#i'm trying a new format for writing essays

[lesbian-infidelity]

s1!wilson (married) (at the time): you want to woo cameron on this date here are my four easy steps to get into someone's pants the last step even has a acronym!

me (remembering s3!wilson's four easy steps to tell a patient they're dying) squinting: ...sure not?

the worm in my brain (shouting): HOUSE AND WILSON HAVE OPPOSITE BUT EQUAL AUTISM THAT'S WHY THEY'RE GREAT FOR EACH OTHER AND ALSO SUCK FOR EACH OTHER

me (pretending to be normal): okay worm in my brain 👍

[chiscaralight]

BOOTY POPPIN' !

men who just love their darlings' ass!

includes: nsfw! aventurine, childe, scara x afab!reader (separately), lots of backshots ! mirror sex, cum eating, dry humping, fingering, eating it from the back, i used the word ass a lot LMFAOO, outdoor sex, clothed sex, unprotected sex, slight mentions of exhibitionism, thigh riding, its all consensual, probably missed a couple of tags

new format! ill drop the second part of this for the boob lovers lmfao hope u enjoy! blade was also a last minute addition to this but I enjoyed writing for him. i was going to post this tomorrow bur I'm too excited to wait !!!!!

CHILDE.

childe loves your ass! you know it, he knows it, and everyone around you knows it. he doesn’t even try to hide it. why would he? your ass is perfect, he would probably write an essay on it if you ask! if you’re at home and you walk past him wearing something short be prepared, because there’s no way in hell he’s letting you get past him without some form of contact.

it’s the same when he’s fucking you! he’s sitting with his legs spread and you on top of him so he can set himself right in front of his full-length mirror. his eyes are switching between your adorable face and the view of your behind in the mirror! he’s kneading and slapping the flesh of your ass as he fucks himself up into you! his bony fingers are tracing the marks he’s leaving all over you while you’re a crying mess, but he’s nowhere near done with you. he’s pulling you off him and flipping you over so he can fuck you right from the back! his hands have found a home on the fat of your hips as he takes in the view. the dip of your waist into the curve of your hips and his eyes lock onto that fucking ass. he groans at the sight, dick twitching as he’s pistoning in and out of you. he’ll never get tired of it.

you’re even starting to think he’s doing things just to get you to bend over. Things that should be nowhere near his room disappeared under the bed, and the remote he was holding mere seconds ago accidentally slid so deep under the couch. he’s politely asking you to bend down and get it. when you do go in for it though, he’s already touching you! but you’re not even on the ground yet! you sigh, because you know swatting him away won’t do much but hold him off for half a second.

even when there’s nothing inherently sexual about what you’re doing! you’re just resting on the kitchen counter and he’s behind you, pressing his hard cock into you. you both end up coming untouched through the messy kisses and the clothes grinding, but you don’t even have it in you to complain.

AVENTURINE.

i’ve actually already written an ass-obsessed aven here, but i can’t get it out of my head!!! he’s definitely more subtle about it, but he’s still obsessed all the same. in public, it’s all fleeting touches. maybe he’s resting his hand there or slipping his long fingers into your back pocket. you help in protest as he silently curls his fingers into the flesh, but he only cocks his head to the side, mocking concern as he asks you what’s wrong. you can only roll your eyes in response.

Your eyes are rolling back behind closed doors though, as you’re laying flat with him beside you, staring at your bruised butt. those taunting fingers, after slapping your ass so much, are bullying your cunt as they’re pumping in and out of you. you want to tell him it’s too much, but you already agreed to give him one more orgasm and you do not want to disappoint:( But it’s a particular curl of his digits that has you arching off the bed and staining your thighs, his fingers and shockingly his face! you’re so embarrassed you could cry, but he only wipes his face with his fingers and licks it off. you’re trying to sit up, but he’s pushing you back down as he mounts you.

he knows how much you love him prone boning you, so as a reward for doing extra good earlier, he does! you’re practically weeping into the sheets as his hips meet yours over and over. he wastes no time in turning you on your side so he can see that face of yours. you’re all red and teary eyes as he doesn’t stop fucking you. his hand is rubbing the flesh of your sore behind and you can barely move! your little body is so spent, but he promises to take care of you with a kiss to your temple. but not without slapping your ass one more time.

he’s pulling out of you to drag your hips up. it’s his tongue that gets you reeling, darting between your puffy clit and dripping hole. he’s pushing you back onto his face over and over you’re releasing much more directly on his face this time! he apologizes, saying how much he couldn’t help himself because the thought of it stuck so much since you squirted all over him before ! Sure, I'll help you with that. The corrected text is: "apologizes"

SCARA.

when it comes to scara, he acts as if he doesn’t care. a body is a body. he’s going to tell you that the “ass or tits” argument is dumb, but his actions tell you otherwise.

he’s always finding some reason to press up against you! he’ll claim he just wants to get something from the shelf above you, but he’s dragging his clothes cock all over your ass!

even when he’s sat in his gaming chair, he has you facing him and immediately he hits an intermission in whatever game his playing, his hands are finding their way right down to the curve of your butt. but he’ll swear he doesn’t have a preference.

“your ass just happened to be in my hands' way,” as he shrugs it off. but you can see past his silly lie.

you didn’t think he’d be proving you right out in the open like this though. his car is parked at the end of some abandoned alleyway while he has you bent over the trunk! the cool metal is no match for the heat the two of you are emitting as he ruts into your walls.

he’s fisting your hair, spitting something about how good you looked. it wasn’t his fault! you’re the one wearing such a tiny skirt, how could he not get a piece of that? the nasty fucker only releases the hard grip he has on your hair so he can take another quick whiff from your panties. your strong scent has him powering up again, so he’s crossing his arm over your ass to grab your hips and fuck into you harder. the sound of your skin slapping is reverberating off the walls, and hard. you’re only getting louder, and he takes the opportunity to dip down into your ear again, warning you that you’ll get found out and show whichever passerby how nasty you are, taking him in so deep like this while anyone can catch you as quickly as it started.

the thought sends waves right down between your legs as his hands come in contact with your ass once again. he’s fucking you onto him as he cums, rolling his hips against the plush of your behind. and per his words, you have to keep it in the whole car ride home if you want him to fuck you again later.

BLADE.

even though blade doesn't talk much, he's very calculated with his actions. he makes sure he's thinking through everything to ensure he doesn't hurt you. it's also why you raise an eyebrow when you feel his fingertips very softly brush against your butt. and it keeps happening. you feel like you're going insane! the feather-light touches are running through your mind but the way he carries himself immediately after, it's like nothing ever happened.

so you start to retaliate. your bottoms are getting shorter and tighter day by day. it's gotten to the point where you're barely wearing any pants around him at all! you're constantly dropping things and bending over to pick him up, seating your half-naked behind just millimeters away from his fingers resting on the couch and asking him what's wrong whenever you notice him freeze up. more importantly, those small touches have stopped. you hmph in a small victory, not sure what you achieved but you feel satisfied nonetheless.

the hmphs and ahs that are spewing from you later in the night are nothing compared to the one of false victory. your shoulders are hunched as your back faced him. Do you think your actions wouldn't get noticed? think again. you're grinding your clothed cunt painfully slow against his clothed thigh. his hand connects with the soft skin as he tells you to speed up. two can play the teasing game but only one can win. your cries and pleas only fuel him further as you blurt out every apology your spiraling mind will let you. your legs are aching and your orgasm is moving in and out as you begin to tire out.. but your bladie isn't that mean, so he's repositioning the two of you to fix both of your problems.

his left leg is propped up on the couch, the other leg hanging off as his back rests against the arm of the chair. your body is flat against the cushions as he thrusts up into you (see sledge for reference). your cunt is sure, but he knows just the right angles to hit to make you forget that. but while you're lost in your world of pleasure, he's lost somewhere else. he literally cannot take his eyes off your ass. he's mesmerized, as each thrust keeps bouncing it around. his hands are gripping the top, pushing you down on him as you both cum against each other. even when he's pulling out and picking you up to clean up, he just can't get it out of his head !!! it's going to bother him for the next couple of weeks, maybe even months! but best believe he will be coming right back to enjoy the view.

[damienkarras73]

An essay on Furiosa, the politics of the Wasteland, Arthurian literature and realistic vs. formalistic CGI

Mad Max: Fury Road absolutely enraptured me when it came out nearly a decade ago, and I will cop to seeing it four times at the theatre. For me (and many others who saw the light of George Miller) it set new standards for action filmmaking, storytelling and worldbuilding, and I could pop in its Blu Ray at any time and never get tired of it. Perhaps not surprisingly, I was deeply apprehensive about the announced prequel for Fury Road's actual main character, Furiosa, even if Miller was still writing and directing. We didn't need backstory for Furiosa—hell, Fury Road is told in such a way that NOTHING in it requires explicit backstory. And since it focuses on the Yung Furiosa, it meant Charlize Theron couldn't return with another career-defining performance. Plus, look at all that CGI in the trailer, it can't be as good as Fury Road.

