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f1smutwriter · 2 days

Note

Hi tis me again

I feel awkward with all the request. I'm just obsessed with f1 rn.

Pierre learning to do your acrylic nails so he can spend more time with you during the f1 season.

This guy's love language is acts of service and quality time

Chilling in the hotel in pajamas drinking wine and sushi getting your nails done by pierre gloating about your man on socials like "your bf could never but here's what mine does." Maybe he gets teased about ut by the other drivers but who cares he bagged a bad bitch and he's in love.

Almond shape but otherwise what ever is fine.

| 𝐌𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐧 (𝐩𝐠𝟏𝟎)

𝐏𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐚𝐬𝐥𝐲 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: Pierre the perfect boyfriend anyone could ask for. He adores his girlfriend and treats her like the princess she is. So he learned to do nails just for his princess

Warnings: nothing just some tea and cursing

Notes: Gosh these Pierre fics you request gosh I love them. Like these are my favorite things to write when the guy just does something to spend time with you. This is my first time doing the Instagram thing on tumblr but I do them all the time on Wattpad so if you don’t like it just let me know and I’ll change it for you girl. Hope you love it!

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

“Ma chérie you ready” he called out for me as I come out of the bathroom with a smile. “Hi handsome” I smiled kissing his lips softly as I sit down on the bed so he can paint my toes. “I learned this cool new thing. Best thing ever” he smiled as he rubbed my feet softly making me sigh feeling more relaxed.

“Handsome I don’t know why you do this, you don’t have to” I whispered softly making her chuckle softly. “Mon cœur I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t want to” he smiled softly kissing my leg making me shiver softly. “I get to spend more time with you, plus I want to pamper my girl” He smiled making me blush from his words.

“Why do you have to be so perfect all the time” I mumbled before he snorts causing me to laugh with him. “You know what sounds amazing right now” I whispered softly as he looks up at me. “Why are you whispering” he laughed making me kick him softly. “Sushi and wine” I groaned softly craving both of them. “Want me to order us sushi and wine” he asked softly making me nod frantically. He goes over to the phone and orders room service.

“Coming in about 30 minutes” he said softly making me squeal. “thank you baby” I whispered kissing him feeling him grab my waist to kiss me back softly. “Gosh you have no idea how in love I am with you” he whispered kissing my neck softly. “Let’s get back to your nails before I take you right here right now” he said sitting me down on my chair while he paints my nails.

˚｡⋆ ୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆ ˚｡⋆ ୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡

yourusername

Liked by pierregasly, and 1,000,000 others

yourusername: get you man who does all this for you, and his excuse to do all this was. “Amour I need to pamper you”

Tagged: pierregasly

view all comments

charles_leclerc: this needed to stay in the drafts

yourusername: someone is mad I took their man

charles_leclerc: mad your always second place 🤷‍♀️

yourusername: really because last time I checked I’m first place babes 😙

pierregasly: my pretty girl I love you ❤️

yourusername: I love you more handsome

User: Charles hate to break it to you but your second

charles_leclerc: I know :(

alexandrasaintmleux: oh for Charles to do this for me

yourusername: you don’t need Charles babe you have me 😉

charles_leclerc: back up bitch or we fight

yourusername: I’m slashing all your tyres

carlossainz55: NO please don’t we need to win

yourusername: oh well bye bye Ferrari

lilymhe: the fact I’ve been stalking your page

yourusername: babe stalk my page all you want

alexalbon: not only are you stealing my girl but Charles girl to

yourusername: I’m after all the wags my master plan

lilymhe: tbh I’d let her take me

alexalbon: 😣

maxverstappen1: he’s lowkey whipped for you

yourusername: yes he is and guess what I love it

pierregasly: I am she gives good head 💁‍♂️

yourusername: 😧

pierregasly: it had to be said Mon amour I’m sorry

User: I want a guy to treat me like this

User: me to they make me feel so single

˚｡⋆ ୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆ ˚｡⋆ ୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡

“Mon amour you posted me” Pierre asked shaking his head making me giggle. “Yes I had to baby, had to show everyone who my man was” I smiled before he grabbed me putting me on his lap. He started kissing my neck softly, feeling myself let out a small whimper. “I love you so much you have no idea baby” he whispered softly in my ear making me blush. “I love you more handsome” I smile before he kissed my head softly. “I love you the most princess” He whispered going back to kissing my neck.

˚｡⋆ ୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆ ˚｡⋆ ୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡

Pierre just got on the paddock now walking towards his garage to look at the car, but he got stopped by one of his best friends. “Bro painting her nails and all of that your whipped mate” Charles snorted before laughing at him. “Why am I whipped because I love my girl” He smiled at Charles before Charles shakes his head.

“I do it because I don’t spend time with her I’m always away, so it gives us some time together” Pierre explained making Charles let out a small smile. “It’s nice to see you like this man, all in love and everything” Charles commented as Pierre feels his cheeks get red. “Me in love what about you and Alex I see how you guys are with each other” Pierre laughed softly now making Charles blush a bit. “Look at us two blushing fools” Charles snorted making them both laugh out.

“Who would have thought” Pierre laughed softly as they both walk down the paddock.

“Who would have thought” Charles smiled softly

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

Notes: I’m sorry this was short but I kinda was running out of things to say. I hope you guys liked it, and please send more requests I beg you.

#f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #pierre gasly x y/n #pierre gasly f1 #pierre gasly fluff #pierre gasly blurb #pierre gasly x reader #pierre gasly imagine #pierre gasly fanfic #pierre gasly #pierre gasly smau #charles leclerc #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc x reader #f1 fluff

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ifwebefriends · 1 day

Text

TRIGGER WARNING: misogyny and mentions of transphobia and bigotry in the video above

Comic dub of this ace attorney fan comic by @runby2 with permission from the artist

Huge thanks to runby2 for letting me dub their comic! Please go support them, he makes great stuff! This is one of my favorite Ace attorney fan comics. I know the sound quality on my voice is bad and I said the wrong word at one point but I did my best. I hope I did it justice (no pun intended).

[Video ID. A comic by tumblr user runby2 vocally dubbed by tumblr user Ifwebefriends. It is a fancomic based on the ace attorney games featuring Apollo Justice, Klavier Gavin, and Kristoph Gavin. Apollo looks determined at the floor with his arms crossed as he says “Klavier, I have to tell Kristoph that I am trans. I know you said if he hired me he already knows but,,, I want to be honest with my mentor!” Klavier, standing next to him and looking worried, waves his hands and says “nein,,,, nein forehead,,,” Apollo looks worriedly at Klavier and says “wait is he ,, transphobic??” Klavier responds “nein,, it’s just,, confusing-“ Apollo says back “then I want to tell him, klav! I made up my mind!” Klavier responds “I’ll,, come with you,,,” The scene changes. Apollo looks determined as he says “Mr. Gavin!!! I have… something to tell you!” Klavier, standing next to Apollo, looks dejected with his arms crossed as he says “ah here we go,” Kristoph is sitting behind his desk and looks concentrated and confident with two fingers to his temple as he says “ah, Justice. There is nothing you can tell me that I do not already know.” Apollo points confidently as he says “well, actually sir, how about THIS?” He then grabs his bicep and looks concerned as he says “I’m transgender” with a voice crack. All three of them are silent for a moment. Kristoph says “but, you ARE a man, yes?” Apollo looks worried as he says “well- yes! … technically -“ Kristoph interrupts “no.” Apollo questions “I- ‘no ‘?” Kristoph clarifies “you ARE a man, Apollo.” Apollo smiles and says “I- !! Oh! Thank you, sir!” Kristoph continues “thank god you’re not a woman. I despise women.” Apollo looks shocked and dumbfounded. Klavier silently puts his hand on Apollo’s shoulder while Apollo looks confused. Kristoph continues “that is why I too, became a man.” Apollo, curious and emboldened, exclaims “wow! Wait! Mr. Gavin, you were born ‘a girl’ too?” Kristoph responds “no. I was born a man. Keep up.” Apollo looks even more confused and Klavier looks away disappointed as Kristoph continues “I chose to become a woman to fully understand what it was like to become a woman. i choose my fate, justice. then when i fully understood what it meant to be a woman, i became a man again. that is why i am the best defense attorney, because i have conquered all gender and i fully understand what it means, to be both a misogynist and hate men. NEVER. assume you know more than me,, justice. i chose you for a reason.” Apollo replies “what abt nonbinary ppl,,” Kristoph looks smugly to the side before saying “‘nonbinary’… hahhah… Justice,,, do you SERIOUSLY think that I am a man, RIGHT NOW?” Kristoph turns to flash a smug smile with two fingers by his eyes as he says “i am more than a man and a woman. I identify as a man solely to fool the idiots who do not understand the spectrum of human existence. i chose YOU, justice, because you understand what it means to become more than what you were born as. I, right now, am a god among men. My gender has evolved past that of a simple male, or a simple female. I understand the binary and I use it to my advantage. I have both joined and fought against the bigots that run this government, yet they could not track me as I did so. I have handled what you understand as the gender binary and distorted it like a fine clay. That is what it means to be a lawyer. Do NOT forget that, Justice.” An endcard comes up that says “comic by @runby2 dub and sound editing by @ifwebefriends End ID]

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lucifyrfallen · 1 year

Text

Alnilam [+ Collector], an oc from the fanfic Supernovas and Black Holes, or on how the stars are born !! i recommend yes yes

anyways, i busted my left nut trying to properly draw how i view him and also keep how he is described in the actual story but also balance out all the blue, i think. i did ok... ?

closer look at the owl house style below \/

i simplify the design too but is it animation friendly? questionable

#the quality makes me shed tears #its not that bad i swear tumblr just hates me i know #i drew these a few days apart so each design is inconsistent whoops//#the owl house #the owl house oc #toh #toh oc #the collector oc #the collector #Alnilam Epsilon Orionis #lucifyrs art #the collector toh #toh the collector

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elmhat · 6 months

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DSMP TUMBLR SIMULATOR

🟩 escapedwarcriminal Follow

On vacation! Check out the fancy hotel :)

🦆 stabbyduck69 Follow

gufys please mass report this he's trxying to fucking dox me and also kill me pls guys

7 notes

❌ god Follow

I just finished writing my latest book! To thank everyone who stuck with me through this process, I'm giving away one copy to a random follower! All you have to do is reblog 😊

#bookblr #writeblr

2,963,086,652,755 notes

🐝 what-if-bees-had-nukes Follow

Anyone know where the boomerville residents went?

