#it's the dumbest bullshit fuck me honestly.

[slayfics]

Hii babes can I get a Katsuki comforts a self-conscious reader if you can do plus size that’s amazing if not it’s okay thehe

Katsuki explodes your insecurities.

800 words

You let out a heavy sigh as you got ready, brushing your hair in the mirror. Every so often you’d have one of those days where your hair looked hideous no matter what you did with it.

That was just something everyone dealt with from time to time, and usually you could brush it off and keep moving. However, today wasn’t proving to be so kind.

The longer you messed with your hair in the mirror, the more you felt dissatisfied with your appearance. Today all your flaws seemed to be screaming out at you.

You took a deep breath and did your best to swallow your insecurities. You couldn’t just shy away from today’s responsibilities and hide away because you felt unattractive. Yet, a sting hit your eyes as you continued your morning routine.

“The hell is that look for?” Katsuki asked, leaning on the doorframe of the restroom.

You jumped by his sudden appearance, “Nothing- just getting ready,” you lied.

Katsuki clicked his tongue at you, “Why do you even bother lying to me. Tell me what’s on your mind,” he demanded.

You sighed, setting down your brush. How could you even begin to explain that you felt hideous to your extremely attractive chiseled by the gods boyfriend? Surely, that’s not a feeling he could relate to.

“Just not feeling well today,” you said, only a half lie this time.

“Mmm, your nose isn't running- and you look fine so, what do you mean?” He questioned further.

“But I don’t look fine!” You snapped, regretting it the instant you said it.

“Hah?! Course you do! The fuck you talking about??” He raised his voice in response.

“Nothing. Just forget it,” you said and tried to brush through him to exit the bathroom.

“No,” he said stubbornly blocking your way. “You’re going to tell me what’s going through your head.”

You let out an annoyed sigh. Why did Katsuki have to be so damn observant all that time.

“Sigh all you want. I'm not moving till you talk,” he said.

“Fine- I just… don’t feel attractive today. That’s all,” you finally admitted.

“The fuck? That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard,” he barked at you.

“Maybe to you! You’re always hot as hell, you’ve probably never had one self-conscious day of your life!” You spat back.

“That’s not fair,” he said in a voice much lower. “Course I have. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean you. You’re hot as hell to ya know?”

“Thank you for saying so but- sometimes I don’t feel like it,” you said honestly.

“Why?!” He grunted. “Have you been looking at those damn influencers again or something?! You know that shit is all fake,” he said.

“I know I know, but it’s not ugh-,” you sighed in frustration feeling your emotions heighten, “it’s not just that- it’s like everywhere and everything reminds me that I could look better and be better. From ads on my phone for beauty products, to friends talking about their diets. It’s exhausting feeling like I’m not keeping up,” you spoke and felt a bubble rise in your throat, “or that I’m not enough,” you said softly. and the tears finally broke through.

“Come here,” he said, gently wrapping his arms around you, pulling you to his chest. The protection that his embrace offered caused the pent-up emotions to rush out, you sobbed freely into his chest.

“Quite down, there’s no need to cry,” he spoke, his best attempt at soothing you. His arms still tightly around you, he kissed the top of your head.

“Ya know- a lot of places make a good amount of money for making people feel this way. Make ya feel like ya gotta buy this or do that to be hot but- it’s all bullshit,” he spoke, as your sobs lessened. “You’re perfect the way you are, and if you aren’t gonna believe me then, I don’t know who you’d believe. Because you know I’m not a damn liar and, I especially don’t sugar coat things to no one. So… believe me.” He spoke.

You pushed off his chest to wipe the remainder of your tears, as he continued.

“Just gotta tell all those thoughts to fuck right off. It takes a lot of courage to ignore all that crap and be confident. But you’re the bravest person I know so- I know you can do it. You’re a goddamn sexy person inside and out. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, especially yourself. Got it?”

You nodded sheepishly and looked up, your eyes catching the damp spot on his shirt from your tears. “Sorry,” you muttered.

Katsuki clicked his tongue once more, “that’s another thing- stop apologizing so much. You’re allowed to feel and take up space and… that’s what I’m here for so- come to me anytime you need. Don’t make me drag it out of you next time… promise?”

“Promise.”

Thanks for the request Mint! I think we all need blasty to grab us and tell us we’re beautiful just the way we are 🥹🥰! Hope you enjoy 🫶~

tags: @queenpiranhadon @unofficialmuilover @maddietries @fiannee @i-heart-carlisle @derangedmango @matchat3a @bakugouswaif @reneinii @zanarkandskylines @pastelbakugou @abadbitchblogs @deluluforcarlos55 @that-one-fangirl69 @b134ch-m4h-ey3z

[nekropsii]

Small Atomic Ask Bomb!!

I've got a bunch of short asks that I'd hate to spam the dash with individually, so I'll just put 'em here, under the cut!!

Content Warning: Long, Brief Discussions of Racism, Misogyny, Grooming, Brief Mentions of Incest and Pedophilia in Fanfiction.

I've always been a hater, and I honestly don't really think it's a bad thing - not as much as everyone says, at least! I think being kind of a bitch about things that don't matter is good for you, actually. Gets the urge to be angry out in a way that's healthier than just snapping at people in critical moments. I also just think being strong and passionate in your convictions is good for you. Being a hater gives you a spine if you do it right, and it fires a gunshot and scatters people you don't really want to be around. It also has the funny side effect of people thinking I take things way more seriously than I do, just because I'm opinionated and will state said opinions clearly. Big fan of this meme:

This is me.

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I used to peek in there every now and then, just to be nosy. Incest at the top, always. Or straight up pedo shit. Sigh. Looked in the Mituna tag a couple times. CroTuna fucking nightmare hell dimension, always. Or KanTuna, which I also have gripes with. Or KanMiTula, which I have even more gripes with.

It is my understanding that the state of Homestuck fanfiction hasn't gotten much better since the 2010s. Everyone is wrong and no one is normal. Sad.

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I don't know if the mere act of only making Jade and Jake brown out of all the Kids is Racist on its own, per se, but it is kinda silly in the sense that, you know, John and Jade are siblings, so realistically they'd look similar. And... People absolutely do get racist about it. Like, making Jade and Jake uniquely huge, hairy, threatening, and oddly shaped - gangly in the context of Jade, buff as hell in the context of Jake. I've seen some SEVERELY racist drawings where Jade and/or Jake were the only hints of melanin in the Kid line up and... Oh my god. It can get to straight up caricature levels. Watermelons and everything. Just comedically racist.

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Genuinely one of the dumbest fucking things in the world. People will say literally anything. Saying Damara isn't Japanese is on par with calling Porrim a fucking Men's Rights Activist. It's a funny little claim people who are grievously wrong say as a condemnation of the Alpha Trolls for no reason. Why. To look smart? To fit in? Dumbass. Notice how they always have to invent bullshit lies to critique anything instead of just saying things that are true. It really frustrates me how 99.9% of Alpha Troll criticism just isn't at all legitimate when there's some real, genuine issues you could critique. It's stupid horseshit. I hate it so badly.

I don't actually care whether or not someone likes the Alpha Trolls, but at least hate them accurately. Come on.

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@sleepy-apparition

Everyone is so, so quick to turn a blind eye to just how violently misogynistic Kankri is, lmfao. Genuinely, I don't think I've ever seen anyone other than myself bring up the fact that he's an avid Slut-Shamer in the modern day. Other than that, I only really saw older Mituna fanatics bring it up over in the early-mid 2010s, but none of them are around these days.

Genuinely, some of the shit he says is so appalling, lol. Kankri FULLY deserves to get his ass beat.

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I have said this before but I'll say it again - I do not think a Red Romantic Relationship will fix Dirk, or even really help him all that much. Before he gets into a RedRom, he needs some therapy, a break, and mood stabilizers.

However, I'm thoroughly of the opinion that a good BlackRom could work wonders on him, way more than a RedRom would. I think a solid, established Pitch Relationship with, like, Caliborn would be genuinely great for him, both mentally and in a Character Development sense. I hold zero interest in watching Dirk and Jake badly fumble a traditional romantic relationship - that notion is painful to me. ... But I do think I could read a full Intermission's worth of Dirk and Caliborn fucking around and not get tired of it once. They have a fantastic dynamic. It'd be good for Caliborn, too, I think.

This has been my Dirkuu propaganda bit. Thank you.

Also, the Voyeuristic feel of how people handle his Mental Illness. It makes me uncomfortable.

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True. I don't have any other remarks to make about this, you're just correct. True.

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... Fuckin'... Why, though? What- what's the appeal? There's nothing there. I literally cannot conceive any way in which that would be compelling, and I'd say Hal and Kankri are pretty high up there in the list of Male Homestuck Characters I Enjoy.

People will do anything but pay attention to Female Characters for five minutes. God. Lol.

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It's literally just DaveKat 2. I don't think it even qualifies as a Crack Ship when it's just a variant of The Fandom's Most Darling M/M OTP. It's just a deeply mid RarePair. Crack Ship would be, like, Dirk Strider x Rainbow Dash.

Dirk x RD was a popular Crack Ship, sure, but it's still a Crack Ship on basis of being a Crossover Pairing.

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I can't recall any specific instances of seeing this myself, but I'll believe it. People will do anything except be normal about Vriska. People will fight the war against Vriska on the side of and against Vriska at the same time. People will call her a Huge 8itch but then call her pathetic when she stops being a Huge 8itch.

We love Misogyny, I guess.

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Well, he is based on Tumblr, after all. Particularly how dogshit the politics are on here. Of course he would. He'd do numbers on here, considering his Woke Hate Speech.

It's called Bubblr, by the way. Like, canonically. We do know what it's called.

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It's actually based on the Three Wise Monkeys. You know, that old Japanese Proverb that goes "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil"? That.

Kurloz is Speak No Evil, Meulin is Hear No Evil, Mituna is See No Evil.

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Great Question. My personal guess is that he's a little too nuanced for a lot of people to be comfortable with handling. He throws out too much surface-level Bigotry that people aren't willing to ignore because it isn't Racism for many to feel comfortable making him their Blorbo. When Dave says the N-Word and talks about how fucking Racist he is and it literally never gets acknowledged or resolved, that's fine and dandy, but god forbid Caliborn be a Misogynist in the funniest way possible AND have that get acknowledged literally constantly as a problem. The fact that Caliborn isn't a Fuckable White 13-Year-Old Twink means none of his crimes are ever forgivable because he's ugly and unshippable, or whatever.

The fact that he's Mentally Disabled doesn't help. People can't fucking STAND IT when a character is Mentally Disabled in a way that isn't Cute and Consumable, much less a character who is Unconsumably Mentally Disabled AND Complicated. It's just not allowed!!

