#you can just take the absurdity to its logical conclusion

[fictionadventurer]

While I'm on the subject of plotting and Doctor Who, you know who was great at plot? Steven Moffat. The man is the master of the well-constructed plot, the shorter the story, the better. A multi-series show can go off the rails as he trails off in a million different directions. A full series of a show can have its rough patches and wind up unbalanced. But an individual episode? A masterpiece you could use to teach writing courses. A 4-8 minute minisode? One of the most beautifully constructed gems you've ever seen in your life. His plots are full of intricate internal logic and drawn from character and can highlight some of the loveliest themes because they're built on such a strong framework.

I think a big reason he's so good at plot is that he's a comedy writer. Comedy is nothing but set-up and payoff. Set up a situation. Pay it off in a surprising way. And the link between those two is character. If you set up that Character A has a certain personality trait, then when they encounter a new situation, you have them act according to that personality trait, and all sorts of funny things can result. The payoff makes sense because it was set up. That's also the gift of the running gag. If you mention something in the early part of the story, you can pass over it as useless information. Or as a minor joke that's over now. But at the end of the story, that seemingly minor piece can come back and resolve the whole thing, and it works because it was set up.

A great example of joke-turned-plot is "The Girl in the Fireplace." Plot: A spaceship is linked via a portal in time to 1700s France. The Doctor wanders back and forth between the past and the future. Later on, we see that a horse from the past has also wandered through the portal, and is now on the spaceship. Haha, silly gag, horse on a spaceship, good joke. But later, the portal closes, and the Doctor's trapped on the spaceship while people in the past are going to die. If only he had something large enough to break through. Surprise! He bursts through the barrier on a horse! The same horse from the gag! The joke was the setup for a plot payoff! And there's tons of that kind of thing in his work, plot hidden in jokes and jokes secretly building plot, and lots of plots that aren't about the jokes but always follow that rule of set-up and payoff.

There's just something so satisfying about a puzzle whose pieces all fit together. About a story that's well balanced. Character's great--and he's great at them--but there's something extra special about seeing them in a masterfully constructed plot. And it's been a long time since I've come across a plot that was as satisfying as his could be.

[vampsywrites]

synopsis: a drabble | lo'ak cant believe you're mated to ao'nung...of all na'vi

"forest boy!" ao'nung taunts, giving lo'ak a playful push on the shoulder. "enlighten me. how in eywa do you swim with that baby tail of yours again?"

"get your hands off of me," lo'ak snarls, forcefully pushing himself away from ao'nung. the omaticayan's tail flickers in the sand, sending a cloud of dust his way. "i'm not answering any of your damn questions."

ao'nung, seemingly reveling in the reaction he caused, takes a step back, feigning innocence with a playful shrug. "alright, alright, just curious, that's all. no need to get all defensive," he quips in a condescending tone.

"oh, you wanna see me really get defensive?" lo'ak shoots a sharp, disdainful glare at ao'nung, ears pinned back in irritation.

just as the tension between them reaches its peak, a figure suddenly comes rushing towards them, breaking the charged atmosphere and causing the two boys to shift their focus.

as the figure approaches, lo'ak finds himself captivated by the enigmatic presence before him.

inky jets of dark hair cascade over your shoulders, framing your face in a hazy allure. your piercing gaze meets his, causing a shiver to run down his spine. the necklace around your neck catches his attention, and he realizes that it bears a striking resemblance to the one worn by ao'nung.

"ma 'nung," you call out for the metkayinan, your voice carrying a blend of concern and frustration. you grasp his hand firmly, taking charge of the situation and dragging him away from the sully boy. "have you been messing with him again?"

before ao'nung can respond, you turn towards lo'ak with a sincere and apologetic expression. "i apologize for my mate's behavior," you say, trying to diffuse the tension.

"do not apologize for me," ao'nung snarks, but he falls silent when he notices your stern gaze directed at him.

you take a deep breath, trying to keep your emotions in check. "as the upcoming olo'eytkan, he's very protective of our clan, and your unexpected appearance has stirred up quite a bit of talk."

"yawne—" ao'nung attempts to interject.

"do not interrupt me," you grit, cutting him off.

with a grumble that rivals the growls of a disgruntled akula, ao'nung stops, his ears pinned to the sides of his head. as you turn your attention back to the omaticayan, you can't help but notice his starstruck and dumfounded expressions, clearly taken aback by the situation.

"mate?" lo'ak croaks out. he gazes at you from head to toe, eyes resembling saucers ready to launch into orbit. "you're mated to him?" he points to ao'nung, his disbelief evident.

"yes—" you try to respond, but he doesn't let up. "are you blind?" he exclaims, as if it's the most logical conclusion he can muster. "or are you suffering from some brain damage? i just—" he wildly waves his hands around. "him? fishlips? of all na'vi?"

your mouth hangs open for a moment. then, you can't help but burst into laughter, the absurdity of his questions catching you off guard. beside you, ao'nung seethes, knuckles white, fists clenching as he looks ready to unleash his inner thanator on the poor forest boy. but you manage to stifle your laughter just enough to reassure him with a calming hand on his arm.

"i assure you," you manage to wheeze out between fits of giggles, "i made a conscious decision."

[gothhabiba]

can i ask for you to elaborate on your issue(s) with those 'male positivity' posts? is it with the whole sentiment, or just with the "you're allowed to be angry" part? i agree w "you're allowed to be angry" being an oblivious at best statement. but i don't see any issue with the first two statements themselves (the "OP says..." and "commenter says...")

yeah so I already talked about some of this in the tags to those posts but sure, let's get into it.

OP says "if you’re a boy with a mental illness, a boy with a disability, a boy with a history of abuse, a boy who has an eating disorder, a boy with trauma, I need you to know that you are not a burden, that you don’t need to 'harden up', that you shouldn’t just have to 'get over it,' and that you are very brave" commenter says "once I transitioned I saw the change in people being like ‘Oh you poor thing I hope you’re coping alright’ to ‘Just get over it and man up’. Men, you’re allowed to suffer."

the implication of the original post is that men with these issues are told to 'toughen up' or 'get over it,' and conversely that women are not. the commenter then makes this subtext explicit by outright saying that people reacted more sympathetically to his trauma when they read him as a woman than when they read him as a man (at which point they switched to "just get over it"). the OP responds favourably to this addition, proving that the subtext "women don't experience this" was in fact subtext that they intended to be there.

I hope I don't have to explain how utterly absurd it is to claim that women have it easier in this regard, or that their emotions are granted more leeway or sympathy in any meaningfully systematic way. that is just MRA logic.

of course people's ideas about suffering, endurance, trauma, & emotion are gendered! people really do say things about how boys and men should just toughen up and not cry, &c. &c. MRAs, like a lot of other reactionary groups (like TERFs and SWERFs, or antisemites / white supremacists / conspiracy theorists who understand that something's not right with the economy but end up blaming 'minorities' instead of capitalists), take an idea with some truth in it somewhere, but twist it around into a conclusion that the idea in question does not entail on its own (here, "women are allowed to express emotion and garner sympathy by doing so") in a way that leads to resentment, disdain, & hatred for a marginalised group.

so, if it's true that (negative) emotion is thought of as a feminine weakness, why doesn't that translate to women being "allowed" to experience and express emotion, while men are not? for one thing, race has a lot to do with this—the myth of the Black "superwoman," for example, praises Black women for being (read: expects them to be) "tough," "strong," "brave," endless wellsprings of emotional / physical / financial support for others while requiring and receiving no support themselves. the assertion that women receive sympathy for their suffering thus reveals a serious ignorance of Black feminist thought on the part of the person making it.

for another thing, displays of emotion (mostly "negative" emotion, such as sadness) being thought of as primarily feminine means that women have to take especial care to avoid them in many circumstances, not that they're able to freely indulge in them! women's supposed heightened emotionality means that they're less likely to be thought of as capable of serious work, less likely to be promoted or hired, more likely to be financially and professionally penalised for any time they do display any negative emotion (or, rather, the other way around—the myth of women's heightened emotionality is used as an excuse to suppress women's earning potential & make them financially dependent on, and thus exploitable by, men).

on an interpersonal level, you're highly likely as a woman (and especially as a woman of colour) to have fairly mild displays of emotion be interpreted as hysteria, extreme anger, irrationality, volatility. you're highly likely to have your allegations of abuse disbelieved.

on an institutional level, you're highly likely to receive disdain and contempt if you engage in disordered eating habits or try to seek help for them, to have a request for help denied or neglected (disordered eating is just, sort of, what women do). you're also more likely to have a request for help turn into involuntary institutionalisation or psychiatric abuse (a lot of work has been done on the relationship between psychiatry and gender).

also on an institutional level, you are less likely to be believed about the pain you are in as a disabled, chronically ill, or otherwise sick woman (again, especially a woman of colour). you are less likely to receive medical care. you are less likely to have anyone give a shit about the pain you're in, since women are so emotional and melodramatic that you are probably exaggerating, and anyway, being in pain is just sort of women's natural state. you are certainly very unlikely to get any kind of medical care if you're a middle-class cisgender white (read: desirable) woman of 'childbearing age' & the extreme pain that you're in would require risk to your fertility to treat.

there's so much more I could go into here. the basic idea is that properly analysing the relationship between emotion, communication, trauma, abuse, race, class, gender, and the uses of rhetoric that references any of the above (e.g. "boys don't cry") is an enormous undertaking. any claim that implies that women (which women?) wholesale receive more sympathy than men (which men?) do for abuse or other pain that they experience, or that they are more free to express that pain, is both inconsistent with reality on a base level, and incredibly irresponsible. the fact (if it's even true) that "girls" are punished less for crying than "boys" does not a whole picture make.

and, like, think about it. we're living in a patriarchy wherein women are expected to care for and sympathise with men, to forgive men for varied wrongdoings in the family & in romantic relationships, to coddle them in order to avoid or appease their anger, to perform (depending on their class position) various kinds of domestic labour and social / planning work for men without recompense, acknowledgement, or thanks (because knowing how to do and plan housework is just, like, women's natural state of being)—a system where the family and the home faciliate and cover for mass amounts of traumatisation and abuse, including sexual abuse, of girls and women—a system wherein trans women are highly likely to be traumatised and yet disciplined out of expressions of anger or upset under threat of social exile—a system wherein cisgender women cannot be allowed to become too wary of or angry at men (read: too unwilling to continue marrying them and performing a significant role in the social reproduction of their class). how on earth could such a system also enable (rather than allowing for occasional escape valves for, but mostly seeking to supress or transform) women's free expression of upset, sadness, trauma, anger...?

this is the same kind of logic that leads people to believe and spread nonsense such as "people believe women who come forward about being abused and not men," which is just demonstrably inconsistent with everything that we can observe about reality.