🐝 what-if-bees-had-nukes Follow

No one replied so I guess I own their house now

3 notes

🥇 dreamsno1traitor Follow

#I'm actually so sick of these mfs #no joke if I have to spend another day around these people I might kms #one more comment about how "evil" he is and I'm gonna snap #I can't believe I used to be friends with them? #they're so bloodthirsty for no reason #sorry just needed to vent #can't say any more than this or I'll blow my cover #neg

2 notes

🧁 the-girl-who-burned-your-tree Follow

New strawberry cake recipe! (Safe for pigs)

Try out this delicious dessert that all the family can enjoy!

Keep reading

#baking #recipes #I just wanted to make something that my friend can eat too #he has some rather unique dietary requirements

130 notes

🐷 bloodforthebloodgod Follow

"average person destroys 1 government a year" factoid actually just statistical error. average person destroys 0 governments per year. technoblade is an outlier and should not have been counted

💿 fuckdream123 Follow

this is so fuckign disrespectful to doomsday survivors take this down you egotesticle fkng prick

45,687 notes

🟩 escapedwarcriminal Follow

@warden-of-the-vault How's idiotville idiot

🟩 escapedwarcriminal Follow

Wait you can't reply cause you're in IDIOTVILLE

5 notes

🪶 philzaminecraft Follow

My good friend has entrusted me with looking after his lovely dogs, haha! 😂 Do any of you fine young people have advice for me as to how to take care of this many hungry hounds? 🤔 I look forward to hearing from you.

From Philza Minecraft.

P.S. Please also instruct me as to how to increase the number of messages I receive in response to my questions. This internet website is a tad confusing. I had enough bother attaching the photograph. 😂

89 notes

🐷 bloodforthebloodgod Follow

woke up to the dash full of drama again. sigh

🦆 stabbyduck69 Follow

fucking Die

🐷 bloodforthebloodgod Follow

oh so you're the one sending all the anon hate

🦆 stabbyduck69 Follow

i don't send anon hate i'll hate to your fucking face bitch

🦆 stabbyduck69 Follow

please go out with me

11 notes

🔱 warden-of-the-vault Follow

🔥 murdered-yo-fave-pet Follow

But fr guys, as much as we're memeing around in the tags dream is actually out there and he's dangerous. If you see him call me or sam immediately. DON'T fight him. You'll /gen die.

6,210 notes

🐈 antthecatmaid Follow

won't be around for a while, going on vacation!

🐈 antthecatmaid Follow

fuck I'm back fuck fuck fuck

27 notes

💿 fuckdream123 Follow

i'm too sad to commit terrorism like what's the fucking point anymore

6 notes

🧨 zombiepresident1 Follow

World's First NFT Burgers

(Ignore the poor photo quality, my good camera got confiscated by authorities)

"An explosion of the senses, and I don't just mean that time the place exploded!" ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"So much better than Quackity's horrible grimy SHIT FUCKING RESTAURANT" ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#reviews are all from verified sources #don't look into it #someone blaze this I have no money

204 notes

✨ quirky-cake-duper-teleporter Follow

Genuinely fuck dream.

✨ quirky-cake-duper-teleporter Follow

Ignore this I wasn't in my right mind

16 notes

🐷 bloodforthebloodgod Follow

The Teletubby and the Pig

Fandom: Original Work Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Characters: Technoblade, Dream (me and my friend) Additional Tags: Pandora's Vault Prison, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort

Summary: idk man I'm bad at summaries, just something I wrote with my friend to pass the time (he was too embarrassed to post it)

284k words so far

-> Read here!

#I actually wrote this a while ago but I wasn't allowed to post it for legal reasons #don't worry though I'm planning to murder the legal reasons soon #writeblr #original fiction

35 notes

💍 im-from-the-future Follow

WARNING - PLEASE READ

My murderer showed up at my house today. Police refused to arrest him. I feel sick to my stomach, I don't know where he is or what he's doing, if he comes back I have no way to protect myself. Please stay vigilant and don't trust anyone you don't know.

🥕 catsncarrots Follow

i'm so sorry to hear that karl :( hey what's the new pfp?

💍 im-from-the-future Follow

No idea

43 notes

🥚 baddestboi-withahalo Follow

we all accepted the prison way too quickly. there's like no safety measures? are we forgetting someone DIED THERE? and i've literally seen the main cell myself and it's a mess. pretty sure there was some real blood on the walls too. idk just doesn't feel right

🔱 warden-of-the-vault Follow

I'm tired of people reblogging posts like this without checking their sources. There are some obvious red flags here. For starters, op claims they've witnessed the main cell personally, but if you actually check the prison's rules, visits have been banned for several months now [x]. The prison is armed with state of the art security measures, including lava, barriers, and numerous manual searches, to name just a few [x]. Speaking as an authority on the prison myself [x], I can safely confirm that these security measures, as well as the prisoner, are in perfect condition. Don't be so quick to buy into conspiracy theories.

🥚 baddestboi-withahalo Follow

I LITERALLY WORK THERE????

🔱 warden-of-the-vault Follow

Not anymore you don't.

972 notes

#long post #I wasted so much time on this and every second was worth it #dreblr #dream smp #dsmp #dashboard simulator #lore thoughts #dsmp dashboard simulators

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exlibrisseverus · 4 months

Text

The torn bond of friendship

The silence between us every time we meet makes my heart ache.

You avert your gaze just so you don't have to look me in the eye. I know that you don't hate me. But to be honest, I'd rather have your hate than your pity.

You wish things had gone differently. But I can't change for you the way you would like me to. Nevertheless, you are important to me.

(You always will be.)

[I tried to put myself in his shoes and that's how these few lines came about. The background in the illustration is a photo I took, it's the view from my window.]

The artist's commentary – psychological aspect/my two cents…

Nobody is perfect, no human being is.

Especially not adolescent teenagers who literally have almost no idea about life. Who lack empathy, compassion, maturity, experience and so many other things. All of us have certainly lost a friend at some point in our childhood or adolescence. Close friendships at a young age and the experiences associated with them can have a strong influence on our behavior later in life. All of a person's first intensive relationships with family, friends, etc., whether positive or negative, shape their world view and character immensely.

We can't expect a young person to be flawless and perfect. Maturity comes with years and experience. It is not uncommon for children and youth to be self-centered and egocentric, but that does not make them bad people. To a certain extent, selfishness is even important. As we grow up, we learn to act autonomously, make decisions and form our own opinions. It is clear that we can make mistakes during this process and possibly hurt others. We all make mistakes on our journey through life, that is part of growing up. That is a part of this life.

I have to remind myself each time that they were practically still children as at that time.

Sorry for my poor English, it’s not my native language. I do my best though. Thanks for reading 🖤

(Additional edit 10.02.2024 Tumblr confuses me a little bit, i was wondering why my previous image lost it’s quality after uploading. It took me too long to draw and i need to show the details. Anyways for better detailed view -> I’ve split the artwork. 😌)

#severus snape #severus snape fanart #lily evans #lily evans fanart #snape community #pro severus snape #snape fanart #illustration #harry potter fanart #snily #my art

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mncxbe · 11 months

Note

Omg hi! My first ever request on tumblr so I hope it’s okay for me to request Fukuzawa and/or Kunikida with a f!s/o that experiences heats? Like if they have an animal type ability?

Hi dear♡ Ofc your request is okay and I hope you enjoy it. The reader has a cat shapeshifting ability. Thought it would be perfect for Fukuzawa.

1:50♡

𝑭𝒖𝒌𝒖𝒛𝒂𝒘𝒂, 𝑲𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒌𝒊𝒅𝒂, 𝑹𝒂𝒏𝒑𝒐 𝒙 𝒇𝒆𝒎!𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓

𝑮𝒆𝒏𝒓𝒆: implied smut♡/ fluff??

○☆°

𝑭𝒖𝒌𝒖𝒛𝒂𝒘𝒂

he already loved your ability. sometimes when he comes home stressed after work you'd turn into a cat and let him pet you. it always brings a smile to his lips

when he first realized that you were in heat he was quite surprised, but he soon got casual about it

offers to help with anything you need. and I mean anything👀 he'd literally do whatever you ask him

he will prepare you baths and cuddle you

will tease you a bit. can't help himself when you're so eager, but in the end you get the release you so desperately need

"Honey, I'm home" said your boyfriend as he closed the door of your shared apartment.

It was a long day at work and all Fukuzawa wanted was to spend some quality time with his lover, watching a movie and resting in your arms. But his plans changed when he saw you laying on the couch with your thighs tightly pressed together. Your cheeks were flushed red, your eyes glossy and droopy.

"Hi dear" you managed to utter.

He quickly made his way to you, pressing a hand to your forehead. "You seem to have a fever. Did you eat something bad today or?" he asked in a worried voice.

"Oh no dear. I'm quite alright. It's just that, well it's a bit embarrassing to say it... I'm in heat."

