectionate in their own special way, my OdyPen one from my one longfic and my MenHelen is just a snippet I wrote recently.

OdyPen squirm and wriggle while MenHelen stare at each other with big eyes and are each others safe place.

My dear friend, @thehelplessmortals (One of MenHelen's super fans! Check em out if you're even more curious about them! they have their own fanart and headcanons for them too!) doodled my version of the goobers being silly. My Helen is Chubby and 6'4 (Zeus' child and most beautiful woman in the world) and she likes to wrestle, and Menelaus is 6'2, she can pick him up >:3

"DAD, I WANT THIS ONE!"

Also~ Here's my list of Odyssey translations I've gathered :3 Feel free to pick one if you ever wanna read the actual text.

[tinystepsforward]

automattic vs wp engine mastterpost

adrienne's GitHub recap is probably the best place to see a comprehensive timeline of what's going down. it's been kept up to date. my (very out of date) previous writeup is here.

what's happened/other links

Matt has not logged off, just switched platforms, so there's lots on X/Twitter, Reddit, and Hacker News. it's really not worth wading through.

WP Engine actually filed suit.

the complaint includes some truly remarkable screenshots of Matt trying to blackmail the CEO of WP Engine.

which... personally i would not happily work for someone who just blackmailed me while not even my boss, but that's just me. he hasn't denied this at all, in fact confirming on Hacker News:

I haven't doxxed any private texts from other parties like they have. [source]

and, notably,

I even invited her to my 40th birthday on Jan 11, another text message she decided not to share. [source]

this gives me the creeps. in the context of the rest of the way he's talking to her, and the ways in which he's interacted with women in general, it's. not great.

also he slid into an ex-employee (also a woman)'s DMs asking why she was being mean to him bc he'd never been nothing but nice to her, while also making legal threats. so y'know, pattern of behaviour.

a good writeup of the social side of things

if you don't care so much about the open-source stuff, Steph Lundberg's writeup is, like her previous one on Matt's Tumblr meltdown, pretty solid and people-focused.

Mullenweg has already demonstrated egregious lapses in judgment and abuses of power, it’s just that up until now he’s wielded his power against vulnerable populations without access to high-powered lawyers and their own massive platforms.

a more technical writeup

this one is melodramatic in the same ways Matt was (uses war terminology), which i don't agree with, and which led to some... internal arguments at Automattic. that part's not my story to tell, but a little more on that later. it's a solid writeup of the actual WordPress side of things. there's some seriously dodgy trademark behaviour going on here.

of note: this blogger locked comments on his post:

and then Matt, uh, found a way around that:

wild!

10% of Automattic leaves

that's a link to Matt's blog post. here's an Internet Archive link.

in short, staff were offered a severance deal of the higher of $30k or six months' salary. while that's very generous, it's still very risky in today's tech market, especially (for the same reasons i mentioned when Matt was melting down on here) for people outside the US, people who need the health insurance, or people with young kids. despite that, 10% decided with very little notice (they had two days to decide) to leave.

However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!

i'm thrilled to see some of my ex-colleagues make it out. i'm keeping the rest who have stayed on in my thoughts. i don't know anyone who's wholesale shilling for Matt.

Matt's been pressuring staff to post in support of him, @-ing the entire company to vote on Twitter polls in his favor, and so on. many of the people who stayed have written blog posts about it, all starting with "I stayed". people on social media have pointed out the very clear pattern of Automatticians jumping into discourse to defend Matt, and it doesn't look good.

i don't have a lot to say about those posts, except to highlight Jeffrey Zeldman, whose "I stayed" post is perhaps one of the more honest ones. (his Rodney King reference was in poor taste, and he... i don't like his role at automattic, tbc) but like. he's nearly 70. he helped shape the modern internet and develop its accessibility standards. he has often put his neck on the line for disabled staff who don't have as much clout as he does. given the financial troubles he talks about and the state of this market and how old he is, i personally have read between the lines of what he's saying in a particular way.

fuck, man. i'm sad. i'm sad for all my friends who are creaking under the strain and watching others leave but who can't do that. i'm sad that many of them are left in teams which are half-empty or divisions where significant senior leadership are just gone, with no time to document what they had in progress.

i'm sad for Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the former executive director of the WordPress Foundation, who was dealing with a personal emergency and ended up having to miss WordCamp US (where Matt started publicly starting shit with WPE). she came back from that to a gigantic fire in the community she's invested a decade of careful, Matt-negotiating, stewardship to, and decided to take the severance offer. she deserved better.

other things Matt's been up to

mostly linking to comments or posts which compile things here, bc it's too scattered otherwise.

blocking people from the official WordPress X account if they disapprove of his actions.

publicly talking about a vulnerability in ACF, a plugin WPE maintains, which could put thousands of sites at risk. this is not normal, and he met with so much horror even from current staff that he deleted his post.

saying he comes across badly because he's "a little ASD", which is driving me personally up the fucking wall. he's never once said it before and he really is turning into Temu Elon.

generally bragging that he still has more planned. jesus fucking christ

continually saying that WPE's suit is against WordPress.org and the community, which is not true. on which note, his pinned tweet is certainly something:

his choice of lawyer is uh. the kind of guy to defend nestle against literal child slaves.

as always, while i think WordPress crumbling will disproportionately affect websites in poorer parts of the world, there are certainly tyrants who are causing much more immediate and potent suffering. if you've read this far, please do send anything you have spare to gazafunds.com.

[yukidragon]

Sunny Day Jack the NSFW Platformer

Imagine if Sunny Day Jack was a NSFW platformer game instead of a NSFW visual novel.

Content Warning: This post is full of smut with a sprinkle of yandere horror on top for a bit of spice. I know it goes without saying with a title and opening line like that, but I like to cover my bases.

You know about NSFW platformers, right? The MC runs around doing the usual platforming gameplay stuff, but whenever they get hit, the enemies have sex with them. I've never been a big fan of the implied dubious/non-consent aspect of those kind of games, plus there's some mixed signals here. I mean, getting hit is what you try to avoid in those games, yet the fail state becomes the reason why we play NSFW platformers in the first place. Even without the discomfort of dubious consent, that seems kind of backwards to me.

I know that we're here to watch the MC have sex in kinky creative ways when playing a NSFW platformer, but I think the concept can be improved. Enthusiastic consent makes everything a hell of a lot sexier you know. Why not have the game be centered around a scenario where MC is just as eager as the player to go down to pound town?

