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prettynice8 · 6 months

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Kinkmas Day 16: Sex pollen

Pairing: Denji x male reader

This guy

Summary: The lust devil infects you two with spores or whatever, making even more horny than usual.

Warnings: Rampant horniness, kissing, dry humping, smashing, doggy style, public area? taking Denji's virginity, dub con? Sex pollen DUH

Word count: 1104

It should have just been a normal mission; you and Denji (mostly Denji) would kill a devil and be done with it, but not this time. You were just normally going on patrol, you weren't even a devil hunter, but you liked the company of Denji, as if you wanted him inside of you. You two had just been walking in a random abandoned warehouse, quite roomy, which probably added to the eeriness. You were talking about random shit, hot people, Makima, smash or pass with devils, who would take care of power if either of you were to die, everyday things. That was all until you were randomly attacked by a devil.

Before either of you could have the time to react, the air began to fill with red mist, it smelled like roses, how pleasant. It clouded your vision, you couldn't even see Denji who was right in front of you, and then suddenly you heard a voice.

"I wish I could stay and watch dinner and a show, but I must be off, sorry." The voice was alluring and high pitched, it sounded like a stereotypical gay man in fact (I imagine the lust devil to sound like a homosexual). Then, just as quickly as the devil arrived, it was gone.

"What the fuck do they mean by that?" You asked, the mist clearing up, almost as if it left with the devil.

"I don't fucking know!" Denji honestly answered, just as confused as you are. For a while you just sat there in your confusion, until your pants started to feel unbelievably tight.

"Do you also feel a little weird?" You asked Denji, not much of a question since you could clearly see his red face, drool starting to collect in his mouth. He looks over at you, giving you a tunnel stare.

"I don't know." He said, slowly walking closer and closer to you. You stay still, trying to figure out what is going on. Denji doesn't have the same concern, the only thing he can think of is getting rid of the overwhelmingly painful hardship he has.

You notice the incredible tent in his pants, you try to think about how or why this is happening, but you can't take your eyes off his clothed dick, and thus can't take your mind off of it.

"What are you doing?" You asked, already having a thought on what was on his mind, which is probably the same thing that's on yours, hard core smashing.

"I don't know." He responds again, finally face to face with you.

You two just stand there, looking longingly into each other's eyes, before Denji finally makes a move, putting his lips on yours, giving in to the over empowering temptation. You can't talk though, instantly reciprocating these emotions, kissing him back.

His lips are surprisingly soft, moving with yours perfectly. You both stay like this, until only kissing isn't enough to satiate your desires.

Your hand goes to rub Denji's already painfully hard clothed cock, you even feel it throb in your hand. His hand goes to grab your ass and then he starts to rub his covered dick with yours, his rubbing becomes so aggressive that it causes both of you to fall over, him being on top of you, just like he wanted.

Denji continued his dry humping, while also kissing you more passionately, his tongue swirling around with yours. You moan into the kiss, his dry humping getting quicker as he tries to chase his release. Sadly, just rubbing his cock on yours simply isn't enough, he needs the full experience.

You notice his hard thrusts and offer your own help, putting your hand in his pants to rub it raw. He starts groaning at the sensation, as his hand does the same with your member, rubbing it without precision or technique.

Denji stops jerking you off, opting to take off his clothes and get straight to the point, showing you his glorious cock. It's about average length, but incredibly girthy, he also has a lot of pubes, looking as if he never trims. You follow suit, removing your clothing as well. You two go back to kissing each other, this time roughly, pure tongues and teeth clashing together, wanting, no, needing to be as close to one another as possible.

"Hands and knees." He ordered, in which you quickly obey, doing exactly as he says. You look back at him, waiting for him to enter you, needing to feel him inside.

He does what you wish, giving one quick kiss before finally entering your ass. Slowly but surely, he makes his way in, his large girth making it slightly difficult to fit all the way in. It takes a while but eventually he does make it all the way through.

He gives you little to no time to adjust, wanting to have this burning sensation go away. You're not complaining though, wanting the same thing.

His thrusts are uncontrolled but effective nonetheless, causing a moan out of you every now and then as he ruthlessly hits you from the back. Denji even let's out a groan or two, loving how tight your hole is, almost as if you two were made to fuck each other.

He leans down and puts his bare chest on your back, wanting more skin-on-skin contact, which is why he also starts rubbing your dick. The sensation of this added on to his attack at your ass makes you an official moaning mess.

He uses his other hands to grab your face so he can kiss you, wanting your lips on his again. Your mouth is already open so he can have full access to your tongue. The kiss is feral, saliva spilling into each other's mouths, down your chins, and onto the floor, teeth clashing together as you two just can't get enough of the other.

His kiss, hand, and dick work perfectly together to make you cum, which is exactly what you do, spilling all over the abandoned building's floor. Denji follows closely, dumping a massive load in your ass, some even spilling out onto the floor.

The burning sensation is finally gone for both of you. Though you notice that Denji's dick is still hard. Denji then notices the cum spilling out of your ass and puts on your underwear.

"I want it to stay there, until we can go somewhere and do this again." He said sensually.

"Where?" You asked, putting the rest of your clothes back on.

"As soon as possible." He replied, doing the same.

Thank you random devil mist.

THE END

245 notes · View notes

public-trans-it · 9 months

Note

i would love to hear your dark spore rant. i didnt even know spore had a sequel.

Oh anon. Poor sweet anon. I’m so sorry.

So, the thing about Darkspore is…

… it was a really REALLY… mediocre game.

Like, the moment to moment gameplay was… fine. Just fine. Not incredible. But not BAD! Really, it only had two major flaws:

The first, it was buggy as hell. One particularly nasty bug was present in the games launcher, and on certain systems the game would fail to install at all. They were unable to ever fix this bug, which I speculate was a major reason the game was abandoned by the devs so quickly and lead to it being taken down from every major digital distribution site. You could still install and play it if you already bought it though! If… it actually installed for you.

Which leads us to the second flaw. It’s right there on the box.

“Internet connection required”

The game has Always Online DRM. All the levels, enemies, loot, your entire account, was all stored server side. And servers are expensive. So, when the games bugs became unwieldy and not worth fixing, and they took it offline… it became a money sink. It was a game generating ZERO revenue, but had huge server maintenance costs. So eventually, they just shut down the servers.

It is now very difficult to obtain the game, requiring you to buy one of the few unopened physical copies remaining. And even once you do have it, it is IMPOSSIBLE to play. There is a project called Resurrection Capsule in the works, some fans trying to create a private server for it. But with so much info stored server side, they basically have to recreate entire subsystems from scratch. It’s… not going very fast, and to my knowledge hasn’t been touched in over a year.

Story

The story of the game is pretty basic. A progenitor race of alien super-scientists create a new, synthetic form of DNA, called Exponential-DNA, or E-DNA. This rapidly mutates to create new life, and can be guided to create specific, specialized organisms, condensing thousands of years of evolution to a few hours. It can also be injected into existing creatures to alter them and make them more powerful. However it also linked everything affected by it into a hivemind. So it was outlawed. The creator of it decided to respond by creating a E-DNA virus, called The Darkspore, infecting himself with it, and spreading it across the galaxy and conquering it, wiping out his own race.

You play as another member of that race, who has been in hibernation for 1000 years while that was going down. Your ship AI has woken you up because it has managed to stabilize E-DNA and also keep it disconnected from the hivemind, and needs you to go kill the guy who took over the galaxy. That is how the game starts.

…

And how the story ends. There is not really any more story past that part. You get a cutscene describing each of the games 6 planets the first time you visit it, and a final “Hey you won!” cutscene after killing the final boss which ends with the cliche “implication the villain isn’t really dead” trope, and… that’s it. That’s the entire story. Not really the selling point of this game. Its not even entirely clear if it takes place in the same universe as Spore! It’s just set dressing for “Run through these 24 levels and beat everything up”

Gameplay

Darkspore was created by Maxis. This alone was HUGE. This was a team of developers who only really made lifesims like The Sims and Sim City, taking a stab at making a diablolike game.

And I GENUINELY BELIEVE every single studio out there needs to do shit like this. Designing for something so outside your wheelhouse creates SOOOOO much innovation so quickly. You get fresh new ideas injected into the genre so quickly. The final product won’t be good! You don’t have any damn experience in the genre! But it will create something unique beautiful, and god damn I wish we lived in a world where that alone was enough and devs weren’t focused on chasing profits instead.