Your partner's eyes shot open, a slight blush spreading on his cheeks. "You're in heat? Like-"

"Yes just like that. It's because of my ability"

After processing your words for a few seconds, a smirk made its way to his lips. "And why would you be embarrassed about that? I don't mind it at all. In fact..." he said as one of his hands traced the shape of your legs, earning a whimper from you "I would be glad to help you feel better"

"Oh, you would?" You playfully crawled to him, placing a kiss on his lips. "Then who am I to turn down your offer, darling?"

𝑲𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒌𝒊𝒅𝒂

he blushed so hard when he found out

he doesn't like being taken by surprise, so having you push him into a corner of the office, your lips pressed against his neck certainly upsets him a bit

proceeds to scold you but when you tell him you can't control it, his gaze softens

he hates to admit it but he is quite excited to go home that evening

he writes down the dates when your "moods" start and end so he's prepared in the future

Kunikida was about to take a sip of his coffee when you tugged at his shirt, pulling him towards the hallway.

"What are you doing I almost spilled my coffee all over my ~"

You cut him short by pushing him into the closest wall, your lips pressing harshly against his. Your boyfriend was taken aback by your actions but he quickly returned the kiss. However, when your hands went to his belt, attempting to unbuckle it he pulled away.

"Wait now this is no way of behaving around the office. Can't you control yourself?" he hissed, squeezing your wrists.

You couldn't help but smirk at your boyfriend's words as you leaned in, pressing your body against his.

"Darling, I'm in heat" you whispered into his ear. Your hot breath sent shivers down his spine.

"Is this some sort of joke?" he questioned, but you could clearly make out the shake in his voice.

"No, dear. It's a downside of my ability. I'm so horny I can barely get anything done unless, you know..." You gave him a wink, which made him blush even harder. He was so aware of the closeness between you and the thought of having you moan out his name as he gave you the release you so desperately needed was enough to drive him crazy.

You noticed the glimmer of lust in his eyes and took it as an opportunity to ghost your lips along his neck. "You know, the closet where we keep the cleaning stuff has a lock. We could go there and ~"

"No, no" he said, covering your mouth with his hand. "Don't do this to me right now, okay?"

You nodded, taking a step back from him and he let go. "How about you take the day off, dear? Go home. I'm sure the president will understand. I'll take care of your paperwork."

"Kuni, that's nice of you but I can manage a few more hours."

"Alright then" he replied, his arms snaking around your waist as he pulled you close again. "I know you got this, dear. And I'll make sure that you're rewarded for your patience tonight."

𝑩𝒐𝒏𝒖𝒔: 𝑹𝒂𝒏𝒑𝒐

he knew you were in heat before you told him

definitely finds it amusing

takes it as an opportunity to tease you, always touching your overly sensitive body

he has no shame to whisper his plans for that night into your ear as you're completing paperwork

gives you suggestive looks, his signature smirk making its way to his lips whenever he sees you blush

Ranpo is quite lazy in the bedroom, but considering the circumstances he will do his best to give you some release

please praise him♡

"How's my darling feeling today? Any different than usual?" spoke the man behing you, his breath hot against the shell of your ear. You needn't look at him to know that he was smiling from ear to ear.

"Good morning to you too" you replied, trying to keep your composure "I'm quite alright thanks for asking."

"Aww c'mon. No need to hide yourself from me. After all I'm your boyfriend"

You spun your chair, finally facing him. The look of annoyance on your face only added to his amusement. "Why is my sweet thing so mad today?"

"Cut the chase, Ranpo. You know I'm in heat." you replied, crossing your arms. "So don't go around teasing me. I can barely manage working in this state."

Your boyfriend chuckled as he leaned in to press a kiss to your cheek. "Of course sugar plum. Do you think I'm that cruel?" Just as he was speaking those words, his fingers brushed against your thigh, moving upwards. "Do you really think I'd take advantage of your state and tease you?"

You shivered under his touch, breaking the eye contact. Even through the fabric of your skirt, his fingertips felt so close to your skin. "You're adorable when you get flustered, you know?" he cooed but you only hummed in response. Ranpo took your reaction as a sign to stop and pulled away.

"Alright, I'll stop. But I promise I'll make you feel really good tonight. I'll show you just how great of a boyfriend I am"

He kissed you one more time before he walked towards his desk, leaving you yearning for his touch. For the rest of the day you kept glancing at the clock, wishing time would pass quicker.

#bsd #bsd smut #bsd x reader #kunikida smut #kunikida x reader #fem reader #bungou stray dogs fukuzawa #fukuzawa x reader #bsd fluff #bsd ranpo #ranpo x reader

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all-mirth-no-matter · 6 months

Text

Time After Time | Chapter Thirteen

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x Reader, Tommy Shelby x Original Female Character

Summary: A significant death shakes up the Shelby household just as you find your way back inside. That events and those after make you start to wonder if now is the time to finally listen to Madam Despoina.

Warning: character death, language, yelling

ao3 link | catch up on tumblr here

Chapter 13: Ghost

I like the sad eyes, bad guys, mouth full of white lies. Kiss me in the corridor, but quick to tell me goodbye. You say that you're no good for me, ‘cause I'm always tugging at your sleeve. And I swear I hate you when you leave. I like it anyway. — Ghost, Halsey

Coming back to the Shelby household wasn’t exactly what you expected. Best case scenario, you expected to be greeted warmly by Polly or Ada; worst case, you expected to have the door immediately slammed in your face by Tommy himself.

Instead, when you knocked on the door, little Katie greeted you.

John’s oldest daughter’s eyes widened and a smile spread across her face when she recognized you, “You’re back!”

She grabbed your hand and pulled you inside as you used your foot to close the door behind you to keep out the cold. When you got into the kitchen, Finn jumped from his chair and threw something into the fireplace.

“Finn,” you scolded. “That a cigarette?”

“Don’t tell Aunt Polly,” he begged, cowering down more in his chair.

Jack ran into the room, a smile on his face as he got ready to watch the show of his youngest uncle getting into trouble.

You hung your jacket on the hook and sat next to Finn, noticing him flinch slightly as you scooted closer. The instinct made you swallow knowing he probably expected you to hit him — one of the discipline actions of the times that still made you cringe despite your attempt to shield your facial expressions.

“I won’t. But you really shouldn’t smoke, especially while you’re still growing. It stunts your growth, ya’know. You want to be this height your whole life?” You tousled his hair playfully to emphasize your point.

Actually, you weren’t a hundred percent sure if that was true — you remember hearing it when you were younger (that and coffee) but you never actually ever did research on it yourself.

“It’s also bad for your lungs,” you added, closing the unattended box of sticks that were sitting in the middle of the table. “It’s bad enough the air quality here is practically smoke itself, the second hand smoke will probably kill us all—“

“Is that what’s happenin’ to mummy?” Katie asked, her hand resting on your knee as she began petting the material of your skirt.

Brow creased, you looked to Finn and Jack, then around the house and noticed no one was around.

“Where is your mum?”

“She’s sick again,” said Jack, or J.J. as you’d immediately called him when you learned that his real name was John, and that he’d been named after his father (Junior). Another moment of instant regret, seeing as you had no idea if initial names or initial nicknames were a common thing yet. But the seven year old latched onto it immediately and you’d apologized to Martha profusely. After the initial shock of her son insisting everyone call him this, who she’d named after John proudly, she finally admitted to finding the nickname quite cute.

That’d been the first substantial interaction you’d had with Martha after just starting in the house. Even before the boys returned, you’d offered to help watch the kids whenever Polly or Ada were babysitting. You’d built a bit of a rapport with the little ones over the months, which had honestly surprised you seeing as you had zero experience with children, being an only child and not having been around family outside of your parents your whole life. It’d taken a little longer to get friendlier with Martha, but eventually you’d found a mutual ease around each other when you were both in the house. But unlike Ada, you didn’t find yourself spending any time outside the house, or alone even, together. And that was okay.

But when she first started getting sick, you’d tried to put in a little more effort to at least let her know you were there for her, or Polly, or the kids, if they needed you. Last you’d heard, Martha had started feeling better around Christmas.

“It’s not smoke, dummy,” J.J. said harshly to his younger sister when she asked again if it was was because of the cigarettes.

“Hey,” you said instinctively, “no need for name calling.”

“Auntie Polly said she’s cold—“

“She’s got a cold—”

“Where is she now?” You interrupted before they escalated, bringing all three of their attentions back to you.

“Auntie Polly took her to the ha’pital,” Katie answered. “Teddy and Annie are with Auntie Ada, said they needed naps.”

And with that, you launched into babysitter mode for the three downstairs. You kept out of the way of the kitchen, especially when the shop opened. When Ada returned with the youngest two, you all took a trip to the shop for food, per Polly’s instructions. By the time you returned, Polly was back and starting dinner.

That’s when she broke the news silently to you and Ada.

Martha had passed away.

Polly was angry with the hospitals, ranting about how she didn’t trust them and how she never should have taken her there in the first place.

“I’ve sent word to John, but he’s still in Digbeth. I’m afraid I’m going to have to break the news to the children.”

You offered to stay the night to help with the kids and housework. That first night had been filled with tears. You even caught Polly’s eyes damp a handful of times during the quieter moments.

Over the next few days, whenever you didn’t have a shift at the Garrison, you ended up at the Shelby house, even sleeping in one of the unoccupied bedrooms most nights. Polly was spending most of the following days preparing for the funeral, while you and Ada tried to make this new world make sense to the children.

You and Ada both had your own experiences of losing your mothers to draw on in an attempt to console the little ones. But it was still difficult, especially for the youngest two, who were still not completely understanding that their mother wouldn’t be coming back. Finn’s patience and kindness to his little nieces and nephews had been the most endearing part for you. He’d been too young to remember his own mother, but was able to explain this new reality in child terms that surprised you.

Since arriving in this time and place, it was hard not to judge the living conditions and lack of opportunities that surrounded you, especially when comparing them to your own upbringing. You’d always considered yourself middle to lower class, but you still had so much more privilege than whole chunks of the world.

