#miserable existence without any mods at all.

[ssspringroll]

Omg it's them... Imaginary friends from my brain...

Updated slightly from how they would've looked when i last thought about them nearly 10 years ago. One of them grew out of his edgy phase. The other one... not so much.

[kmomof4]

The Arena A New Fic for CSSNS24

WE FINALLY MADE IT, Y'ALL!!!!! @cssns is here for the last time!!! And I am sooooo thrilled to be kicking off our final year!!! Before we get to the fic, I have to say a few words about the team of ladies that helped get this fic here for all of you to enjoy!!

First, to the other mods of the CSSNS - @winterbaby89 @stahlop @jrob64 and @ultraluckycatnd This event wouldn't be here without all of you and I cannot thank you enough for stepping up and helping me through this last round.

To @snowbellewells my magnificent beta for this fic - Marta, I cannot thank you enough for reading, rereading, and rereading AGAIN in order to make this fic the best it could be. Love you, my dear friend!!!

To @motherkatereloyshipper artist extraordinaire - Kit's artwork always leaves me with my jaw hanging open in AWE, and this one is no exception!! I could seriously stare at it for hours!!! Please give her all the love!!!! It's at the beginning of the fic under the cut.

And now to the fic! I so hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!!

Summary: The arena. 

A place of fear. Oppression. Blood. Death. 

A place of shattered hopes and dreams. 

A place, for a very lucky few, of hope. 

Words: Almost 3200

Rating: M for graphic violence

Tags: CSSNS24, Werewolves, True Love, Happy Ending

On ao3

Tagging the usuals. Please let me know if you'd like to be added or removed.

@jrob64 @winterbaby89 @hollyethecurious @the-darkdragonfly @jennjenn615

@donteattheappleshook @undercaffinatednightmare @pirateherokillian @cocohook38 @qualitycoffeethings

@booksteaandtoomuchtv @superchocovian @motherkatereloyshipper @snowbellewells @pirateprincessofpizza

@djlbg @lfh1226-linda @xarandomdreamx @tiganasummertree @bluewildcatfanatic

@anmylica @laianely @resident-of-storybrooke @exhaustedpirate @gingerchangeling

@caught-in-the-filter @ultraluckycatnd @stahlop @darkshadow7 @fleurdepetite

@captainswan-kellie @soniccat @beckettj @teamhook @whimsicallyenchantedrose

@thisonesatellite @jonesfandomfanatic @elfiola @zaharadessert @ilovemesomekillianjones

@mie779 @kymbersmith-90 @suwya @veryverynotgoodwrites

Under the cut, unless Tumblr ate it.

The arena. 

A place of fear. Oppression. Blood. Death. 

A place of shattered hopes and dreams. 

A place, for a very lucky few, of hope. 

Killian Jones stood along the wall of the arena with his fellow fighters, his eyes trained on the opposite side of the stadium where the grand prize of the wretched and despicable contest he’d willingly signed up for was being held. The wretched and despicable contest that the despot Arthur had created for the entertainment of himself and his court, promising to the victor everything they could ever dream of - more money than they could imagine, a place in the upper echelons of society, land, and a beautiful bride on his arm. A bride that, in Killian’s fondest dreams, didn’t care he was missing a hand. But all of that was for the victor alone. There was no prize for coming in second, unless you counted death as a prize. 

And Killian did. 

Either everything he’d ever hoped for - but which was so far out of reach for a street rat like him - or bringing his miserable existence to an end. That was why he’d eagerly volunteered for the contest. That last sliver of hope his mother - gone for many years now - had instilled in him that his life circumstances had to get better, because they certainly couldn’t get worse, or the sweet oblivion of forever sleep.

He cut his eyes to the left for a moment, taking in his fellow competitors. He didn’t know any of them. The mates he’d trained with for the last year were long gone - scattered to the other corners of the empire to try their own luck in the arena. There were four other men here with him. The one immediately to his left barely looked to be a man at all, but he held a cunning and evil look in his eye that warned not to underestimate him. The man next to him was the largest of all of them with long curly black hair, bulging muscles, deep set dark eyes, and a closely trimmed black beard and goatee. The other two men on the other side of the large one, he’d only seen briefly as they were released into the arena. One was tall and skinny with blonde hair and a scar on his face that gave him a dangerous look, and the other had a mop of brown hair that flopped over his almost simian-looking visage and he held himself with an air of pretension and imperiousness. He’d fit right in with Arthur’s court. He’d probably been an upper house slave looking to be a master instead. 

Now, Killian’s attention was drawn back to the other side of the arena where two slaves were needed to get the young woman into the center of the sunken pit in which they were all held. She truly was a beauty, Killian could already tell, and a hellcat to boot. She wore nothing more than a torn and ragged gown that barely covered her most private parts and was nearly the same color as her skin and a thick silver bracelet on her wrist. Her golden hair was a nest of tangles but still glinted under the midday sun as she screamed and thrashed in their hold. Her legs alternately stuck out in front of her - her heels vainly attempting to anchor themselves into the soft ground - or dragged behind her in an effort to become deadweight and too heavy for the men to carry. When that wasn’t working, she kicked at her captors, clawing and biting every inch of bare skin she could reach.

They finally reached the center of the arena where they dropped her unceremoniously in the dirt. It took her a moment to rise to her hands and knees, then she raised her head and Killian could see her face for the first time. He caught his breath at the exquisiteness of her face, made all the more evident by the dirt and tear tracks which marred her otherwise porcelain skin. The color was high on her cheeks, and her lips were full and red. She wasn’t particularly far away from him, fifteen to twenty feet at most, but he couldn’t tell the color of her eyes from this distance and under the rays of the sun, although he could clearly see the glint of more unshed tears. 

Her gaze swept over the other men beside him before landing on him, and when their eyes met, something came over Killian that he hadn’t felt in over two decades- the wolf that he’d lost when he lost his hand as a lad. An utterly unfamiliar strength flooded him, and his ears rang with the internal howl of his other half as his heart and mind were filled with images of that fateful day.

Killian ran down the crowded streets of the marketplace, a dreadfully skinny boy, one hand holding up the too-large pants around his waist, lest they fall down around his ankles as he ran. His clothes were tattered and worn and hung off his scrawny frame. A boy on the cusp of manhood, his malnourishment was evident in his height, nearly as tall as a man, and the leanness of his face with the beginnings of scruff on his chin.

His eyes darted around the street, taking in the busy vendors with their customers and trying to determine who’d be least likely to notice a pilfered meat pie or a couple of pieces of fruit for himself and his mother. Spying a likely suspect, Killian never slowed as his hand shot out toward his prize. But the shopkeeper was much more aware than Killian had given him credit for, and before he knew it, his wrist was captured in an iron strong grip and he was being pulled behind the small booth.

Without a word, the hulking shopkeeper pulled out a cutlass and brought it down on Killian’s wrist. He was too shocked to even register the pain as he watched his blood gush from the end of his arm. Too mesmerized by the gruesome injury to do anything, he realized darkness was encroaching on the edges of his vision and the sound rushing in his ears was the agonized howl of his wolf - who had manifested only a scant six months ago - dying away to whimpers before everything went black.

It was nearly a week later that he’d woken, according to his mother. She hadn’t been far behind him as he ran through the market and had seen what the shopkeeper had done. She was too late to do anything about her son’s hand, but she’d made sure the shopkeeper would never be capable of such cruelty again. A small dagger coated with aconite from the Monkshood plant leaving a scratch across his wrist was all it took to sentence the man to death before the sun set that same day. She was the one who got him back to the hovel they called home, and nursed him around the clock until his fever broke and he finally awoke. He felt different - an emptiness he couldn’t define - but couldn’t put his finger on why until he looked down at his hands, now hand, and everything came rushing back. His shout of anguish brought his mother running, throwing aside the excuse of a room divider which consisted of a cord strung between two windows on either end of his straw pallet with clothes and rags hanging from it. She gathered him in her arms, whispering soothing words in his ear and rocking him back and forth like she did when he was a small child until his own cries quieted. 

Killian,” she breathed. He pulled back just enough to see her eyes and was shocked at the profound sadness he saw there. “I’m so sorry. Your wolf is gone.” She tried to gather him close again, but he pulled back in alarm instead.

“What?” he asked, confused. “Why!? Is that why I feel different? Not just my hand?”

“Losing a limb,” she imparted on a hitched breath, “kills the wolf inside of you. Until you find your True Love.”

“My True Love?” Killian’s confusion and grief were stronger than ever. “But what if I don’t have a True Love? What if…”

“You mustn’t give up hope, my son,” she said fervently. “You will find her someday, and your wolf will return.”

And today was apparently that day. Killian watched as her eyes widened slightly. He could only hope that she could somehow feel the connection between them. The hum of True Love that he didn’t have time to examine or revel in as Arthur rang the bell signaling the beginning of the contest - of which apparently his True Love was the prize. 

The other men along the wall moved toward her and then all turned to him, the depraved lust in their eyes as they looked at her turning into gleeful anticipation as their gazes settled on him. In that moment, Killian realized they’d somehow all agreed to band together to take him out first, obviously the weakest having only one hand with which to fight. Killian met each of their eyes in turn as they all drew their swords.

“It’s nothing personal, you know,” the tall, arrogant one said. “Can’t allow such an unsuitable, maimed cripple to claim my prize.”

The taunting words were all that was needed for Killian’s wolf to come to the fore. It had been twenty-two years since he’d transformed, but that didn’t mean he didn’t remember exactly what was happening. His own wicked but gleeful grin took over his face as the power of his wolf filled him and he fell to his hands and knees in front of them. The pain-filled howl taking over his mind ripped from his now open maw while the bones, muscles, and sinew in his arms and legs broke, tore, and mended again into their new form. The men before him were frozen in shock, and Killian became aware of an uproar above him among the spectators of the contest. Arthur rang the bell and screamed at the guards and slaves to kill the beast in the arena, but no one moved to do so.