Turns out I was silly to doubt George Miller, M.D., A.O., writer and director of Babe: Pig in the City and Happy Feet One & Two.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is excellent, and I needn't have worried about it not being as good as Fury Road because it is not remotely trying to be Fury Road. Fury Road is a lean, mean machine with no fat on it, nothing extraneous, operating with constant forward momentum and only occasionally letting up to let you breathe a little; Furiosa is a classical epic, sprawling in scope, scale and structure, and more than happy to let the audience simmer in a quiet, almost painfully still moment. If its opening spoken word sequence by that Gandalf of the Wastes himself, the First History Man, didn't already clue you in, it unfolds like something out of myth, a tale told over and over again and whose possible embellishments are called attention to in the dialogue itself. Where Fury Road scratched the action nerd itch in my head like you wouldn't believe, Furiosa was the equivalent of Miller giving the undulating folds of my English major brain a deep tissue massage. That's great! I, for one, love when sequels/prequels endeavour to be fundamentally different movies from what they're succeeding/preceding, operating in different modes, formats and even genres, and more filmmakers should aim for it when building on an existing series.

This movie has been on my mind so much in the past week that I've ended up dedicating several cognitive processes to keeping track of all of the different ponderings it's spawned. Thankfully, Furiosa is divided into chapters (fun fact: putting chapter cards in your movie is a quick way to my heart), so it only seems fitting that I break up all of these cascading thoughts accordingly.

1. The Pole of Inaccessibility

Furiosa herself actually isn't the protagonist for the first chapter of her own movie, instead occupying the role of a (very crafty and resourceful) damsel in distress for those initial 30-40 minutes. The real hero of the opening act, which plays out like a game of cat and mouse, is Furiosa's mother Mary Jabassa, who rides out into the wasteland first on horseback and then astride a motorcycle to track down the band of raiders that has stolen away her daughter. Mary's brought to life by Miller and Nico Lathouris' economical writing and a magnetic performance by newcomer Charlee Fraser, who radiates so much screen presence in such relatively little time and with one of those instant "who is SHE??" faces. She doesn't have many lines, but who needs them when Fraser can convey volumes about Mary with just a flash of her eyes or the effortless way she swaps out one of her motorcycle's wheels for another. To be quite candid, I'm not sure of the last time I fell in love with a character so quickly.

You notice a neat aesthetic contrast between mother and daughter in retrospect: Mary Jabassa darts into the desert barefoot, clad in a simple yet elegant dress, her wolf cut immaculate, only briefly disguising herself with the ugly armour of a raider she just sniped, and when she attacks it's almost with grace, like some Greek goddess set loose in the post-apocalyptic Aussie outback with just her wits and a bolt-action rifle; we track Furiosa's growth over the years by how much of her initially conventional beauty she has shed, quite literally in one case (hair buzzed, severed arm augmented with a chunky mechanical prosthesis, smeared in grease and dirt from head to toe, growling her lines at a lower octave), and by how she loses her mother's graceful approach to movement and violence, eventually carrying herself like a blunt instrument. Yet I have zero doubt the former raised the latter, both angels of different feathers but with the same steel and resolve. Of fucking course this woman is Furiosa's mother, and in the short time we know her we quickly understand exactly why Furiosa has the drive and morals she does without needing to resort to didactic exposition.

Anyway, I was tearing up by the end of the first chapter. Great start!

2. Lessons from the Wasteland

Most movies—most stories, really—don't actually tell the entire narrative from A to Z. Perhaps the real meat of the thing is found from H to T, and A-G or U-Z are unnecessary for conveying the key narrative and themes. So many prequels fail by insisting on telling the A-G part of the story, explaining how the hero earned a certain nickname or met their memorable sidekick—but if that stuff was actually interesting, they likely would have included it in the original work. The greatest thing a prequel can actually do is recontextualize, putting iconic characters or moments in a new light, allowing you to appreciate them from a different angle. All of season 2 of Fargo serves to explain why Molly Solverson's dad is appropriately wary when Lorne Malvo enters his diner for a SINGLE SCENE in the show's first season. David's arc from the Alien prequels Prometheus and Covenant—polarizing as those entries are—adds another layer to why Ash is so protective of the creature in the first movie. Andor gives you a sense of what it's like for a normal, non-Jedi person to live under the boot of the Empire and why so many of them would join up with the Rebel Alliance—or why they would desire to wear that boot, or even just crave the chance to lick it.

Furiosa is one of those rare great prequels because it makes us take a step back and consider the established world with a little more nuance, even if it's still all so absurd. In Fury Road, Immortan Joe is an awesome, endlessly quotable villain, completely irredeemable, and basically a cartoon. He works perfectly as the antagonist of that breakneck, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote-ass movie, but if you step outside of its adrenaline-pumping narrative for even a moment you risk questioning why nobody in the Citadel or its surrounding settlements has risen up against him before. Hell, why would Furiosa even work for him to begin with? But then you see Dementus and company tear-assing around the wasteland, seizing settlements and running them into the ground, and you realize Joe and his consortium offer something that Dementus reasonably can't: stability—granted, an unwavering, unchangeable stability weighted in favour of Joe's own brutal caste system, but stability nonetheless. It really makes you wonder, how badly does a guy have to suck to make IMMORTAN JOE of all people look like a sane, competent and reasonable ruler by comparison?!?

…and then they open the door to the vault where he keeps his wives, and in a flash you're reminded just how awful Joe is and why Furiosa will risk her life to help some of these women flee from him years later. This new context enriches Joe and makes it more believable that he could maintain power for so long, but it doesn't make him any less of a monster, and it says a lot about Furiosa's hate for Dementus that she could grit her teeth and work for this sick old tyrant.

3. The Stowaway

Here's another wild bit of trivia about this movie: you don't actually see top-billed actress Anya Taylor-Joy pop up on screen until roughly halfway through, once Furiosa is in her late teens/early twenties. Up until this point she's been played by Alyla Browne, who through the use of some seamless and honestly really impressive CGI has been given Anya's distinctive bug eyes [complimentary]. It's one of those bold choices that really works because Miller commits to it so hard, though it does make me wish Browne's name was up on the poster next to Taylor-Joy's.

Speaking of CGI, I should talk about what seems to be a sticking point for quite a few people: if there's been one consistent criticism of Furiosa so far, it's that it doesn't look nearly as practical or grounded as Fury Road, with more obvious greenscreen and compositing, and what previously would've been physical stunt performers and pyrotechnics have been replaced with their digital equivalents for many shots. Simply put, it doesn't look as real! For a lot of people, that practicality was one of Fury Road's primary draws, so I won't try to quibble if they're let down by Furiosa's overt artificiality, but to be honest I'm actually quite fine with it. It helps that this visual discrepancy doesn't sneak up on you but is incredibly apparent right from the aerial zoom-down into Australia in the very first scene, so I didn't feel misled or duped.

Fury Road never asks you to suspend your disbelief because it all looks so believable; Furiosa jovially prods you to suspend that disbelief from the get-go and tune into it on a different wavelength. It's a classical epic, and like the classical epics of the 1950s and 60s it has a lot of actors standing in front of what clearly are matte paintings. It feels right! We're not watching fact, we're watching myth. I'm willing to concede there might be a little bit of post-hoc rationalization on my part because I simply love this movie so much, but I'm not holding the effects in Furiosa to the same standard as those in Fury Road because I simply don't believe Miller and his crew are attempting to replicate that approach. Without the extensive CGI, we don't get that impressive long, panning take where a stranded Furiosa scans the empty, dust-and-sun-scoured wasteland (75% Sergio Leone, 25% Andrei Tarkovsky), or the Octoboss and his parasailing goons. For the sake of intellectual exercise I did try imagining them filming the Octoboss/war rig sequence with the same immersive practical approach they used for Fury Road's stunts, however I just kept picturing dead stunt performers, so perhaps the tradeoff was worth it!

4. Homeward

Around the same time we meet the Taylor-Joy-pilled Furiosa in Chapter 3, we're introduced to Praetorian Jack, the chief driver for the convoys running between the Citadel and its allied settlements. Jack's played by Tom Burke, who pulled off a very good Orson Welles in Mank! and who I should really check out in The Souvenir one of these days. He's also a cool dude! Here are some facts about Praetorian Jack:

He's decked out in road leathers with a pauldron stitched to one shoulder

He's stoic and wary, but still more or less personable and can carry on a conversation

Professes to a certain cynicism, to quote Special Agent Albert Rosenfield, but ultimately has a capacity for kindness and will do the right thing

Shoots a gun real good

Can drive like nobody's business

So in other words, Jack is Mad Max. But also, no, he clearly isn't! He looks and dresses like Mad Max (particularly Mel Gibson's) and does a lot of the same things "Mad" Max Rockatansky does, but he's also very explicitly a distinct character. It's a choice that seems inexplicable and perhaps even lazy on its face, except this is a George Miller movie, so of course this parallel is extremely purposeful. Miller has gone on record saying he avoids any kind of strict chronology or continuity for his Mad Max movies, compared to the rigid canons for Star Trek and Star Wars, and bless him for doing so. It's more fun viewing each Mad Max entry as a new revision or elaboration on a story being told again and again generations after the fall, mutating in style, structure and focus with every iteration, becoming less grounded as its core narrative is passed from elder to youth, community to community, genre to genre, until it becomes myth. (At least, my English major brain thinks it's more fun.) In fact there's actually something Arthurian to it, where at first King Arthur was mentioned in several Welsh legends before Geoffrey of Monmouth crafted an actual narrative around him, then Chrétien de Troyes added elements like Lancelot and infused the stories with more romance, and then with Le Morte d'Arthur Thomas Malory whipped the whole cycle together into one volume, which T.H. White would chop and screw and deconstruct with The Once and Future King centuries later.

