#same for if he's needed for a pre-established thread and stuff

[dr-asterisk]

Asterisk is looking at the sign change.

...welp. i'm clocking out.

Asterisk has disappeared from the center for today. However, he has taken every condiment inside the center with him. Also almost every seat has a whoopee cushion under it (exceptions if it would set of someone's sensory issues) but shhh.

In his place is a very confused Fell. Cinnamon is also here.

how am i back here again?

Fell checks the date.

that asshole.

[villainsoftheweek]

look upon me.

rating: explicit. 18+ only. length: 7,381 content: Jonathan Ohnn / The Spot x f!reader, pre and post-incident Jonathan / Spot, reader is described as being shorter than the Spot but everyone is, established relationship, fluff, smut [fingering - receiving, oral - receiving, unprotected p in v], kink(s) [hair pulling, biting, scratching, orgasm control], hurt/comfort, brief obsessive/possessive behavior, this was not edited because I'm lazy

of the things he’d lost that day, there was one in particular that weighed on Jonathan's mind like a bad conscience.

"Stop looking at me like that."

You hadn't changed your gaze to look at him, still locked-in on the meticulously organized papers in front of you as you scanned for the patterns and knowledge you needed. From across the table he was slumped forward, his chin resting on his hands as he did exactly that - look at you. It was so often that he needed to do little more than that to pass the time.

"Like what, baby?"

You couldn't help but smile at the false innocence in his voice. He knew what he was doing, he didn't care.

"Like you're just waiting for me to stop," you replied, eyes still locked on the scratches of ink beneath you. "I'm doing important stuff here."

"I'm trying to do important stuff to you."

The kind of embarrassing laugh that was accompanied by a snort left you, your head shaking slightly as you continued your steadfast refusal not to look at him, unwilling to have your concentration broken completely.

"Jonny, seriously," you were trying your best to sound serious and stern, but the smile on your face didn't quite match it. "I'm trying to make sure no one blows up in this deathtrap you're building at work, and your notes are nonsense."

"My notes are perfectly -"

"In the middle of this sentence you just wrote 'banana'," you pointed out, sliding the paper in question across the table and pointing to the word. "Do you know why you did that?"

"Because I needed them from the store."

You laughed again, the sound he was convinced was the most beautiful in the world, your eyes finally raising to return his gaze. When you made eye contact with him it sucked a deep breath from him - he was always struck by you, even after years of knowing you. He'd accepted long ago it would be this way until he died.

You looked annoyed, yet at the same time so profoundly in love he couldn't believe you were looking at him. You laughed again and he took your distraction as his cue to reach across the table, one of his hands laying atop yours gently.

"You're absurd," you stated, punctuating your words with a nod. Your hand flipped beneath his, threading your fingers together as your thumb brushed over his knuckles - the ones you could reach, anyway. "You either make complete sense or you don't make any at all. Black or white."

Sometimes you talked about him like another subject you wanted to figure out. If it meant you'd stay around until you did so, he was content to continue coming up with ways to puzzle you.

"But you chose me, Atom," he replied, reminding you of something that needed no reminder. Your cheeks burned under his special name for you, eyes locking on his as any annoyance left your body. He knew exactly how to melt away any negativity from you.

"Why do you call me that?" you questioned, head tilting slightly to the side in an adorable fashion that always made him love you just a bit more than he had a moment ago. So many things you did caused the reaction from him, and he was happy to continue to add to the list. "Anytime I ask you just smile. I want to know."

Something in the look in your eye and a feeling that now was when he should give you the answer you wanted had the words spilling out of his mouth. Compared to how long you'd waited it was rather unceremonious, but so many things between the two of you had always been as such. Neither of you were incredibly concerned with things being made into a big deal, and now was no different.

You already knew how much he loved you.

"Atoms make up everything," he explained, his hand squeezing yours lightly as he spoke. "You're my everything."

Your eyes softened further as you took in his words, your heart tightening just as his hand had around yours. With a smile you shook your head again, using your other hand to mark your place on the page you'd abandoned.

"How am I supposed to keep reading through this when you say things like that?"

"I could've been the next Shakespeare if I didn't love science so much."

"Did you even take theatre at any point? Or creative writing?"

"No, I took anatomy instead," that cheekiness was returning to his tone, the need heavy in his tone. You raised an eyebrow at his words, already expecting something along the lines of what would come next. "Wanna see what I learned?"

He wiggled his eyebrows playfully, a grin that you loved more than anything in the world spreading across his face as he leaned forward in his seat, waiting for permission to come closer, waiting for you to give in. You couldn't help it when you looked deep into his eyes, seeing how badly he needed you…you had to give him something.

As you nodded he immediately grabbed your chair to move it closer, only for you to reach out and grab the table, clicking your tongue against your teeth.

"Well, I still have to finish reading, don't I?"

"But…"

"Aw, don't pout, Doctor," you cooed, turning your head and leaning to kiss his cheek softly. "I'm sure you can find a way to prove how hard you studied while I finish up."

Yeah, he could.

The security deposit the two of you had put on this apartment was forgotten as he yanked his chair across the wooden floor, settling it right next to yours. As he got comfortable you began your work again, the switch of your own activated - when it was time to focus, you could always be relied upon to do so.

Even when one of his large hands slid across your chest, cupping one of your breasts tenderly. The first touch from him was always cautious and respectful, waiting for you to say a single word of disagreement. You nodded, eyes briefly flickering to his before you focused back in one your task.

Thankful for the oversized v-neck sweater you'd worn today he slid a hand into the soft fabric, mentally thanking you for having removed your bra already when you got home. The soft flesh of your breast felt perfect in his hand as he massaged it tenderly before his attention quickly turned.

His thumb brushed over your nipple gently before circling the sensitive bud, his eyes still focused on your face and searching for any sort of reaction. Even when he pinched not a single sound left you, your face unchanging as you read his words.

And while he wanted to let you focus, he couldn't stand to not hear you at least moan for him.

He abandoned his hold on your breast to hike the knee length skirt you were wearing up around your waist, gently pushing your panties to the side - still somewhat waiting for you to stop him. You didn't, convinced you could outlast him in this little game the two of you were now playing, but honestly not really caring if you lost.

You almost lost completely when he leaned down, his tongue circling your nipple as his index finger circled your clit. You slipped - it was understandable - and a soft moan filled the room, your eyes momentarily falling closed as he sucked your nipple gently before looking back up into your face.

"Well finally," he dragged the final letter out as he pushed his middle finger into you, running his tongue over the same nipple again. "You're so wet already."

"I like reading your work," you confessed in a broken voice, allowing yourself a brief moment to forget your focus. You felt his mouth fall open in shock and the groan that he let out at your words.

"Oh."

He kept his mouth busy, as he often liked to do when you were alone together in various ways, but where he chose to focus his attention on proving his anatomy skills was with his hand. As he pumped his longest finger into you he stroked your walls lovingly, pushing against the spongy spot behind your clit carefully and with the perfect amount of pressure each time.

When he pushed his index finger inside you as well, with ease considering how wet you were now and with a downright pornographic sound he couldn't help but moan as he suckled on your breast.

You were trying to focus still - a remarkable feat, mind you, considering how good his fingers felt pumping into you at this speed and with this amount of care - but one of your hands came up to hold the back of his head, fingers pulling at the messy strands of his hair.

"Jonny…"

Your moan immediately had his attention, his mouth abandoning you so he could flash you a cheeky grin, his cheeks deep red in color and pupils blown wide as he took in your face again.

"Oh, now you want attention?"

You blew a deep breath out of your nose, giving his hair a gentle tug as you met a pump of his fingers with a grind of your hips.

"I only have one more page to make sense of…"

"But…"

"You can wait five minutes…"

"I can't," he whined, his voice ridiculous in this tone but earnest - he really couldn't wait for you much longer before he got excessively needy, but you loved pushing him to the edge sometimes. "I swear to…whatever the hell scientists swear to I can't, my tongue needs to be in you now or I swear…"

You pushed his head upward to claim his lips in a heavy kiss, a heavy groan from him falling against your mouth as you licked across his bottom lip before whispering lightly.

"If you're a good boy and let me finish I'll let you cum in me tonight."

If he wasn't so excited about the promise you'd made he would have been embarrassed by the high pitched moan that he allowed to rip through his chest, instead he could only sit spellbound as you sank your teeth into his bottom lip lightly, pulling back slightly before pulling away entirely. You licked your lips slowly, eyes holding his gaze for a moment before you continued.

"But only if you let me finish, Jonny," you warned, turning your attention back to the documents on the table and releasing your hold on his hair. "D'you think you can manage that?"

"Yes," he promised with a huff, rolling his eyes at the fact he had to wait…he understood your fears about his job but at the moment would insist there were other things that deserved attention. He tentatively pumped his fingers back into you, not even risking a glance at your face now. "But…to clarify, I still want my head between your thighs first."

"Jonny," you warned again, flashing him one last serious look with your eyes, though a light smile played on your lips. He removed his fingers from you with another huff, lifting his hand to wrap his lips around them with an appreciative groan.

Aware of your attention on him again and your mouth falling open he grinned as he released his fingers with a pop, shrugging his shoulders unceremoniously.

"Sorry," it was the fakest use of the word he'd ever used, you were aware of that. "Just speaking my truth."

But he was capable - hell, he had a PhD, he could be patient if he really needed to be…no matter how badly he didn't want to be. No matter how hard his dick was throbbing against the black sweatpants he had chosen to wear around the apartment.

He waited until you started putting the papers back in a neat stack, instead choosing to stand quickly, grabbing you by the waist and leaning down to claim your lips in a hungry, somewhat messy kiss. Thankful you returned his kiss and chose calculated movements to encourage it into something more precise, he focused on turning the two of you until the backs of your thighs were hitting the edge of the table.

"Now," he whined out in a heavy breath. "Need you now. Please, now."

He was begging against your lips as he worked the zipper and button open on your skirt, pushing both it and your panties to the ground and kicking the fabric out of the way in hopeful anticipation. You could feel his hard cock pressed between the two of you and knew he had done the best he could in waiting, but that didn't affect how you loved to tease him still.

"You're ravenous tonight," you pointed out in what could be described as little more than a purr, nipping at his bottom lip again to pull another moan from his chest. He returned the favor before he stood straight - well, straight for him - encouraging you to lay back against the table.

"I'm about to show you how much."

He found his own seat in the chair you had been in and leaned forward as his hands slid to grasp your knees, encouraging your legs apart and baring your dripping sex to him. One of his hands trailed upward and he watched in awe as his fingers glided up and down her soaked folds, back and forth, spreading the slick he had already earned.

He continued this motion, adding in gentle rubs to your clit, as he kissed up your inner thigh, enjoying the soft feeling of your skin against his lips as you moaned at the familiar scratch of his beard.

"Jonny…please…"

"Oh, now who's needy?"

But he didn't tease like you, he wasn't able when it came to you, and it wasn't like he could wait any longer. Before you could blink again he had leaned forward, parting your folds with his tongue as he ran the thick muscle through them, well intent on tasting every inch of you again like it was the first time.

"Oh, you're indescribable," he grumbled against you after he'd flicked his tongue against your clit, glowing as your fingers found their way into his hair again, holding him close. Any complaints you'd ever made about his smart mouth were always forgotten when his tongue was worshipping you.

"Feels so good, Jonny," you moaned breathlessly, pulling his hair to encourage him back to what he had been begging for.

With a deep groan he continued, alternating between sucking on your clit and running his tongue between your folds, filling the apartment with lewd sounds as he slurped at your soaked pussy, ensuring every inch received his attention. He began to fuck his tongue into you, his nose pushing against your clit as he devoured you exactly how you wanted.

And that's how he got his first reward, your walls fluttering around his tongue as you came around him, your vision clouded as your orgasm rushed through you. As you moaned his name and your shaking thighs came closer around his head he didn't stop, instead continuing to lick at your sex like he was already setting out to pull another from you.

Your whines and whimpers of overstimulation filled the room, pulling at his hair as you fought to catch your breath and wiggle. He took the silent instruction and removed his mouth from your core, instead kissing along the thigh that hadn't received any earlier. He couldn't resist in full, though, his index finger slipping through your folds and into your still quivering sex.

"So wet," he cooed, just before he sucked a purple hickey to the inside of your thigh. "My dick's gonna slip right in."

"Please," you whined again, fully aware that now the tables had turned and you were the desperate one. You knew what Jonathan fucked like on nights where he was feeling like this and you were eager to feel him stretch you again, but through your orgasm's lingering haze you weren't sure how constructed of a sentence you could muster.

"Aw, baby, that's so cute," you could hear the smile in his voice and against your skin as he continued to kiss wherever he could reach, his lips now pressing to the hips he loved to grab so much. "Beg a little more for me?"

To be clear, he was asking - not telling.

"Jonathan," you whined, releasing your hold on his hair to instead reach for his shoulders, hoping to encourage him to finish his climb back up your body. You weren't thinking clearly, it was obvious - you may have thought the two of you were in bed but you weren't, and there was no way this old wooden table would support what he was about to do to you. "Please. Oh fuck please just…please. I need you."

"What d'you need?"

Okay, so maybe he could tease a little…he so rarely felt like he had any power in this world and these moments where he had you, the most beautiful woman in the world, at his fingertips were irresistible.

"Want you to fuck me," you whined, heart bursting as he finally gave into you and reached to press his lips to yours in a gentle kiss. His finger was lazily pumping into you still, holding you on the brink of overstimulation - he truly did know exactly what to do to your body.

"You want me to fuck you?" he questioned, a falsely puzzled tone behind his voice. "Or you need me to fuck you?"

"Semantics."

"Say it."

His voice snapped slightly lower, just enough in the way it did when he was trying to communicate his seriousness - something he honestly rarely did with you. He would never yell at you, but that didn't mean he couldn't let you know the gravity behind his words in other ways. He needed you to say it - exactly it, and to accentuate his point, he removed his finger from you altogether.

"I need you to fuck me, Jonny," you begged against his lips, turning slightly to press lazy kisses to the corner of his mouth until you reached lower, kissing his neck in the spot you knew would melt away this dark streak.

He stood up immediately, shoving his sweatpants and boxers down to the floor and kicking them to join your skirt, fisting his cock and rubbing it through your folds to gather the mixture of cum and his spit that lingered between them.

"Don't tease," you whined again, eyes meeting his in a hope to convey your desperation. His other hand reached to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing across the bone before it trailed to your bottom lip, repeating the gentle motion as he quietly shushed you.

He started slipping his painfully hard, leaking cock inch by inch into you, trying to take his time and savor the feeling of each push, but by the time he had sheathed his cock fully in you there was something already unmistakably unhinged about his movements, his hand that had been between your thighs grasping your hip tight.

"Fuck…fuck…" he groaned as he tried to force himself to still for a moment, instead finding he couldn't help but pull completely out and thrust back in roughly, his fingers holding you hard enough to bruise - which honestly, you hadn't been aware he was strong enough to do so until now, and this was far from the first time the two of you had fucked.