[prokopetz]

Which mario character would make the best metroidvania protagonist?

Considering only the core cast, I'd probably go with Princess Peach.

Mario's whole deal is that he has a ridiculously comprehensive movement toolkit right from the get-go (and it would feel kind of obnoxious to force him to work his way up to it), Luigi has his own thing going on in the Luigi's Mansion series, and the rest of the cast are kind of one-note. However, the Super Mario franchise just can't seem to decide what Peach's deal is as a playable character, and she doesn't really have a defined game-mechanical toolkit, so giving her a bunch of random upgrades over the course of the game doesn't feel particularly out of place. Like, you want a justification for why she can do that? Fuck you, it's princess magic.

Plus, the core gameplay loop of the prototypical metroidvania is at least 50% a huge escape-room puzzle – in fact, it's explicitly so, in the case of titles like Metroid Dread – so playing up that aspect of it would be thematic for her. She's always getting trapped somewhere, after all!

Considering the whole Mario Extended Universe, though, I think it would be fun to take Donkey Kong 64 to its logical-yet-absurd conclusion and do a nonlinear, open-world game where your primary means of expanding your movement toolkit is by recruiting an ever-expanding cast of increasingly obscure Kongs with increasingly ridiculous special abilities.

Keep the restriction on switching Kongs only at checkpoints, but integrate that conceit into the core gameplay rather than just using it to pad out the collectathon minigame, such that by the late game, figuring exactly which of the 12-15 different Kongs on your roster has exactly the right moveset for the next needlessly complicated platforming puzzle becomes part of the challenge.

[otherworldseekers]

I don't know if I just have a bad sense of humor (I don't) but honestly I don't find joke takes that grossly misrepresent or exaggerate canon traits/events/facts to be amusing. Like you just made that up and then laughed at yourself basically.

But if you can take a trait/event/fact and draw it out to its logical yet absurd conclusion without misrepresenting or grossly exaggerating it? That stuff's the shit.

[gothwizardmagic]

what is red dwarf and why is everyone obsessed w it now bc i never saw it on my dash before?

Ah! Red Dwarf is a british comedy series originally from the 80s/90s and revived in the late 2010s about a man who's put into stasis on a space mining expedition and wakes up three million years later to find out the entire crew have died and he's the last human left alive. The 'bit' is that he's not the pinnacle of humanity or some great scientist or anything like that, he's some random slobby, lazy loser. He, a hologram of his dead roommate, a life form evolved from his pet cat, the ship's computer, and a cleaning droid they picked up along the way, all go on adventures through space, time, and the multiverse, for better or worse. It's about finding purpose in purposelessness and exploring the absurdity of the infinite and really stupid jokes about soup.

For as profound as the concept is, it's a pretty wacky series where they took the fact that it's sci-fi to the logical conclusion of 'therefore we can do literally anything we want' and played around with all sorts of bizarre and reality-stretching plotlines. There's an episode where they go to a universe where time runs backwards, there's an episode where they each have an emotion eaten by a polymorph and become entirely different people, there's an episode where a gender-swapped version of the main character gets him pregnant, because that's how it works in her universe. Because it was 80s sci-fi they accidentally had one of the main cast transition without. really realising what that was? (the ship's computer decides they miss the female universe version of themself and switch over to using that face instead) It's also one of those shows that hates women so fucking much that it winds up incredibly homoerotic. Like, for all the good and fun stuff I just said I gotta stress this show is HORRENDOUSLY sexist even for its time. It's surprisingly chill about other stuff but good christ it hates women.

Like I said, I can't really explain the recent surge in popularity. I grew up watching Red Dwarf with my parents, though I haven't actually watched much of the revival. For all its many flaws it's a show I do thoroughly recommend, as long as you take it in the spirit of when it was made. It's one of the strongest comedies out there imo, and references to it pop up all over the place in popular media. (There's a whole scene quoted verbatim in Homestuck, for example.)

[cavalierious-whim]

Horn-Tea Time (Wriolette)

Part of 'Just as You Are'.

Neuvillette tries his best despite taking 'teabagging' a little too literally.

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--

Wriothesley's answer to Neuvillette’s query is a… confounding thing. 

“Oh? You want to know what I like?” 

Neuvillette clicks his tongue. Yes. Of course. They are partners, are they not? When it comes to the pleasures of flesh Neuvillette is old and unpracticed, and the times have changed over the centuries. They seem to be compatible, Wriothesley keen to care of Neuvillette however he wishes. 

Still. 

“You seem surprised that I would ask such a question.”

Wriothesley tries not to laugh. His expression creases slightly, the skin around his eyes and mouth wrinkling with amusement. “You’re so rarely… forward, is all. It’s a nice change of pace.”

“Then answer, please.”

“Ah. What is something you enjoy in bed?” he muses, repeating the question. Wriothesley rubs his chin as he thinks. “You know how much I love to use my tongue, so teabagging—”

“Teabagging?” What a curious phrase. Neuvillette is about to ask but stops himself at the embarrassed look on Wriothesley's face. 

“Hey, I know it’s a little on the nose but let's enjoy the levity, okay?”

Levity. Right. Neuvillette files the information away for later, figuring that there are books to consult on the topic. He turns to Wriothesley, cupping his chin. “Thank you for your honesty,” he says, tracing Wriothesley's lip with his thumb. 

Whatever Wriothesley is about to say is lost the moment they share a kiss.

#

So, consulting texts does nothing. There is, as far as Neuvillette can tell, not one reference to teabagging. And while his knowledge of bedroom activities is not limited, he figures that this must be a newfangled term that he’s likely too old to grasp. 

Slang? Perhaps.

But then again— “Perhaps it is literal,” he muses to himself, picking his way through another manual that details wiles of the flesh. Slang is more likely but Wriothesley is the type of man who does not mince his words. He also knows that Neuvillette is easing back into a relationship and that it’s been a long time since he’s… indulged in such activities with regularity. 

Wriothesley be very plain with him, yes? And, Wriothesley certainly loves his tea, so the conclusion that Neuvillette comes to seems logical in the long run. 

“Yanshang Teahouse,” he says, switching mental gears. He remembers an old friend speaking of the place, commenting on its well-formed blends. It’ll be perfect, he thinks, as he places an order.

Neuvillette does his best to not be offended when Sedene gives him a confused, suspicious look. 

#

Of all the reactions that Neuvillette could have hoped for, absurd laughter was not among them. 

There had been painstaking planning. He had practiced brewing the tea, which he, personally, had commissioned from the Yanshang Teahouse. Perfect little satchels filled with carefully measured spoons of leaves, tied off gently before being stepped to perfection. 

When Neuvillette revealed the tea kettle, Wriothesley could barely keep a straight face. A soft snort. A cough into his palm, and then full-blown laughter that he fails to contain. 

“I do not see what is funny,” comes Neuvillette’s dry and genuinely confused reply.

“I—I’m sorry. I just…” Wriothesley wipes at his face because he’s laughed to the point that he’s brought forth tears, and frankly, that does nothing but bruise Neuvillette’s ego and make his half-hard cock flag. 

“You told me teabagging, Wriothesley.”

“Yeah, I did. What on earth did you think that I meant? Surely not…” Wriothesley's words dissolve into laughter again, and this time he nearly chokes.

Neuvillette explains his thought process. He hangs over Wriothesley and tells him of his research, of the texts he consulted, of how he commissioned the tea specifically for him, all the while tracing his skin, those puckered scars, the length of his hard cock as Wriothesley lies bare before him in the bed.

Wriothesley's teasing halts and his expression turns warm. “I should have explained,” he says then, cupping Neuvillette’s cheek. “I was too distracted to finish the thought, though, if I remember correctly.”

Neuvillette hums. “I do recall a lot of kissing.” And he kisses Wriothesley here too, dipping down for a short peck against his mouth. “I apologize for… misunderstanding.”

“No, no, now I’m intrigued. Go on.”

Go on. Wriothesley says it so earnestly that warmth seizes Neuvillette’s chest. He shouldn’t be surprised. Wriothesley has taken every punch given to him without a second thought. He never blinks at the weird dragon shit (his words) or Neuvillette’s mildly possessive streak (also his words). 

Neuvillette offers him a grin as he leans back. “Food play,” he murmurs. “During my research, that is what stuck out to me, particularly tales of ice cubes and… other creative applications of Cryo.”

Wriothesley's gaze narrows, half-lidded with interest. 

“And so, I soaked these teabags. They are warm, but no less sensual when dragged across skin.”

“That’s…” 

Oh, he’s interested. Neuvillette can smell his arousal. Wriothesley's cock twitches against his hand as he palms at it. So, he wasn’t entirely off base. Wriothesley is willing to indulge his… unintentionally strange idea for the sake of their intimacy. 

Neuvillette scoops a tea bag from the kettle and lets it drip. “That explains the towel in the bed,” teases Wriothesley when he brings it over, settling it against his sternum. Liquid collects against Wriothesley's breast bone, leaking down the valley of it. “Smells—”

“Good? Yes, I would hope so. It contains a lot of your favorite flavors.” Neuvillette tugs at the bag, watching it slide over Wriothesley's tanned skin. It catches on a scar, staggering over the silvery flesh, down and down until just below his ribcage. Tea trickles into Wriothesley's navel. 