Instead of enemies being the source of the lewdness like usual NSFW platformer games and inserting dubious/non-consent, the player can instead choose to summon Jack at any time for some enthusiastically consenting spicy fun. Consent is baked into his character, and we all know that he's always ready to show his sunshine lots of love anywhere at any time. It can even be the game's healing mechanic.

Yes, I know it might lessen the challenge of a platformer game when you can heal yourself at any time at the press of a button, but the point of NSFW platformer games is just having an excuse to watch the MC get railed. I prefer my thinly veiled excuse for sexy times to be consenting, thank you very much.

Jack could even use the various level settings and backgrounds as props for different animations. He could also have different initial commentary depending on how injured the player is.

Jack: Oh my gosh, Sunshine! Don't worry, I'll help you feel better right away. Just relax and let me take care of you.

Jack: Oh dear, that looks like it really hurts. Leave it to me, Sunshine, I'll make sure you forget all about it in no time at all.

Jack: My poor, Sunshine. Here, let me kiss that booboo all better for you. And I think this spot could use a kiss too. And here too. Can't forget here either...

Heck, the player can summon Jack even when their life bar is full.

Jack: Sunshine, you don't seem to be injured. Why did you call...? Oh... I see, you're not hurt, you're just aching for my love right now, aren't you?*amused, throaty chuckle* That's okay, you know I'm always ready to make you feel absolutely amazing. Come here.

Jack: Oh? Not ready to say goodbye yet, Sunshine? *chuckle* That's okay. You know I'll never get tired of showing you just how much I love you. We can make love as many times as you like.

And other such commentary, plus smutty comments during the act itself as Jack heals MC thoroughly with his love~!

The cutscenes don't necessarily have smut, but a lot of flirting and banter between Jack and MC. Mostly just bonding as a couple and enjoying each other's company for some fun character interaction. Also he gives tips on beating the upcoming boss.

The yandere part comes in when MC loses all their health bar. Instead of a game over, while MC is unconscious on the ground, the screen starts to glitch and Jack's sprite appears, now distorted and terrifying. The background itself starts to warp in unsettling ways, growing darker and the colors more muted.

Jack: *glitchy and angry* I know you wanted to deal with things yourself, Sunshine... but I just can't stand back and watch these monsters hurt you anymore.

Cue creepypasta-esque distortions and the horrors.

Then boop, everything pops back to normal in a snap, the screen cleared of enemies, and MC slowly wakes up, confused. Jack, now back to normal, kneels beside them, helping them up as he cuddles them close. He's a bit shaken up and clingy.

Jack: Easy now, Sunshine. I know you want to get back up and try again as soon as possible, but you need to rest and let me heal you first. That's it... just let me take care of you. I'll make you feel so, so good.

Jack: You've worked so hard for so long and you've been hurting so much. I might not be able to fight in your place, but I'll do everything in my power to keep you safe. I love you so much, Sunshine.

There's probably no lives system, not unless dying too many times makes Jack totally snap to yandere mode, resulting in a bad end. Though, really the "bad" end is him convincing MC to abandon their quest to keep making love to him endlessly. It's just an excuse for more sexy times with some yandere spice on top.

In that case, each time Jack goes yandere mode, he's a bit scarier and kills off more enemies in the level. Like the first time it's just the screen they're on, then each time spreads the effect beyond the surrounding screen. It'd leave for some creepy moments of MC running through an empty world until they find enemies again.

Of course, Jack is clingier each time he heals MC back to full health, with more possessive, needy, and downright desperate dialogue until finally he can't take it anymore.

Jack might be able to heal MC at any time. He might be able to rescue them when they're in trouble, but he just can't watch them hurt themselves anymore.

Jack: I'm sorry, but this is for your own good, Sunshine.

At this point Jack takes them into a pocket zone that they can't escape from. Maybe Cloudy Town themed with some faintly warped colorful scenery. The bad end is just him convincing MC to forget about continuing the quest. After all the pain they've been through, they just decide to give in. Endless sex with their lover, even when he's in scary yandere mode is soooo much better than the pain of dying repeatedly after all.

Jack: There now... isn't this better? You don't have to hurt anymore. You don't have to fight anymore. All you need to do is feel. Feel the way my hands caress you. It feels so good, doesn't it? You don't have to hurt or ache anymore. You can just focus on my hands, my lips... my cock...

Jack: Oh, Sunshine. My precious, perfect, beautiful Sunshine. You don't have to worry about fighting anymore. Just forget about all about that silly quest. Forget about anything else. None of it matters anymore. All you need to do is focus on me and how I make you feel.

Jack: That's it, Sunshine. Take my cock, just like that. Oh God... It feels so good. It... it's better this way, isn't it? We don't have to leave if you don't want to. It can just be you and me. It can just be me pounding my cock into your pretty holes... kissing every inch of your aching body... making you scream my name. I can make you feel like this forever.

Hmm... really, Jack's dialogue might be a lot more unhinged, yandere, and demanding than that by this point in a bad end, but eh, you get the gist. Regardless, MC makes it clear to the player that at this point they're done fighting and only want to feel good with Jack now.

Naturally the good end also involves sexy times with Jack. Victory sexy times. I mean, this is a NSFW game. Sexy time scenes are the entire point. And you know Jack will want to celebrate his sunshine's victory the best way he knows how - a gratuitous full screen CG sex scene.

Contrasting with the bad end, the good end is softer, more loving.

Jack: You did it, Sunshine! Oh, I knew you could.

Jack: Now that you've saved the day, it's time for some well earned rest. You can relax and let me take care of you from now on. *seductively* After all, a hero like you deserves your reward, don't you think?

Jack: That's it. Oh, Sunshine... my brave, mighty hero. You're so beautiful, so courageous. You're so wonderful.

Of course there'd be more exchanges between MC and Jack in the dialogue. Banter makes the intimacy more fun after all. This post is mostly just ideas from off the top of my head as they come to me.

Speaking of endings, I can think of at least one secret one in this kind of game. It's mostly for the hardcore gamer crowd who likes a challenge. In this case, if the player never gets hit and never summons Jack for sexual healing, the ending scene is a just a bit different. Jack still appears during cutscenes to banter with MC and encourage them like usual, but he gets just a little pent up by the end of each level. Maybe even dropping hints how they shouldn't be afraid to rest sometimes, and he's always ready to show them just how much he loves them.

By the time the player beats the game, Jack is just ready to burst. He's just so messy and needy and overwhelming MC with praise as he gives them their reward.