[vvatchword]

In Defense of BioShock Infinite

Although I had preordered BioShock Infinite with all its bells and whistles, I did not actually play it until January 2023. And lordy, I had me another Experience with a capital E. How the hell a bunch of urban Yanks could capture my experience as a queer democratic-socialist atheist struggling with her roots as a rural evangelical-cum-fascist is kinda magical, honestly. As to the game itself, it didn’t hurt how good it looked—the kickass skyhook gun battles—that novel setting—the complex characters—that delicious historical setting—that bloodthirsty critique of America—and to top it all off, they had pulled yet another Cassandra. Hell, speaking of which—not only was the game fun, it was fucking smart. It was intelligent, memorable, and meaningful in a way I hadn’t experienced in video games for years.

Now, back in 2013, when I had realized that I would be spoiled for Infinite, I left the BioShock fandom. After completing the game, I headed to Tumblr to re-engage, wagging my whole body like an excitable golden retriever, only to discover that BioShock Infinite was remarkably absent, and when mentioned, brutally derided. 

“I hate BioShock Infinite and all my friends do, too,” someone said in the tags under a post. 

I was utterly befuddled and deeply sad. I wanted to talk about BioShock Infinite! I wanted to dig into it, uncover unexpected ideas, learn new things, talk shit, make new friends—the full fandom experience. And instead I kept stumbling into hateful diatribes and super-charged disgust.

Obviously, I first looked at myself and my own judgment. Had I missed some obvious problem or misread some theme or dialogue? This wouldn’t be the first time I’d snapped down on a hook. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

There are two parts of BioShock Infinite that are unquestionably terrible: the fridging of Daisy Fitzroy and the false equivalence of violence between haves and have-nots (lol what are the have-nots supposed to do, ask nicely?). Additionally, one could look at the use of real Native American tragedies as tasteless. Personally, I do not—in the same way that I don’t find it tasteless that real war victims were used as inspiration for Splicer deformities. This is what really happened; this is commentary on events that really happened to real people. 

At this point, I’m sure I don’t have to explain why two of these themes are Unequivocally Bad. 

Anyway, I thought that perhaps these were the reasons BSI had been condemned to Super Hell.

I was wrong.

How Criitcsim Werk

This wasn’t the fandom I’d made friends in over 2010. Hell, this wasn’t the fandom of 2013. This was a fandom made up of Babies. They were making their first coltish stumblings into media criticism and with it, dredging up the same brain-dead bullshit from Tumblr circa 2008.

Suddenly I was brought face to face with people who seemed to think that if a character couldn’t be likable or good that the story itself couldn’t be likable or good; that one bad element means the story is unsalvageable (lol u pussies); the implication that one is bad for liking it; the destructive juvenile insistence that media accurately measures its fans’ moral qualities en masse like an astrological sign. This goes far beyond simple like or dislike and plunges head-first into Puritanism: praying loudly on street-corners instead of quietly in a dark corner where God might hear you.

At one point I had a kid go off about how they wouldn’t take time to understand Booker DeWitt’s perspective because he had (fictionally) taken part in a genocide. (That same person said the Native American element had been employed for shock value, a thought that sometimes keeps me up at night, because it is legitimately one of the dumbest criticisms the game has ever received.) At another point I saw someone acting personally offended that (fictional person) Dr. Suchong’s (fictional) data was being stolen (in a fiction) by a (fictional) racist who would (fictionally) take credit for (fictional person) Suchong’s (fictional) inventions “while calling him slurs”. Sure, a better question would have been, “Why would the creative team opt to do this” rather than assume intentional racism from a Jewish creative director with an in-office multi-ethnic team in the year of our lord 2013, but why not handwave the choice with prurient moral dismay so your audience won’t beat you to death with bats? 

It was as though fans were treating these completely fictional characters as real people whose personal gods had opted to torment them, and that their tormentors merited the kind of censure that psychopaths should receive. As I hope all of you understand, this is fucking madness.

More than once I saw people posting about hating the studio or the creative director in ways that seemed intense, unreasoning, and excessive—notably an “I Hate [Irrational Games creative director] Ken Levine” stamp (rofl the more things change amirite). People get so performatively moralistic about it that I started wondering if I missed something big along the way. Was there some secret Voxophone I missed swearing fealty to baby Hitler or some shit?

Double Standards

At the same time, I was utterly confused. BioShocks 1 and 2 both featured some absolutely ghastly bullshit based on real-life horrors and a thick mix of complicated human beings—many of them victims who have become monsters. The fact they are grounded in historical tragedies is a huge part of their appeal. Hell, I don’t think those games would have had half their meaning without World Wars I and II and the threat of a third.

A gay man who feels so cursed by his orientation that he is incapable of intimacy and systematically destroys his ex-lovers—including the man he loves the most. A Korean who survived Japanese occupation and a Jewish Holocaust survivor repeat the violence and traumas exacted upon them and their people, subjecting a new generation to agonies unthinkable. Chasing the shadows of Bolsheviks, a Russian citizen becomes the brutal tyrant that he loathed. A rich lawyer with an easygoing drawl designs a concentration camp and systematically harvests hundreds, if not thousands of political prisoners, selling them out to medical testing for a quick buck.

But a Native man who destroys his own people and class to ensure his own survival and social acceptability is too far? This character is where people drew the line, so much so that the entire game is disavowed? Hell, if you’re just talking about Booker (rather than Comstock), he doesn’t have anywhere near the largest bodycount. If we were to judge on the metric of human misery alone, Booker wouldn’t even hit the top ten. 

Keep in mind that the most-discussed BioShock game on Tumblr is BioShock 2, and that one of the biggest fandom favorites is Augustus Sinclair—the easy-talkin’ Georgia lawyer who sells your character into horrors past all human comprehension, as he sold hundreds before and after you. Sinclair is a motherfucker so vile that BioShock 2 gives you no choice but to murder him. But Sinclair is also pleasant; good-looking to some; spends the whole game making sweet love to your ear; is one of the only true positive experiences you experience in a horror story. Unlike DeWitt, a man who is brutal and awful from step one, Sinclair is smooth and sweet. Unlike DeWitt, Sinclair’s victims are faceless, completely fictional, and carry no political or social baggage.

People fuckin’ ship this guy with Subject Delta, his explicit victim. He’s usually described as a squishy cinnamon roll. In most fanfiction, he often gets to escape to the surface and fuck Delta while helping raise Eleanor as Dad 2. It is rare that I find fanfiction that acknowledges his monsterhood in all its glory. In fact, I can only think of two.

Literacy Comes in Levels

My problem with the over-the-top hatred of BioShock Infinite is along the same lines as my confusion at Twilight and Harry Potter hate: there is so much worse out there (how much do the haters actually engage with media if they think this is that bad—yes, even considering the shitty creators themselves!), the hatred far outweighs the sin committed (in BioShock’s case, the truly bad bits are not central enough to derail the larger narrative), people don’t seem to hate it so much as they want to be seen hating it, fans want to enforce an unspoken rule hating it (bitches this is poison. Stop this), and there’s something about the hate that stinks of poor reading comprehension.

A great metric for general literacy is the newspaper. In journalism, you’re writing for the lowest-common denominator, which for years here in the USA has been about a fifth-grade reading level (about 10-11 years old, for my non-American readers). The AP posted an article a couple years back about how the general reading comprehension of Americans needs to be dropped to a third-grade one (8-9 years), and baby, I’m here to say it’s true. 

Most of the problem is that the American education system is shitty as fuck. The rest of it is from an extremely American disdain of intellectualism and the arts. People are not taught how to interpret art or literature—a difficult and subtle skill which involves accepting such truths as “multiple contradictory readings can exist and yet be simultaneously correct”, “the author can be a complete tool and still be right about things”, “the author can be a great person and still write horrifyingly incorrect bullshit”, and “worthwhile works can be ridiculously long and it really is your fault for not having an attention span”. 

Media criticism must be learned through trial, error, asking questions, confidently swaggering into a public space to announce your brilliant insight only to have your ass handed to you (usually by your older self ten years later), being willing to admit you swaggered confidently into a public space to state bullshit and then amending your bullshit only to produce more bullshit, and otherwise making a complete and utter cock of yourself. We are taught to fear and flee pain and failure, despite the fact this is how we learn and improve. Because we judge our value by whether or not we are “smart,” we are afraid of displaying that we don’t know something or might be mistaken–better not to try at all than to reveal ourselves to be fools. And yet the best way to learn is to crash up against someone else and be proven wrong!

American parents are terrified of hurting their children to the point that they spare them cognitive dissonance of any kind, disavowing difficult art—without any appreciation for the fact that art is how we provide safe spaces to explore key human experiences, better preparing us to face those difficult subjects when there are real-world consequences (sex, gender and social expression, grief, violence, predation, illness, interacting with people of different ideologies, whatever new issue is pissing off some smooth-brained old motherfucker somewhere). 

If parents and teachers aren’t teaching us how to interpret art, we’re probably never going to develop the skill at all, or crash unsubtly into it in a piecemeal fashion (hello it me). Another unfortunate side effect is that these readers tend to be blitheringly superficial: they are literally intellectually incapable of reading deeper than the uppermost layer of a text. The curtains are always blue.

And let’s not forget the role moral performatism plays in media criticism, which although faaar from new, has reached hilarious levels in the age of social media. What’s important isn’t understanding something, it’s finding something to symbolically burn at the stake so everyone knows God loves us: please keep loving me, please don’t hurt me, please don’t throw me on the fire—for performatism is not for outsiders. We long for human connection so fucking much that it’s more important to destroy what might point out our fallibilities than it is to let ourselves stand in the furnace and burn out the dross.

What do you think the point of BioShock Infinite was?

Emotional Machines

Let’s face it. Human beings give a lot more credence to how something makes them feel than they do its complex invisible reality. We are not logical creatures; we are emotional ones. Our logic is too new a biological mechanism to override something as powerfully stupid as our primal lizard brains.

Knowing this, let’s take BioShock’s most popular characters. The first two are Subject Delta and Jack Wynand, the protagonists of BioShocks 2 and 1, respectively; and why not? They’re the characters we play. In the first two BioShocks, whether or not you kill Little Sisters determines the ending you receive. In other words, Delta and Jack can only be as “wicked” as the players are. 

How do people want to see themselves? As good. What do people want to see around themselves? Good. (What is “good”? Uh, well,,,,,,) What do they want? Simple moral questions with simple moral answers. And in the first two BioShocks, what is moral is obvious: don’t kill little girls. It’s actually kind of insulting once you say it out loud.

In-fandom, Jack and Subject Delta are almost never painted as murderers or monsters, but as victims and heroes; I saw someone musing about putting Subject Delta on a “gentle giants” poll and I nearly choked on my own tongue. I only saw that musing because someone put Subject Delta and Jack in a “Best Fathers” poll. Nobody in-fandom really considers the “evil” or “complicated” endings as canon choices, despite those versions being fully understandable alternate readings, with a story that doesn’t make sense without them. (I don’t believe Burial at Sea is necessarily canon; in fact, I would bet good money that it is a huge middle finger lol, mostly because a number of brain-dead motherfuckers won’t take unhappiness for an answer.)

Most fandom art and writing is gentle, sweet, good: the symbolic healing of the damaged, the salvation of innocents, the turning of new leaves. These things are not just saccharine sweet—they tend to be unrealistically sweet. Now, far be it from me to demand these works cease. There’s a reason they exist. People write them because they need hope and happiness; I have enjoyed them greatly myself and intend to enjoy them in the future. But if y’all get to have your dessert, I demand the right to have my dinner.