Killian was fully focused on the men in front of him, but was also dimly aware of his True Love. She was still crouched on the ground, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. The transformation now complete, he let loose a full, ringing howl of victory as he leapt toward the largest of the men, still frozen in terror. His claws sank into the man’s chest, blood flowing like rivers down the expanse of bare skin. Killian clamped his jaws down on his head, his canines piercing bone, until with a powerful shake of his head, the skin of the man’s face and the bone underneath tore away from the skull, exposing the soft brain tissue contained within. The man’s screams were abruptly cut off when Killian swiped his claws from the gaping head wound to the top of his chest.

He then turned his attention to the two men on either side of his first victim. He quickly took care of the both of them - the first, ripping his head off with one swipe of his powerful paw, and the second, using all of his front claws to open his enemy’s chest cavity and gut, his intestines spilling to the ground in front of him - before he turned around looking for the one who’d taunted him in the first place.

The smugness was gone, but a look of grim determination had replaced it as the man, armed with only a sword, and wolf circled one another. The uproar among the audience had all but completely died away, the spectators watching in horrified fascination to see who would emerge the victor.

The man lunged and Killian backed up, well out of reach of the sword his opponent wielded. As they circled, Killian became fully aware of something that had only tickled the edge of his mind in the last several minutes as he faced off with the other men. He had both his front paws! Did that mean that his hand would also be restored when he returned to human form? He had no time to ponder the question as his adversary jabbed toward him again.

“Do you really think you can win?” he asked. His eyes gleamed, and the smugness that had disappeared after Killian killed the others was coloring his countenance once again. “You’re nothing but an animal. I’m going to kill you and skin you and hang your pelt on the wall where I can see it every single day for the rest of my life.”

Killian bared his teeth, a low and vicious growl coming from his throat before he surged forward briefly, snapping at the other man. Giving him a good look of exactly what he was up against. Fear flooded his adversary’s eyes, and the hand holding his sword in front of him began to shake uncontrollably. They continued to circle one another, but the man wasn’t paying attention to their surroundings and was nearing the bodies of two of their dead competitors. It was only a moment later when his foot came down squarely on the innards Killian had spilled earlier and flew out from under him, landing him flat on his back amid the blood and gore-covered ground.

Killian wasted no time. With a mighty leap, he landed on top of the man, his claws making ribbons of his enemy’s bare skin. He’d dropped his sword when he fell, and now reached for it as his screams filled Killian’s ears. Biting down on his upper arm, arterial blood sprayed his muzzle as he ripped it clean away from his shoulder. Killian slung the severed limb away before he turned back and tore the man’s throat out. The terror-filled and agonized screams turned to choking gurgles before they died away completely.

Killian looked up into the seats surrounding the arena. The masses were completely quiet and still, obviously not over the shock of what they’d just witnessed. When his gaze landed on Arthur’s, the despot’s eyes widened in panic, and he made haste to exit his elaborately decorated box. The rest of the audience followed the king’s lead, screaming and running for the exits. With another triumphant howl, Killian ran for the wall and cleared it with a single jump. He quickly caught up with the oppressive tyrant, leaping toward him and landing on his back, pushing him to the ground. He bit down on the exposed skin of his neck and was rewarded with another spray of blood signaling the end of the vile oppressor. 

The arena was now empty, save him and his True Love. He leapt back down to the ground and walked slowly towards her. She was crouched on the ground, her head hidden behind her arms, her golden hair shielding most of her body from view. He stopped, unwilling to terrify her even more than he already had, and changed back to his human form. He looked down and gasped when he saw his left hand completely restored.

He moved toward her again as she lifted her head and looked around at the empty arena.

“Where are your captors, milady?” he asked, gently.

“Gone, my lord,” she breathed. “Did you… what…?”

He unclasped the cloak he still wore from around his neck and spread it across her, covering her rags, though there was no one now to gawk or stare lustfully at her. She grabbed the edges and pulled it more fully around her as she rose to her feet, giving him a grateful nod.

“You’re him.” Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper and was filled with an awe that Killian didn’t understand.

“I’m… who?” he asked, confused.

“You’re him,” she answered, a bit stronger that time. “My True Love.”

Killian couldn’t hope to hide his surprise at her words.

“Yes,” he exclaimed, excitement bubbling over into a beaming smile. “How did you know?”

“You were missing a hand before you transformed,” she explained, haltingly. She couldn’t hold his gaze for any length of time, her eyes bouncing between his and his restored hand that she gently took in her own, her other hand tracing the veins and bones there. “My parents told me before I was taken that if I ever lost a limb, I’d lose my wolf until I found my True Love.”

“You’re a wolf?” Killian almost fell to his knees in shock. He knew there had to be more out there like him, but he’d never met another. Not even his mother. Killian’s wolf came from his father, who’d died long before his own wolf manifested.

She nodded shyly and showed him her arm with the silver bracelet.

“That’s why they put this on me,” she explained. “To keep me from changing. Could you take it off? I can’t. But someone else can.”

“Of course.” He pulled the bracelet off and threw it to the other side of the arena. 

She frowned, and Killian thought he’d never seen anything more adorable in his life. “If they hadn’t forced me to wear it, I would’ve made short work of those two before they could get me two steps in here.” 

Killian smiled and gathered her in his arms, placing a gentle kiss to the top of her head. “That’s my girl.” After holding her for a moment, relishing the feel of her arms around him and the True Love between them, he released her. “My name is Killian. Killian Jones.”

“My name is Emma. Emma Swan.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Emma Swan.” 

She smiled softly and finally met his gaze. “You as well, Killian Jones.” 

She looked around before meeting his eyes once again. “So what now?” she asked. 

“I have no desire to stay here,” he muttered darkly. “Shall we run?”

Her face broke into a beautiful smile. “Yes, please. I haven’t been able to change for almost a year. Since they took me from my home.”

“I have no home,” he said, a note of melancholy in his words. He looked at his True Love again, his mate, and felt a bone deep contentment that he’d never known. “You’re my home now, Emma.”

“And you’re mine, Killian.” Her smile was full of joy as she got down on all fours before him. “Let’s run.”

He joined her on the ground and transformed. When he came back to himself, he saw a pure white wolf in front of him with eyes of green. She tilted her muzzle to the sky and released a long howl before running for the wall surrounding them. He joined her, his howl mixing with hers in a haunting melody that sent chills down his spine. He followed her over the wall and they ran, ran, and ran away from their past and into their future.

Together.

~*~*~

Thank you so much for reading and sharing!!! I hope you enjoyed it and would love to hear what you thought!!! Please give Kit all the love as well for her gorgeous artwork!!! The Supernatural Summer will continue with more fics and art dropping about every other day through the end of August, and I so hope you enjoy this last round!!!

[aziraphales-library]

Hello! Love the account, it's really great! I was wondering if you knew of any fics that have Aziraphale having a conversation with god, with god responding? I've found a few with just Crowley, but not many with Aziraphale, or with both of them together

Thank you so so much!

Hi! Here are some fics in which Aziraphale talks with God...

Unforgivable by aalisse (G)

Crowley was feeding ducks and waiting for Aziraphale. He didn't expect to have a chat with God, but then again, who would? _____ "The Almighty turns to him. Aziraphale’s eyes grow two sizes. He tries to say something, but God claps him on the shoulder, and he closes his open mouth. “I find the whole ordeal with the sword quite amusing,” She tells him. “I thought you should know.” Aziraphale makes a noise that’s very close to a squeak. Crowley can’t blame him."

Uncommanded and Unforbidden by AstroGirl (T)

Aziraphale dozes, a demon in his arms, and receives a divine visitation in his dreams.

The Wax is Melting ( I Need to See Under) by wyrmy (T)

When Crowley decides to take a post-apocalyptic nap, Aziraphale waits with increasing anxiety for him to wake up.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Aziraphale. by aligningplanets (M)

Heaven just was. And it was without Crowley. And Aziraphale was starting to believe that he may have made a mistake. One day, Aziraphale decided to speak to God. A Post-Season 2 Fix-It fic where everything comes right in the end.

Flaming Sword by Bookwormgal (T)

A dark shape in the not-quite-empty darkness. Dressed in black robes. Humanoid. Skeletal. Then wings unfolded. Angel wings, but not ones of feathers. Wings of night. Wings that Aziraphale could sense more than see in this strange place. And even if the thin thread didn't truly exist except as a concept to better understand what was happening, one skeletal hand rested on the weakening connection. Waiting patiently. Azrael. Creation's Shadow. The Angel of Death. "Oh," he said quietly, his voice swallowed by the emptiness. Aziraphale remembered what happened. He remembered moving. He remembered the blade sliding in, sharp and sudden. He remembered pain. And then… "I died, didn't I?" he asked.

In All Things, Balance by Kedreeva (T)

The world had failed to end over a year ago, and Heaven and Hell hadn't so much as looked sideways at them since the kidnapping. As they had taken six thousand years to plan the apocalypse, and their first move against Crowley and Aziraphale had failed so miserably, the duo had assumed they had more than a little bit of time to relax before they had to start watching their backs again. Crowley had moved his flat into the upstairs of the bookshop – quite literally, much to Aziraphale's dismay to find one afternoon – and life had continued on exactly the way it shouldn't have: happily. Unfortunately, the ever after part proves trickier after only a year.

