#you can tell it's serious art because of all the lines

[abuddyforeveryseason]

This is the Buddy for January 31st. Closing the month with a pretty sketchy one. I've mentioned before (like on May 17th and January 24th) that the closest I ever come to making "real art" is making a drawing with lots of short lines, because that's what I was taught to do with those manga-drawing books. So you can tell today's drawing is very serius and mature. Like he has his eyes closed, and there's a tree in the background.

To be honest, the best part about the drawing, in my opinion, is the tree. Drawing trees is never fun, and it doesn't help that they're the cheap go-to element to add to a drawing to make it much more childish. A guy with a tree in a field? A five year old drew it. A forest? A forty year old professional artist would have to spend days working on it.

Because the comic idea Buddy is attached to took place in the woods, I put myself in quite a difficult position. On the very first panel, I would have to have drawn a forest, and I can barely draw a single tree as it is.

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[mrpenguinpants]

Green Slumber

— "Ah, look! Is Alhaitham taking a nap?" "Shh...You're too loud, Paimon." "Th-That's not true…Paimon was definitely whispering-wait, who is that beside him?"

— Alhaitham

Ayato Ver: Pale Blue Slumber Traveller & Paimon lines are taken from the official Genshin Twitter post. [Masterlist]

Congrats Alhaitham, your birthday postpones the fic where I tear you apart for scamming me. I usually don't write birthday fics but pretty art. Can you tell I'm not used to writing second pov and rushed again :)) I don't know how to end fics.

"Ah, look! Is Alhaitham taking a nap?"

Lumine looks in the direction of Paimon's voice, her floating companion peeking through a room with a giddy face. No doubt hatching some sort of plan to get back at the scribe for his words during their quest to rescue Lesser Lord Kusanali. On one hand, she should probably scold Paimon for immediately jumping to payback since the reason both of them are here is to wish the man a happy birthday before departing to the next region. But on the other hand...

“Shh…You’re too loud Paimon,” Lumine whispers as she tip-toes towards the door and gently pushes it open further. She's pointedly ignoring the face Paimon is throwing her for acting just as bad as she is. If anyone asks, she'll make an excuse that she was just being a polite guest and if Alhaitham was sleeping, she would excuse herself quietly. In no way is it her curiosity to see the ever-serious Alhaitham in any mode that's defenseless and relaxed. So with Paimon’s head hovering above hers, they both poke their heads into the room. Alhaitham doesn’t look any different from the last time they met, although asleep, he looks far less intimidating. He’s leaned back in the wooden chair, arm propped up to hold his lolling head in place. Calculating amber and teal eyes are closed as his chest falls up and down slowly with each breath while the gentle sun paints him in warm yellows and soothing whites. If Lumine had never met Alhaitham before, she would have thought he may have been the Dendro archon with how serene the scene itself is. Something that almost makes her want to reach out and touch him just to check if he’s real or not.

"Th-That's not true…Paimon was definitely whispering-wait, who is that beside him?" Paimon’s voice tapers off at the end, eyes alight with confusion. Lumine tears her eyes away from Alhaitham to look at where Paimon is pointing. Seated on the desk right in front of Alhaitham’s sleeping figure, a stranger hums softly with their ankles locked as they swing their legs ideally in the air. In their hands appears to be the beige book Alhaitham usually carries around, the one about physics and motion if she remembers correctly. Now that she’s looking - she can't believe she missed an entire person because she got distracted by the image of a sleeping Alhaitham - the stranger looks far more comfortable in the room than she is. Maybe they're another roommate? Although Alhaitham doesn't seem like the type to have an extensive list of friends and she's positive she's met most if not all of the people Alhaitham could call close enough to have them in his home. She shares a look with Paimon who returns it with a shrug of the shoulders. Neither one of them has ever seen this mysterious person before.

"Haitham, this section here about..." the stranger's voice brings blue and yellow eyes back to the room. Lumine watches intrigued as the stranger finally looks up from the book to see Alhaitham fast asleep. A soft sigh escapes their lips as they close the book, shoulders dropping into something more relaxed, and they just sit and look at the man. They have the same look in their eye but instead, their hand slowly reaches out until their fingertips meet the tips of soft silver hair. Pushing strands away from his face before waltzing down to caress his cheek. It's an intimate touch and Lumine isn't sure whether she should be here interrupting the moment. The stranger surely seems to be having fun as they return to playing with silver strands. Through it all, Alhaitham remains asleep yet, his body seems to lean into the touch naturally. As if these practiced movements have happened before.

Oh. Oh, she understands now.

“Hey, Paimon…” Lumine starts as she slowly picks herself off the floor as quietly as possible lest she disturbs the peace. "We should leave."

"Huh? But why? We've never seen this person before right? What if they're one of those bad guys that are after Alhaitham because he's the acting grand sage!" Paimon adamantly nods, small hands clutched into little fists. It would be cute if it weren't for the fact that Paimon has no sense of volume. Before Lumine can reach out and press her palm against Paimon's mouth to stop her from shouting again, a light chuckle rings out. They both freeze in place, flicking their heads back inside the room.

"You know...if you talk any louder you will actually wake him up," the stranger drops their hand as they turn to face the duo. There's mirth dancing in their eyes and Lumine has enough decency to look embarrassed at getting caught red-handed. Paimon on the other hand has no such reservations.

"Ah, sorry! We didn't mean to! Wait-Hey! Don't turn this on Paimon. Who are you and what are you doing in Alhaitham's house?!" Paimon stomps her feet in the air, crossing her arms as she pouts at the stranger. Her frown further increased by the stranger laughing harder.

"I basically live here. There's no need to be so on edge. I doubt Haitham could sleep so easily if a stranger was in his home," they say, gesturing to the still peacefully unaware scribe who hasn't moved a muscle since they arrived.

"Ohh, so you're like that blond guy from before! Ka-Ka something? But wait, why were you touc-"

"Ahem, sorry for barging in. We just wanted to say Happy Birthday to Alhaitham. We'll visit again some other time when he's awake," Lumine cuts Paimon off, successfully managing to slap her hand against Paimon's mouth. She can feel the back of her ears turning red as she bows and practically sprints away and out of the house. She'll just write a note to the scribe instead.

+

You blink a few times before chuckling again. Wow, that girl sure can run fast. You've heard stories about the Traveller and this "Paimon" character, patiently waiting for your turn to stumble into their journey. Although you wish you had met them with better first impressions, they seem like a lively bunch. Your eyes slide over back onto the sleeping figure in front of you, and there's a slight nudge of his lips. The smallest of smiles threaten to burst before it placates into something more neutral. A small detail that hasn't escaped you.

"I know you're awake Alhaitham," you state blankly, your gentle hands reaching back up before suddenly turning harsh and tugging at his cheek. Pulling the skin so he has a lopsided smile. True to your words, teal and amber eyes open without an ounce of shame. "Weren't those your friends? Don't be rude and ignore them when they came all this way to say happy birthday."

He offers a half-hearted shrug before the hand supporting his head moves to take your fingers still tugging at his cheek. Intertwining them together until his face is free. His smile is still small but his eyes shine with fondness that you're forced to look away. Sometimes you forget just how pretty Alhaitham can be.

"Weren't you the one that said I should indulge on my special day? Is it so wrong that I want to spend it with you and you alone?" He adds to his point by brushing his lips against your fingertips before pressing a kiss to your palm. There's a small smile as he extends his other hand out, eyes taking in how pink your ears become. "So let's indulge."

“For such a pretty face, you sure are…” you trail off but you take his hand and let him move you onto his lap. It's unfair how fast he can turn the tables on you and how easily you let him do so. It was fun being able to poke and prod the man to your heart's content since he had to hold the disguise of being asleep, even if you do feel a bit bad that the Traveller had to postpone their greeting, but now it's his hands that roam over your body. Slipping under your - his - shirt and rubbing small circles into your hip before growing bored and moving onto another patch of untouched skin until there's nothing left to take. Lip hungry as he kisses away your words because every breath that isn't mixed with his is worthless. Perhaps it's a blessing that you need to take a proper breath because you're sure that Alhaitham would keep taking until there's nothing left. Disregarding how tightly your hands cling to him and refuse to let him stray too far away.

"Greedy."

"Pot meet kettle."

---

[taglist]  <- if you want to be added, please read this first.

@genshins1mpact @creatorofstars @xoneaboveallx @timmyitsmeeee @raingoesboomboom @duhsies @thegayrubberducky @isa-solasun @afoxesgreed @yuuki4646 @angel-luv-04 @inlovewithwaffles @maddymints09 @moonssandstars @ieathairs @crypticbibliophile @cumbermovels @totallynotaraidensimp

[bonny-kookoo]

Jungkook

Princess | Short #1

There's something happening between you two.

Tags/Warnings: Wolfdog Hybrid!Jungkook, Showdog Hybrid!Reader, Enemies to lovers, Angst, Fluff?, Brat!Reader, Jungkook has major brat tamer energy, reader has some issues

Length: 1.6k words

A/N: I will force feed you this AU and you will like it 👿

There is no taglist for this fic.

-> Masterlist

♥━━━━━━━━━━•.♡.•━━━━━━━━━━━━♥

Despite Jungkook having agreed to help you, he still continues to work on that choreography the same way as before, ruthlessly pushing you further and further despite your very much constant complains.  

Apparently, according to him, it’s not about the whole contest anymore. But instead, to teach you ‘something’. What it is, he won’t say- but you’re sure that’s all just an excuse anyways to torture you.  

But you’re not going down so easily.  

“How many times do I need to tell you that you have your own snacks?!” Jungkook complains, showing the empty bag of crackers to you, at the sight of which you simply sit in the middle of the practice room, tail happily wagging as if you don’t even know what he’s talking about. “And I’m sure you drank my water too.” He accuses, and you just shrug.  

“Maybe.” You answer. “The crackers sucked though. Way too bland. Do you always just eat old people snacks?” You question, irritating him further. It’s clear that you’re testing your boundaries with him, and most of all his patience- because lets be real, its funny as hell to make him angry. Mostly because you know he’d never actually get too upset with you- if he was to ever do so, you’re sure he’d give you a fair warning way before that line has actually been stepped over.  

Though, clearly, you’ve not really realized yet that you two have actually become closer up until this point- and that also means that Jungkook no longer tries to stay as far away as he can from you.  

So when he returns to the practice room with new snacks of his own and a bottle of sweet electrolyte juice, you’re already up on your feet, happily looking what he’s got himself- before he suddenly takes off his hoodie, catching you entirely off guard and freezing you in place for a good second, because wow. 

He’s got an extensive collection of art beneath the skin of one of his arms up to his hand even, and his physique is definitely also not to be played around with. Years of serious dancing and working out have clearly created the man he is today-  

And suddenly, your world is dark for a good second, as he pushes his hoodie over your head.  

You’re confused, when he suddenly pulls on the sleeves your arms are not yet pulled through, as he instead ties them behind your back, successfully immobilizing you. He picks you up and sits you in one of the chairs after he's done, leaning in close once you're seated, summoning the audacity to smirk at you.  

“Timeout, you gremlin.” He tells you, before he sits down next to you to eat his food, all while you can’t do anything but watch, wide eyed and completely confused.  

And instead of arguing, you just pull in your legs after toeing off your shoes, pouting to yourself while enjoying his scent. You’d never openly admit it, but he does smell nice- both the laundry detergent he uses for his clothes, and, well, his own scent. You blame it on the fact that throughout your career until now, you’ve barely had any close interaction with another male hybrid like this- so it’s probably just the fact that you’re not used to this.  