The Colours Out of Earth

Let there be media where the opposite can also be true: where everything is unbelievably complicated and unforgivably fucked-up. Let there be characters who slide slurs into their speech without thinking. Let there be characters who destroy themselves in a thousand different ways, not all of them obvious, some of them horrifying. Let there be well-meaning people struggling with all their mights to do what is right only to destroy everyone around them and then completely miss the fact it’s all their faults. Let there be wickedness painted as goodness, superficial appearances accepted over essential and inherent values, denial of change and transformation, failure to accept that what is old must die and what is new must live, human stupidity and short-sightedness and cruelty in all their flavors. Let’s smash it all together and see how it plays out. 

Oh, badly? No shit! But “badly” isn’t the point. How does it play out?

Let there be a world of gradients—a place I can float from color to color, hue to hue, value to value, while attempting to figure out where, why, how, and by whom they transform—to taste concepts in a hundred different ways, test their textures by a hundred different mediums, insert them into a hundred different contexts. I need to understand why I feel the way I do; I need to understand morality in all its hideous, fragmentary glory. For I have been sold to a ideology of blacks and whites, and let me tell you: it prepares you for nothing, and it will always destroy what is most precious about human life.

I can no longer believe in a world where what is lost always returns, because that world does not exist. I have a reflexive need to come to terms with Finality: what I have lost, what I have destroyed, what will never return, what will never be better. I have a reflexive need to understand Transformation: what I am now, what is as of the present, what has risen shambling from the ashes, what turns to gaze upon me in the darkness. I need to understand what is wretched about me as much as I need to heal myself. How can I heal if I can’t understand how I have hurt and been hurt? 

I need to shine a light in the dark. Not to remodel it, not to destroy it—because I also can’t believe in a world where the wicked is destroyed forever—but to behold it, to learn from it, to view my own impact upon it, to accept how it has become a part of me, to learn how to do my best (because that’s all one can do). I must learn to love people more than causes, I must learn to love people rather than the act of winning, I must learn to love people rather than battle. I need to stand in that endless black with the lamp off and my eyes closed, letting the agony roll over me, burning with a fire that throws no light, rolling back and forth from an intense self-loathing to a fury at a society that destroys what is most valuable because it didn’t make them feel the way they wanted.

The Unforgivable

I believe that there are only two differences between Booker DeWitt and his equally cursed cohorts.

In the Hall of Whores: The Unmarked Slate

First, unlike the previous two games, where you enter the world as a tabula rasa and might roleplay as what you perceive as a good person, you are explicitly put into the shoes of a monster, and nothing you do can save you.

With other shitty BioShock characters, you are passively watching other people, and you are able to hold yourself apart. Sure, everyone else is crazy as fuck from using biological Kryptonite, but you’re too smart to end up a crazy fucking asshole like them! Sure, you are now technically a mass murderer, but those fuckers deserved it, damn it! 

“Look at this crazy bastard!” you say, rolling your eyes at the Steinmans and Cohens and Ryans and Fontaines. “It sure is a great thing I’m not a crazy bastard!”

You are able to escape acknowledging that you, too, in certain circumstances, might be the crazy bastard. You are being challenged to stand in the body of a person who has committed unforgivable sins. Imagine if you yourself committed those sins. Imagine what sins you have already committed. Imagine what brutalities you cannot take back. Imagine what horrors you have wreaked just by breathing.

“Ahhhh!” said players, probably. “What do you mean I’m not allowed to be good?”

Because that’s what the game was designed to do. Because “good” is a fucking cop-out and if it’s how you live with yourself wait until you find out you’ve been doing horrifying bullshit all your life without question. You can be evil by association through no fault of your own.

Original Sin

Second, the plight of Native Americans is a sin that non-Natives will always carry, and the socially conscious are aware of this even if they don’t know how to put it into words. The state of affairs being what it is, it is unlikely that First Peoples will ever be treated humanely, much less have their land returned. They must struggle for scraps of what is rightfully theirs while we lounge on their corpses. We cannot help but benefit from their destruction; we are made unwitting partners with our forebears; we steal the fruits of their lands and make mockeries of their faiths and identities. We have destroyed part of what made this world fascinating and unique and most of it can never be returned. Even if everything were to be made right tomorrow, their genocide is a sin that we will carry until we die, because the only reason we could be here at all is because they were killed. 

The obvious solution stands before us, but the powers that be are so much greater than we that we are effectively powerless, and achieving anything less than total restoration smacks of anticlimax. 

This is unbearable.

How can one think of oneself as a good person if one sees the good that must be done, but cannot achieve it? If one’s actions are meaningless? Goodness without action is pretension.

We are all Booker DeWitt. We have all set fire to the tipi. We swept the ashes away, we ignored the sizes of the bones, we built a CVS on their graves, and then we made statues and holidays commemorating Native Americans like the world’s cheapest “Thinking of You” card. We have de-fanged them, transformed them into cardboard cutouts, and set them up as cute little side characters in our sweeping American dream.

Booker is not a man. Booker is America and Americans—and America and Americans are monstrous: one part hypocrisy, two parts incessant violence, three parts constant peacocking, and four parts dumb as a stump.

The Monsters We Make

Outside of the message about “choice,” an enormous part of BioShock’s thematic ensemble is the creation of monsters. How are monsters created? Who or what is responsible for creating them? What do the monsters think made them the ways they are? Can a monster be saved? How? Is it enough to acknowledge you did wrong and want to be a better person?

Maybe most people are aware on some instinctive level of what facing one’s own monsterhood means. No one wants it. It’s not fun. It hurts. It’s embarrassing. It’s destructive. It’s admitting you don’t have it all together and might never, ever—that despite your best actions, you can have it horribly wrong at any point. In an age where we demand moral perfection, it demands vulnerability: you must admit that sometimes you’re the racist, the transphobe, the sexist, the nationalist, the classist, the homophobe, the violent, the wrong, the dumbfuck. 

Human beings are not built to be moral; human beings are built to survive. We so rapidly learn how to deal with our contexts at such young ages that we don’t have the time or capabilities to question why those contexts are the ways they are or why it is demanded we perform the ways we do.

In a very real way, BioShock Infinite demands vulnerability of us. It demands you look in the mirror and see what is monstrous in you—how you have been created—manufactured—a tool, a machine, a trained animal. It asks you to recognize that you can be a monster simply by association. And if we can’t look into the mirror and truly acknowledge that monsterhood, we run very real risks of becoming or enabling those monsters in one way or another.

Worst of all: perhaps monsterhood isn’t optional. Perhaps the monster was inside of us from the very beginning. It’s not a matter of if you become a monster, but when, under what circumstances, by whose hand. What is more, believing the “right” moral stances will not save you. Monsterhood can afflict anyone, in any ideology, any political stance, in any social movement, in any faith. The only element that can save you is to truly love other people, and even then, you can fail, for there can be states where there is no winner and ways to misread how best to treat another person.

Environment and Society: Context Will Not Be Denied

BioShock 1’s original ending is Jack-as-monster, regardless of how many children he saves, regardless of your feelings as player. He passes through the gauntlet of Rapture, but he has supped of its poison. And he wasn’t poisoned when he entered Rapture the second time—he was poisoned the minute he was conceived. He was born of it. He had no hope of ever escaping it—he never could have—he’d never had a choice to begin with.

No matter what choices you make in BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth will always kill you. Why? Because she has seen every world—every context—every limitation—every boon. And there is no way to stop what has been; there is no way to undo what has been done. The minute you have committed to a decision, you have split the universe; there is no telling what kind of person it will make you. In fact, there’s no telling which of your decisions will matter at all. Only Elizabeth can see because she is the unlimited future: your offspring stands before you, judge and jury, and you will have no choice but to accept her verdict, for despite your name, you are incapable of controlling how you are interpreted. 

Elizabeth sits across from you in the boat and stares without blinking. She sees a million million similar Bookers. Some are a little bit taller, some a little bit shorter, some a little heavier or lighter. Some more-resemble one grandparent or another. They have different colored ties. This one blinks when rain hits him in the eyeball. That one took a brutal beating back on the airship and one eye is swollen shut. That one can’t stop shaking; this one is unable to speak at all; one hasn’t yet lost hope, although even he doesn’t realize it.

They all lowered the torch to the tipi.

The baptism determined Comstock; what determined Booker?

Why Booker Is

In BioShock 1, characters are often stand-ins for larger concepts. Thus Ryan stands in as Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Ubermensch; Bill McDonagh as Andrew Ryan’s conscience; Diane McClintock as the citizenry of Rapture; Captain Sullivan as law and order; Frank Fontaine as the truest expression of Objectivism in its distilled form.

Who is Booker? Most importantly: why is he?

Booker is a fictional character with a brutal background based on historical events, alternative and true. Booker might be Lakota; Booker might have undergone forced Anglicization; Booker might have been ripped from his parents; Booker is a product of violence, perhaps literally. Booker is American exceptionalism distilled. Booker is the past in constant judgment of itself, unable to live with itself and unable to die. Booker destroys what is best in him and around him in exchange for belonging. Booker has sold the future to absolve his sins. Booker has sold his daughter because he is a fictional character in a work of fiction who needs to be propelled.

Booker is a shell, a sluice, an environment. Booker is the broken shape you are meant to fill, horrified. His internal shape should torture you as it has tortured him: the messy slaggy soul of a shitty tin soldier.

Does Booker take the baptism and become Comstock? If so, it might be his second one. His last name literally means “the white.” His first name can mean “author.” It is most likely his second name: an attempt to rewrite himself. And when he was unable to rewrite himself the first time, when the cognitive dissonance boiled at the edges of his skull, he found there was only one way to cleanse himself the second: to remake the world entirely. To force transformation on everyone else. To take vengeance on a world that could never love him, never want him—to create a world that has no choice but to love him. If he can’t change the world’s mind, he’ll change the world.

Note what he opts to do: to take the fight to the environment–to the unyielding universe.

Context Is Everything

It is no mistake that BioShock Infinite occurs in 1912: the sinking of the Titanic is often credited with ending an unfettered optimism, a period when the Western world believed technology had brought the human race into a golden age. With World War I—which would follow a mere two years later—came modern warfare and all the horrors thereof, not the least of which was the realization that humans had created a kind of war that could destroy the entire world. World War I also seeded the rise of the United States: much of the wealth of warring Europe—itself fat on the blood of subjugated peoples and stolen lands—would rattle into America’s coffers.

It is also no mistake that BioShock 1 directly follows World War II. With WWII came a heightened terror—that this war is not the last war, that there will never be an end to war, that war will go on expanding and expanding until it has consumed us all. World War III would not be denied: prettily packaged in the ideals of its children, it simply followed the utopians down to their underwater tombs. According to BioShock 1’s original ending, World War III is not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when.