All this to say: maybe Praetorian Jack looks and sounds and acts like Max because he sorta kinda basically is, being just one of many men driving back and forth across the wasteland, lending a hand on occasion, who'll be conflated into a single, legendary "Mad Max" at some point down the line in a different History Man's retelling of Furiosa's odyssey. Sometimes that Max rips across the desert in his V8 Interceptor, other times driving a big rig. Perhaps there's a dog tagging along and/or a scraggly and at first aggravating ally played by Bruce Spence or Nicholas Hoult. Usually he has a shotgun. But so long as you aren't trying to kill him, he'll help you out.

5. Beyond Vengeance

The Mad Max movies have incredibly iconic villains—Immortan Joe! Toecutter! the Lord Humongous!—but they are exactly that, capital V Villains devoid of humanizing qualities who you can't wait to watch bad things happen to. Furiosa appears to continue this trend by giving us a villain who in fact has a mustache long enough that he could reasonably twirl it if he so wanted, but ironically Dementus ends up being the most layered antagonist in the entire series, even moreso than the late Tina Turner's comparatively benevolent Aunty Entity from Beyond Thunderdome. And because he's played by Chris Hemsworth, whose comedic delivery rivals his stupidly handsome looks, you lock in every time he's on screen.

Something so fascinating about Dementus is that, for a main antagonist, he's NOT all-powerful, and in fact quite the opposite: he's more conman than warlord, looking for the next hustle, the next gullible crowd he can preach to and dupe—though never for long. For all his bluster, at every turn he finds himself in way over his head and writing cheques he can't cash, and this self-induced Sisyphean torment makes him riveting to watch. You're tempted to pity Dementus but it's also quite difficult to spare sympathy for someone who's so quick to channel their rage and hurt and ego into thoughtless, burn-it-all-down destruction. When you're not laughing at him, you're hating his guts, and it's indisputably the best work of Chris Hemsworth's career.

It's in this final chapter that everything naturally comes to a head: Furiosa's final evolution into the character we meet at the start of Fury Road, the predictable toppling of Dementus' precariously built house of cards, and the mythmaking that has been teased since the very first scene becoming diagetic text, the last of which allows the movie to thoroughly explore the themes of vengeance it's been building to. A brief war begins, is summarized and is over in the span of roughly a minute, and on its face it's a baffling narrative choice that most other filmmakers would have botched. But our man Miller's smart enough to recognize that the result of this war is the most foregone of conclusions if you've been paying even the slightest bit of attention, so he effectively brushes past it to get to the emotional heart of the climax and an incredible "Oh shit!" payoff that cements Miller as one of mainstream cinema's greatest sickos.

Fury Road remains the greatest Mad Max film, but Furiosa might be the best thing George Miller has ever made. If not his magnum opus, it does at least feel like his dissertation, and it makes me wish Warner Bros. puts enough trust in him despite Furiosa's poor box office performance that he's able to make The Wasteland. Absolutely ridiculous that a man just short of his 80th birthday was able to pull this off, and with it I feel confident calling him one of my favourite directors.

[leafpoo1]

Constellations: The Thematic Movie Sonadow song in my humblest opinion

Stars as a theme are ever present in Sonic 3 and as a lover of astrological symbolism you KNOW I gobbled it up like a last meal. Shadow literally coming from a falling star then having Maria's "the star shines even if it's gone" i'm so happy they committed to this as a motif. The gold of Sonic and Shadow's powered up forms as they fly through the sky like comets, and the fact that just like stars, Shadow and Sonic are quite possibly from galaxies away. Symbolism blah blah blah.

I will now elaborate on why for me, Constellations by the Oh Hellos is on theme with movie Sonadow's story and themes. I hope it's not as boring as it sounds lol I'm just very used to writing these things in a formal essay technique.

To start, the first sound of the song is this gentle guitar, it's very reminiscent of the guitar Maria plays in Shadow's introduction scene in the movie. It's simple, gentle, just like Shadow's life before the G.U.N. Raid. The main singer is our beloved Tyler Heath, with backings from his sister Maggie Heath. I like to think in this context, it's Shadow singing with Maria joining him in the back as a little voice of encouragement. Later, more voices are added to the harmony, and maybe I'm a sentimental bastard but to me it's the new people in Shadow's life (AHEM SONIC) that join in, all of it being a warm reminder that Shadow has a place in the world with those who love him, from the past and future ahead.

Okay lyric brainrot time, I'll try to format this in tandem with the song so that the pauses happen with each separate group of lyrics (Oh Hellos instrumentals are divine by the way). As of writing this post, I'm still pondering some of the lyrics connections but I will make updates if I discover new interpretations!

In general, Constellations is interpreted as a song about breaking past beliefs and the inner turmoil that can result from the cognitive dissonance. Sound familiar?

"I can feel it on my tongue; brick and mortar Thick as scripture, drawing lines in the sand and laying borders As tall as towers I babble on until my voice is gone"

The sensory feeling of something being on the tongue; Shadow is trying to speak but he's held back by his memories. Everything he remember is in the ashes of his once home, and in a bid of self preservation he builds the walls around himself. He knows how the world sees him from all the grief it's put him through in the past, so at least in his eyes, this is necessary to protect himself from future hurt.

"This hill I'll die on is about 90 meters of bricks Coloured indigo, and inscribed with my name, and lined with cedar But the words fall flat like Cymbals crashing, like molars gnashing"

From his despair Shadow plans to die underneath the weight of his own revenge and self isolation. But he still hesitates, as seen in his final conversation with Gerald Robotnik ( "is this what Maria would have wanted?"). His love for Maria, and knowing that she believed the best in him, prevent his anger from full reaching full intensity. In the end, the weights of Shadow's past become his newfound determination. To make right, and hopefully live the life Maria always wanted for him.

"'Cause like constellations a million years away Every good intention, every good intention Is interpolation, a line we drew in the array Looking for the faces, looking for the shapes in the silence"

For a good part of the movie, Shadow is confused of Maria's intentions for him after her death. Would she be angry with her perpetrators? Would she want Shadow to die in an attempt to make right? The only thing he is sure of is his love for his sister, and the love she gave back. It's the anchor point, where all his actions lead back to.

"All that's left for me to climb to the heavens is The chasm of the night and a matter of time But I hear the rumble as the tectonic plates start to shake And I feel my blood pounding like the beat of a drum"

Going a little bit backwards but I interpret this as the perspective of Shadow while still believing vengeance is the right option. He accepts he will die and maybe even see Maria beyond life, even if he has to resort to an unspeakable act (chasm of night). But Sonic is there as his equal not just in skill but past experiences. Sonic's understanding combined with Maria's compassion are what ultimately touch Shadow and shake him from the path of destruction.

"'Cause like constellations a million years away Every good intention, every good intention Is interpolation, a line we drew in the array Clinging to the faces, clinging to the shapes in the silence"

In your classic musical fashion, the chorus returns stronger than the last, and I think of it as Sonic adding his more vivacious energy with Shadow's new confidence in what is right to do. With new perspective, Sonic and Shadow have found their constellation, the key to it being embracing their shared past as a way forward.

"Like constellations imploding in the night Everything is turning, everything is turning And the shapes that you drew may change beneath a different light Everything you thought you knew will fall apart, but you'll be all right"

I LOVE THE MOON SCENE I LOVE IT SO MUCH. As Shadow and Sonic share their past with each other in a moment of vulnerability, the stars glimmer above watchfully. And like the ever changing constellations and systems, Shadow is able to change his perspective on his past. Shadow lost his home, his sister, and his old life. But, I like to imagine it's Sonic that says the last line to him with a hand outstretched. The stars are Sonic and Shadow, aliens from far away who found their light despite the seemingly endless darkness. The stars are reminders of Sonic and Shadow's old lives, which can now be cherished in their hearts as a warm glow, despite not being physically present anymore. And as the world turns to reveal the sun, Shadow's realization of his own heart is recognized as they are both bathed in a heavenly ray. ABSOLUTE CINEMA.

Whew I did that mostly in one sitting I hope it made sense. Maybe I'll do it again with my other playlist's songs it was fun! Please do share thoughts, feedbacks, addons, anything if you have it really! Anyway back to crying to my Sonadow Playlist.

Aformentioned Playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1aWnEadpn1rXQoX9d9JxUG?si=PWOt_v6DS7-E43HT9LgCxg

[clumsydolly]

Obey me x Deuce Spade!Reader Part 2!

3 Younger brothers!

Warnings!⚠️: mentions of gang violence

Thank you for the ask! Please send more I'm loving these! The last one will be coming up in the next post since this is sooooooo long!