Genesis

Genesis is just a fancy way of saying ‘Element’. There are 5 of them: Plasma (fire and lightning), Bio (plants and animals), Cyber (machines), Necro (death and fear), and Quantum (space and time) and the way they interact is… certainly a choice I guess. Each Darkspore you face has a genesis it falls into, and each of your heroes has one as well. If your Genesis matches that of the darkspore you are fighting at the moment, you take double damage and they take half damage. If they don’t match, all damage both ways is neutral.

The system itself is kinda mediocre. The biggest part of it, however, is the Variant Skills. Each Genesis has 4 unique skills tied to it that represent the common elements of that type.

Heroes

There are 25 heroes in the game, which each have one Genesis and one Class (Sentinel which are the tanks, Ravagers which are the DPS, and Tempest which are the Casters/Support)

Each hero has 4 total variants, with the first one you unlock being Alpha, and as you level up your account (heroes do not have their own levels) you eventually can purchase their Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants, with each variant having slightly different stats, and a different one of their Genesis’ 4 variant abilities.

Each hero has a unique basic attack, which USUALLY has a little extra to it. For example Sage shoots a bolt that hurts enemies it hits, but heals allies it hits. Zrin alternates between two different punches, one of which has a short duration DoT and the other of which has a 10% stun chance. Stuff like that.

They also have a passive effect that is always active while you are playing them. Collect a soul from each enemy killed for a 5% damage boost, 10% damage bonus when attacking from behind, a stacking defense buff every time you take damage, stuff like that.

Finally, a character has 2 unique abilities. One that is unique to them and can only be used while you are playing that hero, and a second ability that is everyone in the squad can use if that hero is present.

Squad Decks

Which brings me to the first rant and something I am SO AUTISTIC ABOUT (positive). SQUADS. The game had you craft Squad Decks, collections of 3 heroes that you can swap between during your missions, for a total of 883.2k squad combinations (I think my math might be off on that). Swapping between them is on a cooldown of about 10 seconds, but otherwise is don’t instantaneously and as often as you want without penalty. You always have 5 abilities active:

- The unique ability of your active hero

- The Genesis ability of your active heroes variant

- Hero 1’s Squad ability

- Hero 2’s Squad ability

- Hero 3’s squad ability

The first two abilities change out every time you swap heroes, but the last 3 are fixed. So you have 3 abilities that you always have access to, and 6 abilities that are paired up and you can swap between which pair of those abilities is active.

Your heroes do NOT share a health/energy pool, but DO share healing pickups. Any time you pick up a health or energy restoration pickup, it refills a chunk of the respective health pool of your currently active hero, and a smaller chunk of each of your inactive heroes in the squad.

So the core loop of moment to moment gameplay becomes swapping situationally between heroes both offensively and defensively, to get access to your other heroes skills and also to mitigate damage from enemies based on their genesis or control where your healing is directed.

Loot

Loot in Darkspore is fairly standard for your average Diablolike. Item drops have 4 tiers: Common (Item Level=Account Level-5), Uncommon (Item Level=Account Level), Rarified (Item Level=Account Level+5), and Purified (Item Level=Account Level+10)

Items of higher tiers have more chances to roll on a table to gain beneficial modifiers.

Each item fell into one of a few different categories: Weapon, Hands, Feet, Offensive, Defensive, or Utility.

Each hero has one of each slot, plus an additional slot based on their class. Ravagers have an extra Offense slot, Sentinels have an extra Defense slot, and Tempests have an extra Utility slot. Any hero can equip any item you gain, with the exception of Weapons that are hero specific. Some heroes also lack Hands or Feet, in which case their weapon has extra stats and can get the same modifiers as hands and feet can.

The items you equip can then be added onto the Hero in the Hero Editor. The Hero Editor is often equated to the Creature Editor in Spore, which is BULLSHIT and was a pet peeve of mine the ENTIRE DAMN TIME THE FAME WAS LIVE. This is a FALSE EQUIVALENCE. It uses the outfit editor from the Tribal/Civilization phases of Spore instead. Importantly: this means you cannot alter the overall silhouette of your hero. It will always maintain the same basic profile and animations. However you can freely place the extra parts you equip anywhere on its body, and can also place multiple copies of them.

Additionally, old parts can have their stats stripped, converting them into ‘Detail’ parts with no stats, of which you can equip 6 different parts, each of which you can include 10 copies of on your hero. So you could get some pretty cool looks from it!

However all this loot is garbage and you likely would not use most of it outside of appearance. Which brings me to…

Cash-out Loot

Usually if you mention the word ‘cash’ in any sentence involving a game published by EA, it would be a call for concern. Luckily this isn’t that! It’s just gambling! Everything is fine!

The main progression in Darkspore comes from gear, and the best gear comes from how good your ships engines are. These come from account upgrades as you level up your account, determining how many levels you can do in a row. Every time you complete a level, you are given an option: Keep going, or ‘cash out’ and get a guaranteed piece of Uncommon gear, with a 10% chance of it becoming Rarified, as well as all the gear you picked up in the level.

If you choose to keep going, you have to complete the next level. If you die, you lose ALL the gear you picked up, including that guaranteed piece. If you make it to the end, you are given another choice: Risk it all again and go on to the next level, or stop here and get your TWO pieces of guaranteed uncommon loot, which each now have a 20% chance of becoming rarified and a 5% chance of becoming purified.

You can only go another of levels equal to the number of Engine Upgrades you have earned by leveling up your account. So at first, after the second level you HAVE to cash out. As you progress you can start to do many more levels at a time, getting a dozen pieces of gear that are practically guaranteed to be the highest rank.

But of course you have to play these levels in order, and you don’t get a chance to upgrade your character with all the cool new loot you found on the way, so you can’t just jump straight into this. You have to slowly build up to being able to push yourself this much, and once you can, you have a readily available source of some of the best gear in the game.

And that ties into my absolute favorite system of Darkspore:

Catalysts

Many diablolikes have a mechanic called ‘Sockets’. The gear you equip has its own type of equipment slot, and you put gems in there that give you small bonuses. Every game does it a little differently, but it’s kind of a staple of the series.

Darkspore uses a similar system, but utilizes it VERY differently. While you are running levels, enemies will rarely drop Catalysts instead of loot. These come in 5 colors: Purple (boosts your base stats), Red (boosts offensive secondary stats like damage or attack speed), Blue (boosts defensive secondary stats like health regen or damage resistance), Green (boosts utility secondary stats like movement speed or lifesteal), and Rainbow (can contain any of the bonuses of the previous categories) They also come in two sizes: Big and Small. This determines how big the bonus from them is.

You have a 3x3 grid on your HUD that the catalysts you collect go into. You can rearrange them however you want, and if you create a line of 3 of the same color (Rainbow is a wildcard and matches with all of them), it will double the bonus of all Catalysts in that line. This stacks, meaning if you create multiple lines over a single catalyst it could get a x3, x4, or even x5 bonus if it’s the center piece of the grid and forms a line in every direction.

However, you can’t save Catalysts. You can equip it to the grid or drop it on the ground and move on. That’s it. You have to decide now. Do you keep that Big Purple you have for the big buff to your most important stat, or do you trade it for that Small Rainbow for a mediocre stat you just found that you can plug in the middle and double everything else in your grid?

“Surely that only matters early game, and once you have good catalysts you don’t swap them out that much, right?” I hear the diablolike veterans asking, because that is how socketing works in most of those games. And normally you would be right. Except for one major change: All your catalysts only last until the end of your run. When you get to the cash out screen, and choose to keep going? You keep them. But if you choose to cash out, or if you ever die, your catalysts all vanish. Every new run you have to go through and collect them again, which results in you playing your heroes in new ways and adopting new strategies based on what catalysts drop for you each run.

It’s an INCREDIBLE easy to learn system that adds SO MUCH depth and replayability to the game. I love it so incredibly much. Each mechanic flows elegantly into the the next. The catalysts help you do better runs which gets you better gear which upgrades your heroes which lets you do better runs, the entire spiral being locked into your account level to give a quantifiable metric of how far this spiral is gone. It was so good!

And now, it’s gone forever.

Man that sure was a long post. Friends have heard me go on this rant SO many times. Thank god I never got into a second mediocre game filled with novel innovations that are ultimately lost to time and can never be experienced again due to Always Online DRM making it unplayable. Can you imagine if I didn’t learn my lesson and did that a second time? Ha!

… I never did that again. Right?

… right?

…

HEX: Shards of Fate

Hex was a digital TCG legal battle with TCG elements created by Cryptozoic. It was originally put up on Kickstarter, advertised as a digital card game with both PvE and PvP modes, a unique focus on the design space opened up by being a digital game, and gameplay damn near identical to Magic: The Gathering.