"Jonny, o-oh my…"

"Fuck," he groaned out as he continued to thrust into you desperately, his movements hard and a little sloppy as he tried to find a pace he liked. When he finally settled on one he leaned forward to kiss you again, pounding into you with your bodies pressed so close together you could hear obscene sound of his balls slapping against you. "You're so perfect. You're so so so perfect."

You kissed him until you were breathless, repeated moans covering his lips as he continued with the perfect pace to match how feral he felt for you now - quick and hard, almost bruising, desperate to coax you toward another orgasm and earn his own.

You dragged your nails down his back - you might had even drawn a couple of specks of blood with how rough you accidentally slipped into - kissing back down to his mouth as you fought for a desperate breath through moans and mewls. You made a mark of your own on his neck, a spot he would wear with pride for the days it would last on his skin.

"I want you to cum again for me," he managed out between heavy breaths, one of his hands sliding to hold the back of your head gently. "Before….before I…"

"Before you fill me up," you finished for him, your tone breathy and lascivious before you ran your tongue over the hickey you'd just given him.

He moaned - whether it was at your words or tongue didn't matter - and grabbed your hip harder, his pace faltering again into something much for harder and carnal as his mind was overtaken by the idea of spilling his hot load into you.

"Gonna…gonna fill you…" he began muttering promises through breaths and thrusts, any semblance of normal speech pattern forgotten. "So fucking full."

"Please."

"Yeah, baby," he promised, managing to fight through the primal thoughts in his mind to carry out another delicate action, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead. "Know you love it. Go ahead and milk it out of me."

His hold on your head remained as he released your hip, slipping his hand between your bodies instead to rub your clit with purpose, fully intent on not allowing himself release until he felt you spasm around his cock.

With the loudest moan of his name he'd perhaps ever earned you threw your head back, thankful his hand was there to protect it from the hardwood as your vision turned white, the temperature in the room seemingly one-thousand degrees as you clasped your legs around his waist, holding him closer.

His thrusts continued to get sloppier, and when he felt your orgasm approaching a more manageable end, he opted to ask before finding his own release.

"Can I…can I…"

"You owe me two minutes that you interrupted…when I was trying to clean…"

"Baby, no," he begged, his head shaking as he pressed gentle kisses to your cheeks and forehead and nose, hoping his sweet affection would earn him favor. "Oh, please, no…"

"Not yet."

It was a wonder that he could continue fucking you like this with how hard he was, the discomfort and need to cum evident by his begging and whining. When you finally gave him the permission he was seeking his orgasm was immediate - thick, hot ropes of his cum filling you so much it didn't take long for the thick liquid to start leaking out around his cock.

You were both overly sensitive, but that had never stopped him before and it certainly wouldn't now as he continued to drag his half-hard cock through your painted walls, content on doing so until you were a mess, pleading with him that you'd had enough and it was too much.

He listened, removing his cock from your freshly fucked sex and sitting in the chair that waited beneath him, eyes fixated on your leaking cunt. He couldn't resist - three fingers gathered the mixture of fluids that was flowing from your pussy and he pushed it back in with little consideration toward your overstimulation.

You shot up with a gasp, sitting upright just as he removed his fingers again, wasting no time and unwilling to hear complaints as he dove back between your thighs, messily licking and slurping at your hole until he felt enough of your combined releases were on his tongue. He leaned back up, one of his hands coming to the back of your head to pull you down to meet him in a heavy kiss, passing you the thick liquid he held on his tongue and continuing to lick at your mouth as it slid down your throat.

When he broke the kiss for breath his eyes were full of so much love you thought he might break your shared "no marriage" rule and propose.

"I fucking love you," he finally breathed out, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you into his lap gently to continue the shared moment of pure bliss.

"I love you, Jonny," you promised in return, nuzzling your head against his shoulder as you curled against him. "In every universe."

There was no way for you to know that, and yet, it didn't sound like too much of an impossibility.

"Atom…"

His affectionate tone was matched by the loving way he pressed a kiss to the tip of your nose before he claimed your lips again in the softest kiss of the night, letting you climb out of his lap afterwards knowing there were things to be done after sex.

"'m ordering a pizza before we go to bed," he called after you as you grabbed your sweater from the floor, using your other hand to attempt to run your fingers through your messy hair.

"'m gonna shower," you replied, grabbing the other pile of clothes to add them to the hamper. He loved how easy things had become between the two of you in these recent years - he wouldn't give it up for all the power in the world. "Extra cheese or I'm breaking up with you."

"What kind of monster do you take me for?"

"The kinda monster that better hurry up so he can join me in the shower."

You took him by surprise by leaning behind him, pressing a kiss to his cheek as your arms hugged around his neck briefly. Sometimes he didn't know how or why or for how long it would last, but he knew for now, at least, you loved him in ways writers try to convey in novels.

"I'll be so fast you'll think I teleported there."

Of the things he’d lost that day, there was one in particular that weighed on his mind like a bad conscience. The reason for so many of what he used to hold in his heart as his best days, the very same that now incessantly repeated in his mind, an unremitting reminder of what he used to have. 

When he declared he had lost everything due to the incident, he was speaking of you. 

It hadn’t taken long for him to reach through to steal a look at his lost love, and while he told himself it needed to be something that didn't become a habit that's exactly what happened. Some things never changed - he was still more than happy to do nothing more than gaze at you in silence, enjoying how you adjusted annoyances as you read, the way your nose crinkled in focus, the way you fell asleep on your desk, the way you played with the necklace he'd given you when you were nervous…

He'd almost broken his promise to himself several times now, happening across you on a bad morning and an even worse night when the emptiness in your chest at the loss of him was too much to bare, the false face you normally wore too much effort to carry on forever. You missed him, and sometimes you couldn't bring yourself to do more than sob that fact into the night, clutching the lab coat wearing teddy bear he'd gifted you to your chest.

He was positive he still had a heart, because he could feel it breaking every time.

Now was one of those times, perhaps the worst he'd seen you endure, and he'd only been watching for a minute now…at least, that's what he thought, though he wasn't keeping track of time. Your eyes were burning red and you had a framed photo of the two of you lying on the bed next to you, one of his old shirts hugging your frame in familiarity.

“Jonathan?”

The sound of his name from your lips again punched another hole somewhere in him far deeper than any other. You felt him - without words you knew he was there, his presence occupying your space in a familiar comfort that you’d come to accept was irreplaceable. So he had lost track of time…enough time for you to feel him again, the man you'd spent so many hours with in the past exactly like this.

“Jonny?”

He wanted to disappear, a war waging in his mind between the profound desire to hold you again and the need to hide what he’d become from you. Instead, he was frozen, even his mind quiet as the way his name rolled off your tongue again filled his ears sweeter than any memory. He'd promised himself that you would never have to look at what he had become, insistent that you thinking he was dead was better.

“Please, Jonny…I can feel you,” your voice broke more and more with each word, desperate to plead to him enough to persuade him. “I know…I know you’re there, somehow. Please.”

What was he supposed to do when you begged like this? You used to beg in the sweetest ways, he'd never made you beg for anything in earnest, not through tears like this…

Seeing you like this because of him made him feel more villainous and monstrous than anything else he'd done. It was anxiety inducing to watch you beg for the man he used to be, knowing he could never again give you what he once did. It made him sick - every cell felt sick, every portal poisoned and shrinking, withdrawing within himself.

But one more sob from you and a lapse in judgement from him led to a wrong step, his form stepping through a portal directly at the foot of your bed before he could take it back.

Oh, how he'd missed your bravery. You were sitting in a flash, eyes wide and puzzled but not at all afraid as you looked upon him - the new him. For the first time he had to wonder if this form blushed - he felt his cheeks heating like he would have before, but that didn't mean they looked the same. You leaned against the headboard, away from him which was exactly the opposite of the pull you felt to him.

A familiar pull - one that you'd only ever felt before with one person, with your person. Your eyes resolved in knowingness and you glanced at the photo beside you before your eyes found what was technically his face again, eyebrows pulling together as you worked through your puzzled thoughts.

At least you'd stopped crying.

"J…Jonathan?"

A breath was sucked from somewhere in him and filled the room with a heavy sigh saturated in relief - he couldn't deny how right it felt that you were speaking to him again, seated in the same room…seated in the room you'd shared.

"Remember…you used to say I was so black or white," he cleared his throat that suddenly felt far too dry, an oversized hand coming up to the back of his neck to rub nervously. This is where he used to run his fingers through his hair, you noted internally as your eyes watered again hearing his voice. "Either a genius or an idiot. Now I'm black and white all at the same time…"

His rambling was cut by your arms flying around his middle, the size different between the two of you that had always been there now even more significant in his new form. He stood frozen in his place, form rigid as you squeezed him as though you would never let him go.

"You're here."

"I…I'm here," his voice was shaking and he wanted to run, he could feel the unease spreading across his body and expanding like a sickness. But the worse he felt, the more the holes shrank…everything about him was on-edge. "But I'm not me anymore, baby. I'm…this."

"You're you," your voice was that sweet, understanding tone you'd used in college with him, before the two of you had even dated and when you were both pretending you were nothing more than best friends. He'd always said it was like a lullaby to a baby. "I felt you."

But he didn't want to hear it now, and something dark and incendiary inside him screamed that you were lying - that there was no logical scenario where you were okay with how he looked.

"Don't patronize me," his voice snapped into something dark, holes flaring out again and spreading to almost encompass him in darkness, almost like a shield. "Don't. I know what I look like. I might not have eyes but I can see. I can see that I look like…a fucking freak. An abomination."

You couldn't imagine what he was feeling. There was no lying to him, he was a reasonable, intelligent man - he knew that this form was not what anyone would describe as perfect and was certainly not what you had fallen in love with, and there was nothing you could say that would convince him otherwise.

"You look like something tragic happened to you," your voice was unfaltering, the delicate tone coaxing him into the relaxation he used to always feel with you. "But I don't care what you look like, and I never have."

"It's not like a bad haircut or weight gain, Atom," he snapped. The vulnerability he was displaying was difficult to navigate as there was truly never someone to go through what he was…there was no anecdote to help him. These days, his default setting was anger.

Anger was better than anything else.

"I'm hideous. Look at me."

"I am," you said quietly, your voice dropping to just above a whisper. You looked right in his face, unwaveringly. He longed to kiss you more than ever before. "I'm looking right at you, Jonny."

That quieted him as he lost himself in the tranquility of you - you were the only one who had ever understood him enough to walk him through the difficult emotions and that was still true, even with his sorrow and rage felt and expressed tenfold. He'd thought so before, always known so with no scientific way to prove it until now…you were made for him.

And him alone.

"My Jonny."

Before he could register the movement your hands were resting on his chest and the walls he was trying to built crumbled, the spots essentially exploding into dozens of smaller ones all across his body, avoiding where your hands rested. As you lightly stroked your fingertips there they merged again to several larger, relatively heart shaped blobs.

He hadn't felt a gentle human touch since the incident, and he'd never thought he'd feel your touch again. If it was possible, he could have died on the spot. It was obvious that he was lost for a moment, forgetting the danger he presented to you, forgetting to maintain control.

But only for a moment, the horrors ever present.

After temporarily losing himself in the haze of feeling your touch again his shaking hands flew out, grasping your waist tight as his breathing came in heavy, concentrated breaths. Instead of letting him retreat within himself you stepped closer, hands slipping as close to his shoulders as you could reach.

"I thought I'd lost you forever," you said quietly, already teaching yourself how to get used to looking up into his face and not seeing his eyes. "And here you are."

"I lost everything," the vulnerability was shining through more as he opened himself to you again, almost having to reteach himself for a moment that you were someone he could share his emotions with. "My dream job…gone. My body…which was no temple to begin with but now I'm just this…this thing. I lost…I lost you. My dream girl…my everything. I lost my everything."

He saw the pain flashing in your eyes as you listened to him - as you empathized as you always had, your heart connected to his.

"You found me again," your voice was breaking again as you spoke, desperate for him to understand that all the times you'd said you'd love him no matter what you'd meant it. "I'm right here."

You moved your arms lower to wrap around his waist, stepping closer - but he ripped himself from you the moment you were close to connecting your head to his torso, the holes once again flaring in fear.

"No!" he shouted, immediately kicking himself for shouting at you. He took a deep breath to steady himself, swallowing hard as he calmed his emotions enough to speak again without lashing out. "You can't…the spots…the holes…"

Your brow pulled together like it always had when you were feeling inquisitive and you only sought to close the distance between the two of you again, stepping forward as you took in every inch of him.

"Holes?"

"They're portals," he explained, suddenly feeling self conscious about himself in ways he hadn't experienced since his one attempt at a high school dance. "I'm still figuring out how they work…and I don't want to lose you. I could really…really lose you."

He had missed this expression on you - when you were so deep in thought it was obvious your full focus was on solving the puzzle presented to you. He'd thought of this long ago and come to the conclusion that you would want to study him - to understand him more.

He wasn't sure he was ready to be the experiment under your scrutiny. But he was certain he could never be away from you again.

"Portals to where?"

"Everywhere," just like a doctor and patient, you were asking questions, formulating a hypothesis, he was providing the data. How many times had the two of you lived this scenario? Was now really so different? He remembered how you used to look at him in amazement…your expression now was truly no different than it ever had been. "Sometimes just back through another portal. Sometimes to other dimensions to other…universes. I've gotten lost and…I'd never forgive myself if you fell through. You can't be close to me."

"You just need to learn how to control them."

"I can't," he breathed out, his words exasperated with a break in the middle to accentuate it. It was all he could manage - it was all he had to.

"You can," it wasn't a tone full of false hope, it was decisive and resolute - you believed he could, and with your belief, he would try. "It's just another thing to learn, and you're the smartest man I know."

Before he could react to your sudden movements you closed the distance between the two of you again, sticking your hand through one of the holes in his arm with a deep breath.

"Hey -!"

Almost instantly your hand reappeared through his chest and a sigh of relief ripped through him, a puzzled smile spreading across your face as you wiggled your fingers. "Intriguing," he swore he could hear a familiar purr behind your words, and he had to wonder if you were trying to distract him from the complex mix of emotions he was experiencing. "How unique."

"You…you mean how freakish," he attempted to correct, focused on the feeling of you reaching into him. "This uhm…this has to be weird."

"You've stuck fingers in me," you defended, the playful tone in your voice one of the exact things he'd missed. Then again, in truth, he'd missed everything about you, even the parts he once didn't love.

"Atom…"

You pulled your hand back through him which earned another relieved sigh from his chest, his nervous breaths returning as you wrapped your arms around his torso again, your head finding a rightful position lying against his chest.

"Just hold me. You'd never let yourself lose me."

Your faith in him was misguided and foolish, the love you felt for him clouding your mind from the horror that you held in your arms - he was convinced of it. He froze, unwilling to give into even the slightest movement that would create a domino effect, unwilling to do anything to increase the risk he posed to you.