Here, even with some of those privileges, you were beginning to understand just how much faster it seemed these children of the time had to grow and mature than you ever had to. Hardships like losing parents at a young age were just the beginning — poverty, malnourishment, lack of education opportunities — these were things that you couldn’t imagine having grown up through. It make you think about Ada and Tommy, your previous image of them running around as children suddenly shifting to something more heart clenching.

Your respect for Polly and her role as matriarch was already high, but over the next few days it only grew as she handled the household, children, business, and funeral arrangements nearly on her own. There hadn’t been a peep from John or any of the brothers until the night before the funeral.

Not yet asleep, you could hear the banging of doors opening and chairs moving in the kitchen. Instinctively, you rose from the cot and grabbed the fireplace stick. On your way down, you stuck your head in the kids’ room, seeing them fast asleep before shutting the door and heading for the noisy intruders.

“Come on, Tom,” you heard Arthur’s voice coming from the kitchen. “She’s got a sister—“

“S’not tonight.” Tommy replying made you pause, your heart jumping at hearing his voice for the first time in weeks. “We’ve got— got the funeral tomorrow, then back to ‘beth.”

His voice sounded lighter than normal, if not slightly slurred.

“Ah fuck it — we’ve been over there for weeks now. The whores here know exactly what I like, them in Dig—“

You cleared your throat, startling both men, though only one reached for his gun to point in your direction. Despite your curiosity to hear more about their escapades, Arthur’s voice had grown louder and you were fearful he’d wake John’s kids, who’d been nightmarish already to settle down.

Tommy’s throat bobbled as he lowered his gun, setting it down on the table. You noticed the dishevelment of his hair and collar of his shirt under his jacket. That, along with the way Arthur was swaying and both with nearly empty bottles in their hands confirmed what you suspected — the boys were wasted.

“The fuck’re you doin’ here?” Arthur asked, his voice not holding as much disdain as you expected, despite the words coming out.

“I’ve been helping Polly and Ada with the kids,” you answered softly, crossing your arms. ��They’re asleep upstairs, if you wouldn’t mind keeping your voice down.”

Arthur’s brow creased, his voice still at the same decimeter despite your request. “You ain’t got kids—”

“John’s kids,” Tommy reminded his brother. He gestured toward the door, “Go on now. Don’t you have someone to meet?”

Arthur perked up, “Right! Suppose you won’t join me now, eh? You’ll know where I’ll be!” He gave a final shout before leaving the room and closing the door loudly behind him, causing you to cringe and listen for the stirrings of awakened little ones.

After a moment of silence, you turned back toward the kitchen where Tommy was beginning to remove his jacket.

A deep red stain on the shoulder of his shirt sleeve caused you to gasp, walking toward him without realizing what you were doing, setting the fireplace poker on the table.

“What happened?” You asked, touching his arm gently as you rotated it to see a slash in the fabric.

Tommy shrugged, unsteady on his feet as he instead reached for the fuller bottle of rum on the counter. “Just a scrap ‘fore we went to the pub, ‘s nothin’—“

“I can help—“

“Just go back to the room—“

“Sit down,” you instructed more sternly. He glared at you, but you didn’t let it stop you. “Take off your shirt, that’s going to infect if we don’t clean it.”

“I can do it m’self,” he mumbled and turned to leave, but began to stumble as he became imbalanced.

You caught and stabilized him before guiding him back to the chair. “You’re drunk as fuck, Tommy. Just sit down and let me help you.”

He huffed, but began to slide down in the chair until it creaked with the extra weight. Satisfied, you finally turned to get a fresh bowl of water and clean towels, then the bandages you’d seen Polly use a few times before. He was unbuttoning his shirt when you pulled up a second chair closer to him, ringing the cloth in the water.

“What were you gonna do with that?” You caught his gesture to the fireplace poker on the table, his voice laced with condescension. “Should learn how to handle a real weapon.”

By the time you sat down, Tommy had his bad arm out of his shirt.

“I know how to handle a gun,” you answered plainly, your voice serious as he watched you examine his wound.

Well, you knew how to handle a gun in the 2000s, that is. With your father being a military man, he wanted to make sure you and your mother went through the proper gun safety and etiquette classes since there’d likely be some weapons in the house. You hadn’t been to a shooting range since your father was alive, but you imagined if you had to handle a gun today you’d at least not make a total idiot of yourself. Now, whether you could actually shoot a live person was another question.

Concentrating back on Tommy’s arm, the blood had begun to crust around the cut, but began to bleed slightly as you started to put pressure on it. He hissed slightly at the contact.

“Sorry,” you mumbled slightly as you continued to work. “Why’d you let this go so long? You know better—“

He scoffed, “Do I?”

“I would have assumed so,” you answered honestly. Someone with the military backing he had, he must have known the dangers of infections and exposed wounds. Though as you worked you began to realize it wasn’t as bad as it’d originally appeared.

He took another swig of the bottle before handing it to you.

“No thanks,” you answered, not in the mood to drink tonight.

“For the cut,” he said as he shook his head, a breath of amusement exhaling from his nose at your reaction.

Sterilizing, you realized, giving yourself a duh as you took the bottle and carefully poured some on his skin. He hissed again as blood started to flow once more before you applied proper pressure. You sat there silently for a moment, just holding the rag to his arm, when you noticed him looking down at the cut sleeve, running his thumb across the red stain.

“So much blood for such a small cut,” he said softly, mostly to himself.

Your brow creased as you lifted the rag to look at his arm. The cut itself wasn’t that deep, but it was pretty substantial, at least in your opinion. Maybe comparatively it wasn’t as bad as some of the other injuries he’d had in his lifetime. The thought made your heart clench as your eyes began to notice other scars along his arm and uncovered chest.

You kept going back to a particularly gnarly scar just above his chest as you lifted his arm to wrap the bandage.

“Did you get this fighting?” you finally asked, turning your attention back to the cut, your curiosity getting the better of you.

He grabbed the bottle and took another drink. “‘Cause that’s all we do, eh? Drink, fight, and fuck—“

“I didn’t say that,” you interrupted, your voice strong in defense.

You wouldn’t mention how his brother was just talking about whores. Or how they were both currently drunk. Or how the last time you’d seen him in this kitchen he’d been bloody and bruised from an altercation.

Probably wouldn’t be helpful at this point.

Instead, you tried to appeal to the logical side of him. “Just with the Digbeth expansion, I’d imagine that can be pretty dangerous.”

You finished the tie of the bandage as you looked back up at him. He was already watching you, his eyes red and glassy, causing the already bright blues to appear more translucent against the candlelight. You noticed how much darker the skin under his eyes were, and couldn’t help but wonder when the last time he slept was.

“You’ve got some on your hands,” he pointed, gently wrapping his hand around your own. He lifted it, revealing the deep red smear on the pad of your hand. He used his good hand to squeeze out the rag and began to clean your palm.

“It’s just blood,” you shrugged, trying not to let on that your heart was racing at the intimacy. “Blood doesn’t scare me, Tommy.”

He looked between your eyes. For a moment you felt like he’d suddenly become sober as he lifted his good hand and gently ran his thumb against your cheek. “It should.”

You swallowed. “Tommy, I—“

“You don’t belong here.”

At his words, you felt your back straighten in defense, not realizing how close you’d been moving in toward him. Your heart began to race even faster as you tried to decipher what exactly he meant.

Part of you knew he must have been talking more in general terms. That you deserved something more than Birmingham in a gambling den with gangsters.

But there was something in the rawness of his words. Something that made you feel like he knew what such a phrase could actually mean to you — that you didn’t belong here, in this time or this place.

“I don’t,” you answered honestly, not helping the sincerity of the words falling from your lips. “But here I am. And here is where I want to be.”

Tommy’s expression remained unreadable as his eyes flicked between both of yours, looking for the lie. His adam’s apple bobbed, then he whispered, “With me?”

The sound of soft whimpering caused you both to jump, turning back toward the kitchen doorway. Katie stopped at the archway, dragging a blanket as she used the end of it to wipe her face.

You rose from your seat to collect the little one — this wasn’t the first time she’d woken up crying since her mother’s passing.

Katie nuzzled her face into your shoulder as you turned back toward the kitchen. Tommy was already standing, putting his arm back in his shirt and grabbing his coat and gun, still slightly uneasy in his footing as he headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Tommy—” you called as the door shut behind him.

—-

The next morning was hectic as everyone prepared for the funeral. You didn’t see the brothers again until that afternoon, John’s eyes red despite the stone expression he kept on his face as everyone offered their condolences.

You felt Tommy’s eyes on you as you both navigated through the house, stealing a few glances at him yourself when he wasn’t looking. Neither of you spoke to the other though, and you were beginning to wonder if he even remembered your conversation the previous night. But each time you found yourself thinking in that direction, you shook your head to remind yourself of the bigger picture of the day.

Polly explained that they would start at Charlie’s Yard and walk the body through the town Martha had grown up in before reaching the graveyard. There, the priest would perform the ceremony. Apparently most of Martha’s family was already gone, so the guests would be mostly John’s family and her friends. After the burial, the Shelbys would return to Charlie’s Yard to burn the caravan filled with Martha’s mementos and pictures. Apparently this was more of a Shelby family tradition, something you were greatly interested in learning more about, at a different time of course.

The preparations reminded you of your recent conversation with Polly over spirits. It got you thinking about the tea Madam Despoina had given you again.

Excusing yourself to get ready for the events of the day, you left the Shelby house to change in your lodgings, doing your best to find something black. The only thing you didn’t have was a hat, but Ada had promised to bring you an extra. Your eyes kept shifting over to your dresser drawer.