Neuvillette thumbs over his wet, slick skin, marveling at the way the liquid travels. His tongue lolls out, wanting to taste, suddenly ravenous at the idea, and so he dips forward to lap at the tea, licking a stripe from Wriothesley's ribs to his chest. 

The tea bag is tossed aside and swapped for a fresh one, warm and leaking. Neuvillette drops it against Wriothesley's pec, and drags it across a nipple, watching it harden. His tongue darts out to follow, tracing the sweet trail of citrus and black tea.

Wriothesley moans, arching against him as Neuvillette’s tongue swirls around the peak. “Oh.”

Neuvillette smirks, lapping at that nipple, sucking it between his lips and giving it a gentle nibble. His fangs are dangerous. They sink into Wriothesley's flesh, pulling a cry from his mouth, and Neuvillette sighs at the taste of tea that bursts across his tongue. 

Another tea bag—Neuvillette thanks himself for the forethought of steeping several. This one trails back down the length of Wriothesley's body and raises gooseflesh. Tea pools in the lines of his muscles and Neuvillette drinks up every wet spot. Wriothesley's hand finds his head, fingers curling into the glossy strands of Neuvillette’s hair. He jerks as Neuvillette bites at his groin, suckling the spot just at the base of Wriothesley’s cock. 

So hard. Twitching against his palm and leaking at the tip. Neuvillette tosses the last tea bag aside before his too-long and forked tongue licks around the crown. 

Wriothesley curses, bucking against his mouth. “Sorry, sorry—” he murmurs, but Neuvillette just laughs, brushing a lock of his hair behind an ear before sinking further down his length.

A wrecked moan spills from Wriothesley's mouth. He’s already tense, thigh muscles taut as he squirms in the bed. Keyed up from Neuvillette’s touch, from the drag of those damnable tea bags, and how he chased them with his tongue. Neuvillette moans, his tongue now pressed flat against the underside of his cock. He bobs his head, sucking, his mouth wet and hot around Wriothesley's aching cock. 

He loves the weight of it in his mouth. The heady scent of Wriothesley's arousal and the way he tugs at his hair. Wriothesley holds Neuvillette’s head there, petting through his locks, drowning in the heat of his mouth as he tries to suck him dry. 

“Gods,” he mutters. “Baby, just like that, just like that.”

Neuvillette preens. He sinks further, the tip of Wriothesley's cock bullying his throat, lodged so tightly in that space that he can barely breathe. He chokes on it, entering that hazy space of pleasure. Wriothesley never lasts long like this, woefully gone the moment Neuvillette wraps his lips around his length. 

He feels the tell-tale twitching of Wriothesley's cock on his tongue, and the way the grip on his hair suddenly tightens. “Neuvillette,” comes a punched hiss, “I’m going to—”

Neuvillette moves again, pulling back until the tip of Wriothesley's cock rests against his tongue. He strokes the rest hard and fast. Teases the head with the forked tip of his tongue—and that’s when Wriothesley comes, white-hot, with a cry, all over Neuvillette’s face. 

Wriothesley groans, going lax in the sheets. He watches Neuvillette’s tongue slip from his mouth, long and draconic as he cleans his face, licking away Wriothesley's spend. “Fuck, you always—”

“I can’t leave a mess,” sniffs Neuvillette, as if there aren’t wet and sopping tea bags tossed around the bed.

Another weak moan has Neuvillette chuckling softly. He climbs across Wriothesley settling over his hips. “Beloved,” he says, brushing back Wriothesley's damp bangs, “I appreciate your willingness too…” He tails off and gestures vaguely, a motion that Wriothesley often uses.

A weak laugh tumbles from Wriothesley's mouth. He tugs Neuvillette closer and kisses him, tongue slipping into his mouth. “Tastes good. It’s sweet,” he mutters against Neuvillette’s lips. “The tea, I mean. Citrus, rose, and—mhm—lizard tails?”

“Rude,” says Neuvillette, pinching Wriothesley's bicep as he teases his less-than-human nature.

“Wait, wait, no—more kissing, please?”

Neuvillette sighs softly, combing through Wriothesley's coarse hair. “Of all the requests you can make—”

“You deprived me of actual teabagging.”

Neuvillette hums. “Which, by the way, are you going to explain?”

Wriothesley laughs. “Later. I wasn’t joking about the smooches. Come here.”

They do kiss—soft, fleeting touches that Neuvillette loses himself in. And later, Wriothesley takes care when detailing his actual wishes in heated, sultry words before rolling them over and having his way with him.

[flaming-o-has-no-dough]

The Chainsaw Man Chooseboth Video Post

For a while now I've been trying to get started making YouTube videos so that I can externalize some of my least absurd thoughts and neuroses in a way which could profitably be added to my "Cool Creative Person Résumé"... but, uh, I've been having a hell of a month and a half. So, add to that the facts that a key component of my microphone setup has been cleft in twain and I'm uncomfortable with my voice as it is now, and I think YouTube is officially going on the backburner.

But I have all sorts of thoughts and feelings about the narrative pieces Chainsaw Man Part 2 has been moving around, and I'm so out of touch with the CSM community that for all I know, my thoughts and feelings might even be uncommon. So I didn't want to just completely abandon my plans to externalize them, so... here, you're getting This. Or you can just ignore the button which says

Chainsaw Man is one of my favorite stories of all time. In fact, even if it were just Part 1 alone, I'd put it in my S-Tier of media, alongside Deltarune (presuming future chapters don't disappoint), Everything Everywhere All At Once, Little Miss Sunshine, Picture of Dorian Grey (unless I ever reread it and it's not as good as I remember it being), and, presuming the third movie doesn't disappoint, Spider-Verse.

you can tell i'm a filthy zillennial because only two of the things on that list are from before the 2010s and only one of those is from before the 2000s

Speaking of Spider-Man, I don't read comics because I'm not a nerd.

But I have seen the original three movies, which is a large part of why the first part of CSM Part 2 which really hooked me was Denji's introduction (and I'm saying that as a massive fan of Asa who DOES like her more than I like Denji). And I do consider CSM Part 2 to have a Denji introduction, even though we already know who Denji is, because it immediately sets itself up as separate enough from Part 1 that I think it's worth analyzing as a separate work within the same franchise. And taking the first sequence in Part 2 which contains Denji as a character introduction makes it very interesting if I do say so myself.

For you see, I have watched that one Spider-Man movie which was just called Spider-Man because there weren't a million other ones yet so it didn't need any differentiators. And in that movie, Enemy Of Spider-Man called Green Person, says “Okie dokie now Spider-Man, choose which one to save, hot lady or whatever this is”.

Spider-Man, rather famously, doesn’t do it. Spider-Man chooses both.

Which brings us to Denji's Part 2 Introduction. In Chapter 102 Save the Cat, his enemy whose name I think is also Green Person says “You are a superhero now. That’s what you are now. Okie dokie now choose which one to save, hot dude or whatever this is”.

Denji doesn’t do it, but he doesn’t do it in the wrong way and chooses neither. He titularly saves a cat, hot dude and whatever this is both die.

Then we get a cut directly from a blood-and-gore-covered Denji saying "That choice was stupid, I did the correct thing rather than accepting either option" to a monolithic wall of televisions talking about how great and heroic Denji is. That’s not Spider-Man, that’s like, Homelander or some shit. Like, I wouldn’t be surprised at this point if Denji were a blonde horny manchild.

Basically, that's not how stories introduce their heroes. It's how stories introduce their villains.

So, extrapolating "Denji is the villain of CSM Part 2" to its logical conclusion, I came up with what I'll call the Unbreakable Cycles Theory. I don't want to spend too long explaining that theory because I no longer even think it's correct, so let's just hope you can understand what I mean when I say this:

Part 1: Denji is introduced, and a bizarre and unfortunate inciting incident gives him Devil Powers. -> He saves a girl from the Bat Devil -> He really likes the Control Devil [Makima], but even he can't ignore the fact that she has obvious flaws, too. -> Due to the Eternity Devil being enlisted by one of the major Big Bads, he must break an unbreakable cycle -> A lot of terrible things happen, and in the end, he has no choice but to kill his problematic fave the Control Devil

Part 2: Asa is introduced, and a bizarre and unfortunate inciting incident gives her Devil Powers. -> She saves a girl from the Bat Devil -> She really likes Denji, but even she can't ignore the fact that he has obvious flaws, too. -> Due to the Eternity Devil being enlisted by one of the major Big Bads, she must break an unbreakable cycle -> A lot of terrible things happen, and in the end, she has no choice but to kill her problematic fave Denji

Part 3: The Control Devil [Nayuta? Or a third incarnation?] is introduced, and a bizarre and unfortunate inciting incident occurs, although they already have Devil Powers. -> They save a girl from the Bat Devil -> They really like Asa [possibly non-romantic this time?], but even they can't ignore the fact that she has obvious flaws, too. -> Due to the Eternity Devil being enlisted by one of the major Big Bads, they must break an unbreakable cycle -> A lot of terrible things happen, and in the end, they have no choice to kill their problematic fave Asa (unless they can break the cycle FOR REAL this time, and put an end to the game of Rock-Paper-Scissors/Fire Emblem)

(bolded section is things which have already happened, non-bolded section is a potential extrapolation)

I do think the Unbreakable Cycles Theory is probably wrong, because CSM Part 2 has been playing with so many big moving narrative pieces and thematic ideas, while telling the story from Denji's POV a lot more often than I would have anticipated when making the theory.

Recently, in Chapters 133 and 135 (which, uh, WERE a lot more recent when I was initially making the YouTube version of this post, which was my fifth attempt at making my first YouTube video, if you want an idea of how much fruitless work I've been doing behind the scenes) the thematic relevance of a Spider-Man style Chooseboth moment has resurfaced.

(A direct link is even drawn between choosing both and the peace sign that Denji throws up all the time!)