But seconds passed without incident until he'd been allowing you to hold onto him for several minutes. You were still here, still against him, still warming him up in ways he had longed to feel again for what had already felt like an eternity. Slowly, his arms circled you, pulling you slightly closer, clutching to you like you might still disappear at any moment.

As the minutes ticked away his arms got tighter and tighter, his hands resting on your lower back like you were made of porcelain.

"You kept all of my stuff…"

His voice was still so unsure, like he felt he was intruding…like he didn't belong here, in his own home. Like he didn't deserve to be holding you again. You nuzzled into him further in response, your hands flattening against his back to hold him against you tighter.

"I could never get rid of anything that makes me think of you," you whispered, eyes closed as you soaked in the moment, feelings both familiar and new.

"I haven't…laid in a bed since…"

He trailed off and you could feel the energy around him darken - you knew anger was a secondary emotion and in this instance it followed unimaginable hurt.

"Come to bed with me," you weren't asking, it was an instruction - voice unwavering and unquestioning. You looked up into his face again, and it was just like it had always been - you looked at him like you loved him.

"But why would you…ah -"

You really didn't mind the new height, in fact him towering over you more than ever before was causing other feelings that weren't quite appropriate for this sweet lovers' reunion, but it did make standing on your tiptoes more obsolete than ever, your lips barely reaching his chest. His words were cut off, a whine taking their place when your lips connected with his skin. He melted like it was the first time you kissed him, any residual panic withdrawing further into him as he held you tighter.

You felt the shift in his energy and smiled against him as you pressed more kisses wherever you could reach, mindful when you approached a spot, lips continuing to brush against him as you spoke.

"If you get into bed with me I can kiss more of you," "You're so tall now, Jonny. Can't reach."

One thing that hadn't changed was his complete willingness to obey you, to give in to your every request, to fulfill every instruction…it continued to be true as he scrambled into the bed, nearly groaning at the familiar feeling of his pillow and the sheets you'd insisted they needed again. The seconds that passed with him alone - with him getting used to his new height in the bed he once fit comfortably in, getting used to controlling the holes (when was the last time he'd laid down?).

But when you climbed into the bed beside him, the anxieties vanished. You moved as close to him as you could, one of your hands delicately resting on his torso while the other reached to his face, stroking your thumb across his cheek delicately.

It was the kind of moment where your eyes close in serenity, and somewhere inside him he felt it. Maybe he was a fool for thinking this could last, but with the multiverse at his fingertips, he'd always reach out to you.

All of the versions of you were meant to be his.

And they would be.

masterlist. marvel masterlist.

[thespoonisvictory]

to be so honest I haven't even watched the most recent fhjy ep yet but I think it's hard to pick one singular reason why the rat grinders aspect felt so flat for people. On the whole, I thought the season was great and really loved it (compared to neverafter which I had issues with throughout), but this one aspect of the plot just kind of got crushed underfoot, which, tbh, it's dnd that's what happens sometimes brennan is still more talented than I could ever dream of being. anyway here are some reasons why we didn't get more rat grinders:

the downtime mechanics were cool, but highly rewarded deprioritizing social interaction to make sure you passed your classes.

the bad kids are so established as pcs that they already have a well-developed host of relationships, meaning they're less likely to reach out to new people (see how the mazey side-plot also fell flat for me). on top of that, this is more speculation, but the Intrepid Heroes play the bad kid's social cards closer to their chest and metagame more, probably bc they're the oldest pcs and the ones they're most attached to.

brennan, probably because he was juggling a ton of stuff, hardly initiated any rg subplot stuff. this made things like the oisin crush plot work, well, not at all, because what was the plot? all of his advances needed high perception checks to even notice, nothing was explicit, and it didn't go anywhere! they never even had a solo conversation! same thing with ivy and fabian, she just completely dropped off

the bad kids are also canonically paranoid PCs, who were given no carrot nor stick to interact with a group of people who they knew were associated with an enemy, especially when the downtime mechanics pushed them to prioritize other things

all of these issues led to an end of season lore dump where we learned pretty basic info about the rgs that we probably should have found less than halfway into the season. throughout the season, there were just a bunch of dropped balls from both brennan and the pcs that could have helped pick things up, had they been caught. it was both an oversaturation of plot threads and the insanely hostile (for comedy! because rude makes good comedy!) way the bad kids were played in general.

I don't think the rg inherently had to be redeemed. but putting aside that it thematically feels weird to not even mention it in a season about corruption, redemption, and rage, it's also not... really about that. take oisin for example: imagine a world where we get those interactions, maybe a date or even just hanging out more. there's an avenue where he legitimately catches feelings and can be swayed, or one where he plays a much more actively manipulative role. Either way, we learn way more about him, and either way, him getting killed means so much more.

if the rgs were not meant to be a prominent part of the season, it's surprising that brennan dropped so many details that suggested a sympathetic nuance! this was not a penelope everpetal level of detail, here. arguably, it was way more attention that ragh got pre-redemption. it just feels strange.

ultimately, fhjy just had too much to juggle, kind of a reoccurring theme with d20 at this point. there's so much I love and enjoy in the season (once again as compared to trw or neverafter), and I think it succeeds at being a comedy first dnd show! it is hilarious! but the number of plot points that felt like they were either blindly dropped or hastily resolved makes me really hope there's a senior year in the works to try to clean some of this up, and also that d20 will consider longer or simpler seasons.

[lostcndfound]

Nicknames: Null or Dust.

Age: Hard to put a number on. Technically born in the early modern age. Fae realm is fucky with time. Mentally and physically, probably around his late 20s to early 30s.

Height: 5ft10

Pronouns and gender: He/Him, man

What they are: Human (more or less)

Personality: Blunt. Largely focused on himself and his needs for survival reasons. Sees caring about others as a luxury, and definitely not something that claws at him desperately from the inside because he ignores it so much. Mouthy beyond sense. Doesn't take criticism or insults well. Very easy to rile up.

Style and Appearance: A mess. Practical, functional, hard wearing clothing he can move in. Fae realm clothing only, even in human world. Nothing too baggy or that hangs - no scarves or jewelry etc. Because it can be grabbed. Everything is personalized, though. Painted or embroidered patterns, broken and repaired, stained and messy as everything else his wears, blood, mud, sweat and more. But it's clear some effort is there.

Piercings and Tattoos: Largely obscured by scar tissue, but a very faded and blurry marking vaguely visible on his right forearm. A band on his left wrist with a house seal.

Scars and Distinguishing Marks: Back is covered in lash marks. Bites, cuts and misc injuries litter his arms and legs. The burn on his right arm is only over where the tattoo had been. Largely hidden by the lashes, there are tally marks on his shoulder blades.

Sexuality: Most of the time he either needs actual control, or some semblance of it. Likes fighting for control, that sort of primal bordering on cnc stuff. Even if he's bottoming or subbing he's still incredibly mouthy and bratty to act like he's not showing weakness by letting someone else take charge. That shit will fade in threads set later, or with time in interactions.

Abilities: Strong combat focus to his magic, mostly damage with some utility and control in there too. Damn good with a sword. Lets call his hyper alertness an ability instead of a reaction to trauma. Magically enhanced strength, given to make it a fair fight.

Weaknesses: Human. Squishy. Not meant to wield the magic he can, so his body isn't protected from his own work.

Links: Canon - Media - Fun Stuff - Aesthetic - Music - Threads

Bits and Pieces:

The leftover human from a changeling exchange. Raised as a foundling, then handed over to a librarian to work as an apprentice. Librarian had a gambling and drinking problem and lost him in a game of cards to a fae who organized blood sports as entertainment in a hard to reach court in the summer seas.

I'll post more about it later - as I think it could be a fun setting for AUs with other muses - but basically this huge arena for various largescale violent entertainment. It's full of fae fuckery so think the arena in the DnD movie. The building is grand, stained glass, gold, wealth and extravagance. There are tons of entertainments to be found there as well, things to distract a crowd during time between rounds while they set up.

Timeline can be anywhere from actively still there, to recently escaped, to securely free.

Escaped with the single mindset of finding the guy who owns the arena, and killing him, to free himself.

The names Null and Dust are sort of relationship dependant, so I'll leave it up to you with pre-established relationships. In general, Dust is the name given to people he sees as peers, as the same level, whether he trusts them or not, so not just 'friends'. While Null is his official name, the one on betting slips, the one most people would know.

Technically his name is Thatcher, however, due to being raised in the fae realm around fae rules, that's become a more closely guarded secret. He doesn't know it would have no power over him like true names do to fae.

The more or less wrt his humanity is really only because a human who has been in the fae realm that long is not going to go untouched by the realm's magic. His is a very weird manifestation. In low light, he's softly bioluminescent. Green-blue glow that pools around his fingers and fades up his arms until it's nothing but specks of color. Hates it. Makes stealth really annoying.

[keyofhearts]

         they  can  take  your  world.  they  can  take  your  heart.  cut  you  loose  from  all  you  know.  but  if  it's  your  fate  […]  then  every  step  forward  will  always  be  a  step  closer  to  home.

                          𝙺 𝙴 𝚈 𝙾 𝙵 𝙷 𝙴 𝙰 𝚁 𝚃 𝚂.

an independent writing blog for SORA of square enix's KINGDOM HEARTS. oc & crossover friendly. selective + private, canon-divergent & not affiliated with any fandoms. graphics made by floragfx. adored by cero (she/her, 21+).

               ━━  ♡  ━━

𝗔𝗙𝗙𝗜𝗟𝗜𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗦 / 𝗠𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗦 : tba 𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗞𝗦 : carrd. ♥︎ meta. ♥︎ prompts. ♥︎ tags. ♥︎ moodboard. 𝗕𝗟𝗢𝗚𝗥𝗢𝗟𝗟 : @makostrife - @bloodlcrd - @fooltroupe

─── BASICS

this is an independent writing blog for sora from square enix's kingdom hearts. currently replaying through all the games released for console. never finished kh3 because i'm a fool, but in general i'm up-to-date with the general plot of the games and the characters.

─── INTERACTIONS

100% oc and crossover friendly. also small heads up regarding verses - for now i don't think it's necessary to give sora verses for specific fandoms since he has the ability to visit any world. basically his main verse works for any interaction with any muse from any fandom. also very important, please cut your threads!

─── INBOX

i don't post a lot of starter calls, instead i make sure to reblog inbox prompts as much as possible to offer another form of interacting with my muse. also, if you want to send unprompted ic asks please do, it's very much loved and appreciated! in either case, feel free to continue them from me. regarding anon, i usually keep it on but if someone feels the need to spread negativity for whatever reason, i will turn it off and move on.

─── FOLLOW / UNFOLLOW

first things first, i don't want minors interacting with me nor do i want personals around here. i am fully aware that we all want to create a safe place for us on this site, so if you feel like we just don't vibe please soft-block me, i will do the same should the situation call for it. i will also clean up my following once in a while and remove inactive blogs.

─── ACTIVITY

my activity is very sporadic. due to real life draining my energy on a regular basis, and on-off depressive episodes, it's impossible for me to be here daily. i will only write when i feel like it and i will not force myself to reply quickly anymore, i want this to be a hobby, an escape when i need it - this is my personal rule.

─── TRIGGERS

while kingdom hearts is mostly about friendship, disney characters and generally gives off positive vibes, please note that it's far deeper than that and might delve into dark themes at times. however, everything will be tagged accordingly. i myself don't have any triggers but i would really appreciate it if you could tag your nsft/nsfw posts.

─── SHIPPING

mickey voice: oh boy! personally i like sora & kairi a lot. however, i am open to any ship (canon x canon, oc x canon) as long as there is chemistry between our characters. it doesn't have to be romantic either. found family? enemies? pre-established stuff? i'm here for it all. that being said, i don't force shipping and neither should you. no smut. thanks.

─── PLOTTING

if we've been mutuals for a while and have some threads together, i'm all here for plotting. i think it's easier to plot if we as muns have established some kind of bond first versus two people who still have to figure out if their muses vibe together, if that makes sense. basically, plotting is cool but only if it 'feels' right.

─── CALLOUTS / DRAMA

checks calender aren't we all adults by now? anyway, i understand why callouts are sometimes necessary, especially if it's actually problematic or concerns someone's safety - 100% agree. but if it's drama between people, adult people, which could easily be resolved privately without dragging the whole rpc into it, then get out. touch grass.

[blindrapture]

day 3 of the tally mark logs.

frankly it might benefit the readers if I made it clearer, here, what is happening, plot-wise.

the last thing we saw, jordan was running down an alleyway. then he saw something. and then the journal stopped. now, every day, at the same time every day, jordan writes a tally mark in his journal, and that's all we get.

I can't quite remember, but I wouldn't be surprised if I wrote it this way in 2011 for the purpose of just.. skipping some days. I'm not too happy about the laziness of that, but clearly I wasn't happy about it even then, because I chose to make up for it by making the Secret Explanation Of This Mystery kinda complicated, actually providing for a lot of plot threads that... arguably last us all the way to the end.

rapture is hard work, and it looks a lot easier to make than it is. and I wanted it to be that way. I wanted to allow for some laziness, but any laziness must be offset by something else requiring more work. I can attest to this. having written an entirely new act 2 in the course of two months this year, and having begrudgingly started a new act 3, like. it's kind of a serious pain. even down to the most basic element, the Single Timestamp Entry. hour:minute, contents of entry in a specific voice. writing them to a pre-established plot outline is a chore. because I never outline the Single Entries; I need those to be written from the bottom-up to maintain the flow of the character. writing them from scratch... is a fucking challenge. because then I'm also composing the plot, as this nebulous thing far above me (and far ahead of me), while just focusing on some minute detail, jordan kicking a can down a fucking road or looking at some ducks.

and if you think the writing style makes it easier? ...well, perhaps. maybe jordan's writing style is inherently familiar enough to me that it facilitates the ambitious scope of the project. but it doesn't just come to me, I promise that. these aren't real thoughts, because they're not reactions to real events. it feels more like... acting. it's alright in short bursts, it's fun to act for, like, a scene or even thirty. but thirty scenes is barely even one log. and acting and writing it at the same time is, uh, less fun.

rapture is a serious investment of effort and time. is it worth it? by itself, I mean, it does become worth it. it is kind of a "sum of its parts" situation, and we're still getting used to all the parts. but it's definitely worth it when I have readers along for the ride.

see you tomorrow. maybe I'll ramble about the slender man, since there's apparently some anniversary stuff going on in the slender man mythos.

[defountaine]

DEFOUNTAINE.

independent + private roleplay blog for FURINA DE FONTAINE, of mhy's GENSHIN IMPACT as judged by SINCLAIR ( 21 ). crossover + oc friendly. low activity due to college ( junior yr ) + old laptop.

INTEREST CHECKER. / GOOGLE DOC.

rules under cut.