It’d been almost a month since you’d received the gift. You’d spent months desperate for an answer as to how or why you were here. And it seemed that just as you were given some sort of clue, some key to unlock something — you were rejecting it. You’d gotten caught up in the found family of the Shelbys and the unshakable pull you felt from Tommy. This new life you’d created for yourself had become a distraction and disassociation of the still very real mystery of your circumstance.

Your eyes moved again to the dresser as you looked over yourself in the mirror. Could the answer be in that cup of tea?

A knock at the door caused you to jump, your heart racing at being caught with your own thoughts. Half expecting Ada with the hat she’d promised, you were surprised when it was Tommy instead who stood on the other side of your door.

He had his hands shoved in his pockets as he stood there uncomfortably. He cleared his throat, “Ada wasn’t sure if you’d know where Charlie’s Yard was, so I offered to come collect you.”

“Oh,” you replied, wondering if it was true. “I just need to get my coat then—“

“Tommy? What are you doin’ here?” You heard another man’s voice down the hall as you turned back around to poke your head through the still open door of your apartment.

Benji approached the doorway in a button-up and small bouquet of flowers in his hands.

Tommy’s brow creased as he appraised the man, then looked between the flowers and you before his face hardened and back straightened.

“What are you doing here, Benji?”

He smirked, “We were going to get dinner, remember?”

You hadn’t. The man hadn’t even been a speck on your mind the past week.

“I’m sorry, Benji,” you began, your voice sincere, “um— Martha passed away this week. We’re on our way to the funeral, I can’t see you tonight.”

“Oh,” he turned to Tommy. “Right I heard about that. I’m sorry for your loss, mate.”

Tommy shook his head. “Save your condolences for my brother, Hancock. We’re going to be late, if you’ll excuse us.”

Without waiting for you, Tommy began to walk down the hallway toward the exit. You rushed to grab your coat and lock your door behind you before apologizing again to Benji and hustling after Tommy.

“Suppose that answers my question,” was the first thing out of Tommy’s mouth when you finally caught up with him, still looking straight ahead as you both walked down the lane.

“What?”

“Last night—“

“You remember last night?” you asked surprised. He had been really drunk

He scoffed, still not slowing in his walk nor giving you a glance. “I remember a lot of things. Including you telling me you weren’t interested in Hancock.”

“I wasn’t,” you answered, trying to catch your breath.

He scoffed again and your eyes narrowed.

“But then nearly a month went by after you ghosted me so I thought what the hell, give the guy a chance.”

“Ghost?—“

“You told me to stay away—“

“And staying away means being courted by a Peaky Blinder, ya?”

“Courted?” Your brow creased at the use of phrase. “It was going to be one date — just a dinner, we weren’t getting married.”

He rounded on you, pulling you abruptly into an alcove off the sidewalk until your back was against the brick. His eyes bore down at you as the fire returned to his eyes. “Do you know what happens to people who cross me?” He started, his voice lower than it had been moments before. “They lose their ears, their tongues, their eyes. You have no fuckin’ idea who you’re talking to.”

“I do,” you said, your voice just as strong despite the threatening tone of Tommy hovering above you. His eyes simmered for a moment. “You think you’re a monster. Maybe you are— maybe you have to be, maybe you don’t. I don’t care. I said I was going to help you. So shove off with the chauvinistic ‘I’m pushing you away to keep you safe’ bullshit — I don’t want it.”

You surprised yourself at your own words, though you tried to keep your face from showing it. Deep down, you’d always believed what you said, but you hadn’t known exactly to what extent. Did you not care if Tommy Shelby was a monster? No. And you couldn’t shake why.

“You’ll regret it,” he said, his eyes icy once again with the same hint of desperation you saw the night before.

“Not as much as you’ll regret going from ‘I need you’ to ‘stay away from me’—“

He shook his head, finally taking a step back from you. “I was being selfish—“

“Well then be selfish!” You took a step back toward him. “Because dammit, Tommy, I need you too!”

He pulled your body into his so quickly you nearly pushed him away. But your body immediately reacted to the feel of his lips against yours as you pulled yourself in closer, wrapping your arms around his neck.

You broke away first, the whistling of pedestrians on the sidewalk making you remember you weren’t as concealed in this alcove as you thought. Though Tommy didn’t seem to care, his eyes still focused on you as you caught your breath.

“Don’t think just kissing me absolves you from giving a proper explanation for your actions,” you tried to say as serious as you could muster between breaths.

You were still mad at him. He’d put you through a roller coaster of unnecessary emotions the last few weeks. For him to get jealous at the prospects of you moving on? There was something more, you could feel it. And there was no way you were letting him get away with not explaining himself fully before you felt you could open back up to him again.

The corner of his mouth rose in amusement, “Come to the races with me when I return.”

“What?” your brow creased, though the corner of your mouth tugged upward at the prospects of what sounded like a date (you really were delusional when it came to this man).

“I want to take you to the races. Join me?”

You shook your head, “Is this the Tommy Shelby version of an olive branch?”

He smirked, “Maybe. We can talk more then.”

“Deal,” you answered, pulling his smirk into a genuine smile as you both turned back to continue down the sidewalk.

—-

The funeral was beautiful. Honestly, you hadn’t any idea what to expect when Polly talked about the arrangements. But the words, the songs, and the beauty of the traditions had you in tears. John held his children during the entire procession, and gave a lovely send off before lighting the fire.

Despite the grief you were feeling for the family, your brain hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the tea in your bedroom. Tommy had informed you that they’d be wrapping up Digbeth soon, returning properly in a few weeks.

That night was the first night you’d been back in your own apartment. The first thing you did was open your dresser drawer and remove the box.

You left it on your counter top as you started the fireplace, then the kettle. As you reached for the tea cup, you wondered if it was smart to be alone while you did this. You were, after all, still about sixty percent sure that the old tea was just going to give you either a stomach ache or seizure. But, you guessed that was better than the ninety-nine percent that you’d been at upon first receiving.

You gently removed the leaves and vial of water, following the instructions from Madam Despoina as you made your cup.

Holding the warm tea in your hands, you made the last minute decision to sit on the floor — reasoning that if you collapsed or something, at least you wouldn’t have as far to go.

You settled on the rug, inhaled deeply, closed your eyes, then brought the edge of the cup to your mouth.

You could feel the hot water run through your throat, then down to your chest before the warmth began to spread through your arms and hands, down to your stomach, then legs, then toes.

With your eyes still closed, you sat for a moment, waiting for something to happen.

When nothing did, you took another sip. Again, nothing happened.

Sighing, you sent a small thank you to whomever was listening that you at least didn’t go into any kind of shock, then opened your eyes.

“Hello, darling.”

>> next chapter <;< chapter masterlist

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rweoutofthewoods · 2 months

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I need need NEED people on TikTok to stop. I saw a TikTok where someone was like omg I want to befriend and track down x big author and x big author. WHERE IS THE TACT?? I CANT be the only one who thinks this is so odd.

If you actually wanted to be friends with someone you could go talk to them, you could be nice and normal instead of posting about wanting to befriend them for thousands of people to see. I’m sorry I’d never want to be friends with somebody who publicly announced an agenda just because the author is popular. Fic authors no matter how popular are literally just people and y’all are making it weird.

Like if you like someone’s work that’s great, and if u see a quality in them that you think you’d get along with AMAZING. Maybe u could actually be friends but when you just want it because they’re popular that’s so uncomfortable? It feels sleazy.

It irks me so much to see any author put up on a pedestal. Once you do that, and you remove them being seen as the same as everyone else it opens up a can of worms for things to turn bad. Because no one is perfect and someone will probably fuck up at some point and then it creates space to hate on fics or authors or be entitled because you don’t see them as real everyday people.

And I’m going to be so real, it doesn’t matter irl. Like the support and love online is wonderful but do u think anyone I talk to day to day gives a fuck that I have x hits on x number of fics? Or that I have x tumblr followers? NO it only matters in such a small context. That’s the difference between popular fandom people and celebs and influencers, their popularity is not something u can disconnect from them. While fic authors? Hell they could be the server you were rude to, or the person you cut off on the highway.

Come down to earth, treat people like people with respect and love not as their number of hits. Someone knock some sense into mtt I’m BEGGING.

#mere’s non writing rambles #jegulus #marauders #fanfic #fandom #the marauders

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vvatchword · 1 year

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In Defense of BioShock Infinite

Although I had preordered BioShock Infinite with all its bells and whistles, I did not actually play it until January 2023. And lordy, I had me another Experience with a capital E. How the hell a bunch of urban Yanks could capture my experience as a queer democratic-socialist atheist struggling with her roots as a rural evangelical-cum-fascist is kinda magical, honestly. As to the game itself, it didn’t hurt how good it looked—the kickass skyhook gun battles—that novel setting—the complex characters—that delicious historical setting—that bloodthirsty critique of America—and to top it all off, they had pulled yet another Cassandra. Hell, speaking of which—not only was the game fun, it was fucking smart. It was intelligent, memorable, and meaningful in a way I hadn’t experienced in video games for years.

Now, back in 2013, when I had realized that I would be spoiled for Infinite, I left the BioShock fandom. After completing the game, I headed to Tumblr to re-engage, wagging my whole body like an excitable golden retriever, only to discover that BioShock Infinite was remarkably absent, and when mentioned, brutally derided.

“I hate BioShock Infinite and all my friends do, too,” someone said in the tags under a post.

I was utterly befuddled and deeply sad. I wanted to talk about BioShock Infinite! I wanted to dig into it, uncover unexpected ideas, learn new things, talk shit, make new friends—the full fandom experience. And instead I kept stumbling into hateful diatribes and super-charged disgust.