The thinly veiled truth was that this game was never meant to succeed. They had hoped it would, and it would be great if it did, but I’m fairly certain that was always a secondary objective. The first objective was to get sued by Wizards of the Coast over the similarities to Magic: The Gathering.

Now, that might sound strange to an outsider, but to anyone in the industry, they are probably nodding along and going “Yeah that tracks actually.”

You see, Wizards of the Coast is… bad. Really bad. They do everything in their power to choke the life out of the industry and have resorted to a lot of questionable tactics to do so. One of these is against anyone who develops any form of trading card game. You see, WotC has a patent on booster packs, customizable decks of cards, and turning cards sideways.

Literally.

U.S. Patent No 5,662,332 (A)

It is not a coincidence that the second two biggest names in TCGs don’t involve turning your cards sideways. Konami contested that Yugioh was different enough to not violate the patent.

WotC responded by suing them. They settled out of court.

Nintendo actually hired WotC to design the Pokémon TCG to NOT violate the patent in return for WotC getting to distribute the first few sets. WotC gladly accepted, distributed the game, got their cut of the sales, and as soon as that was over….

WotC responded by suing them. They settled out of court.

Every single other game out there ended up paying royalties to WotC. Because the cut of the sales to WotC was cheaper than going to court even if you won. WotC had their fingers in every pie, but was smart enough to make sure not to piss people off so much that refusal was ever a viable option.

Cryptozoic was a company that, at the time, was making several licensed TCGs. The big one that jumps out was the World of Warcraft TCG, which they were in charge of (though it was originally made by Upper Deck). Cryptozoic was begrudgingly paying royalties because having the WoWTCG license was too good and they didn’t want to give that up. Then Hearthstone happened and Cryptozoic was going to lose the WoWTCG license as it got discontinued.

So Cryptozoic set up their new game, Hex, specifically to bait WotC into suing them, so they could get the patent overturned.

See, the patent isn’t actually valid. You cannot patent a game mechanic. There are certainly aspects of the patent that ARE valid and CAN be enforced, but the parts about mechanics can’t actually be enforced. WotC uses it because people can’t contest it, but if it actually was used in court it would get overturned VERY easily, and WotC would be declawed.

So Cryptozoic created a game that was a clone of MtG, used a Kickstarter to build up a large amount of legal funds, and got sued by WotC! Yes! Exactly what they wanted!

… and then they settled out of court.

Sigh.

I guess I’ll talk about the game now.

Lore

The lore of the game was solid. Pretty typical fantasy setting. Humans and elves and sort of racist orcs (better than most other orcs I’ve seen at least) and extremely racist tribal coyote people make up the good guys. Undead, spider-orcs, dwarves, and also pretty racist samurai rabbit people make up the bad guys.

There are two types of magic in the world: Blood magic and Wild magic. Elves are adept at wild magic. Shin’hare (the rabbit people) are adept at wild magic as well. The Shin’hare tried to take over the world, forcing the Orcs, Humans, Elves, and Cyotle to ally together to drive them underground into the underworld.

There the Shin’hare met and allied with the Vennen, an all male race descended from Orcs. They were adept blood mages, and they procreated by kidnapping orcs and using them as incubators for spiders. I fucking love the Vennen. I’ll focus on them a lot in this. The Vennen taught the Shin’hare how to sacrifice their young for more power.

The two then allied with the Dwarves, a genderless race of sentient stone statues who excel at creating machinery, and who believe the world itself is a giant machine. Specifically, a weapon of mass destruction, and they are trying to set it off. They believe blowing people the fuck up to be their natural calling.

The underworld and overworld forces go back and forth a bit, with the Elves doing a large chunk of the work as the only overworld race that can use magic.

Then Hex happened. Hex is a massive meteor made up of Diamond, Emerald, and Sapphire. Hex punched clean through the world, scattering gems all across it, before stabilizing in orbit on the other side, becoming the worlds moon.

These gems were incredibly magical, allowing every race to now use magic. Diamonds were restorative, bringing life to things. Rubies were extremely destructive and burned bright and hot and quickly. Sapphire allowed finesse manipulation and control over water. These

Yes this is just the MtG color pie.

Eventually, humanity stumbled into one of their old crypts that was very close to the impact site of Hex, and found it CRAWLING with undead. They were taking the Diamonds from Hex and putting them into the eye sockets of human corpses, causing those corpses to reanimate. These were NOT actually undead, but an alien consciousness that existed within the gems that were using human corpses as a host.

The Necrotic sought a peaceful and symbiotic relationship with humanity as thanks for the use of the bodies. Humanity responded by getting really pissed off that the Necrotic were grave robbing, and went to war over it. Eventually the Necrotic retreated deep into the underworld and allied with the other races instead, eventually helping the Shin’hare with a second attack on the surface.

The lore has a lot more depth than that, but that’s the basic. I liked it a lot. The Orcs being good guys who just really liked tests of strength was a refreshing take on orcs. I liked them a lot. The extremely racist caricature that made up the Cyotle and the Shin’hare? Less so.

Digital Design Space

As for the actual gameplay… it was MtG. Like, almost 1:1.

Like…

Seriously.

Shards work similarly to Lands, with there being 5 basic shards, Diamond, Sapphire, Ruby, Wild, and Blood. You can only play one Shard per turn and when you do you get 1/1 Resource. 1 resource to spend on this turn, and 1 permanent resource. You spend that resource to play a card that costs 1, and you go down to 0/1 resources. Start of your turn, you would go back up to 1/1 resource.

Pretty straight forward stuff. Resources are a card type like in MtG, but once it’s played it acts as a perpetual resource like the Mana in Hearthstone, with no need to care about where the resource is coming from.

… wait a second though, this is a MtG clone. It uses the color pie. Caring where those resources come from is KIND OF a big deal in MtG.

Which is the first really cool difference between Hex and MtG! THRESHOLD! Each time you play a shard you gain 1 threshold in that color. To play a card, you have to have at least as many threshold as are displayed below its cost. See that purple dot below Murder? That means you need 1 blood threshold to play it.

Threshold is NOT consumed when you play a card, which DRASTICALLY alters deckbuilding and how feasible multi-color decks are.

For example, in MtG, if you had 4 swamps and 1 mountain in play, and 5 cards in hand that all cost R…. You can play 1 whole card this turn.

In Hex, if you have 4 Blood and 1 Ruby, and have 5 cards that all cost 1 and have a single Ruby threshold, you can play your entire hand that turn. This made it incredibly viable to splash colors in relatively smaller amounts. It also opened up cool new design space, like cards that cost 1 but still required 3 threshold in a color. Or cards that require 1 threshold of every type to activate a bonus effect (very common among Necrotic) or… for sockets!

HEY WE ARE COMING FULL CIRCLE!

Remember how I mentioned Diablolike games having sockets, but how Darkspore didn’t use it? Well Hex DOES. There was a pair of keywords called Socketable Major and Socketable Minor. Each set, there would be 10 gems (two of each color) that rotated out for Socketable cards. Cards with Major sockets could equip any gem, while minor sockets could only equip half of them. So for example the current rotation might have the Sapphire gems be “While you have at least 1 Sapphire Threshold, this card has Flying” for its Minor gem, and “When you play this card, if you have at least 3 Sapphire Threshold, target player draws 3 cards”

You chose which gem was in each Socketable card during deckbuilding. Different copies of the same card could have different gems equipped, or you could have the same gem equipped across multiple different cards. It was basically a way to go “This card was designed to be splashed in other color decks. You pick what that other color is.”

It opened up a lot of design space! This was something Hex did VERY well. They knew they were making a MtG clone, but they weren’t beholden to the same restrictions a physical card game did, and they THRIVED in those areas.

For example, REPLICATORS GAMBIT, a one cost card that creates six copies of a troop (read: creature) that just… could not exist in MtG.

Another example of this was in my favorite archetype in Hex: Mill. Now, I’m not normally a blue player. I’m not a big fan of the ‘you don’t get to play the game’ archetype. Even mill isn’t really my thing. But the way it worked in HexTCG? God I loved it. I wish I could see my opponents faces as they reached a trembling hand out to their bloated, grotesque deck, a cruel mockery of what it once was. They had started the match with only 60 cards, but now it held twice that number. Knowing every draw was more likely to bring their own skittering death out.

…

Maybe I should back up a bit.

Vennen are, in MtG terms, tribal Blue/Black with a focus on control. Specifically an aggressive form of control. Your wincon is still ‘beat your opponent to death’, but the means by which you do it is… spiders.