“Take it off.” You demand, and he shakes his head.  

“Nop.” He denies, and you swing your legs on the chair as you’ve let them fall down again.  

“I need to go pee.” You tell him, and at that he sighs, before he unravels the sleeves- 

Just for you to slip your hands through them, and steal his bottle of juice as you run into the hallway, hearing his footsteps loudly right behind you, hand having slapped against the door you’d tried to swing close behind you. You don’t get very far when he suddenly grabs the back of the sweater, pulling you closer again to try and lift you. “No- No no, I really need to go pee!” You deny, standing in front of him now after having avoided his grip.  

“Alright, let’s go then.” He says, grabbing the hood of the sweater to drag you to the restrooms, taking the bottle away from you. “Go pee.” 

“I don’t have to anymore.” You say, and he narrows his eyes at you.  

“Too bad.” He denies. “Go squeeze something out, I’m not gonna take you again.” He threatens, and you reluctantly go anyways, before you re-emerge, glaring at him, until you have an idea. He watches as you stand in front of him, putting on your best puppy-dog eyes, and holding your arms out upwards to him. “What.” He asks, arms crossed.  

“Carry me?” You ask, and he thinks about it for a good second, before he agrees.  

“Alright.” He nods. 

“Wait, really?!” You ask, surprised- when suddenly, your world is upside-down, with him carrying you over his shoulder, one arm holding onto your legs so you don’t tip over and fall off his back. And he hears you laugh about it most of all, your fluffy, curled tail wagging right into his face if it wasn't for his other hand holding it down as well, his own lips turned into a smile.  

Because honestly, this is what your life is supposed to be like. Happy, fun, and most of all, normal.  

It’s clear to him that you’ve simply never really had any proper interactions before that could’ve taught you how to socialize and get used to general manners- if anything, you most likely always got what you wanted just to have you shut up and be quiet. And eventually, when you grew up into an adult that you are now, things simply had gotten stuck like this. 

The reason why he thinks this, is just how.. Helpless you seem at the simplest of interactions. From simple questions about your hobbies, to normal touches like a hug for a greeting, everything appears to be foreign to you. And you mask that insecurity and lack of understanding with attitude- because up until now, most likely, this must’ve been your best defense. Everyone would leave you alone if you got cranky, and so, these days, you must feel extremely confused and without any direction, considering that this doesn’t work with him.  

But you’ve got to learn. Not just basic manners, but also the fact that not everyone in the world is out to get you.  

Especially not him.  

Back in the practice room, you’re now on his lap, where he’s got your hands behind your back, held by your wrists in his hand, grip strong. “We gotta practice.” You whine, but he knows that’s not what you’re going to do once he lets go.  

“We do.” He agrees. “And we will, once you’ve finished your tantrum.” He tells oyu, and you scoff.  

“I’m not having a tantrum. You’re being an asshole!” You tell him. “Who cares if I eat your snacks? You can just get new one’s!” You complain, and he shakes his head at that.  

“It’s not about that. What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours. If I want to take something from you, I’ll ask. If you want something from me, you’ll have to ask as well.” He explains, and you kick out your legs, trying to get off- but he’s got a strong hold on you, so you’re stuck in place.  

“I’m not a child!” You bark, slipping off of his legs to instead lay on the floor now. He raises a brow.  

“You’re sure acting like one.” He says, crossing his arms. “Don’t you have boundaries that you’d like respected?” He asks, looking down at where you’re laying on the floor at his feet, and you stare at him for a second with an unsure gaze, before you slowly sit up, eyes glossy. It’s obvious that sentence must’ve hit a sore spot for you, because you’re visibly fighting another emotional outburst as you try and swallow down any tears that want to escape.  

It’s quiet. Mostly because you don’t want to break down, and he doesn’t want to say anything that might set you off. He hates seeing you like this- but he knows that one way or another, you’ll have to face these things.  

“I’ll respect any boundary you give me.” He tells you. “I promise you that. But you’ll have to do the same for me, because that’s fair, right?” He asks, and you take in a deep breath, before you lean against his leg, head resting against his thigh.  

“I’m sorry.” You mumble quietly, and he reaches out to out a comforting hand on your head. “I’ll be more fair.” You say, and he smiles.  

“Thank you.” He offers, before you look up at him.  

“Can we practice more now?” You ask, and he shrugs.  

“If you want to.” He says, and you nod.  

“It’s.. Actually fun. If you don’t nag all the time.” You playfully argue, making him roll his eyes.  

“I’m just trying to get you to do your best.” He denies, and you smile brightly at that, tail wagging on the floor, a sight he’s come to really like.  

“Thank you.” You say, and for the first time, he has to admit- 

You can actually be really fucking cute, if you want to be. 

[renthony]

hey!! i am genuinely curious about how the catholic church helped implement the hays code, would you be able to tell me more/do you have any good reading material about it? thanks so much!!

This has been sitting in my inbox for aaaaaages, because I want to do it justice! It's actually a big facet of my research project that I'm going to go into much, much, much more depth on, but here's the short(er) summary:

The foundational text of the Hays Code was written by two Catholics: a Jesuit priest named Father Daniel Lord, and a man named Martin Quigley, who was the editor of the Motion Picture Herald. They grounded their guidelines in Catholic morality and values, based on the idea that art could be a vehicle for evil by negatively influencing the actions of those who view it.

The original list of guidelines written by Lord and Quigley was adapted into the Production Code, popularly known as the "Hays Code" after William Hays, the president of the Production Code Administration that enforced it. As president of the PCA, William Hays appointed a staunch Catholic man called Joseph Breen to enforce the code. Breen enforced it aggressively, confiscating the original reels of films he deemed inappropriate and against the Code. Many lost films from this era are only "lost" because Joseph Breen personally had them destroyed. Some were rediscovered later, but many were completely purged from existence.

When Breen died in 1965, Variety magazine wrote, "More than any single individual, he shaped the moral stature of the American moral picture." He was a very, very big deal, and was directly responsible for censoring more films than I could even begin to list here.

In 1937, Olga J. Martin, Joseph Breen’s secretary, said, “To an impoverished country which had become religious and serious-minded, the sex attitudes of the post-war period became grotesquely unreal and antedated. The public at large wanted to forget its own derelictions of the ‘gay twenties.' The stage was set for the moral crusade.”

In 1936, once the Code was being fully enforced on filmmakers by Joseph Breen, a letter was issued by the office of Pope Pius XI that praised Breen's work, and encouraged all good Catholics to support film censorship.

The letter read in part, "From time to time, the Bishops will do well to recall to the motion picture industry that, amid the cares of their pastoral ministry, they are under obligation to interest themselves in every form of decent and healthy recreation because they are responsible before God for the moral welfare of their people even during their time of leisure. Their sacred calling constrains them to proclaim clearly and openly that unhealthy and impure entertainment destroys the moral fibre of a nation. They will likewise remind the motion picture industry that the demands which they make regard not only the Catholics but all who patronize the cinema."

Basically, this letter was a reminder from the Papal authority that bishops and priests are supposed to stop people from engaging with "lewd" or "obscene" art. That meant supporting things like the Hays Code.

So, to summarize: the original text of the Hays Code was written by two Catholics, including a priest. The biggest and most aggressive censor under the Code was a Catholic man, who had the full support and approval of the Pope at the time. Good Catholics were called en-masse to support the Hays Code, because it was intentionally written to line up with Catholic teachings.

There's a lot more to say on the subject, and if you're interested in reading more on your own, I recommend the book "Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934," by Thomas Doherty. There are plenty other sources I can recommend on request, but that's a solid place to start.

(And if I can toot my own horn, I'm intending to do a video lecture series all about American film censorship and the Hays Code. Pledging to my Patreon helps keep me fed and housed while I do all this damn research.)

[harmonictechnicality]

*based off this awesome art right here by @chocoarts - the sketch on the left in particular :)

It doesn’t take long for Steve to get used to Eddie’s raised-by-wolves levels of affection. The hair chewing and the shoulder nibbles and the freckle licking. It’s never classified normal stuff - definitely not stuff he ever did with dainty Hawkins High girls, that’s for damn sure.

But still, it takes no time to get used to it. Full on expects it, by now. The most notable time that Steve is expecting it is on their one year anniversary.

Two months prior to the Big Day, Eddie's spontaneity and Steve's boredom led to an impulsive stick-and-poke tattoo on Steve's forearm. Eddie wanted to give Steve a simple crown. Told him it was to reclaim the stupid nickname from high school, make it his own.

'Overthrow all the teenaged bullshit. Kick trauma in the metaphorical ass.' Eddie had said after completing it, smiling up at Steve. 'It's what kings do best.'

After that day, Steve decides to add on to his impulsive tattoo and surprise Eddie with it. He gets one small bat, just like the ones on Eddie's arm. Gets it right next to the crown, side-by-side. The same way they all fought together a while back.

As soon as Eddie sees the addition, he tackles Steve, linebacker style. Steve is ready for it, totally braces for the aggressive affection. Fucking loves it. Expects it.

However, Eddie doesn't just stop there. Oh no. He climbs up Steve's body, tightly wrapping his arms around Steve's neck. Wraps his legs around Steve's upper arms even tighter.

Which... how the hell did Eddie get so flexible? And when the hell did Eddie get so flexible? Like, yeah they do some semi-contortionist stuff in the bedroom, mostly when they're hyped up on sugary soft drinks.

But this? This is... new. Wild.

He clutches on to Steve like he's a goddamn tree trunk. Some rare tree species that's in grave danger of being chopped down from the rainforest or whatever. He’s making lots of pleased sounds, singing maybe. Hard to tell for sure.

Steve holds Eddie firmly, hands underneath his thigh, his back, anywhere that he can get a solid grip. Keeps him safe from whatever corporate bulldozer that dares to take down their weirdly amazing love.

"Shit, I'm crazy about you." Eddie nuzzles into Steve's hair. "Like... totally and completely."

Steve laughs, comes out a bit strangled from the way Eddie is clinging to him. "Guessing you like it, huh?"

"Duh." Eddie slides off, connecting their hands on his way down.

"It represents-"

"I know what it represents." Eddie interrupts, his expression softens from the reminder, the difficult topic they're both skipping around. "You don't have to say it."

He does though, Steve has to say it. Needs to say it the same exact way Eddie had said it to him two months ago.

Because yeah, they act tough about what went down that night. But that doesn't mean they should just be stuck in a cycle of Acting Tough. Pretending to be okay all the damn time.

So Steve takes Eddie's arm, the one that's covered with tiny bat silhouettes. He holds their two arms together and carefully brushes over each tattoo design. Tells Eddie to reclaim the stupid scars that litter his body.

"Fight off all the inter-dimensional bullshit. Kick trauma's metaphorical ass." Steve smiles up at Eddie, who suddenly looks serious, focused. "It's what heroes do best."

"Steve." The seriousness is wiped clean off of Eddie's face. It's quickly replaced with a gentle grin. Relief reaching over his furrowed brow. No more worry lines. No more grimace. He looks at ease. Content, maybe.

And as much as Steve enjoys making Eddie feel content, he wants him happier right now. So he switches up the energy, tries to lighten the mood a little. Steve hooks his fingers into Eddie's front pockets, readying to pull him in.

It's predictable, been his go to make-out move any time they're standing up. This is a special fucking day, however, and that calls for a Special Edition Make-Out Move.

So Steve digs each hand deep into Eddie's pockets, wiggles them around a bit. Watches Eddie's cheeks go pink, blotchy red in some places. Steve moves all of the coins and lint and questionable items out of the way, making room.