Jack: Oh fuck, Sunshine. I need you so, so badly. I can't wait anymore. Please... please...!

Oh, also, any enemies on the screen probably stop what they're doing to watch while Jack is healing MC, so we get bonus exhibition kink. It might even result in some different positions/animations as Jack intentionally puts on a show when there's other characters around to see. And maybe some leaning on the 4th wall since he's showing off sexy times to the player.

Knowing Alice, she wouldn't be summoning Jack for sexy fun healing times unless there were no enemies on screen. She'd summon him even when fully healed sometimes too, since his love heals more than just her body~

If an enemy projectile would hit the MC while they're in "healing" mode, the attacks are deflected. Like it gets interrupted by Jack's supernatural powers with some yandere hints or something. Or all enemies freeze completely, attacks disappear, and everything becomes a show of Jack healing MC. I dunno. This is just a bunch of silly ideas I'm giving off the cuff. I'd have to put more thought into the details if I was to make this game a reality.

If I had the spoons to program and animate a 2D platformer, I'd be tempted to take a crack at this kind of super self-indulgent smutty game, or at least make some mock screenshots. Of course, I'd have to use Alice as the MC, since there's no way I could create every permutation of MC if they have a sprite visible on screen for sexy times.

Hmm... maybe a character select screen to choose between Alice, Arthur, or Ace... Though that'd still be a ridiculous amount of different sprites to animate in various positions of sexy times with Jack.

Sadly, since I simply lack the spoons for such an undertaking, the world will just have to settle for this ramble. Maybe I'll inspire someone to take a crack at it. Maybe I'll just write a short story full of game tropes and shameless smutty OPT indulgence someday. Who knows?

In any case, I hope you enjoyed this spicy game concept of Jack repeatedly seducing MC while they try to save the world or something in a video game platformer.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur @kurokrisps

[centrally-unplanned]

Alright, last Current Events Drama post, is not a super valuable activity after all. I have seen a lot of Discourse that goes like "I may oppose these efforts but man the PR strategy of this Musk thing is pretty genius, they have a whole generation of people thinking USAID was funding the Liberal Media now". And they certainly aren't without agency, I agree there is an intentional PR strategy going on. In particular it is not just the creation of narrative, but the creation of momentum - every day is a new discovery, a new victory, a sense of progress.

But this isn't really that hard when your supporters are just really stupid? Like you can make shit up for these people! They don't care, they don't have that instinct that goes "okay hold up I'm going to need to see some sources here". The current Admin didn't make that happen, that is a deep, structural change around the internet flattening hierarchies and all that shit. When you know your audience wants results and also you can just invent results out of thin air then, idk, is this that hard? How could you not deliver that?

It is funny because the actual playbook here isn't even their invention, it is the same as the 2010's "Woke Boom". That entire model was that deep, slow, technical solutions to structural inequalities achieved via grinding electoral politics is boring. That shit is for fucking losers. I am not gonna have a role in that all! So instead we will achieve social change via randomly harassing my progressive coworkers for their black comedy tweets about AIDS until they get fired and have a nervous breakdown. Obviously - just like with the current right, don't be tricked! - there was another side of this movement that was much more serious, a huge side actually (we are just focusing right now). But for so many that serious side was window dressing, the real mush was that you got to feel like you were a part of something, doing something, and at a certain point they started running the show. This playbook being reversed really isn't that impressive (and also, in a sense, inevitable)

I will give the Social Justice aggros though that they had some standards - passing around photoshopped tweets was uncommon. Most of them did actually believe in this model for change (and so invented insane ideologies to justify it, but w/e). That isn't really as true on the right - I should partially walk back my statement above, a lot of these people aren't that gullible? They are just apathetic. So many people retweeting stuff about how The Deep State funnels millions to Politico don't really even care, for them it is a game. It is funny to own the libs. They laugh off your attempts at calling them out for accuracy - you care about that? What a cuck you are.

Which makes it particularly sad when you see the earnest ones, the ones writing essays about the implications of what USAID propping up the New York Times means for our political future. Nothing worse than being a true believer in a church where not only the leaders but also your fellow congregants know it is bullshit.

It reminds me of the Gamestop Meme Stock Crash and its slow, agonizing burn (a not unrelated event!). A bunch of people on the rise of the stock created the idea that buying Gamestop could Stick It To The Man, you could short squeeze the hedge funds, diamond-hands-hold that yield, bring Wall St to its knees - to the moon, baby. And some people bought it! And then the wheel turned, the crash happened, and most of the people posting those memes sold their stock and dipped so fast they had disappeared from the subreddits before they could even begin to say "bro, you thought I was serious?". Leaving a stalwart few holding the bag, spinning epicycles of conspiracy theories to justify why they had it to begin with. Which happens on autopilot a this point. You don't really need any PR strategy to make this happen.

[ofeliaxoxo]

charlos+football is actually sooo special to me!! i enjoy both clips you posted and would also like to mention that the clip of them on the floor with carlos still watching football on his laptop while charles has fallen asleep next to him was included in carlos' goodbye post to charles (still insane to me that he waited until their literal last contracted day as teammates to post that). idk how he chose the photos/videos for that post because it feels like a fairly random collection honestly and it looks like he just redownloaded that video from his own tiktok lmao. maybe he was just kind of like whatever i find first that is good enough i'll go with that. maybe everything in that post was selected by guzman and carlos was just like "yeah looks fine." idk! but there is always the possibility that he also feels a tiny bit extra fond about that moment!

i also like this video (https://www.tumblr.com/f1-stuff/734356310949298176/mexican-gp-23-inside-ferrari-the-husband-ism?source=share) where when asked about the score carlos responds with some actual details from the match whereas all charles has to say is "yes i think carlos is happy:)." like sharl is really giving me trying to be interested in hockey because my boyfriend is obsessed with it but not really remembering any of the pertinent information and instead just remembering things like "he likes that player" "ohhh he'd root for this team over that one" etc.

and #neverforget that skysports making them play football at silverstone last year was the reason we got carlos infamously saying "i want to smash you" on camera to charles (https://www.tumblr.com/alexturntable/755115618456535040/i-expect-a-lot-of-things-from-you?source=share). i also appreciate the context to carlos saying that being him suggesting they be each other's goalkeepers and charles starting to be like "no i think there is a goalkeeper" (which there was) but carlos cuts him off to say I Want To Smash You. and well. what is charles supposed to say now to that. so he reluctantly agrees lmao. and i do enjoy the fact that they were the only teammate pairing to think of and do that like i love when we can visibly see them being more competitive with each other than other f1 teammates. and then when they do take turns with the actual goalkeeper i like this moment (https://www.tumblr.com/alexturntable/755096786694225920/i-see-you-he-was-gonna-hit-it?source=share) because i really didn't notice how close charles was standing to the ball or think that he was going to do that. but of course Carlos Did. High Charles Awareness levels on display as per usual!