Lots of Vennen cards work by still allowing your opponent to do the thing that you blocked, but it now creates Spider Eggs in their deck. Lock down a creature as it enters play with ‘Everytime this creature becomes tapped, shuffle 3 spider eggs into your deck’ or ‘Whenever an opponent draws a third card this turn add a spider egg to their deck’ or ‘When this creature is destroyed add a spider egg to your opponent’s deck’ and when they DRAW a spider egg… well… the effect of a spider egg is more or less ‘When this card enters your hand or graveyard, draw/discard another card into that zone and destroy this one. Your opponent creates a Spiderling and puts it in play. “

Spiderlings are 1/1 Unblockable creatures.

The Vennen win con is to just fill your opponent with spiders and then shred them apart once the spiders start hatching. It was a DELIGHTFUL playstyle.

PvE

Hex also features a fairly robust PvE mode with a point crawl encounter map that was quite delightful. There were cards unique to PvE, but all PvP cards were also legal in PvE. In general, all your staples came from PvP and were the same core staples everyone uses to win (they were very generous with handing out common/uncommon PvP cards in the single player mode, which in turn also made Pauper a very popular format), however you also had PvE cards which made up your win cons. PvE cards weren’t balanced as tightly, and allowed to just be dumb overpowered bullshit just because it’s fun to use dumb overpowered bullshit sometimes!

There were also equipment slots that would modify the cards in your deck, turning PvP cards into PvE cards. For example, Replicators Gambit made it so that EVERY copy of that card gained that text.

PvE started with character creation. You would create a character that was one of the 8 races, and one of 6 3 different classes. Warrior, Cleric, or Ranger. I think there was a late update that added Mage but I don’t recall too clearly, and it isn’t document online anymore as far as I can tell!

Each class had a unique talent tree that you could customize and change how you played. Your race determined what colors you could play, and your level determined how many of each rarity you could play.

I played a Vennen Cleric. Cleric’s whole thing was that you would gain Blessings, 0 cost cards that would rise in your deck each turn, and could be played to draw a card as well as additional effects based on your build. My blessings put more eggs in the enemy deck, to the surprise of no one.

As you went from encounter to encounter you would earn new cards to modify your deck, swapping decks between fights. Then there were dungeons, long laborious streaks of a dozen or so encounters, with branching paths and decisions to be made, earning you tons of new packs and equipment and experience to boost your character. One especially fun encounter was crossing a desert with a pack of… I think it was gnomes? There were 20 of them that needed rescuing. The way you rescued them was putting them in your deck, and then leaving the desert through a single combat encounter. Except they were AWFUL. Like 3 cost vanilla 1/1’s level of awful. The more you had in your deck, the harder the encounter became. It was a really nice way to portray the logistical challenge of trying to fight while protecting all these useless tagalongs.

There were plans to even introduce Raids, 3v1 PvE encounters, but they fizzled out as the game got sunset.

The game was good. REALLY good. It relished in the digital design space in a way I haven’t quite seen since then. A few games, like Legends of Runeterra, have come close, but always fall short, and that’s so sad! I DESPERATELY want to play a TCG with this level of customization again!

Luckily that was the end of it. I finally learned the error of my ways, never touched anything ‘always online’ again, and now can live a life without regrets! … except Legends of Runeterra a little bit like I mentioned above but THATS IT! There are no other always online games I have regrets about!

…

ToonTown Online

Okay no, not seriously. I’ve never played toontown. But honestly it looked kinda silly and like a shitpost in video game form. I think it would have been fun to try at some point with a few friends. Not seriously, just to screw around in for a bit.

Never going to get that chance. Just like nearly everyone reading this will never get to play two of my biggest influences that shaped how I think about game design.

Always Online DRM is an insidious beast. It doesn’t just kill games, it kills *archival*. All we have left of these games is a relatively small number of gameplay videos. I was planning on having a lot more pictures in this post of all the interface elements I was talking about as I talked about them, but there just… aren’t any good pictures of them. Even these details are based on my own memory cross referenced with a couple of wikis, and even those were sparse.

Some games can’t feasibly avoid Always Online. MMO’s are a big example. But by adding it into a game that has a single player experience involved, and not making that single player experience a standalone thing on its own, you are destroying any hope that your game will be remembered. It will fade into obscurity. There will never be a cult revival. Your work will be discarded and forgotten and it’s… so incredibly sad to see.

I jokingly titled this section being about ToonTown, but really this section is about Kingdom Hearts: Union X. It was a mediocre and disgustingly predatory gacha. It was horribly managed with horrible issues around localization and it was just… a mess. But it was part of the world of Kingdom Hearts, and it’s story was important and mattered.

The game is no longer playable, but it’s also not entirely lost. The devs created a new version of it, as a gallery to view the cutscenes. The single-player side mode, Dark Road, is also included. The devs didn’t have to do this. They could have gone the same route as Darkspore and HexTCG, and had their work be forgotten. They chose to save it. Not in full, but at least the parts the deemed important.

It also makes me wonder how much this happens in other mediums. Ludology is a pretty new field, and it rarely goes into specific games and their impact on the medium, mostly just focusing on the impacts they have on humanity, rather than the mechanics themselves as these beautiful pieces of art. And it makes me wonder how often this happens with say… film critics. Are there any indie film makers who are deep in the paint of indie films and critique of not just the films themselves, but the very techniques being used, just sitting there going “It’s so upsetting that this big studio managed to do something this beautiful and all of us in the scene recognize it’s beauty, but no one else seems to, and now it’s gone?”

… as I’m writing this I actually realize that this does happen there. It’s how I found out about what became my favorite film of all time, The Man From Earth. It’s a small film that flopped horribly in theaters, and only gained any attention by being pirated by a lot by indies who wanted to talk about it. It’s a good movie, highly recommend. Not for everyone though.

I don’t know. I’m sure I had a point with all this but… seeing it happen again and again and now with streaming services taking stuff down it’s just… I can’t help but seeing not just more and more games, but more and more of EVERY artistic medium ending up in this area. How many digital artists entire portfolios have vanished off the face of the earth because their tumblr got deactivated? How many movies are going to be gone forever when Netflix eventually goes out of business? We can’t even rely on piracy! Many old pieces of media is just lost forever. Just ask the Doctor Who fandom. They probably know more about that than anyone else at this point.

But mostly I just really wish more developers would consider what parts of their games are important, and what kind of legacy they want to leave, instead of just what will generate a short burst of profit, with no care for what happens after.

… I should start doing video essays with how long this got. It’s like some kind of text based video essay. A text essay. Those are a new thing I just invented.

#Darkspore #Spore #Those are the only two tags on this post because those are the only games I talk about don’t worry about it. it’s fine. don’t read further.#HexTCG #Hex: Shards of Fate #Kingdom Hearts: Union X #Always Online DRM #The Man From Earth #I swear to god if anyone tells me I should just play Temo on LoR I will scream #YES I KNOW AND I DO #but also LoR sucks #and also that is missing THE ENTIRE POINT OF THIS RANT #the SAME THING IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO LEGENDS OF RUNETERRA #maybe not soon #but it WILL die someday #and be gone forever #because it isn’t being preserved #Text Essay

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ohcorny · 17 days

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i need to be a hater on main about scavenger's reign or i will explode. i cannot be alone in this.

now that it's being moved to netflix and people are talking about it again, all i'm seeing is glowing praise and absolutely no criticism of the writing. i will gladly agree with anyone that it's visually stunning. like, a+ in that regard no argument. great looking show, and the worldbuilding of the planet vesta is super cool and clearly considered. i like those parts! but that seems to be all anybody is responding to when they praise it.

the character writing is fucking ridiculous. i could point at any of them individually and go "what the fuck is this" but it's been months since i watched it and i don't like arguing a point i can't clearly remember. but it was the most egregious around ursula so i'm going to focus on her. her character seems to exist just to cause problems for no reason, to the point where she's also the only character we get no backstory on. we never see her in flashbacks on the ship, never learn what she did for it or why she was there, nothing about her at all. she is the only one.

and she is the #1 source of shattering my suspension of disbelief. you cannot tell me that she and sam were surviving together for a month on this incredibly hostile planet, working together every day to call the ship down, to figure out how the world worked and what was dangerous and what they could use.... and then tell me she would turn around and treat him the way she does.

spoilers below the cut

she is so hostile toward him all the time for no reason. she wanders off to go look at a weird plant in the middle of a bramble that crushes you if you don't get out the right way, leaving sam alone on the outside with no idea what she's doing or where she is or if she's alive. and when she comes out and he is VERY REASONABLY upset that she did that and isn't interested in hearing about the thing she saw, SHE gets mad at him and says she doesn't need him.

