#like these three rewired my brain and even if i know there are cases in aa1 that are objectively amazing none of them had this effect on me

[akihikosanada]

the mia cases in aa3, literally only one day of trial for each with no investigation segments, were so good that whenever i think about trials and tribulations i think of them rather than the other two middle ones or even the final case which is many people's favorite ever. mia makes the world go round and don't you ever forget it!!!

[mariasont]

Strictly Medical Reasons - S.R

it started as concern. a few check-ins, a handful of visits, just to make sure you were healing. but somewhere along the way, the line between duty and something deeper blurred, and spencer wasn't sure he wanted to redraw it.

pairings: spencer reid x reader warnings: gn!reader, flirting, mention of some undescribed rescue (imagining it wasn't too much trauma because there is too much flirting going on lol), reader has stitches, pre-relationship pining, definitely blurring some unhealthy attachments, mild codependency?, injury/wound care, but this is all fluffity fluff wc: 1.9k request: here

It was supposed to be procedural.

Another life salvaged, another story neatly archived. He had done this before, so many times, in so many places, that the specifics bled together, watercolors smudged by the passage of time. Their faces softened into abstraction, names reduced to reference, tucked away for when necessity dictated. That was the nature of it, the job. He helps, he leaves. They move on, and so does he.

Except this time, he hadn’t.

It didn’t hit him in the moment. Not when the case wrapped up, not when he boarded the jet, not even when he returned to his apartment. It wasn’t until much later — until he was supposed to be focused on a book he had read three times before, until he was staring blankly at his own notes without processing a single word — that he realized he hadn’t moved on. 

He could still remember the exact shade of your shirt, the way the material had wrinkled when you crossed your arms, the way you had cracked a joke, not forced, not out of shock, but because humor was your instinct, the same way facts were his.

The logical part of him knew this was excessive. Maybe even bordering on inappropriate. Checking in once? Reasonable. Twice? Understandable. But five times? Six? He wasn’t even sure anymore. Somewhere between the habitual morning texts and the I was just in the area visits that were only technically lies, he had lost count.

Somewhere along the way, it had stopped being just about your well-being and started becoming something else entirely, something he didn’t want to analyze too closely. Because even if he did, the compulsion remained the same, his fingers hovering over his phone, rereading messages for subtext that probably wasn’t there, scanning your voice for micro-inflections, subtle hesitations, anything.

It was crazy. For someone who spent his life dissecting human behavior down to its most fundamental parts, Spencer found himself struggling with the most basic equation of all: what was it about you that had rewired every rational impulse he had?

“Dr. Reid?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I can take these stitches out myself?”

Spencer’s response time dragged as he attempted to process whether or not you were joking. There was no sound reason for you to even consider that,removing sutures too early could lead to dehiscence, increased risk of infection, and possible hypertrophic scarring. He ran through a dozen potential responses, none of which adequately conveyed the "are you out of your mind" sentiment currently flooding his system.

“What?”

“My stitches. They itch like crazy,” you complain. There’s a rustling sound, a shuffle of movement, then a sharp inhale, like you’ve pressed too hard. He stiffens. “I know they said to wait, but it’s been — what? A week? That’s long enough, right?”

Spencer pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, it’s not long enough. And unless you’ve recently acquired a medical degree I don’t know about, you should absolutely not remove them yourself.”

A small, defeated sigh. He didn’t have to be there to know what you were doing, absently picking the edges of the injury, mind already debating whether to listen to him or your own impatience. He knew exactly how your brain worked. Possibly too well. 

“Okay, okay, doctor.” Your voice now had a teasing lilt, dissolving his irritation like sugar in tea. “I’ll keep them in. For now.”

He should have told you to go to urgent care. It was exactly the kind of advice he would give to anyone else. He even opened his mouth to say it.

But urgent care meant you’d be sitting in a cold, sterile room, and Spencer already had all the proof he needed that you did not handle pain well, so he could only imagine the absolute scene you would cause the second the doctor so much as touched you.

You had made it through an entire armed standoff without a scratch. You had been fine. Perfectly fine. And then, the second you were safe, you tripped over your own feet on the gravel, went down hard, and immediately announced, “I think I’m dying.”

(You weren’t. It was a two-stitch injury. He knew that. You knew that. But that hadn’t stopped you from squeezing his arm like you were bracing for war.)

So yeah, he wasn’t about to subject an innocent nurse to that level of unnecessary suffering.

“...I can come by and take a look.”

He hadn’t told anyone he was leaving and hadn’t bothered with excuses of half-hearted justifications. You had agreed without hesitation, voice light, pleased, and before he could even process what that meant, what it meant that you wanted him there, the call had ended and his coat was already on, his body moving as if his mind had no say in the matter at all.

Which was how he ended up here.

At your door, eyes drawn, as always, to the welcome mat. Stay Awhile. Too sentimental. A little too on-the-nose. The kind of thing he would generally dismiss with a passing thought, another surface-level attempt at warmth, mass-produced and impersonal. Except lately, it was starting to feel like a directive. 

Before he even knocked, the door swung open. He froze, fingers still half-curled into a fist, blinking as if he had somehow miscalculated the timing of reality itself.

“Hi.” You stepped back without hesitation, the invitation clear.  “Come in.”

Spencer hesitated for a fraction of a second, thrown by the fluidity of it all.

“Sorry, it’s kind of a mess,” you added, pushing the door behind him. “I had to work online today, and, uh, turns out, when you don’t have to leave the house, basic organization becomes more of a suggestion than a rule.”

His eyes skimmed the room, cataloging the so-called mess. A blanket, half-draped over the couch, slumped like a figure in mid-collapse. The pillows sat uneven, as if they had been rearranged in restless indecision. A coffee mug, streaked with the last remnants of caffeine, stood beside an open laptop. A pair of socks had been cast aside in the corner.

Mess, you had called it. He fought the urge to tell you that, statistically, people who lived in slightly cluttered spaces tended to be more creative. Somehow, he figured you already knew that.

His gaze tracked downward, instinct eclipsing intention.

The stitches were still in place, neatly spaced, and there were no signs of infection. So far, so good. But the skin surrounding them was angry, irritation blooming in uneven splotches where your fingers had worried the flesh.

“You’ve been scratching them.”

Your eyes flickered toward your arm, then back at him, guilt tucked behind a small, lopsided smile. “Not badly.”

Spencer sighed as he set his bag down with a thump. “Sit on the counter.”

“What?”

“The lighting’s better,” he muttered, already making his way toward the kitchen. “And I’d rather not crouch on your floor to assess how much damage you’ve done.”

You hopped up without argument, legs swinging as you grinned at him. “Do I get a lollipop after this check-up?”

Spencer stepped between your legs, hands settling lightly on your knee for balance. He hadn’t really thought this through, how close he’d have to be, how your leg would brush his hip, how he would be able to smell faint traces of your shampoo. 

He exhaled a dry laugh. “I don’t know. Do you think you deserve a reward for actively making my life harder?”

“Sounds like a you problem, Dr. Reid. If you weren’t so obsessed with checking up on me, you wouldn’t even know I was doing anything questionable.”

Spencer sighed, tugging on his gloves, the latex snapping against his wrist like punctuation.

“You make an excellent point.” He pulled out the disinfectant next, carefully flipping the cap open. “An annoying one, but an excellent point nonetheless.”

Because if he didn’t check up on you, he wouldn’t even know about the irritated stitches. He also wouldn’t know that you never make it through a full cup of coffee before it gets cold, or that you always read the last page of a book first, just in case, or that you leave the bathroom light on when you get up in the middle of the night because you hate walking through the dark.

He wouldn’t know you, not in all these strange, fascinating, tangled ways. And for some reason, that thought startled him more than it should.

When you started, Spencer barely had the cotton pad against your skin, “So I was reading this article about how — ow!” You flinched, shooting him a glare. “That stings!”

Spencer pressed his lips together, barely suppressing a laugh. “I did bring a numbing agent, but I figured you’d want to tough it out. For, you know, bragging rights.”

You huffed, lips turning into a tiny, reluctant pout. “Yeah, okay, I’m fine.”

Spencer’s grip on the cotton pad faltered just slightly before he recovered. He shouldn’t find that cute. He shouldn’t. But he absolutely did.

He continued cleaning, carefully blotting at the wound. Another wince. Another barely-contained reaction.

“Tell me about the article.”

“So, I read this study about how humans actually need physical touch to regulate their nervous systems.”

Spencer hummed in acknowledgement. “I’ve read about that. Social bonding releases oxytocin.”

“Right!” you winced, inhaling sharply through your teeth before continuing. “And it’s not just romantic, like, even casual touch can lower stress levels. They did a study with people holding hands and — ow — measuring their cortisol levels. Turns out, human contact makes everything more tolerable.”

Spencer’s brain decided right then to process every point of contact between you. 

Statistically, you weren’t wrong. Scientifically, it was a well-documented phenomenon.

“Interesting,” he said, clearing his throat. “Sounds useful.”

He could cite three separate studies off the top of his head, break down the neurochemical pathways, and explain in excruciating detail why humans physically needed each other. But he liked the way you described it better.

“You saying you wanna hold my hand, Spencer?”

The antiseptic pad definitely didn’t need as much pressure as he just applied. “You’re very chatty for someone in pain.”

“You act all put out, but you keep showing up. What does that say, Dr. Reid?”

“That I’m too intelligent to believe in lost causes, but not intelligent enough to avoid them” Spencer rolled his eyes as he pulled off his glove. He patted your thigh lightly before stepping back. “Alright, all done. Try to behave so I don’t have to do this again.”

You clutched your chest theatrically. “Are you saying you don’t enjoy our little quality time sessions? That hurts, Spencer.”

He busied himself with picking up his bag. “I’m not dignifying that with a response.”

You hopped down from the counter, and Spencer instinctively reached out, like he thought you might be unsteady, like it was his job to ensure you didn't wobble. His hand brushed your arm for a half a second before he caught himself and pulled away.

“Text me if anything looks worse.”

“What, so you can rush over again?”

His ears tinged slightly pink. “Just… let me know if you need anything.

You softened, nodding. “I will.”

As he stepped outside, Spencer pulled his phone from his pocket, half-expecting, half hoping, to see a message from you before he even made it to his car. He shook his head at the thought, at himself. This was becoming a problem. A habit. An inevitability.

And despite knowing this, here he was, already running through excuses in his head for why it would be perfectly reasonable to check in again tomorrow. Strictly for medical reasons, of course.

💌 masterlist taglist has been disbanned! if you want to get updates about my writings follow and turn notifications on for my account strictly for reblogging my works! @mariasreblogs

[trappedinafantasy37]

Cults & Autonomy: The True Souls

As I mentioned in my previous essay, Bhaal and the Absolute are the only two gods in the game who outright take control of their followers. For the Absolute, it uses the tadpole to take total control. But the tadpole is more of a conduit to transmit instruction, it can also turn those infected into Mind Flayers, destroying the original hosts body and soul. Normally, the tadpole is just part of the reproductive process for Mind Flayers, but these tadpoles are unique and are used specifically to gain cult like control.

However, not everyone in the cult of the Absolute was enthralled. The first True Soul we meet, Brother Edowin has two new recruits who worship the Absolute but are not infected. There are roughly 100 goblins in Act 1 alone (probably more), but only 3 members of the goblin faction are enthralled. The rest of the goblins are under ordinary brainwashing and worship the Absolute. I believe the Absolute and the Chosen Three are very selective on who gets enthralled and that is 1) individuals who have skills the Absolute wants but cannot convince to willingly work for the Absolute and 2) those who are willing but it is too risky to provide them room to defect. Ketheric sent those missionaries with the intent to lure out drow warriors because he wanted their fighting skills. And yes, Ketheric did target House Baenre on purpose. It wasn't specifically Minthara who was targeted, she was just the one who took the bait. Ketheric didn't anticipate Orin snatching Minthara from him, but she was enthralled against her will all the same. Ketheric wanted a warrior who would fight and command his armies, Orin wanted someone to pay attention to her, love her, and acknowledge her.

How the tadpoles work is a little bit on the nose with how it works as it is obvious the True Souls are literally brainwashed. As I talked previously, cults expect their members to willingly relinquish their autonomy, and most Absolutists do. But for the True Souls, their minds and bodies were stolen so Minthara would say. Entirely against their own will, the tadpole literally rewired their brains to get them to do things they otherwise wouldn't do, or do it in ways they would not do. I talked about this awhile ago, but my interpretation of the tadpole is that it amplifies pre-existing qualities that the Absolute wants, while simultaneously suppressing qualities it doesn't want or qualities that would interfere with the ones the Absolute does want.

This puts the True Souls in a strange place. The traits we all see from them are traits they were already capable of. It is just that the Absolute turned those traits up to their most extreme. Minthara also says,

"The tadpole... the Absolute... they worked together like a drug. I did not feel I was compelled to act against my will, I felt ecstatic to serve. Every action seemed a deliberate choice - the best choice - even though I could no more have resisted its commands than flesh can resist decay."

She speaks of it as if she and the other True Souls were addicted to the Absolute, almost as if their bodies wanted to do what they were told, but had no ability to fully resist. I have never struggled with full on addiction but I have been this 🤏 close to becoming addicted to prescription medication. And when you're just on the edge of addiction it feels like your body is betraying you. You want to resist but your body acts on its own, and acts like it's dying if it doesn't get what it craves. It warps your brain and your reasoning to try to convince you to just take it even when you know you shouldn't. Your body is not yours, it is beholden to the drug. In Minthara's case, her body was beholden to the Absolute because it gave her a high she couldn't escape. She didn't want to.