Asmodeus

Asmodeus took one look at you — panting from sprinting to class, tie askew, shoes scuffed, one hand clutching a cracked RAD binder and the other waving wildly as you yelled, “SORRY I’M LATE, I WAS WRITING A PRACTICE ESSAY ABOUT ETHICS!!!” — and decided immediately:

You were precious.

Not just cute though the determined sparkle in your eye was kind of cute but precious, in the way a chaotic, loud, blushy, absolutely earnest soul was in a sea of too-cool demons and tired celestial beings.

“Ohhh, sweetheart,” Asmo cooed as you tripped over your chair leg and collapsed onto your desk. “Are you alright? Emotionally, spiritually, and fashionably?”

You groaned into your notebook. “I just want to be an honor student so my mom can brag about me to the neighbors…”

Asmo clapped his hands. “A family-focused, hardworking, slightly messy disaster?! You're just my type!...well even though I don't completely have one....but who cares!”

At first, you didn’t quite know how to handle Asmo. You were too busy obsessing over flashcards and trying not to cry in front of Lucifer after forgetting to label your potion diagram.

Asmo would flutter into your study sessions, interrupting with dramatic gasps every time you forgot to moisturize or skipped lunch. You’d be mid-breakdown over whether “demon hierarchy” was supposed to be capitalized and suddenly get slapped in the face with an under-eye patch.

“Darling, if you're going to have an academic crisis, at least do it with hydrated skin.”

You didn’t understand him this effortlessly fabulous, glittery chaos sprite who cared more about your self-care than your quiz scores. But slowly, Asmo became a constant in your journey.

He wasn’t a tutor. He wasn’t trying to teach you demon history or correct your grammar. What he did was show up with snacks, dance music, and a new lip gloss for “confidence enhancement.” He called them “beauty battle buffs.” You took the name seriously.

You once called him the “self-care paladin of the Devildom” and he teared up like you just gave him an award.

When you confessed how badly you wanted to succeed how your past mistakes haunted you, how people always seemed to think you’d fail, and how every “A” felt like proof you weren’t a screw-up anymore Asmo didn’t brush it off.

He didn’t make a joke or go soft with pity.

Instead, he said, “Honey, I know what it’s like to want to shine so brightly that no one can see your cracks. But trust me — the cracks are where the sparkle gets in.”

He hugged you so tight you forgot to panic.

After that, Asmo got invested.

He color-coded your notebooks for you. He set alarms on your D.D.D. so you’d take breaks. He threatened to report professors who gave unclear assignment instructions (Lucifer had to intervene more than once).

He also started doing “pop quizzes” on emotional regulation.

You’d be ranting about a dumb grade curve and he’d ask, “Okay, Y/n, on a scale from one to ‘I’m gonna throw hands,’ how mad are you, and how hydrated have you been today?”

You never knew if you wanted to cry or laugh. Usually both.

Asmo also taught you the art of the confidence selfie. Before every big test, you had to take a pic together you doing your best Serious Academic Face™, him holding a “You Got This, Baby!” glitter sign.

He put the best ones in a folder labeled “Y/n’s Hot Honor Student Glow-Up.”

He didn’t just hype you up. He saw you. The weird mix of rage, sweetness, awkward charm, and absolute loyalty that made up the very core of who you were.

One day, when you were so tired you fell asleep face-first on your workbook, Asmo pulled a blanket over you and whispered, “You’re already enough, you know. Grades or no grades.”

You grumbled in your sleep about thesis formatting.

He smiled. “And adorable.”

Of course, being Asmo, he also tried to use your academic success as an excuse to throw “Honor Student Celebrations” complete with party hats and choreographed dances. You drew the line at confetti cannons in the RAD library.

Mostly.

But every time you stumbled, every time you doubted yourself, Asmo was there reminding you that striving for growth didn’t mean hating who you were. That working hard didn’t mean punishing yourself for not being perfect. That even if you tripped on your own shoelaces and knocked over five desks in the middle of a lecture, you were still worthy of being seen. Loved. Celebrated.

“You don’t have to become someone else to be enough, Y/n,” he’d say. “You just have to see yourself the way I do brave, ridiculous, sparkling, and so, so good.”

And maybe, just maybe… you were starting to believe him.

____

Bonus

Y/n's mom took one look at Asmodeus and frowned.

"Why are your buttons undone."

"Because I'm fabulous, darling!"

"You're going to catch a cold."

Asmo shrieked.

Despite the rocky start, Asmodeus quickly became fascinated by how utterly immune she was to his charm. No blushing. No swooning. She just kept giving him disappointed PTA mom stares like he was a kid who failed math class.

But the kicker? She liked him.

"You're too much. But... you make my child laugh. So you're alright."

He gasped. That was the first time he felt seen. Like, actually Mom-approved seen.

From that point on, he asked her for skincare tips, and she asked him how to stop her aging app from blurring her eyebrows. It was a fair trade.

Beelzebub

You met Beelzebub the same way anyone meets Beel accidentally running into a wall of muscle and nearly bouncing off like a tennis ball.

“Oh—! I’m sorry! I wasn’t looking where I was going, I was trying to memorize chemical reactions while also carrying three textbooks and a meat pie for lunch because if I don’t eat I get dizzy but also I think I failed the last quiz and—!”

Beel stared down at you mid-ramble, blinking slowly, and then reached over to gently take two of the textbooks off your stack like it was no big deal.

“You should eat first,” he said with the sincerity of a priest delivering a holy commandment. “You can memorize later.”

You blinked up at him. “Oh. Um. Okay.”

And just like that, you earned a permanent seat next to Beel at lunch.

At first, it was a little intimidating. The guy looked like he could bench-press Cerberus, and the way he inhaled food was borderline alarming. But Beel never made you feel small or silly, even when you got flustered explaining how you were trying to be a “reliable, reformed, academically respectable model student.” In fact, Beel nodded like that was a totally normal thing to say between bites of demon lasagna.

You learned quickly that Beel didn’t speak much, but when he did, it mattered. When you were stressed and muttering about how your mom deserved a child who didn’t blow up their alchemy set three times in one semester, Beel just looked at you calmly and said:

“She’d probably just be proud you didn’t give up.”

You nearly choked on your sandwich.

From then on, it was like you became his academic gym buddy except instead of lifting weights, you were lifting yourself out of a C-average spiral and trying not to cry every time a professor reminded you that “intent isn’t the same as results.”

Beel was ridiculously supportive in his quiet way. He didn’t give motivational speeches or fuss over you like Asmo. He didn’t even fully understand some of the subjects you were studying. But he’d show up every time. With snacks. With patience. With that calm energy that made your racing thoughts feel less like a storm and more like a breeze.

When you wanted to scream over a bad grade? Beel just passed you a protein bar and waited. When you wanted to skip dinner because you had “so much work to do,” Beel picked you up like a potato sack and carried you to the kitchen.

“Can’t study if you pass out,” he said. You didn’t argue. Mostly because his biceps were terrifying.

You found out later that Beel did understand the pressure. He wanted to be reliable too for his brothers, for Belphie, for everyone. He knew what it was like to feel like you had to earn your place by always being good, always being strong, always being enough.

That’s when things shifted.

You started packing extra food in your lunch for him little things you made yourself, sometimes a little burnt, sometimes overly seasoned, but always made with care. Beel ate them all. Every single time.

You started walking home with him after class, talking about everything and nothing. You’d vent about an upcoming test, then ask him what his favorite dessert was. (Answer: all of them.)

Beel never teased you for being awkward, or loud, or getting too passionate about demon law reform. He liked it when you got excited. Said it made you “look like the food was finally ready.”

The first time you accidentally fell asleep on him during a study break, he just adjusted his position so you didn’t drool on his jacket.

“You’re trying really hard,” he murmured to your sleeping form. “I see it.”

You never heard him say it, but when you woke up, there was a perfectly wrapped sandwich in your hand with a sticky note that read “Eat this or I’ll be sad :(."

After that, you stopped trying to be perfect.

Not completely. You still studied like your life depended on it. You still panicked before tests. You still wrote practice essays titled things like “How Not to Be a Disappointment: A 10-Step Plan.”

But you also ate lunch. Took breaks. Laughed more. Tripped a little less over your own expectations.

Because now, you had Beel.

He didn’t just carry your books. He carried your guilt, your doubts, your need to prove yourself. Quietly. Steadily. Like it was no big deal.

And when you got your first A in Demon Ethics, you ran down the hall yelling “I DID IT!” at full volume.

Beel met you halfway. Lifted you into the air with one arm like you weighed nothing, grinning from ear to ear.

“I knew you would,” he said.

Then he ate your congratulatory cupcake in one bite.

You didn’t even mind.

_____

Bonus

Y/n's mom handed Beel a tupperware container the moment he walked in.

"You look hungry. Eat this."

It was over. Beel was in love. Not romantically, just... emotionally. Spiritually. Cosmically.

She cooked like a legend and scolded him like a son. Beel spent exactly four minutes trying to be polite before giving in and eating an entire pot of stew.

"He eats like your uncle."

"You said I don’t have an uncle, you're an only child."

"Exactly."

He tried to offer to help clean, but she waved him off.

"Just keep protecting my baby. And try not to eat anything cursed, please."

Beel nodded solemnly, a meatball hanging from his mouth.