NOTES. ( THIS MAY BE UPDATED AS TIME GOES ON. )

not spoiler or leak free

i tag triggers as “ trigger // “ 

for the main verse ( gi ), i'm almost entirely caught up on the main story.

hc heavy.

i use she/he/they for furina. she looks like both a woman and a twink and it's giving me gender envy, okay. genderfluid furina is so real to me.

generally novella because i love writing a lot!!

scarce activity bc my laptop is fucked up ( most of the keys are stiff lol ) + full time college student. i am literally doing a research proposal this semester.

aforementioned keyboard thing may lead to typos

i tag a lot of my ooc posts ( since a majority of the time they’re useless ) as “ irrelevant // ” as to not clog up peoples dash 

sometimes tumblr doesn’t send my asks so if you’ve liked for an inbox call and you don’t receive it, thats why 

mutuals can ask for discord<3 i encourage it actually since im active there more often but im very anxious and tend not to initiate conversation unless i feel like we’re very close 

if i ever bother you lmk<3 i’ve been told i can get a little spammy at times and i’ll admit i do get easily excited so if i need to tone it down just let me know!

if i’m following you i’ve read your rules !! i’ll assume you’ve done the same if you decide to follow back!

i only have access to the beta editor, sadly. i can try and pull some bullshit but i don't know if it'll work. my apologies.

NSFW.

those who are of age and have characters of age can smut with me. that said, furina is probably not gonna be very easy to fuck. trauma and all that. unless we have pre-established stuff. that's always fun. that said, don't follow just to fuck him, please. gore is also welcomed.

SHIPPING.

i love shipping, so lets do it! platonic, romantic, rivals, familial etc.. love ‘em all! planned or entirely natural, either is fine! if you wanna ship with me just ask! i have no preferences, not really, and i can say the same about furina. both she and i are down to clown with just about anyone. it doesn't even have to be healthy! ( to the tune of tmnt ) codependent toxic yuri/yaoi !

PLEASE DON’T RUSH ME.

full time college student with very limited time to do rp nowadays. i really enjoy writing and all but being rushed to reply makes me lose motivation. however, if i do miss a starter/don’t reply to a thread for a while you can tell me about that!

SELECTIVE + MUTUALS ONLY.

despite me saying this, all in all i probably follow almost everyone back as long as they have a rules + abt page i can find! i don’t follow personals but if you’re a hub or your rp blog is a sideblog, lmk so i can follow you there!  if you have a rules + abt page and i don’t follow back LET ME KNOW. sometimes tumblr doesn’t give me notifications and i don’t pay attention to follower count for the most part. i’m really not picky and im not trying to be mean or ignore you ! 

HATE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.

any sort of hate will not be tolerated. if i see you picking on anyone or you pick on me , i will block you. that’s not the way i roll.

NO GODMODDING OR ANYTHING OF THE LIKE.

this is pretty standard , but please don’t control my muse or anything of the sort. 

I PRACTICE REBLOG KARMA. KINDA.

 i am not a meme archive blog , so if you do rt them please consider sending them!!

I’M FINE WITH ASKS BEING TURNED INTO THREADS!!

just please turn them into separate text posts, please!!

BE FUCKING NORMAL.

y'know. no racism, homophobia, transphobia or pedophilia, incest, and all that gross stuff. instant block. literally just be normal.

[segmentedsuperstud]

Rules

Hello hello, i’m Pierrot (or Felix)! I’m transmasc nonbinary, I use he/they pronouns, and i’m 18+ (Born 1993). I’ve been writing Earthworm Jim on and off for many years, and managed to wrangle the URL from his old blog, so if you recognize it, that’s-a me! I believe I went by Remi at the time.

Here’s some rules, please read through ‘em carefully before following or interacting:

- This blog is 18+ only, i’m an adult and I prefer writing with other adults. There won’t be any outright NSFW threads here, but there will most likely be mentions and depictions of violence and blood and grodey stuff like that. I will of course tag any potential triggers that may come up, please let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like tagged, or if I ever forget to tag something. - This is a sideblog! I follow from my hub, @starlitcircus! I’m mutuals only and a bit selective of who I follow back and write with, primarily for the sake of preserving mental energy. Writing can take a lot out of me. Non-mutuals and non-RP blogs are more than welcome to send in asks, but please do not reblog any roleplay-related posts! - All art under the ‘Mun Art’ tag is my own. Please do not repost it or use it for anything. I also colored the transparent Jim graphic used in my promo/pinned! - I have issues with my memory and comprehension, which can lead to slower replies and may require a bit more out of character discussion. If you’d like to plot something out, or if i’ve forgotten or misremembered something in a thread or ask, please let me know via Tumblr DM’s or Discord. I will message you if I need a reminder or clarification on something as well. - I’m open to writing with canon and OC muses of all kinds within reason. I draw a hard line at writing with blogs portraying Nazis or fascists, even those with fictional ideologies only “mirroring” real-world Nazism. (Marvel’s Hydra organization, for example). This includes AUs and OCs. If I find a blog following me that has this kind of muse or AU, I will soft or hard block as necessary. Other properties I will not engage with are Harry Potter, and Attack On Titan.

How I play Jim

First off, i’m well aware of Doug Tennapel’s views and his old man yells at cloud takes. I will be using some art of his for graphics and icons alongside screenshots from the cartoon and production art from other members of the Shiny team, and parts of my portrayal are indeed influenced by the original games he had a hand in making, but I want to make it clear I don’t support any of his views, nor do I wish to simply brush off his right-wing, anti-lgbtq+ sentiments. My portrayal of Jim, as I said, pulls from several influences including the first two games, a bit from the ‘95-’96 cartoon, the three-issue Marvel comic from that same period, and of course some headcanons here and there. I also include a few things that were either elaborated on or changed in Tennapel's graphic novels, but not much. Those books were honestly kind of a trash fire. Jim’s from Texas like he is in the games and comic, and retains his southern drawl. If his accent seems off its because 1) I’m Canadian, and 2) He’s a worm, he shouldn’t be talking in the first place. I'm super down for discussing pre-established relationships! Since this is both a mixed canon and headcanon portrayal I would prefer if you didn't assume too much about this Jim and his relationships with or views on certain characters, but very general stuff that's consistent across the games, show, and comics--e.g. Jim being in love with Princess What's-Her-Name, Peter Puppy being Jim's pal/sidekick, The Queen wanting the Super Suit back from Jim, etc etc--is more or less fair game. If you'd like anything about my particular mixed canon/headcanon mishmash elaborated on, feel free to ask me! Or even ask Jim!

Okie doke, that's about it! Thanks for reading!!

[wastemanjohn]

happy dadfucker friday! pre-established deanjohn, do you have any headcanons about weird and boundary crossing behaviour?

(like, the deanjohn equivalent of weirdcest)

yes. i have this one:

sammy's finally in bed (teenagers, man), and dean's putting together the stupid kid's lunch for tomorrow when dad comes through the front door kinda loudly. dean can smell the alcohol from the kitchen, hard stuff, cheap stuff; and dean dutifully forgets about putting too-expensive meat-salt-fun free fillings into sam's sandwiches, because dad sounds like he's in a state, and it sounds like he needs dean.

dad's got beer down his shirt and human blood on his knuckles and one of his eyebrows is burst, he's so wasted dean has to help him into the living room to sit down, and dad's got this blank look in his eyes and he isn't saying much. it's a bad night.

dean gets the first aid kit out and a tall glass of water, and dad grips unsteady so it spills a bit, while dean digs around for needle and thread. dean says "i should see the other guy, right?" with this chuckle, like a chirpy er nurse, and dad's eyes mist over, like they do on the really bad nights, those nights when he's so drunk and sad and quiet; so dean forgets the needle and thread altogether and he sits down next to dad, he puts an arm around him and he holds dad's rough scarred up hand and says "it's okay, it's okay now, i'm here, dad," and dad squeezes his hand so tight with that dry palm that dean feels like his bones are gonna break but he doesn't say a word because it's nice when dad needs him, because all too often dad feels so far away and untouchable; but he always comes back to dean eventually, he trusts dean, and that's very, very good.

he gets dad calm enough that eventually dad lets go of his hand, and he's looking a little less stiff; and dean sews up that gash above his brow as gently as he can, and dad sips the water dean gave him and doesn't even wince for the stitching because he's hardcore, and dean is gonna be just like him one day; and "lets get you to bed," dean says when he's done, and dad runs his fingers through dean's hair and he nearly almost smiles; and he doesn't ask for dean to come with him, and he doesn't have to, because dean is good at this, he knows what dad needs without him even saying a word, and dad near-smiles again, and he doesn't tell dean he's lucky to have him but dean pretends he does, and he thinks that's what dad might say, if he ever said things like that.

upstairs, dad strips down to his boxers because he does that when he's drunk, and it's hot in here anyway, and dean doesn't want him to feel self conscious in the morning so he does the same; and it's fine, because he has to stay anyway, because what if dad throws up in the night or something, he could choke, and besides, his body is nothing dad hasn't seen before, dad's is nothing dean hasn't seen before; and in the dark, dean shifts towards the center of the bed, because he loves being close, and be thinks dad might like it too. and dad doesn't have to ask dean to rub his back, to work the little cricks out of his neck with his fingers, but dean does it anyway because he knows it helps dad sleep; and it helps him sleep too, soothing, because he loves how warm and solid dad's body feels underneath his hands.

[kookicat]

The Macaron Job 

I'm a damned idiot, Eliot thinks and scowls at the sheeting rain outside the kitchen window. It's a horrible damp day, the sort that turns his hair into a curly mess that defies even the hottest flat iron, and he's making macarons. They're never going to dry, he thinks and pokes the closest one with a clean fingertip, scowl deepening as the mix sticks to his skin. 

It wasn't like there were a million other, more rainy day compatible things he could have made. Like brown butter and oatmeal cookies. Or madeleines. Or lemon and poppy seed muffins, with a lemon glaze, sweet and sharp. Or an apple pie, rich and golden and spiked with cinnamon. Or even sugar cookies. 

But Parker had asked for French macarons, and he's never been able to say no to the women, especially when Sophie gets in on the act. So he's stuck in the kitchen, babysitting a sheet pan of macarons that are stubbornly refusing to form any sort of skin. They're never going to work, he thinks and sighs, pulling out the ingredients to make a batch of sugar cookies, just in case, letting his hands fall into the familiar actions while his mind wanders, pondering what else he wants to add to his newly established kitchen garden. 

It's another part of himself that he's reclaimed, once he'd committed to the team, and it had taken him a while to get comfortable with his hands in the dirt again, but damn, it was nice to replace the old blood on his hands with warm, fragrant soil, capable of giving life rather than taking it. Parker had caught on first, bugging him with questions about what the plants did until he got his first harvest of peas and squash and carrots and tomatoes, turning them into something they could eat, remembering exactly how at peace he'd felt, sitting down at the table to eat a meal he'd produced in more ways than one. 

He glances at the tray of macarons again, feeling irritation niggle at him when they still aren't set. The sugar cookie dough forms a neat ball under his hands and he shapes it into a log, wrapping it in plastic and slipping it in the fridge to chill, trying to ignore the urge to glare at the macarons. Like that'll make them set faster, he thinks and has to laugh at himself, just a little. Truth be told, there's not many other places he'd rather be on a rainy day than his kitchen, even if he is stuck with the least rainy day friendly bake ever. 

Quiet footsteps head towards the kitchen and he keeps his back to the door, deliberately, ignoring the prickle between his shoulders that he still can't quite shake. He trusts them with his life and his soul and his sanity, but bone deep instincts aren't so easy to turn off. "They're not done yet," he says when the steps transfer from wood to the tile floor in the kitchen, knowing as good as he was, he wouldn't have heard her if she didn't want him to, because the woman was like a damn cat, all liquid grace and soft steps. 

"They didn't take this long last time," she complains, boosting herself onto the counter and reaching around him to steal a crumb of sugar cookie dough from the big copper mixing bowl. 

Eliot tucks a curly strand of hair behind his ear and glances at the window, where the rain has become even worse, pouring down in a way that makes him wonder idly if they need to start building an arc. Hardison would hate that, he thinks, all those animals to manage and manages not to grin too widely. "Last time it wasn't pouring with rain," he says, and lifts an eyebrow at her when she frowns. 

She sneaks another scrap of cookie dough, chewing thoughtfully. "That makes a difference?" 

"Sure." He crosses his arms, resisting the urge to poke the damned macarons again, and leans back against the cabinet. "It's baking, Parker. Everything makes a difference." There's a thread of wry, amused annoyance in his voice. Sometimes the strict measurements, the recipes that have to be followed to the letter, the exacting nature of baking are exactly what he needs, letting him lose himself in the details, pushing back the memories for just a little while longer. It's almost like meditation, steps he knows like the notes of an old, familiar song. And sometimes, he wants the opposite, wants to grab ingredients by instinct to create something entirely new, something fresh and exciting and his in a way that baking never quite captures. 

"How do you know when they're ready?" she leans over, bumping shoulders with him, close enough that her hair brushes his cheek, nibbling on the last scrap of dough. 

"You're going to get a stomach ache," he mutters absently, tapping the closest macaron round with his pointer finger. "They're ready for baking when they don't stick to your fingers." 

It doesn't, to his surprise, and he lifts the tray, sliding it into the pre-heated oven. There's dark chocolate ganache chilling in the fridge and he pulls the bowl out, setting it on the counter to warm, pretending not to see Parker steal a spoonful as he turns away to stack the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. He turns back and has to smother a grin, because she has chocolate on her cheek and an overly innocent expression on her face. 

"Is that nice?" he asks, biting the inside of his lip to keep a straight face. 

She blinks at him, idly swinging her legs, taking care not to thump her boots into the cupboard door. "I don't know what you mean!" she says and he laughs, tossing a dish towel at her. 

"You have ganache on your face," he says and she swipes it away. 

The timer beeps and he silences it, turning the sheet pan around in the oven so everything bakes evenly. He grabs a piping bag and gives the ganache a stir, handing the spoon to Parker while he fills the bag. The kitchen smells safe, like good vanilla and sugar and chocolate and combined with the pouring rain it's making him feel relaxed, tranquil, almost sleepy in a way that's rare for him. He leans against the counter again, letting the comfortable silence stretch its legs, half an eye on the window, watching the water run down the glass. 

"You could have said no, you know," Parker says suddenly, softly and he grunts as he ponders his answer. 

"I know," he starts, and shrugs. "I didn't want to say no." 

"Oh," she says, frowning like she's missed something and normally, he wouldn't have the words to explain it to her, but it's different somehow, in the warm kitchen and he shifts his weight a little, glancing at the timer before he starts talking. 

"I wanted to," he shrugs, "For a long time, all I did was destroy stuff. People, mostly." The words sting more than he expects coming out and he pauses, clearing his throat, taking the time to figure out what he wants to say next. "I was finding my way back from that when we did that first job, but I still had a ways to go. Creating rather than destroying helps." The words are sticking in his brain and he scratches his jaw, meeting her eyes, seeing understanding there, feeling the echo of another conversation like this. "You never expect me to give more than I can." He lifts a hand, gestures vaguely at the kitchen. "This, I can give. So, yes, I could have said no, but I didn't want to." The corner of his mouth quirks up in a wry smile. "Even if you did ask for macarons on the worst possible day to make them." 