Obviously, I first looked at myself and my own judgment. Had I missed some obvious problem or misread some theme or dialogue? This wouldn’t be the first time I’d snapped down on a hook. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

There are two parts of BioShock Infinite that are unquestionably terrible: the fridging of Daisy Fitzroy and the false equivalence of violence between haves and have-nots (lol what are the have-nots supposed to do, ask nicely?). Additionally, one could look at the use of real Native American tragedies as tasteless. Personally, I do not—in the same way that I don’t find it tasteless that real war victims were used as inspiration for Splicer deformities. This is what really happened; this is commentary on events that really happened to real people.

At this point, I’m sure I don’t have to explain why two of these themes are Unequivocally Bad.

Anyway, I thought that perhaps these were the reasons BSI had been condemned to Super Hell.

I was wrong.

How Criitcsim Werk

This wasn’t the fandom I’d made friends in over 2010. Hell, this wasn’t the fandom of 2013. This was a fandom made up of Babies. They were making their first coltish stumblings into media criticism and with it, dredging up the same brain-dead bullshit from Tumblr circa 2008.

Suddenly I was brought face to face with people who seemed to think that if a character couldn’t be likable or good that the story itself couldn’t be likable or good; that one bad element means the story is unsalvageable (lol u pussies); the implication that one is bad for liking it; the destructive juvenile insistence that media accurately measures its fans’ moral qualities en masse like an astrological sign. This goes far beyond simple like or dislike and plunges head-first into Puritanism: praying loudly on street-corners instead of quietly in a dark corner where God might hear you.

At one point I had a kid go off about how they wouldn’t take time to understand Booker DeWitt’s perspective because he had (fictionally) taken part in a genocide. (That same person said the Native American element had been employed for shock value, a thought that sometimes keeps me up at night, because it is legitimately one of the dumbest criticisms the game has ever received.) At another point I saw someone acting personally offended that (fictional person) Dr. Suchong’s (fictional) data was being stolen (in a fiction) by a (fictional) racist who would (fictionally) take credit for (fictional person) Suchong’s (fictional) inventions “while calling him slurs”. Sure, a better question would have been, “Why would the creative team opt to do this” rather than assume intentional racism from a Jewish creative director with an in-office multi-ethnic team in the year of our lord 2013, but why not handwave the choice with prurient moral dismay so your audience won’t beat you to death with bats?

It was as though fans were treating these completely fictional characters as real people whose personal gods had opted to torment them, and that their tormentors merited the kind of censure that psychopaths should receive. As I hope all of you understand, this is fucking madness.

More than once I saw people posting about hating the studio or the creative director in ways that seemed intense, unreasoning, and excessive—notably an “I Hate [Irrational Games creative director] Ken Levine” stamp (rofl the more things change amirite). People get so performatively moralistic about it that I started wondering if I missed something big along the way. Was there some secret Voxophone I missed swearing fealty to baby Hitler or some shit?

Double Standards

At the same time, I was utterly confused. BioShocks 1 and 2 both featured some absolutely ghastly bullshit based on real-life horrors and a thick mix of complicated human beings—many of them victims who have become monsters. The fact they are grounded in historical tragedies is a huge part of their appeal. Hell, I don’t think those games would have had half their meaning without World Wars I and II and the threat of a third.

A gay man who feels so cursed by his orientation that he is incapable of intimacy and systematically destroys his ex-lovers—including the man he loves the most. A Korean who survived Japanese occupation and a Jewish Holocaust survivor repeat the violence and traumas exacted upon them and their people, subjecting a new generation to agonies unthinkable. Chasing the shadows of Bolsheviks, a Russian citizen becomes the brutal tyrant that he loathed. A rich lawyer with an easygoing drawl designs a concentration camp and systematically harvests hundreds, if not thousands of political prisoners, selling them out to medical testing for a quick buck.

But a Native man who destroys his own people and class to ensure his own survival and social acceptability is too far? This character is where people drew the line, so much so that the entire game is disavowed? Hell, if you’re just talking about Booker (rather than Comstock), he doesn’t have anywhere near the largest bodycount. If we were to judge on the metric of human misery alone, Booker wouldn’t even hit the top ten.

Keep in mind that the most-discussed BioShock game on Tumblr is BioShock 2, and that one of the biggest fandom favorites is Augustus Sinclair—the easy-talkin’ Georgia lawyer who sells your character into horrors past all human comprehension, as he sold hundreds before and after you. Sinclair is a motherfucker so vile that BioShock 2 gives you no choice but to murder him. But Sinclair is also pleasant; good-looking to some; spends the whole game making sweet love to your ear; is one of the only true positive experiences you experience in a horror story. Unlike DeWitt, a man who is brutal and awful from step one, Sinclair is smooth and sweet. Unlike DeWitt, Sinclair’s victims are faceless, completely fictional, and carry no political or social baggage.

People fuckin’ ship this guy with Subject Delta, his explicit victim. He’s usually described as a squishy cinnamon roll. In most fanfiction, he often gets to escape to the surface and fuck Delta while helping raise Eleanor as Dad 2. It is rare that I find fanfiction that acknowledges his monsterhood in all its glory. In fact, I can only think of two.

Literacy Comes in Levels

My problem with the over-the-top hatred of BioShock Infinite is along the same lines as my confusion at Twilight and Harry Potter hate: there is so much worse out there (how much do the haters actually engage with media if they think this is that bad—yes, even considering the shitty creators themselves!), the hatred far outweighs the sin committed (in BioShock’s case, the truly bad bits are not central enough to derail the larger narrative), people don’t seem to hate it so much as they want to be seen hating it, fans want to enforce an unspoken rule hating it (bitches this is poison. Stop this), and there’s something about the hate that stinks of poor reading comprehension.

A great metric for general literacy is the newspaper. In journalism, you’re writing for the lowest-common denominator, which for years here in the USA has been about a fifth-grade reading level (about 10-11 years old, for my non-American readers). The AP posted an article a couple years back about how the general reading comprehension of Americans needs to be dropped to a third-grade one (8-9 years), and baby, I’m here to say it’s true.

Most of the problem is that the American education system is shitty as fuck. The rest of it is from an extremely American disdain of intellectualism and the arts. People are not taught how to interpret art or literature—a difficult and subtle skill which involves accepting such truths as “multiple contradictory readings can exist and yet be simultaneously correct”, “the author can be a complete tool and still be right about things”, “the author can be a great person and still write horrifyingly incorrect bullshit”, and “worthwhile works can be ridiculously long and it really is your fault for not having an attention span”.

Media criticism must be learned through trial, error, asking questions, confidently swaggering into a public space to announce your brilliant insight only to have your ass handed to you (usually by your older self ten years later), being willing to admit you swaggered confidently into a public space to state bullshit and then amending your bullshit only to produce more bullshit, and otherwise making a complete and utter cock of yourself. We are taught to fear and flee pain and failure, despite the fact this is how we learn and improve. Because we judge our value by whether or not we are “smart,” we are afraid of displaying that we don’t know something or might be mistaken–better not to try at all than to reveal ourselves to be fools. And yet the best way to learn is to crash up against someone else and be proven wrong!

American parents are terrified of hurting their children to the point that they spare them cognitive dissonance of any kind, disavowing difficult art—without any appreciation for the fact that art is how we provide safe spaces to explore key human experiences, better preparing us to face those difficult subjects when there are real-world consequences (sex, gender and social expression, grief, violence, predation, illness, interacting with people of different ideologies, whatever new issue is pissing off some smooth-brained old motherfucker somewhere).

If parents and teachers aren’t teaching us how to interpret art, we’re probably never going to develop the skill at all, or crash unsubtly into it in a piecemeal fashion (hello it me). Another unfortunate side effect is that these readers tend to be blitheringly superficial: they are literally intellectually incapable of reading deeper than the uppermost layer of a text. The curtains are always blue.

And let’s not forget the role moral performatism plays in media criticism, which although faaar from new, has reached hilarious levels in the age of social media. What’s important isn’t understanding something, it’s finding something to symbolically burn at the stake so everyone knows God loves us: please keep loving me, please don’t hurt me, please don’t throw me on the fire—for performatism is not for outsiders. We long for human connection so fucking much that it’s more important to destroy what might point out our fallibilities than it is to let ourselves stand in the furnace and burn out the dross.

What do you think the point of BioShock Infinite was?

Emotional Machines

Let’s face it. Human beings give a lot more credence to how something makes them feel than they do its complex invisible reality. We are not logical creatures; we are emotional ones. Our logic is too new a biological mechanism to override something as powerfully stupid as our primal lizard brains.

Knowing this, let’s take BioShock’s most popular characters. The first two are Subject Delta and Jack Wynand, the protagonists of BioShocks 2 and 1, respectively; and why not? They’re the characters we play. In the first two BioShocks, whether or not you kill Little Sisters determines the ending you receive. In other words, Delta and Jack can only be as “wicked” as the players are.

How do people want to see themselves? As good. What do people want to see around themselves? Good. (What is “good”? Uh, well,,,,,,) What do they want? Simple moral questions with simple moral answers. And in the first two BioShocks, what is moral is obvious: don’t kill little girls. It’s actually kind of insulting once you say it out loud.

In-fandom, Jack and Subject Delta are almost never painted as murderers or monsters, but as victims and heroes; I saw someone musing about putting Subject Delta on a “gentle giants” poll and I nearly choked on my own tongue. I only saw that musing because someone put Subject Delta and Jack in a “Best Fathers” poll. Nobody in-fandom really considers the “evil” or “complicated” endings as canon choices, despite those versions being fully understandable alternate readings, with a story that doesn’t make sense without them. (I don’t believe Burial at Sea is necessarily canon; in fact, I would bet good money that it is a huge middle finger lol, mostly because a number of brain-dead motherfuckers won’t take unhappiness for an answer.)