Belphegor

Meeting Belphegor was not your most graceful moment.

You had just spent three straight nights trying to memorize every demon law amendment from the last three centuries because “I will make honor roll this semester or die trying,” and promptly passed out on the stairs in the House of Lamentation.

You woke up to a face about an inch from yours, staring at you like you'd just rolled into his nap zone uninvited.

“…Did you die?”

“Not yet.”

“Lame.”

And just like that, Belphegor decided you were tolerable.

Well tolerable in the way you were a little weird, a little too upright for your own good, and carried the air of someone trying way too hard not to mess up. That amused him. You were like a tiny, chaotic wind-up honor student that occasionally exploded into panic. Very entertaining. Very loud. Very dramatic.

“I have to pass this next exam or my mother is going to vaporize me with a single glare.”

“...Sounds fake.”

“It’s not! Her eye twitches before she kills.”

“...."

"...."

"Okay you're right she's super supportive, but I still wanna make her proud!"

Despite his love for naps and general hatred of effort, Belphie found himself weirdly drawn to your energy. You were constantly flinging yourself into responsibilities and tripping over your own motivation, like a demon-slaying Roomba.

You, on the other hand, had no idea how to handle Belphie.

You’d walk into the attic to grab some old textbooks and he’d be draped across the floor like laundry left out to dry.

“You’ve been asleep for eight hours.”

“Wrong. I woke up after five. Then I watched you panic over your essay for two hours. Then I fell back asleep.”

“…You watched me??”

“Yeah. Your hair fluffed out like a murder bird. It was cute.”

Cute.

You nearly passed away on the spot.

But somewhere between your seventh panic attack over “not being smart enough” and Belphie telling you to “just set the library on fire and start fresh,” a weird friendship settled in.

He’d appear in the library, half-awake, tossing a pillow at your head before you could spiral.

“Don’t even start. You already know you’re trying too hard. Take a nap. You’ll be less annoying after.”

You’d complain. Loudly. You’d say things like “But if I sleep now, I’ll dream of my GPA crumbling like stale cookies.” But you’d still curl up beside him anyway, mumbling formulas into his shoulder until you passed out.

Belphie was surprisingly patient with your goals. He didn’t get why you were killing yourself trying to be the perfect student but he respected it. Sort of. In a “you’re insane but also determined and I guess that’s hot” kind of way.

What really confused him was how easily you admitted to your mistakes.

“I used to be kind of awful. Got into fights. Broke stuff. Screamed at vending machines. I’m trying to be better now.”

Belphie blinked at you. “You… admit that?”

“Why lie about it? I was dumb. Now I’m just medium-dumb with better habits.”

He laughed so hard he snorted.

It was the honesty, maybe. You didn’t pretend to be perfect. You weren’t afraid to be the punchline if it meant making someone laugh. And you didn’t treat Belphie like a landmine you just… existed around him. Even when you knew what he’d done in the past.

“I used to… hurt people,” he muttered once, during one of your library naps. “I’m not always someone worth trusting.”

You peeked open one eye.

“Well, I’m not always someone worth betting on, but here we are.”

That was the thing. You never asked him to change. You didn’t ask him to apologize for his past a thousand times. You just kept being there a hurricane of ambition and accidental vulnerability wrapped in a tie that was always a little crooked.

And Belphie?

He kept showing up, too.

He’d bring you snacks from Beel when you forgot to eat. He’d yank your pen out of your hand when you hit your fourth hour of overthinking an essay. He even started letting you win at pillow fights (though he’d never admit it).

When you finally passed that brutal demon history exam with a high score, you came running into the attic yelling like you’d just discovered fire.

“I DID IT, BELPH! I PASSED! I—”

You tripped on a pile of blankets and face-planted next to his mattress.

“…Congrats,” he said, not even looking up. “Now shut up and nap. You earned it.”

So you did.

And for once, your dreams weren’t about grades or failure or your mom sighing over your report card. They were quiet. Warm. Calm.

Like you’d finally found someone who didn’t care whether you were a delinquent turned honor student or just an exhausted mess.

To him, you were enough either way.

_____

Bonus

The showdown between Belphie and Y/n's mom was...tense.

He tried to sleep on the couch the second he got there. She hit him with a rolled-up newspaper.

"Get your feet off the cushions."

"...I see the resemblance now," he muttered, rubbing his forehead.

But oddly enough, she liked him. He didn't talk much, didn’t fake anything, and most importantly, didn’t try to sweet-talk his way out of accountability. She respected that.

She even gave him a weighted blanket before bed.

"You need it more than you know."

He stared at her, half-asleep.

"I get why Y/n turned out okay now. You’re terrifying."

"And you're welcome."

They both understood each other on a deeply passive-aggressive level. It worked.

Thank you for reading!! I will have the last part out soon! Please send more asks as usual Reblogs are encouraged and appreciated! 🩷

[stitched-mouth-vs-the-world]

Just For Research

Pairing: Professor! Rick Sanchez x College Student! GN! Reader.

Summary: When Rick discovers his top student is a virgin, he knows he must change that so she can write her paper on human pheromones.

Warnings: Smut, Intercourse (P in ?), Virginity Loss, Teacher x Student relationship, Age Gap, Virgin! Reader.

Writing Time: 30 minutes.

Word Count: 652.

Format: Kinktober Fic, Day 7.

A/N:

Woke up in the middle of the night and decided to just write this. Sorry for any mistakes, this is not proofread. I'm just really trying to make sure everything is written before October arrives so the quality is some fics might be lacking a little, this might be one of them. This is probably my shortest fic so far. Oh well.I also have completely forgotten what it was like in college. I did about 3 months of Combined Science in the UK before I dropped out for an apprenticeship instead and I don't remember anything about those 3 months. So this could be all completely wrong but tbh I really don't care.I tried really hard to keep it GN, which is getting harder and harder for me due to the lack of gender neutral terms in the English language but I'll keep managing.Hope you enjoy, I've been eager to write something for Rick for ages now.

Here is the masterlist for all my Kinktober works.

---///---

Thoughts were swarming your head, making it almost impossible to think about what was currently happening.

'How did this happen?' You thought, 'This couldn't of been an accident, but how then did it happen?'

You let out a torn scream, but Rick was fast to cover your mouth and silence it.

"Shut up little Whore, or the whole building will hear you." He huffed.

Just a second ago you and Rick was discussing your college assignment. Your assignment was to write an essay about the human and animal pheromones that tell them to breed and compare the two. Something fairly basic for a Combined Science class and as the class's top student, Rick expected this assignment to be a breeze for you.

But he had been wrong. For a top student with a bright future in Science, you had no idea about pheromones. Especially the sexual kind. It was the one thing you hadn't studied yourself in your own time nor had you experienced it.

You had come to Rick after class to hopefully explain the subject better for you or give you good resources to look up but once Rick found out you was a virgin, what you got instead was a private lessons on pheromones that included an experimental or practical that would give you the experience.

So now you were bent over his desk taking all of him like the good little one you was.

"Please..." You whimpered, tired and stretched out to the max. It had only been a few minutes but this was completely new to a virgin.

"Please what, Whore?" Rick glared down at you, still thrusting in and out of you at an ungodly pace.

Rick didn't think this was exactly the best way to show someone who had never experienced sexual feelings what they were like, but to be honest, he didn't care. He was just looking for a reason to fuck you. His prettiest most innocent and intelligent little Princess/Prince who always sat in the front row, listening to him with wide ears.

But this had been a good lesson for you. Your sexual desire and need for Professor Sanchez now more than alive, it was insatiable.

"Please more Sir!" You cried.

Rick was a little shocked, but more than happy to oblige. And quickly increased his speed, you looked down and moaned into the once clean desk.

"Yeah? You like this cock? You want more of it, my little cocksleeve?" Rick groaned into your ears.

"Yes!" You nodded eagerly.

Obviously, you came first. You did so with a scream and giant smile. Rick came not too long after you onto your back, with just a few loud grunt.

You was pretty confident now you was gonna Ace this assignment.

[tlbodine]

T.L. Bodine's Zine Club

Wouldn't it be cool to have something to look forward to in the mail every month?

I thought so, too.

We're living in a world that is increasingly trying to replace human labor, human art, even human thought. And as everything around us becomes more and more inundated with AI slop and algorithmically generated bullshit and sanitized corporatized messaging, I've found myself increasingly interested in creating something real.

So, to that end, I am now offering zines as a Patreon reward.

All zines are written, designed, printed, folded, stuffed into envelopes, and mailed by me.

Contents may include:

Original short fiction

Nonfiction/essays/deep dives

Writing advice and instruction

Interactive elements like journaling prompts

Art, collage, photography, and so forth

Bonus notes, stickers, errata, and other lil bits and bobs I find

Anticipate that they'll be horror-flavored.

I'm still new to zine-making, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with different formats and techniques. I'm looking forward to practicing art and collage and multimedia. I can't guarantee glossy perfection with every issue, but I will always deliver something unique that you won't find in any of my online materials.

Subscribe for $5 on my Patreon. I'll also sell the files so you can print them at home if you'd rather buy them as one-offs.