"You like them too," she protests, knowing that she's not the only one in the room with a sweet tooth. Eliot just hides his better, but she's never seen him turn down a donut yet. 

"I do," he agrees easily and shoves his hair back again. The humidity means it wants to fall in his face and his last two hair ties had mysteriously vanished. I'd order more, if I didn't think a quick sweep of the brew pub would turn up a dozen, he thinks. With three of them using them, the damn things seem to grow legs. 

"Here," Parker says and offers him a hair tie. 

He takes it, pretty sure it had started out life as one of his to begin with and puts his hair up, washing his hands just as the timer starts to beep. He turns off the tap and dries his hands as Parker silences the alarm, grabbing a dry dish towel before he pulls the sheet pan out of the oven. 

They're not his best batch ever - some are more oval than round, and he's enough of a perfectionist to find that annoying, but they smell great and he sets the sheet pan down on the cooling rack. 

"How soon can we eat them?" Parker asks and he swats her hand away as she reaches for one. 

"They're hot," he says absently, before he remembers that he's talking to Parker and she seems to spend a quarter of her life in places where anyone else would find the heat unbearable. "Let them cool, or they'll break when you move them," he adds. "It shouldn't take long." 

The kitchen is cool and he knows from experience that the macarons will be cold enough to handle pretty quickly. He just needs to distract Parker until that point. 

"There's sugar cookie dough in the fridge. We can shape those while these cool," he suggests and she brightens. 

"Can we make dinosaurs?" she asks, seeming to bounce on the spot without actually moving. 

"No," he says, because sugar cookies should be round and he's pretty sure the dinosaur cutters found a new home, far away from his kitchen. 

She frowns. "Animals then." 

He pulls the dough out of the fridge and sets it next to the ganache while he preps another sheet pan. "No," he says, because he's fairly sure the animal cutters went to live on the same farm as the dinosaurs. "Rounds are fine."

"You're no fun," she grumps and frowns at him, seeing the quirk in his lip that means he's secretly amused and not buying her act at all. 

"I made you two types of cookie," he protests, and reaches into the cupboard on the wall, pulling out a new blend of sprinkles. They're less lurid than her usual pick, but they're also dyed with natural extracts and not chemicals he can't pronounce and so he figures it's a decent trade off. 

"Ooh, sprinkles!" Parker says, grinning at him. "Sprinkles are fun." 

He cuts the log of cookie dough into neat, even slices and arranges them on the tray, reaching over to turn the oven up, wondering what to defrost for dinner. It's just him and Parker, for a change, because Nate and Sophie have a table booked at a fancy new restaurant and Hardison is at some game thing with his friends. Eliot doesn't rate the new restaurant - the menu is overly complicated, and he knows enough about Hardison's game nights to know he'll come home stuffed with enough cheap pizza, orange soda and gummy frogs to fuel a small army for a week. Parker would be quite happy with a bowl of whatever luridly coloured cereal she'd latched onto for the week, but Eliot is craving something rich and warming and comforting, because the weather shows no sign of improving. There's a ragu sauce in the freezer and he pulls it out, setting it aside to defrost, knowing there's fresh pasta in the fridge and homemade dinner rolls in the bread bin. 

Parker is rifling in the drawer next to her knees and pulls out a star shaped cutter. "Stars?" she says and waves it at him. 

"Fine," he says, and rolls his eyes. "Make half of them stars." 

She hops down and crosses to the sink to wash her hands, humming happily as she desecrates half of his perfectly round cookies. He sighs and presses the scraps together, wrapping them in plastic and dumping them in the fridge for later. The cookies will be a little tough, but that's nothing a glass of milk can't solve. 

The oven beeps to let him know it's reached temp, and he slides the cookie pan in, checking the macarons and finding them nicely cool. "You wanna fill these?" he asks as he gathers the stuff he needs for a simple glaze for the sugar cookies. "Just don't eat all of them," he warns as she takes the piping bag from his hands. 

It's the sort of kitchen task she's good at, hands that can crack a safe in seconds graceful as she works the piping bag. Piping makes his hands and wrists ache - he's broken too much stuff for there not to be consequences- so he's glad she took to it so readily. 

They work in comfortable silence as he sets the ragu sauce in a pan over a low flame to defrost and adds pasta to a second pan- fettuccine, not the one of the random bags of shaped pasta that keep appearing in his kitchen. He'd opened the cupboard and found pasta pandas a few weeks ago and wondered seriously if he'd taken one too many blows to the skull before Hardison claimed them. 

The glaze for the cookies comes together easily under his hands and he pours it into another piping bag to keep it from setting while they wait for the cookies to bake. There's lemon juice in it, to offset the sweetness of the cookies and for some reason, the combination reminds him of the team, all distinctive parts that come together to be better than they ever could be alone. 

He has nothing else to do for the moment and so turns to watch Parker as she finishes off the last few macarons, piping a neat dot of ganache on one before adding a second on top. There's a new smear of chocolate over her top lip and he reckons more than one has made its way into her stomach. 

There's an odd macaron left and she offers it to him. "They're really good," she says, around the bite in her mouth. "Is there a secret ingredient? What is it?" 

Love, he thinks and takes the macaron, knowing he's smiling again. "Now that would be telling," he says instead. 

[rivalsforlife]

anything you’d like to see the most in future AA games? like character interactions, character development, a certain prosecutor and defense in a case, someone from the main cast getting accused from murder, etc

future AA games. a terrifying prospect. there are definitely things I think would be neat to see that I know AA would never do. at least not given how dd and soj did things.

As far as interactions go I think it would be neat to shake things up a bit instead of sticking with the same dynamics. One of the things that really annoyed me with soj was that they just didn't even bother trying to change up which characters interact with each other. apollo defends trucy, phoenix defends (and in the dlc case investigates with) maya, phoenix vs edgeworth... the dlc case in particular I understand is deliberate trilogy nostalgia bait which is alright I guess, I just wish they'd done something fun with the new dynamics in the game outside of that, too. Like, I talked about this before, if we had Apollo go to Khura'in instead of Phoenix, it would be fun to see Apollo and Maya interact and investigate and be co-counsel. It's shaking up the pre-established dynamic since we had three whole games of fun Phoenix-Maya dynamic, which I totally love! but at the same time this is a world with a bunch of characters who could have their dynamics explored more! Even things like Phoenix and Trucy got practically spat on by DD and especially SOJ. Having a case where the two of them get to work together would be so much fun, and it's an obvious and non-controversial choice.

Some things like Phoenix vs Edgeworth admittedly are the nostalgia bait that panders to me, and unlike an assistant situation, Edgeworth only really shows up for one case at the end so you can't really play around with his interactions as much. Even still through, keeping in mind I did like them investigating together, it would be neat to see Edgeworth also working with or against Apollo or Athena, see how he interacts with people who aren't Phoenix. You could do some neat stuff there. It really felt like with SOJ the characters rarely ever interacted outside of pre-established circles which was a bit annoying. Like, Maya never speaks to or acknowledges Trucy, her best friend's daughter, and that's a crime.

I don't want another Phoenix-centric game he's got nowhere to go. If they're going to do another Phoenix-centric game though they have to at least do something interesting with his character. SOJ was awful for that. They said it was to "challenge him" but it told me absolutely nothing new. wow phoenix would put his life on the line for his friends and clients how novel. never dealt with anything like that before. Apollo's backstory is such a mess now I have no idea how they'd follow up on it. A spiritual successor to AA4 elaborating on the plot threads introduced in that game would be very neat, though I doubt Capcom would do that.

An Athena-centric game could be interesting since she has the most room to grow as a lawyer, the problem is she's not that popular in contrast to Phoenix and Apollo. Also lots of the interesting stuff about Athena was wrapped up in DD, so you'd really need to dive more into her own motivations for becoming a lawyer outside of Simon? Like... Phoenix became a lawyer in part to save Edgeworth, but also because of the class trial which motivated him to save people who have no one else on their side, or at least so that nobody feels as alone as he was at the time. I'm admittedly not as familiar with DD but I can't remember any sort of secondary motivation for Athena outside of "my brother-uncle-figure is on death row and I want to help him". I think that could be neat to explore if they actually put effort into it.

Overall I just want more interesting character choices because SOJ in particular felt very devoid of that for me. SOJ's character decisions felt nonsensical so many times. I'm mostly into AA for the characters and their relationships and how they grow over time, so like... that's something that's super important to me. I think it could be neat to have characters come back but like... in relatively minor roles. Kinda like how they brought Adrian back for T&T. You could see her character growth from who she was in JFA, and she didn't take over the entire plot, allowing for other characters and their dynamics to take center. Contrast with SOJ bringing back Maya and kinda basing the whole game around "let's bring back Maya" but then not doing anything interesting with her character. oh no she's accused of murder and kidnapped again. Like, it could be neat to see Kay as a private investigator investigating a case from a different angle. Or stopping by the prosecutor's office and asking Sebastian for some details about the case. Or looking at a case a few years back that was handled by Ray. Showing these characters still exist in this world without putting them in the spotlight.

(This primarily works for characters whose roles are done, not necessarily cases like 5-3 Klavier, where the thing that stuck out to me is they never followed up on his story. Klavier's story needed more depth into it which 5-3 did not provide. Contrasted with someone like Kay who had her arc essentially wrapped up in the investigations games, and having her in a minor witness role wouldn't really feel as weird. I have no idea if this is making sense.)

Also? Maybe controversial? I wouldn't mind if they just started off with new characters in the same world. No connection to mr phoenix wright whatsoever. A soft reboot like AA4 but completely disconnected except for maybe minor witness roles for main AA characters. I liked TGAA and part of what made it so refreshing is that I didn't have expectations for these characters and was learning their story for the first time. They can do all sorts of new and interesting dynamics with new characters without shoehorning it in to a current protagonist's backstory. I think that would be neat even if hard to market. like I want to get excited for a new AA game but I am scared of what an AA7 might do to characters I love.

ugh this got long didn't it I need a tl;dr.

tl;dr: I'd like to see them shake up pre-established character dynamics a bit, possibly bring back some old characters but unobtrusively, and I wouldn't mind if they even started with new characters and a new story to try and keep things fresh and explore new character dynamics without being bogged down by series lore.

[tossawary]

Chapter 24: “Seeing is Believing” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” random favorite lines and commentary. Not a full list or full commentary, but longer commentary than usual to talk about quest construction. 

-

AN: This was... a weird chapter to write. When I started outlining, I had... the conversation with Shen Qingqiu planned... the conversation with Shen Yuan planned... the fact that SQH, SY, LQG, and LFL was the quest party... and the fact that they get the Eye at the end of it. That was everything. 

The entire rest of this chapter came together FRIDAY LAST WEEK. 

Huan Hua Palace wasn’t going to be there. The Weeper didn’t exist. The Eye or its previous owner wasn’t at all connected to the Garden Master. The Shadow Cave Wolf Spiders didn’t exist. The murder plant didn’t exist. The mysterious monster showing up at the end wasn’t originally planned either. 

I mean, I had a lot of pre-existing plot threads to tie in and weave with, but ohhh boy! Picture someone lying facedown on a floor like, “I forgot to plan the contents of the super important quest...” 

I was originally going to have the Eye quest a lot simpler, but given the weight “Death of the Author” had when I finally reached this part of the story, that wasn’t really going to do! It had to be bigger than that! It needed oomph! This also felt like a good opportunity to really establish the new SQH-SY dynamic. To explore SY fumbling to find a place in this world without strict character role, especially in relation to settled and well-supported SQH. 

- 

“One attempts to remain dignified,” Shen Qingqiu agrees. “As there is little point in kicking and screaming about how such ignobility isn’t fair.”

“Ha! Is there ever?”

“Not in my experience.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely not cute when I do it,” Shang Qinghua jokes.

Shen Qingqiu’s lips actually twitch at that.

Success?!

- 

AN: I wasn’t going into this fic with the intention of writing any Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu almost friendship! But it started developing and it seemed a shame not to explore Shang Qinghua developing a real relationship with Shen Qingqiu (though not a particularly close one) when the man is suppose to be the scum villain (and the readers know that the man might get replaced by Shen Yuan). 

I can see myself writing more Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu content in the future. Someone dropped a particularly nice prompt for them in my inbox that I’m looking forward to exploring at some point. 

(I mean, not to say that Shang Qinghua has a type, but Shang Qinghua has a type and it’s handsome, deadly, intimidating, frosty men with a villainous character design and trust/abandonment and communication issues. I could make it work.)

- 

“Ah, well, two ‘ideal’ situations come to mind: severing the personal relationship for good… or, ah, talking about how to do better and trying that. You don’t have to forget or even forgive if you don’t want to! But, ah… there’s got to be a difference between totally swallowing your anger and cutting ties forever, right?” Shang Qinghua says awkwardly. “If there’s… ever going to be anything good afterwards…”

Shen Qingqiu stares at him for a sweat-inducing length of time.

 “Ah, fuck,” Shang Qinghua thinks.

“Sorry,” he says. “Ahhh, I’m just… thinking about something someone told me… in… in regards to some of my own problems. Never mind! Never mind!”

- 

AN: Luo Jiahui really is out here making Moshang and Qijiu get their fucking act together just by setting a better example. 

- 

“Shizun, my apologies for the interruption, but I came to ask Shizun if he would be willing to join our music lesson today? The disciples have missed his playing and are eager to present their improvements.”

“...Very well, unless anyone here would disagree…?” Shen Qingqiu looks directly at the Qian Cao Peak cultivator, as though daring her to object and die.

“It’s an excellent suggestion!” the Qian Cao Peak cultivator says quickly.

The young woman smiles. “And perhaps Shizun could sit in on the calligraphy lesson afterwards? In order to offer his opinion on my progress as a teacher?”

“Fishing for compliments is unbecoming,” Shen Qingqiu says dryly.

“Wait, what?” Shang Qinghua thinks.

- 

AN: So, this has all been happening in the background, but Shen Qingqiu accepted this House of Rejuvenation woman onto his Peak about... 6-ish years ago now? This is kind of meant to parallel Shang Qinghua’s once-secret relationship with Luo Jiahui. 

Shang Qinghua was out here trying to be a better person and Shen Qingqiu noticed; now Shen Qingqiu has his own positive (platonic) relationship with a nameless background character who was meant to die for plot reasons. What a thing, huh? If the story was saved because Shang Qinghua started a domino effect of saving random people who went on to change things? 

- 

After all, as Shang Qinghua said to the kid, besides Peerless Cucumber’s apparent talent for cultivation, he knows that his fellow transmigrator has three very important skills that will serve him well on An Ding Peak! 1) An encyclopedia knowledge for even seemingly pointless bullshit (which is kind of flattering, honestly). 2) The willingness to fight total strangers over seemingly pointless bullshit. And 3) a sharp enough tongue to win.