In a lot of ways, it's become clear that choosing both is a major idea CSM Part 2 is interested in, as well as kind of an intersection between two other major ideas it's interested in, those being Western-comics-style superheroics and duality. Most notable as of right now are the duality between Asa and Yoru, the duality between Chainsaw Man and Chainsaw Man, and the duality between the Asa-Yoru-continuum and Denji.

So, with that third duality in mind, let's revisit Denji's introduction and see what it could be saying which is more complex than just "Denji is a villain this time".

Because Chapter 102 Save the Cat ISN'T just about Denji, it IS about that third duality. It doesn't just establish a worrying lack of empathy on Denji's part, but it in fact does the same for Asa.

And Denji isn’t the only one who condemns a nonzero amount of humans to death by titularly saving a cat in that chapter, either. Nor is he even the only one who immediately gets praised for it. The only reason it didn’t strike me nearly as villainously with Asa is, well… just look at her face. She might as well be saying “That was horrible”.

So, thinking about Chapter 102 Save the Cat as establishing a dynamic between the Asa-Yoru continuum and Denji made me wonder where that dynamic occurs in Chapter 127 Save the Asa. Because in that chapter, it really is only Denji who titularly saves an Asa, as far as I can tell. Even keeping the double meaning in mind where "asa" is also the word for "day" doesn't seem to change this.

There is, to be sure, a parallel to be found in this chapter, however.

As you can see in these unedited images, the dynamic has been established.

Asa saves a cat, people die, and she gets praised for it. Denji saves a cat, people die, and he gets praised for it. Denji: :D Asa: that was horrible

Asa doesn't have anything she considers worth living for other than sex. Denji doesn't have anything he considers worth living for other than sex. Denji: :D Asa: that was horrible

Yoru injures Asa to combat despair. Denji injures himself to combat despair (also take a note how blatant it is that he gleefully targets his own brain and remember that for something I'm going to talk about later). Denji: :D Asa: that was horrible

Asa and Denji are really, really similar. But something which has been made clear about Denji as early as In Content Already Adapted By The Anime is that... while he's not as stupid as he seems, he hates thinking. Introspection makes him deeply uncomfortable, so he avoids it by always acting on impulse. This is rarely successful, and he kind of ends up being quite introspective in spite of himself, but it's really not something he wants or enjoys.

Asa, meanwhile, is established as "a goody-two-shoes" in her very first chapter. But it's not long afterwards that she's just as lacking in empathy as Denji is when it comes to complete strangers (so not actually including her mom or what's-her-name). So it's clear that her being "a goody-two-shoes" isn't actually particularly tied to her moral fiber. So then, what is it tied to? Well, the way I see it is, she's striving for societal acceptance. Denji and Asa are both striving for happiness and human connection, but Denji grew up outside of society, and disregards societal norms entirely, but Asa grew up within society, and sees societal norms as the threshold she needs to cross through in order to gain that happiness. She sees widespread acceptance as a fundamental requirement for forming meaningful relationships, and "staying in line", morally speaking, as the way to achieve that acceptance.

Another way of putting it is through this diagram:

okay analysis over. you can stop reading now

[drbased]

Conservatism and optimism

It's commonly said that right wing thought is pessimistic; it's based on a belief that there are certain immutable types of human, and that some of those types of human are simply not very good at living, and in a Darwinian-esque fight for survival, the 'not as good' people should simply be left to die out on their own, shunned by the society of good, hardworking and competent people who deserve real success. It's staunchly individualistic and anti-community.

But it would be a lie to think of conservatism as purely pessimistic about human behaviour. For example, one of its tenets is the 'pull yourself up by the bootstraps' mentality, another is the concept of the 'marketplace of ideas'. Within these overlapping ideas is the concept that left alone, people will squabble, and they will fight, but ultimately when faced with challenges, people will rise up and come to the right conclusions about what needs to be done, and act on that accordingly.

The idea that if we just let freedom of speech roam uninterrupted and unmanaged then people will end up gravitating towards the objectively best solution becomes patently absurd when you think about it for long enough. There are so many examples of this system utterly failing; 4chan was considered to be the ultimate bastion of free speech; an experiment, if you will, into what happens when there are zero social consequences for saying what you really, truly think. And what happened? It became the most disgusting cesspool of bigotry and psychopathy known to humankind. Turns out, that when you let anyone say anything, the people with the worst ideas, the cheapest ideas, the ideas that appeal to the basest, more bigoted impulses that only serve the existing oppressor classes get a real audience, and as such the more reasonable kinder person you leave, and a sort of spiralling sifting effect happens where the more reasonable people leave, the more nazis stay, the more nazis are attracted, the more reasonable people leave and so on.

The 4chan example is not perfect, because 4chan is not a perfect mirror of the real world. But then, in the real world itself, where people have to stake their reputation on their ideas, things aren't much better. We even know on a day-to-day personal level just how unfair the social system is. The biggest, loudest, confident people will always get their way through sheer charisma alone. That's why we have to have democracy, that's why we have commitees, that's why parliaments were set up so the king didn't have a monopoly on power. We all know that in practice, letting the 'market place of ideas' play out is a categorically terrible thing for society.

But it doesn't sound very nice, does it? It sounds kinda... pessimistic. It's also insulting; people really, really want to believe that we're ultimately in charge of our own destinies, that we respond rationally to the information we're given and that we, ultimately, when left uninterrupted to engage with pure logic, will make good decisions. Imagine being told that no, actually; no matter how good you think you are at making decisions, you shouldn't be allowed to have any power, and instead you need to be surrounded by red tape, prevented from making any movement by a chatter of other, contradictory voices that hold just as much power over the masses as you do.

Make no mistake, here; conservatives do not apply this logic equally; to the right wing, those other people in the committee will always have worse ideas because they're just built that way, and the person with the biggest and best ideas should have got to the top by pure strength of will and commitment alone. They were built the right way, they're the genius, they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and now they've earned that power. No committee of npcs/lemmings is needed, because the person in power has all the best ideas, and they can take the risks needed to push society in the right direction.

Within this conceptualisation there's an optimism: that person could be you. If you really put the work in, you could turn out to be the secret genius who through sheer hard work and determination has earned power and a place in history. To the conservative, saying that no, actually the people in power did not get there fairly, that things are unfairly stacked against you and it's very unlikely that you're a secret genius - and that even if you were, there's a limited chance that you'll ever get to demonstrate your full potential... well, that's pretty damn miserable. There's a phrase that describes a lot of people: 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires' and it applied here. Under conservatism, the system is running as it should, which means if you're good enough, people will recognise that goodness because people are fundamentally good, and the system will recognise that goodness because the system is funamentally good, and you will rise to the top in the most natural way possible, because people and the system are not just good, but naturally good.

And, of course, if you never rise to the top, you can be safe in the knowledge that that isn't because of some great injustice against you, where you were robbed of your true potential by an unfair system; rather, you've lived an honest, noble life of a worker. You have played your part in the machine, you are valuable as you are, as the type of person that you are. This is how conservatism appeals to the most downtrodden by the system. It doesn't say 'you're disgusting and you should stay there', rather it says 'you are a type of person, and that's not a bad thing - it's a very good thing, actually'.

[titoist]

a nonsensical sort of feeling, a vague sort of tugging at my heartstrings, a vaguely vague disjointedly absurd absurd absurd absurd absurd feeling... you can't put it into words, because every possible manifestation would feel merely like a physical extension of its nonsensicality, & thus completely & totally wrong. let's see if i can approximate something. i feel a deep, strange drawing towards always sticking to one side of an extreme, with very little in between. if i am doing something, i feel that i must be doing it fully. if i want to be something, i feel that i must take that "something" to its natural, logical conclusion. & when i want to be nothing in particular, i want to be nothing. this is maybe what most feels like there is some sincere, anomalous lack of comprehension in my brain. i cannot imagine what it must be like for one to be able to just... compromise with themselves, & then meaningfully carry out that compromise with little difficulty. i cannot imagine what it must be like for one to be able to just do things, to be able to conceive of an action, get up, and carry out a real manifestation of that imagined action. to be able to act with no deep feeling of discomfort, to be able to form habits, to be perhaps not as i am, a little less forgetful & a little more human - it is the closest thing to magic to me. i am sincerely unable to comprehend what it might be like. let's try that again... it feels like my executive dysfunction has ruined my life let's try that again - a little less dramatic this time, please... it feels like a willfully untreated lifelong case of crippling executive dysfunction, paired alongside an isolated & sterile developmental environment where i was incentivized to consign my autonomy to another in lieu of learning how to take care of my own functions in any particular way, has resulted in personal scarring that is probably not ideal. well, alright, still a bit dramatic, but tolerable, right? one foot forwards... which is frustrating for a numerous variety of reasons, but particularly because it's a problem that feeds & compounds on its own self, is allowed a mandate on account of the booming echo of its own authority, an authority which is granted to it by its mandate. mmmmrh. no, no, no, this doesn't feel quite right. let's try another pose... most of my life, i have been attempting to strike a balance of knowing which discomforts are fundamental to life, & which are merely manifestations of my unfortunate, particular life circumstances - & not confusing the former for the latter, or vice versa. becoming somewhat scared when i notice that my mental thought processes tend to assign blame to a vague sort of untreated depression or personality aberration or attachment disorder, even if those things are very real, because they just so conveniently provide a sense of relief in the sort of, uh... "this is not my responsibility" type of way. because it feels like i shouldn't completely ignore these things either, when it feels somewhat undeniable that an active & cruel inability to be treated or medicated is an undeniable factor contributing to my general misery. need to strike some sort of middle ground... back to the middle ground, back to the middle ground, back to the extremes... falling into extremes takes no effort on my part, since you just roll a dice & let it fall with a sort of grimace.