But even more important than the history in the BioShock games are their settings. Mute leviathans, Rapture and Columbia determine all of your behaviors: from where you can exist in space to all of your desires and goals to how you choose to present yourself to how you opt to behave. Isolated in extremism—whether that extremism is the crushing depths of the ocean or the unbearable lightness of the air—most of their power is that they simply cannot be escaped. You can’t outrun them. They are everywhere. They are everything.

Like Lovecraft before it, BioShock acknowledges the greatest horror of all: you cannot escape your context. Your context does not only involve your immediate surroundings. It is also historical; contains zeitgeists from various cultures and subcultures; is filled with pressures both personal and impersonal, human and nonhuman. Many of these forces can hurt you. Many more can destroy you. What you do to survive depends very much on where, when, and with whom you must live.

Human beings are not built to be moral.

The Death of the Future

In the film Operation, Burma!, a soldier asks Errol Flynn: “Who were you before the war?”

“An architect,” says Flynn.

Who were you? Because that “you” doesn’t matter now. That “you” is irrelevant. So you’re an architect. What the war does to you; what these deaths mean to you; your past, your education, your loves and desires and forward motivation, the you that could have been outside war, the you that slogs alone into the brutal future—all completely irrelevant. Your forebears don’t care so long as you can bleed. 

Children are the manufactured tools of their creators—helpless before the enormous strength of their elders and the zeitgeists that enclose them, poisoned by their parents’ insecurities and flaws, utilized like weapons regardless of the cost—often with great love.

Consider something more than the traumatized culture: consider the society filled with traumatized children; consider the traumatized society. Consider channeling children through that trauma over and over and over again, if you can. Poisoned—poisoned—poisoned—all of us poisoned. Poisoned by those who loved us most. Poisoned by the people we trusted. Poisoned by the people who meant to make a better world.

I believe it is notable that creative director Ken Levine is Jewish; I have read from multiple accounts that the European Jewish diaspora was uniquely traumatized from the Holocaust and passed that trauma down upon their own families. I sometimes wonder if he saw that firsthand.

The fathers eat sour grapes; their children’s teeth are set on edge.

Choice: Player Expectations and Entitlement

For players who experienced BioShocks 1 and 2 with their multiple endings (Good, Bad, and “ok bye then I guess” respectively), it must have been jarring to suddenly reckon with being a monster. How often I see players grousing that nothing they do will change their wicked pasts! These players completely miss that the only meaningful choice had already been made, that it had nothing to do with the player at all, and even if they had been there, DeWitt was still unforgivable. The only way to go on was to bow out and allow the future to redefine herself.

Nobody was ready for that shit. 

Like it or not, BioShock 1 had set a precedent. Not everyone’s going to read up on creator intentions. If any keyword came blaring through the noise, it would have been “choice.” Most players only recognize choice by the ability to make it, not the absence of it, and most of them weren’t equipped to recognize that its lack was the point. The meaningless choices were commentary, and they were as much about the player as they were about DeWitt himself. Not every choice will be meaningful, will it? And there will be choices you make that will be momentous, but they will seem very small when you make them.

Because most players had experienced what they thought was a basic moralistic tale in the first two games, and would see Infinite not as reflection upon America’s destructive personality, its obsession with a meaningless Good/Bad duocracy, and the infinite, cyclical nature of violence, they saw Booker’s death as corrupted artsy claptrap.

“I did the good schuut,” they say. “I want the good schuut end. Where happy end??? Where treat :(”

Bitch the future is here. 

Time to die.

It’s Not Me, It’s You

Generally I despise essays that end with, “But the real fault lay with the clueless motherfuckers who played the game!” Often, if enough people complain, there’s something to it; the message has been obscured somehow. Details or explanations weren’t clear or intuitive enough, some mechanism isn’t working somewhere, some character needs to talk more or less, some setting needs to be transformed. O artist: stop whining and get cracking. If everywhere you go smells like shit, it’s time to look under your shoe. 

But sometimes it’s true that a piece of media is on a level folks aren’t equipped for. Think of every literature and art class you’ve ever had, if you’ve been fortunate enough to have one. There’s always someone scoffing in a back row, like here are all these jokers making more of something than they should. Similarly, some of you have been arguing with me this entire time, saying: “I just wanted a video game. I just wanted to shoot something and feel better and instead I get this bullshit ending that makes no sense.”

First of all, smart bullshit (and even fucked-up attempts at smart bullshit! Hi BioShock 2) gets to exist on this Earth along with Gmod and Roblox or Schuut Big Tits 84 (there are 84 tits and you must shoot them all. They explode into smaller tits) or whatever-the-fuck-else you think is a worthwhile gaming experience. Second of all, miserable bullshit also gets to exist, and what did you fucking expect if you played through either BioShocks 1 or 2? When you hear a football player quavering out in the darkness for his mom to pick him up, how’d that make you feel? What did you think was going to happen to Jack after pounding back the entire Plasmid library, the cancer cocktail that explicitly destroys the fuck out of its users? Third of all, if you missed the smart bullshit going on in BioShock 1 and didn’t think BioShock Infinite might be larger in scope in more ways than one, that’s on you. Fourthly, if you were simply satisfied with saving like, 15 kids from a violently-perishing city of thousands and call it good, I mean… is that really where your thoughts end? Are you really that fucking small?

It’s Not You, It’s Me

You ever meet those motherfuckers who talk shit about Shakespeare or modern art? And you’re just left there staring with dead eyes at this poseur who mistakes playing devil’s advocate for intelligence, cheek resting on your fist, thinking about the fanfic you’re writing, wondering who it’s for, remembering that all your smut-writing friends get ten times the viewers, and considering throwing yourself in front of a bus.

Yeah, there’s a personal element to this: the fact that BioShock Infinite is the kind of art I like and long for and want to make myself, the fact that the game was successful and yet the studio was closed, the way its DLC was so rushed that the story plopped out like half-baked mystery meat—realizing that the same forced rush was at 2K’s behest for BioShock 2, as well, and wondering how good art can ever be made in this unforgiving capitalist hellscape. The game was weirdly niche and I’m not 100% sure I’ll ever experience anything quite like it again. And with the whiners in this fandom, the loud ones controlling the narrative, some fresh brain-dead exec in some brain-dead publisher might be like: “We must keep it safer and simpler for these fuckin babby adult!”

Nah bitch nah. Naaaah. Cry some more while I enjoy me my fucking dinner. I’ll eat it while making loud smacking noises and keeping unbroken eye contact. Come here. Let’s look at each other. It’ll be like Lady and the Tramp but we want to punch each other. What truer form of love can there be here in the modern world?

I keep having to remind myself that this response isn’t new. I keep having to remind myself of my place. I keep having to remind myself why I write, why I read, why I like to experience art to begin with. It’s not for the reasons other people do it. Oh, I want the same emotional release as everyone else, I want the same rollicking plots, I adore the same tropes. I seek out everything and anything for a good time; I’ll read Moby Dick today and a smutty 5,000-word abortion with the world’s most suspect grammar tomorrow. I don’t give a shit if it’s low- or high-brow; there are all kinds of ways to have fun and there are all kinds of ways to engage with art, and lord knows I’ve done my share of smooth-brain criticism. The problem is that I’ve always wandered off by myself, sunk into an all-consuming reverie, on tracks that no one else ever seems to be on, and then looked up to talk excitedly about something only to realize I’m alone. And whose fault is that?

By the same token, maybe I haven’t talked enough. Maybe I spend too much time with my mouth shut. Maybe I haven’t stood up enough for things that are worth our time, worth talking up, worth setting on pedestals.

I tell you, BioShock Infinite will stand the test of time. It’s too good for this. It’s too good for you, warts and all. Some of you will grow to understand that; some of you won’t; many of you will shrug and go on with your lives (and this is fine; it is only a video game). But I’ve truly not seen anything like it. I can’t believe a mainstream video game was allowed to be so fucking brutal about the American juggernaut, and what’s more, that it sold like hotcakes. Plus, I can’t think of any works in recent memory that have struck me so close to my own heart. No creative work has made me start beating a monster’s face into a washbasin for ten hours only to lift her by the scalp and see my own eyes looking back.

Look into those eyes. See your own stupid impulses pouring out. Your own stupid excuses, your violences, your sins—your claws, your teeth, your costumes, your hilarious attempts at interpretive dance. The beast doth protest too much.

O, monster—behold thyself—and tremble.

[leincendiaire]

anyways salty thoughts. dont expect me to be nice

this is the one problem not exclusive to the finale, god ed's character arc just. didnt do it for me at all. I excused it before cuz I thought it would pay off as the season went on but nope. he never had a genuine apology moment, just that youtuber apology like gag and the cat collar joke. like they literally show us how the crew was completely scarred by his actions but theyre later just completely fine with him on board???? and stede keeps being his biggest stan when I think he would have been like hey what the fuck!! im sorry I hurt you but I am not responsible for your actions and you hurt my crew whom I hold very dear!! I love ed but Fuck he really went too far those first episodes and he never makes up for it. they only ever focus on His Own self journey, not how he hurt and traumatized practically every other character.

"well, I think narratively izzy's death made sense but—" no!! no it fucking didnt!! im sorry but it was just lazy writing!! they didnt know what to do with him so whoops he gets shot in the dumbest way possible. like, this aint my first rodeo, it aint the first time ive seen a character start off on their character journey to happiness only for writers to give up on it and kill them off. it's a tiring fucking trope tbh and I really wish they hadnt fallen into this trap. like his death scene wasnt good either, if youre gonna do it at least focus on his relationship with the crew, you know, the people he came to accept as family? not the man Who Shot Off His Fucking Leg And Almost Killed Him? I know they had an important relationship but that shit should have been talked about way beforehand, it deserved closure. they should have acknowledged they werent good for each other and made peace with it. izzy deserved a death with people who actually made him happy. ALSO THEY BURY HIM ON FUCKING LAND?????? he spent his life at sea!!!! he is the most devoted out of everyone to being a pirate and you bury him next to your fucking inn???? fucking twats istg

lastly I swear they forgot stede is the main character. they forgot literally everything about how to write him. he gets No Focus in the finale, and every scene he is in is bullshit. I actually wanted to punch my screen every time there was a joke about him being incompetent or whatever. like, hello??? thought we left that shit in s1??? he had Multiple Episodes about learning to be a pirate and adjusting to his new life and gaining more skills but no. he is just silly old loserboy for his cool war criminal boyfriend now. literally no skills or experience whatsoever. ok sure yea thats totally how he acted the rest of the season. also the fuck is it with him staying behind to run the inn with ed?? wasnt the whole conflict last episode their different desires out of life, with ed wanting to start a normal life and stede wanting to be a pirate?? when the Fuck did he change his mind. who are you and have you done with my boy

honestly I feel bad because jenkins is actually a good writer and the whole fandom really expected a lot from a man making his second show, and I think there were a lot of budget cuts and production issues so I can see why it turned out this way. he is probably mad about this too, I bet the cast also, like even the acting in this episode didnt feel passionate, and thats saying a lot since these actors really love this show. im just frustrated. man. time to write fics ig

[randoimago]

Fandom: Critical Role / Legend of Vox Machina

Character(s): Percival Fredrickstein Von Whatever Whatever De Rolo III

Note(s): I have no idea what possessed me to write this. Here I am looking for cute, fluffy things and trying to decide who to write for when all of a sudden The Changebringer took the wheel. Here's some Hurt/Comfort with Percy set during the Chroma Conclave stuff but no campaign spoilers (just mentions of things that have happened already in the TV series)

"Are you okay?"