Peerless Cucumber didn’t find these points as funny as Shang Qinghua did.

- 

AN: Shen Yuan was always going to end up on An Ding Peak. I thought about sending him to Qing Jing or Qian Cao or Qiong Ding... or any other Peak... but that would take him too far away from Shang Qinghua to really explore their relationship and to move him around conveniently in the story. And SY sticking to An Ding seemed to best illustrate the fact that SY is lost and doesn’t know what to do except cling to SQH. 

- 

“It���s not much, sure, but it’s yours,” Shang Qinghua says finally. “You’ll be joining the talisman classes soon, so don’t try anything from a book and then need to request some home repairs.”

Peerless Cucumber nods and puts his stack of manuals down on the table.

“How’s your tutorial mission going?”

“Fine,” the kid says shortly. “Have you found anything for the other one yet?”

“Ah, not yet.”

- 

AN: “Are you winning, son?” meme energy here. 

- 

Ah, now Shang Qinghua recognizes his fellow transmigrator’s expression! That’s the same stunned expression one of his Huan Hua not-disciples, Yu Chaonan, made upon meeting the Bai Zhan Peak War God for the first time. Shang Qinghua assumes that Peerless Cucumber was expecting a man who looked more like a musclebound giant and less like a pop idol (if one with amazingly muscular arms), which is a super common and never-not-funny misconception people have about Liu Qingge.  

“Brother of one of the most beautiful women in this world, bro,” Shang Qinghua reminds his fellow transmigrator, amused. Aha! Now Peerless Cucumber’s vehement disinterest in the harem stuff is making even more sense than before!

Shang Qinghua’s assumption gets 100% confirmed when it comes time for Peerless Cucumber to fly with Liu Qingge for the next leg of the journey. The other transmigrator is so embarrassed and awkward about it that Shang Qinghua’s super direct brother-in-law asks if the young man is alright.

- 

AN: This was so fun to write. Shang Qinghua really can use the Liu siblings to gauge people’s sexual/romantic orientation. 

- 

The map (or rather, the copy Shang Qinghua made of the delicate original map) takes them to a green and grey landscape of leafy trees crawling over a wide network of tall cliffs and deep gorges. Gurgling rivers cut through twisting rock formations. Shang Qinghua can’t see any of these rivers on the map. Or these deathly drop ravines. From the outside, the whole thing looks like a natural maze (holy shit, there could be so many monsters and death-traps in there!), and Shang Qinghua would know those golden robes flying low over the hanging trees anywhere.

“Huan Hua,” Liu Qingge mutters.

“Do you think they’re looking for what we’re looking for?” Luo Fanli asks.

“That’s usually how it goes,” Peerless Cucumber says, before Shang Qinghua can.

- 

AN: I came up with the skeleton idea first. Then I was like... “I should give it three eyes.” And then I was like... “But who IS this dead author? A god? A spirit? What grander implications am I spinning here?” 

And THEN I remembered that I had some ambiguous powerful being force the Garden Master into exile due to a flood. This was because, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the immortal man Gilgamesh meets in the abyss is the survivor of a great flood. So I was like, “Reduce! Re-use! Recycle! There’s my skeleton!” 

So I wanted to relate the skeleton to water because of the flood angle. Water as a symbol of cleansing/reincarnation is a big thing throughout many cultures. I can’t remember exactly how the crying aspect came up, but I knew there was going to be water in the temple now, so at some point my brain like was, “Bro, this skeleton should totally be crying because mythology vibes.” 

So I built the surrounding land off the idea that there was water flowing from or around this temple. At this point, I had decided that Huan Hua Palace should also be looking for this artifact, so I had to come up with a way to hide the temple, yet have a way for SQH’s party to track it down. 

- 

The damage to the doors is worse: someone once upon a time collapsed a part of the cliff face around the entrance, essentially leaving only the top fourth of the utterly smashed stone doors visible. It’s a wall now and has been for ages. It looks like it would take days to dig through the rubble. Someone has even super helpfully carved, “These doors will never open again,” just above the wreck.

“Guess we’ll have to go in as intruders rather than guests!” Luo Fanli says.

“What would be welcoming us inside a lost temple exactly?” Shang Qinghua asks vaguely, inwardly cursing the fact that explosive mining techniques will definitely attract the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators’ attention and also probably collapse the whole cliff on them.

“We only have to clear a passage for us, not the whole door,” Peerless Cucumber says optimistically. “Is there a special technique for this kind of thing?”

“Aha, not really.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t we just keep following the water?” Luo Fanli says.

“...How so?” Shang Qinghua asks.

“Some of those waterfalls could be passages inside,” Liu Qingge explains, because he and the little sister-in-law apparently share the same brain. He’s already eyeing the waterfall wearing down the giant statue on the left.

- 

AN: Temples in quests need to have traps and obstacles and monsters! Well, not ALL of the did, but this one did. I based the obstacles they faced as much as I could around the whole “Death of the Author” theme, while using this whole quest to explore Shen Yuan, Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua, Shang Qinghua and Liu Qingge and Luo Fanli, and so on. 

The idea here with the door is that the “author” is not going to let them inside the temple to take the interpretation of the narrative (the Eye) for themselves. The story is over (the temple is closed for business)! The author is dead! If they want to get inside, they have to break inside or slip inside as intruders. 

This also creates a convenient obstacle to hold up the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators so that our party can be nearly caught later! And shows off Shang Qinghua, Liu Qingge, and Luo Fanli’s twisty lines of thinking. 

- 

Luo Fanli is holding the light and Shang Qinghua passes the other transmigrator to her, while accepting Liu Qingge’s hand for help getting out of the water.

“Ahhh, that was fun,” Shang Qinghua mutters.

Then he notices that Liu Qingge has the Cheng Luan sword out and ready. Shang Qinghua looks through the surrounding darkness, but all he can see are columns and water. For a moment, he thinks he sees something, a prowling shadow at the other end of the cavernous room, but he wipes the water out of his eyes and it’s gone.

- 

AN: The water in Shang Qinghua’s eyes briefly lets him see a flash of the invisible monsters who show up later! It helps up the tension. 

- 

Another low growl rips through the darkness and Peerless Cucumber shuffles a little closer to Shang Qinghua. Because that sounded really fucking close and yet Shang Qinghua still can’t see the thing that’s making that sound.

He doesn’t see Liu Qingge lunge at him either. He only feels his brother-in-law shove him into Peerless Cucumber, knocking them into the water, out of the way of something that howls when Liu Qingge slashes at it with his sword. Shang Qinghua rolls off Peerless Cucumber and looks up just in time to see dark blood splatter across the watery floor. Liu Qingge pursues the attacker with a second slash, but only seems to meet thin air this time.

“It’s invisible!” Luo Fanli cries. “Fuck!”

“Behind you!” Liu Qingge snaps, and spins to slash at the thin air beside him. Dark droplets of blood hit the water again and something hisses at him.

Luo Fanli whirls and slashes, searching for an opponent.

“They’re reflected in the water!” Liu Qingge yells at her, standing guard over Shang Qinghua as he gets to his feet again. “Listen for their footsteps and vocalizations! Feel the demonic energy and air displacement!”

- 

AN: I got this from a list of Dungeons and Dragons puzzles. The idea is that there’s some puzzle that must be solved, but the truth of the room can only be seen in the reflection of the nearby water (or mirror or whatever). 

Which felt fitting for a “Death of the Author” quest! Whatever an author’s intentions, the story is what they actually wrote, so the audience interprets a text without the context of the author’s insight. The truth (of the story) is in the reflection (audience interpretation)! It felt like a fun idea. 

It also allows Shen Yuan to actually contribute to the quest via monster lore and bring up his impaired vision problem. And to confront Shen Yuan with the reality of this world. And to show off Luo Fanli’s fighting skills. And to show off LIU QINGGE’S legendary fighting skills, instincts as a warrior who fights many dangerous beasts, and the fact that he’s clever and observant! 

Liu Qingge is good at what he does! And this is what he does! 

- 

Someone has… angrily… or desperately… carved a lopsided message into the wall.

 “‘If I go blind, so does the world,’” Peerless Cucumber reads.

“...That’s probably not good,” Shang Qinghua says.

“Nooo…” Fanli agrees.

The messages continue as they climb, carved into the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Most of it is illegible. Some of it is just nonsense. Some of it looks like the same kind of historical records carved into the broken tablets. Some of it looks like someone attacked the walls after reading what was written there. There are deep gouges in the walls and cracked marks that would match a giant’s hands.

 “‘The water cleans the lies,’” Peerless Cucumber reads. “‘I am the only one who can see.’ ‘Lies everywhere, lies everywhere, lies everywhere.’ ‘The water cleans the evil.’ ‘I do not have enough tears.’ ‘Everything is nothing now. Everything in vain.’”

“You really don’t need to read them!” Shang Qinghua tells the kid. “It’s fine. It's totally fine.”

- 

AN: This is mostly here to up the tension, but it’s also here to try and give insight into this being and relate them more to the “Death of the Author” and the “Seeing is Believing” themes. 

I also saw the phrase “If I go blind, so does the world” while I was browsing a list of riddles for D&D campaigns and I was like, “THAT’S SICK, I’M USING THAT.” Really brings the “an eye for an eye” and vengeance vibes. (The riddle was longer than that one phrase, but the answer was “the sun”.) 

- 

The top of the temple reveals one massive room that looks like someone was alternatively scratching their insanity into the walls and tearing chunks out of the interior design with their bare hands. Overtop of the rubble is that eerie overgrowth. There’s a fine layer of water over the floor. At the center of it all is an incredibly enormous desk, cracked in half, with a robed skeleton sitting behind it, slumped over the top. It’s a little too large to be an ordinary human.

Plus, its skull is a little too long, probably to accommodate the third eye socket in the forehead. There’s something gleaming softly yellow in the third eye socket.

“Is… there water dripping from its eyes?” Luo Fanli whispers.

“It looks like it…” Peerless Cucumber whispers back. “Like it's crying…?”

“Still…? Is it dead or not?”

 “Holy shit,” Shang Qinghua thinks, slightly nauseated. “System, bro, the worst bro I’ve ever known, tell me that we have not been swimming in a three-eyed skeleton’s magical undead tears or something this whole time.”

The shitty, no-good System stays unsurprisingly silent. 

- 

AN: Okay, so the idea here is that this being was someone who recorded history and shared their knowledge freely. This being had the ability to discern the truth of a person - they were extremely perceptive. (The Weeper is either female or doesn’t have a gender, by the way.) 

The Weeper met the Garden Master at some point. The Garden Master was an asshole, a liar, arrogant, etc.. The Weeper and the Garden Master clashed badly, until the Weeper sent the cleansing flood that nearly destroyed the sect and the Garden Master essentially had to flee to a personal abyss. 

The Garden Master sent the plant as a final “fuck you” to the Weeper. The plant caused the Weeper to slowly go mad. The smashed tablets and destroyed temple are the Weeper’s work. The Weeper (not in a great state of mind) had the temple closed themselves once they realized they and their work had been corrupted. This was a “you destroy my (embellished) reputation, I destroy yours (and your entire life)” plot by the Garden Master. 

The idea behind the tears is the whole “water is cleansing” thing. The Weeper tried to clean away the madness using their magical water-related abilities... and it actually worked for a long time. But eventually the madness began to overpower the effects of the magical water. The Weeper’s tears are from frustration and helplessness at losing control. 

The water inside the temple combats the plant’s physical effects. Also stabbing the root killed the plant and essentially broke its mental/spiritual powers. 

- 

Unfortunately, to get the fuck out of here, they have to go back through the temple. But hey! That’s still a lot better than an extended hike through an underground, haunted desert in darkness! The battle with the now-dead plant caused its growth to writhe around the temple. The vines need to be hacked through sometimes as they travel down through the rooms of broken shelves and shattered tablets.

“So much history lost…” Peerless Cucumber murmurs.

 “He still thinks of himself as a reader - an observer, a visitor, separate from the flow of fate.”

- 

AN: This is... absolutely based on the Heart from the Dishonored franchise. But this sort of item didn’t originate with Dishonored and I need it! It’s a surprise/mystery tool that will help us later! 

The Eye isn’t exactly a mind-reading object. I mean, it kind of is, but it works in a very specific way that I’m looking forward to getting into. 

- 

From there, their path back out of the natural maze is even more careful and stressful than before, now that the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators are actively looking for them rather than the temple. It’s slow-going and stressful and silent, except for when the Weeper’s Eye presses too close against his chest.

 “He is afraid that if he starts screaming, he will never stop,” it tells him, when he’s looking at a pale-faced Peerless Cucumber, as they fly over a particularly deathly-looking drop.

 “Oh, me too, bro!” Shang Qinghua thinks. “Seriously! Tell me something I don’t know!”

- 

AN: Having Shang Qinghua be totally unimpressed by an object like this was very funny to me. He’s the author! He’s a transmigrator! He knows these people well! He already has insight into their situations. 

- 

Shang Qinghua groans, but supposes that Peerless Cucumber would have at least been disguising Liu Qingge from the back. “You tell them that you were tracking thieves who stole something from Cang Qiong Mountain Sect,” he says quickly. “Rule of embarrassment! Admitting something that makes us look bad to a rival makes it sound true. Don’t tell them what was stolen and act really offended if they try to poke into Cang Qiong business. I’ll come back as soon as I get these two out!”

Liu Qingge nods and launches forward into the fight.

“We’re just leaving him?” Peerless Cucumber says, as they do exactly that.

“I’ll get changed and come back ‘looking for him for urgent sect business’ as soon as I’ve dropped you two off in the last town,” Shang Qinghua says. “I’m really good at acting stressed and confused, and at desperately needing an unstoppable wandering Liu Qingge back at Cang Qiong Mountain Sect immediately. Now let’s go! Let’s go! Mission isn’t over yet!”

- 

AN: Shang Qinghua is, at heart, a liar. I love him. 

[mowu-moment]

i feel controversial & i care too much, so here's my des rocs complete tierlist

ranked list & reasoning (ish) under the cut

1. WAYNE: hoholy shit wayne. can hardly put into words how explosive this one is to me. the intro sets a Whole Mood before swiftly (& cleanly) smacking it down into an Absolute Banger and i don't use the term lightly. very hard not to scream along with it. only detriment is that wayne the person is kinda an ass in the mmc video but that's no qualm

2. POS: basically the same thing as wayne (oh both have great lyrics btw, this one more so), only gets points knocked for being 2 minutes long and having 30 seconds of that being intro & outro. go danny give us nothing

3. WHY WHY WHY: there's a theme among my top picks--they're all hard-hitting w/ killer guitar. the lyrics are absolute batshit in a good way, but the chorus is a lil flat & i feel like in general it just needed a touch more spice to score the top spot. or maybe it's just seniority & it'll have a coup a few months out idk

4. DEAD RINGER: similar killer guitar & lyrics but this one is Groovy as Hell. don't particularly like his singing in this one & it's too repetitive if i'm feeling grumpy but there's something so magic about after the bridge. top 10 songs to twirl a flag to

5. NOTHING PERSONAL: the minute long outro irks me & it's a little bit empty but plays into that well. groovy, great lyrics, the Sexiest Guitar Solo of the lot, the screaming's a minus but it does have an emotion there. not entirely sure what one but it's there.