[theseventhoffrostfall]

Mass Effect should have been set over 1000 years give or take, the first one can be the wide eyed idealist star trek type game where humanity first learns to get along, 1000 years later you can even keep the same plot as the 2nd but time has passed and humanity is moving into the bad parts of space and dealing with legit weird and hostile aliens who wanna be left alone, 3rd part you guessed it, another millennia has passed and now Humanity legitimately has earned its place among the most powerful races. Choices would have larger impacts that might be the opposite of what you think. Wars began and ended, empires rose and fell, but it should feel like it tells a giant story. Outside of the reapers being a once every 50k years thing, the rest of Mass Effect is just way too inconsequential in the larger scope of the galaxy

I wouldn't make it that enormous of a scale in that scenario, preferably a few decades to a century max between each installment, largely for the same reason I disagree about 'consequences opposite of what you intended' and 'empires rise and fall'. Each installment within a series should be a continuation of the story, and the changes from one installment to the next should be what's been hinted at thus far, taken no further than its logical conclusion. Your breaks in the story between installments are stepping away from the oven while those story developments bake, not opening the oven to find a golf cart instead of a cake

One of the things Endymion did that pissed me off was, after Hyperion ended with a setup of the Hegemony torn down with worlds left to fend for themselves and the small remnant Catholic church managing to ensure its survival under the leadership of a kind, wise, and humble new Pope, Endymion began a few hundred years later with mankind completely conquered by a fanatical Catholic theocracy under the reign of a different Catholic character from the first book who not only was acting in reverse of his character but also literally died in said book. I despise sequels taking absurd turns from everything logically and thematically indicated by their predecessors just for wacky subversion points

Back to our scenario, give it a century or so. Let Shepard pop in, make some big decisions, then step back while those decisions percolate through society. Humanity spreads from its ME1 state to its ME2 state, so on, so forth. Maybe you're playing a new character, maybe Shepard has a habit of going on cold sleep for the authorities to wake up when in need of a troubleshooter (itself a character dimension more interesting than any of the background options in the first game or "I was gone for two years.....I'm so sorry.....I wish I hadn't been killed and resurrected...." in the second) and perhaps either way you have an Asari or Krogan character taking the long journey through time who serve as a throughline on the crew, with your decisions in each game helping them decide their life choices and how they've developed the next time you see them

[houseofcuckoos]

“Philosophy, a subject that has perplexed and challenged the minds of the greatest thinkers for centuries, has finally reached the pinnacle of its evolution. After years of contemplation and debate, I have come to the revolutionary conclusion that the ultimate form of philosophy is the beautiful illogical truth of Cuckoo Reasoning.

“What is this Cuckoo Reasoning, you may ask? It is a philosophical concept that defies all traditional logic and reasoning, for it claims that absurdity is the only path to true freedom. This groundbreaking theory declares that the very essence of humanity lies in our ability to embrace the illogical and absurd, rather than to confine ourselves within the boundaries of reason and rationality.

“But how can this be, you may wonder, when reason and logic have always been the pillars of philosophical inquiry? Ah, dear reader, allow me to elucidate. In our quest for knowledge and understanding, we have been trapped in the chains of traditional thinking, limiting our minds to what is considered logical and rational. But Cuckoo Reasoning liberates us from these shackles and allows us to explore the limitless possibilities of the absurd.

“Take for instance, the concept of time. Traditional philosophers have spent centuries trying to decipher its true nature and meaning. But with Cuckoo Reasoning, we can embrace the absurdity that time is a mere construct of our minds, and that it is the cuckoo bird that truly controls the passing of time with its incessant cuckooing. How freeing it is to let go of such rigid notions and embrace the silliness of the cuckoo clock!

“Or consider the age-old question of existence. Philosophers have debated endlessly about the purpose of our existence and the meaning of life. But with Cuckoo Reasoning, we can reject all notions of purpose and meaning, and simply embrace the absurdity of it all. We exist simply because we exist, and that in itself is a beautiful and freeing realization.

“But the true brilliance of Cuckoo Reasoning lies in its acknowledgment of the irrationality and chaos of the human experience. We spend our lives trying to make sense of the world around us, but it is in the nonsensical and absurd moments that we find true joy and happiness. By embracing the illogical, we can break free from the rigid constraints of reason and truly flourish as human beings.

“Some may scoff at this newfound philosophy, claiming that it is nothing more than a joke. But I say, who are we to define what is rational and what is absurd? Are we not creatures whose actions often defy explanation and reason? So why not embrace the beautiful illogical truth of Cuckoo Reasoning and allow ourselves to truly be free?

“In conclusion, dear reader, I urge you to join me in the exploration of this new form of philosophy. Let us throw off the chains of traditional thinking and embrace the absurdity of the cuckoo. For in doing so, we may just find the ultimate freedom to live and think as we please. As I always say, "Cuckoo reasoning may be illogical, but it is the only true form of freedom for humanity to flourish."

‘Yours in Cuckooness,

Chables Fbankis Massty ‘

(excerpt from Appendix W756THoC: ‘The Goal of Cuckoos’ 1908)

@HouseOfCuckoos

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Lunark

Lunark Gushing

Watch this video on YouTube

And there’s a thumbnail after the fold, and the script outline afterwards.

Lunark is a 2023 step-platformer from Canari Studios, a Montreal-based indie game company, Wayforward games, an America-based indie game publisher, and me! Well, not me directly, but I, and two thousand eight hundred and twenty three other people all pledged some money, around $28 a head, back in 2019. It raised $81,655 on the back of a promise of a pixel-art step puzzle platformer, with rotoscoped cutscenes, and that’s exactly what I got, exactly what it is.

Well, short script, guess I can knock off early.

Lunark’s excellent. I did back it on kickstarter, entirely based on the trailer, and because it reminded me of Flashback. I loved that game, and loved all the first third of it I ever played, and the weeks of time I spent playing that part of the game.

Flashback was a great game for its time and I don’t just mean that because videogames hadn’t invented machine guns yet. It was great because the whole game fit on a 3.5 inch floppy so if you saw it at a mate’s place you could zip it up and take your own copy home and maybe photocopy some copy protection (I think) or their copy was cracked (probably). In that time, a single floppy was a great size for a game. You weren’t logging onto the internet to download new games all the time, you were having these rare meetings of going around to a friend’s house or seeing someone you didn’t often see to broaden your network of available software, and in that space, Flashback was great.

Flashback was a game that unfolded. Setting aside the core mystery you were dropped into tabula rasa, it was a game whose mechanical system felt like it was immediately available, just there under your fingertips as you played it, but which you had to learn how to coax out with the right positions, the right timing, the right combinations of buttons. Learning how to play it meant getting to know how it worked through the plot itself, which, and I know I’m not alone in this, often meant restarting the whole game to see an early cutscene again because you didn’t see what it told you to do next because you pressed a button and accidentally skipped the cutscene wholly.

Flashback was a time abyss of a game with a big beating mystery at its heart compelling you to finish it and I never did and nobody I know ever did but we all agreed that it played really well and we liked it. It was cool and it looked amazing and we definitely liked it. Do you know how it ends? Nope. Nobody did. Why’d you stop? uh, there was that bit.

You can go and play the original Flashback in a number of places, including a gog remake that… may be fine, I don’t know, and honestly don’t really care. The stylisation filter they put on it looks like my attempting to hide photoshopped-out tattoos on pictures by making the whole image’s skin texture rubbery and shiny. That’s not even touching on the 3d remake which is, uhm, well, I was told if I can’t say anything nice and the company that made it is probably out of business now anyway, since the only other game they made was Amy.

[maybe a clip from the folding ideas speedrun of amy]

The thing with going back and playing these old DOS games is that you need some heavy nostalgia to stick with them or a deep and abiding interest in getting to the end for some other reason, like a self-assigned dedication to trying to play games every week to get through a sort of ‘game pile’ as it were. Most of them work fine, but also, they’re not very good at encouraging you to play them, some of them are really repetitive, their narratives and conclusions aren’t really very interesting, the logic can be positively absurd at times, but also, very importantly, most of them have awkward interfaces. Not bad, not a huge problem, but there’s a lot of game interface language that you marinate in right now that is kind of universalised by the right things succeeding and most people adopting them.

WASD movement, which is the standard for first person shooters, was not the default in DOOM. Nor was it the default in Quake, where you were expected to toggle strafing with the alt key. Sierra, one of the companies most renowned for point-and-click games of the generation, made point and click games for less than half their life, and even then, the model people assume is standard only lasted for about five years.

When you go back to play these old DOS-era games, you were very likely to find an interface designed by someone with some very specific ideas of what was natural and intuitive and often you couldn’t customise them at all. Some designers thought the most natural way to move left and right was with the O and P keys, and jump and duck with the Q and A keys.

I bring this up to you to underscore that Lunark, as a game, owes a lot of how it looks to this particular period of rotoscoped pixel art that we mostly tie to Flashback and Prince of Persia, but what it owes about how it plays and the story it tells is not about how Flashback plays, but rather, how I remember Flashback feeling.

I mean, okay, yes, you could just simplify that into ‘Flashback but it plays really well,’ and that’s a place to start. It’s not just ‘that thing you like, in a bigger cup,’ though. I like Lunark a lot, and I like it as its own thing, which is very important. Enjoying it though, had all these moments when I thought ‘oh, is this going to be like this thing, from other games,’ and the game has an almost perfect sense for when introducing that thing would piss me off, and routes around it, or, when it would be perfect and revels in it.

You know something a lot of step platformers don’t do well? Combat and boss battles. Know what Lunark does a surprisingly good job of? Yeah! I was surprised! The step platformer tends to be a game which makes a puzzle of movement, with really deliberate and fixed-animation movement to boot and how do you treat that kind of movement in combat (you know, when there’s immediate risk of harm)? It feels weird to say this, but Lunark has a number of boss fights that feel like they cracked the puzzle without complicating the interface, and it’s just, really? Quite good?

Lunark has boss battles! And they’re interesting and good and they don’t feel like they’re repeating the same basic pattern, nor do they feel like they overstay their welcome. It’s very honest, hey, this is a boss battle and all the bits of how it works are visible, and that honestly plays into the honesty of the rest of the game. There are sure some execution problems, the game doesn’t mislead you or lie to you. Even the narrative, which is about a main character trying to solve a mystery, is mostly a mystery because people are withholding information, not because you’re somehow wrong about something important.