Every choice that they made felt like the best choice. Well, that's because they were making these choices with behaviors and rationale they already had, but were missing the characteristics that would pull them back, or make them make a different choice. Minthara already has violent intentions, but she applies a strict and lawful rationale to them and doesn't always react violently to things as not all situations require it. But Ketheric wanted a warrior and Orin wanted a mad killer. So the Absolute amplified Minthara's pre-existing violent intent while simultaneously suppressing the strict code that would prevent her from being violent. So of course every choice seemed like the best choice because there was no longer anything to make her question her choices. Normal brainwashing isn't this effective, but it ultimately is how it works. Cults slowly reprogram their members decision making process, only seeking out behaviors it wants, silencing others, and prevent questions. The Absolute does this by direct force with the tadpole, no "Welcome to the Cult" seminar required.

In the off chance that someone manages to break their indoctrination, the Absolute will just wipe their mind and erase everything. My personal theory is that the Minthara that is on trial at Moonrise is the real Minthara and broke through the tadpole on her own at some point. We see with Minthara that the Absolute can take total control of a person and wipe them from existence. It can render someone into an empty shell that can only receive orders, but literally incapable of thinking for themselves and unable to generate an original thought. But even when wiped away, there is still one thing the Absolute needs from Minthara, her devotion.

< Cults & Autonomy: The Bhaalspawn | Cults & Autonomy: Lae'zel and the Gith >

[tagsecretsanta]

From @the-original-sineater

From @the-original-sineater to @idontknowreallywhy

My TAGSS prompts were: Thunderbus Karaoke

Pie

Wee!Tracys adventures. Preferences: happy / fluffy

Two out of Three Aint Bad!

Virgil dropped into Two's pilot's seat with a marked lack of grace. Gordon on the other hand ganged up with gravity and launched an attack on the co-pilot's. Virgil wasn't sure if the resulting groan came from Gordon or the seat. 

As missions went, this had been mixed: an airship tour of the Sahara had engine trouble and had been drifting aimlessly around. Not the biggest emergency, but a haboob had been racing across the desert and headed straight for it. Add in a Thunderbird Two heading home from helping with a landslide on Corsica and you had a mess of a situation.

Virgil wiggled in his seat, grimaced, and started the pre-flight checks. 

"It gets everywhere, doesn't it?"

Virgil twisted to look at his brother, and snarled a little as the sand grated with friction of the movement on his neck. Gordon was still slumped in the seat with his eyes closed. He was beyond asking 'how'. It was Gordon. 

"Yeah." He went back to checking things and glowered at an orange panel. An orange panel that should be green. "I hate to ask this -"

"Then don't."

Virgil rolled his eyes."I need you to check the port side air intakes, while I monitor here."

"Why don't you check the intakes and I monitor?"

"Because the last time we tried that, you looked at the wrong info panel and I ended up getting doused with hydraulic fluid." Dark eyebrows drew in, "And you promised to check the air intakes in the future and in exchange I wouldn't rewire your room."

Gordon blanched at that and his hands came up, "I'm going, I'm going." He rose and headed for Two's innards. "But I'm activating 'Sonic Sanity'. We're both tired and the trip home is going to be long." He vanished into the depths of Two. Virgil sighed and turned back to the control panel and frowned at the alert. 'Sonic Sanity' sounded like a pretty good idea, but he didn't know if he had enough cognizant ability to make it through more than one song. Because if he muffed on the first try, he'd never hear the end of it from Gordon.

One cleared air intake and some cussing later, Two lifted off with her usual elegance, but not her usual speed.  Sand did indeed get everywhere, in this case into Two's fuel lines, which needed extra filters and  kept Two to half her speed. So it was an even longer trip home than Gordon thought. They could be farther from home, but that would require leaving the atmosphere.  He wrinkled his nose at his own smell. Yes it had been 'honest work', but he'd grown a lot since then. He brush at his sleeve, felt the sand under his fingers and decided that two showers were in order, maybe three. But he needed to remember to save enough hot water for Virgil, or he might have to learn to fly without a Thunderbird. Virgil ran his hand through his hair, snarled as sand dug into his scalp, and vowed to come up with even better filters for the suit helmets. Then he transferred his annoyance to the hologram in front of him and stabbed to the next one. 

"You flex those eyebrows any harder, you're going to need to charge admission."

Virgil jerked out of the numbers and glared at his brother, who was still drying his hair as he plopped into his seat. "About time." Virgil fought the urge to scratch at the sand and went back to trying to decide which flight path would get them home fastest. They were on the other side of the planet from the Island. He flicked another figure and lost his sight as something landed on his head. "HEY!"

"You, brother mine, are thinking so hard you 're going to catch your hair on fire. Go take a shower, grab a clean uni, and have some coffee."

Virgil pulled the damp towel off his head and snarled, "I'm trying to get us home!" "Virg, you're burning brain cells. Go get cleaned up, a clean uniform, a coffee, and some food. You'll feel better. I'll plot the course home." Gordon pulled up the navigation controls and started checking flight paths. There was an atmospheric river that could shave at least an hour of their time. However, there was an extremely loud scowl coming from the pilot seat. "Bro, go take a shower, don't scrub until you wash all the sand off, get a clean uniform, some food, and the coffee I just made." He kept his gaze locked on the numbers scrolling in front of him. "Do  I need to call Spacecase and have him lock you out?" His tone was as hard at the carnelian his eyes sometimes became.  

". . . you wouldn't."

"Keep pulling a Scooter and I will." Gordon's hand hovered over the comms button.

Virgil growled but pushed the pilot's seat back and headed for Two's small quarters with ill grace. When his fish of a brother got that tone in his voice, you knew he'd do whatever it was he'd said he would. It took three showers; once in uniform to get some of the sand off, one to rinse the sand, sweat, and mud off of him, and one last time as a proper wash before he finally felt clean.

 He'd still have to vacuum all of Two to get rid of all the sand, but he was clean. He was also caffeinated and fueled. Not that he'd call the chocolate orange protein bar 'food' but it was fuel and didn't taste too much like cardboard wrapped in sugar.  He really hated to admit it, but his little brother was right.

As he headed back to the cockpit, he hoped that Gordon had forgotten about 'Sonic Sanity'. Not that Virgil didn't enjoy it, he just wasn't sure if he was up to it. It had been a very long day. That hope hit the rocks with a 'splat', when he opened the cockpit door. Fiddle, pipe, and a fine tenor rolled out with and wrapped words around him. To me ri fol leather ol,

ri fol leather ol,

ri fol leather ol lay.

Rol a diddle i,

rol a diddle i,

to me ri fol leather ol lay.

Virgil's shoulders slumped a little, but he'd agreed. He plopped into his seat and kept dying his hair, he'd fix it when they got home. 

Gordon finished the shanty with a flourish and shot a grin at Virgil. "Feeling better?" Virgil wanted to snap, but Gordon had been right, but he had a standard to maintain,being an older brother. "What's our location?" "Hurmph." Gordon pulled up an interface. "We're about to pass over Costa Rica." Virgil blinked, his girl was good, but running at least then her best speed... "How?" "Sky river," Gordon smirked. 

Virgil strove manfully not to flick his towel at Gordon's head. "So we've got a tail wind?" "We're gliding along an atmospheric river." Gordon snapped back.

It wasn't worth fighting over and he shouldn't have said that. "Sorry. I'm running on fumes." He took a swallow of the coffee. "Did you still want to do Sonic Sanity?" Virgil refused to call it Thunderbus Karaoke, but it was a way for the two of them to unwind. 

"Yes! I'll go first!" Gordon cleared his throat. "You even think about starting with 'Great Green Gobs', and I'm dropping you off in the middle of the Arctic Ocean." Virgil stated calmly.

Gordon's mouth closed slowly. "Um… that's the wrong direction."

"I know, and I don't care. Start that song and you're swimming with the polar bears."

Carnelian eyes narrowed. "Is that a challenge?"

"It's a statement of fact." Virgil gave his hair one last rub and draped the towel around his neck. Gordon looked his brother over, running the odds about him singing the song and actually getting thrown into the Arctic Ocean. The ones that came back weren't in his favor. "Fiiiiiine. What can I start with instead O Choir Master?"

Virgil shrugged with studied ease. "Whatever you think won't get you booted off Two."

Gordon sent some serious side-eye Virgil's direction, then started swiping through the music choices. Virgil kept close watch on the starboard air intake and wondered if they shouldn't have replaced that one as well, when 'da da dada-da dum-dum' rolled through the cockpit on a full brass section. Virgil groaned a little. Let's go, girls

Come on!

I'm goin' out tonight

I'm feelin' alright

Gonna let it all hang out

Wanna make some noise

Really raise my voice

Yeah, I wanna scream and shout

Gordon's tenor did it justice, Virgil had to admit that. But if Gordon wanted to go down that path - well then, they were going to go down that path. Virgil pulled up his music file called 'Warfare'. 

Gordon held the last note, not part of the song, but hey, it felt good. He turned to Virgil, when trombones blasted through the speakers and Gordon's eyes got VERY big. 

She's into superstitions

Black cats and voodoo dolls.

I feel a premonition

That girl's gonna make me fall

She's into new sensations

New kicks in the candlelight

She's got a new addiction

For every day and night

Gordon watched in an impressed horror as Virgil shimmied in his seat as he belted out the lyrics. He gave a slow golf clap when Virgil finished. Virgil grinned and settled back in his seat with a sly grin. "Your turn." 

Which was just a blatant dare, but Gordon was ready to accept it and had his music queued up. He cleared his throat, hit play, and enjoyed the look of shock on his brother's face when the sad blues guitar turned into the banging piano intro. I got ketchup on my blue jeans, I just burned my hand

Lord, it's hard to be a bachelor man

I've got girls that can cook, I've got girls that can clean

I've got girls that can do anything in between

I've got to get ready, make everything right

'Cause all my rowdy friends are coming over tonight

"Like hell they are," Virgil muttered as he pulled up his play list. Gordon knew Virgil disliked this song. Well the lyrics mostly, the musicality of it was very good. But the lyrics were - very much a product of their time. If little brother wanted to play hardball, they were going to play hardball.

While Gordon bounced his way through the lyrics, Virgil worked on his breathing, not even really listening to his brother. He had to be loose and relaxed to pull this off. 

tooooooooooooooonight! Gordon sat back with a grin. 

Virgil just raised an eyebrow, made sure his chest was open, and hit the switch. 

The three taps on the drum rim furrowed Gordon's brow, then the heavy piano started, supported by the tambourine. "Nonononono." But it was far too late for that. 

Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want

So tell me what you want, what you really, really want

I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want

So tell me what you want, what you really, really want

Virgil couldn't stop bouncing his seat a little, the beat was just that catchy. Yes, this was one of his songs of aural mass destruction, but he also liked it! The lyrics really spoke to him. 

"How do you do that?" Gordon demanded as the song finished. 

Virgil swallowed some cold coffee. "Do what?"

"Dude, you're singing like an octave above your normal range, and it sounds good!"

Virgil inhaled some more drink. "It's an octave and a half, and it's just practice." He finished the cup. "Your turn."  He was hoping that was enough for Gordon to quit, his throat was starting to ache. 

Gordon was flipping through his holographic list at high speed. "A-HA Got you."

"Oh, in Timon's name, not A-HA." Virgil dropped his head back. 

Gordon cleared his throat several times. "You only wish it was A-HA." 

The acoustic guitar was nice but the first words had him sitting up and staring at his brother in open mouth shock. Porcupine pie, porcupine pie, porcupine pie

Vanilla soup, a double scoop please

No, maybe I won't, maybe I won't, maybe I will

The tutti fruit with fruity blue cheese

Virgil spent the next two stanzas being horrified that the lyrics worked on this and trying to find a song that would stop this. Gordon had to have been sitting on this one for ages. 

Gordon finished the last line with a cough. 

Virgil wasted no time starting his music, it had a long lead up. Which he spent reaching for an even higher falsetto than he did for his last song. Gordon looked confused by the big band opening with woodwinds and trumpets. Then concerned when Virgil hadn't started singing when a trumpet did a double trill and Virgil opened his mouth. 

Petootie Pie, Petootie Pie

You're my Petootie, sugar fruity, dreamy pie

I crave and cram your special jam

You underrated, solidated superman

Then he switched to his falsetto and sang.

And every gal who passes

Just looks and hollers 'ooh'

Like flies caught in molasses

They all get stuck on you

He was thanking all nine of the Muses for the instrumental sections because they gave him a chance to breathe.  He let the last instrumental fade before slumping in his seat. He'd forgotten how hard singing both parts of a duet were. 

Gordon made some inarticulate noises before settling on "Bro. Wow. Just wow, bro." 

"We good?" Virgil hoped so, he didn't have any more in him. 

"Yah, we're good." "Awesome. Wanna listen to some music?" Virgil leaned into his seat to relax. 

"Choice?" Gordon pulled up an interface. "Something instrumental. Williams or Phoenix."

"John Williams it is!" Gordon settled back to keep an eye on the controls as the crash of cymbals and fanfare of brass filled the air. 

… Song list in order The 23rd of February Trad. Sea Shanty

Great Green Gobs

Trad. Camp Song

Man! I Feel Like a Woman!

Shania Twain Livin' la Vida Loca

Ricky Martin

All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight Hank Williams Jr. 

Wannabe The Spice Girls

Porcupine Pie Neil Diamond

Petootie Pie

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Jordan

Extra Credit Song

Two out of Three Aint Bad

Meatloaf

[that-ari-blogger]

IDK How to Title This (King's Tide)

There’s something fascinating about meaning. Not just the answers we draw from texts, but how we do that, and just how much informs our readings thereof.

There are so many conflicting elements that change our perspective on things, from authorial bias to external circumstances, to coding, to our own life experiences. Meaning is dynamic.

The best example of this is actually Tumblr. There is a recurring thing on this website of misinterpretation caused by factors the original poster had no idea about. You said A but because I experienced B, I interpret what you are saying as C.

This is nuanced, and it’s important to understand when it is happening so you don’t pick fights with people who absolutely do not deserve it, but at the same time, on a smaller scale, it’s almost unavoidable. The variety of interpretation, that is. Don’t pick fights, that part is easy to not do.