The first zine will be sent in early July, so subscribe now so you don't miss it :)

[orangeearlgrey]

A Story Made True: A Mini Essay on Reading and Storytelling in Black Butler

Black Butler is, in itself, a story about people who are telling stories about themselves, either to keep up a charade in public or to get themselves through the day. However, an interesting idea that Black Butler constantly works through is whether you can make the stories about yourself true. All of the residents of Phantomhive manor are, sure, playing at being an Earl and an Earl's servants, but through both sheer force of will and action they kind of are, at the end of the day, what they claim to be. One way that Black Butler explores this idea is through the lens of Ciel being a massive fan of reading and stories.

Historical Context of "Bad Reading" and Literacy in the Victorian Era

The Victorian Era saw a massive rise in both the literacy rate and in the rate of publishing both newspapers and serialized novels. The former is important to Black Butler because it cracked open the possibility of more tabloid leaning newspapers to sensationalize and build up their own narratives to what we'd now refer to as true crime, the best example of this and the one, again, most relevant to Black Butler being the way the newspapers heightened the Jack the Ripper murders. (An excellent source on this is Lucy Worsley's episode of Lucy Worsley investigates on Jack the Ripper- it gives a really interesting account of the newspaper industry at the time.)

Novel reading is important to this exploration of Black Butler too in that while novels were being read and printed more than had ever been seen previously, there were still lingering attitudes from the early 19th century's conception of novel reading. When the novel was a new form of literature around the turn of the century, it was viewed by many as a dangerous and sensationalized form of literature that would lead its readers- especially female ones- to believe the stories in novels were true and try to emulate them in their real lives. (Many good nonfiction sources on this I don't feel like linking bc this is a summary of a lot a lot of graduate work I did on this subject and I'm just writing this for some fun consideration, but a fictional source that handles this I'm sure a lot of you are at least familiar with is Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.) So in many cases, while the types of published novels in the Victorian Era started to expand out of the purely educational sort of fiction, there was still kind of the prevailing attitude that at the end of the day reading should be improving you socially and morally and that "good" readers weren't taking sensationalized ideas from fiction and trying to unrealistically trying to apply them to their socially regimented lives.

How This (Kind of) Applies to Ciel as a Reader:

Ciel is an interesting case because he kind of counts as one of those "bad" readers. Which isn't to say that *all* of Ciel's issues and/or characterization stem from his reading habits but there is a certain fairy tale quality to the life he has chosen for himself.

He does what he wants, he gets from Sebastian everything he wants, he names his baby after a book character and imagines him in the character's likeness, effectively making Finny feel like he can be whoever he wants too if he emulates and draws inspiration from that character.

In another vein, Ciel is supposed to like mysteries and he's fashioned himself into a detective of sorts like The fictional detective originated in the Victorian Era- Sherlock Holmes. (Although per the Book of Murder arc, in this universe Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hadn't made the full leap into detective fiction yet, but more on that in a bit.)

Why the Anime's Old 'Book of-' Titles Matter and How Ciel in Wonderland Recontextualizes Ciel as a Character

When the Black Butler anime returned in 2014, this time with the intention of following the manga more closely than before, the Circus arc was accompanied with the title Book of Circus. This title format was applied to the next two arcs, respectively Book of Murder and Book of the Atlantic. Putting this specification on the title specifically orients the viewer to the idea that this is just a story we are being told. (And not in a duh this is fictional kind of way.) See also the way the most recent anime season framed Sebastian's words here as a 'dull end to our story'.

Going back in time a little bit, the season 2 OVA Ciel in Wonderland is perfectly representative of several of the points I am attempting here. Not only does this three episode arc place Ciel explicitly as a well known book character, it also very interestingly and indicatively shows that when Ciel has lost his way here (per the death and memory loss) his first unconscious instinct is to place himself in the shoes of a familiar character. Through following Alice's (almost) exact footsteps, Ciel is able to find his way back to himself again which circles back to my point about emulating novels and using them as a form of self identification. Reading here, for Ciel, represents not only finding solace in stories (Sebastian is literally reading the book to him like a bedtime story in the end, like it's something that's a part of their everyday life.) but also, pretty significantly, represents Ciel making himself Ciel Phantomhive through fiction.

Also interestingly this edition of Alice from around the time Black Butler takes place depicts Alice explicitly as a reader. (And one of the books I did for my graduate research had such an interesting chapter on Alice being an example of a "bad" overimaginative reader and I am currently having trouble finding it without access to my old school account so if I find it I will drop the title here eventually even if this post is more for fandom fun anyways and not necessarily I am publishing this thing without citing that person etc.) (Something else I would like to link here too when I find it again is one of the radio interviews Daisuke Ono and Maaya Sakamoto did for the Public School Arc last summer where Maaya said that during the filming of the first few Black Butler seasons she'd always be off by herself reading a book and that's so Ciel of her that I know that was somewhere in her portrayal of him.)

Conclusion

I don't know if this is something a lot of the fandom on here would care to read especially since it's so niche to my own extensive research but I did feel like writing something like this for a while now and it was fun to write an essay kind of thing I wouldn't be getting graded on regardless of how many notes it gets dhdjf. I am planning on revisiting the Blue Memory arc and writing a post like this about how the stuff I wrote about here kind of portends to Ciel's version of events, the fact that the Undertaker is literally producing people with false stories about themselves in their heads, and what this all may mean for the end of the story. But this will take a little bit- I have even had this in my drafts for weeks.

[3liza]

Do you write? Where can I read something you wrote? :)

I'm really bad at updating my CV so I'm forgetting a lot of stuff but I wrote for most of the main "gaming news and journalism" websites during the 2000s and also worked on Unhallowed Metropolis the TTRPG in a bunch of roles, including a chapter in the soucebook. one of the more recent ones was Headcase which was an anthology by Oxford Press, which was an honor, i think it was about queer mental health? also my book Problem Glyphs has an essay in it, that's sold by Strix (publisher). I had some stuff in Thick As Thieves in Seattle that I was proud of but fuck that paper it was run by a psychopath. uhhhh I unfortunately started a short fiction series with Warren Ellis way before all the reports about him came out, called Deep Map Pilots, I think some of that is on this blog and searchable. Cafe Racer Anthology about Dune called Dune, I'm not sure if it's searchable or purchasable. I was in Lightspeed Magazine's special issue (or maybe it was another anthology) called Queers Destroy Science Fiction. Short story in Conclave Journal's 2010 or 2011 issue.

i'm a shit promoter of my writing honestly it's not really something I have been actively pursuing recently because it pays peanuts and I just haven't felt like writing as much as pursuing other stuff. i really only publish when someone asks me specifically or contacts my business manager lol. I've been thinking about trying to find a publisher for a poetry chapbook I've already completed and formatted but the poetry market is...well it's exactly what you would expect. borderline impossible to publish, much less sell, unless you have some sort of brand name going in, which I do not, at least in a way that would help sell poetry.

i started a short story I really liked based on the Clarksworld published list of "most common words used in titles of stories submitted to Clarksworld Magazine" more as a joke than anything but I've been thinking about cleaning it up and submitting it. it was kind of an exercise in "how do I take these extremely worn out title words and do something I think is fresh with them" and sort of as a little joke to submit to them. i think it's probably something they would maybe consider printing if the issue was right for it, I'm not sure though.

[thankskenpenders]

And now for something new

So, here's something I was never planning on doing, but I just couldn't shake the idea... Thanks Ken Penders is gaining a sister blog featuring an entirely different comic franchise!

Introducing... Thanks Steve Ditko, a blog where I read the Earth-616 Spider-Man comics, starting all the way back in the '60s! It's gonna be much more casual and less thorough than how I run things here on TKP, though, which I'll explain in a sec.

If seeing me post weird bits from old Spider-Man comics sounds fun and you need no further info, then just head right on over to Thanks Steve Ditko. But for longtime TKP readers, I know you probably have questions...

Number one: Why?

Spider-Man's always been my favorite superhero, and with the Spider-Verse movies kicking ass and my excitement building for the new Insomniac game, I've been in a Spidey mood. Inevitably, a thought occurred to me: Maybe I should actually read the comics that everything else is built off of and see the wildly varying contributions of all the original creators, rather than filtering them through big budget adaptations. If I can power through One Piece and all these other manga with hundreds of chapters, it can't be that hard... right?

And, well, after a few issues I quickly realized that my options were to either clog up my other accounts with random Spider-Man panels for years, or to just make a side blog. And so the side blog was born.

Two: Will this blog replace Thanks Ken Penders?

NO!!!!!!!!!

Okay but prove it

To allow the two to exist side-by-side, Thanks Steve Ditko will have a different format than what Thanks Ken Penders developed. Rather than an in-depth guided tour that critically analyzes every story beat of every issue, TSD will just be a place for amusing panels and brief thoughts as I casually read the comics at my own pace.

If you've seen me make a few tweets about reading Spider-Man recently, I'm basically just moving that to a dedicated Tumblr. It's a place for me to dump these things so that it doesn't fill up my media tab on Twitter for the next decade. (You know, assuming Twitter is still around in a decade.) There will be many issues where I only post two panels that I thought were funny. There will be issues where I don't have anything to say at all. Maybe I'll reach a run that I just cannot get into, and I start skipping around more. Who knows!