It’s a game that feels classical and invigorated by deeply loving its source material. Where Flashback unfolded through stages to reveal a game that was pretty good, Lunark is every bit as good, with a better interface, and an equally solid narrative told through the same mix of short cutscenes and character dialogue and play experience as Flashback did. And the story isn’t complicated, or even particularly complex. What it is, is obtuse; for the most part, the sequence of events that make up the story, and its background, all follow a reasonably coherent, sensible set of choices, but because your character doesn’t know what’s going on.

Lunark is amazing, and part of why it’s amazing is because it feels like it loves Flashback enough to know how to do Flashback better. You can make things that are like the things you love, and just add some more care, and more love, and a big monster that huggs you and an opportunity to pat some animals. That’s pretty cool.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#GamePile #Games

[writefightandflightclub]

I really enjoyed your Nathan fluff 🥺 we love this angry peach fuzz king 👑💖 would you ever write him being comforted after having a nightmare? 💕

First of all, LOL @ “angry peach fuzz king” 🤣🤣🤣

Second of all, here you go! 🧡 I will warn you - I think I forgot the fluff a little bit though. It became more hurt / comfort? More angst than expected? It ends nicely though and comfort is given to Nathan - but only after I’ve subjected him to rattling around in his own head and house for a bit.

Through the looking glass (Nathan Bateman x GN!reader)

Summary: Nathan has nightmares after The Incident. After so long alone, he doesn’t realise how badly he needs a little comfort - and maybe he doesn’t believe that he deserves it.

Author’s note: hopefully this isn’t too similar to All Better. I know they both take place post-stabbing, but I tried to give this a different focus. I know I could have made the nightmares based off of anything given the ask, but this timeline / focus seemed most sensible to explore the character.

Warnings: nightmares following traumatic incident (a stabbing); mentions of blood and injury - not graphic. Self-harm (punching the bag until injury); Body horror if you squint (some gruesome descriptions occurring in-dream, but fairly abstract); swearing; implied alcoholism recovery if you squint; mentions of therapy; Nathan mildly injured in fic; reader offering comfort.

Rating: MATURE for themes mentioned above.

GIF: by @santiagogarcia (this whole gifset is magic- check it out + reblog!)

Nathan wakes up breathless, plastered to the covers by a sheen of sweat - and not in a good way. On instinct, or out of habit by now, or maybe somewhere between the two, his palm slides over his body to the site of the wound.

He is so slick that he half-believes he is soaked with dank, deep blood again, until his fingers trace over nothing more than a half-concave, half-ridged scar. The lack of searing pain is the next point of evidence leading him towards an alternative conclusion. He’s not dying (again).

It’s just another gruesome nightmare.

Although… there is nothing “just” about it.

The nightmares are pretty brutal. Brutal enough for him to wake with ragged breaths and a hammering heart, his sheets dampened and coiled up around him. Enough that it takes effort to sift through the layers of terror and distinguish reality.

With what can only be described as a whimper, Nathan swings his legs over the edge of the bed, bringing himself into a seated position and bracing his head in his hands until his racing heart levels.

In his mind, he’s telling himself to be logical about this. That Ava hasn’t truly arrived to finish the job she started; but logic is not the safe haven it used to be.

She could come back.

She’s still out there, somewhere, and Nathan distinctly got the impression, last time, that she was vehemently not a fan of him.

His hand trembling, Nathan reaches for the glass of water by his bedside, glugging it down so eagerly it spills into his bushy beard.

Since the… accident? Malfunction? Functioning just fine, actually? Failed experiment? Greatest achievement known to man? Attempted murder? (Truth be told, Nathan isn’t quite sure what to call it, so he simply calls it The Incident.)

Since The Incident, Ava has begun to regularly visit him in his sleep.

The visitations are not waning with time. In fact, they are happening more often, not less. They are happening more since you moved into the house.

It’s a bad fucking time to have quit drinking.

You’d been sent by the board. Something about Nathan taking “tortured genius” a slice too literally. Something about him being in isolation too long and needing another human around in the compound.

Well, that’s not technically true, is it? The shit all started when he opted to get social, after all.

Fucking Caleb.

Before that, he was doing just fine.

Nathan doesn’t like it at all - having you here. Being watched. Observed. Having someone monitoring his actions. Waiting for him to either fuck up or prove himself.

Ironic really, considering where he kept Ava. The experiments he ran on her.

She’d probably find it poetic, if she could truly understand such a concept.

At the thought of her, Nathan physically shudders, and reaches for an old vest to haphazardly mop the excess sweat from his skin. Then, he balls up a change of clothes and tracks nude to his wet room, feeling relief as the luke warm water sluices over his skin.

He watches himself in the mirror as he stands there naked. It’s not a vanity thing - at least not any longer. These days, he examines the way his form has changed since it happened. He lost some of his muscle and bulk during recovery, whilst unable to exercise, his arms slightly smaller and his abs softer. His stomach a little more rounded.

There’s also the puckered scar, of course - that permanent reminder of where he was skewered through the chest like a piece of kebab meat.

His gaze travels up over his body, until his eyes settle on his still haunted face. He doesn’t have his glasses on, and somewhere between the blurred vision, misted mirror, clouding steam and sluicing water, his reflected face distorts. It transforms - for the briefest of moments - into her.

Still amped with adrenalin from his harsh awakening, this briefest flash sends a surge of panic zipping through Nathan’s chest, his heartbeat racing so hard he can feel the pounding of blood in his ears.

Fuck, he curses, reaching his arms out to brace himself against the shower wall above him, his body trembling and his head dipping down between the cradle of his broad shoulders as his legs threaten to buckle.

He turns the water cold, until it is practically glacial and thundering on to the back of his neck, subduing this spiking heat.

She really did a fucking number on me, didn’t she?

It’s true though.

Ava is haunting him. When he sleeps - and at other times too.

Nathan didn’t know robots could do that. Didn’t know they could spawn ghosts.

Nathan doesn’t believe in ghosts, of course… but he does believe in trauma and its effect on the brain. He at least concedes that it is natural to continue to feel afraid; but this?

Being dogged by the spectre of her taps into Nathan’s deepest insecurities.

After all, there is nothing a genius fears more than doubting his own mind.

Nothing a God fears more than his own mortality.

And the man? Turns out, there is nothing he fears more now, than dying alone.

With a ragged breath, Nathan towels off and pulls on his grey sweatpants, tugging on his black zip-up hoody over his bare chest. And then, keen not to return to his damp, tangled sheets, he tracks towards the kitchen - mainly for want of any more favourable option.

Of course, he had returned to the compound after The Incident. Something about that many fibre optic cables being a bitch to lay down. Sunk cost fallacy and all that - too much already invested.

But it possibly wasn’t the best choice for his recovery.

Nathan has certainly gotten more used to walking down that hallway since he returned from the hospital, and yet he still finds himself holding his breath until he is free of it. Still finds his pace is just a little faster as he passes through. His gaze deliberately averted from that spot.

Once, you’d found him lying in it.

Lying in that exact spot, his body arranged like a crime scene photo, his eyes closed.

Hey, it’s hardly his least healthy coping mechanism, is it?

What in the fuck are you doing, Nathan?

Re-enacting my death, obviously.

Uh-Kay…. A beat. A devious smile. Shall I get some popcorn?

Absurd as it was, he had laughed. Laughed for the first time since it happened, and, with an extended hand, you had helped him up off the floor.

Still, now that he’s alone, he does not dwell in the corridor, colder and darker as it is without your light in it, and he tries not to think about your face or hers as he pads to the kitchen.

When he arrives though, he bypasses it entirely - heading out on to the decking, the crisp night air soothing his hot skin.

He wants to be outside.

There are too many ghosts in his house now.

He has tried to shake it. Tried to desensitise himself to Ava’s face. Spent longer than strictly necessary poring over footage of her.

He built her. Shouldn’t that take the fear out of things? Not to mention the fact Ava’s face was simply a composite of some manipulable nerd’s wank bank browsing history.

Fucking Caleb.

Still, once Nathan had looked her in the eyes and seen a rage that was all too human, things seemed a hell of a lot different.

Nathan crosses to the punchbag on the deck -lit by creeping dawn- on instinct, or out of habit, or maybe some combination of the two, his unease riling him enough to sock some punches at its midsection. Right at the equivalent site of his corporeal puncture.

He punches so hard that the skin on his knuckle splits, but Nathan doesn’t stop. He throws punch after punch until his hands are scathed and bloodied, and a trail of spit hanging from the corner of his mouth. Until he hugs the bag - the closest thing he has to a warm body to hold - and slides down it, coming limply to his knees, wiping his face on his sleeve.

He stays there, dead eyed and still for some time, the pain in his hands raw and singing. Unpleasant, but better. Better than what he was feeling, and worse all at once.

He considers his tired, cumbersome body, and contemplates remaking the world one more time. Uploading his mind into a machine or some shit, so that he doesn’t have to contend with the fragility and failings of his own existence.

He stays there, until some motion in the interior of the compound causes the light and shadows to dance differently over him, and he looks up to see your figure there, cast in a soft halo of yellowed light.

He tips his head up slightly, opening his mouth as though he might cry out to you for help, but no sound comes out - only a thin, dry croak.

So, instead, Nathan watches you for a moment, moving seamlessly around his kitchen as though it is your own. Maybe it is - more yours than his now.

Observing you like this, through the tall, cinematic windows, it is as though he peers in on another world entirely. Something less resembling a nightmare.

Lighter than that. Something more like a good dream, albeit a good dream that Nathan cannot be part of. One he can only ever watch, from the outside looking in, always fated as he is to be on the other side of the glass.

Truth be told, you haunt him too. You represent everything he could have and yet doesn’t deserve.

You appear in his nightmares and his dreams, in various terrifying and beautiful incarnations. Many variations of which his therapist would have a field day with, he’s sure - or, she would, if he’d ever fucking call her.