In the context of The Owl House, King’s Tide was the last episode. There were no more afterwards. There was no season three. So, everyone who watched it knowing that got a very specific reaction.

But then we did get a Season Three, and suddenly this stops being the series finale. Suddenly, the meaning changes.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (The Owl House)

In 1994, American rock band Soundgarden released their fourth album, called Superunknown. It would go on to achieve iconic status and be the band’s breakthrough album, but more importantly, it would be one of the few albums that I own on CD.

This is the Black Hole Sun visual, despite the fact that it 100% is not.

Genuinely, I went mad trying to find this, because it wasn’t just that the vibes were aligned. I was convinced that I had seen this specific visual before.

I hadn't. I wasn’t on to anything here.

The cover for the single version of Black Hole Sun looks like this:

And the album cover for Superunknown looks like this:

They aren’t even close. So I, brought out my CD case, which looks like this:

Now, we are talking. It isn’t exactly the same, but it’s something I can work with. Once again, I came into this thinking I had seen the specific visual of a black hole in a beam of light before, and I was wrong, but I wasn’t off by a mile.

As a last-ditch effort, I looked up covers of the song and found one by Voiceplay that I listen to fairly frequently.

Slightly closer, but it came out in April 2024, almost a year to the day after The Owl House’s finale aired. I remember watching King’s Tide for the first time and doing the Decaprio pointing thing.

The Voiceplay arrangement is good, here’s a link to it so you can check it out. But there is no way their version could have rewired my brain if it didn't even exist yet.

Which brings me back to the question of why do I bring this up? If it is only tangentially relevant, what is the point?

Complexity of interpretation.

This is the closest shot I could find in The Owl House to any of the Black Hole Sun official imagery. But I want to stress that I am shifting the goal posts sommat savage.

Whether it was intended or not, my reading of King’s Tide and the draining ritual is inextricably linked to Black Hole Sun, and I actually think that is fascinating.

It is important for me to understand that this is my bias speaking and not the actual text, but again, it’s not something that is avoidable. It’s just something that happens in the human brain.

Meaning is complex, and in this case in a way that the creators most likely did not account for. But Black Hole Sun is a part of how I draw meaning from the story, and since this is a blog about my own thoughts and analysis, it needs to be dwelled upon.

Black Hole Sun is nihilistic, kinda.

It is one of those songs that resists interpretation because it wasn’t written with one in mind. Soundgarden was just trying to put lyrics to a page to support the atmosphere of the title, and as such the song is surreal first and foremost.

Combine this with the genuinely unnerving music video and you get a song that, to me, seems to be about a disillusionment with reality. It is the nihilistic “nothing matters” that is maddening and uncaring. It views life as a but a stage or a game for pantomime theatrics.

Hey, would you look at that? The draining spell is the manifestation of Belos’ nihilism brought about by his own bigotry. The man doesn’t view the Boiling Isles as real; he treats the world like a chessboard, that’s why it doesn’t occur to him that he can lose. Why would the pawns turn on their player?

This also relates to the Collector a bit though, doesn’t it. Someone obsessed with games to the point of cosmic indifference.

But their time to shine will come in another post.

Belos is interesting as a villain because he is fundamentally wrong. He doesn’t have a sympathetic motive that he took too far. He’s not out for revenge. He’s an eejit.

Black Hole Sun is, as has been stated, surreal. Which implies a lot about the mindset of the musician. The world is hopeless here, but that’s not how the world looks.

It’s fake, the entire song is pointedly distanced from reality. Nihilism is based in misconception.

This is foreshadowing. Eda's arm being able to detach is a Chekhov's gun in the final moments. But also... look at Raine's face. They are sad, and melancholy. They aren't smiling. It is imperative to understand that Raine smiles once in this episode, and it will hurt you.

As a side note, my thesis for The Owl House is that it is about freedom, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that in 2014, Chris Cornell (the band’s singer, drummer, and frontman) gave an interview with Uncut Magazine, in which he claimed the following in relation to the line “times are gone for honest men”:

“It’s really difficult for a person to create their own life and their own freedom. It’s going to become more and more difficult, and it’s going to create more and more disillusioned people who become dishonest and angry and are willing to f*** the next guy to get what they want. There’s so much stepping on the backs of other people in our profession. We’ve been so lucky that we’ve never had to do that. Part of it was because of our own tenacity, and part of it was because we were lucky.”

Freedom is stepping on people’s backs. It is something to be taken. Except that no it is not. Freedom is something you can claim otherwise, with a bit of luck, and a bit of willpower. You don’t have to claim it at anyone else’s expense.

I will talk more in depth about character design in a later post, but it is a character beat for Belos to take off his cloak as he comes this close to winning. Symbolically, he has been a witch hunter under it all, wearing the outfit under a mask and facade. But to him, he wants to win as a human, because he is a bigot. He wants to distance himself in his own head from the people he is about to mass murder. He wants to look the part. To whom? To himself. The man is acting, fantasising about heroes and villains. He is caught up in his own story. He is a dark mirror to Luz, her equal opposite. With the differences being that one, Luz could change and see the world as more than its archetypes, and two, Luz can see people as people, where Belos can only see them as characters in his own story. Luz is kindness and change, Belos is cruelty and stagnation.

There is another image of a blacked-out sun that has been used in real world history. The Schwarze Sonne, an icon in Nazi Germany and Neo-Nazi imagery. It is not my area of expertise and to my limited knowledge, the symbol isn't a direct one to one with anything in The Owl House. But I feel it would be disingenuous to not link the genocidal bigot to the aesthetics of the ideology that he invokes.

Just in case anyone was still unsure as to what kind of person Belos is.

Belos is also a poster child for something I will never miss a chance to harp on about. The futility and self-sabotage inherent in evil and cruelty.

He could have kept his trap shut. He could have told the collector to wait until after the draining spell. He could have kept the collector in his lab where he could see them. But no, he knew he had already won, so he chose to gloat, and that directly caused his demise.

The collector defeats Belos. They didn’t have a reason to hate him until he threw them off a cliff, and they didn’t have a way of getting free until he gave Kikimora a motivation to lead king to them. Belos is an eejit who claims to be a mastermind but is in reality just willfully ignorant.

That’s his dichotomy with Luz. Curiosity vs ignorance, kindness vs cruelty, expression vs restriction, freedom vs control, knowledge vs power.

Blight robots are instrumental in the end of the world. The rich industrialist has doomed the world for power. I am shocked.

To me, it is important that this doesn’t just affect Belos.

You can’t educate someone whose mind is closed, sure. I agree with that sentiment. You will just cause yourself more misery. However, their anti-intellectualism will actively do you harm as it will make the world worse, so you need to combat them in some way shape or form.

Facts and logic don’t work, so Luz has to appeal to his emotions to just stand in the same room as him. When that fails, she has to fight him outright.

Making a deal with the villain while half in shadow and half in light. Presenting the lit side openly while the hand in shadow is also hidden behind Luz's back to signify duplicity. I think there's some symbolism here but I just can't quite figure it out.

Speaking of whom, Luz is a mess this episode. She is trying to get herself killed, and that matches the rest of the isles. There is not going to be a tomorrow, there will not be another episode after this, so everyone is trying to go out in a bang.

Except, there is a tomorrow. There is momentum that has to go somewhere, and the only direction it has is forwards.

The final moments of this season, and of The Owl House, are of the brutal realisation that life keeps moving. You have to treasure the moments while you have them, because if you keep fearing the future, it will come, and you will have missed every opportunity to do anything about it.

That is a through line in this entire episode. The future is not what you expect. Every plan fails. The draining spell, the rebellion, the coven heads’ plan for paradise. Everything goes pear shaped. The future is never what you expect, just treasure the moments you have, and roll with the punches.

Always try to make the world a better place, don’t get me wrong. The show firmly takes the stance that evil can and should be fought against, but two things can be true. Treasure the moment and change the future are two phrases that must stand side by side.

And yes, that has been the theme of The Owl House as a whole, hasn’t it? Luz has been afraid of returning to the Human Realm because that signifies her future and maturity, meanwhile the Boiling Isles is the moment she is in, the treasure that she is missing out on because of that fear of the future. She can’t make a decision, so life chooses for her.

But rewind a bit. This episode is a masterclass in building dread.

Everything in this episode is pointing towards the one end point. The A and B plots are perfectly aligned in this episode. Both are trying to stop the spell, they are just in two different locations.

Usually, these disparate storylines are separate, with one usually acting as the main story while the other provides comic relief and supplements the themes.

Find me a joke in King’s Tide. There are exactly two. One at the start with Amity and finding out about her nickname, and the second at the end with Hunter’s expression when faced with the collector.

You will note that neither of these are particularly funny, but Hunter’s reaction to cosmic horror will draw out at least a smile because the entire episode leading up to it renders that moment hilarious.

Eda tries to find humour, but that actively worsens the mood because it draws attention to how out of place her comedy is. It’s not funny because of its context.

However, there is another plotline. Let’s call it the C plot, and that is King and the Collector.

This should be a deus ex machina, or god from the machine. This should break the story, the hand of the author shown to get the protagonists out from the corner they have been written into. But it isn’t.

We have seen King discover the Collector over the past few episodes. He hasn’t known what they were, but the two have been shown to be connected.

Now, we see all the dominos slot into place, then start falling. We see King, Kikimora, and the Collector all arrive in the same place, and we see King drastically misinterpret the power of what he is dealing with.

But I want to be clear here, why would he know better? Why would anyone know better? As far as he is aware, this is something that can stop Belos, and he needs a Hail Mary. What would you do if you were given those two pieces of information?

Add to this that he is a literal child who isn’t in the best place mentally because he has just had his entire world shattered by the revelation of his species. Of course he would make this decision. This isn’t a plot hole, it's an inevitability, that’s what makes it so tragic.

Everything moves forwards towards one event.

Pause. Could you please do me a favour? Raise your hand and move it as fast as you can in one direction, then try to stop it in place. Be sudden with the start and end, and take note of how it feels.

Take a moment.

Thank you.

You will notice that stopping moving feels weird. It’s shaky, and there is resistance to you stopping. At the risk of oversimplification, this is momentum in action.

Energy builds up and it needs somewhere to go, everything moves forwards, to where? If you stop the series, what happens to that energy?

In this case, it gets dispersed amongst the fans and then picked up later.

The Owl House was finished. The show ran its course. But then it got brought back to life, and that changes my reading of its purpose.

Perhaps I read this as the finale to the entire show. Life happens, deal with it. Consider this a warning.

Perhaps I read this as the finale to a season, setting up stakes for a final sprint.

Or perhaps I read this metatextually.

I think that The Owl House got revived in no small part because of the sheer drive behind King’s Tide. If I namedrop almost any other episode of this series, you will have to look up what happened, but King’s Tide is burned into your brain.

Maybe if you know the series off by heart you will do better, but for the majority of fans, Hollow Mind and King’s Tide are pretty much it.

King’s Tide built up energy, then gave it to you and ended in a way that was pointedly unsatisfying. It said “we aren’t done, and you can do something about it.” Yes, the characters are great, but The Owl House came back because it wasn’t finished.

This is a solid minute of shot after shot, each of which I could analyse individually for hours on end. But I linger here. It's a small thing, but it's the smile. The only time Raine smiles in the entire episode. They have saved Eda's life, and sacrificed their own, and they do not regret it one bit. But also, the light of the ritual cuts through their relationship, tearing them apart and as Eda tries to reach across that barrier, it burns her. She is forcefully separated from Raine, and she is powerless except to watch them fall.

Then there is this, the lives broken by machinations of people who don't care. The stories sacrificed for one man's game. The tears of tragedy.

There is a lot to meaning, and you can’t truly grasp authorial intent until you have seen everything they have laid out on the table. But you can draw conclusions based on what you have seen so far. That’s why theory crafting is so much fun.

So, going into the final season, here is what I want you to keep in mind:

The Owl House is about freedom. Freedom to be who you are without fear of bigotry and xenophobia. It is a fundamentally queer story more than just a story with queer people in it.

The Owl House is about knowledge and change. Luz’s journey isn’t over yet, and now she has to learn about the world she came from, the world she willingly left.

The Owl House is about hope. Things are bad, but they will get better. Everything can always get better. The point of no return is called the end, and we haven’t reached it yet.

Light, do not faulter.

Final Thoughts

There is so much to this episode that I want to talk about but I haven’t formulated thoughts on properly.

Like, Eda and Raine’s scenes with their more unsubtle visual storytelling techniques of memories and a big ol’ crack in their relationships as Raine passes out. I don’t have anything to say about that other than look at it, but it makes my brain buzz.

Similarly, everyone else with a coven sigil passes out, and yet Hunter, a child, is still standing despite it all. He’s obviously about to fall at any moment, but he is still gritting his teeth and facing down Belos. Once again, I this doesn’t relate to my point, but asdfghjkl.

Next week, I will not be covering Thanks To Them, and instead will be discussing the missing years. i.e. the fanart and fanfiction that kept the show alive until its re-emergence.

Stick around if that interests you.

Previous - Next

[thecircularsystem]

Recovery and Syscourse Thoughts

I thought I would toss my hat into the ring briefly in the latest discussions about recovery from CDDs, since everyone and their uneducated brother have been spamming screenshots and sources left and right, and almost all of them have ignored the fact that the DSM and scientific (or otherwise) sources are not the people going through this disorder.

So let’s drop this take into the mix: there is no one set way to heal or recover, and everyone should work to find their best method of recovery and what works best for them.

I am a person working on recovery with DID. I phrase it that way specifically because I don’t want to stop having DID. I… actually really like having my system, and being multiple parts. My partner loves it too. They actually are overjoyed when I split — sad that I’m that stressed, of course, and so, so caring and gentle with me when I reach that point — but thrilled that they get to meet another part of me, a part so vivid and developed.

Isn’t it beautiful that I can see that love so brightly?