Percy rolls his eyes at the question as if it's the dumbest thing anyone has asked him. And honestly, in this moment, it might be. He's had his family almost wholly taken from him. A demon pretty much had him under possession at some point, attempting to kill those he cared about because of his damn pride and need for revenge. Dragons are every-fucking-where, and he's just a human with a gun.

"Yeah, I'm perfectly fine, just like the sky is green. Next question," he mutters, tone his usually casual with a hint of frustration.

"Percival-"

"How I'm doing is pointless. Caring about me right now is pointless. Who gives a shit if I'm okay. How about you ask the people of Whitestone, who have been under the thumb of a vampire for years? How about you ask those that lost their homes to dragon fire, acid, ice, and every other bullshit element under the sun. I am fine." It's been a while since he's let out his feelings. Since he's spoken and the weight he's carried seemed to drain a bit. Since he's felt tired.

It's silent for a moment. And usually, he would turn around and stomp off to go sulk. But he doesn't because he feels bad. Who the fuck are you to make him feel bad?

"I'm sorry. It's just… It's a lot happening, and I don't know if I will ever be okay," he admits with a sigh. And now you're silent and he's feeling even worse. Out of all the blasted emotions, guilt must have been created by the Hells.

"Percy, you're allowed to be tired. You're allowed to be angry and frustrated. You're allowed to want to scream and punch in someone's face." He can't help but chuckle a bit at your last words. He'd rather shoot someone in the face, he might break a nail if he punched someone.

"Am I? I'm part of a small group of people who seem to be the only ones able to do anything against all of this. Am I really allowed when so many are looking at us for guidance? How fucked must the world be that we're their last hope." There's a dry sense of humor in his words, and you shake your head at them, but he knows you have the same tired amusement that he does.

"Yes, you are. And if they don't like it then they can kiss your ass."

"Most people are unworthy of kissing my ass."

"There's the bitchy noble I know."

He makes a face at you when you call him that, but it doesn't hold up as more amusement takes its place and he shakes his head. His arm moves to land on your shoulder, initially just wanting to hold you for support before the rest of his body treacherously pulls you in for a hug, holding you tight.

"I'm not okay, my love. I was truthful earlier with not knowing if I can be. But thank you for still staying with me. Despite me being a… bitchy noble." You chuckle at the huff he lets out with those last two words, but it puts him at ease.

"You might not be okay now, but we'll get through this. Yeah?"

"Yeah. You, me, and this group of assholes that we travel with for some godforsaken reason." You laugh again and he smiles more, feeling that diminishing weight vanishing for just this moment.

[silassinclair]

Uh Oh! It’s Magic!

[Billy H x Fem!Reader]

Summary: Billy and his friend Tommy are on a double date. Tommy with Carol and Billy taking out one of Carol’s annoying friends Brandy. They all decided to go to a roller skating rink but when there Billy is hypnotized by a roller skater completely in her element. But she isn’t quite what she seems?

Moving to Hawkins was probably one of the dumbest fucking things that Neil has ever done. I don't know why he chose to move to this hick town but there is no stopping that insufferable piece of shit when he makes a decision. The house where he, I, Max, and Susan live is small as shit. Whenever I can I am out of the house as much as possible.

This very moment I'm arm in arm with some blonde chick named Brandy. Her and I are following Tommy H and his girlfriend Carol into the entrance of Rink-O-Mania, one of the only places in Hawkins that isn't dull and lame. Honestly I don't want to be here, I hate dates, I just want to screw Brady and leave. But it's an excuse to be out of the house so I'll take it.

"Billy I don't know how to skate, can you hold my hand when we're in there?" The dumb bitch clinging to me says looking up at me with doe eyes. Why the fuck would her and Carol want to go skating if she doesn't even know how to? Probably wants an excuse to touch me with her grimy ass hands.

The white eyeliner on her bottom lid fails to make her eyes larger, she looks like a desperate clown instead. But she has a nice bod so I'll have to put up with her shit if I want a BJ.

Putting on my signature smirk I pull her in close, "Sure thing hot stuff. I roller skated all the time in Cali so I'll help you out."

That wasn't a lie. When I was younger if I wasn't surfing I was roller skating with my Mom when the weather got bad. Some of the only enjoyable memories I have honestly.

"Hurry up lovebirds we gotta pay for our skates." Tommy says when he and Carol approach the counter. The skating rink is lit up by neon lights and It's Magic by The Cars is playing over the surrounding speakers. Not many people are here except for some kids with their folks and some teenage girls.

"Billy" Brandy says, "Help me tie my skates." She pleads with a small pout. I hide my eyeroll as I kneel down and tie her skates. Once hers are on she nearly stumbles to the floor when we're literally on carpet.

Stupid bitch.

"Woah woah," I say and hold my arms out for her, "Wouldn't want to fall yet, we're not even on the rink yet."

The girl blushes and waits for me as I tie my skates on. Once on I take her hand and help roll her to the round wood rink. Looking out at the rest of the people I see someone zoom by in my peripheral vision. Scanning the floor I see a girl. Blue bell bottom jeans, a jersey styled crop top, dangly earrings, and pristine white skates. As the music plays her body moves to the rhythm as she glides on the floor as if she were walking on water. Her flowing h/c hair frames her focused yet relaxed face.

She’s absolutely breath taking.

"Oh Billy I don't think I can do this." Brandy says next to me. "What if I fall?"

Having enough of Brandy's pick-me bullshit I turn to her with a deadpan expression.

"Then fall bitch. Now get-"

I pull myself from her acrylic nailed grip

"-off of me. You're dumb and annoying as shit. Now screw off." I skate away from her leaving her standing crookedly by the entrance to the wooden floor. Tears fall from her face and her mascara follows the flow of her pathetic tears.

Oh fucking well, boo-hoo, I have my eyes on something else now. She was annoying anyways.

"Hargrove!" Tommy calls to me, Carol holding his hand as the two skate to me from where they once were out on the rink.

"What gives man? Why's Brandy prying her skates off and crying?" He asks.

"She was annoying as shit so thanks a lot for making me take her out." I turn to Carol and say disgustingly. Carol looks down embarrassed.

"Well now you don't have a date idiot." Tommy says with an eyeroll, but I grin.

"We'll see about that." And I look to see the girl again. She's low to the rink and doing a complex skate trick to the tune of the music. Her right leg bent beneath her bottom and the other stuck out long like a half squat.

Following my eyes Tommy sees who I'm looking at.

"Oh no chance in hell dude. She's way too pretty for your whore-ass." Tommy says and punches my shoulder. But I punch him back harder causing him to whine and rub his arm.

"We'll see."

The song comes to an end and the mystery girl skates to the exit where I’m leaning on the half wall.

“You’re pretty good out there gorgeous.” I say showing my pearly white teeth, aka my secret weapons.

She turns to me with a small smile. “Thanks. I haven’t seen you skate yet.”

I chuckle lowly and roll my eyes, then explain to her about my date and how she only wanted to use me as popularity gain and for my body.

As if I didnt want to use her but still- Not that that a matters.

“Brandy McMay. She doesn’t even know her left from right.” The girl said and I laughed with her to her joke. She was 100% right.

“The name’s Billy, Billy Hargrove.” I hold my hand out for her to shake, she gingerly accepts.

“Yeah I know.”

“Well how come I haven’t seen you around at school? I would never fail to notice someone as gorgeous as you in the halls of Hick-Hawkins High.”

She blushes and crosses her arms over her exposed tummy. “I don’t really dress like this in school. Not after being made fun of by girls like Brandy. So I only express myself here at the rink.”

Poor thing. My hand goes up to brush her hair out or her face without thinking.

“Don’t listen to them sweetheart, you’re an absolute doll. A total talent if you ask me. Don’t listen to those chicks, they’re just jealous of you.”

What the fuck am I saying? Jesus Christ, this is what happens when I talk with my heart instead of my mind and dick I guess. I should do this more often.

Her eyes lock to the floor. “T-Thanks Billy… Also I’m Y/n by the way. We have Chem and World History together. I sit at the all the way back in both those classes though.”

I smile and lean in closer to bask in her scent. Smells like sweet candy with a hint of honey. What a doll.

“Well I’ll keep an eye out for you. Say, how about we hit the rink together? You and me since my date ran off?”

Before she answers she checks her wrist watch. “Sorry Billy but I have to head home before the streetlights turn on or else my brother will be pissed. But I’ll see you in school okay!”

I hide my disappointment behind a smile. “Alright, I’ll see you Monday.”

Before she leaves she pulls me into a gentle hug which I don’t have time to reciprocate before she skates off with a small wave.

Oh my god I think I just fell in love. No I just met her… That’d be weird, right?

Monday…

It’s the second class of the day, World History. I changed my seat so now I’m in the back row. I took some nerd’s seat but he didn’t have the balls to tell me it was his seat so he sat in my old one towards the middle left. The seat next to my new one is empty, and I assume that’s where Y/n sits.

This is probably the first time I’ve come to class on time. And for a girl? Let alone one I met yesterday? God I’m embarrassing.

Seconds before the bell rings a girl stumbles into the room with a heavy backpack. Her puffy sage green coat, long brown frilly skirt that goes down to her ankles, and dirty white converse. Her hood hides some of her h/c hair but her bangs peek through the front. Big round glasses adorn her face and a black scarf is wrapped snuggly around her neck hiding part of her chin.

What a basket case.

Before the teacher notices the girl comes to the back and sits next to me.

“Hey Billy.” She whispers to me and pulls her hood and scarf down. Her hair is messier than how it was done up in Saturday and glasses sit on her button nose.

This is Y/n? Holy shit.

“Y/n? I didn’t even recognize you.” I say and turn to her completely. She giggles and takes her jacket off revealing a snug grey sweater.

“Yeah I can see why, I look like that girl from The Breakfast Club huh?”

I nod with my mouth slightly parted. I myself aren’t really into the basketcase type chicks. Not so into the baggy clothes that hide their bodies. But with Y/n, god it just makes me curious. I’ve seen her rockin bod in that crop top and jeans that framed her ass oh so well. The fact that only I got to see it too gives me a new sense of pride. It’s like my own little secret.

“I probably look silly to you now huh? Not so confident as you thought.” She said lowly when she realized I haven’t said anything like the idiot I am.

I reassure her immediately, “No no sweetheart not at all. I’m just admiring how adorable you are is all…” I mumble the last bit more to myself but Y/n heard it loud and clear, her blush says so.

“Oh shut up.” She fires back quietly like a kicked puppy.

I grin and hold her hand that was atop her desk. She freezes but relaxes in my hold.

“How about I take you on a date? Maybe we could go skating?” I shoot my shot hoping she’ll say yes. Why was I even nervous she’d say no? Girls always say yes to me.