When you first arrived here, he was plagued by grotesque visions of you. Grotesque visions of the skin being peeled back from your body. Sometimes, circuitry beneath, and other times, muscle and bone. Sometimes, Ava’s face was buried beneath the chilling slip of your fleshy mask.

Sometimes it is a better dream. Sometimes you save him. Sometimes he saves you.

Sometimes it is a good dream. Ava isn’t there at all. But the good dreams never seem to last for long. 

Sometimes you kill him, and sometimes...

The glass door slides open.

“Reenacting your own death again, are you?” you tease, though not unkindly, interrupting the spiral of Nathan’s incessant thoughts.

A lump forming instantly in his throat, Nathan swallows thickly, and looks up at you helplessly with a thin, joyless smile. He snorts as though it’s funny, but it really isn’t. “Over and fucking over.” 

You nod once, and, without hesitation, you extend your hand towards him. Your gaze cuts through him as you search his face and he feels suddenly see-through, as if he’s about to be hit with some Shyamalan-esque twist. Was he the ghost all along? Did he die here after all?

If so, is this purgatory because Ava is here too, or heaven, because you are?

Christ. So fucking schmaltzy, Bateman.

After hesitating, Nathan takes your hand and you yank him to his feet, drawing him inside, through the looking glass.

The room seems warm on the other side. It feels… safe.

“What happened?” you ask, as you look down at your joined hands, your thumb painting a smear of red across his split knuckles. 

You mean now. What happened now, but Nathan’s mind harks back further than that. In his mind, everything is connected. Every thing threaded to another. This one smear of blood to that weeping flower of red.

The thought -the thoughts, all of them- halt him in place, his feet firmly planting on the ground. Nathan’s hand clenches tightly around yours as though it is a lifeline, as he is cast adrift on this familiar crimson tide, his face growing increasingly angular and stern.

“She...” He swallows, unable to complete that precise thought, his eyes dropping down to his feet.

You turn your body towards Nathan as he croaks, still not letting go.

Your eyes flitting around his face, attempting to search his eyes, you tentatively step closer, sliding your palms slowly over his tense shoulders, feeling them rise with an uneven, stuttered breath as you do so.

He’s so tired. He’s so very, very tired.

And it happens all at once on the exhale.

Suddenly, your arms are tugging him closer, and his face is contorting as a violent smattering of tears beads in his long lashes. You are encasing his body in your embrace and rubbing circles into his back as his buzzed head sags all too willingly toward the junction of your shoulder, your fingers splaying along the smooth flesh at the nape of his neck and pads dancing over the gentle prickle of his hair. You are shushing and soothing and reassuring and squeezing and smoothing and cradling and Nathan can feel it. Can feel his heart race in his chest and…

Finally.

Finally, his heart is not pounding because he is reliving his death.

It is pounding because he feels alive again.

When was the last time he cried, even? The last time someone really hugged him? He doesn’t remember the last time. The serendipitous combination of Nathan willing to be vulnerable, and another being willing to hold space for his pain is an all too rare thing.

There’s a reason -or several - he’s so emotionally constipated, after all.

Fuck. I’m taking a huge emotional shit right now.

Nathan remains in the welcome circumference of your arms longer than is strictly necessary - until the tear trails over the bridge of his nose begin to feel cloying. Until his breaths steady, and until his thoughts and ego creep back in. Until he notices the way his hands are clasped at your waist like claws, fingers sinking into your softness, and he thinks to release you.

Then, he leans away, a weight on his brow making his expression stern.

He waits for you to judge him, another swallow trailing thickly down his throat.

However, your eyes are kind and level, dancing with soft concern. Not with judgement or satisfaction or pity, or with anything he fears.

It is refreshing not to feel so afraid.

Finally.

“She…” Nathan begins again, finally finding courage. All at once his eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline. “She fucking stabbed me.”

You take his words in. You listen.

His “reveal” is simple. Plain and factual. A little indignant. Kinda salty. It’s not overly emotional, or articulate.

But it is enough.

Your eyes narrow, and you nod slowly, trying to understand the true meaning beneath his words.

You even reach up to cup Nathan’s face, his springy beard a cushion beneath your gentle palm as you hold him. “Yeah, genius,” you tease, with a tentative, lopsided smile, dropping your arm all too suddenly, perhaps as you catch yourself. “I got that from context.”

In response, Nathan chucks air from between his teeth, bringing his hand up to comb through his beard - perhaps to obscure his involuntary smile, or perhaps chasing your tender touch, the impression of it left warm on his cheek.

As he brings his hand up, your brows draw together, and you hook his bloodied paw delicately in yours, examining the wound, and leading him gingerly across to the couch as though his whole being might be hurting along with it.

It is.

You order him to stay put while you fetch the first aid kit, and then, in stages, Nathan watches you with fascination as you painstakingly clean and tend to his wounds, without ever being asked to.

He watches you carefully swipe the angry red away from his skin, and, to his overactive mind, it’s all connected. This red is one and the same with the flower of blooming red from The Incident.

Ava hurt him then, and she is hurting him now too.

And you…

“Going to tell the board about this?” Nathan asks, his voice weak and scuffed.

You search his eyes, holding your words back for a moment before answering. Then, you launch them on a big breath. “Fuck the board, Nathan. I told those assholes to stick it.”

Nathan blinks in confusion, shaking his head, his hand flourishing emphatically through the air. “Then… what the fuck are you still doing in my house?”

“Well. I’m… here for you,” you admit, sucking in air through your teeth, your voice shrinking. “If you want that.”

Well, that’s news to him.

Welcome news, perhaps?

You’re not watching him at all, are you? Not observing. Not asking him to evidence his humanity. Not waiting to see whether he fucks up or proves himself.

Instead, you’re seeing him. You’re seeing him and you’re not running.

Nathan had begun to think that maybe he was the nightmare. He’d begun to think he might always be haunted.

Always alone. That he might die that way; again.

And now, here you are.

Nathan thinks about that. He could so easily revert to his old ways, in this moment. Of pride and ego and stubborn independence.

But, perhaps those assholes from the board got a few things right - he’ll admit.

Maybe he had been in isolation too long. Maybe he didn’t need to take “tortured genius” quite so literally.

And so, Nathan almost protests. Almost rejects your presence and your comfort and pushes you away. But the truth is, he’s just so… tired. He’s had so many nightmares, and this time, he’d like to be on the other side of the glass. He’d like to step into that dream.

Nathan takes a deep breath, and releases on the exhale. Releases more than air.

He slowly, ever so slowly, shifts towards you on the couch, angling his body until he can safely dip his head towards your lap, his nose pointed in towards your abdomen and his knees curling around you.

“Th.. this okay?” he asks weakly.

You throw your splayed hands up into the air in surprise as the weight of Nathan settles there, but as he curls his arms around your middle and shuffles closer, you ease into it. You snake your fingers in intricate caresses over his head and neck and shoulders.

“Yeah, Nathan. This is okay,” you soothe gently, voice taut with emotion.

You comfort him.

And finally, Nathan does not need to peel your skin back to know what’s underneath.

He knows you’re not a robot, and that, as your kind touch finds him corporeal, that he is not a ghost.

He closes his eyes. And this time, when he next wakes, he knows that whether the dream is bad or better or good, it doesn’t matter. Because you will be there with him.

He wants you with him.

It’s not at all natural to him, to have you around. For the longest time, he didn’t like it. It didn’t come instinctually, and he has formed no familiar habits.

It isn’t easy - he doesn’t make it easy.

But he wants it to be.

And, in your arms, he can finally dream that it will all work out. What’s more; he can dream he deserves it, too.

[prokopetz]

Some literary fantasy settings are like “yes, this world is 100% egalitarian gender-wise, but it just happens to have some other made-up institution that precisely resembles gender in its particulars”, and I’m always like, well, if you’re going to do that, why not take it to its logical conclusion?

Like, picture a high fantasy setting where everybody is aligned with one of the classical elements – Earth, Air, Water, Fire – and that alignment carries all the absurd baggage that contemporary gender roles do. Occupations are considered Fire work, Earth work, etc. Kids of different elements get different toys to play with and dress in different colours, and there are dumb arbitrary rules about which elements can marry which other elements. Some people can flip between two different elements at will, like video game characters hitting the secondary loadout toggle, and they’re regarded as dangerous rebels.

(Of course, to make the analogy complete, elemental alignment isn’t nearly as inherent and immutable as the Man wants you to think it is, and you can in fact change your element, which from an IC perspective is treated exactly like gender transition, except instead of taking pills you meditate in the heart of a volcano until your soul catches fire and shit. Yes, I am 100% saying that transing your gender is now a martial art.)

[yandere-wishes]

A Story Told In Maybes  {Part #1}

🗡️Yandere! Enma Yuuken x reader

🗡️Summary: Enma Yuuken lives on the fine line between "Hero" and "Villain" but his story will never end in a "happily ever after" or a "tragically ever after" it will only end in Maybe...

🗡 Edited by the amazing @tealyjade-libran

🗡️ Alternative title: How many times can Genie use "Damn" in a story...

Maybe in some other world, they could have been lovers

Imagine that...

picture it as vividly as a fresh stab wound to your heart. Sketch the vision of a red waterfall carrying away your life. 

Now picture two people. A young man and woman, sitting on a park bench, holding hands and laughing, inching closer and closer. 

Imagine love, happiness, tranquility...

But those things only exist in fairy tales. And his life was most certainly not a fairy tale. 

They were foreigners, outsiders, aliens. Banished into a strange land were twisted fairy tales, roamed the earth. Where magic and mischief came as naturally to the inhabitants as breathing. Where nothing mattered, because nothing was. Everything is and thus it isn't. Nothing made sense, and sometimes, in some rare moments of stolen repose, Enma Yuuken was scared that nothing would ever make sense again. 

All of it, every microscopic thing about this 'new world' was wrong, abnormal, twisted. 

Everything except his traveling companion. Another lost soul as disjointed and out of place as he was. Another ghost trying to survive in this matrix of a so-called reality. 