this ferrari video from silverstone (https://www.tumblr.com/alexturntable/755183084554600448/pumamotorsport-be-careful-girls-and-boys?source=share) also has good moments. charles saying "i'm too good" immediately followed by a disastrously bad kick. also charles saying "no carlos don't do that don't be arrogant. Thank You."

and this ferrari video (https://www.tumblr.com/alexturntable/755093236674084864/its-always-a-competition?source=share) which is not really about football but i'm still counting it. i remember the ferrari admin mentioning also that this wasn't a planned part of the video they just came up with it on their own and started doing it. thinking lots of thoughts about what you said about them just having fun bonding by Playing Games!!! like the way when carlos messes up and laments it charles (in a very out of character way i feel?) doesn't even say anything about being better than carlos at this or imply anything about winning he just restarts the game without comment or hesitation so they can play again. of all the times for the admin to say "it's always a competition" i feel like it was less so the case this time… here they are playing Together more than most times like they only continue if both of them are successful. incredible stuff honestly

there is also one moment in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg0M5BZJ7xQ) that always makes me giggle which is around the 1:50 mark when it's a question related to monaco and carlos lowkey annoyed (not really but you know) is like "you HAVE to know this come on charles" and charles is like !!!!! sorry that i don't know anything about football!!!!! and carlos starts to loudly ask him something else and the fuckin. shell editors decide to cut him off mid-sentence and just cut to them discussing the next fact it was hilarious when i first saw it it's still hilarious to me now. god knows how long they must have continued debating it especially considering the numerous times the editors sped up their discussions throughout the video. and later on when charles knows the date for a real madrid fact carlos is like ??? How and charles says it's because there's still an empty space next to that date for a fact lmao i love the work smarter not harder energy. and then at the end (the way carlos says OKAY LET'S REVIEW OKAY! REVIEW! also makes me laugh idk why) it's like sped up discussion > carlos going "it is CLEAR this one is not correct" > sped up discussion > "we are sure. we not are sure but we are sure" > sped up discussion > charles: i think we have everything right - carlos (expressing basically the exact same thought): i think we might be close to 100% - charles: Wait!!!! > sped up discussion again until they both are like Okay We Have Committed To These Answers. and to their credit they do end up being 100% correct :)) it just seemed like it took an hour of discussion for them to get there LMAO

not to mention the actual content we have gotten of them playing football at those monaco charity matches (which speaking of it seems like they will both be playing again this year!! - https://x.com/sainznificant/status/1915087936263205192). this regretful moment (https://www.tumblr.com/f1-stuff/718133372798566400/monaco-23-world-stars-charity-football?source=share) where carlos passes to charles and it looks like charles kicks the ball literally right into the goalkeepers hands. in my head carlos hangs off the crossbar for a moment because he needs to expend a little extra bit of energy to physically shake off the embarrassment. i mean look at how amused the goalkeeper is at the situation lol. these photos (https://www.tumblr.com/leclercskiesahead/767297536244482048/these-pictures-are-insane?source=share) where we have an instance of carlos being unnecessarily touchy which prompts charles to do it back fork found in kitchen etc etc. and of course this video (https://x.com/charlosarchive/status/1792839244085633278). this is probably nothing but it's always been kind of intriguing to me how they are clearly approaching each other but they're doing it kind of slowly??? like it's not in my head that they're walking at kind of a slow pace right and charles is doing his unnecessary little leg kicks. or maybe it is in my head idk it's just always looked like they're walking so slowly to me lol. it's like they're trying to be subtle/casual about it-- like oh haha i was just moving aimlessly so funny that in my completely random movements i ended up right in front of you-- even though it's obvious enough that they're walking towards each other i mean they're literally talking?? and does charles almost kick that guy walking across and does carlos laugh about it i can't tell. but either way love how when carlos reaches him he can't help but squeeze charles' shoulders and charles is very "noo come on" about it and slips away immediately. anyway i hope at this year's match charles flops as usual and carlos is 1.endeared (possible as long as charles doesn't make them lose i guess) and 2.subsequently annoyed at himself for being endeared by sharl being bad at a sport <3 sorry this got so long omg apparently i have way more things to say than i realized about charlos and football sorry for crowding your inbox with these silly little thoughts!!!

Well FIRST of all dont apologise because im actually in love with you. There is nothing more delicious for me than to read charlos scholarship and in my own inbox?? Even better. I am genuinely so delighted with all of this and I’m really glad you sent it to me. Charlos and football is something that can be so meaningful for women. Idk why it makes me so extra crazy but it absolutely does im with you on it being special. And you have gifted me a beautiful dissertation about it replete with bibliography

And now onto your points which i am deeply DEEPLY obsessed with.

firstly Charles's supportive gf moment. This is exactly the energy I was talking about in my other post…where he’s like ok:) yay:) while Carlos is having an aneurysm about The Team. I genuinely have no coherent thoughts about this I’m just like CUTE! It’s so straightforwardly adorable to me. The fact that he has absolutely nothing to say about it himself so he pivots to this will be fun for Carlos. Idk i just love the concept of Carlos being like this is the most important thing on earth and Charles saying ok well I don't understand or care but yay go team! Hope they Win for you<3 its soo hot girl with her sports bf. I have the least words for this because my entire reaction is just OW SO CUTE. this is my favourite thing ever.

and on to the fact that carlos wants to smash charles...thank you for this my king.

I feel like as a pairing they were an interviewer’s/presenter’s wet dream because not only would they often play along very well for the Thing du jour but they would even “yes and” it. Most of the grid vary from “do this but make it clear I dont wanna:(” to “pleasantly do this for you:)” but charlos brought it up to Ok Time To Fucking Achieve This Nonsense Task. My Life Is On The Line. I Am Going To Play Rounders Or Whatever The Fuck With Charles So Hard They Crown Me King. as the guy running the game I'd be so delighted. It’s so entertaining to watch and also reveals that Ferrari literally broke their brains. Imagine your entire career could be boiled down to Beat This Guy every weekend and then when you werent engaging in direct high stakes competition you were still obliged to compete over every little thing on camera. AND the only reason you both even made it this far into this situation is that you both have a Sick Competitive Freak gene. Those guys were REPROGRAMMED i swear.