But with Y/n… It’s different. Maybe it’s because I don’t only want sex with her? God I’m going soft, but I don’t dislike it.

“Sure.” She sends me a warm smile and holds my hand back in her smaller hold. “Are you sure you want to go skating though? I’d probably leave you in the dust Billy.”

I smirk at her snark remark.

“Oh baby you haven’t even seen me skate yet, don’t let that hidden confidence get to that pretty little head of yours.”

Just then the teacher walked in meaning we couldn’t talk anymore, but that didn’t mean that Y/n and I would stop holding hands. My thumb traced gentle circles on the back of her soft hand. Every minute or so she’d look at me with a cute smile.

My leg shook not with anxiety but rather excitement. This school day couldn’t go by any slower could it?

The final bell rang and I walked Y/n out to my car. Max came by but I told her to skate home much to her disappointment, oh well shitbird, I have a hot date.

“Hey wait!” Y/n called to Maxine before she skated away. My stepsister paused and turned to my date in confusion.

“I didn’t mean to take your spot, I’ll get in the back,” Y/n then turned to me, “Cmon Billy take her home would you? The ground is wet from rain and it’ll ruin her skateboard trucks.”

Maxine perked up at the fact that Y/n even knew what trucks were. So she skipped over and hopped in the passenger seat while Y/n got in the back.

“Ugh fine.” I groaned and started the car and drove Maxine home.

The while car ride was Y/n and Maxine talking about roller skating and skateboarding.

“Yeah I tried skateboarding but I liked roller skating more, it feels more fluid for me.” Y/n said.

Maxine replied, “I totally get that, less chances to crack your skull too.”

The two girls laughed as I sulked. It took longer to get hole too since I didn’t want to drive fast and scare Y/n.

Pulling up to the house Maxine hopped out of the car and waved goodbye and Y/n sat up front.

“You’re a good brother Billy, and even a better date. And the date hasn’t even begun yet!” The girl next to me said with a smile. Said smile was contagious because I couldn’t help myself to wear one too.

“Don’t flatter me too much doll it’ll get to my head.”

Next thing you know she placed a kiss on my cheek.

“I think I like you Billy, a lot.” She said bashfully and held her hands. “I don’t want to rush this though so how about we go to the rink now yeah?”

I could still feel her lips on my cheek as I drove us to the rink. Drive by The Cars played on the radio which Y/n turned up, saying it was her favorite band.

The date was everything I hopes it would be. Y/n and I skating under the dim neon lights as music softly played. It was getting late and everyone was gone except us. And under the discoball in the center Y/n and I shared a kiss that sparked something inside me. It felt like magic coursing through my veins.

Uh oh, I think I just fell in love… That was fast.

[system-of-a-feather]

(Disclaimer: this post was written in two parts, the first half was done the day before but not posted cause I didnt feel it was a complete thought, the second half was added after. I did not edit or touch the first half as I like to keep space for the thoughts of myself as they were; i also have passive chronic amnesia so Im not 100% sure if everything is on the same page; regardless that is just context)

Honestly, I think the thing that is important to keep in mind when interacting with syscourse - or specifically for us cause the only one we really care about is the tulpa discourse - is that you are never going to force or change anyone's mind who is so set that they are sitting on tumblr and pulling the dumbest arguments out of their ass to support their claims and I do think those that spend their time arguing with @/sophieinwonderland and @/cambriancrew - while honestly doing the dirty work no one wants to do by balancing out their bullshit posting so mad respect - are largely wasting their time if they do ever think that a mind will be changed.

The only reason to ever engage or talk about the stuff they (and the clique that actually buys into those arguments) talk about is solely to make an example out of how incredibly deep their interalized racism and just disregard for POC goes and honestly looking at them as anything other than a stubborn white person is putting more emotional energy than its worth.

Because genuinely, in a weird way and me doing what XIV calls "The Riku Thing" of looking at a really negative, annoying, and/or harmful thing and finding the bright side silverlining to it, I do kind of appreciate how astonishingly White TM they are because their unapologetic and loud nature makes a really big spectacle for a lot of people who otherwise would not understand how bad certain issues are look and go "what the fuck" and in its own way, it brings good publicity to the issues AAPI and eastern cultures go through in a western and white predominant area.

AAPI issues often go under the radar and are disregarded due to a number of reasons, but honestly? This is the most I've ever seen people actually talk about how white people take advantage of eastern and Asian cultures (relative to the size of the community in question) save for the brief blip of when Stop Asian Hate got loud during COVID where sinophobia blasted up and a bit surrounding Cyberpunk as a genre when Cyberpunk 2077 came out.

In that regard, I'm kinda glad they are so loudly racist and White TM about AAPI cultures. It makes for good publicity and awareness by being the example of just the Usual Bullshit and it starts better conversations. I'd honestly prefer a loud bigot to a quiet insidious one cause the loud ones at least can serve part of a message and be ignored.

Anyhow, this is all just to say that bigots will be bigots and you can argue with them all you want and call them truthful statements like "bigots" and "racist" but thats about all you can do to really control their behavior. Those balancing out their bullshit arguments, mad props - I could never cause that shit is too toxic and too much of an investment, but it is respectable work. (insert "it aint much but its honest work" meme at yall)

---(cut between original thoughts and the added bit)---

That said, I'll just say it as the fact that it is, those two and those that follow their rhetoric do not care at all about AAPI individuals and are just racist. We don't have to debate it and it's honestly not up for debate and while we could put our energy to trying to tear down their following and make them shut up, in a world where the KKK still exists and thrives, its an unlikely and futile of a goal to try ti achieve.

Instead its best imo to treat them like the public case study of white and western abuses to AAPI culture, particularly since time and time again they redisplay some of the most classic and frequently used techniques white and western individuals do to try to excuse their shit.

If you wouldn't give a person arguing with any other loud and proud bigot, its best to just accept that bigots be bigots and rather than banging your head against a wall, put it up for display on the museum wall as a means of education and awareness.

Theres no point in talking to bigots about how they are bigotted. There is, however, a point to displaying it for those less effected and usually not given the opportunity to sed it in full get a much closer look at some of the shit we deal with

I like to think that while a lot of white and western people suck, that a lot of them genuinely are trying their best with the limited awareness, access, and understanding that they have.

I dont feel as though I would be correct calling them and bigots a "small minority", but I'd like to think they aren't the majority and I honestly appreciate those willing to learn and better understand and so ya know? Whats a better way to explain it than with a live dancing monkey that loudly and proudly displays the behaviors in question for all to see.

Anyhow, I digress. Take this as you will. I am just throwing some insight and personal thoughts about specific users in hopes that some people who might be overly stressed about it might find a little more peace moderating the topic

[jewishbarbies]

https://www.tumblr.com/jewishbarbies/760744047881125888?source=share

NO LITERALLY. And not to make this about pan people too, but they LITERALLY DO THE SAME SHIT WITH PANSEXUALITY.

Like why do people think it’s not okay for bi/pan people to not be bi/pan? All I see on the internet is people saying that we’re more likely to cheat… bitch, what?

I’ve also heard from some lesbians/gays that they’re afraid of their partner cheating on them or leaving them for a man/girl.

queer people will project their dumbest insecurities onto bi & pan people and pretend it’s our fault. the disc horse around whether or not you should be bi instead of pan because they think being bi is transphobic literally made me lose brain cells.

queer people infantilize pan people to a certain extent with that, acting like being pan is the most inclusive thing possible so therefore you’re this super good and wholesome person who can do no wrong because you’re attracted to everyone. meanwhile bi people are these transphobic cheaters and bi women are just pretending to be queer for brownie points while ‘always ending up with men’, but we’re not gonna talk about how mean and exclusionary lesbians are to bi women noooo. like, why would i want to date a woman that clearly thinks so horrible of me bc of my sexuality? or doesn’t even believe my sexuality? bi women have a hard time finding queer women to date because of the bigotry in the modern queer community, not because we have some internalized homophobia.

like if they actually TALKED to us about our own sexualities instead of just making assumptions based on literally nothing, they’d understand the difference and why both sexualities need to exist, and one is not more valid than the other. typically gender is a part of attraction for bi people and it’s not for pan people. it’s not hard to understand and neither sexuality is bigoted in anyway. yeah, there are bad people of every sexual orientation and gender identity (hence this conversation), but that doesn’t mean there’s an inherently more bigoted one. it all sounds like such a duh statement to me but these people act like you’re moses bringing down the stone tablets when you explain it??

also the jaded lesbian to radfem pipeline is so real and it’s honestly getting unnerving just how many queer women end up there and start attacking pan & bi women for their sexuality. it’s the whole “men are your natural predators so its unnatural for you to date them, it’s because it’s ingrained in you and not real!” bullshit. like i feel for you man, but you’re a fucking idiot. and this is the dating pool that bi & pan women have to weed through online and irl to try and find a queer woman to date. but sure, we’re just choosing men over women because we’re faking being queer. yeah, that’s it. 🥴

[theonlyadawong]

putting all my hateration under the cut 😌❤️

I love that ethan is just a Normal Guy but dear God would it have killed them to give him some semblance of a personality other than wanting to save his wife and daughter like yeah okay he loves his family and that's something but when you're spending two games with him it's actually a whole lot of nothing! The game overall was beautiful of course but my God it just felt like a dark fantasy game and that's great but I want to play resident evil and this was not a resident evil game and I don't care how hard 8 fans campaign for it to be seen as one, it will never fit into the franchise unless the next few games make a hard left turn into fantasy. And yeah you could say 4,5, and 6 aren't exactly horror games and you know what I would agree with you kind of, but they still are resident evil games. I just think everything they did in this game was so... it was such a wild departure from anything we had ever seen before and not in a good way. The only things connecting this game to the rest of the franchise were chris (who is only in 10% of the game and that's pushing it) and ethan and mia, and those 2 are brand spanking new to the franchise. It honestly feels like they wanted a testing ground for 4remake so they just worked backwards from that and then worked on the story and that's how we got this junk and boy do I mean fucking junk. There is no way you can look me in my eye and tell me vampire woman and metal powers man seriously feel like they belong in the franchise. I can work with moreau because he leans into horrific mutations and donna... is kind of a joke to me lol. The doll thing is creepy but again it feels like a fantasy thing and not Sci fi or horror (though there are some horrific aspects to the game.) AND ALSO DO THEY EVER EXPLAIN WHY EVERYONE HAS AMERICAN ACCENTS EVEN THOUGH THEYRE IN ROMANIA DID I MISS SOMETHING?!?!? anyways the whole retroactively putting miranda in the ozwell Spencer story is such a fucking joke to me. Why would they fuck around with an already fine story beat? Why? Just to justify miranda and it doesn't even work because she, like everything else, feels so out of place in the franchise. And the game itself? Like the gameplay? Was nothing special! I didn't care for it! The most interesting thing that happened was the bsaa using bioweapons and that came at the VERY END OF THE GAME!!!!!!! like... THAT is the story beat we will be following up on (I assume. I mean. Unless capcom wants to go batshit like they clearly did here) and we don't even know about it until the fucking end!!! And my God. Shadows of rose. Completely boring don't care don't care don't care they literally just did all that work just to tell us ethan is always with rose. That's it. It's not for us to understand rose. It's for ethan. And again I must ask, why on God's green earth is mia seemingly absent from her daughters life. Why. THAT is an interesting story beat I would have liked to see in SoR not this other half cocked bullshit. Also eveline so did not need to be here. It's not like rose ever actually gets to learn about her. She's just there to be a malicious force and it's only for like... 20 minutes at best. Anyways this was the dumbest re game I've played and I suspect it will be the dumbest out of the franchise. I literally could go my whole life ignoring this game and be happier for it. Also it should have been mias game that way we can see mias relationship with rose but fuck her I guess.