- Mod D

[lilac-set]

I submitted a poll to a poll blog asking if people are rad inclus, curious how prevalent it is but i was planning on having my little ramble in the tags, but then the mod messaged me asking for a definition and getting to talk about it a little bit made me want to talk about it more, so here i am :3 this’ll be a discoursy one about (in favor of) radqueerness, and im also not willing to debate it, tw for discussion of transphobic talking points, feel free not to read if you dont want to but dni about the topic if you disagree

We’re rad inclus, thats common knowledge, but what bugs me is the definition talking about “good faith identities” and “bad faith identities”, i dont believe bad faith identities exist, im not really sure what it means. Someone suggested a bad faith identity could be like the transphobic attack helicopter meme, but thats not an identity, thats a joke. I dont support jokes at the expense of earnest identities, but in real life its not so easy to necessarily say “oh that isnt a genuine identity, thats just a joke, theyre doing it to mock us”, you cant know other people’s intentions for sure without asking them, and then what bugs me is that even if they do ask and they say no, this is genuine, they’ll still write it off as a joke and insist its harmful

I dont believe an identity can be harmful, theres no potential for someone’s self-concept to hurt someone else. The only argument that it can is “but it offends/disgusts/invalidates me!” Cool, those are your own feelings, not that person’s problem. Everyone has a right to live in whatever way feels the most fulfilling to them personally, even if no one else understands it, one person’s right to autonomy doesnt end until someone else’s starts. Someone identifying and living any particular way doesnt stop you from identifying and living any way you want to, if you dont want to be part of their life then politely excuse yourself, you have to no right to make them change for your comfort. “You cant transition into oppression” same thing. You cant harass someone into changing their identity. No matter how unfavorable the circumstances are for someone because of their identity, no matter how unfavorable you make them, you can only make someone miserable, you cant change them. Or even if you could, if someone’s identity is more malleable, you have no right to tell someone how to live, they arent materially harming you, “but it hurts my feelings!” Youre hurting their feelings, shut up, live your life and leave them alone. I primarily have transx in mind as im writing this, but it applies to everything

As for paras, cuz thats the other big point of contention i think, someone’s thoughts cant hurt you. What they do privately with other consenting adults or alone themselves as a consenting adult literally doesnt affect you in any way. I dont support harmful contact, we all know there are certain groups of people who cant meaningfully consent, but i dont think thats what the debate is on, this is about thoughtcrime. Transx is about thoughtcrime too. Thoughtcrime isnt real. No exceptions

I thought i was done but im not, i wanna talk about belief as well. We’re anti-science, we dont believe “science” does, will, can, or should have empirical evidence about all aspects of the experience of life, or that it should be the final arbiter (or any sort of factor at all) in determining if someone is valid. People are not attacking your beliefs by not conforming to them. You can believe whatever you want, and i can believe whatever i want, we dont have to threaten each other’s autonomy of belief by trying to convert each other. Can we discuss it and work together to find a right answer as long as both parties consent? Yeah, sure. But you dont need to try to change someone’s beliefs if they dont want to. You think their belief is a conspiracy theory? Cool, that doesnt affect you in any way, leave them alone about it. You think theyre going to hell? Doesnt affect you, leave them alone. Its a delusion? Guess what, leave them alone about it. Its ok if you value truth or science or religion above all else in your own life, but people have a right not to prioritize those things for themselves in theirs, and you dont have a right to try to make them conform

“But theyre spreading misinformation” You do not have the authority to enforce that whatever you believe is correct information and whatever anyone else believes thats contrary to that is misinformation. No one has that authority, no one should have that authority, people need to and have a right to curate their beliefs for themselves, not be expected to trust the government or anyone else and blindly accept whatever propaganda they might hear from a source they were told to trust

[glowyjellyfish]

The failure of William le Gacie

I finally finished fixing my medieval downloads folder on Wednesday! Turns out it was just me hitting my object mesh limit, and I just had to be patient and keep deleting stuff until it worked. It only took two YEARS to figure that out lolllllll... Honestly, there’s probably still a ton of random crap I’ll never use in there, which I will have to delete before I add any new shinies. Anyway, the Megakingdom of Simland is back on! …but first, I started that medieval legacy game I wanted so badly to play the other day, and it turns out… I’m really bad at this?

It started off okay. William le Gacie started his life, was placed in the Politics career, I discovered I seem to have a mod conflict of some kind as the only medievalized part of the career was the icon when it should be the job titles and descriptions as well… he worked on a little foraging and farming at home, then I installed my The Woods lot so he could do a little gathering on a community lot. Worked great, aside from a couple plants I apparently have in my 18th century downloads but not my medieval downloads. I will have to correct that, which will probably mean deleting a bunch of stuff first. Townies loved gathering in the Woods, and William met many of them.

One red-headed lady, Wren Wilde proved a bit elusive, and I wanted him to meet her! He’s attracted to red-heads and wasn’t keen on the other townie ladies so far! They finally met, hit it off with two bolts, and he quickly asked her to move in with the intent to marry her. Great! She got pregnant—also great! Just after she gave birth, though, I suddenly realized I never got them married. Whomp-whomp.

So firstborn son Ashton Wilde isn’t a proper heir. First problem. I immediately had him propose marriage, which she went through with but didn’t care for, as she turned out to be a romance sim. (And when I calculated her secondary, she was romance/pleasure. Sigh okay.) I had them doing a few romantic interactions after this… and she attacked him.

Like, I’m pretty sure I instructed her to make out with him? And I saw no making out and then they were a cloud of fighting dust.

So, cool! Great for stories, very dramatic! She’s probably angry that she had to quit her job, he made her have a baby for him, and then that baby wasn’t good enough and won’t inherit and they had to get married and he’s wiping her individuality from existence! They were very angry with each other and wouldn’t share the same bed, except when I directed them to casual WooHoo (and before long got her pregnant again, which is great for my legacy needs). I made him spend a lot of time stargazing with a telescope tree, because he needed some logic for work and I thought it would be an interesting story if he had a fae child and wanted to favor them over his illegitimate firstborn son. Didn’t work out that way, just made them both exhausted all the time. 

At one point, Wren was miserable so I decided to invite over a townie friend she could seduce to make herself feel better. I directed her to pillow fight him because she had a want for that, and she attacked him instead. Do I have a bug or a bad mod or what? She wasn’t too far down in the red, she doesn’t have hot-headed or evil traits or anything that would make sense for her to be angry with her romantic interests. Damn good story in theory, but why is she doing that.

So yeah, they’re miserable, their two sons are miserable, I named the second son Alfred without thinking that I’d just given them both A names, I have no real rules planned and don’t know what my goals are aside from “basic legacy but a bit like an MCC, and nobody has a social class until somebody becomes king in the politics career”, so yeah! It feels like a fail!

(Okay okay, I did make up a rule about wells that said they had to dig until they struck water before a well could be placed. I like that.)

I’m also debating whether I really like playing with Hat’s proportionate aging mod. I LOVE what it does for a calendar and birthdates and all, don’t get me wrong. But I am worried it’s making things just take too damn long to really play in any style that wants generations to pass. I played for a full cycle of the seasons, and the oldest kid is just a toddler. Granted, it took them a minute to get pregnant in the first place, but still. I already have one downloads folder (my original collection, a modern mishmash) where I played with this age mod for a whole round in a megahood before getting tired and uninstalling it. I will have to think about it some more. And maybe separate out a medieval downloads folder with it and one without it.

[tossawary]

Bidding has opened for the FTH 2022 auction! I have two 10-20k fanfics up for auction, under the SVSSS, MDZS, and TGCF fandoms. You can find the event’s FAQ here. If you win one of these two auctions, I write you a fanfic!

You can see my contributor page with all of the information on the offerings and how to bid on them here:

https://fth2022offerings.dreamwidth.org/195080.html

Offering #1 Bidding Spreadsheet.

Offering #1 Bidding Form.

Offering #2 Bidding Spreadsheet.

Offering #2 Bidding Form.

Basically, you bid on offered fanworks. If you win, you donate the amount pledged directly to the org, show the FTH mods the receipt, and then I write you whatever fanfic you request as a “thank you” gift. If you don’t win the auction, you don’t have to donate anything. Neither I nor the FTH mods ever touch your money. Even if your creator can’t complete their offered fanwork for whatever reason (they get banned from future auctions for this), you’re still donating to charity, which is pretty cool.

More information on my offerings below! (Just some brief elaboration on the information on the contributor page, really.)

Cut.

Especially interested in: I'm open to most subjects, themes, and pairings! I particularly enjoy Mòběi-jūn/Shàng Qīnghuá as a pairing, Canon Divergence as a subject, and Families of Choice as a theme. I also like worldbuilding and Fusion AUs.

This is just a rundown of what I’m used to writing and generally enjoy for people who may be unfamiliar with my work, but bidders are certainly not limited to these subjects, themes, or pairings!

I like Canon Divergence best, probably, but if you’re following me here on Tumblr, you’ve probably seen me throw out plenty of Modern AU concepts and Fusion AU concepts from Cinderella AUs to Dragon Ball Z AUs. I’ll write both romance-centric and friendship-centric stuff. I’ll write pretty much any pairing! If you’re not sure if I’m up for it, you can always ask.

Unwilling to address: I am not willing to write rape/non-con, incest, alpha/beta/omega dynamics, slavery, extremely graphic violence, unhappy endings, harems as a main pairing, cheating in relationships, underage/adult pairings, and character bashing. If you have any questions about subjects that fall along similar lines, please don't hesitate to ask.

You do you, but I’m not really a porn / kink writer (I do read it, though), nor do I particularly enjoy bashing characters or making them utterly miserable without comfort at the end. I’m not really a darkfic writer or reader. The limit for both of my offerings is a Mature rating, so I will unfortunately not be writing you the explicitly kinky PWP of your dreams.

Notes: I am happy to collaborate with you on story premise through email or Discord and to give you inside looks into my process and progress, or to surprise you with a completed fic after the premise is given. I would like to post this fic to AO3 upon completion and I can gift it to your AO3 account and/or the AO3 account of a friend. If this work is a gift needed by a certain date, please let me know and I will try to accommodate that need.

I am aiming for a minimum of 10,000 words, with allowance to go over, and I have a flexible maximum wordcount. This being said, please do not intentionally request a fic you know will be a minimum 25,000+ words.

I am happy to accept original prompts, or to allow you to pick from my "fic ideas" tag on my Tumblr, or to write a sequel, prequel, alternate POV, or AU of one of my existing fics on AO3. Please note, however, that if the request conflicts with my own plans for an existing fic or fic idea, I may ask for a different prompt.

I mean, if you want me to write something that I already have plans for, I’ll probably still write it for you. If you want the story a certain way, you just have to be cool with me potentially doing a different take on it down the line.

I’m a pretty wordy writer and when bursts of inspiration hit, I can get even wordier, so I’m cool with potentially going a little over the 20k limit. If you want me to pare it down, though, and stick to a 10-20k fic, I can actually do that. I’m just usually writing for myself and inclined to be self-indulgent, but I can edit a story down into something nice and streamlined.