YOU DONT NEED HIM? THE GUY WHO HELPED YOU SURVIVE THIS ENTIRE TIME? THE ONLY OTHER LIVING HUMAN ON THE PLANET AS FAR AS YOU KNOW, WHO IS THE ONE WHO KNOWS WHERE YOU ARE GOING, AND HAS THE CREDENTIALS TO GET YOU INTO THE SHIP? you have been alone with him for a MONTH, he is your ONLY HUMAN COMPANION, and you think you DON'T NEED HIM?? BECAUSE HE WAS WORRIED ABOUT YOU IN A LOUD WAY?

this could be explainable if there was any real tension between them, or if we're given any reason to believe she actually could survive without him, but there isn't! she fucks up with the spores in the very first episode and would absolutely die if she was alone. sam is never anything but a good leader to her and keeps trying to look out for her, and any time he's "wrong" it's because he showed reasonable caution about the fuckplanet. he gets hurt by the egg parasite because he didn't want to climb into a giant animal's egg sac. reasonable thing to not want to do! when he and ursula get into that argument about her disappearing on him, he gets hauled off by the weird emu for the dramatic irony. because he was upset his only companion in the world disappeared. he never does anything wrong. it's never his actual character flaws that he gets punished for, it's only ursula's ~trusting your instincts~ shit that ever gets him hurt. she is ultimately responsible for his death but the show never acts like it.

so much of the show seemed to be drama for drama's sake. do not get me fucking started on kamen's creature. what was that thing's fucking problem. what was kris' fucking problem?

if i have to ask 'what is their PROBLEM' at every other character's choices, your writing is not good.

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captainsvscaptains · 6 months

Text

Round 1 Part 8 Poll 2

Propaganda

Spoilers ahead

Crow is what's called a "spore eater", which protects her from physical harm but also causes severe dehydration. Like most spore eaters, she feels the tradeoff is not worth it, so she manipulates her crew into piracy so they'll be desperate enough to venture into the dangerous seas where the dragon Xisisrefliel lives, as Xisis is reputed to be able to "cure" spore eaters. (It turns out that the cure requires ongoing maintenance from the dragon in order to be ongoingly effective, so her plan was flawed to begin with.)

It's Lucky Jack! On his very first command, took a frigate with a sloop, and filled up Port Mahón with prizes. He's a disaster on land, kind of shit with money, but he is brilliant at sea, ingenious and strategically minded. He loves his wife, Sophie, and his bestie, Stephen Maturin, and he gets up to all sorts of hijinks with the latter. He rescued Stephen from being tortured by the French, actually, and Stephen frequently uses his own connections to try and work to Jack's advantage. He's obsessed with gunnery, and his crew generally love him because he's disciplined but not a hard-horse, plus he's lucky and brings them lots of prizes and prize money. He's a jock, but later in life he starts to love math for its own sake, as well as becoming an astronomer of no mean ability; he's presented papers on math and astronomy to the Royal Society. He's a great musician, a violinist, and his duets with Stephen (a cellist) are so incredibly touching to read about. His music is just... beautiful. Stephen's hands were wrecked by torture, and later on we find out that Jack's been downplaying his own ability to match Stephen's level, because he'd rather play average with Stephen than perfectly alone.

There's so much more I could say but tldr he's the best I love him.

#battle of the captains #tournament polls #round 1 #captain crow #tress of the emerald sea #cosmere #brandon sanderson #jack aubrey #aubrey maturin series #aubrey maturin #master and commander #bookblr #movieblr #ssp1 #ssp

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althea-and-alcestris · 2 months

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Infection Au

The results said the audience wants to hear my Infection Au so I shall deliver. (TW for blood, mentions of gore and su1cid3). I based this on the MLP Swamp Fever Au and the general Infection aus <3 Also this au includes a lot of ocs that belong to me and my friends

So the main plot is that a strange fungi was discovered on Sage Island that soon began to make people ill. At first everyone thought that it's just a regular magic fungi, however it quickly turned out to be an incorrect assumption. Those infected with the spores began to develop odd symptoms such as nosebleed, gums bleeding, bloodshot eyes, discoloration of fingers and soon the limbs as it spreads. By the ending stages of the infection, the patient will resemble more like a bleeding and decaying tree. The infection spreads through either bites or the spores of the fungi. Coming in contact with the infected without any safety gloves also results in infection. Those with high magic drive are able to remain sane for longer periods of time than those with lower or no magic drive at all.

It has been 4 weeks since the outbreak started. Idia and Ortho were able to leave Sage Island before STYX put the island on lockdown, sealing the dorm mirrors and the Dark Mirror so nobody can pass through. They're working on a cure. Meanwhile the ones stuck on Sage Island have started to adapt to the current situations, learning through several losses. Trein was one of the first victims of the outbreak, having been killed by the infected while trying to protect his students. Riddle, Vee, Marqu, Ellis, Mary, Fox and Jade have been terminated after they could no longer fight the infection and grew way too hostile. Cater, Dominico and Ace are injured from expeditions and attacks but uninfected. Azul and Leona are still under infection, Azul due to no access to any more human potions has returned to his merform and is now kept in a water tank until further notice. Leona is incredibly hostile and staff decided on termination. Trey, Lilia, Adamaris and Crowley are missing with no trace of where they could be. Malleus is infected but manages to maintain his sanity. Ruggie, Jack, Sebek, Alce, Thea, Allen, Deuce, Augustino, Chenfeng and Vargas are the ones on the expedition team who regularly leave campus (what has been turned into a main camp) to gather supplies, look for survivors, kill the wandering infected and clear areas. There are snipers (Thea and Allen), gatherers (Ruggie, Deuce, Augustino) and those who cover the team incase the infected are nearby (Sebek, Alce, Chenfeng). Jack and Vargas do most of the heavy lifting and Jack pulls the occasional carts with his UM. The ones in charge of terminating those who lose the battle with the infection inside NRC are Spider, Alce and Vargas. Vil is also infected but holds on, Rook wrote himself out of the expedition groups to stay with Vil while Epel along with Silver and Kalim are not allowed to join the expedition groups for their own reasons. Jamil stays with Kalim and Spider in NRC, Alto is in charge of the supplies that the expedition groups successfully gathered, Silver is distraught and anxious because of Lilia's absence which is why Sylas stay with him at all times. Floyd is his own person ever since Jade was put down and staff can't determine how much impact his brother's death had on him. He leaves a lot but never comes back infected. Ami and Crewel are the ones staying in NRC at all times to take care of the few children that were caught in the outbreak such as Karina and Eve. Sam is infected but resides in his shop while holding out.

As the story progresses, multiple of the canons and ocs fall. Cater dies to an infected wound, Leona is terminated, Thea asks to be put down by Sebek, Deuce is terminated by Alce due to the infection, Jamil is killed by the infected, Azul ends his own life by leaving the water tank in his merform, Alto is put down by Idia after infected severely, Vil is put down but he ends up killing Rook and Epel, Lilia is found dead, Spider is killed by the infected, Alce is killed by Allen who was infected, Allen ends his own life after realizing what he had done. Crowley is never found.

The last survivors end up being:

Ace, Trey (he is found), Ruggie, Jack, Floyd, Kalim, Idia, Ortho, Malleus, Silver, Sebek, Crewel, Sam, Vargas, Ami, Karina, Eve, Sylas and a couple more ocs.

It's a lot of angst and I know it's a bit jumbled right now but I'm in the making of the character files and I will post them one by one. If you have questions, you can ask away ^^

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docgold13 · 3 months

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Batman: The Animated Series - Paper Cut-Out Portraits and Profiles

Poison Ivy (New Adventures)

Following an absence from Gotham City, Poison Ivy returned looking quite different. Her skin had turned a greenish shade of pale and her physique was more slim and nymphlike. Pamela Isley had used plant-golems as surrogates for herself in the past and it is possible that the Poison Ivy who reemerged in Gotham was actually just another of these floral golems. Conversely it is also possible that continued exposure to plant-based mutagens had transformed Isley, making her more of a dryad-like being.

Whatever the case, Poison Ivy was up to her old tricks. She created a series of plant-based replicants each of whom exuded invisible spores that made them incredibly desirable. Each of these golems were designed specifically for an individual victim, all people who were wealthy and influential throughout Gotham and its surrounding boroughs. Bruce Wayne was among these targets and he found himself having fallen head over heels in love with a young woman named Susan. The spore-based pheromones Susan emitted made Bruce feel a sense of peace and contentment that he had never in his life experienced. She was the perfect woman: strong, accepting, beautiful and compatible in every way.