He takes deep breath, then yanks the seams at the very bottom of each pocket, flipping the material inside out. Sticking straight up from his jeans.

Eddie is all red now, flushed down to his neck. "What the..."

Steve tugs on the flipped out pocket seams, jolting Eddie closer. He lands on Steve's lips, colliding a bit roughly. For a second, they're too busy smiling to kiss properly. But Steve slides his hands up Eddie's chest, around his neck, scratches the tiny hairs on the back of Eddie's head, and that's it. That's all that it takes for them to get lost in the kiss.

Eddie's mouth opens, biting the center of Steve's bottom lip. Breathes out the warmest air as he lets go, returns to a softer approach. Steve licks over the spot, soothes the pulse that Eddie left behind.

"That was... different. " Eddie laughs. He swipes his tongue over Steve's cupids bow, traces an outline until Steve is laughing too.

"Bad different?" Steve asks.

"Not at all." Eddie shakes Steve by the shoulders like he’s nuts for asking such an outrageous question. "Besides, different is right up my alley, babe."

"I'm highly aware."

"Didn't realize I was such a bad influence on your freakier side."

"What can I say?" Steve shrugs, steals one of Eddie’s rings to twirl around his finger. "I'm very easily persuaded."

They head over to the couch, kissing haphazardly as they flop down. Eddie tugs and twists at the fabric of Steve’s shirt, stretching it out. Wrinkling it. Steve couldn’t care less if it gets ruined because Eddie will be the one ruining it.

Eddie sighs into the kiss. Not a sexy sigh either (which are obviously Steve’s favorite of the sighing variety). It sounds more shocked. Disbelief or something.

Steve angles his head away from the kiss to see that Eddie’s eyes are open, wandering all over Steve’s face. It’s pretty cute, seeing Eddie too busy just staring to even shut his eyes mid-kiss. Like his schedule is too jam-packed up with Gawking, has to multitask during their make out sessions now.

"Kinda can’t believe it." Eddie finally says, still staring.

"What?" Steve stares backs. Makes it a staring contest. Doesn't tell Eddie though cause he wants to win.

Eddie motions toward his pockets that are still turned inside out. "After one whole year, you still keep me on my toes with shit like that."

"I do?"

"Sure do. You're something else, babe.”

"I am?" Steve blinks.

Damnit, he lost the one-sided staring contest.

“Yup.” Eddie nods, transitions to chewing on a chunk of Steve’s hair like he always does. Sometimes, he’ll make mooing sounds. Especially after sex, when he’s at his goofiest. Most comfortable.

It’s fucking unreal how Steve has learned all of these quirks. How he waits for them, anticipates them. Every bit feels familiar to him now.

"You're unexpected in all the best ways, Harrington."

Steve tries not to gush at that compliment. It's not one he gets often.

Eddie stops chewing on Steve’s hair to kiss his cheek instead. The kiss is powdery-sweet, miles away from his usual eagerness. Still perfect somehow. Just like the weird stuff is somehow perfect too.

That's kind of who they are together. Weird and unexpected.

In all the best ways.

[katapotato55]

how to make your writing be remembered forever and possibly be well loved.

(incredibly stupid and silly fanfiction line at the end of this post) I know that title is incredibly daunting but listen, its very simple. you ready?

MAKE STRONG CHARACTERS

"but kat! surely its not that simple! " nononono listen. bear with me. I want you to think of your favorite thing. Now ask: what do you remember the most about the thing you love? I will go first:

I love team fortress 2. and guess what: this game has been around since 2007, and was in development hell since before I was even born. The game has been around for 16 fucking years. And guess what? in the strong year of 2023 team fortress 2 Is STILL getting memed about. and do you want to know the crazy part? the character designs to the naked eye are not special at all. ok sure from a designer standpoint, these are very well designed characters made so that you can easily tell who they are based on their silhouette. but from the average joe.... tf2 is iconic but overall it looks ok. it doesn't seem special to a stranger to tf2. look at this completely random and arbitrary example of a game in the same genre:

I don't know shit about the characters in overwatch. Yeah i have a BASIC idea on what their personality is like based on voice lines and some videos i guess... but in-game they just exist. these characters are brightly colored, they have beautiful unique designs, hell they have even more diversity such as robots and people from other cultures! but i don't remember shit about these characters. Maybe I remember the ice lady and tracer, but nothing else. and yeah part of overwatch struggling right now is incompetant development, BUT: The characters in team fortress 2 are SO remember-able because the characters have such a vibrant personality. I am an orange box owner, its been a decade and a half and I am still remembering this game and enjoying art about it.

"but kat! that is a comedy game! Overwatch is a very serious game! are you saying comedy is needed to make a character more noticeable?" no. though I think allowing your characters to lighten up every now and then would humanize them. Not full on goofy, just give them something that makes them likeable. and if you cant do that, you can STILL make a compelling character even though they are mostly seriousness. I have an even more awfully thought out example:

kung fu panda is a masterclass in making a serious comedic movie somehow work. Master Oogway.... he isn't a comedic character at all. Yeah we made memes about him, but ignoring that, he is a wise and resourceful person. He is at calm and has faith in this intuition. there are a lot of characters like this. What makes Oogway stand out is that he is also a little bit kooky and sassy.

this youtube clip sums up what I mean. It is a funny line, it fits the character, and It doesn't ruin the seriousness of the moment. Some of the most successful series in history have something about them that has appealed to people. In my opinion: characters with strong personality and interesting traits is always a good way to ensure your writing is successful. The second most important is the characters bouncing off of each other in terms of their chemistry with each other. There is a reason why I spent years playing the first Destiny game and all of the DLC, but I remember fuck all about the characters. I think I maybe remember the bootleg star lord robot guy.

A writing exercise

here is an exercise to get you in the spirit of character making. step 1- get a random character from a random bit of media. In this case let me bring you master Oogway. Step 2- Get a completely different character from a completely unrelated series. I am going to give you Scout from team fortress 2. step 3- write a random ass thing about them interacting. Think about how the characters would react to each other and why. Think about each characters values in life and think about how they would bond and conflict with each other. Think about characters similar to the character they met in the past and how they reacted then, and if they have never interacted, make something interesting with it. Step 4- keep experimenting. Once you get into the spirit you can apply this to any new character you could want to make anyways thats it byeee- "arent you going to do that ?" do what? "make a writing thing about oogway and scout. " ........

Scout: let's go turtle you got nothing on my speed- Oogway: The one who first resorts to violence shows that he has no more arguments. Scout: that sounds like chicken talk! come on tough guy let me have it- Oogway then proceeds to make scout eat shit before vanishing in a cloud of cherry blossoms and dust from the desert. If this post isn't popular I want you to know my dignity was lost for nothing.

[celiciaa]

GILBERT VON OBSIDIAN EVENT STORY....

CHAPTER ONE.

I just love you.

translations are not 100% accurate. expect mistakes.

special thanks to @otomehoneyybearr for proofreading! ♡

minors and ageless blogs dni.

One day, I was caught in a runaway carriage in town and lost my memory.

Gilbert: This is trouble. I never expected the little rabbit would forget about all our time together. 

Gilbert: The coachman who caused this accident will be executed at once…

Gilbert: The main issue is this distance between us.

(….This is a nightmare.) 

(I'm having a bad dream right now.)

I was working at the small bookstore in Rhodolite, the land of roses and art.

But for some reason, I woke up in the castle of Obsidian, an enemy nation of military and ore.

The unrealistic nightmare of being confronted by a handsome looking man with black hair and one eye from the royal family makes me feel dizzy.

(Why am I in Obsidian? And why is a member of the royal family approaching me?)

I rolled off the bed and ran to the wall but,

The man who introduced himself as Gilbert steadily closed the distance between us.

At first glance, he looked like he was smiling, but his blood-colored eye was not, which was simply terrifying.

(He’s the infamous Obsidianite royal family who must have killed many people so far—-)

(If I'm not careful, he could kill me too.)

Gilbert: Hmm, to be so frightened by the little rabbit who loved me so much...

Gilbert: I'm so shocked that I feel like I want to prepare a cage right away.

Walter: You idiot! Don't say that even if it is a joke!

Then, the man who claimed to be the royal physician, Mr. Walter, yelled so loudly that it made me flinch involuntarily.

Walter: You always think of imprisonment and execution whenever someone is in trouble.

Gilbert: I’m serious, you know? Once I confine the little rabbit, she can't escape.

(…)

Walter: Don't threaten the injured person. Look at how pale her face is.

Gilbert: Aah, sorry? I'm the kind and sweet villain to you, so if you don't like it, I'll stop.

Gilbert: But, you know what will happen if you keep acting like that...right?

(I might actually end up being trapped.)

It didn't seem like this was the right time to be afraid and try to escape from reality.

I fought the urge in my body to escape from Gilbert standing in front of me, and held my ground. 

(First, I’ll assess the situation. If I can’t recall anything, I won’t know the right way to act.)

Emma: Why…am I in Obsidian?

Gilbert: Of course, because I brought you here.

Emma: But why a commoner like me….?

Gilbert: Because I’m the big villain who loves the little rabbit very much.

Emma: …Am I the little rabbit?

Gilbert: Yes, that's right. I love you.

(…I don't understand.)

But surely, I see my reflection captured in those seemingly indifferent red eye.

I felt his genuine feeling of love, and had no choice but to accept Gilbert’s words.

Emma: Can you tell me how I got here?

Gilbert: Sure, I'll spend the whole night telling you.

Gilbert: In bed. 

(!?) 

━━

(I never thought he would actually bring me to bed…)

After Mr. Walter finished treating me, I was led into a spacious room covered in black interior

I was intrigued by the shelves lined with many books that rivaled any bookstore,

Gilbert stopped in front of the bed and urged me to sit down.

(Perhaps this is Gilbert's room?)

(…I can imagine the consequences for not complying would be horrific.)

I tried to sit as far away from him as possible, but Gilbert mercilessly settled down close enough for our shoulders to touch.

I quickly gave up. 

Gilbert: Now, let's start off with the fact that you were chosen as Belle.

━━

Gilbert: ——And so, you are now loved by me, the world's greatest villain, and we lived happily ever after.

(No, no, no….!) 

(Wait, is what you just said true!?)

I was chosen as Belle to select the next king of Rhodolite,

Apparently, I caught Gilbert’s attention when he visited to participate in a social event,

And now he’s telling me that I’m his fiancée or something….

(This…has to be a lie.)

Gilbert: Let me tell you, I don't lie.

Emma: ….

Gilbert: Huh, you froze. Is it that hard to accept?

Emma: ….I don't think I'll ever be able to accept it.

(It's as if I've been told a grand story, and…it doesn't seem like it's my own.) // (It's as if I've been told a grand story, and…it doesn't feel like it's about me.)

Gilbert: I see. Then it can’t be helped if your mind rejects it.

Gilbert: But it’s possible that your body might remember.

Emma: What?

The corners of Gilbert’s mouth raised into a smile as he pushed my shoulders and laid me down on the sheets. 

I could easily imagine what would happen next, and my blood ran cold.

Emma: Please stop!

Gilbert: Why? Didn't I just tell you that I'm your fiancé?

Gilbert: We used to do things like this quite often.

I feel his cold lips touch my ears and he bites down forcefully. 

I winced in pain, and he lapped my skin with his tongue.

(This man...seriously…)

(But I don't know...it just feels weird.)

Even though I was being assaulted by a man who I barely know, I don’t feel any disgust at all.

It seems to be true that my body remembers.

Still, my heart couldn't keep up, so I pushed back against his chest, Gilbert bit my skin once more then pulled away.