Anyways. Back on topic, I am recovering with DID. I am utilizing EMDR (though it’s been some time since we did a session) and I attend therapy weekly. I have grown far more integrated, and this past week, we’ve been so soupy that it’s hard to tell who’s fronting, and it hasn’t caused distress. It’s been nice to just be a collection of parts all at the same time, instead of split apart.

But wait. Isn’t that functional multiplicity? I mean, I just said I’m not distressed, and we’re all working together.

But wait. Isn’t that final fusion? All of us together, instead of split apart?

But wait.

How the fuck am I defining it?

Cause doesn’t that matter so much more??? There isn’t a set definition of what FM/FF are, guys. There isn’t this Ideal Recovery that so many people seem to post about. I’ll reach functional multiplicity when I say I do, and my FM will look different than others, and could look like FF too, because FF isn’t “okay now you’re a singlet.” If anything, the FF systems I’ve met have discussed how they feel MORE plural now.

FF/FM isn’t a dichotomy that can only exist separately, and they aren’t even the only ways to heal. For instance, am I not in recovery right now? Am I not actively healing? I might still be disordered, but isn’t it possible to be disordered and functional? Isn’t it possible to heal WITH DID? (The answer is yes; even FM/FF do not erase the fact that I have a rewired brain with new mental pathways. I could become nondisordered, that IS a thing, thought it took years to convince me it was. The fact is, it’s up to the individual.)

And my recovery is going to look entirely different than the recovery of my friends. For instance, I know many of my friends have reached final fusion, and one of them said they split frequently still. But for me, I split maybe once a year at the current moment, max three times a year. It's been a little messy, and confusing, but that seems to be the case. But if you're final fused, shouldn't you not be splitting???

NO YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, FUCK THE RULES!

If that person says they are doing better and feeling fine, then that's what matters. And the fact is, regardless of what a DSM or source you provide says, that's what any therapist worth their salt is going to say as well. If you aren't distressed, then you're good.

The same thing does for anything system related.

Preference of how to refer to your alters/parts/headmates/people in your head/fuckers in your head/those assholes up there who bother you constantly? More power to you! You can call them whatever you want!

Littlecourse and how your littles engage in healing? Woohoo, do whatever makes you the most happy and does the least amount of harm -- or, yknow, harm yourself! That's part of learning too, and people trying to take away the dignity of risk from systems because "but-but think of the children" can go suck a dick. So long as the person is doing what they think they should be doing, why is it my problem?

The only time these things become my problem is when they impact me. And, remarkably, what someone else does with their system does not impact me.

I think so much of syscourse needs to learn to mind their own business when it comes to other people's recovery. What someone calls their parts or origins or recovery does not matter and does not impact me in the slightest. What someone else does on their own time is of no consequence to me. The only thing I see in syscourse that does actually impact me is misinformation about my disorder, which impacts me because it makes our parts who struggle with denial latch onto that...

WHICH IS A ME PROBLEM.

Sure, I correct the misinfo, because that helps me, but that's still a me problem, something I need to work on for me.

I used to be gung-ho about fighting against endogenic systems, and one of the reasons for that was because I had parts who clung to the idea that we might be endogenic. The existence of endogenic systems helping my parts deny that we had trauma does not suddenly mean endos shouldn't exist. It means I need to work on my trauma denial.

This post has been a HUGE ramble, and I'm sorry about that -- there's so many thoughts I Have about recent syscourse, and I usually can squeeze in about 30 minutes of free time to write.

I want to post more about this soon, but to summarize some ideas:

Let people recover however they please.

If someone is recovering in a way you don't like, then look away.

If someone is spreading misinformation, correct them, but like... buddy, do it gently, no need to get all butthurt, relaaaaax

If someone continues to spread misinformation after you've corrected them, more power to you, my guy, do what you gotta do to correct that shit for others if you want to do that

It is exactly Nobody's Job to do steps 3 or 4

And lastly; stop sucking [insert source you just googled]'s cock and talk to a system in real life for like. A half hour, at least. Just get to know how they view their system and what works/doesn't work for them. It might actually make you learn something.

[purplepixel]

Okay, storytime!

I was hardly on the internet as a kid and teen, and I really didn't know about the existence of online fandoms. So the first time I heard about the Lego Ninjago movie, I was sitting in the movie theater waiting for Lego Batman to start. A trailer started playing, and when everyone started yelling about 'Garmadon' I almost exploded with excitement. And then I saw the ninja. And heard the ninja. And because everything was different, I don't like change, and I had no clue what was happening, I immediately developed a visceral hate for the Lego Ninjago Movie. I almost cried in that theater. Even when I saw the movie I tried to have an open mind, but I still abhorred it.

Flashforward, eh, a year. 2018 SDCC, Ninjago had a panel in which they showed the first scene of season eight. My brother found it on YouTube and showed it to me. Between the different looking Lloyd and his different voice actor, I thought the rest of the show was following the movieverse (because again, I wasn't online and had no idea that that wasn't the case at ALL). Because of this assumption, I decided that I wouldn't watch any of it.

A couple months go by. My brother and I are out of shows for watch. He finds Ninjago season eight. I refuse to watch it. He begs me to just watch one episode. "One episode, that's it," I begrudgingly agreed. I hated the first half or so, because the designs took me a WHILE to get used to. I was mad at the new designs. I was mad at a random monarchy all of the sudden. I was mad at the intro. I was determined to hate it.

But hearing that only Lloyd's voice had changed, seeing that it was still in the continuity of the show, learning that it was faithful to the characters and plot, I began to crack. At the end of the episode my brother turned to me and I pointedly looked elsewhere as he played the next one.

As the season went on, we had our theories about Samurai X, Harumi, the baby, and the rest. I loved it. I was genuinely enjoying myself-- not because I'd gone in with my expectations underground, but because it was also just a fantastic season. Episode 7 rewired my brain, episode 8 was an insanely wild ride. We would have finished the season in a week, but I had a camp to go to. I begged my brother to wait for me, and he grumpily agreed.

Finally home, we had two episodes left. Our mom said we could watch one. As we turned on the TV, we saw this new thing called Hunted, but I assumed it was a miniseries we had missed, like Decoded or something. Landing on the horrifying cliffhanger at the end of 9, we begged for one more episode. The season finished on yet ANOTHER MASSIVE CLIFFHANGER.

Out of desperation, we clicked on the Hunted thingy, and to our utter shock, it was a new season. The first three episodes premiered in exactly 15 minutes.

Long story short, we started season 8 at the exact right time, watched it at the exact right pace, and didn't have to deal with the wait that the rest of the fandom did. Somehow.

Anyway, that's a really long story but it's cool so I thought I'd share :}

Oh wow! Funnily enough I think that's how I first heard of the ninjago movie too. But unlike you I wasn't a fan. Ninjago was just another lego movie to me, but my friend did tell me there was a series about it. Movie was fun, but it clearly didn't leave a lasting impression on me since i barely remember anything and didn't seek out the show.

I...unfortunately understand not liking change. I loooove denying it, but I have to force myself to keep an open mind. I was so salty over the changes in s8 but also felt guilty over it since I know that shouldn't judge the quality of the season. Also idk if you noticed, but I kept getting whiplash with the changes they'd do with cole. HES A GHOST NOW? ...Ok I've accepted it. WAIT HES NOT A GHOST ANYMORE? BUT I JUST GOT USED TO IT. Ugh ok fine atleast he has his ghost scar. WAIT THEY TOOK HIS GHOST SCAR. Oh, it's still there it just shows up when he uses his fist powers.

LIKE SKDJFSKJDFK IM NOT IMMUNE. I GET YOU. But I always try to give things a chance. I've gotten loads better, but its still there in the back of my head at times.

uhhh...confession time, I have not watched tales of the tmnt bc of this. mutant mayhem never fell prey to this and i love it, but tales looks too much like rise without being rise and it makes me incredibly angry. also i learned too many things they did that i am not a fan of. love mutant mayhem but it held tales back from what i heard

BUT YA. Glad you gave it a chance. Cuz wheeeew, you would've missed one of the best seasons. And also watching the episode that got you into fanfiction. That's still crazy to me.

[barbie2023]

hey you don’t have to answer if this is personal but do you have any tips for pain-free sex with vaginismus? i’ve struggled with it since college until i switched to just exclusively having sex with women. i’d bleed the first time i was with a new partner but it was 1,000x better than when i was with men. but with my newest partner, while it’s never been painful with her, i’ve bled each time. i’m worried my vaginismus is getting worse. i know you’re not an expert, but if you have any advice that you feel like could help i’d love to hear it!

happy to give some tips!

will preface this by saying that while i had a pretty severe case initially (like a mini tampon was excruciating) i’ve been very lucky in how my body responded to treatment! i think for me there have been three big things that got me to this stage:

the biggest was being really consistent with my dilating. i went through a phase where i was super motivated and basically did it every day for 6 weeks and that really helped in a physical sense but also in a mental sense where i was able to rewire my brain to have more positive feelings towards penetration.

the second was literally just fucking relaxing. like becoming cognisant of exactly how tense my pelvic floor constantly was and making a real concerted effort to just like. unclench. i think this was the main thing that’s helped me maintain my progress even now that i rarely dilate

and finally just dealing with the mental blocks i had towards sex specifically in terms of some body dysmorphia and feeling a lot of shame in my body as a sexual being

also if it’s something you have access to and are comfortable with having a doctor check everything out is never a bad idea. thankfully i have a beautiful gp who i was able to go to and basically confirm that it was a pretty textbook case and nothing to do with like a microperforated hymen or anything like that

hope literally any of this was helpful! it really is an absolute bitch to deal with but there is hope!!

[mostlymalena]

January 14th 2025 9:42pm

Hi everyone I am tipsy off of ONE CORONA. It's bc I don't drink here lmao so I've been sober for three months plus don't vape/smoke so coming home practically mormon again.

Anyways not the point of this post - wanted to write my thoughts down about two articles I read today.

So here is some flesh from the bones of my thoughts:

The general area of topic was "The coming wave of sexual negativity and how it is shackling a generation." I read two articles on substack (love that app and if anyone else knows what that is and is active on it I'll marry you on the spot). Speaking of marriage I have a feeling I will have an offer for my hand here soon and I might say yes for the heck of it LMAO. She has some wealth and owns property so who am I to deny. Wait not the point back to the articles.

Titles are as follows:

https://default.blog/p/72-the-coming-wave-of-sex-negativity?lli=1

https://www.thefp.com/p/im-30-the-sexual-revolution-shackled?lli=1

When I wrote my 2025 in's and out's I had some sexual ideas on there. I came across these (outdated in the world of writing) articles today and they were perfect. Considering that I am on some journey to rewire my brain and how it views sexual encounters with men, these delighted me.

January 15th 2025 3:10pm

um so I had to stop writing because after my second and last corona hit I became drunk. I knew if I kept writing I would start spilling state secrets and we cannot have that happen on this blog. Here is go number 2 but my computer is also on 8%.

Anyways lmao; The first article I read is actually the second link.

"Sexual asymmetry is profoundly important"

Women are biologically more vulnerable to violence. We are (in most cases) weaker physically then men when is comes to violent acts. Let me be very clear when I am specifically speaking about committing acts of wrath and violence and more so unprovoked.

Where does this hostility towards women stem from? And why are we a threat.

January 15th 2025 10:07pm

Sorry had work and a hair appointment lmao. Officially brown haired girl. No more scary emo black, maybe this will make me more approachable which is my single greatest fear. Something I did not take into consideration when making the switch

Okay back to it:

I do wonder why after whatever million something years men still need to prove themselves the superior (physically) gender. What is even more baffling is that if they were just, like, nice they would get what they want.

Whatever. Nevermind tbh. I do not feeling like continuing this. When I read my articles I write my thoughts as I read in my journal and it's hard to flesh them out after.

I want to have conversations like this with actual people anyways, not pixels.

[hotpocketcasserole]

Thoughts on X Files so far...

There really aren't many shows that I get super invested in anymore these days. I think because of work and the lethargy that comes with getting older and unhealthier, my brain has sort of rewired itself to only be able to tolerate youtube videos. Mostly commentary and narration channels.

Like, I rarely sit down and watch movies anymore because I could easily watch a twenty minute Cinema Snob or Ryan Hollinger essay on the movie. On the one hand, those sorts of reviews give a deeper analysis of movies and shows and give me different perspectives that I hadn't considered before. On the other, it's my lazy way of consuming media without putting 90 minutes into it. And when I do, I find myself playing a game on my phone or scrolling tumblr.

I have sort of found myself doing that with the X Files but I'm trying to make more of an effort to pay attention. Some episodes can be a bit slow but I know I ought to be making more of an effort.

That said, it feels so natural to get into this show. Not just because I've already watched the first three seasons about a dozen times but because it really is just a good show. There have been other shows that I really struggled to get into or keep up with and I wondered why that was.

I've tried watching similar shows like Hannibal or Mindhunter. I enjoyed them a bit but found myself getting burnt out after a season or even a few episodes. They were beautifully shot, well written, very well acted. And yet I quickly fell out of love with Hannibal and I lost interest in Mindhunter after about five or so episodes.

I think it might be because these shows took themselves too seriously. To me, they lacked the range of emotion. They were too dour, too despondent. The visuals in Hannibal were extremely artistic and lush but ultimately too depressing. No one seemed to have much humor about anything and everything was focused around murder and cannibalism. It was very similar with Mindhunter. It was a fascinating story to follow along but I came away from each episode in a deep funk.

The X Files can be a dark show, both in content and in visuals. I think I watched a special feature on a DVD where one of the show's creators joked about how the show seemed to mostly take place in the dark. They'd come to the set and all the lights would be off and they'd think it was closed but actually they were just getting ready to start filming!

But I think what separates X Files from these other shows is the fact that there is a balance of light and dark. Mulder and Scully have a good professional rapport with one another. As they grow as characters, they're starting to care more each other, about how they're feeling. Mulder expresses concern for Scully a few times on particular cases he knows affect Scully on a personal level. They go out of their ways sometimes to help one another. They even joke and smile with one another!