This may sound similar to what I thought this blog would be before it blew up. Aside from the simple fact that there's already mountains of Spider-Man commentary out there and therefore less of a void for me to fill, one of the main steps I'll be taking to avoid repeating the past is not enabling an ask box on TSD. I do not need people to ask me to go into ten times more detail on everything. I do not need to write seven essay-length responses to questions about Spider-Man minutiae every day. I do not need a place for people to chide me for not covering certain scenes, issues, or ancillary series.

It also won't have any kind of update schedule. I'm trying to keep it very casual. I'm reading these comics at my own pace, and if I feel like sharing a moment or commenting on something while doing so? It goes there. That's it.

(On the subject of format changes, I'm also listing the issue, writer, and penciller in the body of every post. This is a thing I wish I'd done on TKP so that people didn't misattribute every weird Archie Sonic panel I post to Penders.)

Three: So when will TKP come back from hiatus? You said it'd come back after you finished SLARPG!

I don't know! Sorry. I have a couple things on the backburner right now for TKP, but I'm not sure when I'll get back to proper updates where I read more comics.

I wanted to bring TKP back this year, and that's still possible. The main hurdle is that I want to reread my own archive (again) as a refresher, which is, uh. A lot of posts. I've developed a high standard for myself on here, and I feel like I wouldn't be doing my job right if I forgot half the ongoing subplots and character arcs and didn't bring them up in my analysis. Especially when I'm discussing the work of an author as obsessed with continuity as Ian Flynn. Unfortunately, the nature of this blog means that every time I go on another long hiatus for Life Reasons I have even more comic continuity to catch up on than last time.

(This is a big part of why I'm making Thanks Steve Ditko an extremely casual blog instead of promising to become a Lore Expert on 60+ years of Marvel.)

Mostly I've just been very burnt out this year after having finally finished a video game that took almost eight years to make. I haven't really had the energy for any creative projects, including TKP. But I feel a little bit of a spark here with Spider-Man, so I'm chasing that feeling to try to get back into the swing of blogging about comics - no pun intended.

So, basically, bear with me on this as I start this low-energy side project. But hopefully folks will enjoy Thanks Steve Ditko as its own thing, too.

Look forward to goofy shit like this

[angelpassing-by]

THE FASTEST WAY IS SELDOM THE BEST

After an attempt, you try to comfort your lover and look through his recovery. Pairing: Tighnari x gn!reader Cw: impplied suicide attempt. A/N: I had some wips about character conforting reader, but none of them seemed good enough to post. I know this is a weird format, but though it would be comforting to read how you comfort someone. Again, English is not my firt language and I'm afraid I sound a bit too formal [it would be great if you had some tips in how to write not so robotically/essay like(?)]. If there is something you would like for me to write, message me, maybe I'll post some sort of guide lines to show what is it that I'm willing to write.

“I wanted to escape, maybe forever.”

Tighnari lies on the simple bed, head thrown against the embroidered pillows. His face – bronzed before – is pale and stained with tears, eyes lost in the ceiling of the room thinly veiled by the smoke of incense burning.

“I understand it, really” You respond trying to keep your voice even, but your lover says nothing, as if he can't believe you. You gently take is hand between your own and rub soothing circles on top of it with your thumb. “I know sometimes life becomes too daunting and the easiest way out seems to be the light at the end of the tunnel.” You whisper

Now he’s looking at you, his eyes glimmering with new pools of tears that threaten to spill into the blankets. “But you told me once that the fastest method is seldom the answer.” Tighnari chuckles, only a raspy sound that seems like a pained groan, but you can see the slight twitch in his ears and the way his frame sinks a little bit more into the mattress, as if more relaxed.

You begin then to reminisce of that particular day leaning against the bed frame and using one hand to caress your lover’s hair. Your voice is barely audible in the clutered room.

“It had been a quite long day, you were on duty and had proposed for me to join you – you didn't wanted me to be alone – and I was jumping from rock to rock in the edge of the path leading home. Do you remember?” A faint nod “For hours you had talked about the flowers and the little forest animas we encountered with such fondness it almost made me jealous” The corners of his mouth curve ever so slightly “You didn’t let me take some roses; said it would be a disaster to the ecosystem. And right there, just in the front of the village, in the middle of the path, lied a beautiful bird feather, it’s blue hues made it look like some sort of treasure or spirit buried beneath the damp dirt. I ran for it, carelessly, anticipating an impressive monologue about birds from you, but I ran too fast and the feather was too light”

“I remember, his hoarse voice cuts through the story” and through the tiredness, he smiles relieved.

“Yes” now you are also smiling sadly and you fingers keep brushing his hair with slow deliberate motions. “I ran too fast, and the feather flew out and into the bridge and as I chased it, it fell below the wooden structure. That’s when you caught up to me and told me .”

How could you not see it? It was so obvious, his tired movements, his longing stares at night, sitting in front of the bedroom window and sighing pitifully. You should have done something. That is what you repeat to yourself everyday sinc the incident happened, still convinced you could have done something to prevent it, although your lover has already told you that tha isn't a burden for you to carry. And obviously, everything seems so crystal clear in retrospective.

"We can't change the past, so holding grudges against it is simply futile." Those are words of wisdom from Tighnari on a rainy afternoon.

Tighnari is sitting outside on a kitchen chair propped on  some velvety green pillows that keep his weak body comfortably leaned into the firm wood. He has changed his usual ranger clothes for some flowy linen garments  and a blanket sent by Candace after the news reached Ardu Village is draped over his knees. It’s woven with a variety of reds and browns and depicts a forest scene populated by shadowy dusk birds and half hidden lizards.

After Collei left, settling in a quaint town in the proximities of Sumeru city, the cabin had fallen silent. Tighnari started to space out his lectures in wildlife and botanic, often preferring the warm seat next to the fire where you cooked. At first, everyone just thought of it as a domestic situation, both of you had even started thinking about children during the months prior to Collei’s departure, just a loving couple wanting to be together. But then he slowly started missing patrols; it was at some point commonplace to see Iraj and Nasring on your living room trying to convince your lover to leave the house and help them in their duties.

You should have known, but you were also going through a lot. Your cooking supplied the forest rangers and watchers and your stock of ointments and pomades were highly sought after by the townsfolk. With little to no time to spend with Tighnari, your living arrangement and relationship deteriorated with each passing day. It also didn’t help that Cyno stopped visiting Gandharva Ville after a while and that his letters, frequent and light hearted before, became rare occurrences with little more than bad news.

But now, Tighnari stretches carefully and happily looks at you at the other side of the kitchen window through his lashes. The sun is making him more optimistic, at least, that’s what he tells you at night, just before you both fall asleep in each other’s arms. Maybe it’s also the overexcited rambles that Collei sends through her letters or the short Genious  Invokation duels with Cyno during his recurring visits.

It has been well over a month, Tighnari is sitting, still too weak to stand for long periods of time, next to the stove. His soothing voice filling the inside of the home with vibrant colors of the rainforest through his tales. The counters are filled with  spice bowls and chopped vegetables whose stories Tighnari never forgets to tell you about. You place a steaming spoon of soup in front of his face.

“Do you like it?” You ask as you watch you lover frowning in a comically exaggerated thinking pose.

“It’s magnificent, love” He responds after a dramatic pause. His sweet words caress your skin and you can’t help but place a big kiss on his forehead, on then one over his nose. “Hey!” he playfully reprimands you, but you can see through the corner of your eye the wagging of his tail.

[liveandletrain]

Commenting on Fanfiction and Conflicting Concepts of Fandom

I've been trying to figure out how to word this for months, because it has been on my mind for awhile. I finally decided to just go ahead and give it a shot.

I think there is this concept of "comments as payment" that is leading to the idea of "comments as an obligation" that makes it actually, much harder to leave comments.

And I think its related to the sort of commercialization of fandom that we've been seeing happen.To explain, i'm going to use myself as an example, because I work better with examples and stories than with essays. (It's why I write more fanfiction than meta)

When I share a fanfiction, it is not because I am "making content" or even looking for an audience or anything like that. It's my way of contributing to the conversation.

Fandom is, at its core, all of us being Unwell about our favorite stories and characters and settings and little made up people. When you watch a show and have Thoughts about your blorbos, you might draw art to show it and explain it. You might scream to your friends. Or you might write fanfiction about it.

Fanfiction is my preferred medium of blorbo conversation because it allows me the space to really and truly show all the complicated interwoven fictional relationships that have given me Feelings TM. I am not writing fanfiction because I want to put it up on a pedestal for people to look at, I am writing fanfiction because its me participating in the ongoing conversations in the fandom community, or inviting others to enter into a new conversation about it.

When I hope for comments on my work, I'm not hoping for accolades or congratulations (though those are nice, I am only human after all) I'm hoping that someone read what I wrote and had things to say about it. And that they will say those things to me so that I can respond.

If you go back on my AO3 account five, six, ten years, you will find some comment sections that are literally unreadable because when you have enough entries in a thread the formatting means the comment box is exactly one character wide. Because the fics themselves were only a jumping off point, or a continuation of, a larger conversation. And it was definitely not the end of it.