Gilbert: Did you believe that? // Did you fall for that? 

Emma: Was this a joke? 

Gilbert: You’re injured.

Gilbert: If it weren't for that, I would have forced you to remember.

Emma: ….

Gilbert: Didn't I tell you? That I’m the kind and sweet villain to you.

Gilbert: I'll just have to remind you slowly. // I’ll make sure you remember slowly. 

Gilbert: Even if you lost your memories, you can never escape from me…okay?

Gilbert combs my hair with his fingers and kisses me.

It was a gentle touch that conveyed love and affection.

(He's supposed to be scary, but...he really seems to love me.)

Why he fell in love with me was never mentioned in the conversation.

(I wonder if one day I'll be able to remember.)

(…I want to remember.)

━━

The next day, the confusion and agitation caused by the memory loss still lingered—-

Gilbert invited me to visit a quiet place full of plants.

Gilbert: ….

Emma: …..

(…There’s nothing to do.)

It felt like a laboratory, with equipment here I've never seen before and tags attached to plants. // The equipment I had never seen before and the tags attached to the plants looked like a laboratory.

(It doesn't seem like it...or maybe it really is.)

Gilbert is silently writing difficult formulas on a document.

It was somehow refreshing to me.

(I wonder if there's anything to do….)

As I looked around, carefully examining each item one by one, something caught my eye.

Emma: A rose…?

 ▸       [  next ]

[reduxulousoctopus]

X-Men '97, Post-Episode 7, ~2500 words Morpherine established relationship, missing scene (unless the show actually does explore what happened during that fight, in which case boy is there egg on my face).

I follow established show canon by referring to Morph as he/him in diegetic works (fanfic and fan art) and they/them in non-diegetic works (my episode analyses and reblogs), because that's the stupidest option and, like Morph, I am also an enby with a terrible sense of humor.

Now come watch me struggle to write two whole lines of dialogue for one of my favorite characters in the series, Beast, because Me Too Stupid to Write Smart Talk Good.

--

“You wanna explain what the hell happened back there?”

Although he considers pretending he didn’t hear the question, Morph reluctantly glances across the center aisle of the Blackbird to see Logan glaring back at him with an expression as hard as the adamantium underneath it. Although it’s a look he’s seen plenty of times before as an innocent bystander, Morph has only been the target of that glare on a handful of occasions. Usually when he’s severely fucked something up. Or when Logan is completely out-of-his-mind, cuckoo-bananas worried about him.

Morph suspects that this time, it’s a little Column A, a little Column B.

A wiser person might realize they were in a hole and stop digging; Morph smirks and asks, “What, the Summers Family Reunion? Well, you see, when a man and the clone of his wife love each other very much…” Morph chuckles. “By the way, this might be a bit creepy to say as one of his honorary uncles, but Baby Nathan grew up to be a serious hottie—emphasis on serious.”

No laugh. Okay, maybe that wasn’t his best material, but not even a lip twitch? Logan must be pissed.

Morph sighs and slouches in his seat. God, he doesn’t want to talk about this right now. Or maybe ever. He can feel his throat literally closing up to stop the words from coming out.

When enough time has passed that what little patience Logan had left in the tap completely runs dry, he goes right for the jugular: “I thought you were dead. Again.”

Morph winces.

“I saw that… ‘Trask Sentinel’ blow your goddamn head off. Then, next thing I know, you’re up and walkin’ around like nothing happened.”

“Not that you’re complaining, right?” Morph asks with a weak attempt at a laugh. “You know what they say about gift horses. Although, you’d think the lesson from the Trojan War would be that you should look gift horses in the mouth.”

From the seat behind him, Morph hears: “Although it’s a common misconception, that phrase actually has nothing to do with the Trojan Horse. The proverbial ‘gift horse’ is a literal, living horse, and to look it in the mouth—”

“With all those books you read,” Logan grumbles, “I thought at least one of them would've taught you it's rude to eavesdrop.”

“It would be difficult not to overhear, given the two of you are speaking quite loudly in a confined space while surrounded by people,” Beast points out. “Have you considered that this perhaps isn’t the best venue for a private conversation?”

“He is a super-genius. We’d better listen to him,” Morph tells Logan. “We’ll talk later, okay big guy?”

The stubborn set of that heavy jaw says Logan knows damn well ‘later’ means ‘never,’ and he isn’t gonna let Morph weasel out of this that easy. “If you ever want me to let you off this plane, you’ll talk now.”

“Let me?” Morph scoffs. He transforms into Quicksilver, puts on his best smug speedster grin, and says, “Just try and stop me, slowpoke.”

To his shock, Logan actually flinches. It’s a subtle thing, Morph might not have even noticed if he didn’t know Logan so well. The cause eludes him, however—until Morph remembers that he looked like Maximoff when the Thrask Sentinel… when everything went dark and quiet for a few seconds.

Funny. There was a time when Morph, blinded by youthful naivety and hero-worship, would have insisted Wolverine wasn’t afraid of anything.

Returning to his default form, Morph mutters out an apology. He tries to imagine what it would be like to see Logan die, only for him to get up a few seconds later and act like nothing happened. With that healing factor of his, they’ve gotten damned close to that exact scenario more than a few times.

How much worse would it feel, if Logan had kept his quick-healing abilities secret and Morph had to find out the hard way?

Morph takes a breath, looks out the window at the black clouds rushing by, and starts from the beginning.

“You know how most of us don’t know we’re mutants until we hit puberty, and our powers manifest? Well… I didn’t have to wait that long. Problem is, since I was just a baby, I had no idea how to control my powers—no more than a normal baby is born knowing how to walk or talk.

He holds out his hands with his palms cupped together to form a shallow, makeshift bowl.

“When I was born, I looked like a wriggling lump of white clay, about yay-big. No arms or legs, no face, no ears, no eyes. Just a mouth that would appear somewhere on my body whenever I was hungry or wanted to cry.”

Whatever Logan was expecting to hear, from the look on his face, it clearly wasn’t that.

“But even at that tender age, someone clearly recognized my star potential. I was only two days old when I made my media debut: Severely Deformed MUTANT Born In Pittsburgh Hospital.” Morph shrugs. “Not the most positive review, I’ll admit, but you know what they say: all publicity is good publicity. After all, that’s how the professor found me.”

Logan’s frown returns, more confused than angry. “You told me you didn’t meet Xavier until you were thirteen—after your mom passed.”

“That’s when I moved to the Institute. Turns out we actually met quite a lot earlier than I remembered, which is pretty embarrassing. Ideally, you don’t want to meet your future high school principal, college instructor, mentor, and world famous civil rights leader while wearing a diaper. Even worse, I was wearing a diaper, too—and I told him, mister, one of us is going to have to go home and change his outfit and it sure isn’t going to be me.”

That gets him a smile and a huff of a laugh, which would be an encouraging sign if he didn’t know how the story ends.

“So Xavier talked to my parents, explained the whole ‘mutant thing.’ Dad wasn’t happy. Then again, I’m not sure he ever was. He would have been disappointed to have a girl—a sentient lump of polymorphic biomass was right out. Thankfully, Xavier was able to use his telepathy to coach me through my very first transformation. He showed me how to turn into a normal baby boy, who would eventually grow up to look like this.”

Morph transforms into his old default, the one he still uses whenever he wants to pass: pale (although not that pale) skin, brown eyes, brown hair, hooked nose, pointed chin, gaunt cheeks, arched brows. Not exactly Fabio, but it’s the face Logan used to know him by—the face he sometimes worries Logan might secretly still prefer.

“Then he put some psychic blocks in place to limit my powers to something a bit more… manageable. Don’t give me that look. It sounds shady, but the professor messing with my head was the only reason I got to have a normal, happy childhood with my parents. God only knows what would have happened otherwise—if I’d even be alive now.”

The worry and suspicion that appeared on Logan’s face at the mention of psychic tampering grudgingly fade away. “When did you find out?” he asks instead.

“A couple months after the professor… y’know,” Morph sighs. “I hacked his personal files. Since he wouldn’t be around anymore to help you recover your memories, I hoped that maybe I could find something small he overlooked, some clue that might give us an idea where to look next.”

Logan’s eyes widen and his mouth goes slightly slack. “Morph…”

“I didn’t find anything, before you get excited. Not about you, anyway. Sure found out a lot about myself, though—a lot more than I was bargaining for.”

“That’s when your default form changed,” Logan realizes.

“Yeah. It was kind of hard to think of this,” Morph replies, gesturing at the face of his human-passing form, “as my ‘real’ face after that. Not that my new look is any more real, of course.”

“Who else knows?”

“Other than our friends listening to this conversation right now?” Morph asks pointedly, causing an entire plane full of X-Men to each make their best attempt at looking busy. Nightcrawler’s method of peering thoughtfully at the radio controls with one hand on his chin is particularly masterful—Logan mentioned he used to perform in a circus, so it’s no wonder he’s got such a good instinct for stage-business. “I told Hank and Moira not long after I found out. Seemed like a bad idea to keep that information from my doctors. Especially when one of them is also my therapist.”

At receiving a glare from Logan, Beast develops a sudden and convenient fascination with the view through the Blackbird’s window.

“But you didn’t want anyone else to know.” Logan could accept that, even if he doesn’t like it. Nothing personal. A man’s business is man's business, after all—even for a not-quite-man like Morph.

Too bad it wouldn’t be the truth; no more ‘real’ than any face that Morph wears.

“I didn’t want you to know.”

Morph can handle Logan’s anger, no problem. That’s almost charming, after all these years. But it’s the flicker of hurt, just like that little flinch earlier, that really cuts him to the quick.

“Not because I don’t trust you, or want to keep things from you or anything, it’s just… I didn’t—I couldn’t—”

He sighs and looks away again. He transforms back into his new default: smooth white skin, mask-like face. Obviously inhuman.

Still a lot more human than he looked when he was born, though.

“So, yeah. That’s why I’ve apparently gained the ability to survive having my head blown off. It sure would have been handy to know that my organs were optional the last time a Sentinel put me down. Now, instead of being out of commission for two years I’ll never get back, I can just squish myself back together and keep on keepin’ on.”

Logan doesn’t respond, and slowly, the mutter of other conversations step in to fill the void. Morph stares at nothing, sick with nerves. It’s deeply unfair that he can still feel nauseous even though he doesn’t have a stomach anymore.

He would say it’s all in his head, but if he can survive without one, maybe he doesn’t have a brain, either.

Badum-tch.

Good line. Hopefully he’ll remember it after the existential horror wears off, in the brief window when things will be funny again before the heartbreak sinks in.

Because there’s dropping a bombshell on a relationship—then there’s dropping a fucking nuke.

Oh God. There isn’t going to be a window, is there?

“Morph. Look at me.”

Although he considers pretending he didn’t hear the command, Morph reluctantly glances across the center aisle of the Blackbird to see Logan looking back at him with an expression as soft as the heart he usually tries to hide.

“No matter what you look like, there’s one thing you’ve never been able to change,” Logan tells him. “That’s real enough for me.”

A wiser person might realize they were in a hole and stop digging; Morph can’t stop himself from opening his big stupid mouth. No wonder that was the one feature even Baby Morph knew to give himself. “There are more blocks Xavier left behind that I haven’t pushed through, yet. Maybe I’ll even figure out how to change my scent, someday.”

From the look on his face, Logan clearly hadn’t considered that possibility. Morph immediately wishes he could take it back, feeling like he’s just tarnished something sacred.

It’s always been strangely intimate, the way Logan can recognize him by scent alone. Even from the beginning, when Morph decided to pull a prank on the grumpy new recruit, only for Wolverine to sniff him out mere seconds into his planned routine—it was as if, like the Emperor’s New Clothes, he suddenly realized he had been naked the entire time.