I'm still only three seasons in but I'm already hooked because I can see the broad range of humanity in these characters. Not just Mulder and Scully but the supporting characters as well. There are funny moments, tender moments, heartbreaking moments. And having those only makes the intense moments even more suspenseful. Even though I know the show goes on for several more seasons, I still cling to the edge of the sofa when they're in danger.

That's what sets this show apart from most other shows for me. Even with some bad acting, even with it's cheesy TV special effects, it's still an effective and dynamic show. It's story telling and the relationship between Mulder and Scully.

Feel free to disagree or tell me if I'm wrong, these are just some random things I was thinking about lately while watching the show.

Also, Scully is always a mood:

[clowneryandshenanegans]

Theory time!!!!

TADC one this time, here we go go go go on an adventure

so we know that in the circus there’s three types of characters, AI’s (Caine, the moon and sun, bubble), NPCs (candy kingdom residents, gummygoo, gloink queen), and humans (main cast). (To specify: AI’s are characters who have not been created by an outside character and are not player characters, NPC’s were created by an outside force and are not players, humans are, well, humans)

But what if our main guy Caine is a part of that last group?

Hear me out. I doubt that the technology of the time when the circus supposedly takes place (probably around 70’s-90’s) would be able to support something as powerful as an all knowing, practically all powerful AI.

We know that the way the main cast most likely got in the circus was from a headset linked to a computer, which probably either made a complete perfect replica of their brain that was placed in the game while the original was killed, or their consciousness was somehow transferred into the computer.

So what if instead of Caine being an AI created by whoever made it, he was human? What if there was a human that was hooked up to the system way before the circus was even made, which then became a part of the game?

If Caine was put it the game before the circus was even there, the original human’s consciousness could have melted into the game until it seemed like an ai. Caine could have been a human placed in when the program was nothing but a void, who then went insane so far to the point his brain practically collapsed, then rewired itself to be a part of the game, to where he basically became god once his brain had been far enough melted into the code.

after all, which would be easier; develop an entire code fo years to properly run a program, or put a perfectly working brain, one of the highest quality “computers” out there, into the game, then wait it out until it became its own AI?

The circus is shown to have quite a few glitches, with clipping, character models going wack, and abstraction if it’s a glitch in the game. These could all be the results of a brain not functioning automatically like a computer would.

then there’s the theory of the NPC models. If the only thing that made the candy kingdom was Caine, and Caine is an AI, why would he have character models below the map?

character models below the map are something developers use when making a game, in order to have the models fully ready in case one glitches, goes missing, or is messed up in some way. This way, they don’t have to recreate the entire model if it glitches, and can just replace it.

but if Caine is an ai, he wouldn’t need the character models, since he could just spawn one automatically from storage.

but if Caine was originally human, the Candy Kingdom could have been one of the first things he built, believing he needed the models under the map to avoid having to redo the model.

So, my theory? Caine is a human, who was trapped in the circus for so long that his consciousness melted into the code, rebuilt itself, and embedded itself into the code to make him into the games “ai”.

[darsynia]

Present Imperfect | Ch 5. Day Three - Mourning

TONY STARK MASTERLIST | STORY MASTERLIST | PREV | NEXT

Summary: After losing Pepper to Extremis, Tony decides to get the shrapnel (and thus his arc reactor) removed– but he wakes up as President of the United States.

Tony’s heart surgery is the last thing he remembers, a worst-case amnesia scenario that leaves the country with a leader who doesn’t remember the last year of office, the election, or his marriage to the First Lady, Natasha Romanoff Stark. Length/Warnings: 3,534 words // none

Tags: @sobeautifullyobsessed @chickensarentcheap @karimac

Excerpt: “If this keeps up it’s going to remind me of our honeymoon,” he jokes, turning his head to look at her right as he turns the lamp on. Natasha’s hair is a riot of messy red curls, and it’s the most natural thing in the whole world to reach up with his other hand and bury his fingers in them at the nape of her neck as he steals a kiss for the camera.

There’s something heady about the cling of her lips to his, like maybe she did drug him, but not with an identifiable substance. Instead, she’s rewired his brain to recognize the little noise at the back of her throat when he angles his head and presses closer. She’s rearranged his molecules to find the scent of her hair intoxicating. Somehow Natasha’s converting his exhaustion to lust-- and it’s that thought which finally gets through to his sleep-fuzzed thought centers.

You kissed her for show, Tony. She’s kissing you back for show. Don’t lose your head.

Day Three - Mourning

Tony is insufferable when the two of them emerge from the bedroom. He rationalizes the smug, self-satisfied behavior as something the ‘real,’ unsuspecting Tony Stark would engage in anyway. Anything that makes these fuckers’ lives miserable while he and Natasha set them up for their big fall is worth doing, in his book.

That gives him an idea, as he eats lunch at the sturdy-ass desk and reads about the fake victims of the fake terrorist attack that’s supposedly happening.

“Hey, Cora!” he hollers, instead of using the phone. The resulting silence doesn’t feel empty as much as resentful. Finally, the door swings open.

“Yes, sir?”

If she’d wired her jaw shut, her expression wouldn’t have been more stiff and forbidding.

“Two things. One, I’d like to speak with one of my doctors about this memory thing, see if there’s some way to jog it so I can get access to at least the Presidential years. Two, along that vein-- have I written a book?”

Cora blinks at him like an android assassin faced with unexpected parameters. “No book that I know of, sir, but I’ll look into contacting your physician. I’m not certain the Secret Service can safely set up a secure phone line; the best we can manage is encrypted email.”

Tony nods, unsurprised. Cora turns to leave, and he catches her with her hand on the doorknob. “Can you have a staffer get back to me with some of the articles written during the campaign, the first 100 days, that sort of thing? Thanks.”

His dismissive tone doesn’t allow her to prevaricate before she leaves. The whole conversation is utter bullshit, just like everything else. The President of the United States is traditionally treated at Bethesda Naval Hospital, a place that definitely has access to secure phone lines. Not to mention, if the packet of overdue condolences were really true, there’d be news footage of the events, articles written, demands for accountability.

How has HYDRA been able to stay hidden so long if they’re this sloppy? They have to be expecting him to become unhinged and try to escape. Even with sub-par agents working the fake President detail, that’s the only way any of this makes sense.

Tony leans back in his chair and frowns, looking around the room with new eyes. He should have come to this conclusion sooner, but he’d been lulled by the excitement of a mystery, something to figure out, something to solve. The months since losing Pepper had been so achingly lonely, partly from missing her, partly because he’d felt so guilty to have failed her that he’d pulled away from everyone else.

He’d gone to some dark places, tearing apart one of his labs to make space for what he’d called a Grendel Cluster, a souped-up version of a Beowulf Cluster. It was the fun way to get enough computational power (with JARVIS’s help, of course, though his AI had asked whether that made Tony Beowulf, or Grendel’s Mother) needed to project holograms to simulate the entire confrontation with Killian. It was important to know without a shadow of a doubt whether he’d missed something.

He’d drawn no concrete conclusions, but he had spent hours watching Pepper die over and over, in the process.

Tony looks down at the open folder, his eye catching on the address of one of the fake people who ‘died’ in the Capitol attack. Virginia. Seeing her name doesn’t hurt as badly it would have just weeks ago.

“I need to know you’ll let yourself be happy again.”

Natasha’s face flickers in his mind for a few seconds, and Tony clears his throat. He’s thinking of her because she’s the first friend he’s been in contact with for months. She’s on his mind because of what they’d just done, which had of course just been in the service of the greater cause, finding HYDRA’s weakness and taking it down.

He latches onto that last thought with the desperation of a man drowning in the deep end of sudden possibilities. Her plan is solid, but so is his: he’s going to flood these jerks with documentation requests, hundreds of them. They’re bound to make mistakes, and that gives Natasha plausible deniability. Tony has no doubt that her life is in danger, should they know exactly how far the Black Widow has woven her web around HYDRA’s plans. Inevitably, they’re going to realize Tony’s onto them, and he doesn’t want them to assume it was Nat who gave away their game.

He’ll be damned if another beautiful woman dies because of him.

By the post-dinner meeting, Tony has asked for a massive amount of documentation, including curated clips of news footage from multiple countries to gauge how they’re reacting to the crisis, and a group call with the mayors of the top twenty cities in advance of the attacks spreading to other locations. He’d pointed out how strange it was that he has yet to see a report from both the Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate, or a threat assessment from the CIA, Homeland Security, and the FBI. 

Then, to really twist the knife they’re aiming at his back, he demands to speak to the Vice President, because seriously, who is his VP? He’s still holding the ‘amnesia’ trump card in his back pocket. Basically, his philosophy isn’t that he’s trapped in this nonsense with them, they’re trapped with him.

Predictably, the VP thing gets the most resistance, probably because they haven’t picked one.

“Sir,” that Darby guy says, “Having the two of you in the same location is an unacceptable risk.”

“See this? I’ve been studying it all day. I know more about the names of the people who died than how they died, who could have prevented their deaths, how to prevent more deaths in the future, and how the global community is dealing with our utter weakness!” Tony throws the folder down the center of the long table, and the various fake files slide out, cinematically. “Everything that’s happened is an unacceptable risk, but I’m going on little to no data, here! The only conclusion to draw is that I’m being isolated because of my medical condition, and my VP is being groomed to step in. Does anyone want to challenge that conclusion? Hmm?” He spins in place, arms out, struggling to keep the derision from showing on his face.

The whole room is silent.

Amateurs.

“You know what you need? I mean, besides a backbone,” Tony sniffs, changing tacks. He’s all derision, now. “You need a healthy sense of fear. No television sets showing the news, no phones ringing, no fax machines churning out scary headlines, what! Is it the Stark Administration or has there been a coup?” He leans forward and rests his weight on his fists, looking  each person at the table in the eyes. “If you were sitting in your homes hearing about this, wouldn’t you be fired up? Wouldn’t you expect the staff of your elected president to fight back?”

The dismay on everyone’s faces is palpable. Tony pushes back up off the table with a sound of disgust.

“Either you’re with me or you’re part of the scheme. Get me the things I’ve asked for by breakfast tomorrow or find another job.”

With that, he stalks out the door, startling the ‘Secret Service detail’ that lurks on their phones outside each room he inhabits. It’s another confirmation of how absurd this all is, but he can’t risk blowing up at them. He may have spent a generous percentage of the past months working out for the endorphins, but these guys are beefcake goons straight out of central casting.

Once at the Fauxval ante-room, Tony stalks through, saying, “Clear my schedule for the rest of the night. Next person who comes into my office better be my wife or someone with any of the reports I’ve asked for! Enough of this amateur bullshit.”

He only has fifteen minutes before the condolence calls anyway, and Cora is nowhere to be seen. Tony looks at the folder, looks at the door, and then looks at the desk. Natasha had told him she’d hidden his watch prototype in a false bottom of one of the drawers, and it feels like he’s going to need it sooner rather than later.

Fuck it.

Muttering that everything needs a reset, even his desk, Tony starts removing the contents of each drawer. The plan is to shuffle things around just enough to make retrieving that watch a two, maybe three step, swift process.

Everything he’s removing is the kind of filler crap you’d expect to see on a comedy skit, but one of them is a pocketknife whose edge lets Tony find the break in the bottom of the false drawer and lift just enough to see the compartment. To cover what he’s been doing for those assigned to watch the video feed, he scrapes the knife edge along the back of the drawer and pulls the tool out, looking at it with distaste.

“Thought sure Clinton kept pot back there,” he muses aloud, tossing the ‘useless’ knife into the ‘put back’ pile. A check of his watch tells him that something’s up; he’s just strolled two blocks past Condolence Call Avenue, and no one’s bothered to say anything.

As that thought crosses his mind, though, there’s a brief, heavy knock at the door, and it springs open to admit Secretary Alexander Pierce. He’s wearing a surgical mask slung under his chin, and there are sweat droplets around his hairline.

“Tony! I was wrapping up a security meeting at Searchlight when I heard you were having a tough time, wanted to see if I could help,” he says jovially, striding over with his right hand outstretched to shake. “Before you ask, they brought me up to speed on the memory thing.”

Two things occur to him at that moment.

One: Alexander Pierce is meant to be his Vice President. Two: Pierce is HYDRA.

Tony stands slowly and accepts the shake, noting the crushing warning in the strength the other man exerts on Tony’s hand. “Starting to think they’re poised to put you in charge, with the limited data I’ve got access to,” he says.

“Ahh, the Joint Chiefs and Congress are working hard, I wouldn’t worry too much about that.” Pierce gestures goodnaturedly for Tony to sit back down. “The big bill on Separation of Powers at the end of the last guy’s term really fucked with war powers, but that’s what you get when the President tries to jump into a foreign conflict without listening to anybody else’s opinion on it.”

Tony keeps his expression neutral, but inwardly, he’s swearing a blue streak. Pierce is good at this. He’s just put a kibosh on Tony’s whole plan by making up something that ‘legally prevents’ the HYDRA team from having to construct false evidence.

“Nothing an executive order can’t fix, right?” he says, leaning back in his chair. The move was supposed to project confidence, relaxation, but Tony worries it just looks like he wants to put more distance between them.

“Truth is, Tony, we’re past op-eds and news footage, here. We need to get moving on defense, while the rest of the leadership focuses on offense.”

“You’re all starting to sound like a broken record.” If Tony can avoid punching this guy in the face, they might get some incriminating stuff for Fury.

“Well, when there’s only one song worth singing, that’ll happen.” Pierce lets out a weary-sounding sigh. “We’ve clashed about this before. I might even be willing to admit that it was too soon, back then-- it’s not like those weapons would have done much against the Chitauri.”

Tony doesn’t doubt that HYDRA’s lifted the Tessaract weaponry out of the SHIELD database, ready and willing to adapt it to the gem in the scepter. “You want me to okay something worse, and authorize its use on our own citizens!”

“Our own citizens are already dying!” Pierce rockets out of his seat, moving to pace in the middle of the room, rubbing at his temple in distress. “My daughter could have been one of them, and you know it!”