Special Interest Tags

   f/f pairings    Poly ships    Genderswap/genderbending    Canonically trans or nonbinary characters    Trans or nonbinary readings of canon characters    Racial or cultural experiences of nonwhite characters    Racebending    Unhappy endings    Ambiguous endings.

So, this year, the FTH mods allowed creators to opt into these special interest tags, so that they could advertise to people looking for a certain thing. I did not opt into any of them, because I didn’t want to give anyone the idea that I was only looking to write any of these, even if the mods have made plenty of announcements to remind people special interest tags aren’t limits.

If you’re looking for it, I’m good to write F/F pairings, poly ships, genderbending, trans / nonbinary / genderqueer characters, and ambiguous endings. Racial or cultural experiences depends. And I’m not really down for unhappy endings.

[writingwithcolor]

Hey! I’m currently writing a Jewish character and was wondering if this would be offensive: my character has a family where her mother is Jewish but her father celebrates Christmas, so they fuse their holiday celebrations to bring their two families together for any holidays that fall in line with eachother. Would this be a problem? I’m basing her off of irl friends who’s family does this, but I want to make sure it doesn’t seem like I’m erasing her Jewish heritage and pride. Thanks so much!

Celebrating Hanukkah & Christmas in interfaith family

No problems from me other than to note that I hope you meant to say that they're both celebrated, not that they're literally "combined." Because putting Christian ritual into a Jewish holiday would bug me, as a reader, but someone watching Mom light the menorah before going out caroling with Dad would not--for example. Does that make sense? There are plenty of interfaith families out there that do both, but keeping the actual practices separate is the best way to keep the Jewish ones Jewish. (And in my example I was picturing both parents there for each activity, so it's not like I'm calling for that much separation -- just, not bringing up "the meaning of Christmas" while you're literally telling the Chanukah story.

You may also want to decide if the character themselves is drawn in one direction or the other, or neither yet. (You said "Jewish heritage and pride" so from this I gather that's how she believes? In that case, is Christmas totally just a fun secular thing for her or is it something she regards as an outsider, religiously speaking?)

--Shira

I'm going to start by saying that interfaith families exist, and have a variety of ways of expressing their combination of cultures. I'm absolutely not here to argue with that, be negative about that very real way of life, or invalidate those experiences in the slightest. 

With that being said... people outside our community really, really love to show us celebrating Christmas, and Easter, and eating bacon, or doing anything else that might code us as assimilated (regardless of our internal identities). These are things that some Jewish people do, and I think it's absolutely good to show the breadth of the community, and the varied ways we express ourselves, but I do not, at all, trust someone outside the community to do that mindfully. 

In wider media, whether books, television, movies etc. Jewish characters are so often shown to be either assimilated, or from an interfaith family. Interfaith does not necessarily mean assimilated of course! But the fact of their interfaith relationship is often used as a convenient way to get the Jewish character into situations that are intended to show how "not really" Jewish they are. There is an obsession with showing us as assimilated, a delight that is taken in trying to prove that we either are exactly the same as the broader culture, or that our differences can be erased and eroded until we are. 

A Jewish person remains Jewish, whether they go to a Christmas party or not, whether they have shrimp at dinner or not, whether they marry a non-Jewish person or not, but the intent behind constantly showing Jewish characters doing this is suspect to me. This asker may not have this ill-intent, but frankly, it's hard to come by a character, written by a non-Jewish person, that says "I'm Jewish" in the beginning of a work, and then "oh, no thank you, I don't celebrate Christmas" in the middle, let alone even continuing to say "I'm Jewish" by the end.

When I read a work about interfaith families, and their specific traditions by a person inside the community, or coming from an interfaith background themselves, I'm interested, happy to learn about the characters, and their lives. When I read a work like that by someone outside the community it leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth, and the feeling that even fictional versions of us are being gleefully, voyeuristically, intentionally assimilated.

-- Dierdra

1) If your character is invested in their Jewish heritage, celebrating Chanukah is not enough to show this. Please please please research our other holidays and traditions, talk to Jewish people who feel the same level of connection to their Jewish roots, consume #OwnVoices materials.

2) Agree with Dierdra that interfaith families exist and deserve representation, but that writing an assimilated character requires a lot of research and sensitivity; any blatant disregard of halacha should probably be avoided in case it is consumed in that voyeuristic way by the reader.

3) And with Christmas in particular, you can be close to touching a nerve because not all Jewish people have fond memories of Christmas, to say the least. To people of minority faiths, it can be the time when our othering is the most blatant and impactful (we’ve included some personal stories below). 

It would be best to listen to many Jewish experiences of December shenanigans, from people who celebrate Christmas partially or fully, to those who are indifferent, to those who have mainly negative associations and memories.

-- Shoshi

Our personal experiences with Christmas (Jewish Mods)

Also, as a note from all of us, discussing this question brought up so many stories about our own experiences with Christmas, and the culture surrounding it.  A selection of them are below, just to give an idea of what it can be like:

- Just not having lights up was enough to get our neighbor asking our then roommate if we were "you know... sorta..." When our roommate confirmed that we are indeed Jewish, he reassured him that it was "fine." It didn't feel fine to be told that though. I also had a neighbor ask what we were doing for Christmas once, and I said "oh, we do Chanukah in this house" just to keep it casual. She excitedly yelled back "JEWS!!" Even without Covid I was getting to the point where December was just a month where I tried to stay in, and avoid getting grumpy at people who are just enjoying their holiday (they just happen to be enjoying it everywhere, all the time. And sometimes kind of aggressively). God forbid you correct someone when they wish you a Merry Christmas. 

- Me too, it's the marketing, it's so aggressive. Last year I got so fed up with Christmas music being on in the office that I decided to bring a dreidel and spin it casually on my desk throughout the day, just so that my own space could feel like it was somewhat reserved for my own identity, you know? On day two of this, a colleague I didn't know that well came up to me and said, "Please could you stop doing that? It's really loud." I wanted to yell "NOT AS LOUD AS YOUR MUSIC!", but I didn't, I just stopped spinning it because I'm a darn pushover at times. I had to sit through my first hand-wringing 'how will we do Christmas with Covid?' conversation in about September, even though Pesach and Eid were both during the height of lockdown in this country and no one said a thing until after the fact. 

- I've had people scoff, and sniff, and make snide comments to my face in my old workplace when I politely reminded them that I don't celebrate Christmas. It can get so uncomfortable, just existing in the world, and Christmas can end up a really miserable time. 

[timemachinesims]

So I’ve had this idea for years now for a Sims 4 save file/play challenge based conceptually on, like, a reality dating show. I’ve even idly worked on pieces of it, but never fully committed.

The idea is that I would make a save file and in it include a household of 8 eligible sim suitors.

Along with putting them all together in a house, I’d build them all homes with families elsewhere in the game. They’d have existing jobs, educations, histories and relationships. They might already have kids, or be fabulously wealthy or miserably poor. You don’t know.

You the player would need to download both the save file and probably an MCCC .cfg file. I feel like the idea might not work on an unmodded game. So either I’d need to make a .cfg file available or give suggestions for play settings. There may be other mods I would recommend as well.

You’d then build your eligible sim, or upload them to the library to install into this new save. It would be highly encouraged that your sim have existing skills and history, though not required. Also suggested would be either having the Player reward trait or turning off jealousy altogether.

The save would have the calendar already set with a slate of holidays and events for the suitors. These would represent dates and elimination ceremonies.

When you first bring them into the game, you’d add your sim to a household next door to the dating game lot. This household would have a sim who exists as the leader of a club with all the sim suitors as members (this is part of why you need MCCC, because unmodded clubs can’t have more than eight members). You move in there, take over the club, and kick the placeholder leader out. You can kick that sim out of the entire save if you want. Their purpose is served.

Then you invite the whole sim suitor club to start a gathering. You meet everyone, and you choose who to send home first.

When you send a suitor home, you switch control to that suitor. You can look at their personality, inventory, relationships, sentiments, etc. Among this is something I’ve left to tell you which lot to find their house at, so you can have them move back home after being eliminated. You can go to their household and poke around for clues to their life story and any secrets they might have. See what you missed now that you’ve said no.

After the first suitor has been kicked out, the eligible sim you made can be moved into the mansion, but throughout the game you cannot take control of the other sims, and if you do you are strictly limited to their needs panel unless you’ve reached a certain milestone in the game (like after you’re down to four, you can check inventories or something, idk, I haven’t finalized it).

Then we get the home visits, and then finally when you’re down to your sim and two suitors you can poke around at absolutely everything and then pick the winner and get married.

I imagine this taking a few weeks in-game, with managing the sims needs still part of the challenge. Giving everyone time to live together in the mansion between events and for drama to unfold.

I also imagine this with as much autonomy and free will as possible. Like suitors might just fall in love with each other instead or die or whatever.

SO. QUESTIONS. ADVICE.

1) Is this too much? Is it too many rules, too many instructions, too much stuff to download and put in the correct folder? Would anyone actually be interested enough to try it if I made it?

2) I feel like you cannot build this without at least Seasons and Get Together. Ideally more packs would be included (like Pets and City Living) to give a variety of backgrounds and worlds for suitors to be from. What packs is it reasonable to expect people to have? I definitely would not use CC.

3) Where does the ethics of using stuff from the gallery fall? I feel like part of the reason I never got further with this is that I don’t want to have to build and decorate all the homes from scratch. I’m already going to be doing a lot by making sure the right photos and books and clues can be found around so that there’s things to learn about these people. This is going to have to utilize a lot of environmental storytelling. And I think just the idea of having to build everything from scratch feels too tedious, but idk if I need to ask permission for each thing from the gallery I might use or if it’s enough to just give credit.

4) Supernatural stuff? What tone would be more fun, real world dating reality program or silly? Can one of a sim’s secrets be that they are a vampire, mermaid, or alien? Would people prefer this be relatively grounded in existing dating competition tropes, just based on common fantasies/dramas, or completely unhinged?

Thoughts?

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Hi! I’m a big fan of your work!! I am looking for more but unfortunately I feel like I have read all yhe good Harry Potter docs on Ao3. Do you have any recs?

Sorry for the delay, I just know that whenever I make rec list it usually ends up taking a while.