6. LET ME LIVE / LET ME DIE: his first time being all over the goddamn place, history was made. amazing guitar, a little worse lyrics than 1-4 i'll admit, the intro Slays me both in a good and bad way. must be a joy to play live where he can just drag out that intro & bridge as long as feels right. at least i liked it in the digital concert like that. would actually kill me in a physical concert, imagine how much stomping gets going to that beat. bonus points for presumable cowbell

7. PIECES: for once not this high for the guitar & lyrics, they're both kinda basic. idk what's about this one but it just takes me to a separate dimension & i love it so much for that. really fills those earholes. also a bit of personal meaning, heard it for the first time on the day we moved into the house i'm currently split-custody-living in (is that tmi?) & the first music video of his i saw. man i love some spaghetti on the wall

8. SLO: basically the same as dead ringer, but knocked points for a kinda lame outro & the subject matter being a little less interesting to me. still lovely.

9. HANGING BY A THREAD: not my normal fare really & the way that the ends of the verses don't really fit in the pacing of them is bleh, but it's just so reminiscent of the songs my brother puts on whenever we hang out together that it just makes me all warm & fuzzy. it's also nicely put together which is something i'll have to start saying for. the later list.

10. SUICIDE ROMANTICS: this is where i start griping about head voice & higher pitches in general. don't like em so the pre-chorus is a lil annoying. also not my normal fare but it's tender & the ending is awe-striking. imo better live where he's loud on that last line before the final chorus. not enough to bump it up though. shoutouts to love and a smoking gun, i still am dying to hear that one

11. THE PAST HAS PASSED AWAY: my favorite lyrics out of the first 2 ep's. only thing wrong with it really is the bridge getting kinda repetitive. love that last chorus heehoo. same schpeel as the Banger Category

12. MMC: this one's lower than the rest of the Bangers for being pop punk which is something the radio has made me dislike, i guess. that trope with the guitar in the second half of the chorus just kills me so much. improves greatly during & after the bridge, love that lil ragtime piano. generally the same bit as before but i do love him doing something un-romance-related. yeah fuck the establishment!

13. THE DEVIL INSIDE: reminds me A Lot of the electronic-ish cassettes i've got from the early 90's but that's just me. this one will probably move up as i get more used to it, but only a little bit. the first part of the second verse makes me like. genuinely uncomfy? but the second part of it's fantastic. ending's ass though what happened to the instrumence. bonus points for using 'reverie' that's an SAT word (maybe). good singing but returning to the gripe at higher pitches, just a little bit though

14. THIS IS OUR LIFE: feels shockingly generic for a des rocs song tbh but there's nothing really wrong with that. adore the bridge. singing's alright. kinda miffed that he doesn't pronounce the 'f' in the second 'life' in the chorus, but it makes sense here. that sort of thing won't later so i'm bringing it up now. guitar's nothing spectacular but fits nicely into the song, probably one of the most cohesive of his (especially in recent history).

15. OUTTA MY MIND: really lives in the same space as slo and dead ringer do in my head (most likely the 'songs to twirl a flag to' zone), but this is by far the worst of the three for when i'm grumpy. just. Very repetitive. back to great lyrics here but it's kinda hard to pick them out (i've heard the song at least 100 times by now & i'm still missing a few lines). still groovin'

16. RUBY WITH THE SHARPEST LIES: what the fuck actually goes on in this song by the way? not the premise or whatever it's just. so all over the place. the verses are incredible but bringing in another vocalist just for one line kills me. bridge is really cool but that one part i don't remember where it is, the one that alternates basically nothing & an Electronic Piano Chord blaring at ya? ruins it. partially anyhow. also can someone tell the people on genius that it's 'carved it in my skin' not 'crawled down in my skin'

17. GIVE ME THE NIGHT: same repetitive issue as outta my mind but it's not groovy enough to save it, shame. feels like a trial run of all the wackshit stuff he's been doing recently, with the additional vocal bits at the end & the kinda weird lyrics. it still has a place in my heart don't get me wrong but it's just fallen in favor of stuff that Commits to banger or batshit (or actually pulls off both strongly, yyy). oh yeah nice guitar alright singing etc etc

18. USED TO THE DARKNESS: similar story to give me the night. i love it i do, but it's just lackluster nowadays. also remember that under-pronunciation thing i brought up in this is our life? this is where that comes back. rampant i tell you! that second verse he just doesn't finish the words & i hate it!

19. DON'T HURT ME: i honestly don't know why this one isn't in D. the chorus bit where he just cuts it short is irksome. the lyrics aren't anything special. i don't know what i like about it. but i can tell it does exactly what it set out to do if that makes sense. respect, respect. and using missile in an analogy, he's getting creative with the vocab

20. LIVING PROOF: kinda got a vendetta against this one i think? i don't know why i hate this one but i do. it's just kinda, blah. like the perfect sort of thing to nightcore up. sentiment's lovely & i do love the lyrics even if they aren't impressive but like. it bores me to an extent

21. TICK (LIVE): separating the version i heard in the digital concert just to give it some credit, this one was actually kinda nice. another one with a nice sentiment & what he was going for is great. no clue what the second part of the second verse has to do with any of this though. and it also begins our final group, the songs that just feel empty. like there's not nearly enough going on. this one's alright though i was just hoping the studio version would add some flair. you can see where that one is though.

22. IMAGINARY FRIENDS: also got a vendetta against pop. kinda hate the sentiment here (contrast!), the chorus just falls short of what the verses prime me for, head voice is rampant, and yet i still swing along to it. it's infectious props to him. love the outro though, monkey laugh and all.

23. MAYBE, I: another empty one, like it's a four-note progression what is that. love his singing in it, and the chorus parts do round it out, but like. eh? it doesn't even give me much to say.

24. BORN TO LOSE: another flop on the chorus! too smooth i say! and i absolutely Despise the pitch-shifting thing going on. not something i was expecting him to express so points there, lyrics are nothing fancy to my Literary Mind though. initially good singing but the chorus he's just sloppy over it. the instrumental is lovely but the vocals just throw it so hard into the bin which is a right shame. fuck that outro too i hate that gimmick

25. I KNOW: here's where the bad batshit comes in. singing is some of his worst imo, does the other-vocalist thing for that bridge, genre i'm not fond of, just a soup of Stuff I Don't Like. not one i'd kill someone over putting as #1 like i can see where it comes from but. mmmmmhhhh bad. cover does NOT help his case.

26. HVY MTL DRMR: empirically i should put this one higher. but the chorus flops so goddamn hard it deserves to be in the bottom of the barrel. the verses are lovely for what he was doing back then! but then just... nothing!

27. RABBIT HOLE: i was so excited for this name but it's just sad boi hours playlist curated by some corporation you hate. probably the most nothing of them all, genuinely where are the instruments. what happened. was this one just shoehorned in as the final track just to pump numbers up. and i swear he had some autotune or something which only makes his voice worse it's fantastic naturally. also that's not what a rabbit hole is! that's not the idiom! a rabbit hole is when you go on a wikipedia spiral from jennifer lopez to group theory! not when you just have a shitty night's sleep or whatever this is! i'm not just miffed i'm downright annoyed

28. TICK (STUDIO): what the fuck happened des. how did you release this. it sounds like a 3rd grader singing for the school talent show it's so out of rhythm. singing's honestly kinda bad & the instrumental has the same problems i talked about in the live version. the last chorus is fine, i guess, but no i don't forgive him for what he did to tick.

[sepublic]

Starkiller Base was unnecessary

           Re-watching The Force Awakens, and… It’s occurred to me that, even more than I initially thought, Starkiller Base is a genuinely useless, pointless part of the plot that’s just shoehorned in for the sake of arbitrarily raising the stakes, in a blind attempt to redo the Original Trilogy while one-upping it at the same time; Taking pot shots at the original Death Star’s ‘absurdity’ to try to make Starkiller Base’s destruction feel more ‘involved’ and ‘sensible’ with having an inside job to sabotage and blow up key components, yadda-yadda; Almost feels like the writers are punching down at the Original Trilogy in a vain attempt to look more clever and ‘self-aware’, without considering how reckless power-scaling doesn’t work (Which we see once more and somehow even worse in The Rise of Skywalker).

           The thing about why the Death Star works is like… It’s relevant. It has build-up. We’re introduced to it from the start, the entire story revolves around destroying it; R2-D2 is important because he has plans to the Death Star, Vader is seen chasing Leia because she had those plans. It all comes around to and circles back to the Death Star, we have a sense of what it is from the start, there’s build-up. You NEED the planet-killing machine for the climax of A New Hope, because the only reason to go there is because, surprise- The Death Star IS there, it just arrived right besides Yavin IV!

           But Starkiller Base… When you watch the movie, it just pops in out of nowhere, amidst the pre-established plot threads. Without any prior context or build-up, we’re just suddenly treated to a shot of this huge, mechanized planet, and then Hux almost casually drops that the ‘superweapon’ is ready, and then suddenly it’s firing and blows up the Hosnian System. The Death Star is justifiable because it’s the first of its kind, Starkiller Base is the third. In canon and Legends, there’s a lot of side-material going into the sheer enormity and horror of the Death Star, the amount of manpower it takes to construct such a thing, its formation is treated with gravitas; And yet something WAY bigger and more advanced comes out of nowhere, from a group even less powerful than the Empire?!

           Again, you need the Death Star, it’s why the rebels are being chased, it’s why Leia was captured, it’s why R2-D2 meets Luke and then Obi-Wan, bringing up the Rebel journey; It’s why Luke’s aunt and uncle die, it’s why there’s no Alderaan and instead the Death Star itself to capture the protagonists when they arrive there. But Starkiller Base is pointless- The plot is about BB-8 because he has the map to Luke Skywalker, it’s about finding Luke through BB-8. Starkiller Base is just so casually dropped for something that should be so much bigger than the Death Star in the narrative… And likewise, we don’t need it for anything.

           Is it to prove to Finn that the First Order is dangerous, that he can’t just ignore its destruction? The thing is, he already has Rey’s capture to motivate his participation. Starkiller Base could not fire, but Finn would still help the Resistance infiltrate, because Rey would still be captured. It’s not needed for Poe and the Resistance to arrive on Takodana, because they came for BB-8 after getting that message, the Hosnian Cataclysm totally unrelated. You could argue it gives the Resistance an excuse to fight back against the First Order in the film’s climax… But that does not justify creating another superweapon, much less one as implausible and redundant as Starkiller Base.

           Like, maybe the writers wanted to REALLY return to the status quo, so having the New Republic be devastated was a requirement… But was it really? Just have the New Republic continue to be ineffectual, it’s even a plot-point in side material that its military is embarrassingly small; So just say the Resistance IS the full extent of that military! You still get an underdog situation. And again, if you really want to forcibly cut off any support for the Resistance… You don’t need a giant superweapon to one-up the Death Star. Just have the First Order demonstrate its traditional military power, by having a fleet invade the New Republic’s capital, unexpected, able to waltz in because everyone is so incompetently lax about these rising fascists; And with recent real-life events, it only makes more disturbing sense.

          Instead of getting a pointless superweapon, have a bunch of Star Destroyers attack Hosnian Prime and take it over, show a montage of destruction and civilian death, etc. This still establishes the danger of the First Order and how it’s quickly decapitated the New Republic and left it in shambles, setting the stage for the underdog conflict; But you don’t have to rely on something as absurdly over-the-top as Starkiller Base, which has no build-up to its unprecedented firepower besides “Oh yeah this exists” and then watching it fire and finding out firsthand.

          The death of trillions with the Hosnian System is senseless violence both in-universe and from a narrative, writing perspective… And again, this arguably establishes the First Order as a threat better, because they don’t need to rely on a superweapon; And even after The Force Awakens ends, the audience still knows that they have access to an entire fleet… Whereas with Starkiller Base, that threat is lost by the end of the film and thus made redundant. The scene could become even more disturbing if we straight-up see some civilians on Hosnian Prime welcome the First Order, adding additional world building that helps explain why the First Order was able to develop, how it got support- And again, being topical to what happens today. It connects with canon lore about the First Order’s supporters in other worlds (such as Coruscant), and could even be a callback to liberty dying with thunderous applause in Revenge of the Sith! We could still have the people on Takodana react in horror, through the Holonet’s broadcasting of the coup.

           Of course, this is Star Wars- And what’s more iconic than thrilling space battles and trench runs? Sometimes you want sci-fi fun and stuff for the sake of it, nothing wrong with that, that’s always important too… But again, you don’t need a giant super-laser to have that. Just make up something else; Like Starkiller Base is the planet that the First Order has taken over. Perhaps they intend to launch a bunch of new Star Destroyers, or are about to finish production of a whole new batch, which would make things even worse. Instead of destroying a superweapon, you could have the Resistance crippling the factories that finish these Star Destroyers- There’s your trench run! Have them blow up a power plant that’s running the factories, instead of a thermal oscillator. There’s still a victory at the end, and while the threat is far from over, time has been bought- And it makes the First Order’s immediate retaliation in the next film more sensible, adds to the idea that every second, every bit of progress helps, you gotta take what you need… Even an extra day to prepare and evacuate is a miracle that furthers the underdog motif.

           Plus, with a batch of Star Destroyers that need to be stopped- There’s still the need to rescue Rey. The Resistance still needs to cause damage at the First Order’s base, and Finn is still needed to infiltrate and lower the shields, while taking advantage of this operation for himself and Rey. Most importantly, you don’t get a contrived superweapon that only adds to the bland, carbon-copy standard of the Sequel Trilogy; And perhaps best of all, we don’t have to see Ilum retroactively bastardized and destroyed, with Starkiller Base’s identity revealed AFTER we see it get blown up… The legacy of the Jedi and its history is not further destroyed with the loss of this sacred planet of kyber crystals.

          And that’s better, because this trilogy about passing the torch, seems as insistent as Kyle Ron, the villain, on interpreting this theme as utterly wiping out all traces of the past, and leaving nothing for the next generation to work with. Which, I’m not surprised at a corporation thoughtlessly razing and salting the earth in selfish disregard for those who will need and use it afterwards, but still. And while a star that burns brighter than most thanks to its heart of Kyber IS a neat concept that could be worked with, especially with what Chirrut Imwe says, in addition to the motifs of flames of rebirth and the Phoenix… It’s not something that justifies the further eradication of Jedi history and effort on a level that even the Empire didn’t go, just to arbitrarily raise stakes with yet another uninspired superweapon.