It’s too late to suppress his instinctive look of confusion, but Tony’s figured it out (with a sinking feeling he’s not going to shake any time soon) by the time Pierce clarifies.

“Cora Pierce. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful her position has kept her mostly out of this, but it could have easily gone the other way. All of these people, they’ve got parents, husbands, wives, children. We owe it to them not to expand the victim list.”

“She’s very good at her job,” Tony says, looking up from the folder of fake victims just in time to catch a hint of suspicion in his fake VP’s expression. “Okay, say I listen to you, aren’t there procedures, especially after the Separation of Powers thing you mentioned?” he asks. “You’re all acting like I have the right to just tell you where it is, and that’s it. If that were really true, you, Darby, half the others out there, you’d be hassling Nick Fury about it, not me.” 

Pierce stops behind the chair he’d been sitting on, leaning thoughtfully on it, nodding, and Tony presses his advantage.

“The only thing worse than an amnesiac President lying about a serious medical condition is one that just got impeached, Alex. You want the scepter, you’re going to need to show me what we’re going to do with it, or show me a legal pathway to telling you where it is that doesn’t get my political future strung up by its fingernails.”

“Fair enough,” Pierce says, turning his charm back on with a bright smile. “As always, pleasure doing business with you.” He stretches out a hand to shake again, and Tony smiles back.

“My wife has plans for these fingers, so I’ll forego another shake, if it’s all the same to you.”

Pierce’s grin widens. “You’re a lucky man. Tell her I send my regards?” With his golden hair and penchant for treachery, Pierce makes a perfect Lannister.

“Will do,” Tony says, standing. He watches the statesman exit the room, feeling certain his next stop will be the room Natasha’s so anxious to get a recording device into.

Can they afford to wait until tomorrow?

He isn’t given much time to ponder the question, because one of the secretaries from the ante-room comes in to set up for the condolence calls. Tony had been planning to half-ass them and blame his medical condition, but instead, he asks her to send someone with a strong coffee to fortify him for what’s to come. It seems clear that things are escalating, and he can’t imagine HYDRA has any bigger guns to bring in to persuade him than the former Secretary of Defense.

Halfway through the calls, Tony understands that this is retaliation, escalation. Knowing that the people on the other line-- querulous elderly ‘parents,’ indignant, world-weary adult ‘children,’ heartbroken ‘spouses,’ even one elementary-aged child who answered the phone asking ‘Is my daddy ever coming back?’ --are acting, that their concerns aren’t real… it doesn’t help. Tony’s emotionally wrung out by the time he’s done, and he opens the door to the ante-room to find it empty except for the ever-present ‘Secret Service’ agents.

“Mechanic’s moving,” they say to their nonexistent microphones, but he doesn’t wait for them. Tony runs, uncaring whether this confirms for his captors that they’ve won, they’ve gotten to him. He runs because it’s one of the last acts of rebellion he has, because he didn’t have the guts to do what he wanted to do on those phone calls: call their bluff. “Yes, your daddy isn’t coming home. He’s dead.”

Even knowing it’s not real, he couldn’t do it.

Some superhero he is.

Tony walks into the fake Presidential suite, shuts the door, and falls face first on the bed. It’s all he can do not to flip off the camera he knows is watching.

He wakes up to the feeling of someone tugging his (unbuckled, unbuttoned, and unzipped?!) pants off in the dark.

“And here I thought I usually woke up before the best parts of dreams,” he says aloud.

Natasha immediately stops what she’s doing, and he has to roll over onto his back with his pants down around his ankles. That’s when he notices that his arms are bare. Before starting on his pants, Nat apparently got his suit jacket, tie, and long-sleeved button down dress shirt off. Without waking him up.

“Did you drug me? Maybe I did wake up before the good part,” he says incredulously, kicking off the pants and reaching for the bedside lamp. That involves swinging his legs out over the side of the bed and sitting up, and right as his fingertips touch the switch, Natasha presses up against his back and whispers in his ear.

“Pierce authorized the installation of a microphone and two more cameras to cover the rest of the bed.”

“If this keeps up it’s going to remind me of our honeymoon,” he jokes, turning his head to look at her right as he turns the lamp on. Natasha’s hair is a riot of messy red curls, and it’s the most natural thing in the whole world to reach up with his other hand and bury his fingers in them at the nape of her neck as he steals a kiss for the camera.

There’s something heady about the cling of her lips to his, like maybe she did drug him, but not with an identifiable substance. Instead, she’s rewired his brain to recognize the little noise at the back of her throat when he angles his head and presses closer. She’s rearranged his molecules to find the scent of her hair intoxicating. Somehow Natasha’s converting his exhaustion to lust-- and it’s that thought which finally gets through to his sleep-fuzzed thought centers.

You kissed her for show, Tony. She’s kissing you back for show. Don’t lose your head.

He pulls back and opens his eyes, catching the moment where disappointment crosses her face and her eyes flutter open, revealing those gorgeous green eyes of hers.

“How are you even real?” Tony whispers, without thinking.

Inexplicably, his words seem to crush her; her brows furrow and cheeks flush before her professionalism takes over, and the walls come crashing down in the form of a blank expression.

“Shut up, Tony,” she whispers, quiet enough for that to be only for him, before she scrambles off of the bed to angrily rummage through her drawers. Tony knows he shouldn’t watch but he’s so confused he needs to, needs to understand what just happened. She pulls on a pair of black sweatpants and stomps off into the bathroom with another black thing for mere seconds before emerging with a shapeless black top on. Their eyes meet as she pulls back the blankets, and Nat snaps a “Go to sleep!” at him, ruthlessly pulling back her curls into a ponytail.

“Was it something I said?” he can’t help asking.

Natasha doesn’t answer until she’s walked around the bed to turn off his lamp without asking. “No.”

He’s wearing boxers and an undershirt, but Tony gets in bed and turns on his side (facing away from her, because message received), mind racing.

After many minutes of self-examination, the best he can do is the thought that she was setting up a fake argument to bolster the idea of make-up sex in the office they need to steal the bug from. 

Tony’s almost asleep when another option occurs: she’d thought he wanted to kiss her, wanted to compliment her, and her fury was related to the idea that he’d been faking for the cameras. She’d been disappointed.

He allows himself a few seconds to re-imagine the kiss and compliment from that angle, to inhabit that forbidden space, just to see what it feels like. He can almost smell her hair, can feel the press of her lips against his, can see pleasure cross her face when he draws back and looks at her like she’s so beautiful. 

Oh, he thinks. Then, oh no.

Tony can’t lay still in the aftermath. His mind is racing, a yin/yang of positive and negative reactions. The only thing that takes him out of it is remembering all of the really important things that Alexander Pierce has access to. He runs the cold water for a long time, soaks a washcloth in it and scrubs his face until his cheeks hurt.

Get it together, Tony. Your life’s at stake. HER life’s at stake. Stop acting like a fucking playboy idiot.

It works, but when Tony makes his way back to bed with the tiny flashlight whose battery is so close to dying it hardly makes any light anymore, he sees that Natasha’s rolled over while he was gone.

Her right arm is outstretched, fingers tucked under the edge of his pillow like she’d felt the bed to see if he was still there and fallen asleep waiting for him to come back.

To be continued...

[hurricanek8art]

So! Update on my SWTOR woes! I figure putting it in the main tag makes it so everyone that helped me sees it. Thank you everyone for your advice! I was so nervous about asking and you guys are so cool!

I'm planning on just doing Voss and Corellia for now to keep from burning out! This is like attempt three at me making a Jedi Knight because I wanted her to be my Outlander and then I'd freeze up and panic because I wanted it to be "perfect" but y'know what? Perfect's overrated anyway, this is supposed to be fun! I'll keep the other planetary storylines on the backburner in case I need to level up any further, but since I hit level 50 before I was out of chapter one and I thiiiink I hit 54 last night finishing Maelstrom Prison, I don't think I need to worry about my level being too low for a while. 🤣🤣🤣

(side note—thank you so much @greyias I GOT THE STUPID WHATSHISFACE COLONEL GUY WITH THE EYEBEAMS FINALLY 🤣 I do not know why I didn't think of using those crates as a shield before, I am so dumb :P)

You guys were so helpful and nice and I don't know what else to say I'm so bad at this 🥴🤣 but thank you! All of this actually helped me work up the courage to maaaaaaybe share my stuff? At least screenshots and backstory rambles because I have to share it somehow. I can only yammer my brother's ear off about it for so long, and he's the only other person I know IRL that's as into all this as me, so y'know. 🤣 I might make a masterpost to introduce everyone but I gotta gather up all my screenshots first and I'm kinda meh about getting good ones, so :P we'll see. And condense about two and a half/three-ish years of my brain hurtling backstories at me faster than I can write when I'm supposed to be writing other stuff into readable paragraphs. Uh... yeah, maybe don't expect it too soon. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I'm queuing this for tomorrow because I only got the chance to actually sit down and write this at midnight here, it's been crazy. Thank you again, everyone! I'm so bad at social stuff I don't know what else to say but thanks!

I don't know how to end this, so uh... Here! Unnecessarily adding all my Republic side characters in because I love them and I constantly want to infodump when it's not the time or place! 🤣

Aja Verdona, my Jedi Knight; Reilly Hawkins, my Smuggler; Ataraxia Kestis, my Consular (and my smuggler's twin sister); and Ijaaka Ordo, my Trooper. They have permanently rewired parts of my brain and I love them all dearly even though I accidentally play favorites with Aja. 🥴

[laurafaritos]

HDMS018. Not Just Funny—Profitable: How I'm Learning To Apply the Marketing Funnel to Comedy Shows

Listen, I am not a marketing expert. I’m a comedian who, until recently, thought “marketing” meant slapping a show flyer on Instagram, posting it on my story a couple of times, and hoping for the best. And if that didn’t work? Well… guess my friends didn’t love me enough!

For years, I ran shows that were objectively great—strong concepts, talented comedians, fun lineups. And yet, my audience was usually just other comedians, my friends, and whatever couple accidentally walked into the venue that night. I tried word of mouth, organic social media, and sheer blind optimism. But nothing worked consistently. Sometimes I broke even. More often, I lost money. And I had no idea why.

Then I started a Harvard Digital Marketing Strategy course, and I felt my brain rewiring. Marketing is a system, not a shot in the dark. There’s a structure to it. And more importantly, most comedians struggle to sell out shows because we are skipping steps. We promote, but we don’t market. We assume "putting it out there" is enough. And when people don’t show up, we blame everything except the fact that we never actually gave them a reason to care.

Nobody teaches us this. Not comedy schools. Not media programs. Not even “the industry.” But if comedians actually understood how audiences decide to buy tickets, we wouldn’t have to rely on clubs, bookers, or external gatekeepers. We could take control of our own careers.

So let’s break down the three stages every audience member goes through before they buy a ticket—Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. If you’re only focusing on “getting the word out” (like I did for years), that’s exactly why you’re struggling to fill seats.

I. HARVARD RECAP: THE MARKETING FUNNEL & WHY IT MATTERS

Alright, let’s break this down like I just smuggled Harvard Business School notes straight to you. (Because, in a way, I did.)

A marketing funnel is a three-stage roadmap that explains how people go from “Oh, what’s this?” to “Take my money.” Every single person who buys something—whether it’s a pair of shoes or a ticket to your comedy show—goes through these psychological steps: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.

Most comedians (my past self included) completely ignore this. We assume that if we post a show flyer, people will magically buy tickets. The reality? Audiences move through these stages, and if you skip one, you’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping it sticks.

Stage 1: Awareness (Getting on Their Radar)

The first hurdle is simple: people can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist. For brands, this means investing in ads, press coverage, influencer marketing, and viral content. For comedians, this means making sure people actually see your promo material before the day of the show.

Harvard explains that there are two types of brand awareness:

Unaided Awareness – When people can name your brand without being prompted. (Example: If I ask you to name a sneaker brand and you immediately say “Nike.”)

Aided Awareness – When someone recognizes your brand only after being reminded. (Example: If I show you a list and you go, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of OOFOS.”)

Big brands like Nike don’t have to worry about Awareness. Small brands—and comedians—do. This means investing in the right places so more people hear about your show before it happens.

Stage 2: Consideration (Why Should They Care?)

Here’s where most of us screw up.

Just because someone knows about your show doesn’t mean they care about it. Consideration is where audiences weigh their options. They’re asking, “Do I really want to go to this? Why should I pick this over other plans?”

In the Harvard case study, OOFOS struggled because runners didn’t immediately see why they needed "recovery footwear." Just knowing OOFOS existed wasn’t enough—they had to be convinced it was worth their money. Similarly, comedians need to give people a reason to care.

If you post a flyer that just says “Comedy Show – 8 PM”, that’s weak Consideration strategy because it doesn’t tell anyone why your show is different. But if you post, “You love dark humor? My show mixes stand-up with paranormal stories. Here’s a clip of the last one where the audience lost their minds.”—that’s strong Consideration strategy because it taps into your audience’s specific interests.

At this stage, you need to sell the experience and differentiate yourself. Why should people come to your show instead of watching Netflix at home?

Stage 3: Conversion (Closing the Sale)

This is where money is made—or lost.

By the time someone gets to Conversion, they already know about you (Awareness) and they’ve considered their options (Consideration). Now, they’re standing at the door of your comedy show wondering if they should actually buy the ticket.

At this stage, your job is to remove friction and give them a final nudge. This is why businesses use one-click checkout, discount codes, and “only X tickets left” tactics. People hesitate before spending money, so the easier and more urgent you make it, the more likely they are to buy.

For OOFOS, their problem was that people interested in their shoes weren’t always buying. The fix?

Stronger messaging on why their product was unique

Targeted search ads to hit people right when they were actively looking to buy

Email marketing to re-engage people who visited their site but didn’t purchase

For comedians, conversion problems look like this:

People liking your promo posts but not actually buying tickets.