Charles Management!!! THIS MOMENT AUGH. you have hit on all of my absolute favourite things and dynamics with this compilation, and this is HIGH on the list. Carlos is like I See You. i like that being the phrase he uses because he doesn’t even have to be like, i know what you’re going to do, or don’t do it, or whatever. It’s enough to say you know I can see you right? The implication being well if i have eyes on you i can read you. And charles collapses into laughter immediately and moves back (like i said before he just laughs because hes been got!) with absolutely no protest hes like ok fine you do see me. and its only THEN that carlos explains well i knew he was going to hit it. Which also is fun to me because not only does Carlos practice Charles Management he also likes to be like i can TELL what you're going to do CHARLES look everyone i knowww what hes going to do. he is flexing his Charles Awareness skills. Another beautiful thing about this instance is Charles standing so polite and handsome and well-behaved and Carlos is like NO i have seen through your little scheme and Charles is like >:D #MyScheme

their cringefail kick compilation...There’s something intriguing about when you can tell Charles is On. He’s kind of just showboating for the craic. I also love Carlos’s little flipping his shoe off moment. You get the sense that he could run rings around Charles if he wanted to in football. (WITH the pinch of salt that i dont play football or know anything about it. My football experiences are limited to PE in school. So maybe any Real Men would NOT get that sense but what can i do im not a Real Man)

Playing Games oh my god…I maintain that if they actually had to work on achieving the same goal through teamwork they would be EXTREMELY devoted. There’s something endearingly childish about their focus, and the no-nonsense way Charles just restarts the game immediately. And YES of course they’re at their jobs and part of their jobs is to give their all to bullshit that doesn’t matter, BUT if as you said they came up with this part themselves then omg..you know when kids get super focused and absorbed in a task theyre like we fucking have to sort the markers by colour oh my christ if this isn’t done its all fucked. Its crazy that we constantly were given footage of these grown men Playing Games I can never coherently word my thoughts on this but I think there is arguably a very childish dimension to some aspects of their relationship. They make each other MAD:( but then they have FUN playing GAME:D

“doesn't even say anything about being better than carlos at this or imply anything about winning he just restarts the game without comment or hesitation… here they are playing Together” you’ve driven me insane with this. No notes just AUGH. they want to play Together:(

This video makes me INSANE. It reminds me of 1. Their intense deep focus on how to draft the incredibly simple Lando contract text message and 2. This snl sketch. Because why is Carlos with his better English getting to say things like “when did Madrid score:)” and Charles is dutifully wading through “Shell launches Shell Helix Ultra, with Pure Plus technology, bringing gas-to-liquid technology to the track” and other such phrases which he powers nobly and dubiously through. Why did they do that to him lmao

But omg help yes at 1:50 the way Carlos is gearing up to be like COME ONNNNN and the editors were like ykw enough. The way they just totally cut him off mid rant. Also charles’ disclaimer at the start of the video that he would be shit at football facts and Carlos went oh ok lol haha and clearly still couldn’t BELIEVE charles wouldnt know that.

Related to this I think my favourite moment of the entire video at 3:42 where they get a question about AS Monaco and carlos is like i swear to christ you need to lock in. and charles is like nervous gulp i cantttt. And then he goes ok 2017 is the answer and Carlos mildly questions it. To which Charles responds with a moment of wide-eyed uncertain panting. Its so funny because for a beautiful split second both men are locked into each other like did monaco win the fucking french league in 2017 oh GOD. [TO be horny for a moment. Carlos going Ok Task Time and Charles just wordlessly heavy breathing with a Stare. Desperation to Complete the Task Successfully For Carlos but hes Not Sure If He Can. Yeah…]

I also like the little moment around 5:00 where they’re debating an answer and charles goes it IS that and to definitively end the discussion he goes to take the card and pin it but carlos pulls it out of reach and goes Are You Sure. in any video they had to hold things in there was always a delightful unspoken body language subplot where they were constantly trying to Be The One That Held The Card. if you ever watch them have to navigate either holding something next to the other, or handing each other things, it is a hilariously involved process for them. I dont think its even always conscious they seem to continue the conversation entirely smoothly while also nimbly dodging each others grabby hands 

And the amount of discussion…so delicious. It was so real for them they were going to be shot if they had one wrong answer they had to WIN. back to my previous point about genuine teamwork between them being maybe stupid as hell but by god would it be dedicated and thorough. I love that the video creators were like ok give us content:) ok youve gone totally overboard no ones watching all that 2x speed time:) EYE would have fuckin watched it…podcast episode topic have them solve a riddle or do a quiz or something. I want to see them use every neuron for an hour straight. @ formula 1 business man i will pay real human money like from the real world in order to watch this happen.. Imagine being on the same team as them at a pub quiz id go home…

“Carlos is like "you HAVE to know this come on charles" and charles is like !!!!! sorry that i don't know anything about football!!!!!” similar to the first moment and my other post this is just so cute to me for some reason. Charles who fakes this interest when they’re getting together but then Carlos accidentally exposes him because he expects Charles to have way more knowledge than he actually does.

about the upcoming charity match... yay do we think we can get them to recreate thee iconic damon albarn liam gallagher charity match moment if we all manifest hard enough. ill light a candle

Help the way carlos just launches himself like some sort of beautiful gymnast hes like all this momentum has to go somewhere THANKS CHARLES ill just throw myself into the sun then. The way football is maybe the only thing they cannot go full sick pervert on together because clearly charles is not on that wavelength lol. like for ONCE carlos is like ok let me do some rhythmic gymnastics to calm down and charles is not there with him hes just havin a giggle

these photos are great. They would touch each other in any universe<3 their hard work in the yaoi mines should never go unappreciated. 

I actually think you are right about this video? Its kind of a dont be suspicious situation..not consciously definitely but the way theyre like okkk lemme just tell him what to DO…ok lemme get closer so he can hear meee ok well look ill just go up to him to make sure he gets it. And then carlos is like well now i have you in reach i obviously cant help but feel you. Just for good luck. And charles is like NO youre ruining our lack of suspiciousness were Cool Football Men did you not see how i failed to score that goal with such flair earlier dont sensually embrace me on the pitch. What i like about this video the most is how they’re clearly trying to strategise and it just visibly is a doomed endeavour

TO SUM UP: if they dont give us football yaoi this year im calling both of their managers to complain. This is the spiritual opposite of the golf trickshot video where Carlos is like YES you did it you absolute legend waow golf!! Now hes like aw sweetie its fine that you scored an own goal. I mean it isnt fine at all but i love you. Please practise before the next match. Yes of course we are still going to fuck immediately after this. Keep the kit on. 