Another, smarter shapeshifter might have avoided Logan after that; Morph couldn’t get enough.

One-sided pestering turned into an unlikely friendship, turned into friends-with-benefits, turned into… whatever they have now. That which dares not speak its name.

The thought of losing that connection, the idea that someday he may be able to change himself so thoroughly that even Logan won’t be able to recognize him anymore… It’s too awful. Cursed knowledge. Like learning about the solar cycle when he was a kid, and suddenly having the horrible realization: if even the sun is going to die someday, what makes him so sure Mom will get better?

Out of the corner of his eye, Morph sees Logan’s hand start to move, stop, then start again, reaching across the aisle towards him. For a insane, terrifying moment, he thinks Logan’s about to hold his hand, outing them in front of God, the other X-Men, and everybody—but of course, that enormous, rough mitt lands on his shoulder instead. Perfectly platonic, approved for all audiences by S&P.

Though they’re shooting through the air at supersonic speed, under the heavy weight of that hand, Morph feels rooted to stable ground. He closes his eyes and takes a few slow breaths he doesn’t actually need, with lungs he only has when he remembers to make himself some.

If there are any people left when the sun finally burns out in a few billion years, they’ll still be telling each other jokes as they go into that endless good night. Just think of the money we’ll save on sunscreen. Maybe, but you know the light-bulb companies are gonna take us to the cleaners. Ha ha, freeze frame, theme song, end credits.

Even as her body slowly wasted away under the combined onslaught of cancer and chemo, Mom always laughed at his jokes, no matter how many times she heard the one about the chicken who crossed the road. His most appreciative audience, to the very last curtain call.

The world is pretty fucking scary right now, and only getting scarier. Sinister. Genosha. Losing Gambit. Sentinels again, in all new and even more monstrous forms. Even worse: total war between humans and mutants looming over the horizon, shaking the ground with each step, getting closer and more inevitable every time someone mentions it, like a demon whose power grows every time you says its name.

But just because things are scary doesn’t mean the world's turning into a horror movie, and just because things are sad doesn’t make it a tragedy. Everyone gets to choose the genre of their life story—and Morph will always pick comedy.

He gives the hand on his shoulder a friendly pat, and uses the motion to disguise a slightly more-than-friendly squeeze. “I’m alright, just a little airsick. I think it’s making me maudlin.”

As he pulls his hand back, Logan frowns a little in confusion—he knows Morph is experienced enough in the air that he shouldn’t be getting nauseous over what are, for the Blackbird, barely above pleasure-cruise speeds.

“How unfair is that, by the way?” Morph asks. “I don’t even have a stomach right now.”

Logan chuckles. Nah, baby, don’t give it up for me that easy, Morph thinks, fighting a grin. You gotta make me work for it a little…

He needn’t have worried, though. When he does make it to the punchline, Logan laughs so hard that he snorts, the laugh-lines Morph has personally carved into that seemingly indestructible face creasing and growing deeper still. And as their friends who Definitely Weren’t Eavesdropping join in—even Rogue, so teary and congested that her laughs would sound like sobs if she wasn’t smiling—Morph knows all their attempts to hide their relationship have been for nothing, because there’s no way that all the love he feels for Logan in that moment isn’t writ large all over whichever face he's wearing right now.

That’s real enough for him.

[i-heart-hxh]

During the shinju scene,meleoron mentions theres something killua cant tell him, what is it that killua couldnt tell him?

from what i seen,shinjuu isnt always romantic,was it he couldnt tell meleoron he was going to die w gon because of his romantic feelings

The line

meleoron:‘if you joking,whyd u have that incredibly sad look on ur face(talking about when he was observing killua with gon)’ ‘you cant tell me,so i wont ask’ or in different translations its ‘cant you tell me?’ But in the original japanese its about being unable to tell somebody something

Hello!

So, I decided to just post (most of) these two pages because I think seeing the art and layout of the actual pages helps with understanding exactly what's going on and also analyzing it. I also went and looked at the pages in Japanese just to see if anything stood out. Aside from the famous shinjuu line, the translation seems fine.

Just to summarize and be clear before I launch into further analysis: In this scene, Killua says (with a rather dark expression) that the worst case scenario is he and Gon die together in a lovers suicide. Killua sees that Meleoron is rather vexed/taken aback/discouraged by this response and doesn't know what to say, so then Killua immediately claims he's just kidding and that they'll be okay after all, and he knows how to snap Gon out of it.

Meleoron then internally doubts that Killua is kidding about this, because he was there when Gon said the "It has nothing to do with you," (essentially) line that pushed Killua away, and he saw how heartbroken Killua looked by that. He then decides it's not worth asking because Killua clearly doesn't want to be honest about his feelings, he can't or won't express what he's going through, so he backs off.

I'm glad you brought this up because it's a piece of the whole shinjuu scene that people don't talk about as much, but this whole exchange and Togashi bothering to show Meleoron's reaction to it in the first place says a lot about the importance of the scene. If Meleoron didn't pause and connect this to Killua's earlier heartbroken moment (and notice how it takes up literally half of the page--it's important!), it would be easy to read on past it without thinking about it more deeply.

In other words, this further exchange with Meleoron is emphasis. It's there so the readers don't simply gloss over what Killua said about the shinjuu, and so the readers understand that he means it, that no matter what he says to the contrary, Killua is in fact serious about this possibility. It's there to slow things down enough so the readers can reflect on and ask their own questions about the situation.

I'm sure this is why Togashi bothered to put Meleoron in the scene with Gon pushing Killua away in the first place--there was no other reason for him to be there, other than being an observer of this moment and standing in to ask these questions.

Meleoron--an outside observer without as much context for Gon and Killua's relationship as the rest of us--wonders what's going on here, why Killua looked utterly destroyed by a few simple words. But because he saw Killua's immediate urge to lie and say it's a joke when he hesitated, he knows Killua won't open up to him about exactly what's going on, why Killua was so devastated by what Gon said to him and why Killua intends to do a teen lovers suicide with his best friend if all goes badly. Meleoron is definitely pointing out (in his view, anyway) that there are feelings behind this that Killua is unable and unwilling to talk about. Is he implying they're romantic feelings? I mean...

This happens so much in Chimera Ant arc around Killua's feelings. Togashi leaves it open-ended, doesn't spell it out blatantly, but it seems like the question is being asked over and over again--what exactly are the nature of Killua's feelings for Gon, anyway? And there keep being these moments where the concept of romantic love is conjured in some form in connection with or around this unspoken question being asked, like multiple instances in the Palm subplot I've talked about a bunch of times now. (Linking to that post in particular because it links to a lot of other Palm subplot related posts.)

Even the way Killua asks if Gon considers him a friend or a comrade, asking What are we? basically is essentially a shoujo trope--and especially how it was presented, very dramatic with a lot of focus and emphasis on Killua's internal turmoil around asking the question.

There are just so many times in this arc where emphasis gets placed on a question of, What are your feelings for Gon anyway, Killua? in an indirect way, including this moment with Meleoron. It's repeated so many times and there are so many instances where there's some subtext around or even direct mention of romantic love hovering around these questions, it's basically daring the audience to answer.

It's true that shinjuu can be non-romantic in some cases, however the word choice is meaningful. Togashi knows what the implications of it are, especially in a literary sense. He could have chosen other ways to phrase this, he could have opted not to use this word in particular. If it was presented completely in isolation from any other romantic subtext, there would be more of an argument to be had for it just being included in a platonic sense, but with how much repeated romantic subtext there is with Gon and Killua's relationship to begin with...I think the word choice is very intentional.

I hope that answers your question!

[kierongillen]

i have to know - as a disco elysium fan who didnt do disco, what would you say is essential disco listening for me?

I'm hugely behind on the asks, but I have to answer this one, because I'm going to answer a connected but completely different question, and then maybe then loop back to you. I'm just looking for an excuse to ramble, and do the writer equivalent of a warm-up sketch (i.e. waste time).

My apologies.

If you wake up and decide that you want to get into a whole genre of music, there's basically two tactics.

(There's also the "Why would anyone care to get into something they don't care about", which is one of the few things I have a "There's two sorts of people..." response to - those who when presented by something unknown either think "why should I know about that?" or "why don't I know about that?" I'm the latter, and it's served me well.)

The first tactic is simple.

Jump on a genre with Best Of in the title and follow your pleasure response. Here's a Spotify one. What interests you? What excited you? What makes you laugh? Probably explore more of that. If not, indulge widely, and see what sticks. At a glance, Disco playlists seem to have the problem of most playlists, in that strictly not everything on it is disco per se. For example, Dancing Queen strictly speaking isn't a disco song - but it's a song about disco, in every way. But if anything has found its way on a playlist, it's found its way on for a reason.

In your case, you're interested in what Disco resonates with Disco Elysium. Which I've bought for C, but not played, but I'm aware of in a "if I was still a games journalist, this is clearly one I would write a lot about." I spent years writing about Planescape Torment, and I know a spiritual successor when I see one.

This makes me think the area you want is basically the classier end - the big bleak emotions, the chilliness, the control, lonely on a dancefloor, lonely everywhere, oh-so-much cocaine, and - to steal Paul Lester's line - glass mountains on fire.

Which leads back to the second way of getting into a genre of music - which is to hit a major artist, and hit them hard.

When asked about "how shall I get into a band" my advice is actually the opposite of what I'm about to give. If you just want to get into a band, get Best Of, see what tracks you like, then go to the albums they're from. But if you're trying to get into a whole genre of music, that's a more serious endeavour, and may reward the opposite approach.

Basically pick a key album from a key band, and get into it, and grow from there. Read about the band - you don't need much, but a little helps. Learn how to listen to what their tracks do. And then you use that band as the single point of knowledge you have to orientate yourself to everything else you listen afterwarads.

There's a huge danger to this - basically, no-one is more ignorant than someone with a little knowledge. You have to be aware that you are the person who knows a bit about Boss Baby, and using that to get into things other than Boss Baby.

The strength is that it's a more holistic, lived in knowledge than just skimming the surface. You understand the music better as an artifact of their times, made by people, responding to their specific situation - which adds different flavours to your appreciation of it. Sure, your own response and how it finds a place in your life is always the thing which over-rules anything else - but the more you can listen for, the more you can hear, the more you can get from a work of art.

Anyway - I'm telling you to go and listen to Risque by Chic.

Chic are basically fucking awesome. If you don't know Disco at all, the opening Good Times chilly ironic take on American late-seventies culture is a great and (I suspect) Disco Elysium relevant intro. You'll know it as a sample, if nothing else, and the eight minutes version that opens Risque is a great way to think about it as both music for dancing (it is endless) and music for listening (it is boundless).

I got Risque as Paul Lester went to bat for it so hard in the Unknown Pleasures book the Maker stuck on the cover in 1995 (it was covering 20 albums that had fell out of the critical conversation, and it absolutely changed the dirction of my listening in the period). Here's Lester writing about Risque more recently for a taste, as the original piece doesn't appear to be online. I just read it in my copy, and it's a burst of love, describing it Disco as music about love - never sex, only love, and mainly love that is denied. That seems solid, at least for the best of chic.

Risque is the Chic album that Lloyd from Phonogram would have been listening to, certainly. I know I did.

(Plus At Last I Am Free from C'est Chic, obv)

There's a lot of Chic to listen to - their own work, especially in the period, and all their productions. Their work with Sister Sledge is of particular import - Lost In Music was one of the working title for Phonogram, and you can see and hear why. They're also the Disco band whose influence is perhaps most obvious in other bands. Everyone liked Chic. No Chic, no Orange Juice, no Orange Juice, no Smiths, etc.