           Like, the Duel of the Fates script and its concept of a device that blocks off all inter-galactic communication is MUCH more interesting, clever, and innovative than the Death Star Lite, and it hits closer to home in this age of internet and mass communication; In contrast to the Death Star, which fit more in its time as a criticism of the stockpiling and development of nukes, and how that tapped into the public’s fear at the time of nuclear Armageddon. And a device blocking off intergalactic communication provides good reason for why the Resistance doesn’t have the full might of the New Republic behind them, because they can’t even communicate to collaborate, and it adds to that idea of people made to feel ‘alone’ or whatever and thus isolated, so they can’t band together and rise up. That adds to Rey feeling alone, and makes Poe and Zorii’s discussion at the end of the trilogy that much more meaningful… Not that the Sequel Trilogy was planned to consider the latter, of course.

           (Actually, I wonder if it’s possible to cut Starkiller Base’s superweapon scenes from the film. Like a cut where any references to its superweapon, and the scene where it fires, is cut out; I think the film might still work that way.)

[zmediaoutlet]

my year of fic (2020)

I had a lapse in doing this, because the end of 2019 was just---a haze---but I thought it might be fun to try again on this, my first day off of 2021. Ignoring for a moment the armed sedition and the pandemic and the general feeling like the world’s about to spin upside down, I think it might be a good day. Let me try to feel some joy in writing, so that I might do some more writing this weekend. There’s a chance!

Per the AO3 stats tracker:

Total words written in 2020: 278,664 (Compared to 2019: 201,375 -- definite improvement!) That brings the overall AO3 published total to: 1,160,723. Jesus. I need another hobby, haha.

I’ll try to collect a year masterlist below, but let’s see what happened with stats first.

fic with most hits, which is not the same thing as best: no disguising truths i’ve sold -- y’all are fiends for the dadsex, just admit it. It always gives me a giggle how many hits these ones have with so few people actually interacting. :)

fic with most kudos, which I guess means people admitted they liked it: there will be better days -- which I guess isn’t a surprise, written when it was, but it’s still super gratifying to see that people enjoyed it. This one takes top spot for most of the other categories, too, so I’m going to go for the 2nd-placers on the next few...

fic with (2nd-)most comment threads, which I guess means people wanted to chat about it: In a Cursed Hour, which is a pleasant surprise! This is the very long gen (with sneaky pining!Dean), the first part of which was technically finished this year. I hope I come back to it at some point, because the story is... great, haha. Just super hard to write. Gratifying that people wanted to talk about it!

fic with (2nd-)most bookmarks, which I guess means people want to read it again: see things so much clearer -- aw, now that’s a nice surprise! This kinda felt like channeling old-school weecest, in some ways, so it’s cool that people seem to have enjoyed it.

fic with (2nd)-most subscriptions, which I guess means people are hoping for more: welcome to capitalism -- another nice surprise! I almost forgot about this one: a little ruthless, a little kind. Logical choices in a world that sucks, kind of my favorite genre, haha.

longest fic: what comes after certainty -- ow, ow. This is a---strange one---started in 2019 before the haze, published finally in a bit of ignominy, still not read by the recipient I’m pretty sure because it’s fucking depressing, haha. But I’m kinda proud of it, or at least proud of myself for finishing it, so I guess it’s good that I spent this many words on it.

least popular fic, if we’re going by kudos: transference -- lol, that makes sense -- Umbrella Academy momcest? That said tho, it’s kinda fun and you should read it. Diego’s just the biggest mommy’s boy. Ahem.

The best thing writing-wise about this year was stretching into stuff I wouldn’t normally write, thanks to the charity drives. Maybe I’ll try to do that again this year; I’m sure something horrific will happen that will need some monetary support.

In the meantime, here are all of the fics I wrote this year, in order that they were written. Probably Sam/Dean unless otherwise specified. Imagine retrospective montage music:

January

none. no surprise here.

February

the hollow summer - E. Boy King Sam, AU.

March

‘he has a kiss stuck in his mouth’ - M. Pining!Dean, Stanford era.

no disguising truths i’ve sold - E. John/Deanna, pre-series.

“I almost died” - T. Jared/Jensen, firefighter!Jared fluff.

‘sam waking dean up with his mouth’ - E, somnophilia, married!sex.

relay - E, D/s play.

April

extreme pollen warning - E, sex pollen, established relationship.

whatever we were before - E, Dragon Age AU, mage!Sam/warrior!Dean.

‘cokehead!Alex’ - T. Alex/JDM; part one.

pragmatics - E. Established wincest, past Dean/others. Prostitution.

May

teamwork (makes the dream work) - Alex/Jared/Jensen. cokehead!verse pt 2.

to dream of the next - E. First time, pining!Sam.

In a Cursed Hour: Protesting Fate Supreme - T. Men of Letters AU, ch.6.

June

FFFB 1 - M. Gabriel/Rowena, meeting through the years.

FFFB 2 - E. A/B/O, first time.

FFFB 3 - E. Jensen/Jeff, voyeur!Jared, Non-AU.

FFFB 4 - M. Cloud/Sephiroth, mindfuck.

FFFB 5 - M. Amos/Alex, pantykink.

FFFB 6 - E. Dubcon shading to noncon, pining!Dean.

FFFB 7 - M. Hannibal/Will, first kiss.

FFFB 8 - E. Post-Michael possession, piercings, body mods.

FFFB 9 - M. Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, AU.

FFFB 10 - M. Dean/Bobby, Stanford era.

FFFB 11 - E. Mommy!kink, bunker era.

FFFB 12 - M. Gen, Sam’s wall, mild self-harm.

FFFB 13 - M. Sam Wilson & Bucky Barnes, racial discussion.

FFFB 14 - M. s2, Sam’s cast.

FFFB 15 - E. Jared/Jensen, established relationship, CBT.

FFFB 16 - E. weecest, first time.

FFFB 17 - M. Sam/Dean/Jack.

FFFB 18 - M. Amnesia.

FFFB 19 - E. BDSM, sub!Dean, dildos.

FFFB 20 - E. A/B/O, demon!Dean, noncon.

FFFB 21 - T. Established relationship, Stanford discussion.

FFFB 22 - E. Dubcon, time travel, soulless!Sam/young!Dean, prostitution.

FFFB 23 - M. Implied Dean/John, jealous!Sam.

FFFB 24 - E. ‘The End’!verse, Lucifer!Sam/Dean, noncon.

FFFB 25 - E. Tentacles, body horror, oviposition.

FFFB 26 - E. Belly bulge!kink.

July

none. apparently I needed a break.

August

have a cigar - E. Sam’s powers, slight D/s.

welcome to capitalism - E. Jared/Jensen, prostitution.

September

the wealth gap - E. ‘capitalism’ pt 2; Jared/Jensen, prostitution.

what comes after certainty - M. Mutual pining, amnesia.

reunion theory - E. Cloud/Sephiroth, Cloud/Hojo. Body horror, torture, mpreg. Fic for fire relief 1.

the honeytrap - E. Jared/Jensen, mob!AU. FFFR 2.

scotch courage - M. Sam/Kevin, hair play. FFFR 3.

he will tear your city down - E. Damen/Laurent, slight D/s. FFFR 4.

cyrano - E. Jensen/Antony Starr, established J2. D/s, consensual infidelity. FFFR 5.

two runners on base - E. Dean/Deacon, established relationship, BDSM, DP. FFFR 6.

what’s to stop me, pretty baby - E. Noncon, MoC!Dean. FFFR 7.

the need to choose - E. A/B/O, pregnant!Dean. FFFR 8.

transference - E. Diego Hargreeves/Grace, mommy kink. FFFR 9.

vertex - E. John/Dean, Stanford era, pining!Dean. FFFR 10.

faith without works is dead - M. Sam’s powers, violence, dubcon. FFFR 11.

be subject to each other - E. Photography, facial. FFFR 12.

October

you know i’m gonna be like him - M. Past Dean/John, child abuse. FFFR 13.

unbalance - E. A/B/O, Jared/Jensen, prostitute!Jared. FFFR 14.

buccaneer - E. Crowley/Deanna, demon!Dean, always-a-girl!Dean. FFFR 15.

make much of time - E. Sam/Dean/Jack, virginity kink. FFFR 16.

see things so much clearer - E. Pre-series, first time, diaries. FFFR 17.

won’t let you let me down so easily - E. Sam/Brady, Sam/others, Stanford era, mind control, gangbang, noncon. FFFR 18.

the beams of our house are cedar - E. Bunker era, panties, feminization. FFFR 19.

November

negotiation tactics - E. Homelander/Soldier Boy, D/s, superpower sex.

finale coda - M. Heaven.

15.19 coda - T. Jack as god.

there will be better days - E. Heaven, first time.

December

a leaden anchor - E. Post-Playthings.

That’s it. I haven’t had a single writing thought in my head since that last one. Here’s hoping it comes back in 2021!

[beizhuo]

✔ :right_point: :left_point:

❥ ;  quick & easy plotting guide │ always accepting !

Send me ✔ and I will bold my preferences for your muse!

My muse(s): baizhu !  - ( also  this  may  be  common  knowledge  for  most  of  my  mutuals  here  ,  but  this  is  not  my  main  blog  .  what  isn’t  common  knowledge  is  that  i  do  ,  in  fact  ,  have  a  genshin  oc  located  on  my  main  blog  -  a  multi  .  i  may  bring  him  up  every  now  and  then  ,  but  i  will  always  be  happy  to  talk  about  him  to  others  and  will  always  be  happy  to  discuss  my  other  muses   as  well  ,  one  need  only  ask  ,  &  sometimes  i  may  offer  /  suggest  my  other  muses  .  i  only  bring  it  up  now  for  you  &  others  to  see  but  if  you  or  anybody  else  wants  me  to  ,  just  ask  if  you  want  me  to  list  what  other  muses  that  i  may  think  will  work  with  you  &  your  muse  ,  since  this  is  a  baizhu  blog  ,  i  won’t  answer  this  in  detail  again  unless  prompted )

Do I know your muse(s):  yes | no | a little | tell me about your muse - i  think  this  goes  without  saying  ,  but  i  do  interact  with  a  duplicate  childe  .  however  ,  much  like  how  i  believe  each  interpretation  of  dupes  are  different  ,  i  know  very  little  about  your  childe  &  childe  in general  .  i  am  only  lvl  33  in  genshin  ,  so  i  dont  have  him  unlocked  for  a  boss  (  though  i  have  him  as  a  playable  character  cause  my  rng  is  blessed  to  be  forever  good  )  .  so  i  really  &  genuinely  do  not  know  much  about  childe  in general  .  aside  from  my  friend  ,  who  as  cried  to  me  about  him  ,  i  don’t  know  him  as  a  character  ,  and  as  said  previously  ,  each  interpretation   is  different  .  from  what  i  have  noticed  ,  you  have  a  very  specific  take  on  childe  ,  it  interests  me  cause  it’s  a  different  take  than  from  what  i  have  seen  .  so  please  ,  feel  free  to  come  &  talk  to  me  about  your  muse  .  i  promise  i  do  not  mind  .  despite  my  warning  label  that  i  will  bite  people  ,  i  really  don’t  .  i  love  it  when  people  come  to  me  to  cry  about  their  muses  .  you  are  more  than  welcome  to  go  off  about  childe  or  anything  else  to  me  .

Setting: our verse | my verse | your verse | modern | alternate universe | other seeing  as  we  are  both  rping  canon  genshin  characters  ,  i  will  automaically  assume  the  genshin  universe  .  but  i  dont  mind  alt.  verses  or  other  verses  in  general  .  i  prefer  practice  in  the  genshin  verse  though  since  i  just  started  writing  him  .

Pre-established relationships? yes | no | depends on the relationship - i  am  a  plot  driven  writer  .  i  like  to  discuss  my  pre - est  relations  before  writing  them  as  i  am  more  comfortable  with  that  .  that  being  said  ,  my  ‘ on  the  fly ‘  interactions  are  normally  set  to  be  quite  random  and  generally  assumed  that  people  do  not  know  baizhu  ( or  my  characters  in  general )  i  am  lenient  otherwise  with  obvious  interactions  at  times  .  but  it  just  helps  to  discuss  before  hand  so  i  can  have  a  better  grip  on  my  muse  you  know  ?  

Possible relationships: friends | classmate | co-worker | roommate | family, real or adopted | dating or blind date | married | friends with benefits | unrequited love | lending a hand | teacher - student | rivals | allies | partner-in-crime | enemies | protecter - guarded | business partners | spy - infiltrated | manipulator - manipulated | star-crossed | first meeting | other - aside  from  the  generic  stuff  ,  i  really  don’t  know  much  about  your  muse  so  i  don’t  know  what  to  go  off  of  .  baizhu  is  a  really  finicky  muse  as  he  doesn’t  have  friends  to  begin  with  .  childe  is  a  bit  on  the  younger  side  too  so  he  wouldn’t  see  him  as  an  interest  ?  however  ,  i  do  see  that  they  could  have  a  more  unhealthy  relationship  with  each  other  .  baizhu  is  not  a  nice  guy  okay  ?  he  can  be  quite  manipulative  .  and  perhaps  i  feel  like  childe  can  be  as  well  ?  so  ah  . . .  2  manipulators  in  the  same  room  ig  ??  and  that  can  be  kinda  funny  .  jokes  aside  though  ,  i  really  would  want  to  learn  more  about  your  interpretation  of  childe  because  it  helps  me  have  a  better  gauge  on  what  kind  of  relationship  these  two  could  have  .  what  i  have  bolded  is  simply  stuff  that  i  see  could  possibly  work  on  a  more  generic  setting  .

I’m in the mood for: fluff | angst | horror | romance | humor | crime | hurt / comfort | action | supernatural | slice of life | crack | dark threads | light threads | any genre | multi-para | shorter para | one-line | any length | plotted threads | unplotted threads | other - see  above  responses  .

Feel free to: message me ooc !! | message me ic | tell me your ideas | write a starter | answer one of my opens | send a meme | reblog this with your preferences - let’s find common interests! - i really need people to come and approach me because otherwise i will not know if you want to interact nor will i know what you want to do .  please  read  this  again  ,  because  i  know  everybody  says  this  but  i  really  mean  it  .  i  really  don’t  stick  my  head  out  unless  you  do  or  you  grab  my  attention  .  i  know  that  i  can  be  intimidating  at  times  ,  but  i  promise  you  that  if  i  follow  you  i  do  want  to  interact  with  you  !  you  seem  like  a  very  excitable  person  and  thats  really  great  !  i  love  your  excitement  .  please  don’t  ever  hesitate  to  come  speak  to  me  about  anything  okay  ?  i  really  do  not  get  annoyed  with  the  bombardment  of  messages  .  nobody  will  ever  annoy  me  with  a  message  &  i  normally  respond  with  the  same  amount  (  if  not  more  )  of  enthusiasm  .  i  promise  you  that  i  do  actually  communicate  &  voice  things  .