People saying they’re coming but bailing last minute.

People watching your stand-up clips but never showing up IRL.

The solutions?

A direct ticket link in every promo post (remove friction).

Limited-time discounts for early buyers.

Personal DMs to past attendees (retention marketing).

The more you make it easy and urgent to buy, the higher your ticket sales will be.

Why Most Comedians Fail at This

Most comedians don’t sell out shows not because they aren’t funny, but because they skip steps.

They assume Awareness = ticket sales. (Just because someone saw your flyer doesn’t mean they’re coming.)

They don’t nurture Consideration. (You need to convince them why your show is worth their time & money.)

They don’t optimize Conversion. (If you’re not making it EASY & URGENT to buy, you’re losing potential ticket buyers.)

Big companies have entire teams for this. As self-employed comedians, we are the marketing team, production team, and talent. That means we have to work smarter, not harder.

TL;DR Recap:

The Marketing Funnel is Awareness → Consideration → Conversion.

Skipping steps = struggling to sell.

If you want to sell out, you need strategies for all three stages.

If you think, “but I’m just a comedian, not a businessperson”—guess what? If you’re self-employed, you’re running a business.

Now, let me show you how I failed at every single one of these before finally getting my first (almost) sold-out show.

II. MY COMEDY SHOW GRAVEYARD: HOW I FAILED AT EVERY STAGE OF THE FUNNEL

If I had known about the marketing funnel earlier, I could have saved myself from years of failed shows. But hey—what is comedy if not turning your own disasters into something useful? I want to walk you through three key failures that showcase exactly how I ignored Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion in my early comedy shows. Spoiler: I was out here learning the hard way.

FAILURE #1: The Disaster Show (2017) – No Awareness, No Money, No Plan

The Disaster Show was my first attempt at running a comedy production, and I went into it with all the confidence of someone who had never heard the term "marketing strategy" in her life. I relied entirely on my classmates and comedian friends to fill the room, assuming that word-of-mouth and personal invitations would be enough. I put up a couple of posts on Facebook, told a few people, and hoped for the best.

What I did not do was create awareness beyond my immediate circle. There was no social media campaign, no email outreach, no strategic partnerships with other communities—just me assuming people would show up because the show existed. The result? A half-empty room, no new audience members, and no revenue.

It was a pay-what-you-can show, and the most I made in two editions was enough to give each comic $10. I made nothing for myself. Worse, I had no way to keep in touch with the few audience members who did come. No email list. No retention strategy. Just me, starting from scratch every single time.

FAILURE #2: Good Vampire Morning (2019) – Great Idea, No Consideration Strategy

By 2019, I had leveled up—I now had a unique and exciting show concept: Good Vampire Morning, a variety show where comedians had to perform in a vampiric accent. I thought the concept alone would carry me to success. I was wrong.

I made the classic mistake of assuming a cool idea was enough. I assumed people would see the show flyer, think it was fun, and automatically want to come. I did not think about my target audience, the competitive landscape, or the fact that people need a reason to buy beyond just "this looks cool."

The result? Two shows with nearly no audience. The lineup was killer. The performances were hilarious. And yet? I was performing to four of my friends, two comedians who weren’t booked, the bar DJ, and a confused walk-in couple. I failed to give people a reason to choose this show over any other way they could spend their evening.

I didn't build engagement. I didn’t offer any exclusivity, discounts, or compelling reasons to attend now instead of later (spoiler: there was no later). I didn't even reach out to niche communities—no horror fans, no goth groups, no vampire-loving weirdos like myself. I skipped the Consideration stage entirely, and the result was a completely empty room.

FAILURE #3: Haunted Comedians (2021) – The Conversion Catastrophe

At this point, I should have learned my lesson. Instead, I made a whole new set of mistakes.

The first time I tried to run Haunted Comedians, I intended for it to be a live show—but when I struggled to sell tickets, I panicked and pivoted. Instead of focusing on ticket sales, I reframed the event as a recording day, assuming that if I just got comedians together to film, I could at least create some content.

This was a huge mistake. Instead of doubling down on my marketing and actually driving conversions, I gave up on selling tickets altogether. I assumed that I could salvage the event by recording it. What I didn’t consider was that recordings only work if the production is solid.

The venue had originally agreed to let me use the space under the assumption that I could bring in at least 15-25 audience members. When I showed up with five, it was humiliating. They never wanted to work with me again. Worse? Our recording equipment failed halfway through the interviews, and we didn’t even notice. Half the footage was unusable. I walked away with no audience, no content, and another financial loss because I had to pay the comedians out of pocket.

I failed at the conversion stage. Even the people who had expressed interest never made it to actually purchasing a ticket because I never followed up, never created urgency, and never made buying tickets as easy and frictionless as possible.

THE TURNAROUND: HAUNTED COMEDIANS 2025

Fast forward to January 31, 2025—my first real success.

Was it perfect? No. Did it sell out? Not quite—80% sold. But compared to my track record, this was a HUGE win.

What changed? I used actual marketing strategies—consistent promotion, a clear value proposition, and targeted outreach. I made sure to capture audience emails for future retention. I created an experience, not just a comedy show, but a unique event that was worth talking about.

This show proved to me that marketing isn’t about luck—it’s about strategy. Now, my next step is making sure I build on this momentum and retain my audience. Because a one-time success isn’t enough—I need to turn first-time attendees into repeat customers.

III. WHAT I’M DOING DIFFERENTLY NOW: APPLYING THE FUNNEL TO MY COMEDY BUSINESS

So, what’s changed? Why did Haunted Comedians 2025 succeed when all my other shows flopped? The answer is simple: I finally started treating my comedy like a business.

This means I’m no longer relying on hope, good vibes, and a cool concept to sell tickets. I’m actually applying the marketing funnel to make sure my audience moves through each stage—from Awareness to Consideration to Conversion.

Here’s how:

1. Awareness: Making Sure People Actually Know My Show Exists

Before, I relied on posting a flyer and hoping for the best. Now, I take an intentional, multi-platform approach to brand awareness:

Consistent social media presence: Not just “promo posts,” but engaging content—clips, behind-the-scenes footage, audience testimonials, and memes related to my show’s themes.

Collaborations & cross-promotions: Partnering with other comedians, podcasters, and local businesses to tap into their audiences.

Press & niche communities: Reaching out to bloggers, newsletters, and community groups that align with my show’s themes (horror fans for Haunted Comedians, relationship bloggers for Failed By Sex Ed).

SEO & searchability: Making sure my show’s event page is optimized with keywords so it actually shows up when people search for comedy in Toronto.

2. Consideration: Giving People a Reason to Choose MY Show

People don’t just buy comedy tickets—they buy experiences. Instead of assuming that people will just “get” what makes my shows special, I’m actively showing them why my events are worth attending.

Clear branding & messaging: Every post, email, and promo reinforces what my show is about and why it’s different from generic stand-up nights.

Building anticipation: Instead of just announcing the lineup, I introduce the comics one by one, tease special moments, and create a sense of exclusivity.

Testimonials & social proof: Sharing audience reactions, post-show highlights, and feedback to build credibility and FOMO.

Storytelling: I don’t just say “Come to my show!”—I tell stories about the chaos, the comedians, the wild moments, making people feel like they’d be missing out if they don’t attend.

3. Conversion: Making It EASY for People to Buy Tickets

This is where I failed the hardest before—I’d get people interested, but they’d never actually make it to the purchase. Now, I’m making ticket sales frictionless:

Clear, frequent calls-to-action (CTAs): Every piece of content has a next step—“Get your ticket now,” “DM me for the link,” “Join the email list for early access.”

Urgency & scarcity: I highlight when tickets are selling fast and create limited-time offers. (Example: “Only 10 tickets left at early-bird pricing!”)

Email marketing & retargeting: Instead of relying on Instagram’s algorithm, I’m actually collecting emails so I can remind people to buy tickets.

Partnerships for added incentives: Offering free drinks, discounts, or giveaways through venue partnerships to make ticket purchases more attractive.

WHAT’S NEXT? KEEPING THE MOMENTUM GOING

I finally have proof that marketing works, but this is just the beginning. My next priority? Retention. Keeping track of my audience, building relationships, and turning one-time ticket buyers into repeat attendees and superfans.

I’ll be setting up a real email list, creating more content between shows, and making sure my marketing doesn’t just start two weeks before the event—it’s ongoing. Because at the end of the day, a sold-out show isn’t luck. It’s strategy.

V. THE AUDHD ANGLE: HOW I’M BUILDING A SYSTEM THAT WORKS FOR MY BRAIN, NOT AGAINST IT

Let’s be real—I didn’t struggle with marketing my shows just because I didn’t know the strategy. I struggled because traditional marketing approaches are built for neurotypical brains that can handle structure, discipline, and long-term consistency without a meltdown. That’s not me.

For years, I thought my inability to stick to a long-term marketing plan was a personal failing. That I just needed to “try harder” or “be more organized.” But newsflash: I have AuDHD. My brain doesn’t function the way business books tell me it should. And instead of fighting against it, I’m finally building a system that works with my brain.

1. Making Marketing Work for My Dopamine-Seeking Brain

Reframing marketing as content creation: Instead of treating promo as a chore, I frame it as “making funny or interesting content” because that is something I actually enjoy doing.

Batching & automation: If I try to post daily, I’ll fail. If I dedicate one hyperfocus day to scheduling a month’s worth of posts? That works.

Gamifying the process: I track ticket sales like a video game, celebrate every small win, and make it fun instead of overwhelming.

Micro-wins instead of massive tasks: “Write one social post” is manageable. “Build a 3-month marketing plan” is instant executive dysfunction. So I break it down into dopamine-friendly steps.

2. Beating Executive Dysfunction by Using My Strengths

Interest-based motivation over discipline: If I don’t find a way to make it interesting, I won’t do it. So I inject humor, storytelling, and creativity into everything.

Body-doubling & external accountability: Instead of struggling alone, I set deadlines with friends, co-work on marketing with other comedians, or even use public accountability like “If I don’t post about my show by 3 PM, roast me.”

Templates & structured flexibility: I use marketing templates so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time—but I also leave room for last-minute impulsive creativity because I know that’s how I work best.

3. Preventing Burnout by Pacing Myself (Instead of Going All-In and Then Crashing)

Building in rest & recovery: I no longer overextend myself with unrealistic expectations. I plan around my energy levels.

Working with my hyperfocus, not against it: If I feel a sudden surge of productivity, I lean in and create as much as I can. If I’m in a slump, I don’t force it—I work with what I already prepared.

Prepping for future-me: I leave breadcrumbs for my future self—easy-to-edit templates, clear next steps, reminders that make it easier to pick up where I left off when my motivation inevitably fluctuates.

VI. BUILDING A SYSTEM THAT SUSTAINS ME LONG-TERM

For the longest time, I thought my inability to “just be consistent” with marketing was a personal failure. I saw comedians around me grinding, posting non-stop, and selling out rooms, while I struggled to even remember to promote my shows until the week before. I assumed the answer was discipline. Structure. Forcing myself to stick to a rigid, long-term marketing plan like a real businessperson.

But that’s not how my brain works.

Now, after spending over 60+ hours studying this Harvard course and applying what I’ve learned, I see marketing differently. It’s not about willpower—it’s about building a system that works with my neurodivergence instead of against it.

What does that mean in practice?

Marketing = Content Creation. I’m reframing show promotion as a creative process, not a boring task I “have” to do.

Batching & Automation = My Lifeline. I build my promo in hyperfocus bursts, so I don’t have to rely on daily motivation.

Templates & Systems = Future-Me’s Best Friend. I create reusable marketing materials that make it easier every time.

Momentum > Perfection. I’d rather be consistently imperfect than perfectly inconsistent.

This shift in thinking is the reason Haunted Comedians (Jan 31) was 80% sold out, while past shows barely broke even. It’s the reason I’m finally tracking my audience, building a real marketing funnel, and making decisions like a business owner, not just an artist.

And the best part? This is just the beginning.

I can’t wait to see what happens when I apply this system to all my comedy shows in 2025. If this is what I’m learning from just two modules of this course, I can’t imagine how much my strategy—and my career—will evolve by the end of it.

So if you’re a comedian reading this, wondering if you’ll ever figure out how to market yourself, just know that I’m figuring it out in real-time too. And if you stick around, I’ll share everything I learn along the way.

VII. FINAL THOUGHTS

Aaaaaaaaaaaand that was the post! You made it to the end!

If you’ve made it this far, congrats—you now know more about marketing than 90% of comedians running shows right now. (Seriously. Most of us are out here hoping for the best and praying our friends show up.)

I’m documenting everything I learn from this Harvard course in real time and applying it to my own comedy career. If you want to:

Follow the full journey of me trying to crack the code on selling out shows,

Steal my marketing strategies without having to take a Harvard class,

See if I actually succeed or fail spectacularly,

Then stick around.

Tchau, tchau!!!

[rainofdauwuand0w0]

Oh joyus I've been thinking this au over a bit. such as my take on DD uzi and how that all stumbles together as things all come together

and this au has been marinating in my mind a bit so once more we get some things

two headcanons to set the stage

1.Solver did not anticipate this actually ever coming up, it was more a side comment it made to J, it did not think any drone would be stupid, stubborn, or brave enough to do such an action. J being the business gal she is, always has it saved as a part of her backups the solver keeps as a just in case,hence her being the one to react because "oh god some poor sap just got into the onboarding process without knowing, without even being able to check paperwork!"

2.next is the way it effects her visually, I think she'd still keep her iconic purple...but things that shouldn't have purple (like the warning designs stuff on the dd's arms for example), it can be explained as the solver in her passed down from her mother going "hey I recognize this, I can work with this"

and then my brain made the episode names

Ep 1: Unknowing Recruitment (the events you described play out, I like to imagine the episodes are longer to go along with and show more of the horror and feelings dealing with such a thing, and how unnatural it all is)

Ep 2: Test Run (Much to the annoyance to the clashing parts of their personalities, J and Uzi Do some hunting training on distant bunkers, J's reasoning for choosing a different bunker? "eh easier on a rookie to cover a different shift then old grounds, uzi still tries to use her rail gun but when she holds it, solver magic plus the dd thing going on makes it a new weapon apart of her systems she can use...and making it more dangerously accurate but loads smaller in beam size.)