Sister Sledge was the first live band I was at. My mum went to see them when she was eight and a half months pregnant. The temptration to say I'd have heard Lost in Music then and sold is tempting, but ahistorical - it's well before their work with Chic.

Anyway - get into Chic. It'll make your life better - and when your life isn't better, it's a superior context to lose yourself.

However, to go back to your question, as a Disco Elysium fan, I'm not sure it's actually THIS Disco you're looking for.

How about Disco Inferno?

Not Disco at all, but most like itself than anything else, which sounds like what I understand about Disco Elysium. right?

(DI Goes Pop is the starting place)

[johnwickb1tsch]

Vino Veritas - Part II

A Destination Wedding Frank x Fem!Reader Fic

Attending the wedding of your ex-fiancé gets slightly better when you meet someone having just as miserable a time as you... Warnings: Nothing too serious holy shit. Cursing. Broken engagement. Nihilism, existential bullshit, copious amounts of sarcasm. Eventual nsfw, not this chapter. Pretty much in line with the movie here. Part 1 Part 3

II. The Interminable Fucking Car Ride

“So…what do you do?”

“I run the marketing department for JD Power.”

“The car trophy people?”

“That’s a magazine.”

“Ah. So you’re the grand architect of big corporate’s bid to tell us what to think while slyly taking all our money.”

He snorts. “Only those who are incapable of thinking for themselves. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to apply to you.”

If you squint, that almost felt like he was paying you a compliment.

“So, what do you do?” he asks in turn.  

You don’t know why you’re almost embarrassed to tell him. “I run an art gallery/gift shop on the beach in Santa Bonita.”

He blinks, those lovely dark eyes fixed on you for a moment. “Of course you do.”

“What does that mean?”

He huffs a little. It almost sounds wistful, but then he frowns, utterly fucking ruining the moment.  “You just look the type.”

You’re not sure why that stings…or why you even give a fuck.

The Fucking Rehearsal Dinner

“I’ve never really understood the point of the rehearsal dinner. Is eating so hard we really have to rehearse it?”

You sense an almost twitch of the corner of Frank’s mouth. They have stuck you together at a table in the far back. The black sheep who they felt they had to invite, but didn’t really want to.

“Not to miss the opportunity to make the groom’s parents spend unnecessary money too?” Frank offers.

“Fair to spread the misery, I guess.”

“Didn’t you sue Keith over this shit?”

“My parents did. They lost thirty thousand dollars in deposits.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. No one should spend that kind of money on a wedding.”

“Strangely, I agree with you now. I didn’t know any better at the time.” You’d been so young, you could hardly even fathom how much thirty-thousand dollars was.

Your parents had been happy at the time with the prospect of marrying you off to Keith. He’d been successful, charming, and outwardly doting on you. They never really thought you had much going on your own, so they probably thought he was the best you could do. The thought still hurts, more than it should.

“I mean,” you blurt, “Did you know who you are or what you wanted when you were 20?”

“Of course not.”

“He was my whole world. When he dumped me. It...it really fucked me up.” You don't know why you're admitting this to this near total stranger. There is just something about his forthright manner that demands honesty. 

“Ah well, join the club. My father tried to shoot me once, if it makes you feel any better.”

You blink. “He tried to shoot you?”

“Yes. With a gun.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran at him.”

“You ran at him? Not away from him?”

“Yeah. Well, I was pissed off. He tried to shoot me again, but I got the gun away from him and hit him with it. Broke his orbital bone. He said I was the accumulation of all his bad decisions. He started to cry and begged me to kill him. I didn’t, only because I didn’t want to fuck my whole life up. The poor bastard jumped out the seventh floor the next day.”

Before you can stop yourself you reach out to place your hand on his on the table.

Before he can stop himself, his long fingers close around yours.

This connection endures for precisely 1.5 seconds before he shakes you off.

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t think your fine.”

“Fine, I’m all fucked up, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

You sigh, sinking down in your chair, embarrassed. Why did you touch him? What were you thinking?

“I guess we’re in the club together,” you answer miserably.

You feel him looking at you out the corner of his eye. There is a weight to this man’s gaze. It’s not unpleasant, just…you feel as though he sees everything.

“I feel like we should get at least decoder rings or something,” he grumbles.

The bride and groom make their entrance, interrupting whatever acerbic thing you were going to say next. You watch as they make their way through the crowd, basking in the glow of being the center of attention. Keith always loved that shit. You hate to admit, that his bride to be is a solid stone cold foxy 10. The kind of woman that men will trip over themselves for as they walk down the street.

You weren’t bad looking but you’d never had that kind of power.

If you wanted to trip a man, you had to do the dirty work and actually stick out your foot.

“Oh, look at us, let us presume to inconvenience you with the ostentatious display of our love,” you mock quietly in a mousy little falsetto.

It actually makes Frank laugh. At least, you think it’s a laugh. Maybe it was indigestion.

He joins in, though forgoing the funny voice, “And we’re conceited enough to think we’re actually different from the rest of the human race, and our love will last forever and ever…”

You’re enjoying this malicious bit of fun, but there is something in the way that he says it that makes you pause. “You don’t think love can ever last?” you ask.

He snorts. “Well, he doesn’t. I heard the prenup she had to sign was brutal,” he tells you.

 “Poor thing.”

“You really feel sorry for her?”

“Slightly?”

“Are you going to say hello?”

You sigh. “I guess I fucking better.”

You slowly make to stand, the chair screeching under you. “Give ‘em hell, kid.”

You flip Frank the bird as you go, and hear that peculiar strangled sound that must pass for his outward expression of mirth.

Dumb ass free shit you would never do on your own

"I spoke to the bride last night."

“Indeed?”

You’ve had pedicures before, but you’ve never sprung for a professional foot massage, and you have to admit it feels pretty good. It totally surprised you to find Frank there, but he’d informed you unashamedly that he can’t resist free shit. You find that amusing, considering he’s obviously comfortable, if not outright rich.

Maybe that’s how he stays that way.

“Yes, and she told me she doesn’t mind that you’re here, and she’s not threatened by you.”

You snort at that, taking a long sip of your iced latte.

“At least, I think she meant you. She’s dumb as a box of rocks, it was hard to tell who or what she was talking about at times.”

You sigh at hearing that. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to soothe my feelings.”

It’s his turn to snort. “Merely reporting facts, I assure you. If you still feel badly about Keith and have not managed to move on to one of the other 8 billion people on this planet, then there is no helping you.”

“Is that your method for getting over a bad breakup?” He makes it sound so easy, you cannot help but roll your eyes at him.

“No, I have opted out of that shit show. It makes me uniquely qualified to offer comment on your own situation.”

You tilt you head in confusion, looking over at him. “You’ve…opted out of what? Dating? Romance? Marriage?”

“All of the above. It never ends well, as I have learned from watching my mother’s train wreck of a life as she blithely stumbled between marriages and boyfriends and suitors.”

“That’s so sad,” you blurt before you can stop yourself.

If you hadn’t already started to learn this man’s gestures, you would have missed the way he stiffened slightly, staring fixedly down at his feet.

“How many times have you been in love?” he asks.

You think about it, and regret the answer. “Just the once.” With Keith, the asshole. Any one who came after didn’t have much luck getting over the wall you built to protect yourself from another heartbreak.

He looks at you then, and you are pinned by those chocolate brown eyes, that for once seem earnest rather than annoyed. “What’s it like?”

The fact that this man, who is at least ten if not fifteen years your elder, is asking you tears your heart into little bits of confetti.  

“It’s like going insane,” you answer truthfully, and he looks back down, frowning.

“I thought so.”

***

You are standing in your inflatable body bumpers together on the sidelines, declining to partake in this insane sport, content to watch the others attempt to inflict cervical injuries on themselves and others.

The question is eating at you, and you decide what the hell. What’s he going to do? Be mean to you?

“So, you’ve never been in love?”

“I don’t think so,” he answers, frowning, though it’s the same frown he’s been wearing for the past hour watching the idiots running around the field.

“Believe me, you would know.”

“Do insane people know they’re insane?”

“Ok, maybe that was a bad comparison. It’s…total surrender.”

“Wow, you’re really talking it up.”

“It is though. You have these special feelings for a person, and you just know whatever they do to you, it won’t matter, because you’ll still care for them.”

“It doesn’t matter, until it does matter.”

“Some people have higher tolerances for pain than others.”

“If you loved Keith you could probably take a Caesar-style stabbing without flinching.”

You’re not sure how exactly to respond to that.

“At any rate. I prefer to avoid pain rather than withstand it. My parents inflicted quite enough. No need to spread it around.”

“Alright, I get it that your parents sufficiently traumatized you, with the failed marriages and the…shooting thing. But doesn’t there come a point where you have to let it go and rise above it?”

“I don’t see any reason to.”

“Think about all your missing out on though.”

“What exactly is that?”

“You know…human connection. The things that make life worth living.”

“Jesus, are you sure you don’t work for Hallmark?”

“Positive.”

“I bet you sell rocks in your shop that have inspirational words carved in them.”

“Of course I do. The markup on those things is astronomical.”

You see him smirk out the corner of his eye.

“I bet you also sell little statues of big-eyed children slinging bible verses.”

“Ohhh, now those are fighting words, sir.” You bump him lightly with your inflatable tutu, making him shuffle a step. For a fleeting moment, you catch a hint of a smile, and it feels like a resounding victory.

Feeling bold, you fix him with an earnest stare. “You claim you’ve opted out of this mess. But what if you meet someone you really like?”

“Then I should probably run swiftly in the opposite direction,” he says, paying you a side-eyed look.

Five minutes later, he does quit the field, though he doesn’t quite run from it. You tell your self that it’s just a coincidence, and that he was just done standing in a polyvinyl orb in this heat.

But deep down…there is the tiniest kindling of something in your heart, and you know you should kick dirt over that shit and stomp on it.

You don’t, and you carry a ridiculous little light feeling with you as you return to the hotel.

It feels like you swallowed a butterfly.

[tozettastone]

@waffliesinyoface okay, let's go! (I agree on Itachi's sweet tooth honestly.)

Itachi — He likes sweet food. He'll order something you didn't even know was real, like a lavender latte, or a smoked salted vanilla frappe. "Does your drink even have coffee in it?" you may ask, dubiously eyeing what appears to be cup of lightly flavoured simple syrup piled high with freshly whipped cream. Yes, yes it does. Itachi is the tiredest person on this team, and that's including the guy who is just 6 dead bodies in a trench coat. Do not order him decaf.

Kisame — He's pretty easygoing. He'll take whatever, and then while the barista is making it he'll tell them that sharks can have milk because some of them don't have umbilical cords. He consumed the milk shed from his mother's uterus lining, like a great white, after eating his siblings. How fun. Sir, here's your coffee.

Kakuzu — Kakuzu is a pile of stolen hearts and tentacles condensed into roughly human shape. He can't taste the coffee, but his hearts respond to the caffeine. He will have whatever option comes with unlimited refills.

Hidan — Orders something new every time and hates it every time. He doesn't like bitter flavours. He has not yet made the connection between "coffee" and "bitter notes" in the formal way that would permit him to stop trying it. He complains about the taste every time. Bonus: caffeine only affects him for about 2.5 minutes.