There was no shock initially, no surprise in not being the only normal creature to be transported to this bizarre world. Enma knew full well that he wasn't special in any way. Another foreigner being here was one of the few things that actually made sense. 

But as the old expression goes, everything comes at a price. 

Someone else just like him being here, being stuck in this nightmare, made sense. Yet the price of logic was a thread of hysteria that had woven itself deep within his battered heart. A maddening sense that gripped his lungs, robbing them of breath. That picked off pieces from his tattered mind, replacing them with clear cutout thoughts of her. It was always only her.

His companion in this broken world just had to be you. A frail, naïve little girl with no sense about her. Some pretty-girl protagonist straight out of the pages of Shojo Beats. The kind of girl who finds her happily ever after no matter where the hell she is. 

Yet he did not have that luxury, his life was dictated by a series of maybes and could bes. He was a secondary character at best, a background shadow at worst. With no purpose other than smiling and waving. And listening to the protagonist weep about their love-driven woes.

Some days, when the dreary bell chimed for the last time, when the students marched back to the solitude of their dorms, Enma would wander around the halls, squirming in his own misery. Pondering why, oh why of all the people, in all the towns, in all the worlds, did you have to be the one to wind up in this grim land along with him. 

Why fate always had to be so cruel, so domineering, thinking it knew better than the people whose miserable lives it toyed with. He wanted to be your lover, your prince, yours. But what would a guy, who doesn’t even belong in this backward world, have to offer some heroine-type sweetheart? 

🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️

The Ramshackle’s flickering porch light glows in the distance. Like a dying star beckoning him to a destroyed paradise. He knows what's waiting for him behind the worn door. He knows you'll be there standing by the cracked dinner table, laying out days-old sandwiches for dinner, while Grimm rangles with an expired can of tuna. He knows you'll smile with tears in your doe-like eyes as you retell the fables of your endeavors. Telling him in great detail how the so-called king of beasts overpowered you in the school garden. How the King of poisons stole yet another kiss. The tales go on and on. Never-ending, never stopping, never giving him the chance to scavenge the fragments of his shattered heart.

You play your role so damn well. You know how to be the damsel in distress, the poor thing in need of saving. It's repulsive, disgusting...but only because he doesn't know how to be the hero that you need. 

If he was being honest -something he rarely did nowadays- Those "prefects" were the root of all his problems. They were the evil that made this dark world an endless horror. They'd been the ones to drive him into the "caring older brother" role. They had twisted his hand, leading him to the role of the "side-hero" like a lamb to the slaughter. Made him into a prince charming in a world that ate princes alive and spat them out once more. 

They had sealed his fate with a few insults and loaded threats. With just a few longing stares overflowing with lust and envy. They were villains, in a world that celebrated sinners. A world that cheered when the dragon steals the princess and rejoices when the evil king sits upon his skeleton throne. They were villains in every dreadful sense of the damn word. 

It's hard to be in love when all odds are against you. 

When your fate binds you into one role with no way out.

Like a rabbit hole made of quicksand. It dragged him deeper and deeper into intimate madness.

Maybe in some fair world, those leeching villains could keep their greedy blood-drenched hands off of you.

Maybe in a world where the sun never dies, you could bring yourself to love him.

Maybe he could have been the love interest, maybe, maybe, maybe.

It's always only MAYBE!

🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️

"Welcome home Nii-san," 

It's a sweet greeting that ties his guts into ribbons. His hands grow damp as his heavy eyes stare into yours. His lips curl into a painted smile, shielding you from the pain that's clawing in his stomach.

"Hi..(Y/n)"

His voice cracks and croaks like a dying frog. His lips feel abnormally dry and his eyes sting as if they've been pierced by diamond daggers. His steps are heavy as he plops down in his seat. The weight of his worries pulled him down harder than gravity ever could. He watches you through tried, restless orbs. Watches as you waltz over to your seat and sit down with the half grace of some future queen to be. It's bitter, dreadful, leaving a sickly toxin-like taste in his mouth. The mere thought that someday one of those, sinners, will take your hand and drag you to some kingdom far far away makes Enma want to claw his brain out with his bare nails. 

Enma's focus shifts over from his traveling companion to the silver-coated fireball licking his paws. Grimm's teal eyes scan him nervously before he offers a nervous smile, a rarity for the narcissistic cat. He's usually so talkative, so boasting, there was never a moment of tranquility with that cat around...

It takes a moment. A steel coated moment before the gears in Enma's head begin to turn. Before he can place his finger on the heavy abnormality weighing down the atmosphere. His nerves jolt to life, leaving a freezing sweat behind their trail. The room is spinning like a ballroom floor. Something's off, something big and obvious and hidden and...

Maybe...

"So..."

It's your sweet voice that breaks the tension creeping into the air. Melodic and luscious just like the sensation of a blissful dream. The room freezes in its tracks. The heavy atmosphere melts away like a cube of ice. Normality has one foot through the door. Behind it, hope and tranquility peek their heads through the tiny gap.

 Maybe just maybe everything is alright. Maybe it's just him, his stress and anxiety are starting to play cruel jokes on his wonder mind. Maybe he's just going mad. Yeah, that's the sanest conclusion to draw from all this. 

Enma cranes his neck to the side to get a better view of your face. Distress is scribbled all over your skin, like pristine razor cuts. You shift around in your seat, clawing at your uniform skirt as if the midnight black fabric is cutting off your circulation. Your fingers nudge the entrance to your pocket fiddling with something he can't quite make out. 

His voice is low, shaky, as he replies. The unusualness of the situation has him on edge. Nervous to the bitter bone. Maybe he was wrong, maybe his nerves were right to be wary of whatever this was. This uncertainty permeated the air-tight room. 

"What is it?" 

Slowly you drag out a white envelope flooded seven times over from your pocket. You stretch out your hand placing it in between his fingers. Enma throws a passive look at the note, his nose wrinkled up at the familiar scent that pervaded from the paper. 

"What's this?" 

It was rhetorical, asked out of dull, morbid courtesy. This time he didn't bother looking at you, in fear of seeing you look -lord forbids- gleeful. 

"A love letter, Grimm found it in our locker after class." 

There was a pause, lengthy, nerve-wracking, heart wrenching. Yuuken could hear the way your breath hitched in your throat, he could almost feel the excitement radiate off your body. 

"Can you believe it Nii-san? Someone actually left me a love letter!"

It hurt it really did, this time his heart didn't shatter. It simply broke, in two or three or maybe four. Who knows, who cares.  They had escalated from simple harassment and unsightly displays of public affection to leaving you love letters. How ungodly, how absurd, how brave...

He laments, eyes tracing over the fog of his breath as it wafts through the musty room. He wants to rip that damned piece of paper, shred it into millions so the words become ineligible, so you'll never read those horrible words again. So you'll forget that some damn fool other than him can actually love you. But he doesn't, he has too much self restraint and too much respect for his dear "little sister" to actually do it. 

His arm stretches over the table, skin illuminated by the dying candle on the center. He places the letter back safely in between your fingers. His eyes meet yours for only the second time that night. He takes in your face, Committing every piece of it to his miserable memory. The heartily glow in your crystal eyes, the faint schoolgirl smile dancing across your lips, the rose blush kissing your cheeks, the way the candle illuminates your skin, wrapping in a sparkling glow like the princess from those tales of old. You're mesmerizing in every way, it would be reasonable for other men to notice your elegance. No wonder those "prefects" were drawn to you so naturally like moths to a golden flame. 

"Who sent it?" 

His voice comes out like a block of ice, shielding away any and all his stray emotions. He doesn't want to know how doleful he is, he just can't have you taking pity on him. 

Your smile fades ever so slightly, your brows draw closer. Confusion is etched on your face. You haven't got a clue. 

"Well...I'm not sure, but they did say to meet them at the school gates when the clock chimes twelve."

Oh, joy, another fairy tale reference. It's comedic how fairy tales have begun to dictate his life. Everywhere he turns there's a grim tale awaiting him. Yuuken spares a quick glance at the crooked clock hanging by a loose thread. It’s a minute to midnight. 

"I should come with you" 

It's not a request but you take it as so. 

"No need to bother, I'll take Grimm, he could use the walk. He's starting to bulk up a bit"

"HEY! The great Grimm-Sama doesn't "Bulk up" He only gets more powerful!" 

Before the older male can protest, you're already halfway out the door. Grimm scurrying to follow you on all fours like a pesky rat. The door slams on your way out, leaving Yuuken alone with his morbid screeching thoughts. 

There goes the only good thing in his life. Into the arms of another. 

For a second he contemplates leaving you to fate, after all, who's he to disobey fate, go against whoever orchestrates this universe. But it's only a second, short lived and quickly died. 

Maybe he's a hero.

Maybe he's a Prince Charming.

Maybe he's a villain.

Maybe he's just some honorary older brother looking out for his kid sister.

Maybe, just maybe, he's your future lover;

and he'll be damned if he lets you slip out of hands. 

Enma's quick to grab his old practice blade from the overstuffed closet. It's not much, but it's all he has from the normal world, from his world. 

The door grates for the last time that night as he steps out into the cold midnight air. The stars blink in some sort of secret tongue, either warning him or encouraging him, he doesn't know. Nor does he truly care, for Enma Yuuken is done letting life and fate and villains decree his meaningless life. Here and now that's where he'll make his stand, he'll save you. Kiss you. Love you. Marry you. You, You, YOU

But there's still one nagging thought that screams inside his head as he dashes for the school gates. This world worships villains, prays at their feet, and hands them death and destruction on golden plates. And he's no villains, he's some sort of upside-down, in-between. Rotting alone in the border between Hero and Villain. By law of society, he's a reject, a useless foreigner, an alien, an outsider. 

and MAYBE he's already too late...

Who wrote the love letter? Was it the head of the savanaclaw dorm or maybe the head of the heartslabyul dorm ? Maybe it’s the ever mysterious  Tsunotarou...