Most fandom art and writing is gentle, sweet, good: the symbolic healing of the damaged, the salvation of innocents, the turning of new leaves. These things are not just saccharine sweet—they tend to be unrealistically sweet. Now, far be it from me to demand these works cease. There’s a reason they exist. People write them because they need hope and happiness; I have enjoyed them greatly myself and intend to enjoy them in the future. But if y’all get to have your dessert, I demand the right to have my dinner.

The Colours Out of Earth

Let there be media where the opposite can also be true: where everything is unbelievably complicated and unforgivably fucked-up. Let there be characters who slide slurs into their speech without thinking. Let there be characters who destroy themselves in a thousand different ways, not all of them obvious, some of them horrifying. Let there be well-meaning people struggling with all their mights to do what is right only to destroy everyone around them and then completely miss the fact it’s all their faults. Let there be wickedness painted as goodness, superficial appearances accepted over essential and inherent values, denial of change and transformation, failure to accept that what is old must die and what is new must live, human stupidity and short-sightedness and cruelty in all their flavors. Let’s smash it all together and see how it plays out.

Oh, badly? No shit! But “badly” isn’t the point. How does it play out?

Let there be a world of gradients—a place I can float from color to color, hue to hue, value to value, while attempting to figure out where, why, how, and by whom they transform—to taste concepts in a hundred different ways, test their textures by a hundred different mediums, insert them into a hundred different contexts. I need to understand why I feel the way I do; I need to understand morality in all its hideous, fragmentary glory. For I have been sold to a ideology of blacks and whites, and let me tell you: it prepares you for nothing, and it will always destroy what is most precious about human life.

I can no longer believe in a world where what is lost always returns, because that world does not exist. I have a reflexive need to come to terms with Finality: what I have lost, what I have destroyed, what will never return, what will never be better. I have a reflexive need to understand Transformation: what I am now, what is as of the present, what has risen shambling from the ashes, what turns to gaze upon me in the darkness. I need to understand what is wretched about me as much as I need to heal myself. How can I heal if I can’t understand how I have hurt and been hurt?

I need to shine a light in the dark. Not to remodel it, not to destroy it—because I also can’t believe in a world where the wicked is destroyed forever—but to behold it, to learn from it, to view my own impact upon it, to accept how it has become a part of me, to learn how to do my best (because that’s all one can do). I must learn to love people more than causes, I must learn to love people rather than the act of winning, I must learn to love people rather than battle. I need to stand in that endless black with the lamp off and my eyes closed, letting the agony roll over me, burning with a fire that throws no light, rolling back and forth from an intense self-loathing to a fury at a society that destroys what is most valuable because it didn’t make them feel the way they wanted.

The Unforgivable

I believe that there are only two differences between Booker DeWitt and his equally cursed cohorts.

In the Hall of Whores: The Unmarked Slate

First, unlike the previous two games, where you enter the world as a tabula rasa and might roleplay as what you perceive as a good person, you are explicitly put into the shoes of a monster, and nothing you do can save you.

With other shitty BioShock characters, you are passively watching other people, and you are able to hold yourself apart. Sure, everyone else is crazy as fuck from using biological Kryptonite, but you’re too smart to end up a crazy fucking asshole like them! Sure, you are now technically a mass murderer, but those fuckers deserved it, damn it!

“Look at this crazy bastard!” you say, rolling your eyes at the Steinmans and Cohens and Ryans and Fontaines. “It sure is a great thing I’m not a crazy bastard!”

You are able to escape acknowledging that you, too, in certain circumstances, might be the crazy bastard. You are being challenged to stand in the body of a person who has committed unforgivable sins. Imagine if you yourself committed those sins. Imagine what sins you have already committed. Imagine what brutalities you cannot take back. Imagine what horrors you have wreaked just by breathing.

“Ahhhh!” said players, probably. “What do you mean I’m not allowed to be good?”

Because that’s what the game was designed to do. Because “good” is a fucking cop-out and if it’s how you live with yourself wait until you find out you’ve been doing horrifying bullshit all your life without question. You can be evil by association through no fault of your own.

Original Sin

Second, the plight of Native Americans is a sin that non-Natives will always carry, and the socially conscious are aware of this even if they don’t know how to put it into words. The state of affairs being what it is, it is unlikely that First Peoples will ever be treated humanely, much less have their land returned. They must struggle for scraps of what is rightfully theirs while we lounge on their corpses. We cannot help but benefit from their destruction; we are made unwitting partners with our forebears; we steal the fruits of their lands and make mockeries of their faiths and identities. We have destroyed part of what made this world fascinating and unique and most of it can never be returned. Even if everything were to be made right tomorrow, their genocide is a sin that we will carry until we die, because the only reason we could be here at all is because they were killed.

The obvious solution stands before us, but the powers that be are so much greater than we that we are effectively powerless, and achieving anything less than total restoration smacks of anticlimax.

This is unbearable.

How can one think of oneself as a good person if one sees the good that must be done, but cannot achieve it? If one’s actions are meaningless? Goodness without action is pretension.

We are all Booker DeWitt. We have all set fire to the tipi. We swept the ashes away, we ignored the sizes of the bones, we built a CVS on their graves, and then we made statues and holidays commemorating Native Americans like the world’s cheapest “Thinking of You” card. We have de-fanged them, transformed them into cardboard cutouts, and set them up as cute little side characters in our sweeping American dream.

Booker is not a man. Booker is America and Americans—and America and Americans are monstrous: one part hypocrisy, two parts incessant violence, three parts constant peacocking, and four parts dumb as a stump.

The Monsters We Make

Outside of the message about “choice,” an enormous part of BioShock’s thematic ensemble is the creation of monsters. How are monsters created? Who or what is responsible for creating them? What do the monsters think made them the ways they are? Can a monster be saved? How? Is it enough to acknowledge you did wrong and want to be a better person?

Maybe most people are aware on some instinctive level of what facing one’s own monsterhood means. No one wants it. It’s not fun. It hurts. It’s embarrassing. It’s destructive. It’s admitting you don’t have it all together and might never, ever—that despite your best actions, you can have it horribly wrong at any point. In an age where we demand moral perfection, it demands vulnerability: you must admit that sometimes you’re the racist, the transphobe, the sexist, the nationalist, the classist, the homophobe, the violent, the wrong, the dumbfuck.

Human beings are not built to be moral; human beings are built to survive. We so rapidly learn how to deal with our contexts at such young ages that we don’t have the time or capabilities to question why those contexts are the ways they are or why it is demanded we perform the ways we do.

In a very real way, BioShock Infinite demands vulnerability of us. It demands you look in the mirror and see what is monstrous in you—how you have been created—manufactured—a tool, a machine, a trained animal. It asks you to recognize that you can be a monster simply by association. And if we can’t look into the mirror and truly acknowledge that monsterhood, we run very real risks of becoming or enabling those monsters in one way or another.

Worst of all: perhaps monsterhood isn’t optional. Perhaps the monster was inside of us from the very beginning. It’s not a matter of if you become a monster, but when, under what circumstances, by whose hand. What is more, believing the “right” moral stances will not save you. Monsterhood can afflict anyone, in any ideology, any political stance, in any social movement, in any faith. The only element that can save you is to truly love other people, and even then, you can fail, for there can be states where there is no winner and ways to misread how best to treat another person.

Environment and Society: Context Will Not Be Denied

BioShock 1’s original ending is Jack-as-monster, regardless of how many children he saves, regardless of your feelings as player. He passes through the gauntlet of Rapture, but he has supped of its poison. And he wasn’t poisoned when he entered Rapture the second time—he was poisoned the minute he was conceived. He was born of it. He had no hope of ever escaping it—he never could have—he’d never had a choice to begin with.

No matter what choices you make in BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth will always kill you. Why? Because she has seen every world—every context—every limitation—every boon. And there is no way to stop what has been; there is no way to undo what has been done. The minute you have committed to a decision, you have split the universe; there is no telling what kind of person it will make you. In fact, there’s no telling which of your decisions will matter at all. Only Elizabeth can see because she is the unlimited future: your offspring stands before you, judge and jury, and you will have no choice but to accept her verdict, for despite your name, you are incapable of controlling how you are interpreted.

Elizabeth sits across from you in the boat and stares without blinking. She sees a million million similar Bookers. Some are a little bit taller, some a little bit shorter, some a little heavier or lighter. Some more-resemble one grandparent or another. They have different colored ties. This one blinks when rain hits him in the eyeball. That one took a brutal beating back on the airship and one eye is swollen shut. That one can’t stop shaking; this one is unable to speak at all; one hasn’t yet lost hope, although even he doesn’t realize it.

They all lowered the torch to the tipi.

The baptism determined Comstock; what determined Booker?

Why Booker Is

In BioShock 1, characters are often stand-ins for larger concepts. Thus Ryan stands in as Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Ubermensch; Bill McDonagh as Andrew Ryan’s conscience; Diane McClintock as the citizenry of Rapture; Captain Sullivan as law and order; Frank Fontaine as the truest expression of Objectivism in its distilled form.

Who is Booker? Most importantly: why is he?

Booker is a fictional character with a brutal background based on historical events, alternative and true. Booker might be Lakota; Booker might have undergone forced Anglicization; Booker might have been ripped from his parents; Booker is a product of violence, perhaps literally. Booker is American exceptionalism distilled. Booker is the past in constant judgment of itself, unable to live with itself and unable to die. Booker destroys what is best in him and around him in exchange for belonging. Booker has sold the future to absolve his sins. Booker has sold his daughter because he is a fictional character in a work of fiction who needs to be propelled.

Booker is a shell, a sluice, an environment. Booker is the broken shape you are meant to fill, horrified. His internal shape should torture you as it has tortured him: the messy slaggy soul of a shitty tin soldier.