With that, Harry Potter fics are a big genre. Just saying Harry Potter in general really isn’t that specific to me so this is across genres/character focuses/you name it.

Also, as usual, I’ve been on fanfiction longer and have amassed more favorites there. Some of these are cross posted to Ao3. Similarly, a lot are unfinished, this personally doesn’t bother me but if it bothers you take heed.

Also, you’ll see my embarrassing obsession with Tom Riddle. So, heads up for that.

Stepbrother (Tom Riddle/Hermione Granger, period piece, in which the two remind me a lot of Nabokov)

Cat Among the Pigeons (Tom Riddle/Lily Evans, Psycho-Pass Detective AU, in which I am a beta actually so my promoting this goes without saying)

Til Death Do Us Part (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Voldemort wins AU, which for me does very well with the concept of immortality and what exactly Tom is supposed to do after he wins)

This Tangle of Thorns (Tom Riddle/Hermione Granger, modern AH AU, a full on Nabokov inspired fic which I enjoy because Lolita)

Delusional (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, sort of. Harry wins the war, goes crazy, checks into a mental hospital. Or he’s not crazy and Voldemort is as unkillable as Palpatine.)

Harry Potter and the Natural 20 (OC insert, D&D inspired, shameless crack. I mostly enjoy the beginning of this but it makes me laugh enough to recommend.)

A Hairy Business (AU, Harry is a deer, he is literally a deer, that’s it. It’s funny.)

Animus, Anima (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry travels back in time, gets stuck in Tom Riddle’s brain, and it turns out Harry’s responsible for every terrible thing that ever happened. This one was squicky even for me, very well done, but strap in.)

Addendum, He is Also a Liar (Tom Riddle/Hermione Granger, Tom has an inexplicable ability to travel to the future, but only to this random little girl Hermione Granger)

Framed & Fractured (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry gets stuck in an evil painting back in time. Tom is creepy as usual.)

Trying for Eden (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry travels back in time to lecture Tom into morality. It doesn’t work.)

Magical Mirrors (Luna Lovegood and Severus Snape, Luna and Snape stumble on the Mirror of Erised at the same time and strike up a conversation)

Aphelion (Hermione Granger/Loki, MCU crossover, Hermione and Loki strike up the world’s weirdest toxic friendship when Hermione’s young and attending Hogwarts, this leads terrible places as Loki slides into madness and despair)

Wandering Souls (Luna Lovegood and The Undertaker, Black Butler crossover, Luna meets and strikes up a conversation with the Undertaker)

Of Lies Most Beautiful (Tom Riddle, Hunger Games crossover, Tom wins the Hunger Games becaues that’s what he does bitch)

In Wonderland (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry ends up back in the past and decides to raise Tom Riddle. This goes so poorly that the pair almost get eaten by eldritch gods multiple times.)

Rumpelstiltskin, Guess My Name (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Female Harry travels back in time and offers to save Merope’s life/get her Tom Riddle Sr. the non rapey way in return for her firstborn son. Merope thought Harry was joking. She wasn’t joking. In the sequel, also linked, Harry kills Morfin.)

The Eyes (Harry Potter, AU, turns out “the power he knows not” is the power humanity knows not, Harry’s ability to see eldritch abominations and cosmic gods and thus bring them far enough into our reality that they eat everything. And I mean everything.)

Mirror Mirror (Harry Potter, MCU crossover, Harry makes a huge mistake and stops Hulk in the middle of a rampage. This gets him abducted by octopus nazis.)

I See the Moon (Harry Potter and Bruce Banner, MCU crossover, Harry got brain damage from the war and wanders around the middle of nowhere. He runs into Bruce. He’s now Bruce’s only friend.)

You Will Be the Death of Me (Harry Potter and Tom Riddle, Despicable Me inspired, through a series of convoluted events Tom as the world’s worst father figure ends up raising Harry the sad adorable orphan.)

In Death, Standby (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter (sort of, the authro claims), Tom raises Harry, the only Tom raises Harry that I’ve seen done well because Tom is the world’s worst father. Harry thinks he’s a deformed snake until the age of three.)

Little Harry’s Mirkwood Adventure (Harry Potter and Dudley Dursley, Hobbit Crossover, one of the most Tolkien style crossovers I’ve actually seen and is very good)

A (Self-Imposed) Trap for a Fool (Ginny Weasley, turns out Harry Potter never existed, as in he’s a collective hallucination made up by the entire wizarding world)

McLaggen and From McLaggen with Love (McLaggen, a detective AU then a James Bond style adventure starring McLaggen, the greatest wizard who ever wizarded)

Tom Riddle’s Diary: on keeping devils in the summer (Tom Riddle, Tom Riddle’s antichrist orphan adventures involving exorcism and burning people alive)

and the fates sing (hold on, son) (Harry Potter, MCU crossover, Harry is the son of Loki and like all children of Loki he is a wretched and cursed thing)

A Faulty Master (Harry Potter and Itachi Uchiha, Naruto crossover, Itachi after the massacre of his family has a run in with a master of death Harry, who is a creepy creepy man)

Eye of Reason (Harry Potter/Jack Frost, Rise of the Guardians crossover, due to the mythos surrounding his life Harry ceases to be a man and becomes akin to a god)

Flowers for a Ghost (Luna Lovegood and Itachi Uchiha, Naruto Crossover, Luna befriends a blind ghost)

Third Time’s the Charm (Harry Potter, MCU crossover, Bruce Banner keeps trying to kill himself and MoD Harry is there to have himself a real good day)

Blind Faith (Bellatrix LeStrange/Tom Riddle, canon compliant, an in depth look at Bellatrix from the escape of Azkaban onward)

Cocktail Time (Rita Skeeter and Gilderoy Lockhart, Rita does an expose and autobiography detailing the descent of Gilderoy Lockhart and how he became what he became)

Fantastic Elves and Where to Find Them (Harry Potter, canon divergent AU, Harry thinks he’s an elf. That’s it.)

The Twine Bracelet (Colin Creevy, a look at Colin’s death) 

Legal Alien (Harry Potter, MCU crossover, Harry visits New York and an alien invasion breaks out. Culminates with the best, dumb, joke.)

The Root of Desire (Tom Riddle/Hermione Granger, Hermione travels back in time and tries to influence Tom. All this does is inspire his sexual awakening.)

Deadheads (Harry Potter/Godric Gryffindor, a romantic comedy of a kind, culminating in the best dumbest joke)

Give and Take (Tom Riddle/Hermione Granger, Hermione tries to outwit Tom, it ends in despair)

The Road to Somewhere (Harry Potter, Spirited Away crossover, Harry as MoD is in the realm of the spirits)

Absolute (Harry Potter, Harry picks up a death note, he kills everyone)

Fortunate Son (Dudley Dursleys, years afterwards Dudley looks back and writes a memoir and expose about the abuse inflicted on his cousin)

Elective Affinities (Severus Snape/Harry Potter, Harry travels back in time to discover his parents are assholes and things are more complicated than he imagined)

Juxtaposed (Bod, Graveyard Book crossover, Bod attends Hogwarts)

The Fire Omens (Tom Riddle and a look at WWII)

Broken Toys (Tom Riddle and his useless broken toys)

The Fine Art of Poisoning (Madame Zabini)

A Marriage of Convenience (Pansy and Theo get married)

Reparabilis (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Tom becomes a professor, he still destroys Harry Potter)

The Unforgivable Curses (Draco Malfoy, a look at the 4th year unforgivable lecture with Moody and the Slytherins)

Ugly (Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy one sided Dudley/Harry Potter, Dudley’s fat, ugly, and creeps on his cousin)

Three Can Keep a Secret (Harry Potter, on secrets and secret keeping)

Caveat Incimici (Hermione Granger, on Hermione and her terrifying wrath)

Babylon (Harry Potter and Tom Riddle, Harry never gets rid of Tom)

Wonderful Tragic Mysterious (Luna Lovegood and Albus Dumbledore, Luna Lovegood time travels and becomes a young Albus’ neighbor)

In the Clockface, Weighted and Weary (Harry Potter/Ariana Dumbledore, Harry after DH ends up back in time in Dumbledore’s childhood and witnesses the beautiful Dumbledore family dysfunction)

Eternal Return (Harry Potter and Tom Riddle, Harry is reincarnated as Tom Riddle and as a result becomes Voldemort so that a Voldemort exists)

Like Pale Fire (Harry Potter/Godric Gryffindor, the Founders are resurrected and it turns out Harry had travelled to the past and become Salazar Slytherin, turns out the Founders were more complicated than people expected.)

12 Moves Sideways (Harry Potter and Light Yagami, Death Note crossover, Light becomes the Defense Professor, for once Harry does not figure out the mystery.)