[thewalrusespublicist]

"Tbh I was starting to feel a bit down about my blog and what I was putting out ( the eternal crisis on how to give full answers and opinions without being stupid, boring and annoying lol)"

OMG no way! Your blog is one of the best here! What i love the most is reading the analysis and meta from the users, there's always more information and good takes, and yours are always quite deep and insightful.

I would love if you share your opinions about Stuart as well. I feel like he is obviously more sanctified that he should be since he died young (like that insane quote from his mom saying that Brian told her that Stuart could have been the Beatles' manager, no way lol) and i feel his memory has been used to attack Paul, sometimes in a very unfair way. Like, i don't deny the teenage drama and jealousy that Paul felt about him but he *was* a shitty bass player and the band was Paul's future, he was allowed to criticized him not only for being John's new bestie. I also think John played with them both but i lack of your eloquence so i will love to read your take about it.

Hi anon! And the other anons!

Thank you again and to all the other messages I got, they were extremely sweet and really made my day. :)

From my inbox, it's clear you guys want to know about Stu and his role in the Beatles legacy. Well you asked for it and a novel you shall have. Be warned this might be the longest post I've done so grab like a drink or something.

A few disclaimers: I wish and had intended for this to be more of a deep dive into Stu as a whole person rather than just his relationship with John and Paul. Unfortunately I just didn't have the space to do it. If you want to know more about Stu I would highly recommend @eppysboys' blog which is the source for all things Stu Sutcliffe and where I got a lot of this info. Please check their stuff out. Also, I'm going to be a bit blunter on this than maybe I usually am because this topic has been irritating me for some time. Oh also I’m trying my best to answer a lot of asks in one post so please forgive if I don’t fully answer your specific ask about this!

Stu in a perfect world should be a fandom darling: an exciting cipher, a handsome artistic talent that died way too soon who had a major influence in the early Beatles style. It's like there’s this secret other James Dean looking mf Beatle hidden away to uncover, that's cool and he is cool! The problem is that he’s sort of becomes radioactive to talk about in a normal way due to how he's been portrayed and utilised in some biographies and fandom spaces, particularly those that have been infected by John Lennon aspirational boy bestie syndrome. As those types of spaces cannot seem to exist without tearing down Paul to prop John up as their special lil guy, Stu as John's other best friend has become the ideal heavy object to hit Paul McCartney over the head with. It's like a corrosive element, the minute Stu hits a Beatles bio, the biographer suddenly loses all training in objectivity and source work and starts waxing lyrical about 100 percent reliable never biased or wrong Saint Stu of Hamburg who died for our condom arson sins and that Paul McCartney should feel bad about every day of his life for not worshipping Stu and not accepting his own ‘place’ in life as John's just-some-guy placeholder best friend. I’ve personally seen so many posts and forums where Stu being mentioned leads to a legion of comments about how Paul could never have been Stu (correct both ways) and how John would never have even glanced at Paul for much longer if Stu had been alive. Sidenote: If you seriously think that the musical savant from down the road whom John went on to produce the most prolific song writing partnership in history with couldnt have kept his attention for long then I'm begging you on hands and knees to get your head out of the arse of your John Lennon body pillow and be serious. But anyway…

This boy bestie battle royale approach has in turn lead to a reflex reaction where Stu gets studiously ignored by other sections of the fandom as a precedent has been set that shining a light on him diminishes Paul and John's relationship with Paul. It's frustrating because if people weren't so keen to cut Paul out of his own story then we would get a much better nuanced view of every single person involved.

So let's put aside all of our defenses, cut the John Lennon loved one ranking system bullshit and lets look at the actual question here which is what was John and Stu's relationship really like and what did he mean to John?

John and Stu met at art college a year or so after Paul and John met. Up to that point John and Paul had their fun little codependant thing going on but Stu quickly became a huge fixture in John's life. Stu had things that Paul couldn't really offer at that point in time. John was at his heart a musician who aspired to be seen as an artist (he would later express surprise that he didn't become an artist). Stu was the passionate artist who knew tons about the art of the period that could teach and inspire John. Their creative leanings meant they could work on projects together and share art notebooks and poetry. (Including yes the one with anti-semitic story which I mention again as I believe it's an important thing to remember when it comes to both John and Stu and the culture of the time.) Stuart by the sounds of it was even writing a novel about John at the time of his death. They were fascinated and inspired by each other.

So, creatively they fired each other up but more importantly perhaps, Stu and John were peers. It's funny to think about when you see the Beatles later but at the time Paul and George were the kids in their school uniform coming to see their cool older friend at art school. That's an important divide. When Paul and George's parents insisted their kids do their homework and go to bed, John and Stu could stay up and talk all hours of the night, which they did. They also could rent a place together and spend long hours chatting (despite John moving out later after realising electricity cost money lol.) There's a different dynamic that the age similarity offered as well. Whilst Paul would later somewhat grow into this role, Stu could act as an authority figure to John as well as open up to John in a way you can really only do with your peers. Stu was the person John opened up to throughout Stu's life:

How long can one go on writing and writing like you. I now don’t really know who I’m writing to or why it’s quiet peculiar. I usually write like this and forget about it but if I put it in a little part of my [almost?] secret self in the hands of someone miles away who will wonder what the hell is going on or just pass it off as toilet paper. Anyway I don’t care really what happens because when I think about it, it’s so bloody unimportant – but what is important who has the right to say that this letter is not important and this is a something any way – anyway – anyway – yeah! I wonder what it would be like to be a cretin or something. I bet it’s gear. & how are you keepin Stuart old chap are you as ok – is life as good – bad shite, great – wonderful as it was or is it just a thousand years of nothing and coolness on and on and on. I think this is it Goodbye Stu don’t write out of – er what is it? well not because you think you ought to write when you feel like So goodbye (from John you know the one with glasses) ANYWAY BYE BYE see you soon I don’t know why I said that I remember a time when everyone I loved hated me because I hated them so what so what so fucking what I remember a time when belly buttons were knee high when only shitting was dirty and everything else clean + beautiful I can’t remember anything without a sadness So deep that it hardly becomes known to me so deep that its tears leave me a spectator of my own STUPIDITY + so I go rambling on with a hey nonny nonny nonny no

Extract from a letter to Stuart Sutcliffe from John Lennon, 1961

By lots of accounts Stu was gentle but firm when it came to telling John he'd gone too far. John references this aspect of Stu to Hunter Davies:

"I looked up to Stu. I depended on him to tell me the truth. Stu would tell me if something was good and I'd believe him."