It was only after his marriage to Susan and decision to forsake his life as Batman that Bruce finally discovered the terrible truth of who (or rather what) Susan actually was. A heartbroken Bruce resumed his guise as Batman and brought down Ivy’s schemes, destroying the various plant golems who were planning on killing their new spouses and leaving ivy in control of their fortunes and influence. Ivy herself seemed to perish, but she would resurface soon thereafter.

Hiding out with her partner, Harley Quinn, the two were visited by the escaped super villainess known as Live Wire. The three of them went on a destructive crime spree that was ultimately stopped by the combined efforts of Batgirl and Supergirl.

Some time later, Poison Ivy teamed up with The Floronic Man as part of a diabolical scheme to transform all life on earth into plant-based creatures similar to the Swamp Thing. Although Batman and Nightwing fought hard to put an end to this plot they could not prevail and the day was actually saved when Harley Quinn pleaded with Ivy to stop. Ivy and Harley’s love for each other turned the tide and Ivy chose not to go through with the plan.

Actresses Diane Pershing and Paget Brewster each provided the voice for Poison Ivy, with the villainess first appearing in the ninth episode of the first season of Batman: The Animated Series, ‘Pretty Poison.’

#batman the animated series #Batman #Poison Ivy #Diane Pershing #Paget Brewster #cut-out #paper art #DCAU

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spider-mancan · 1 year

Note

Starker fuck or die

This is insane. The entire day has been one dumpster fire after another. Peter fell asleep on top of a building still in costume with his textbook spread open on his lap to the sound of a phone call. The resulting jolt of unfortunate awareness nearly sent his school books down onto the pavement — instead they just have a stain from the webbing and an extremely damaged spine. Peter answered the phone but was more interested in mourning his rental deposit than whatever threat was causing the Avengers to assemble.

Then he heard the words Sex Demon come out of Captain America’s mouth and it was all downhill from there. Forlorn, Peter agreed to set his studying aside and come help out, because, really, when was he going to have another opportunity to sit in a room while Steve Rogers tried to talk about a Sex Demon in the debrief?

It wasn’t nearly as fun as Peter expected. They’d called him in because he was difficult to hit and had the benefit of both long- and short-range fighting, but some of the others weren’t so lucky. By the time he arrived, Black Widow had already been removed by Hawkeye, leaving Second Hawkeye looking very purple (“nice new uniform, Kate!”) and incredibly perplexed. Steve was mostly alright, but whatever was causing problems was not reacting well to the serum.

Causing problems, of course, meant making people extremely Down to Fuck extremely quickly.

“This is hilarious,” Peter says, swinging around the rafters. The warehouse they’re in has already been trashed, light leaking in through the roof and scaffolding collapsed in heaps on the concrete floor. “There is so much porn about this. At least two. Not that I know for sure.”

Tony comes over the comm. “I did hear Sex Pollen Sluts Go Nuts got excellent reviews.”

No one thinks this is funny at all, but Peter is too busy twisting out of harm’s way to feel bad about laughing.

It’s not a Sex Demon, which Peter finds incredibly disappointing. It’s just a man who believes in the power of the aphrodisiac, or something, and developed yadda yadda whatever he’s trying to get blackmail of the world’s most influential people blah blah super awkward and gross and his sex blaster doesn’t even look cool at all.

None of this is the particularly insane part.

The insane part happens about two seconds after Tony manages to topple Mr. Sex Demon over the railing and onto the ground, where the pressurized canisters on his back give way to the unforgiving asphalt and explode into a green haze so dense Peter can barely see the brilliant blue glow of the arc reactor in Tony’s chest.

“Mr. Stark!” Peter yells into the comm, without a response, and he’s swinging over to assess the damage when Captain barks orders for him to stay out of the way.

The Iron Man suit is already vacuuming up the fumes to remove the contaminant from the air, but Tony hadn’t been wearing one of his space safe suits which means there’s no internal oxygen supply, which means he’s also been contaminated. Regardless, the two men come into view and Tony just waves. “FRIDAY gives the all clear.” His voice sounds strained.

Peter drops down just behind. “Mr. Stark!”

“Spider-Man,” Steve calls, jogging over. “It’s best not to get to close—”

Peter is about to ask what Steve could possibly mean when he feels heavy hands grip his shoulders. The Iron Man gauntlets are heavy — in the armor Tony weighs nearly 400 pounds — and Peter winces. “Mr. Stark?”

He isn’t afraid — Natasha hadn’t been dangerous. She’d stood stock still for a moment, called for assistance, and immediately removed herself. Over the phone, Captain America had run through the symptoms of the spores, but Peter can’t remember all of that now. He vaguely remembers a loss of inhibition, some kind of animalistic behavior, and an increase in body temperature to dangerous levels over time.

“Tony,” Steve says warningly.

Iron Man’s faceplate lifts up and Tony is sweating, gritting his teeth. “I know, Cap.” His hands tighten, shaking, enough that Peter grabs one and flexes his fingers, debating whether to pry it off. “I’m trying.” Deep breath.

“Get away from the kid, Tony.” Steve pulls out his firearm and Peter is about to laugh, it’s insane, Tony would never hurt him. Touching Peter isn’t something Tony isn’t allowed to do. But when Peter goes to laugh Tony still looks so serious, so stony, almost sick. Deranged, even. Just a little.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter frowns and Tony’s eyes flutter closed, tight.

“Don’t call me that, right now, kid.”

Kate hops down from her perch in the rafters, awkwardly adjusting the quiver on her back. “I’m just gonna, uh, go.” She gestures over her shoulder to the door, which Tony blasted off the hinges not half an hour ago. “I’ll find a broom or something. Or just leave.”

Steve nods, mouth tight. His gaze doesn’t leave Tony where he’s hunched over Peter like a bad shadow, but his finger stays still on the trigger. Waiting. Not moving one way or the other.

Peter knows how these sorts of things go; if something can go wrong, it will. He runs through the data he can grapes through the confusion, tapping into Tony’s suit. Tony had been exposed to nearly twenty times the recommended dosage. Peter pulls his vitals through Karen and tries not to balk at Tony’s heart rate or internal temperature. Hot. Tony could fry an egg on his chest soon. “We need to get you out of the suit.” Peter reaches for one of the latches.

“Leave it,” Tony grunts. He’s bitten his lip so hard there’s blood in the corner of his mouth. “Better.” His hands haven’t moved, like he can’t move them, like he’s a statue. Peter is going anywhere without forcing himself free. “Better for you.”

“For me?” Peter demands. His hands are already on the gauntlet, but he freezes, struck silly by the sheer nerve. Tony is overloading and he thinks he should stay in the suit for Peter’s sake?

“I’m calling Fury.” Steve brings one hand up to his ear, gun still level. His eyes don’t leave Tony the entire time, even when he backs away slightly and starts to argue on the private channel.

Peter’s fingers tap a nervous rhythm on Tony’s armor. “Karen says you’re spiking really fast, sir,” he says at a whisper. This isn’t good for Tony’s heart, still weak, or his nervous system, which has been run ragged.

“I’m fine,” Tony chokes out through clenched teeth. His skin looks terribly gray, haggard, even. “I am really reliving some of my old glory days right now, but I’m fine.”

“Oh, yeah. Drugs.” Peter laughs nervously. Tony’s eyes are blown, the warm brown consumed by darkness, and his gaze is heavy on Peter. The gauntlet moves now, pulling up the hem of Peter’s mask until Peter feels metal against his pulse point. “Mr. Stark?”

Tony groans.

Peter is a good kid, but he’s not a saint. He’s seen the Tony Stark sex tapes, even the ones that Tony didn’t know were being recorded. He’d been through his own moral beratement when he opened it the first time, but he’d done it several times since because they’re something about Tony that Peter can’t get enough of. And Peter has heard that groan a million times. It’s not like his enemy just punched me into a wall groan, or his this meeting could have been an email groan. It’s the groan he makes when he opens someone up with his cock for the first time. The eyes rolling back, hips stuttering kind of groan.

Peter is suddenly very hard in his jock strap. Terrible. Terrible news.

Karen is a welcome distraction in the form of more terrible news. “Mr. Stark!” The vitals displaying on Peter’s HUD are approaching dangerous levels, especially for an older, unenhanced human. “Your heart rate. It’s crazy!”

Tony is sweating, mouth open in the face of the rising temperatures, and Peter starts to frantically start prying at the mechanisms that hold the armor together. Tony makes no move to assist. “Leave it.”

“You’re in a metal can and you’re already over 100F,” Peter tells him, as if Tony didn’t know. “You’re going to—”

He doesn’t hear Steve barking at him to stop. It doesn't strike him that it’s a bad idea until it’s too late.