A Very Young Girl’s Record of Her Own Impressions (Ariana Dumbledore’s diary)

Night Comes Early (Moody on war)

Little Witches (The Black family women and how it all falls apart)

Paved with Good Intentions (Petunia on finding a baby on her doorstep)

Emerald Serpent for Vanity (Draco and Nagini introspective)

Blue (Tom Riddle/Bellatrix LeStrange, Voldemort wins dystopia, Tom visits Bellatrix’s grave and is very crazy)

Eighteen (Hermione Granger, on Hermione’s betrayal of her parents)

Ouroboros (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, on what they’ve made of each other)

Not so Different (Scout, To Kill a Mockingbird Crossover, Scout reflects on the wizarding world’s raicsm)

Traitor (Hermione Granger, Hermione is captured by the Death Eaters and commits unspeakable acts to free herself)

Smashing Mirrors (Tom Riddle, introspective)

Twelve Dark Moons (Luna Lovegood/Tom Riddle, Luna becomes a captive of the dark lord)

Full Circle (Harry Potter, Harry wins and is miserable)

The Web of a Thousand Spiders (Luna Lovegood on the diary)

The Metronome (The fall of Lucius’ entire generation)

Understand (Hermione Granger and her betrayal of her parents)

Tea with the Headmaster (Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore, the pair have tea)

This Grief Feeling (Hermione Granger and Severus Snape after the end)

After Innocence (The trio after the end)

Of Great Turmoil and Excess Stupidity (Sesshomaru and Hagrid, Inuyasha crossover, Hagrid decides to capture a demon for class)

What’s Left of Hope (Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore, on preserving hope)

In His Keep (Severus Snape and Luna Lovegood, Snape informs Luna her father has died)

Wednesday (Petunia Evans, introspective)

In the Presence of Angels (Moody in WWII)

What He Grows to Be (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry Potter raises Tom Riddle in the past and it goes horribly wrong)

Being Cassandra (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Tom, and their strange AU friendship)

The Girl (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, a fem Harry Potter keeps accidentally appearing in Tom’s childhood)

Corruption (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Tom wins AU and female Harry slowly becomes corrupted)

One Night Stand (Tom Riddle/Lily Evans, a wonderful look on the first war, Tom Riddle, Lily Evans, the Order of the Phoenix, and terrorism)

The Voldemort Principle (Severus Snape, turns out Snape was Voldemort the whole time and Harry is a lying liar who lies)

Harry Potter and the mountain of pure diamond (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry has become an ageless god who travels worlds and decides to raise Tom Riddle. He’s disturbed when he realizes Tom is more of a person than he is)

A Road Less Travelled By (Harry Potter/Lucius Malfoy, Harry’s a veela, just read it, it’s amazing, I know I sound crazy but it is)

Transformation (Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy, Draco gets eaten by the Forbidden Forest and then Harry gets eaten too)

Rock Bottom (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Tom gets trapped being defense professor and has a miserable time)

[a-problematic-writer]

MCSM Not-All-Hardcore AU

Hardcores: Majority of the population. Since there's no inventory in MCSM besides the hotbar, inventories have also been forgotten about, since with the evolution of their civilization there was no need to carry around so much. But they can still use inventories to an extent, and have the potential to learn how to fully use them if they try.

Survivors: Very rare. More in tune with inventory, magic and instincts. Their main powers are travelling from world to world without portals(in the sense of the portal corridor in the second half of season1. A Survivor could will themselves to teleport into the corridor or from Sky City directly into Beacontown, but not from Beacontown into Champion City) and respawning after death by pure will. They can also will mobs to ignore them or focus on them, though it makes them hungry faster. Their healing factor rises when they eat, and they could, in theory, go forever without any bodily needs that aren't food and air, but most would rather not, it can be a miserable experience since it still affects them, even if they don't get physically hurt from it.

Creatives: Very rare. They have the creative mode inventory. Mobs will always ignore them, and the only thing they need to survive is sleep. Can't be killed or hurt by normal means, but will pass out if they go without sleep for too long. Capable of flying, but it has to be learned.

Spectators: Surprisingly common. Can will themselves into spectator mode. People feel inclined to ignore their existence if they don't make themselves known. They instinctually know how to sneak around.

Modificators/Modded: Incredibly rare. They can pretty much make mods. They alter the reality of the world around them, but every rule, crafting recipe or item they make becomes true for everyone. They can be pretty powerful if they explore the correct loopholes in the rules of their powers. Their abilities are based on rules and possibilities, making things possible or impossible. A Modded can turn all the chickens into Eversources, make Eversources spawn naturally, create a crafting recipe or ritual or really any sort of process to turn a chicken into a Eversource, but they can't turn a single, especific chicken into a Eversource.

Moderators/Mods: Admin-made. Admins can turn others into Mods, and strip Mods of their powers. They have nearly all of the powers an Admin has, with the exeption of being able to turn others into Mods, create worlds, harm Admins by normal means and some other powers I'm forgetting. They are also semi-immortal, even after getting their powers stripped away, they can only die by murder or stuff like fall damage. No dying of old age.

Admins: You're probably not going to meet one in your entire lifetime kind of rare. Have the powers Romeo is seen using, but also have the powers stated in the Mods section, and also full immortality(can be killed, but you're going to need help from a Modded for that. Or a command-made OP item) the power of being a living command block, and if they don't recieve training for their powers, there's a big risk that their powers will become unstable and corrupt their mind. In a mild-possession sense, because the corruption vanishes if their powers do.

Well, here's the explanation, now for who is what:

Admins: Romeo(the powers still get taken away)

Mods: Xara(past), Fred(past)

Moddeds: Aiden

Spectators: Gill, Cassie, Radar

Creatives; Harper, Lukas

Survivors: Jesse

Hardcores: everyone else.

I might add some to the list of character, but that's it for now.

[aziraphales-library]

Lost Fic #156

Not specific lost fics, but I’ve spent weeks looking for fics likes these and haven’t really managed to find any, so we’re throwing them out in the hope our followers know of some!…

1. Hello dear fic dealers, Do you by chance have any fics in which one of them gets replaced by someone who pretends to be them. whether through possession or a polyjuice style spell, just a story in which one has been replaced by a look a like. Bonus points if they get found out (or is v obvious) because the intruder drastically misunderstands azicrows relationship. If this fic doesn't exist I'll write it. - @queercomesthesun (we have an #impersonation tag, but I couldn't find any fics we haven't already recommended)

2. Hi, I love your blog so much! I was wondering if you could help me find any fics where after Armageddon't, Crowley tries to repress any mischief he wants to get up to for Aziraphale's sake, but he ends up really miserable without being able to cause a bit of chaos. Thanks for all the time you take to help people and run this blog, it really brightens up my day. - anon

3. Hello! You are awesome and thank you so much for trying to make fan fiction a more user friendly place. I was wondering if you had any recommendations for fics with Crowley having horns, a tail, cloven hooves, just any kind of extra demon characteristics he could be angsty about. - @hatoftimelady

4. Hello! Just wanted to say that this blog is absolutely wonderful, and I'm so grateful for all the fic recommendations on here! You're really making the fandom a brighter place with this! I was wondering if you'd have any recommendations for fics where there is a demon who is suddenly interested in Aziraphale, mostly due to curiosity at his relationship with Crowley. I would be happy with fics where angels take an interest in Crowley because of his association with Aziraphale as well! Just any recommendations on anything with a third party suddenly inserting themselves into their dynamic would be much appreciated! Thank you in advance! - anon

5. hey guys, thank you so much for all the amazing work you do, keep it up! i’m looking for some fluffy fics where crowley accidentally falls asleep in azi’s company (like azi comes home and finds him asleep or crowley is at the bookshop and dozes in an armchair, etc). thanks you so much <3 - @cgrec8

If you know any fics that fit the bill please include the number in your reply! Thank you :)

- Mod D

[0xeff]

MxRP Announcement

Hello.

After careful discussion among the staff and mods over the course of several weeks, culminating in a formal vote this morning, it has been decided that MxRP will be shutting down. There are many reasons for this that are discussed below, but this is being enacted with immediate effect.

To pre-empt some of the anticipated questions - a log site is in development, and will be up by Monday. The log site will remain up for at least a year in a read-only state so you can get at your old logs, and export them if need be. Second, MxRP 2 is still going to be a thing - however, instead of being hosted by the team, it will instead be released as an open source project, for anyone to run their own instance. Details on this will be forthcoming. For now, until MxRP 2 is in a usable state, the beta site will remain up through development. The Patreon has been closed with immediate effect, and patrons will not be charged further. The charity items are still for sale, and that event will proceed as planned so the chosen charities can get their money.

If you wish to continue RPing in the meantime, the team recommends the following two sites:

https://cherp.chat/

https://dreambubble.xyz/

Some of you will likely be wondering about the reasoning for this. Rather than mince words, we’ll just put it out there - running this site is a miserable affair, even without the technical difficulties. With rampant rule breaking, people conspiring to harass other users, and people who make it very abundantly clear they hate the team’s guts, there’s not a great value proposition there for running the site. Add in a few instances of people maliciously trying to discredit the team and ruin their reputation both on the site and off, and a couple of nearly-successful doxxing attempts over the last year, and it very quickly becomes apparent that no amount of money is worth keeping this site up, and that, with a few exceptions, users are largely uninterested in fostering a healthy community, and so it simply should not exist in the first place.

This all being visible from the outside makes it extremely difficult to find actually competent mods, and absolutely none of the current team wants to work on, with, or alongside the site, or has any love for the community due to the behaviour common in it. Cherubplay shut its doors because of the community, and now it’s MxRP’s turn, resulting in both the OG sites being gone. I encourage you all to learn that acting the way a lot of you do isn’t a viable strategy in the long run to get things you actually want, or encourage the things you have to actually stay up.

As said above, MxRP 2 will be open source, and there is one party interested who both has the qualifications and skill required to operate the site going forward if they so choose, to provide a main branch of MxRP 2 on the current domain, as was the original plan. That party has not yet committed, and it will be up to them to notify you if they choose to take on the project. There are no other parties we would be comfortable handing the site off to, and any requests to do so will be rejected and ignored.

[dboliklover]

Tainting the Angel so that she falls - Laito

Warnings: Dub-con (This is Laito), heavy religious imagery/contrasted with sin, fucking in a church - mentions and mild NSFW.  Disclaimer; I am not responsible for your mental health. If any of the above warnings trigger you; do not read. 

Laito:

Amongst the angelic circles, you were revered for your outstanding purity and virtue.

The type of angel that made all others pale in comparison with both beauty and divine excellence.

Not naive nor innocent; but truly, undoubtedly holy.

Whispers in the clouds proclaimed you “The Truest Light Of God”, and your consistent purity and unwavering devotion made you rise high in the ranks of angels.

You had seen all there was to see; bloodthirst, horrors of war, abusive lovers and cruel parents who harmed their own offspring. All the vile deeds of humanity - you had witnessed.

Most of those your age and experience felt bitterness towards humans.

But you did not blame them.

You did not hate them.

They were lost lambs, led so astray by their ambitions.

Not to mention the disgusting amount of demonic entities - vampires, werewolves, all their elk - polluted human minds to commit atrocities.

It was filthy.  These dark beings were filthy.

And so you had made it your mission to rid the world of them one by one; and thus far, you had been successful.

Dozens of thousands of monstrous beings fell to your divine power and strategic brilliance.

You can’t have peace without a war, and a war this was; a war against creatures impure.

Your task was simple, yet so difficult. It seemed for every vampire you slew, two new fledgelings were made.