[secretlilsis]

Omg yes😭 the boob size judgement is one of the dumbest things ever🙄 like judge people by their actions, not random assumptions based on a ridiculous stereotype. The entire thing with judging women's character based on how they dress is so disrespectful. I really don't get the innocence thing? Like if you don't know someone you can't possibly know if they are or not? Anyone can wear dresses that don't show cleavage, it literally says nothing about them as a person😭 like what the heck is that?🤨

Yeah legit lol. Its so fucking superfical honestly? Like what are we rating womens morality on how likely she is to accidentally give u naughty thoughts? Literally, theres so so so many fucking divinely beautiful outfits w/ extremely short skirts esp paired w/ like knee-socks. Ugh. Like I will admit that the only reason I dont dress revealing is bcz I am not actually equipped to deal w/ the kind of attention it would get me. Like I had a trial period for that and I found out that the "male attention" feels fucking abhorrent lol. Like I am VERY argumentative irl regarding feminism and calling out men and shit, but somehow even then I just really cannot go thru w/ it to just dress how I want and like, I 100% cant fucking handle the way men look at me, the way men interpret that, the way they think its an invitation, the way they try to speak to me, catcall me, hit me up. Fucking hate hate hate it. Like this I still get catcalled but its no comparison to how frequent that shit was when I dressed how I wanted to. And HONESTLY no front, being catcalled whilst you dont show a lot of skin does not feel as disgusting and uncomfortable as when you dress more revealing. I honestly believe the girls that dress provocatively without a care in the world not giving A FUCKING shit about what anyone says about it and just manage to ignore all of the bullshit are fucking warriors lol.

[siren-melodies]

Hiii, so idk who else to tell this too but backstory my family has never been religious but lately they have an some points they be making does make sense but some are like I have my own opinion of it

But what has gotten to me is that manifesting is a sin and that we should believe in God and God only and rn idk what to do because I don't want to sin but I also want to manifest my dream life just how I want to live it. The thing is I'm not educated enough in manifesting/loa/non duality even thought I been in this community for almost a year now, to actually tell them about it.

So now I'm stuck.

Religion is a trap, a bubble designed to keep you ignorant. It was created so that you look elsewhere for God when in truth it was you all along. Why would God make the Earth and then not partake of it? There is no other power but you as awareness. Nothing is outside of your control. Religion is full of fuck ass limiting beliefs to make you feel small and incapable. Society is crafted the way it is so that you never awaken to your true identity. It is full of distractions and unnecessary rules and whatnot.. constantly telling you bullshit like you have to work your whole life and slave away, life isn't fair, I'll believe it when I see it, daydreaming is a waste of time, glorified hustle,, superpowers are fantasy and the likes of such. All of this is fantasy to awareness. It is all imagination, a dream. And when you remember who you are, you consciously control the dream. Awareness is in a human body literally just for the experience, to be entertained by it all. You don't need to be educated because there is nothing to learn, just unlearn. This is your rebirth. Start from scratch. In the very first chapter of Genesis in the Bible, God created heaven and earth of of nothing. The world was void and out of nothing, came everything( this is the void y'all) literally mentioned in the very beginning of the holy book. Look it up for yourself. This is why religion and society have done their best best brainwash by the multitude. If people awoke to their true selves, where would there power and authority go? Surely they can't oppress a self-aware God. Lol and a bunch of teenage girls on tumblr fucking know this out of everyone in the world to exist at any point in time. Honestly, it's not even just about manifesting and stuff. That is what ego desires. You are pure awareness experiencing the human body and mind in a dream world. Nothing really matters, never has. You are always awareness. You were before you took on an ego and incarnated, you are during and will be after the character dies. This is a game and it's supposed to be fun! I'm really glad you asked ME this question because I feel I am perfectly qualified to answer. I come from a deeply spiritual family. Starting with my great-great-great grandmother, black magic was heavily practiced in the family, men and women. Seances and speaking to the dead, letting the dead possess your body and speaking through you type of shit. I've always seen and felt dark entities (was attacked a couple times but not anymore bc I'm above those shits) Anywayyyyss, point being that my family went crazy and it passed from generation to generation. Suicides, Drugs, Mental and physical disease, Severe abuse.. until my grandmother decided enough and looked towards Christianity. Now she is a FANATIC. Absolutely ludicrous! It's so amusing hearing her speak about Jesus and crap because in my head I'm going "if only you knew God was right here." She is also one of the dumbest women I know. She believes you shouldn't ask questions about the afterlife and stuff because that is doubting God. And she thinks Saturday is a holy day and you shouldn't even buy anything on that day because it's a sin. She forbids anyone to listen to music and thinks if a woman was raped she has to marry her rapist because sex is holy and the woman is impure... She became a Christian at 19 and now she is pushing 60 with nothing to show for it. She has nothing! Her faith in " God", who is supposed to be a man that lives in the sky, had gotten her absolutely nothing and it is because she is worshipping a false God instead of herself. I don't care if it sounds narcissistic.. Worship Yourself! The moment you want something, give it to yourself. You are not a pathetic little human with it's pathetic little problems. You are sooo much more than this. You are above everything. You are truly privileged to know the truth out of everyone. Everyone else is suffering and going through their own shit, and would kill to know what we know. Don't let this life on Earth go to waste when you can heaven right now! Feel free to DM me for anything

Xoxo,

Jezebel 💜

[leon-on-the-froggy-chair]

Preferably only to be seen by the moots. Venting semi-humorously

okay so like I hate that I get triggered by the dumbest goofiest bullshit bc i literally had a panic attack over balding gate tres

and over a scene/dialogue sequence I've ALREADY seen most of on tiktok and shit. But i got it without really expecting it. for anyone who might be familiar it was the scene with a Drow chick that tries to pressure Astarion into biting her when hes clearly uncomfortable and upset about the demand. And its really icky and carries a lot of implications esp with the allegories presented by the character.

And its literally just a game and a fake interaction but it smacked me like a bag of hammers to the ribs and skull and i like felt my bones collapse on themselves and i just freaked out a bit. I just relate to Astarion a lot for a LOT of reasons hes of like 3 characters I've ever TRULY deeply related to in ways i can't even put to words. And it seems silly i know. But that dialogue sequence hit really close to home. And like ive been on a weird edge lately where stuff in my interpersonal relationships and personal feelings about stuff has been hitting weird and something has been making me uncomfortable and anxious but i havent known what and i guess that jabbed into something i didnt realize has been sitting dormant and everything just went rAjKakak.

But like. HONESTLY IM NOT EVEN UPSET BECAUSE IT OPENED MY EYES A LITTLE AND ALSO JUST SHOWS THE REALLY FUCKING GOOD PERFORMANCE AND QUALITY OF THE DIALOGUE AND CHARACTER WRITING LMAO like this is GOOD shit and regardless of this I'm still playing it lmao I'm just maaaad unsettled at how badly that got me lmao. Not bc of the game duh I'm just like damn what the fuck why was THAT just sitting there in my brain and waiting to get me LMAO

wild stuff frfr

[tri-punisher]

What’s the dumbest, most brain-dead take coming from TriStamp that you’ve read so far? Like what’s the dumbest most asinine take you’ve read that’s just left you staring into space like “what the actual frick dude”

One of mine (I have a lot) is Knives being okay with human/plant hybrid experimentation because it gives Tesla a second chance (stemming from a dumb fan theory that fake Elendira has both Knives and Tesla’s DNA in her), because why would Millions frickin Knives of all people want to bring his dead sister back to life by combining her DNA with the DNA of the very things that killed her?

oh yeah i’ve seen that, i fucking hate that one too. literally why in god’s name would KNIVES be okay with any kind of plant experimentation like that, after knowing what tesla suffered before she was consequently killed, especially if it was for the supposed benefit of humans? like. HUH ?????

but to answer your question though i’m honestly not the best person to ask cus i’m fond of the “block and move on” method of content curation after i’ve had my 5 seconds to complain about some bullshit that pissed me off. at this point any time i’ve spent thinking about stampede is time i’ve wasted so i’ve been trying to Not do that. it gets fucking hard when people never tag things correctly though

could be worth coming back to me when S2 drops and razlo makes an appearance cus i know for sure i’m gonna be pissed as hell every time i go into his tags, considering the trg fandom even as it is now can’t go 10 seconds without calling him “crazy” or demonising him and blaming him for ww’s death or saying anything that’s tantamount to “he and livio are the same person”

[hamartia-grander]

I played Detroit: Become Human like it was Dungeons and Dragons (rolling dice left and right based off of these character sheets I made, with the help of @detroitbecomeonline​). Here’s how it went:

First off, I rolled d4s to decide dialogue options, then d20s + their ability/proficiency modifiers for general checks and saves, and even initiative and attack rolls.

AND Each Character got their own dice set because I just so happen to have 3. So I only roll for each character using their corresponding dice set.

It honestly started off a bit slow. Connor rolled terrible investigation and didn’t notice shit about Daniel, then got himself killed by sacrificing himself to save Emma.

The first few chapters are pretty inconsequential so the most that happened were wacky dialogue options and also for fun I rolled a Stealth check for Markus to see if he could avoid the protestors and he Could Not.

I determine these things by setting what I’m calling “Room DCs”: for each character, the environment they’re in has a minimum DC they need to roll higher than on investigation, perception, stealth, etc. Each room DC varies on the characters’ proficiencies in investigation. Connor’s room DC is 18 bc his investigation is highest, then Markus whose room DC is 16, then Kara whose room DC is 15… It makes sense I promise.

(The Room DCs only apply to non-characters though, like investigating an environment. For situations like Markus avoiding the protestors, I rolled a Stealth check for him and a Perception check for them. They won.)

In Partners, everything was going great, Connor rolled high investigation and found all the evidence… but then when relaying that evidence to Hank, the d4 fucked me over and had Connor insisting that both the android and the victim attacked each other “without a weapon”, to which Hank called bullshit and the mission failed. Oh well.

Kara rolled low Sleight of Hand and was caught stealing by the supermarket guy, so no money for the motel.

She rolled low Persuasion on Alice, so no car. But she rolled high Perception so we found the wire cutters to get into Ralph’s house

Aannnndd then she rolled low Perception so she forgot to grab the gun off the dresser after she finished changing :/

Kara and Connor both rolled high on their Dex saves for the highway chase scene, but Kara rolled higher so she got away. 