Peter manages to get his nails under the ridge of the chest plate and release it, pulling back, and then suddenly he’s falling. Tony has miraculously changed his mind about the suit and decided to abandon it entirely, stepping out and using the momentum of Peter’s scrambling until they both fall prone on the ground. There’s a poof of dust as they clatter onto the warehouse floor, tangled together.

Steve looks over at them sharply and is yelling orders Peter can’t quite hear because he is too busy trying to place the way Tony is smothering him with his body. Even through Peter’s suit he feels the heat radiating off of Tony’s skin, so sweaty he’s almost slick. He smells like hard work and expensive cologne. Peter is bewildered, and he puts his hands on Tony’s chest to push him away only to freeze when he feels Tony pull up mask and lick a thick line from his collar to his ear.

“Mr. Stark, I don’t—” Tony gets a hand between them, pushing the release on Peter’s suit until it’s loose around his body and Peter turns his head to look at Steve. “Captain, I didn’t think it was supposed to be, ah, oh.” He shudders when Tony sucks Peter’s ear into his mouth. “Mr. Stark, please. We need to get you to medical.”

“No time,” Tony mumbles against Peter’s throat. He’s cupping Peter’s groin through the suit while the other hand pulls the mask off completely. “Want you bad. God, I can’t even think. Look at you.”

“Tony.” Steve takes the safety off, conversation over the communicator set aside, and gets closer. He doesn’t want to shoot. That much is obvious — if he was going to, he would have already done it. “I said get off the kid.”

“He’s mine, Capsicle,” Tony growls. He winds his hands around Peter’s back until their chest to chest, and Peter feel the rabbiting heartbeat until it’s hard to separate whose is whose. “Get your own!” There’s the tell-tale fire up of the propulser on Tony’s palm, and then there’s a stare down between Iron Man and Captain America with a shivering Spider-Man sandwiched between.

Steve looks away first.

Peter feels a bit wild, wide-eyed, confused. Flushed and hot and not attractive at all, but Tony is near-tearing the suit off of his body and Peter is so shocked he’s barely fighting it. Cold air hits his sweaty skin where Tony is pulling it down at the neck and it feels like an electric shock. “Mr. Stark, seriously. You need to—oh.” There’s a rough hand on his cock. “Oh, my god.”

Tony has both hands on Peter again, like he’s going to reach into Peter’s chest and start pulling him apart, but the Iron Man suit is in sentry mode now; Peter hears the thunk of the boots on the ground even as he’s writhing, trying to focus past the sound of his own insane breathing. He blinks and then there is red and gold staring down the barrel of Steve’s gun.

“Need you, kid,” Tony growls in his ear, pulling down the length of him through his underwear. This was not on Peter’s bingo card for the day. “Feel like I’ll die without you.”

Maybe you will, Peter thinks hysterically.

Steve could stop this, but the gun is slowly falling lower until it’s pointed at the concrete. “Peter,” he starts, “if you give me the word, I’ll remove him and take him to quarantine until we find a willing partner.”

“Partner?” The puzzle pieces are falling into place but there has to be another picture because the one in Peter’s head isn’t making any sense. “I thought this just made you horny!”

“It sure does,” Tony mutters. He doesn’t spare Peter’s underthings nearly the same respect as the suit, but he tears Peter’s t-shirt off at the neck and spreads it open like a child opening a Christmas present. Hands splay flat over sweaty skin, feeling Peter’s rapid breathing. “I’m going to ruin you, kid.” Like he can’t hear a single thing.

“I’m not—oh, god.” Tony is heavy on top of him and his cock is hard in his sweats, thick where it’s digging into Peter’s hip. Tony readjusts and grinds them together, hard enough that Peter scrambles for purchase against Tony’s back. “Cap, I don’t know what to do. What do I do?”

Tony rakes his nails down Peter’s bare chest, catching on Peter’s nipples with a satisfied smirk.

“What do you want to do?” Steve asks slowly.

Tony has such a high fever and his heart rate is dangerous and he looks at Peter and says, “you want to be a good boy for me, don’t you?” and Peter is so fucked. He’s both literally and figuratively fucked.

Like a flash of lightning, Peter remembers the call earlier: if Tony doesn’t come inside someone, he’ll overheat until he’s either cooked inside or dies from a heart attack. It had sounded kind of funny at the time, only half-paying attention.

Despite having a god among men standing not twenty feet away — oh, god, Captain America can totally see Peter’s boner right now — Tony doesn’t look away from Peter for a single moment if he can help it. Years of the revolving door love interests have made Tony extremely good with his hands. He’s often joked about it, about how good he is in bed, but Peter never actually thought he’d feel the way Tony smoothes hands over skin or bites bruises cherry red and it’s just a whole lot more than Peter expected to happen.

“I—I…oh, god.” Tony licks a line from Peter’s navel up to his chest and latches on to one of Peter’s nipples with his teeth. “I’m, I’m willing. I just—”

“Are you sure?” Steve says firmly, like Peter might be able to think straight with Tony all over him like every unfortunate wet dream he’s had since the seventh grade.

“If you don’t leave right now,” Tony says with a growl, “you’re going to get quite the show, Cap.” His eyes look clouded over, and he sits back heavy on Peter’s cock and just looks at the mess he’s made. Peter’s suit is hanging haphazardly around his hips and his shirt is ruined and his skin is bright pink. The cold wind through the holes in the walls brushes past, too cool on the spit-slick on Peter’s chest and he shudders.

“I’m okay,” Peter chants, and he lets himself reach out and touch for the first time. It’s tentative, fingertips across the scarring on Tony’s chest. “Like, what the fuck, but also I’ll be okay.”

If anyone understands that, it’s Steve, who is flushed almost as red as Peter and pivots. “I’ll guard the perimeter.”

With a grin, Tony rolls his hips so fluidly Peter whines high in his throat. “Kind of wanted to put on a show.” His cock is so hard, rutting into the dips of Peter’s stomach. “Bet he’ll watch. He just doesn’t want to admit how good you look. My perfect boy.” He grabs both sides of Peter’s head, fingers tangling in his hair so hard Peter can’t look anywhere but straight ahead.

Peter presses his hands flat. “Mr. Stark, I…” He closes his eyes tight. “What do I do? This is crazy.” Not last week Tony had been helping Peter with relationship advice, how to get a girl’s attention, clapped him on the shoulder and called him champ like he was going to take Peter to the baseball game later. “You’re…”

The first time Tony kisses him, Peter’s brain doesn’t care about the drugged nature of it. It’s everything he wants, everything he thought it would be in his wildest dreams. It’s possessive, almost bruising, like Tony is boiling over and he’s going to fill Peter up with it. Teeth nips at Peter’s bottom lip until he makes the smallest sound, a little desperate. What? That’s Mr. Stark’s tongue in his mouth.

Tony’s hands slip down under the waistband of Peter’s until he touches hair and Peter writhes, knees clanking together, trying to hide himself even though Tony groans again like he’s found nirvana. His nails rake up the sensitive skin near Peter’s groin. “So soft and beautiful.” Tony bites into the meat of Peter’s shoulder, hips still rutting in a sinful rhythm. “Knew you would be.”

“Are you sure about—ah, about this, Mr, Stark?” Peter tries. His tongue is so thick in his mouth. He can hardly process anything. Beyond Tony is the dingy gray walls of the warehouse, the open space, anyone could walk in and they’d see Tony pinning Peter down with his body. Tony has never looked at him this way; not that Peter hasn’t tried. “You’re…you’re going to hate me later.” He covers his face with his hands, feels the heat on his cheeks.

When he turned seventeen he’d pushed his luck. He touched more, took more. Kissed Tony on the cheek goodbye until he was daring enough to slip, catch just the corner of Tony’s mouth. Peter remembers it, it’s was Monday, rainy, because he’ll never forget the way Tony had looked at him after. Terrified. Disgusted, even. Of Peter. Of Peter kissing him.

Right now, Tony needs more than a sidestep kiss and pat on the shoulder. He needs a hole, something to fuck into, something to take apart piece by piece, and he’s already let Peter know he wasn’t interested in that with him. Peter’s brain is spinning, the reality of the situation started to seep in through the cracks of his shock, and he wonders if he’s being an opportunist by taking Tony’s wandering hands in stride.

“Oh, darling.” Tony leans in and presses a wet kiss to Peter’s shoulder. “I could never hate you.”

The sound of the zipper fills up the whole room. The space is public, with the open floor and windows and sun streaming down, but it’s quiet, save the police sirens outside. Tens of people, probably, just a flimsy wall away while Tony Stark gets his cock out with a groan.