[bunni-v1]

Scrolling through my wips trying to figure out what anything is because I don't fucking title my shit like genuinely what is wrong with me. Anyway, I have several smut things that I'm going to work on independently, but do expect some twst headcannons and some cookierun stuff here soon.

Cookierun stuff will be answered in a more short-form format, but I do have a few requests sitting here that I intend to take more time on (they've been sitting in my inbox for so long, specifically because I wanted to make sure I could dedicate a lot of time to them!!)

I also will probably start working on Hugo stuff, I've purposely held off because I wanted to see more of the story before taking on what seems to be a deeply complex character like him. Since the new update comes out tomorrow, I will likely play it sometime this week and then start his requests here shortly.

On top of all of that, though, please keep in mind that I have opened commissions and I try to set a two-week completion deadline for those (for myself ofc). I have one which has already been paid for, and two I am currently discussing with requesters, so those will take priority because I am being paid for them. I also have an essay for an internship due by the middle of May, and classes obviously have homework and studying. I am determined to keep writing, though, so do keep up with me and have faith in your humble horny rabbit.

Love ya! Mwah!

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Do you have any recommendations on Dr. Who books/audio format things? I haven't watched the show in a bit because Moffat wasn't my thing and I can't seem to find the old stuff. (If you have any advice on where to find that too I would be very grateful) Following your blog has been a nice reminder of why I liked the show so much. Hope you have a good day!

Aw thank you! Depending on your location, you can find classic who episodes either on BBC iPlayer or Tubi (with ads).

As for books/audios, I'll try to keep this brief as I could write an essay on this.

For books, my favorite author is Kate Orman. Orman writes wonderfully, and my personal favorite is The Year of the Intelligent Tigers. I also really liked Goth Opera, Camera Obscure, History 101, Autumn Mist, Lungbarrow, Divided Loyalties, Somewhere Never etc etc etc etc (so many more but I'm forcing myself to stop here). You can often find free versions of basically every novel (at least all I've looked for) on the internet either as pdfs or epubs or whatever. The Internet Archive is particularly useful. Some examples:

And now for the audios! I personally have sold my soul to Big Finish. I have literally hundreds of recommendations. They do have some audios for free, such as those that came from the Paul Spragg Memorial Competition. You can also find a lot of them (up until Zagreus I think) for free on Spotify. There is also almost always a killer sale going on on the website on top of that too.

As for my recommendations, it's pretty dependent on what Doctor or companion you want to listen to. They even have series centered on UNIT, Romana's Gallifrey, Benny Summerfield, and a ton of other things (including a Masterful special that just had a bunch of Masters fucking around and finding out). I'll put in some of my favorites, one for each Doctor, from what I own (which is far from everything, but I do my best).

One: The Sontarans. It was the first time the Doctor had ever encountered the Sontarans, so he was unfamiliar with them. It takes place during Dalek Master Plan, so Steven and Sara are there.

Two: Lords of the Red Planet! It's a good Ice Warrior origin story and has Jamie and Zoe in it. :)

Three: Terror of the Master. I had pre-ordered it as soon as I heard about it. Three....Delgado Master....what more do you want from an audio? It's narrated by Jon Culshaw.

Four: The Wrath of the Iceni. It was a brilliant historical with Four and Leela and Boudica. Leela gets quite a lesson in this one, first being mad at Four for not helping Boudica and then at Boudica for being cruel.

Okay now we are getting into my favorite Doctors (5-8), so these decisions are going to get difficult.

Five: The Kingmaker! Shakespeare spikes Five's drink to get him absolutely wasted to sneak on the TARDIS, the TARDIS gets hiccups as a result, leading to Peri and Erimem being separated from the Doctor. Shenanigans ensue.

Six: Doctor Who and the Pirates. Six and Evelyn have a really meaningful discussion with one of her depressed students. The third part is a musical!

Seven: The Shadow of the Scourge. Benny Ace and Seven against 8th dimensional eldritch abominations. Seven gets turned into one of these insectoids, and body horror ensues.

Eight: Oh dear I can't choose. At the moment, probably the Great War from Dark Eyes 1. Eight meets Molly and is still grieving here. He is very much doomed by the narrative.

War: The Neverwhen. Lots of the War Doctor is good if you like Time War horror, but this one has a lot of time-as-a-weapon and is well written.

Nine: Battle Scars. A nice short story about that one family Nine saved from the Titanic mentioned in the episode Rose. Has a really fantastic girl in it and a Nine dripping in PTSD.

Ten: The Time Reaver. Ten and Donna! There's this gun that basically slows down time for a single person, so that a few minutes for everyone else is centuries for them. Ten is a self sacrificing dope.

Eleven: The Geronimo boxset is the best in my opinion, but I haven't been able to listen to many of these yet.

Twelve: Another one I haven't managed to buy a lot of yet, but Dead Media is amazing. It's written to sound like a podcast with adverts and everything and is set during his time at St. Luke's. And I cried at the end.

Anyway, I'll shut up now. This was so much fun! Thank you!

[creacherkeeper]

is the class you’re teaching this semester the same as last semester?

nope, different classes!!

the last three semesters i've taught composition 1 (basic writing for new college students). this semester i'm teaching advanced composition, which is a junior level (3rd year) class. im really honored because only one person gets to teach it a semester and its usually a phd or faculty member (im still masters)

but with advanced composition we basically get to do ... whatever we want? as long as its a topic in advanced writing. theres no required units like in comp 1, theres no specifics that go into the class structure. i got to go ham

so my class theme is "interactive text and multimodality"

first unit is interactive text, so were looking at interactive fiction, interactive essays, and one ttrpg ("LOGAN: an autobiographical tabletop game" by @breathing-stories). for their big unit project, they can do twine, bitsy, or a ttrpg project for their essay

second unit is zines. were looking at a couple of indie zines and one big one that was very professionally put together. were gonna do collage work in class and also do one sheet mini zines. then my students are doing a "research zine" where they research a topic and instead of a research essay theyre making it into an 8 page zine

third unit is presentations. were looking at a ted talk, and animated short, and a youtube video essay. im having them give a 3 minute persuasive presentation on why we should get into the media they really like. and then they get to give a longer presentation in a format of their choice (poster board, powerpoint, video essay) on a topic they care about

the writing topics were exploring throughout the class are exigency, writing for the public vs wtiting for a discourse community, and multimodality

then our final unit is a 3 week workshop on a large project based on something from the writing journals they keep throughout the semester. theyre taking something theyve written about and are making it into a large multimodal project

im also trying a new grading method this semester so fingers crossed!!

so far im really enjoying the class and i have a great batch of students. idk if you intended for this infodump but here ya go :)

[a-land-lacking-sleep]

Sam's Massive WIP Update 2025 (or rather, what to hopefully expect)

I didn't get a lot posted last year to AO3 or Tumblr, and I want to try and fix that this year. In that vein, I wanted to share a bunch of WIPs that I plan to post (and will hopefully actually post)! Each will have a little blurb to it, as well as level of focus (* to ***) that I want to apply to it.

These fics are primarily for Submas and Pokemon Legends Arceus, though there are a few Gen 5 focuses and an essay about Gen 5. ... Maybe also a few other fandoms, we'll see! Most of these are also the starts of chapters, with a few outlines as well.

Electric Trains Are The Future Chapter 22 *** (PLA/Submas)

I've already started Ch. 22 of Electric Trains! An Akari-focused chapter, we'll see her process having to leave Hisui behind!

A New Home Chapter 2 *** (PLA)

I haven't forgotten about Kamado and the formation of Jubilife Village! I want to try and get this chapter out soon, to coincide with the anniversary of Pokemon Legends Arceus, and the plan is to use it to establish the Diamond Clan's relationship with the Galaxy Team.

Self-Loathing is One Hell of a Drug ** (PLA)

I've shown this to several friends on Discord over the last year, this one is actually half written already! A Volo-centric fic, this takes place around the time of Chapters 21 and 22 of Electric Trains are the Future. One half deals with "The Two Selves Shall Meet" to disastrous results, and the other closure for a certain immortal.

Charting Course ** (PLA/Submas)

This is the Ingo version of A New Home essentially, telling his early time with the Pearl Clan, and his journey to become Warden of Sneasler. I'm also using this time to flesh out Old Shiki, the previous Warden, and Jun, the next Warden, who were both mentioned or shown in Chapter 21 of Electric Trains.

HELP! AU * (PLA)

I'm not writing the full title for this. This is purely an outline at this time, so it's the least likely to be written this year, but I really want to do it oh my god. It'd be so fun, so if you have questions about the AU or want to see it, please please pester me about it!

Thoughts About N and the Original Dragon *** (BW)

Did you know I still regularly get notifications from this post about twice a week? I'm still working on the follow-up, I just need to get my head together for more analysis and research.

Disappearing Act ** (BW/PLA)

A three-part fic, focusing on Hikari, Ingo, and Elesa disappearing from their times and regions and appearing in Hisui. Specifically, the lead ups, disappearances, and aftermaths. I've been slowly working on this since 2023, and may wait to focus on this until Electric Trains finishes.

Devil May Care * (DMC)

A Dante/Lady fic that explores their relationship through the years, following release order (not chronological). Very much not the focus, but something I want to do once the DMC bug revisits.