Konan — Konan never had coffee growing up (she didn't have a lot of things growing up!) so now it's kind of a novelty. She's mostly a tea drinker but when she has coffee she takes whatever variation of 1 part coffee and 2 parts milk is easiest. She's not a connoisseur of latte foam vs cappuccino froth, etc., etc. She likes to watch the rain fall, dry and cosy in her oversized coat, while her coffee steams gently into the humid air over the village.

Pein — Nagato doesn't like to put extra fluids into his bodies because they're dead and if you alter the water content on the inside it can be very hard to maintain them in the state of preservation he prefers. He watches Konan drink, though.

Sasori — Sasori is an arty bitch, but not a "with lavender smoked honey," kind of wanky art bitch. He's a traditionalist. Espresso. With sparkling water. The tinier the demitasse, the better.

Deidara — Deidara wants a fancy sweet little treat but he's still young enough to get mad that he doesn't drink serious grown up drinks. He'll order something black and bitter and then sulk about it. What he really wants is exactly the kind of fancy and ridiculous coffee drink Itachi orders, but he's already set himself against this and mocked Itachi about it. Watch him toss back his coffee and slam the empty cup onto the table like he's doing shots of bad tequila.

Zetsu — A cafe macchiato. This is a trap because a "spotted," coffee is either all milk spotted with a bit of coffee (which is what the writer understands to be common in America) or all coffee spotted with a dab of milk (common in other parts of the world). Either way, when you serve it to him, the order will be wrong according to at least one side of his body. ;—;

Tobi — Drinks his coffee mixed 1:1 with sweetened condensed milk. Is the sweet tooth genetic?

(Honorary) Orochimaru — Orochimaru is also a pretentious arty bitch, but in his case, his order isn't intended to communicate artsy-ness about himself to the outside observer. It's instead carefully calculated to communicate that he's a snob and to stress out the barista tasked with making it for him. He wants your single origin in a double ristretto with a 3/4 cup of silky milk. If you make a latte and just don't fill it up all the way, he will know. No, really. He'll know.

[e-vay]

if it’s okay to ask, What are top 5 favourite sonic games and what is it that you like about them?

Mine are 1. Sonic Unleashed, 2. Sonic Adventure 2, 3. The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog, 4. Sonic Riders Zero Gravity, 4. Sonic Frontiers

Those are some great picks!

Mine are constantly changing, but my current top 5 as I'm typing this are:

1: The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog. This game was so unexpected and it did not need to be as awesome as it was, but man they put everything into it. The art is GORGEOUS. The writing is HILARIOUS. The gameplay is actually fun! And Amy's (basically) the main character? An absolute treasure! I can only hope we get more like it!

2: Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. The game I think of when I think "Sonic." It's the perfect balance of great story and gameplay. It's heavy but it's also fun. The Chao Garden. The main storyline already has great replay value, but the individual challenges for each level were actually fun (and killer) and made you explore each level in a new way. I never get tired of playing this game!

3: Sonic Frontiers. This game is so beautiful not only visually but emotionally. I can't tell you how many times while playing I would specifically scale to the top of a structure just so I could enjoy the view. And every time it rains in the game it's breathtaking! I LOVED that we got a story with serious, heartbreaking themes. I cried multiple times (AND ESPECIALLY DURING EGGMAN MOMENTS!?!). Don't get me wrong, I think it's important for Sonic games to be fun too (and I had a lot of fun playing this, for sure) but I love when the writers aren't afraid to delve deeper and explore the vulnerability of these seemingly unshakable characters.

4: Sonic the Hedgehog 3. My favorite of all the classic Sonic games. I enjoy the graphics in this version the most and the music tracks and levels are peak in my opinion. And even though the bonus level drives me nucking futs, I actually love it (I'm a masochist I suppose).

5: Sonic Dream Team. I was not expecting this level of quality from a mobile game. The character models ARE SO GOOD I CAN'T TAKE IT. They're so beautiful??? Let me kiss them PLEASE. The levels are vivid and so detailed and really look straight out of a dream. There are VOICE LINES?! I constantly replay levels as both Sonic and Amy because I just love hearing them so much. I also love games that offer different gameplay styles depending on the characters you play (though obvi I prefer playing as Sonic and Amy). It's reminiscent of SA2. I just wish it was a console game and not limited to Apple Arcade. More people should be able to play it, especially on a big screen where you can appreciate it!

Thanks for the question!

[deliciouskeys]

Cozy Corner Domaystic prompts #16: Going through immigration and #24: Identity theft.

Guys. Guys, I’ll be honest. I have no idea what possessed me. I think I found these two prompts as some of the most challenging to imagine as a domestic fic, and… my thinking got a little bit too outside the box.

This fic will have an intended audience of about 1 (me). But I want to give major major props to @olliveolly who introduced me to this game and was the one who came up with this That’s Not My Neighbor / Boys crossover AU (with a couple lovely art pieces on the theme). The “lore” of this horror game is very simple. Tell me you don’t see it:

Butchlander. That’s Not My Neighbor crossover/AU. Rated E (why). 3.3k words (why). 2nd person to allegedly reflect the feeling of first-person gameplay (why). Is this domestic fic? Welllllll. It takes place in an apartment complex so it counts, right? Lax interpretation of ‘going through immigration’ but honestly that’s what this game really reminds me of 😂 AO3 link

Another day, another interminable shift working as the concierge in the dreary lobby of this apartment complex. It was exciting at first, sure, what with getting to play the first and last line of defense against the doppelganger monsters that attempt to sneak in every single day. But you’ve just gotten too good at noticing discrepancies. Nothing gets past you anymore. You know every single feature- hell, every single freckle! -of every single resident in the building. By this point you’ve got all their phone numbers memorized, for no better reason than there is simply too much tedium to this job. You find yourself wishing you could actually watch the D.D.D. ‘decontaminate’ the lobby, as they so euphemistically put it, instead of just sitting there twiddling your thumbs behind a pulled down rollup metal shutter after summoning them. You could still make out screams without seeing the brutality, and you knew the D.D.D. employed flame throwers and other serious weapons to deal with these monsters. Sometimes you caught yourself feeling just a little bit of sympathy for the doppelgangers, even though their main goal in life appeared to be to imitate people to blend in and then feed upon human flesh, and your main goal in life was supposed to be to ensure none of them would ever get let in through the locked inner door.

John Gillman comes in through the first door and gives you a tired, nominal wave before fishing around in his pockets for his documents to gain entry. He might be your favorite resident— always polite, always in that clean-cut milkman uniform at least when you happen to see him, because no one really leaves the apartment building outside of work obligations. There’s no nightlife in New York anymore, not with everyone nervous of dark alleys or being alone on the street, especially after dark. When you came over here from London, you certainly didn’t expect to get stuck here during a worldwide apocalyptic event like this that has resulted in curfews and lockdowns. You certainly didn’t expect to get zero action and get a mindnumbing job just to make ends meet. It was probably still more interesting than your gig working as a bouncer back in London, but at least you got fresh air there, and sometimes a date to go home with after closing time. Maybe that’s why you’ve started hyperfixating and daydreaming about one of the residents— the involuntary celibacy is getting to you.

John just always looks uncannily attractive. Maybe it’s that silly uniform that’s easy to fetishize. Maybe it’s because his tired eyes also look like bedroom eyes, or the dark circles function the same way eyeliner would. Why is he always so tired anyway? You know he lives alone up there in F03-02. He never gets any visitors either. How much can a person masturbate, really? There’s a rumor around the building that Becca Saunders’ tyke might be his, but you don’t really see the resemblance, and have your doubts that this didn’t just start as a “sleeping with the milkman” joke that got out of hand. People just like to gossip about single mothers. Things like this shouldn’t be considered scandalous. It’s 1955 for god’s sake!

“Sorry, William,” John says, hurriedly shoving his ID and entry request form underneath the glass so you can take take a look. “Almost thought I left my ID at work.”

“Long day, huh?” you ask without expecting a reply, pretending to scrutinize the documents while making small talk. You know this is John. You’d know him from a mile away. But it doesn’t mean you can’t have a little bit of fun. “Looks okay, and you are on the list of people authorized to come and go today. But can you take off your cap?”

John grabs his milkman cap off his head, exposing a mop of blond hair, looking mussed after being under the hat all day. You really wish you could test him, see how far you’d be able to take things before he refused to cooperate. Take off your shirt, John. Gotta make sure it’s really you. You never know these days. But of course you don’t. All you’ll have is your fantasies about breaching every code of ethics and using your master key to gain entrance into his apartment, seducing him, ravishing him right in the middle of what must be a depressing bachelor pad. Give him much darker undereye circles by keeping him up all night. Give this apartment complex a more interesting rumor to spread about the milkman in their midst.

“You’re good to go,” you say and press the green unlock button to let him in. He gives you a wan smile and walks out of view, and you listen to his footsteps ascending the stairs.

The rest of the afternoon is uneventful, only a few people coming and going, and a couple of doppelgängers with laughably strange appearance or bad credentials being dispatched quickly. Or at least it’s uneventful until John walks in, just a little bit past curfew.

“Hey William,” he says, sounding distracted, rummaging in his pockets for his documents as a cold sweat breaks out on your forehead. This better be a doppelganger, you think to yourself. But he has both his ID and the entry request filled out correctly. He looks identical to the John that passed by here a couple of hours earlier. This can’t be.

You start dialing John’s number, not taking your eyes off the man in front of you.

John’s eyes widen with alarm when he sees that you get an answer from the other end of the line.

“Yes, hello? John here. I’m not expecting any visitors.”

You hang up pretty abruptly, staring at the John in front of you, searching his appearance for any subtle defect or inconsistency but finding none. Your finger is hovering over the alarm button.

“Oh my god. Oh my god, you think I’m someone else? It’s me, William! I swear to god it’s me! I don’t know who you let in earlier, and who’s answering the phone now, but it’s not me up there!”

And shit, you believe him. You must have fucked up. Gotten smug and sloppy. Maybe the doppelganger handed you a fake ID but you didn’t notice because you were too busy daydreaming about fucking him.

“William, please believe me, please!” John is pressing up against the glass at this point, clearly scared that you’re going to quarantine him in the lobby and sic the D.D.D. on him. They don’t tend to ask questions. You’ve never had it happen, but you’ve heard of innocent people getting snuffed out on the mere suspicion of being doppelgangers, the D.D.D. rarely admitting to such mistakes even after the fact.

“Alright, alright, I believe you. I just have to think…” you mumble. “I’ll let you in, but don’t go up to your flat. We have to figure this out.”

John nods frantically and slips into your office after you buzz him in.

“What are you going to do?” he asks, and if you weren’t scared shitless at the moment, you’d probably get a kick out of how vulnerable and scared his expression is compared to his usual tired, impassive one.

“I should call the D.D.D. and get them to go up there,” you think out loud.

“Won’t you get reprimanded?” John asks, and oh how sweet of him to worry about your job when you’ve fucked up so royally and almost gotten him killed with your negligence. Maybe already gotten some of his neighbors killed.

“I just don’t want you losing your job over this— you’re the best concierge we have,” he says and then looks down shyly, as if realizing how strange that concern is.

What is this? Are you dreaming? Maybe you’re just out of your mind with adrenaline, but John sounds like he’s got feelings for you.

“Let’s just go up there and see what’s going on,” he says, and damn he’s persuasive as fuck. You want to go and deal with the mess you made, and protect him.

“I’ll go up there and just check,” you say, hardly believing yourself as you grab the fire extinguisher from the wall as a makeshift weapon. Everyone who was scheduled to return to the building has, so you shouldn’t get any more legitimate people coming through, but you still tape up a note that you’ll be back at your post in a few minutes. “Right then. You just stay down here and wait. I don’t want you putting yourself at risk. If I’m not back in five, call the number on the post-it.”