Off to a very bad start with Hank, thanks to Connor’s d4 that fucking hates me I guess. (pay back for all the times I’ve dissed on Connor?)

I rolled opposing strength checks for Markus and Leo to see if Markus holds his ground or pushes Leo, and yeah Leo Got Pushed.

Connor rolled high investigation and found Rupert… but Rupert rolled a significantly higher Acrobatics check so he got away.

Kara rolled a low wisdom save on Zlatko’s “Forget Spell” so she forgot, but then rolled a high Investigation check so she found all the clues. Thank God.

Connor’s Animal Handling is -2 AND I rolled a 5 so he did not get to pet Sumo in Russian Roulette :’(((

Markus rolled high Acrobatics so he took down the drone, but then the d4 said John wasn’t allowed to join them so they had to run, but the mission was mostly successful.

Uhh Connor rolled high Investigation at the Eden Club but Ripple rolled like an 18 attack roll and Connor’s AC is only 14, so she kicked his ass.

BUT THEN THE D4 MADE HIM SHOOT BOTH TRACIS AS THEY RAN AWAY I WAS FURIOUS

Hank FUCKING hates us

To make everything WORSE, the fucking Bridge chapter, oh my GOD I swear this d4 is literally fucking possessed by Gavin or some shit, bc it kept rolling the WORST dialogue options, and yeah needless to say Hank shot Connor :/

Like it was maddening but also so so funny. Connor kept saying the dumbest shit and Hank’s metre kept going down. He legit said “I know you’re not gonna shoot me, Lieutenant” and then got fucking shot. Dear Lord.

Stratford tower! Markus’s d4 LOVES me. He rolled to Ruse the guards, and then rolled to Shoot the runaway newsboy, so Simon is safe! (for now)

Connor rolled SHIT investigation in Public Enemy AND he kept attacking the wrong kitchen android so they just left. I didn’t even know you could fail that chapter, but Connor sure did.

Midnight Train could’ve gone SO bad, but Kara rolled super high perception, found all the deviant evidence, d4 rolled good dialogue options, and then everything was fine. I was so stressed tho.

Capitol Park was pretty lowkey, other than Markus failing his Acrobatics check, again, and failing to take down the drone. I rolled percentile dice to decide violent or peaceful, 1-50 for pacisfism and 51-100 for violence, and unfortunately I rolled a 40, but the public STILL hates us bc the d4 made Markus shoot Chris :/

Connor fucking shot Chloe so now Hank is gonna fucking kill himself. All because of a stupid d4.

I’m gonna have to replay and see if I can do any better with these dice rolls cause jfc

Freedom March, d4 decided we are attacking. Markus rolled a very high attack roll and a mediocre dex check so he won but with a few missed QTEs. The public HATES US.

Connor found Jericho thanks to the Tracis and a high Investigation check, but then rolled a shit dex save against Gavin’s attack roll of 24. So Gavin killed him LMAO

Fucking shit balls ass motherfucker, as you can imagine, Crossroads went so bad. So first of all, I was right, Connor couldn’t deviate. Oh well. Then when he faced the one soldier guy the d4 rolled “Attack” so I rolled Connor’s attack role and rolled a fucking natural ONE. Against the soldier’s AC of 14. So yeah Connor died again. Then for Kara, I rolled to save Luther thank God, but then when they were escaping the d4 rolled for “Run” and then “Attack”, and APPARENTLY LUTHER ATTACKS FOR YOU??? I DID NOT KNOW THAT. So anyways now Luther is dead too bc he saved Kara and Alice. Then, for Markus, I rolled a SHIT Stealth check so he got shot, only once though! Then d4 rolled and got the Not Intervene unfortunately, rolled a high Strength check to drop the thingy on the soldiers, then d4 rolled to Hide instead of saving Josh which sucks. THEN the d4 actually DID roll to save North, but APPARENTLY if Markus got shot before, his Vital Systems Damage doesn’t let him save North!!! So she fucking died!!! I’M SO SAD😭😭 So now it’s just Markus and Simon, but Simon’s relationship status is at NEUTRAL, which is the lowest I’ve ever gotten with him and idk how I fucked up so badly to make the guy who likes Markus the easiest not give a shit about Markus, I’m crying it’s so funny. Imagine hanging out with a group of people and they all like you but the nicest guy in the group just considers you like a coworker. Embarrassing. Anyways. Markus successfully blew up the ship at least (he rolled an attack roll against the soldiers of 23) so there’s that.

D4 got Carl killed bc his weak white privileged ass can’t stand it when an oppressed man is angry. Fuck him. I literally couldn’t care less. I’m just sad Leo didn’t get his closure.

Simon is our Friend now yay I love gay people

Hank… yeah. And I’ve seen this scene like 4 times now (only once my own, the rest other playthroughs) and I still fucking cry my eyes out every time, I hate d*vid c*ge so much for making that one of Hank’s outcomes I hate that there’s literally no way for Connor to stop him and I hate that it’s entirely determined by his relationship with Connor, idc how much he reminds Hank of his son it shouldn’t fucking matter bc that’s not how depression/suicidal ideation fucking works, I would know. It makes me so damn mad. Anyways wbk Connor’s dice hate me.

Revolutionary Markus babyyyy let’s just hope Simon survives this at least otherwise Markus loses everyone.

It was Connor on the roof with the sniper rifle! Haha, just a little Clue joke for ya. Anyways it was actually Captain Allen on the roof with the handgun, because Connor got his ass beat. Thanks to a nat 1 attack roll. Again.

Yeah I fucking jinxed it, Markus rolled a shit Strength check (which is ironic) in attempting to grab Simon so Simon died. Now Markus is all alone :’((

BUT Markus rolled high attack roll after high attack roll, one missed and he got shot but the rest succeeded so he won the Revolution babyyyy.

Kara rolled high Deception against Oliver’s parents’ low Insight so she took the tickets. Slay.

For the Markus v. Connor, I rolled initiative for both of them, and where Markus rolled an 18 Connor got a nat 1. Again. Maybe I should redo this but only use one set of dice for all three of them. I don’t believe in dice superstition, but this is just ridiculous. So anyways then I rolled attack rolls for both of them and Markus hit while Connor missed. So Connor gets killed dead, AGAIN. Which I mean I’m not at all complaining, I LOVE watching Markus beat his bitch ass up.

Side note, when Markus wins the revolution, since all of his friends are dead, one of the Zac Efron looking Chad bots tells him they won, that the soldiers are fleeing, and he says it so cheerfully it made me laugh so hard. Markus is standing there, broody as fuck, carrying the weight of the war and the Toll of the Dead (d&d pun intended) on his shoulders, and here’s this Just Some Guy android jumping up and down excitedly, clapping his hands and cheering “we won!”. It’s so funny.

I’m so upset. Kara and Alice made it all the way through, but since Luther died, and I rolled a low Stealth check so I couldn’t save Jerry, she couldn’t sacrifice anyone else, then of the “sacrifice self” or “no sacrifice” I rolled the latter, so they both got shot. I’m so mad. Literally no one gets a good ending in this God forsaken game

Except technically Markus because he won but also he lost everyone, so did he really win?

Anyways this sucked balls I cannot believe this is literally the worst playthrough I’ve had yet. I wanna redo this but tbh I don’t wanna restart from the beginning, so maybe tell me what chapter I should start at? Cause most the beginning chapters are inconsequential.

That’s all! Hope you had fun reading!

[cordycepsfem]

I opened my heart to you. I let you read me. My hands were up, guns were down. I said I was happy to talk if anyone had hurt you. But instead you just turned around on me and yelled. I know you've been hurt, but that is no excuse for what you have permitted to be on your blog and what you have said. I am entirely willing to help you heal. But if you keep lashing out, no one will benefit. You call me a coward for being scared of you but you reblogged that horrid post. So I am perfectly in my right to be mother fucking terrified, and I am. Because I don't want any of my friends to be raped or murdered. So please, please, just talk to me, or somebody you trust, or someone with open DMs or anyone. I'm not going to judge you as long as you're open.

I did not yell or “lash out,” I responded to you frankly and openly as an adult, which I will continue to do now. Again, if this is too much to handle - getting an honest response from someone speaking openly and honestly - some time away from the computer may serve you well. You told me you’re a minor but if you approach me with wild claims that are intended to hurt or motivate me into doing something, I’m going to assume you’re ready to have a grown-up conversation. If not, the procedure to log off is very easy.

Your word vomit about your own identity was not “letting me read you,” it was an attempt to guilt me into feeling a certain way. You didn’t ask about my own thoughts or feelings, didn’t ask about why I may write or reblog the things I do, didn’t give a shit about anything related to me except your hope that I would be guilted into change through your presentation of self as a poor little meow meow.

You have no idea what my background is, nor what the “hurt” is that you’re so earnestly petitioning me to hash out with you. I do not find it appealing to engage in a discourse with someone who claimed to be “terrified” of me - if you can’t connect to my feelings or what I might say because you are too scared of them, what chance do we have of having an actual conversation that means anything? What else might my words and experiences trigger in you, since apparently all I am is terrifying? A heart attack? The vapors?

I didn’t say you were a coward, I said that you being scared of sharing a massive online platform with me was very silly. You could have continued to scroll on by and never approached me at all. It probably would have been better for you, considering all these histrionics.

I don’t give a shit about you judging me. I’m not going to rape or murder anyone, which is the dumbest thing I’ve had to state so far.

You are “entirely willing” to help me heal? Bullshit. You reference how scared you are of my ideas; I hardly think that as a minor who can’t debate issues without crying about being raped or murdered that you are in any way qualified to “heal” or even have further discussion with about my life. I have a professional who I pay who works with me, because that’s what healthy people do instead of Tumblr asks.

[rose-grimm-spirit-does-dumb-shit]

Spirit's Blorbo Shop

Considering I'm currently banned from TH* and cannot remember my comms details**... Why not instead see how far I can get with frankly the dumbest fucking commisions venture you've ever seen, Blorbo Shop. You give me £1 I give you doodle of your blorbo.

There's nothing else really to it honestly.

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SHOP RULES - I will take both ocs and pre-existing characters for Blorbo shop, all I need is a good enough ref. - Only Humanoids, Anthros, Ferals, and monsters that aren't hellish to draw will be accepted. Don't try bringing me your ungodly mechs, I love you guys but please no. - Keep it nsfw-free, gore can be allowed if it fits but ultimately... No sexy times please thank you.

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EXAMPLES??? They... should be here? Just take a look at this ned doodle for now as reference okay?

------- DISCLAIMERS * I was banned for being auto flagged as a side account of a spammer, this is because I logged on at college around the same time as them so the ip address got us both fucked. I will hopefully have my account back soon. ** I can only remember specific comms, and even worse... I only remember their pricings in GBP, sorry Americans!

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ADDITIONAL SHIT

Are you looking for an actual comm rather than a mere scribble? Well, then let me guide you towards my very own Blorbo's {@cherrykitkat} BECAUSE IT'S NOT SPIRIT'S BULLSHIT IF SHE ISN'T ADVERTIISING HER QPP! GO COMM THEM, THEIR ART IS GORGEOUS!