The Beatles: The Authorised Biography (Hunter Davies)

In this way I kind of see Stu as a proto-Yoko. John was so insecure and uncertain about his grip on the world and reality that he relied on Stu to be his point of reference and guide. Paul did this too later and I think in Hunter Davies John mentions this, but not at this time period and not as much due to their competitiveness. This may be why some people saw Stu as the person that really understood John at this time period:

"During the turbulent adolescence that prefaced a turbulent manhood, hardly anyone knew Lennon as intimately as Stuart Sutcliffe. If they weren't exactly David and Jonathan, June Furlong, one of the life models at Liverpool's Regional College of Art, had "never seen two teenagers as close as those two."

The Gospel According To Lennon by Alan Clayson

Now this person likely never met John and Paul together but this is only one of many similar quotes and even Julia captain of John and Paul's friendship boat seems to agree there was a period where Stu dominated and Paul 'kept his distance' from the John-Cyn-Stu 'menage-a-trois'. But the friendship wasn't perfect and his position as John's ultimate best friend was never iron clad. This is best outlined by the shit they pulled when John convinced him to join on Bass for the Beatles.

Despite being John's best friend, Stu was teased and bullied:

"They argued as usual amongst themselves, but most of all they picked on Stu, the newest member of the group. John, George and Paul had been with each other long enough to know that rows and arguments and criticism didn't mean much. If it did, you just argued back. "We were terrible," says John. "We'd tell Stu he couldn't sit with us, or eat with us. We'd tell him to go away, and he did." At one hotel they stayed at, a variety show had just left. There had been a dwarf in the show and they found out which bed he had slept in and said that would have to be Stu's. They certainly weren't going to sleep in it. So Stu had to. "That was how he learned to be with us," says John. "It was all stupid, but that was what we were like."

The Beatles: The Authorised Biography (Hunter Davies)

Why John encouraged this I have no idea, maybe jealousy over Stu's looks and wanting to play people off each other? Things were tense in both Scotland and Hamburg, especially between Stu and Paul. As I said in my last post, the girls were fighting and it was mutual. Paul was mad for both fair and immature teenage-boy reasons. Stu could not be bothered with the bass most of the time and couldn't really play well and was only there as he was '(John's) best friend' (ouch for Paul). Paul conversely had given up higher education to be there and was sending lots of money back home. He also was dating the girl Paul fancied. Stu was popular with the new group and also did mean things like help John steal Paul's money when money was really tight for him. Paul in turn was a passive aggressive, jealous and mean. It all came to ahead in the punch up onstage which according to Spitz came about from Paul wanting money back and saying that Stu could borrow some from Astrid. Stu goes for him and reports vary from full-on bust up to embarrassing scuffle. Stu then goes to where Astrid and Paul's gf Dot are, demands Dot leaves and goes on a rant about Paul. Now all of this must be framed in the context of Stu receiving increasing brain damage from his condition that seemingly lead to mood swings and anger. Nevertheless, the mutual needling and anger, as well as John's refusal to do/say fuck all about it, especially given how protective John was of Stu, suggests that it wasn’t straightforward and/or John may have been playing some games to make both feel threatened. This would also make sense as to why we hear conflicting accounts of John and Stu being the centre of everything and everyone else in orbit AND John and Paul being the centre and everyone else playing catch-up, as well as John giving Paul the lead to take him round the Reeperbahn when John got dressed in the gorilla costume. (I know Paul may have just been the closest there but that always gave off bestie behaviour to me.)

(I did get an ask about how John and Paul's friendship survived it, I think it was damaged by Hamburg. When Paul got back home he got a job at a construction site and there's just a vibe of everything being a bit on tenterhooks. John also acts a bit weird at the period, not talking to anyone for a few weeks then making a lot of weird demands from Paul. I'm really not sure what to make of it.)

Even when he's back in Liverpool, John still writes long letters to Stu and vice-versa. I can't find it at all but I’ve read a really sad interview with John saying he missed his best mate and it's a shame that he's not with them. He had no idea at that point that Stu had already died of a brain hemorrhage at 21.

John is said to have gone into hysterics when he found out Stu had died. A lot of people who've spoken about this time (Aunt Mimi, his sister Julia, the Exsis) concur that at this point Stu was his best friend and the death shattered him. He even told Astrid he wished he could give his life for Stu’s. This is backed up by the fact that John never forgot Stu and his shadow lingered for the rest of John's life:

Stu was recalled in In My Life

Years later, after John composed the first of his truly poignant and heartfelt Beatles songs, "In My Life"—with its lines about "friends I still can recall/some are dead and some are living"—he revealed to me that the two people he had had uppermost in mind were myself and Stuart Sutcliffe. And then he stunned me with a statement that I'd never heard him address to anyone—least of all to another man. "You know, Pete," he said softly, "I do love you. But," he quickly added, "I loved Stuart as well."

Weird that Paul isn't mentioned surely you think that he would be mentioned if Pete was there too okay, okay my tin hat is going away this isn't the time

Pete Shotton, Nicholas Schaffner, John Lennon: In My Life

In 1965 John drew Stu on a postcard

He apparently said this about Stu prior to sending the postcard, prompted by an article about Stuart.

The card had been sent from Genoa mid-way through the Beatles' Italian tour. [...] But the conversation had become maudlin when I reminded him that he was going to talk to me for an article about Stuart. [...] In that sad telephone conversation before they set off for Milan, I asked him if he was happy: 'I'd be a lot happier if Stuart was still part of us,' he said, 'The Beatles would be complete.' And before he rang off he said 'Ill send you something.'

He also appears on the cover of Sgt Pepper

As mentioned, Stu gets mentioned in Hunter Davies in terms of wistfulness and guilt AND he gets a mention in John's insane 'if I were a homosexual' ramblings in early 70s. According to Yoko, John also wanted Yoko to write letters to him and didn't think it would be strange because Stu wrote letters to him.