John shakes his head and follows you up the stairs. “I’m not letting you go up there alone,” he says in that quiet irresistible voice and you start to wonder if there’s something strange going on. Why are you going on this potentially suicidal mission to deal with a doppelganger on your own? So what if you get fired? No job is worth your life, right? But you probably wouldn’t see John ever again if you lost this job and that’s clouding all your judgment right now.

Knocking on John’s apartment door is probably not a good idea, and will just give the monster inside time to prepare or hide. So you take out your master key and turn it in the lock as quietly and quickly as you can. The door swings opens with an ominous creak, revealing a dark living room with no sign of anyone there. Did he hear you coming up the stairs? You try to keep John behind you and shield him in case anything sudden happens from within the apartment, but then you feel a strong push from behind and both you and John are in the flat now.

You’re so stupid, so critically, fatally stupid. The John you let in earlier was the real one. You’ve let a doppelganger convince you that you made a mistake, and now you did let one in. You whirl around, try to hit him upside the head with the fire extinguisher you’re brandishing, but he blocks the move with little effort.

“I thought we agreed,” he says, and you realize he’s speaking not to you but past you to someone else in the room.

“Thursdays are my days,” an identical voice answers from behind you and you step back and try to make sense of what you’re seeing. Two John Gillmans, both in the same uniform, neither one looking the least bit spooked, both looking mildly irritated if anything.

“Since when,” the John who came up behind you asks of the other one. “I get to be here every other day, doesn’t matter what day of the week it is.”

“So now what are we going to do about him?” the John who was in the apartment asks, pointing to you. “Why didn’t you just leave once he called me? Are you stupid?”

Your heart may be racing, but your thinking feels as slow as molasses. They’re …. both doppelgangers?

“What have you done with the real John Gillman?” you whisper hoarsely. The twins turn to look at you and you’re creeped out by the very similar smirk that spreads across both of their faces. They’re really impeccable facsimiles of the real person, but this is an expression you’ve never seen on John.

“You’ve never met the ‘real John Gillman’,” one of them says.

There’s enough cold sweat that’s broken out on your back that it starts to trickle down as drops.

“We like you William. It would be such a shame for our friendship to end.”

You hold up the fire extinguisher in front of yourself defensively, but you’re not sure you can really do anything against two of them. You’ve never noticed before, and maybe the real John’s teeth didn’t look like this, but the two doppelgangers have sharp looking canines when they’re grinning. It’ll serve you right to get devoured in this dark flat for making so many mistakes and bad decisions in a row today.

“So you’re just going to kill me then?” you ask.

“We’d really rather not,” one of the twins says. “A murder would bring a lot of snooping law enforcement if not the D.D.D. Itself.”

“And it’s so hard to find good lodging to spend the night.”

They must be joking. “You really expect me to believe you’re not just here to eat people?”

One of the twins rolls his eyes. “Eat people! Yeah, that’s why we’re here, clearly.”

“Has anyone in this apartment building ever disappeared in all the months you’ve worked here?” the other one asks.

“How should I know?” You’re beginning to feel like this has to be some sick nightmare. You can’t possibly be having a civil conversation with a couple of cannibal monsters. This thought has a strange calming effect on you. “If I didn’t know you lot were masquerading as John Gillman, how am I to know how many other residents are real people?”

The twins turn to each other, still smiling and shrugging.

“We’ve been on a vegetarian diet for a while,” the other says and you can’t help but bark out a laugh.

“Laugh all you want,” the other one says, spreading his hands in concession. “But milk is more than enough to sustain us. We do think people are delicious, but there’s one thing we like much more than eating them.”

“And what’s that?” you ask, emboldened by the possibility that you’re just in a ridiculous, paranoid, bad dream of a worst case scenario at your job.

“We’ve been watching you William. We think you’ve been interested in us.”

“We’ve never fucked anyone from this building, and never fucked together, but there’s a first time for everything, right?”

You just stand there, fire extinguisher still raised up defensively. No question about it, this must be a nightmare that’s slowly but surely twisting itself into a sexual fantasy.

“Come on, William. Let’s make you comfortable.”

You can hardly protest as one gently pulls your makeshift weapon out of your loose grip, and the other one sweeps you off your feet with preternatural superhuman ease and carries you over to the couch in this sparsely furnished apartment.

Gentle but insistent hands undo the buttons on your trousers and then maneuver you so they can pull them off completely and free your legs.

“Humans are such fun creatures,” one of the Johns comments when he sees that despite your fear of the situation unfolding right now, you are sporting a half-hearted hard-on. It somehow only gets harder when you hear them talk about people as another species.

Both Johns are still fully dressed, situating themselves to kneel on the floor on either side of you. It’s wild. You must be dreaming. And as you watch both Johns lean forward, extending their tongues and licking your cock up and down from opposite sides, you realize that if this is a dream, you never want to wake up.

They know what they’re doing. They bring you right up to the edge of orgasm and then pull away, leaving you feeling desperate and even annoyed. You’re not annoyed for long though as they both strip down, and you see that their human-mimicking powers are perfect, down to the most minute details that would never be seen under clothes. Granted, you don’t know what John Gillman looked like naked, so maybe they’ve taken artistic license and embellished. Whatever it is, they’ve compared notes, because they still look indistinguishable to you.

“Like what you see?” one of them asks and you realize you I’ve been staring, maybe even with your mouth hanging open. You never imagined you’d hook up with a doppelganger, let alone two of them at once. But you have imagined foisting yourself on John in this very flat, and you’re about to live that daydream.

You end up doing things with the two of them beyond what you’ve ever dreamed of. You fuck one of them, and at the same time get fucked by the other one from behind, the cheap bed’s metal joints creaking and moaning from the motion of three bodies rocking against each other. You let them suck your cock and rim you to get you back in the mood for another round, trying not to think about how unsettlingly hungry they both look, and who they really are underneath the human-looking exterior. The exterior slips periodically when they’re in the throes of pleasure. You wince when they betray just how strong they really are, whenever they flip you over or change positions, as if you weigh nothing. You try not to pay attention when their eyes start glowing red when they’re particularly turned on, but it’s impossible to ignore in the darkness of the bedroom.

“William, you are fucking delicious,” one of them declares, licking his lips obscenely after swallowing down your cum, and all you can do is emit a short nervous chuckle, and think that even if they do decide to eat you at the end of all of this— either to cover their tracks, or just because they might start feeling peckish after all this is over— it will still have been worth it.

You don’t get eaten. In fact, you’ve had the time of your life, and as you get up from the bed and mumble that you have to get back to your post before your shift is over, the two Johns lie languid, naked on the bed watching you, each enjoying a post coital glass of milk (that’s all they have in the fridge— you saw when they opened it), like perfect mirror images.

“You won’t be making any unnecessary phone calls, right William?”

“We can count on you to be discreet and keep a secret, right?”

Through the combined haze of being scared for your life and then having the time of your life, there’s still one thing that bothers you, and you ask about it, against all your best self-preservation instincts.

“So what have you done with the real John Gillman?”

They turn to look at each other, not exactly conspiratorial but it still makes you uneasy.

“Oh, John Gillman never existed. We’ve been around a lot longer than you humans think. Many of us never tried to replicate and replace real humans.”

“Yeah, and a lot of good that did when some of us started! The ones who are doing it are the reason we’re being hunted now. Unoriginal hacks. And so bad at mimicking too.”

“So many embarrassing ones out there.” They both nod at each other.

You’d like to believe them. You really would. “So why choose this persona?”

“The milkman gets free milk and gets around in your society! And humans seem to like this look,” one of them says, grinning and gesturing with his hand over their naked bodies.

“But we only ever get to enjoy bored housewives.”

“And why are there two of you?” you ask hesitantly, glancing at the clock on the wall to verify that you’re not late yet.

“Oh there’s more than two of us,” one of them says and they laugh in unison in a way that sends a chill down your spine.

~~~

You think you’ve got it all worked out. You’re letting the John Gillmans stay in the apartment undisturbed, and you let them through even when it’s obvious that there’s more than one of them coming and going. You figure it’s a win-win. They promise to protect the building from any rogue doppelgangers who infiltrate and intend to harm the residents, and in return get a place to stay the night peacefully. You get to visit apartment F03-02 after your shift ends and have mind-blowing sex. They seem to enjoy the orgies as well. They know your shift hours and try to only come and go during those times. There doesn’t seem to be a problem with this arrangement.

Or at least not a problem that you’re going to make into your problem. When one of the Johns walks in, visibly smeared in blood, you do give him a hard time.

“Come on, John. Just because I’ll let you in, doesn’t mean you can just stop trying to look decent. God forbid I call in sick and someone else is here.”

John shrugs and goes through the formality of pushing his ID and entry request under the glass window.

“And get a new ID…” you tell him when you see bloody fingerprints all over the worn paper.

John shrugs, doing his usual tired act, despite how ridiculous it looks to be so bored and nonchalant when he’s smeared in blood.

“Whose blood is that, anyway?” you ask, wondering why you’re not more disturbed.

“Someone who was of no consequence and who won’t be missed,” John replies, terse and cool as a cucumber.

“I thought you said you were vegetarian?”

“I’ll take a cheat day if I run into a wifebeater,” John says, shrugging.

You buzz him in, telling him to get washed up before someone sees him, wondering if you’re being colossally naive to believe his story, and wondering if you’ve got a death wish because you’re still looking forward to going up there once your shift ends in a few hours.

(What in the world. 💀)

ETA: now with another art piece by @olliveolly

[twopoppies]

https://x.com/savan_kotecha/status/1786822536069517665?s=46&t=8oGXlY2gNSWLDR_INsMZpg god he’s so pathetic

I can't stand him. He's such a fake POS. But she's pathetic as well. That whole article is basically her rejecting all criticism of her book because it's obviously misogyny. Her article is the same bullshit excuse Olivia gave for any criticism of her work or her behavior. Misogyny.

I will give her credit for being frustrated that the movie seems to have removed any substance her book may have had and has turned into a feel-good rom-com, complete with a happy ending. That must be annoying as fuck.

However, she has the nerve to say that people who label her work as "romance" or "fanfiction" are being reductive because her book is so much more. It's a story "about ageism, sexism, the double standard, motherhood, female friendship, agency, and the dark side of celebrity".

She goes on to say that "Labeling it as “fluff” or “fanfiction”—particularly when done by those who have not read it—is both reductive and dismissive. And this is not something that happens to male authors." Meanwhile, most fic is written by women. And I'd hazard a guess that most romance is as well. So, it's okay to dismiss those forms of art created by women as "fluff", but not her very serious deep novel? 🙄 I wonder if she's seriously delved into fic before criticizing it as a reductive form of art. I highly doubt it.

And this is my favorite part:

"But assuming a novel with a fictional celebrity in a relationship must be based on an existing celebrity—in this case, the internet has decided, Harry Styles—is unimaginative at best and sexist at worst."

AS IF SHE DIDN'T TELL THE WHOLE WORLD that her character was inspired by him when the book came out. AS IF she didn't use that as a way to excite her readers. AS IF THE ACTOR IN THE FILM DOESN'T FULLY COPY Harry's mannerisms and wardrobe choices at times. AS IF Anne Hathaway didn't steal a line out of Olivia's playbook and focus her early promo on this film's sex scenes being about "a woman's pleasure". AS IF there aren't numerous moments in the film that echo tabloid moments in Harry's life.

Everyone is backtracking now because his fans pitched a fit. It's all so idiotic. And I can't wait for this movie to go away.

You can read her full article here.