It’s thick, uncut, slightly to the left, and nestled in a thick and well-groomed swath of dark hair. Peter knew all that from the videos, the tapes he keeps on his phone for the lonely nights, but that’s just an old image of Tony. Right now, Tony is on his knees above Peter and he grins, circling his cock with his fingers so Peter can watch it twitch. He’s still a bit gray, he looks sick, and his hair is slick against his neck. Peter has always liked that, when it curls there, but Peter can’t look away from the curls around Tony’s cock right now because he’s just a man and his mouth is watering.

“You’re going to be the best thing I’ve ever felt,” Tony says through that wicked grin, eyes dazed — mind far away, probably, since the fight has left him. He leans over, lets his cock drag over Peter’s stomach. Peter feels pre-come in a smooth line and it makes him whimper. “I’ve fucked royalty, the most powerful people in the world, the most beautiful, but I know you’re going to feel the best.”

He kisses Peter then, when Peter opens his mouth and moans at the idea. He brings one thick hand up to Peter’s neck and just holds him, all threat but no pressure, and opens up Peter’s kisses with the flat of his tongue until Peter is weak and loose on the floor. Those fingers pull his mouth down, slip in and feel his tongue slide under the fingertips, and Tony doesn’t have to tell Peter to suck because this has happened in Peter’s head at least twenty five times.

Tony tastes like metal and lotion and salt. He presses on Peter’s tongue until Peter drools around his fingers, grinding his cock into Peter’s hip and rolling his thigh up between Peter’s legs. “Knew you’d melt for me, sugar in the rain, just like that.”

Peter thinks his eyes might roll back in his head. Is he the one that got caught in the sex pollen nightmare? He feels giddy, almost drunk, and he lets more drool come out of his mouth and slick up Tony’s fingers. He knows where they’re going.

Tony is less single-minded than Peter would have thought, because he’s slow to pull his fingers away and he’s slow to lift up Peter’s leg and he spends an awed moment just looking, which borders on being too much. Peter can feel his ass clench when Tony runs a thumb over the pucker, and his legs tighten around Tony’s hips.

“Just, uh…” Peter wipes his mouth and hides his face in his elbow. “You can start, just…whatever you need.”

Tony presses in gently with the pad of his thumb at the same time he tugs Peter’s arm away from his face, just in time to see Peter’s expression slip into something feral. “Need to see you.” Tony bites into the meat of Peter’s shoulder and laves at it with his tongue. His goatee scrapes across Peter’s skin so good, and Peter curls up until his arms are curling over Tony’s head, hovering, unsure whether to bring him closer or pull him away. “My good boy.”

“Mr. Stark.” Peter presses Tony into his shoulders, another bite, and Tony slips a spit-slick finger inside quick and easy. “Oh, god, I didn’t think—I never thought—”

That’s a lie. Peter thought about it a lot, the way Tony might work him open. Tony’s fingers curl smoothly against Peter’s walls, one to two and then three, a little dry but Peter doesn’t mind when it hurts a little because sometimes soft and sweet feels dull. Sometimes he wants someone to rip him open and make him cry and if Tony is going to do it right now, under threat of death—

“Think about you all the time,” Tony croons heavily against Peter’s skin. He pulls away, purposeful, and Peter blinks. He wonders hysterically if the fog melted away, no more sex magic or whatever it is that’s making Tony want to destroy him, but Tony just draws closer until he can slap his cock around Peter’s swollen mouth. “Get me wet. I’ll make you stop thinking for good.”

Peter groans, an open invitation. This is insane. He shouldn’t enjoy this because Mr. Stark is drugged into wanting him and it’s a huge breach of trust and privacy but Peter scrambled up onto his elbows so Tony can feed him his dick, thick and perfect. He grabs Tony’s hip so hard he thinks there might be bruises but Tony fucks a little harder into his mouth, smooth.

There isn’t a lot of time for sex in his line of work, he’s busy, he’s pining over a man who doesn’t want him, not for real, but Peter isn’t too good to get on his knees in the back of a club and swallow someone down. He knows what he’s doing, throat opening up until the head of Tony’s cock hits the back of his throat. He hums. He loves this. He loves sucking people off, makes his head floaty and easy, and he’s got his eyes closed just to revel in it. He lets drool pool in his mouth again, knows it’s going to make his life easier.

Tony’s thumb wipes a tear off Peter’s cheek, and it’s only then that Peter opens his eyes and finds his lashes damp, stuck together, watery. “There’s my boy.” It’s so fond. “Don’t cry. You’re doing so well.”

Peter’s hips fuck up into the air and he pulls off, suckling at the head before letting it rest gently on his bottom lip. “I’m good. I’m good, Mr. Stark.” He feels Tony twitch against his mouth. It’s incredible.

It’s nothing compared to Tony rolling him over on his side, the obscene way Tony hikes up one of Peter’s legs and spits in Peter’s hole and feeds Peter the head of his cock so fast it burns a little, the way Peter kind of likes but won’t admit. It hurts and then his body knows it like this and everything evens out and Tony growls when he thrusts fully into Peter. His skin slaps hard against Peter’s hips, rocking Peter with a surprised cry further across the dusty ground. Tony just smoothes his hand over Peter’s hip, under the knee, and rocks into him. He bites feral at Peter’s neck and shoulders like he’s here to take and claim, like he’s going to want to see the shape of himself on Peter later.

“Oh, Mr. Stark, I’m, ah, oh, please.” Tony brushes up against his prostate and Peter jolts forward, bracing himself with his free hand on the ground to stop from being fucked flat into the floor. “Oh, please. It’s good. It’s good, it’s good.”

Peter isn’t sure Tony can hear anything anymore, but he takes his hand off Peter’s knee and wraps it around Peter’s throat, pulling him back so their bodies are flush and rocking hard and tight into Peter’s body. It’s hard to remember this is just drugs, this is just another day on the job getting fucked by the unrequited love of his life, when Tony watching the way Peter’s eyes roll back so closely. When Tony kisses Peter he tastes like blood but feels like gold, wrapping Peter up tighter. Peter couldn’t leave if he wanted to. He doesn’t want to. He’ll never want to.

“You take me so good, kid,” Tony says against Peter’s jaw, kisses wetly at the skin there. “Thought about this, about opening you up in the lab.”

“Ngh.” Peter is beyond speech, just like Tony promised, but his hand flies back to dig nails into Tony’s hip. His cock aches, dribbling precome onto the dirty floor and the tangle of his ruined clothes.

“It’s bend you over and slip inside and you’d just—fucking—let me.” He thrusts hard into Peter’s hole, punctuation, and the sound Peter makes is ungodly. “Thought about it when you glued yourself to the wall, just ripping your clothes off—mmm.” A slow roll Peter can feel in his toes. “Find you already open and dripping because I know you fuck yourself sometimes before you come in. FRIDAY can tell.”

Tony isn’t squeezing his throat but Peter can’t breathe.

There are a million and one first hand accounts of Tony Stark’s stroke, but Peter doesn’t think any of them compare to the real thing. On the ground, in the warehouse, while Captain America tries to stop New York’s Finest from throwing open the door and seeing Peter pinned here in the dirt, spread open—

“That’s it,” Tony whispers, gravel. He scratches down Peter’s chest and wraps his hand around Peter’s cock. “You’re so good. Go on. Make a mess. Daddy will clean it up for you.”

It’s deep in Peter’s stomach, rolls up until it burns in his chest and chokes him. His hips cant back, trying to take more of Tony, more more more of something that isn’t here, out here in the open. Everyone knows they’re doing this right now. Fuck. Tony’s suit is still there; FRIDAY is recording all of this, the way Peter shudders and writhes and comes and comes and comes all over Tony’s fist.

He falls flat on his stomach, Tony’s hand still pumping lightly until Peter is pushing back against Tony’s thrusts just trying to get away from the sensitivity.

“That’s it, that’s it.” Kisses all over his neck, his throat, his cheeks. “Let me take care of you. Almost there, so good. So perfect.”

There’s no condom. That’s the last thought Peter has, as Tony comes thick and hot in Peter’s ass and grunts, bites one more time. No condom. Very messy. It’s fine, probably, since Tony said he’d clean it up.

The adrenalin drop hits, empty, and Peter fades away into something deeper than sleep with his cheek pressed into the cold ground and Tony pulling out of his body, wet and sloppy.

#alright so this got away from me #obviously #i'm gonna add a little ending onto this and then post to ao3 because this is just a whole fic #starker #sex pollen #fuck or die #i did my best i've never written anything very exciting smut wise before lmao #asks #tntp #dub con #this is fine #im on fire it's fine

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