I have a pet theory that as with a lot of things for John, his unresolved grief over Stu really came to the fore in the late 60s now that he had actually had a chance to sit down and think about things. I believe it was partially why he wanted Yoko to write letters and why he gets mentioned in the early 70s as a collaborator/best friend and not in 1980 where John only gives that credit to Paul and Yoko. I think with the cracks with Paul, John had started to think back on his old friend and guide and what advice he would give.

Stuarts presence is still felt throughout the seventies:

“He told me everything. He loved to talk about Hamburg. There were no secrets. It was the kind of life I never knew…. It meant total freedom. At his side always was Stuart, sweet Stuart. There wasn’t a time in John’s life when he didn’t think about Stuart. He spoke always of his love and respect for Stuart.”

Yoko discussing Stu in When They Were Boys: The True Story of the Beatles’ Rise to the Top by Larry Kane

Coming to grips with his death is also present in Skywriting

SEAN O’HAIRE: What happened to Stuart Cliff? DR. FISCHY: What happened was a full exchange of energy where it was not needed within the expression of your own self or in the energies involved around and about you. We cannot call it a happening. We’ll say it is an awakening, for in that way it has served an expression from the past to the present and to the future to where there shall be more of that incomplete vibration expressed to you in a more fuller understanding.

Skywriting by Word of Mouth, John Lennon

This isn't exhaustive but I think from all this it's pretty clear that John adored Stu, John grieved Stu and kept grieving Stu. Stu had a specific place in his life as a confidant that he tried to recreate with Yoko. At the time of Stu's death, he was John's best friend, probably slightly over Paul. Stuart had been able to be both a friend and paternal presence, a confidant and an artistic collaborator. His presence and loss was one of the foundational points in John's life.

But as we've been asked to play this stupid game and so many bios like to make a hoopla about it, were they at their closest ever as close as John and Paul were at their height?

No.

How do we know? Because John told us so:

" He [Paul] still is the closest friend I've ever had, except for Yoko, so I'm still close to him whatever goes on."

John Lennon to an interviewer, 1971

But Walrus! John just says shit! How do we know he isn't leaving out Stu because the press don't know Stu. Well true John does just say shit but this is at a time where John isn't the most glowing about Paul and he's had no problem mentioning Stu in this time period ('one of my best friends ever' would have made a similar point).

But Walrus again! If John picked Stu over Paul when they were young why wouldn't he be the boy bestie of all time, and why would John say that he was closer to Paul? Well, because of the environment and timings. Stu's death happened near the beginning of John and Paul's major bonding moments. If you look at their personal timeline, Paris, the Nerk twins, and getting signed happened just before Stu died. That's missing the major years of Beatlemania, Key West, LSD, Paul growing more into being John's peer and a load of other huge moments in their lives. It's like how John writes to Cyn in 1962 about wanting the house to themselves and not have Paul around all the time. Would you say because he feels closer to Cyn then that John in his overall lifetime loved Cyn more than Paul? No, because relationships change over time and theirs were no exception. (One thing to consider as well is that we don't yet have many letters between John and Paul during their Beatles years and earlier, probably because they were spending so much time with each other. We know a couple exist that Paul considers too personal for publication but I'm sure there are others. It's easy to understand what John felt for Stu as we have the letters, I think we would also have an easier time understanding what John felt for Paul if we had the equivalent of those.)

At the end of the day Paul was the man he believed he had a psychic bond with, the man he couldn’t shut up about, the man whom he’d conquered the world with with their endless collaboration, the man with a twin personality to him and according to John spent more time with throughout the 60s than he had with Yoko ever. To be frank if Paul had died in 67' I don't think this would have been a conversation.

As mentioned early, in early 1970s John elevates his partnership with Stu to his collaborations with Paul and Yoko but by 1980 he’s pretty clear that Paul and Yoko are their own category.

"I was saying to somebody the other day, “There’s only two artists I’ve ever worked with for more than a one night stand, as it were. That’s Paul McCartney, and Yoko Ono.” And I think that’s a pretty damned good choice!!"

John Lennon interview with DJ Dave Sholin, 1980

There are of course the what ifs. Would Stu still being alive mean that John was not as close with Paul? Maybe, highly doubtful though as the Beatles experience was so intense. If Stu remained a Beatle would John be as close with Paul? If Stu remained a Beatle he wouldn't be Stu so no. At the same time who knows what it would have been like if Paul and John were peers from the off? I said this to @the62ndbugsfan when it comes to Stu vs Paul (hi girl sorry i've made our chat a whole ass post lol) but to go a bit Wuthering Heights, soulmates are made as much from the earth as they are of the stars. What binds us is our experiences just as much as our personalities. There may be a universe where Stu and John took on the art world together or became inseparable bffs again after the Beatles disbanded, but it is not our universe. In this universe Stu tragically died and John and Paul chose to become Lennon/McCartney and artistically unite themselves forever.

Even going back to Stu's lifetime, I've said it before and I'll say it again I find it interesting that not only did John choose to go to Paris with Paul rather than pay to meet up with Stu somewhere but that they arranged to meet up with Juergen and nobody told Stu until they'd already gone. Stu was shocked and didn't know if it meant the end of the Beatles which is a pretty big thing for him not to know about. Why didn't John tell him if they're apparently still writing long letters? Was it because he really wanted to do this with Paul and didn't want to hurt Stu's feelings? And that's really the point I want to make here. Due to his trauma John was preoccupied with reinforcing ranking of relationships within his life. But the thing is friendship rankings are made up guidelines and the reality is far more complicated. You can have a designated best friend but feel closer to another friend at times, you can want to do one thing specifically with one friend and not the other for various reasons. You can (as I do) have more than one equal best friend. Friendship as with most relationships are in a constant state of flux and each friendship you have will give and mean a different thing, even if they are of similar value to you.

Paul may have ended up closer to John than Stu had been, but that doesen't make John's relationship with Stu any less special. Nor does Stu negate the significance of Paul. Whilst both fit into John's pattern of intense relationships and demands related to that, both had unique positions and meaning to him. Considering what I've gone into about John's closeness to Stu, it actually says something deeply, borderline unnervingly, intense about John and Paul that Paul pipped Stu to the post. Maybe it's time Beatles bios accept the fact that John Lennon just wouldn't be into them like that, stop using a tragically prematurely deceased young man as a prop in their jealous psychological warfare against Paul McCartney, stop perpetuating one of the most damaging games that John did to his loved ones and allow both relationships the space to shine and showcase the amazing talent that was the Beatles and those that surrounded them.