Hungry work, but you weren’t just some low-ranking angel. You were pure and secure in your holiness, so you knew nothing could ever get you to fall.

You were never going to fall.

You were not weak-willed like some other angels - you were resilient and diligent and faithful - so faithful - to your cause.

Everyone else believed you would never fall, too.

But you did.

How the mighty have fallen.

Looking back at the situation in hindsight, you cursed your own folly and the hubris that had allowed you to be tricked into the filthiest of sin.

Lust.

He was a sly one, you admit; you’d met ones like him before but there was something so specific about Sakamaki Laito that made it difficult to focus as you should have.

Perhaps you should have struck him when you had the chance instead of allowing him to tangle you into his web of darkness - should have slaughtered him into pieces before he had the chance to become your downfall.

You were killing some low-level ghouls and vampires in the same city in which he lived when you first met.

He was a smug vampyr - agitated you, teased you, played with you as though you didn’t have the ability to destroy him where he stood.

Not destroying him then and there - feeding into his game - that was your greatest mistake.

From then on he seemed to find you often, taunting you as you killed loose ghoul after ghoul, and fighting with you whenever he did.

You hated admitting it then, and you hated admitting it now but you grew to enjoy your run-ins with him.

It was wrong of you, but it brought excitement to fight with someone who was actually a relatively good fighter.

But you didn’t even think he took it to be a fight; he always acted as if you were just having a dangerous dance with blasts and angel blades.

You thought him foolish at first, but now you see that you’d been foolish all along.

From the start it had been Laito’s intent to make you think him a fool; to lower your defences against him.

And, with time, you started to - dare you say - have fun fighting with him, sinking into the same flow of almost-dance-to-the-death.

He got you off-guard enough to strike you down, falling on your bottom in a dark alleyway as you gasped and stared up at him.

Then it hit you; the moon was full, and he was a pureblood.

A pureblood with demonic blood flowing within him.

Desperate and afraid of what he’d try to do to you, you threw your angel blade at him to buy you some time, running into the nearest church.

The humans believed that churches would keep them safe in their folklore; now you wished that you had the chance to test that theory before. Why you never tried to observe whether this worked or not in your millennia of existence, you did not know, but it was your undoing.

Because he laughed, mocking you as you adorned yourself with crosses and rosaries you found, telling him to stay back - full moon or not, you were a warrior of the heavens.

His mocking laughter felt like acid on your skin.

You hated it, you hated it, you hated it, you hated it.

The full moon was the time of beasts; your powers were lessened on the mortal realm during this lunar phase.

Your mistake had been being so distracted by Laito in general, plagued with thoughts of him, that you did not pay attention to the lunar cycle.

And you paid the price for it when he approached you, throwing his fedora elsewhere in the church,  running a hand through his crimson locks.

You were frozen in place, despising yourself for the fact your body was hot and felt so lecherous. So disgusting - to feel arousal for a monster.

But when he pinned you down on the altar, ignoring your weak struggling and pleads for him not to kill you (you were sure he would) you could feel wetness forming in your core. What the fuck was wrong with you?

He kissed you into submission, and your mind started feeling blank.

You submitted to his lust.

And you allowed yourself, under the spell of his excellent seduction and the never-before-experienced pleasure he made you feel in thousands of years in which you remained a chaste virgin, to be taken by him.

The sensations, the heat, the electricity as you held tightly onto his body, latching onto him with your limbs, moaning his name and sweating as you cried out in pleasure - it was all too much to resist.

But what had sealed your fate was the moment he filled you with his miserable seed, flowing inside of you until there was no remaining room within your core, and a mix of his cum and your juices fell down from your thighs.

Once the lust cleared, you panicked, but it was too late.

You sinned.

And so, you fell.  

Shu: Click here for Shu’s scenario 

Reiji: Click here for Reiji’s scenario

Ayato: Click here Ayato’s scenario

Kanato: WIP 

Subaru: WIP

- Mod Rozalia 

Me? Having a schedule? At long last!? Let’s hope so! 

[rotationalsymmetry]

Thinking about the twitter "villain of the week" phenomenon and call outs that turn into dogpiles. Imagine you're with your family or some other large group for a holiday dinner. Everyone's eaten and you're back in the kitchen washing dishes, with someone else drying. Suddenly, the person drying the dishes notices you missed a spot on one of the plates. Now, people who aren't assholes (and even quite a lot of assholes for that matter) will just be "oh, you missed a spot" and hand it back to you to clean up. Because missing a spot when you're washing dishes is normal and no big deal. So you say "oops" or something and fix it and all's good. But maybe it doesn't go like that. Maybe they go "tsk, (your name) is being so irresponsible, they can't even do something as simple as washing a plate" and then suddenly your entire family show up with a list of everything you've ever done wrong since age 5. That would be utter bullshit, right? That would be emphatically not accountability, right? That would be your family deciding to make your life miserable just so they could feel superior or whatever, right? (That would be abuse, or at least something very close to abuse, since y'know it's important to name things what they are.) (I mean...a lot of people do the "let's talk about 20 different things you've done wrong at one go" thing without it being abuse per se...but it sure as fuck isn't functional.) (And no, the degree of the offense doesn't really affect things. If you, say, abandoned your terminally ill spouse to run off with the affair partner you'd been cheating on them with for the entirety of your marriage, that would be really bad, and it still wouldn't make sense for your family to all get together to tell you what a terrible person you are while bringing up things you did ages ago and so on. The focus should always be on making it better, not on painting the offender as a shitty person. No matter how big the offense. Figuring out who's going to take care of the ill spouse, not determining the exact level of assholery of the abandoning spouse and whether everyone should have known from one thing they said 15 years ago, right? There can be consequences, like not inviting especially nasty people to future events, without engagement.)

So, at one point I joined this one group on Facebook, when I was relatively new to social media. I mean, I'd been on FB for ages, but I'd just been following what my friends posted, I hadn't joined any groups specifically to engage with people that I didn't already know over shared interests. (A very different FB experience.) This group was nominally about being bisexual, but an awful lot of the posts (several a week) involved someone innocuously equating genitals to gender, or some other language thing that ignores the existence of trans people. (This was before I ID'd as nonbinary, but on a personal level that sort of thing still doesn't bug me. I recognize it bugs other people, and it is reasonable for people who do care about this to want other people to alter the language they use.) I'm not talking blatantly hostile stuff like calling trans women men. I'm talking the things that people who grew up being told there's boys and girls and you can tell which is which by looking at them, just do because they haven't yet adjusted their worldview yet. Intent isn't the same as impact, but there is a difference between an innocent mistake and outright hostility. And there'd be literally dozens of people making the exact same callout. And because there were so many responses, everybody in the group would see the post, because that's how FB's algorithm works. And then this would happen again the next day and a couple days after that. And I (being new to this sort of thing) was just like, wtf? Wouldn't it make more sense to set things up so that the mods have to approve posts so they can quietly shut those down and privately tell the posters what rewrites they have to make? Or at least shut down those posts as soon as a mod catches them, or make one callout and shut down replies so it doesn't turn into this snowball that you can't miss? If the problem is this is hurtful to trans people, why intensify that hurt by making sure every trans person in the group ends up seeing the post?

I eventually left.

I imagine people had good intentions, or at least thought they did. That "educating people" this way was the important thing. But thing is, mostly it teaches people that that behavior is OK, that behavior that recall I've already explicitly described as verbal abuse or at least as something very close to verbal abuse, and that's a terrible lesson. This is not how decent human beings interact with other human beings. In similar groups I've also seen one person make a brief call out and the called out person say "oh, I didn't realize, I'll (edit the post, or whatever)" and that's it, and that's entirely different, you know? A single low-key call out, not the entire group piling on. Which is why I don't really like the term "call out culture", because sometimes people have cultures around making call-outs that are actually healthy and reasonable and not abusive, that are much healthier than the cultural default of "if you bring it up, you're the one making trouble," and it really should be normalized for people to do small low-key "hey, you missed a spot" checks without it turning into "I don't have a racist bone in my body". If the person doing the dishes goes "I am a perfect dish-washer and therefore that plate is clean, and how dare you say I don't know how to wash dishes right", that's also a problem. But I do think we should have a way to distinguish between normalizing saying "you missed a spot" about social justice language, and normalizing everybody within a mile radius jumping on and amplifying the message and bringing the person's past behavior into it and also literally telling the person who missed a spot that they're a terrible person.

Especially since, y'know, follow the money? Social media companies financially benefit from those pile-ons. They encourage them. It's in their business model. It's "engagement." If you're cynical about corporations in general or social media companies in particular (and if you're on tumblr, you probably are)...then part of that should be recognizing when social media companies are manipulating people into being more assholeish than they would be on their own. Even when, especially when, it's done in the name of social justice.

[border-spam]

Leech Lord: Habitual

Troy:

Behavioral: 

Masks anger and frustration by forcing calm over it, meaning the more purposeful and controlled his movements and body language is, the more aggressive he is feeling. It's a tell without him realising it's one.

Excellent at maintaining a calm facial expression till he gets the maw mod work, and develops a facial tick in the right jaw plate he can’t quite prevent from happening when highly emotional. 

This can be any emotion however, from desperately trying to hold in a laugh, to wanting to rip your face off, so it can be hard to get a read on him based solely on his jaw flicking open slightly. He also gets proficient at hiding it with a cough or gesture.

Fear and Anger can both trigger his stunted Leech power into activating. This means a flash of markings and without any other way to expel the energy, his wings flickering into existence as they apparate. This is traumatic and desperately embarrassing for him as he can't force them to shift out of visual form till he calms down, and they are a very clear reminder of how unnatural and botched his broken powers are.

He's avoided them being seen at all in public since his spinal implant, as it vents out the energy The Leech pulses when he's in these emotional states, but it does mean the raise of the spines along his back is a tell he cannot hide for how on edge he is.

Chews his bottom lip when thinking and not in character.

Has a very specific tightness to his lower eyelids that means he's reminiscing about something that makes him sad, if you catch him lost in thought. Leda. Home. Everything that's gone wrong.

When under extreme pressure emotionally, subtly straightens his mech arm and pulls it back towards his hip, then slowly, slow enough to make it near impossible to notice, swings it in small circles while tightening the first hard. 