Does Booker take the baptism and become Comstock? If so, it might be his second one. His last name literally means “the white.” His first name can mean “author.” It is most likely his second name: an attempt to rewrite himself. And when he was unable to rewrite himself the first time, when the cognitive dissonance boiled at the edges of his skull, he found there was only one way to cleanse himself the second: to remake the world entirely. To force transformation on everyone else. To take vengeance on a world that could never love him, never want him—to create a world that has no choice but to love him. If he can’t change the world’s mind, he’ll change the world.

Note what he opts to do: to take the fight to the environment–to the unyielding universe.

Context Is Everything

It is no mistake that BioShock Infinite occurs in 1912: the sinking of the Titanic is often credited with ending an unfettered optimism, a period when the Western world believed technology had brought the human race into a golden age. With World War I—which would follow a mere two years later—came modern warfare and all the horrors thereof, not the least of which was the realization that humans had created a kind of war that could destroy the entire world. World War I also seeded the rise of the United States: much of the wealth of warring Europe—itself fat on the blood of subjugated peoples and stolen lands—would rattle into America’s coffers.

It is also no mistake that BioShock 1 directly follows World War II. With WWII came a heightened terror—that this war is not the last war, that there will never be an end to war, that war will go on expanding and expanding until it has consumed us all. World War III would not be denied: prettily packaged in the ideals of its children, it simply followed the utopians down to their underwater tombs. According to BioShock 1’s original ending, World War III is not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when.

But even more important than the history in the BioShock games are their settings. Mute leviathans, Rapture and Columbia determine all of your behaviors: from where you can exist in space to all of your desires and goals to how you choose to present yourself to how you opt to behave. Isolated in extremism—whether that extremism is the crushing depths of the ocean or the unbearable lightness of the air—most of their power is that they simply cannot be escaped. You can’t outrun them. They are everywhere. They are everything.

Like Lovecraft before it, BioShock acknowledges the greatest horror of all: you cannot escape your context. Your context does not only involve your immediate surroundings. It is also historical; contains zeitgeists from various cultures and subcultures; is filled with pressures both personal and impersonal, human and nonhuman. Many of these forces can hurt you. Many more can destroy you. What you do to survive depends very much on where, when, and with whom you must live.

Human beings are not built to be moral.

The Death of the Future

In the film Operation, Burma!, a soldier asks Errol Flynn: “Who were you before the war?”

“An architect,” says Flynn.

Who were you? Because that “you” doesn’t matter now. That “you” is irrelevant. So you’re an architect. What the war does to you; what these deaths mean to you; your past, your education, your loves and desires and forward motivation, the you that could have been outside war, the you that slogs alone into the brutal future—all completely irrelevant. Your forebears don’t care so long as you can bleed.

Children are the manufactured tools of their creators—helpless before the enormous strength of their elders and the zeitgeists that enclose them, poisoned by their parents’ insecurities and flaws, utilized like weapons regardless of the cost—often with great love.

Consider something more than the traumatized culture: consider the society filled with traumatized children; consider the traumatized society. Consider channeling children through that trauma over and over and over again, if you can. Poisoned—poisoned—poisoned—all of us poisoned. Poisoned by those who loved us most. Poisoned by the people we trusted. Poisoned by the people who meant to make a better world.

I believe it is notable that creative director Ken Levine is Jewish; I have read from multiple accounts that the European Jewish diaspora was uniquely traumatized from the Holocaust and passed that trauma down upon their own families. I sometimes wonder if he saw that firsthand.

The fathers eat sour grapes; their children’s teeth are set on edge.

Choice: Player Expectations and Entitlement

For players who experienced BioShocks 1 and 2 with their multiple endings (Good, Bad, and “ok bye then I guess” respectively), it must have been jarring to suddenly reckon with being a monster. How often I see players grousing that nothing they do will change their wicked pasts! These players completely miss that the only meaningful choice had already been made, that it had nothing to do with the player at all, and even if they had been there, DeWitt was still unforgivable. The only way to go on was to bow out and allow the future to redefine herself.

Nobody was ready for that shit.

Like it or not, BioShock 1 had set a precedent. Not everyone’s going to read up on creator intentions. If any keyword came blaring through the noise, it would have been “choice.” Most players only recognize choice by the ability to make it, not the absence of it, and most of them weren’t equipped to recognize that its lack was the point. The meaningless choices were commentary, and they were as much about the player as they were about DeWitt himself. Not every choice will be meaningful, will it? And there will be choices you make that will be momentous, but they will seem very small when you make them.

Because most players had experienced what they thought was a basic moralistic tale in the first two games, and would see Infinite not as reflection upon America’s destructive personality, its obsession with a meaningless Good/Bad duocracy, and the infinite, cyclical nature of violence, they saw Booker’s death as corrupted artsy claptrap.

“I did the good schuut,” they say. “I want the good schuut end. Where happy end??? Where treat :(”

Bitch the future is here.

Time to die.

It’s Not Me, It’s You

Generally I despise essays that end with, “But the real fault lay with the clueless motherfuckers who played the game!” Often, if enough people complain, there’s something to it; the message has been obscured somehow. Details or explanations weren’t clear or intuitive enough, some mechanism isn’t working somewhere, some character needs to talk more or less, some setting needs to be transformed. O artist: stop whining and get cracking. If everywhere you go smells like shit, it’s time to look under your shoe.

But sometimes it’s true that a piece of media is on a level folks aren’t equipped for. Think of every literature and art class you’ve ever had, if you’ve been fortunate enough to have one. There’s always someone scoffing in a back row, like here are all these jokers making more of something than they should. Similarly, some of you have been arguing with me this entire time, saying: “I just wanted a video game. I just wanted to shoot something and feel better and instead I get this bullshit ending that makes no sense.”

First of all, smart bullshit (and even fucked-up attempts at smart bullshit! Hi BioShock 2) gets to exist on this Earth along with Gmod and Roblox or Schuut Big Tits 84 (there are 84 tits and you must shoot them all. They explode into smaller tits) or whatever-the-fuck-else you think is a worthwhile gaming experience. Second of all, miserable bullshit also gets to exist, and what did you fucking expect if you played through either BioShocks 1 or 2? When you hear a football player quavering out in the darkness for his mom to pick him up, how’d that make you feel? What did you think was going to happen to Jack after pounding back the entire Plasmid library, the cancer cocktail that explicitly destroys the fuck out of its users? Third of all, if you missed the smart bullshit going on in BioShock 1 and didn’t think BioShock Infinite might be larger in scope in more ways than one, that’s on you. Fourthly, if you were simply satisfied with saving like, 15 kids from a violently-perishing city of thousands and call it good, I mean… is that really where your thoughts end? Are you really that fucking small?

It’s Not You, It’s Me

You ever meet those motherfuckers who talk shit about Shakespeare or modern art? And you’re just left there staring with dead eyes at this poseur who mistakes playing devil’s advocate for intelligence, cheek resting on your fist, thinking about the fanfic you’re writing, wondering who it’s for, remembering that all your smut-writing friends get ten times the viewers, and considering throwing yourself in front of a bus.

Yeah, there’s a personal element to this: the fact that BioShock Infinite is the kind of art I like and long for and want to make myself, the fact that the game was successful and yet the studio was closed, the way its DLC was so rushed that the story plopped out like half-baked mystery meat—realizing that the same forced rush was at 2K’s behest for BioShock 2, as well, and wondering how good art can ever be made in this unforgiving capitalist hellscape. The game was weirdly niche and I’m not 100% sure I’ll ever experience anything quite like it again. And with the whiners in this fandom, the loud ones controlling the narrative, some fresh brain-dead exec in some brain-dead publisher might be like: “We must keep it safer and simpler for these fuckin babby adult!”

Nah bitch nah. Naaaah. Cry some more while I enjoy me my fucking dinner. I’ll eat it while making loud smacking noises and keeping unbroken eye contact. Come here. Let’s look at each other. It’ll be like Lady and the Tramp but we want to punch each other. What truer form of love can there be here in the modern world?

I keep having to remind myself that this response isn’t new. I keep having to remind myself of my place. I keep having to remind myself why I write, why I read, why I like to experience art to begin with. It’s not for the reasons other people do it. Oh, I want the same emotional release as everyone else, I want the same rollicking plots, I adore the same tropes. I seek out everything and anything for a good time; I’ll read Moby Dick today and a smutty 5,000-word abortion with the world’s most suspect grammar tomorrow. I don’t give a shit if it’s low- or high-brow; there are all kinds of ways to have fun and there are all kinds of ways to engage with art, and lord knows I’ve done my share of smooth-brain criticism. The problem is that I’ve always wandered off by myself, sunk into an all-consuming reverie, on tracks that no one else ever seems to be on, and then looked up to talk excitedly about something only to realize I’m alone. And whose fault is that?

By the same token, maybe I haven’t talked enough. Maybe I spend too much time with my mouth shut. Maybe I haven’t stood up enough for things that are worth our time, worth talking up, worth setting on pedestals.

I tell you, BioShock Infinite will stand the test of time. It’s too good for this. It’s too good for you, warts and all. Some of you will grow to understand that; some of you won’t; many of you will shrug and go on with your lives (and this is fine; it is only a video game). But I’ve truly not seen anything like it. I can’t believe a mainstream video game was allowed to be so fucking brutal about the American juggernaut, and what’s more, that it sold like hotcakes. Plus, I can’t think of any works in recent memory that have struck me so close to my own heart. No creative work has made me start beating a monster’s face into a washbasin for ten hours only to lift her by the scalp and see my own eyes looking back.

Look into those eyes. See your own stupid impulses pouring out. Your own stupid excuses, your violences, your sins—your claws, your teeth, your costumes, your hilarious attempts at interpretive dance. The beast doth protest too much.

O, monster—behold thyself—and tremble.

#bioshock #bioshock 2 #bioshock infinite #bioshock infinite burial at sea #booker dewitt #subject delta #jack wynand #augustus sinclair #essays #video games #spoilers #vvatchword #vvbsreceipts

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