Ep 3: Trying out the old ways (to try to get her mind off everything, Uzi tries to go to the prom still, even managing finding....but she is caught off guard by doll similar to canon but under...even wore circumstances considering her current looks, Dapper N and Distinguished V manage to come as clean up and Aid, when doll eventually does the bullet scene, her right arm switchs to a telsa coil like machine, and projects her solver to catch it, doll looks even more worried, as do n and v a lil)

Ep 4: In with the new cabins (despite everything going on, teach still does go out and takes the kids out to the old cabin for a camping trip, stating his "no year end bonus, no fun" blank line. the dd's and uzi once more using this as more training, and N, both managing to find and watch the old tape about zombie drones, uzi not being as affected due to the DD processing but still does feel uneasy after watching it, they still do kill all who died originally)

Ep 5: Mixed memories (remembering her old ways of body possession and know how of tech, she rewires everyone to be under her admin while they sleep, hooking herself up as well, she passes out, when she thinks she is back awake...she's in a maid outfit of sorts, her own eyes purple but everything else is a normal drone again, she watches as the events of the gala unfold, unable to stop them but able to see a complete picture, when they all awake....J doesn't know whether to be thankful or to bonk her on the head for doing overtime on unpaid hours)

Ep 6: A Raid of a conclusion (the squad pull up to the labs again, after some well deserved break hours, the dd crew glitch a little and after a bit of heads feeling funny, their colors change to purple as well, seemingly confirming the new admin-ship, leading to solver checking out what in the world is going on down there herself in her tessa disguise, trying to make clones of the other three but the data come out for the copied didn't process right...like something of equal force is holding the data from her, so the episode would swap between the knock-off crew and "tessa" and the true dd manor crew both looking for the patch, meanwhile doll and alice have their own shenanigans with them and without them)

Ep 7: Abundance of Insurance (solver does her best to keep up the tessa act when she spots the crew but something feels off to them about her...especially with how these knock-off's look along side her, like a scary familiarity of a certain other planets final day, after shenanigans with that, uzi after some exploring comes across her mother....leading to a LOT of explaining from both of them, one was thought dead, one was thought to still be a worker drone, a worker drone with the solver but a worker drone none the less, doll trying to escape with the patch gets saved by uzi....and well....while the body drops for a bit, when they turn around...."tessa" is putting her head back on...much to the horror of everyone in the room...including the dd's who just got to the door)

Ep 8: Assimilation Error (solver does it's typical shenanigans for mass accumulation, an epic final battle ensues with expert flying from the dear pilot, doll is forced to fight off the knock-off's though she gets her own help from a certain close figure of her mother's, and oh boy the horrors! Extra Eldritch, just as we like'em)

Idea that just came to me

So when uzi uses N’s nanotechnology saliva for healing, that whole scene plays out

When uzi escapes and J literally slaps him back to better condition, he retells instead of keeping it a secret, including the saliva part.

While v has the expected reaction at this point in the story…J’s eyes go wide and horrified, swearing but replaced with her corporate jargon

Telling N that it is now his job to get that new up and coming rookie out of there.

Aka my idea of a disassembly drone uzi, where the nanities slowly replace her parts and she becomes a disassembly drone of her own (the first part that transforms is her length of her arms and legs)

Series: Murder Drones AU Criteria: So about those nanites that are in the saliva, healing the acid… are they programmed to stop "healing" a Worker Drone? AU title (optional): Deep Awakening

So in this universe the healing nanites in the saliva helps the turning process like a vampire's saliva in some lore.

J has an atypical reaction as she realizes just how big this screw up is. She orders N to go and bring in their newest team member so she can do the onboarding process.

Meanwhile, Uzi is fighting off something that is causing her core to ramp up, and her body feels like it's overheating. Being in the Outpost seems to be a very bad idea to her, and so she escapes, heading towards the camp her mother's necklace told her about.

Self-isolating, she locks herself in a cabin, trying to keep herself from going insane. She feels a hunger, a craving for oil, and she wasn't going to turn on her people. She wasn't going to become one of those monsters!

N arrives right at the peak of her madness with a case of oil, and the combat experience to keep her from tearing him apart. Finally he gets her pinned down and his tail force feeds a can of oil into her with a funnel.

Oh, she still has Solver inside her, but there's many other things going on right now, and that's a minor note.

[thebaddestofbatches]

The Bad Batch Preferences pt. 1

Kissing

------------

Crosshair

Favorite Place: Just behind your ear and along your jaw. He prefers to wrap his arms around you from behind and these places are easier to reach. Plus they’re more sensitive and he likes to watch you squirm.

Makeouts: Definitely. And frequently. Whenever he gets back from a mission, you do something he finds hot, or just because he hasn’t kissed you in awhile.

First Kiss:

It was hot on Techitua. Dusty too. You lowered your shades on your nose, a polarized version of Tech’s goggles as Crosshair opened a case on the ground.

A makeshift shooting range was set up parallel to the Marauder, a metal piece with a target spray painted on it placed at a distance of 25 meters.

Hunter had told you that if you wanted to stay on board, you needed to know how to defend yourself and assigned you to Crosshair, without even asking if you had any prior experience.

“Alright. I don’t expect you to be top notch with this thing.” Crosshair said, his tone borderline patronizing as he removed a small blaster from the case. “Blasters take a lot of practice to use correctly and you’re only a doctor. I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t hit anything.”

You raised an eyebrow at him and took the blaster from his hand. Barely looking at the target, you took aim and fired one, two, three, four, five shots.

Crosshair’s slack jaw and a quick glance told you they all hit the bullseye.

“You forget, soldier,” You said smugly. “I’m an army doctor. I can rip you apart and put you back together just as easily.”

Crosshair’s toothpick hit the dirt and then he was on you, smashing his lips to your hungrily.

.*(*)*..**(*)**...**(***)**...**(*)**..*(*)*.

Echo

Favorite place: Your hand. He likes to hold your hand and bring it up to his lips for absentminded kisses. When you cup his face, he turns his head and presses kisses to your palm.

Makeouts: Not too often. He’s shy after all his modifications and you definitely have to initiate them, but once he relaxes, then he’s into it.

First Kiss:

“Dang ferreck!” You swore as the control panel of the rescued radio shocked you for the fifth time that night.

You gave it a swift thump on the top in retaliation, gritting your teeth.

You needed this to work. It had to work. It’d been so long since you heard real music.

Another try at the wiring and another spark that singed your fingertips. You let out another string of curses and tossed your screwdriver onto the counter with a clank before thumping your forehead against the table repeatedly.

There was a gentle touch on your back that stopped your assault on your cranium. You didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. You could feel the poke of Echo’s prosthetic through your tunic.

“You alright?” He asked.

“No,” You grumbled into the metal.

Echo sighed quietly and after some shifting behind you, you raised your head to see his human hand disconnect two crossed wires and reconnect them at new points. There was a fizz of static and then a gentle song began to float through the speakers.

You let out a whoop of joy and leaped to your feet, grabbing the clone by his collar to pull him down for a quick kiss.

“Thank you!” You squealed, snatching up your screwdriver again and leaving Echo standing there, stunned and pink.

.*(*)*..**(*)**...**(***)**...**(*)**..*(*)*.

Hunter

Favorite place: Your neck. He likes to feel your pulse point and kiss the sunmarks and spots along your skin. It’s also one of the best places for him to get your scent.

Makeouts: Not as often as Crosshair, but frequent. He likes to be affectionate with you and when he gets time or feels stressed, being around you and close to you is his priority.

First Kiss:

You’d been separated from the Batch in a marketplace and were now wandering aimlessly.

As you passed an alleyway you heard a whistle and a man sidled up to you.

“Hey gorgeous,” He said. “Where you going?”

“Away from you,” You muttered, but he heard it anyway and snorted. “Feisty girl.”

A gag rose up in your throat and you increased your pace. Behind you the man called. “Hey I’m talking to you! Though I appreciate the view!”

A hand landed on your butt and you whirled, fist raised to deck the stranger for daring to touch you. Before you could though, someone stepped between you and punched him, hard.

You looked up to see Hunter, a deep scowl on his tattooed face as he glowered at your harasser.

“Don’t touch her,” He growled, drawing up to his full height.

The man spat and launched himself at Hunter, sending them both rolling to the ground.

There was some yelling and sounds of fists hitting bodies before Hunter scrambled to his feet breathing hard as your harasser lay on the ground, groaning.

Hunter turned to you with worried eyes and you punched him in the arm hard and then quickly pecked his lips. “You didn’t have to make a scene.”

“Sorry,” He said, not sounding sorry at all as he pulled you in for another kiss.

.*(*)*..**(*)**...**(***)**...**(*)**..*(*)*.

Tech

Favorite place: Your forehead and temples. He can get so busy with this or that and a quick peck to the forehead is his go-to for affection when he’s caught up in something.

Makeouts: Usually whenever he gets an idea he wants to try with you. He learned affection mainly from books so he’s picking up more and more as he goes. Usually you initiate the sessions. However, when he gains confidence later in the relationship, things get more serious as he experiments.

First Kiss:

“Tech?” You called from the porch of your hideout. Hunter had sent you to fetch the male for dinner and so far he was nowhere to be found.

“In here!” The clone called and you followed the sound into the shed to see Tech holding two vials above a pot.

“What’re you doing?” You asked leaning on the doorframe.

“I’m testing a theory. The substance excreted from the fire salamanders’ skin may have some properties that can boost our explosives.” He replied, carefully tipping the vial of white powder in, followed by the orange liquid.

“And you thought it was a good idea to test that in my shed?” You said, quirking a brow.

The technician had the decency to look a little abashed. “Well it isn’t in the house.”

He set the tubes aside and picked up a firestarter, holding it over the pot. “And a spark to trigger the reaction..”

Crack. Fwoomp! Boom!

The small windows shattered and you ducked as a blaze burst up from the pot and then died out just as quickly, sending up a cloud of ash and dust.

When the smoke receded, you heard Tech give a small cough and looked over to see his whole face covered in soot and the front of his normally gelled back hair spiked up.

You burst into giggles, picking up a small cloth from the worktable and approaching the clone to wipe his goggles clean.

He blinked at you from behind the lenses, like he was surprised to see you and you smiled. “That went well.”

Tech gave you a sheepish look. “I’m sorry about the windows. I’ll fix them tomorrow.”

You laughed again, waving him off. “It’s alright. I was prepared for damages when I brought you lot here.”

He gave you a grateful look and suddenly you couldn’t help yourself, darting forward and pecking his lips.

Tech immediately turned scarlet. “What was that for?”

You shrugged. “For being you.”

And then you passed him the cloth with a wink. “Hunter says dinner’s ready. You should probably clean up a bit before you come inside.”

.*(*)*..**(*)**...**(***)**...**(*)**..*(*)*.

Wrecker

Favorite place: Your cheeks and nose. He likes to pepper kisses all over your face. He’s so enraptured by you that he wants to keep you close at all times to make sure you’re real. Plus he’s a massive cuddlebug.

Makeouts: On occasion. But this boy is too much of a teddy bear for anything more than gentle loving touches. He’s slow and sweet and so very careful with you.

First Kiss:

The Batch was pinned down in an abandoned bunker as a gang faction gathered outside. Echo was doing his best to reboot the turrets while Tech worked on the doors, but unless it happened fast, you weren’t getting out of this unscathed.

You were peering out one of the broken windows with Hunter, Crosshair, and Wrecker picking off grunts where you could, but they had greater numbers and illegal firepower.

A shot from a bike mounted turret hit the wall above your lookout and the ceiling caved in, causing Wrecker tackle you, cradling you to him as he rolled away.

“You alright?” He asked, pushing off of you, his voice higher than normal.

“Yeah.” You said and Hunter swore as glass shattered behind you.

“Echo!! What’s the status on those defense systems?!”

“Same as you asked thirty seconds ago!” Echo snapped. “These circuits are rubbish! This place should have been scrapped for parts years ago!”

Parts.

A light bulb went off in your brain and you immediately turned to Wrecker. “Give me a charge!”

“Why?!”

“Trust me!”

He gave you a look you couldn’t read under the helmet, but dropped an explosive in your palm.

Immediately you started dismantling it. “I need a gravmag, some wires, and anything explosive we can spare. Oh and Echo’s arm.”

“What?” Said Echo.

You ignored him and started your hunt for parts as you snatched a screwdriver, a multipurpose laser tool, and pliers from Tech’s backpack, stripped a console, broke Crosshair’s gravmag off of his grappling hook, and took three more charges from Wrecker. You dismantled, screwed, and rewired before beckoning Echo over and having him weld it all together.

“(Y/N),” Wrecker asked as he fired off another shot. “What are you doing?”

You waved him off as you activated your new, shoddy weapon of mass destruction and bolted for the window, lobbing it as hard and far as you could.

“Hit the dirt!” You yelled and there was a large boom and the whole building rattled.

When the dust cleared, you beamed proudly at the clear landscape.

The gang that had been surrounding your hiding place was now lying unconscious having been thrown a good 50 meters in all directions at extreme speeds.

“What-“ Said Crosshair in his rare stunned tone. “What did you do?”

“Simply,” You said. “I reversed the polarity and made it into a big bang.”

Wrecker whooped and tossed his helmet aside, scooping you into a bear hug and peppering kisses all over your face. “THAT’S MY GIRL!”

You turned pink and he drew back from you enough to press a sweet kiss to your lips, which only served to fill your face with crimson.

There was an awkward cough from one of his brothers and Wrecker turned a similar shade of red, setting you back on the ground.

“Er-“ He said, patting your shoulder awkwardly. “Good job.”