You need to know about it to spot when it’s happening, but he is grinding the edges of his inner bracer against the scarring. He's with years of practice, taking out rage on himself with no one being the wiser.

It means he's frustrated to the point of a breakdown but is in the public eye, unable to show it. He's learned how to deal with that entrapment in a way so invisible that he can do it right in front of you and you'd never see, unless you noticed the blood.

Verbal:

Can't for the life of him stop his voice hitching when he's happy or excited. It leads to trying to sound "gruff" while having his voice crack midway through attempting to be serious. If Troy goes's quiet in a meeting or nods to Tyreen to take over, then won't make direct eye contact? He's desperately trying to hide what talking will give away.

Rumbles to himself when OOC. It's not quite muttering as he's talking clearly, it's just down to a whispering low octave. He does it a lot when working on something, and it'squite nice to hear.

His stammer presents itself during very heightened emotion or when completely dropping character, so doesn’t really have positive or negative connotations. If he stammers a little while talking to you about something in general, he feels very relaxed and comfortable with you. If it's around others? He's 10 seconds from a tantrum in one way or another.

Maw gives him a slight hiss to his ending s's and a tiny whistle to his starting ones. He can mask it perfectly in public and rarely lets it slip even in private, but if he's not sober he think's its funny enough to laugh along with.

Surprisingly sincere in his gentle tone of voice when OOC, finds it hard to sound like this when in persona, something about the way he has to carry himself maybe, but when Troy sounds warm and smooth, when his voice has a soft husk to it, you're talking to Troy. 100%. Troy. Not anything or anyone else.

Seifa

Behavioral:

Sei is extremely on edge far more than anyone who doesn’t know her could possibly guess. She's only in a relaxed state when alone or around very close friends, and has never, despite her current position, grown out of needing to read the room and be prepared at all times.

She carries a lot of this tension in her core and shoulders. "Relaxed" charismatic stances during interactions mask how tight she's coiled, how much she's balanced on her toes. She's taken a knife and had far too many bullets hit far too close to her head to drop the alertness around competitors and possible business partners. 

Good friends will notice this overtime, and Troy knows just how to drop a heavy hand on her shoulder and thumb into the tight tendon before anyone notices him. A wordless, simple reassurance to someone who provides so much for him.

She can't mask frustration very well and tight lips with squinted eyes is an instant tell. She'll loosen up as soon as you draw her attention, but as once she's distracted again the same expression returns. She's surprised by how often people "get just when to bring me a drink!" and doesn't realise it's because she's so incredibly obvious about it. She'd be disgusted if she knew.

Covers her stomach with one or both hands when feeling vulnerable. It's not intentional but the memory of how that knife felt is burned into her mind, and she automatically covers the scar protectively if she feels threatened or unsafe. Her actual behavior won't change, still all fake confidence and bluster, but the people who know see her real concern very clearly.

Verbal:

Very, very bad at hiding her emotions verbally unless in full blown character mode. If she's not bullshitting someone you can tell rapidly how she's faring by how she actually communicates. The more stress or frustration she's under, the snappier, more curt her speaking style becomes. One word answers, snorts, data driven retorts. She knows she's terrible with this and has tried to hide it over the years, but failed miserably every time.

A Seifa who sounds unsure of herself is really in a bad place. Questioning her own decisions, looking for reassurance, voice sounding meek? She's really struggling and it's a cry for help she won't put into words.

Cries quite easily and it's her voice that will break well before the tears do. She hates it, feels it undermines the level of control she tries to come across as having, but it happens when she's frustrated, angry, or sad and it's a constant source of embarrassment for her when it does. Ignoring it and letting her continue, focusing on her words and not her voice is the best way to deal with it, and she will appreciate you so much for doing so.

Pretends she doesn't get affected by flirting but is actually an easy target for flattery. Chat her up, play to her vanity, and you'll get the laugh. The real one, the snorting, stupid giggle as she blushes. She cannot hide that shit. Loves it, even if she knows damn well she's being played. She can enjoy it without falling for it, after all.

Asks (including IC responses ) are Open!

[thatheathen]

“Seize the day. Then set it on fire.”

We are living in that cyberpunk dystopia now, the very type Philip K. Dick warned us that could happen and is slowly creeping its way into our personal lives/minds and that's mainly due to big internet providers and the fascist governments whipped by corporations hijacking all modes of freedom even virtual freedoms. everything is connected in the system the ruling class decided and you are a slave with in that caste system until you die. oh gee fun. 

I feel bad for the devs that are forced to time crunch for this month. CD Projekt RED better compensate their workers for pushing this game out for them greedy selfish CEOs who are attached to this game that will no doubt be a hit and make tons of money, but at what cost? video game developers need to desperately unionize before its too late to even do so as most triple A games are made by wealthy liberal and or centrist elites who pretend to be progressive but actually hate unions, socialism, sharing, comradery, solidarity, grassroots fund raising cuz that’s all anti-capitalist and bad you see.  

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and that's exactly what cyberpunk is; it's a genre of unchained sci-fi yeah but it's also showing capitalism on steroids, corporations gone rogue and eating up all the earth's resources just to produce enough power and energy to run a whole city now requires a while country of power to push harder and harder to keep that light pollution at the maximum. animals should be going completely extinct in a cyberpunk future, what do humans even eat? 

To my mind cyberpunk should be about breaking away from cultural programming that makes us hate each other, fight and kill, it always boils down to those who have and those who have not social structure. That's a lot like Feudalism and a false sense of safety for all people. Cyber-feudalism is how it's structured underneath the veil. “Seize the day. Then set it fire.” 

Cyberpunk seems like a countercultural idea within the hyper-capitalist world that's still very male dominant. The feminine exist only to tantalize the masses, domestic females to slaves of profits and glamour. The brutal police forces ignoring human rights laws daily. Journalism is remotely impossible. So is the world of cyberpunk really a world of freedom and choices? Cyberpunk can be seen as a connection of like minded folk hungry for freedom and not need to fall into crime to survive. For many that’s the world you’re forced to live in or die in. rights are not natural handed from god, they are taken. cyber-rights seems like a fruitless fight in a hyper-cyber-capitalist reality; big brothers eyes everywhere. mass surveillance that would make PKD’s jaw drop.  cyberpunk-world cops are thugs beyond what we could imagine and could kill you on sight if they chose and nobody will care or not be able to do anything. nobodies memories can be trusted unless you express a certain class. all the punks, rejects, anarchists, anti-corporation, hackers, etc. are all outsiders, terrorist suspects. Every queer person or Muslim or any kind of marginalized group of that era is vulnerable as the system doesn’t favor them nor see a reason to protect them, with fascist-leaning politicians WANTING certain groups of people to literally die out. Those who struggle in any unequal world are going to be feeling the most pain. Lots of pain may mean; drug addiction to numb this awful reality, mod addiction to be less human maybe or change your identity completely. Lots of pain could also mean lots of anger towards the system and the state that’s making life so miserable for the 90% the citizens who have no power. cyberpunk 2077s idea is an “anything-goes” kinda place. here’s a sci-fi GTA/Witcher3 sandbox about a fucked up capitalist future that’s super fun and action packed!! It’s okay it’s not real though. Meanwhile capitalism as it exists today is grinding down the working class including the Dev employees working on Cyberpunk as I type this. long hours for the same pay. was it worth it? will it be worth it? will cyberpunk be the GAME that will end labor abuse in the gaming industry? 

People who are different, people who reject authority and anti-human social constructs, people who are spiritual without an organized religion, people so different and taboo to where the ruling elites see them as a threat, mocking those gross punks/queers/dissidents, but love their style and aesthetic because the rich have no soul and ZERO creativity. stealing is what rich assholes do best. rich people steal everyone’s aesthetic claiming it as their own and you begin to see YOUR aesthetic in the media regardless if it's offensive, it’s just unfettered anarcho-capitalist-land, there's no more restrictions to anything really. like ayn rand vision that would result in Bioshock’s world. that was a steampunk nightmare to an extent. point being the rich can do anything. money is power and it only matters to those who thirst for power. Many people just deal with money and hate at the same time cuz what other choice do people have? Poor people get no choices and all the bad days.

The rich and powerful will indulge in the vices of the poor to get another experience; meanwhile the real poor struggle to survive in this electronic hell world and your only choices are to fight and kill these hyper-corporations that run the planet's economy basically and that sucks. seems prophetic in a way to see what the future would be like if capitalism still stood and there was business as usual. I think a true dystopian cyberpunk world is full of dark skies and contagious air due to the extreme pollution i.e. climate change the previous generations of humans ignored and still ignore because profits and luxury and drugs and opulence and legacies and authoritarian rule is far more important to uphold you see. "human nature" is always condescendingly professed as an argument killer to why capitalism is the only way because hooomons are deep down real mean and violent... which is not true. 

Human infants literally can't live without being held and nurtured in a healthy environment. Humans are wired to love and communicate. humans lived a long time cuz they worked together. Humans lived even longer when they learned to domesticate animals leading to agriculture. only in the last 20,000 years have humans begun to grow their ego and misunderstand its message and purpose. fascists and billionaires take advantage of human minds and fool people into thinking there's no other way to live. it's a fucking lie. human beings are disconnected with nature. wires and cables are not non-nature, those are materials derived from nature. everything is nature, but not everything is natural like human concepts fabricated by civilizations.

“Deleuze and Guattari describe capitalism as a kind of dark potentiality which haunted all previous social systems. Capital, they argue, is the ‘unnamable Thing’, the abomination, which primitive and feudal societies ‘warded off in advance’. When it actually arrives, capitalism brings with it a massive desacralization of culture. It is a system which is no longer governed by any transcendent Law; on the contrary, it dismantles all such codes, only to re-install them on an ad hoc basis.” ― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

I want a cyberpunk game where it's a good kind compassionate civilization, a star trek like society, full of infinite exploration into the cosmos and into our minds... I want a cyberpunk world worth protecting, protecting the people from sneaky politicians (demagogues) and authoritarian thugs ready to install the capitalist religion of endless self-destruction and pain. remnants of evil scatter and reform, we must always help people who struggle under capitalisms spell.